Speaker A: All right. Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a very special interview episode. We're joined today by Alejandro Campos. And Trinity is here as well, of course. How's it going, everyone? Good morning.

Speaker B: Good morning.

Speaker C: Or good afternoon slash early evening, potentially.

Speaker B: Yes, afternoon for me.

Speaker A: Well, Alejandro, we've been chatting a lot off and on for well over a year now, and we finally got you on the show. This is super exciting. I think fans of the show will know you from the Enfantine series on FXHash, from Pensado a Mano. And probably from the works in progress you've been sharing from this upcoming release that you're doing with Tender with Adam. But before we get into all that, all of the great art that you've made, perhaps you can introduce yourself to the audience, tell us about your background in art and architecture and coding and how you decide to get involved with crypto and NFTs in the first place.

Speaker B: Okay, that's lots of things to explain. First, it's super nice to be here. I've been listening to the podcast for 1 year, I think, now, maybe even more than 1 year. So it's nice to be on the other side for once. And I think the first thing I would say, thank you both for the work that you are doing, pushing for this generative art scene on the blockchain. So that's the first thing. So I knew that this was the first question because I've been listening to the show and I was yesterday thinking about it. And I thought at first I was going to start explaining that I'm an architect. Which is basically my artistic practice, what I do as an artist, because I consider architecture an art somehow, although it's connected to, of course, dwelling and inhabiting and functional needs and all these things, but I still consider it an art. But then I started reminiscing about my background, or my story with web art, let's call it like that, or with the internet. I was born in '89. That means that I— my teenage years were this explosion of the internet somehow. I was looking at my old emails and all these things, and I was thinking, when did I start really to be interested in art? And I discovered that it was always connected to websites and forums and communities. So for instance, I started doing art creating signatures for forums. So they— with these threads where I would say request a signature here. And it was always like this kind of free thing that I like to do. So this is how I started really using Photoshop and using painting and drawing and all these things. And then I somehow, when I was going to the university to start to become an architect, I also started presenting my work to art competitions, for instance, posters for events and things like this. So this is somehow how I started to become interested in visual arts. Let's call it like that. Of course, when studying architecture, there's something quite interesting, which is architecture is a practice. And I think you've been talking about this also with other architects from the scene. Architecture is a practice where there's somehow a nice balance between creativity and also logic or organization. And it's not a coincidence that we call also— there's things called architecture of programming, and one can be an architect.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Not only of buildings, but also of software. And I think they are very connected— coding and looking for order, looking for logic, and architecture— and also connected to creativity and creation and all these things. So I think that's how I've always been interested in art, but more than art, on creativity and imagination and how to bring these ideas through some kind of order into reality. That could be the starting point. And with coding specifically, I started coding websites. So this is my background really with coding. I— my first experiences with coding is HTML and PHP and a bit of JavaScript. So it's been always connected to websites. And I think this is important for when I explain Fantasia because it's connected to a realization that I'm— that I've been having these last months that What we are doing is actually web development rather than art in the visual arts sense of things. And this is, I think, what I'm trying to also push for with, with the project. And it's connected to where do I come from in my coding journey.

Speaker A: So did you study coding then as part of your formal education, or is it something that you picked up professionally after the fact? And where does crypto come into the scene? Like, were you an early person on Bitcoin or ETH? Like, how did you find NFTs? Because they're controversial. I mean, most people don't like crypto, most people don't like NFTs. So what kind of pushed you into getting curious about the space and releasing art here?

Speaker B: I did not study coding. It's always autodidacta in Spanish, like self-learning, I think it's in English. Yes, I wanted to do websites somehow. I had to learn coding. So I used to have, for instance, this— I don't know if you remember this— this MSN Spaces, this thing by Microsoft. So I used to have one of those where I was posting tutorials about how you could, with coding, yes, what I thought it was coding, where you could put your own banner and your own theme and things like this. So this is how I became interested in coding. It was always connected to communities and to helping people. Yeah, so that's also connected to the library and all these things later. Regarding crypto, it's a bit more of a personal story. 4 years ago, I moved to the Netherlands and I moved by myself. So my partner stayed in Spain and then I felt somehow alone, I can say that, or bored maybe. So I started viewing lots of YouTube videos. So it's very like practical thing. So I discovered crypto, I became interested in it. I started with Binance trying to buy and sell different coins and tokens. And then I discovered NFTs. And I think from the moment I discovered NFTs, it's like 2 things connected because it's my interest on the internet and technology and all these things, but also community, which is, I think, something that we all people which are on NFTs have felt at some point, that the most important part of it was community and how NFTs with Web3 culture and Discord servers and Twitter and all these things created some sense of community. So this is how I became interested in crypto, and I did it through projects. So NFT projects basically, where I will go into the Discord server, I will meet people. I didn't feel alone anymore because I was having fun with other people. So it's more this personal story what brought me to here.

Speaker C: What types of communities was it specifically? Like, obviously we came into this as a part of the generative art community and just really loving the culture that we saw here, especially in comparison to elsewhere within the crypto culture scene where everything is just something, something, something to the moon and just hodling everything left and right. What was it about the communities that really brought you in? And I think maybe a part 2 to that is how did you come into this space more specifically?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm just creeping on your Tezos wallet right now, and you've been here for about 2 years. So obviously not since like the 2021 journey, but it's been a while.

Speaker B: It's been a while, but I'm also quite new, I think, to crypto. When I say community, it was actually through NFT projects and especially this kind of puzzles that in Twitter someone would post, and then you would have to look for some things in a wallet and then go somewhere else and this kind of Pasos that I also like, but it was especially role-playing. I got into NFT communities by role-playing, and this is also connected to my first name in the space, which is Ratkitek, which is the merging of rat and architect. And this is because I started in crypto by role-playing in a server where we were rats somehow, and we created our own community of rats. So it was quite absurd, but I mean, it was also fun. And this is also where I started producing images for people also, and posters and maps of this kingdom and these things. So it was by roleplaying how I came into the space. From there to generative art, it was actually architecture what brought me to generative art, specifically 2 people, which are Ismahelio and Jacek. You interviewed Jacek a few shows ago, and it was especially one project by Jacek, Holo.

Speaker A: Holo.

Speaker B: Which I know you love Trinity. So it was this project when I thought, wow, so I can also bring my architecture background into the space somehow. So I became interested in fx hash. I got into fx hash. I started collecting some projects that I liked, like this one. And I also started talking with Ismahelio and Jacek by DM on Twitter. And they sent me some tutorials and some things where I could start coding with fx hash. p5. So it was actually through them that I got into generative art, and that's why I'm always speaking about them, because I think their work has been quite important for me personally. But I also think it shows how you can bring disciplines together, or how you can use architecture as a start for coding.

Speaker A: I mean, I think we see that influence most prominently, or most obviously, in your earliest works on fxhash, Maps of Life, And sparsely populated grid. I mean, they feel more organized around kind of like forms and what, I don't know, to us, like non-architects feel like more architecturally driven pieces. But the works that really blew you up, the first one that really got you a lot of attention was Enfantine's one, Small Talk, which really goes into a different direction, right? It's more about creating these like very childlike brushstrokes, imitating the feel of crayon and some other mediums. And then it also has this musical component.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I really want to dig into those projects with you, firstly by asking why the music? You know, a lot of generative artists don't incorporate motion into their work, let alone sound, and you incorporate both of those here through the drawing process and then the, the sound that plays. So what importance does music have to you when it comes to your artistic practice, and like, what do you hope to convey to the audience like by using these pieces?

Speaker B: Yes, Enfantiins really was different than what I was doing before. And it's also maybe connected to architecture again, I think, because if you think of, for instance, Jacek or Ismahelio, they are from a branch of architecture which I, which I'm actually not. As an architect and also as a teacher, because I'm teaching at the university, I'm very interested in history. For instance, I'm very interested in archives and drawings, but real drawings, not digital drawings. So I'm really interested in analog things. Somehow. And what I thought when I saw generative art is that many times they didn't have these textural qualities or these material qualities that analog works have, which I love. And I always want, for instance, to print my architectural drawings immediately to see how they look on paper. And I'm very picky with what paper do I use and all these things. So it's this feeling of, of materials and textures and all these things. So actually, Infantines, I think It documents my journey to learn how to use coding to represent these analog techniques. And there's been lots of discussion about this, I know, over the last months with Mapan and many people who are using similar techniques. So Infantines was— I said, okay, I'm going to teach myself, well, the code how to draw. And of course, when you want to draw, you start to draw like a child. So this was the theme for the series, how to draw like a child. And I think music comes also from this idea that what we are doing is not— because at the beginning, of course, I was completely clueless. What is generative art? It's coding, but what does that mean? But immediately you discover that what that means is that it's a website. So what we are creating, it's actually a website. So for me, it doesn't make sense that a website is only an image. A website can offer much more than just an image. It can offer music, but also animation. So all my work is animated or has music. So it's always not only an image but something else. And this is because I understand generative art on the blockchain as websites, basically. And with music, it— yes, it was more connected to my readings and my interest on childhood and Satie specifically, which is the composer of the Enfantines pieces. And I thought when you animate these shapes with music, they really get this idea of materiality, of texture, of weight, as if they exist somehow. They are not only circles. They are actually made of small, tiny circles, but they are more than just geometry. So this was more or less the thinking behind it.

Speaker C: You do speak a lot about— I think maybe this was in relation to both of the Enfantine series— you're not only are you learning how to construct lines and flow fields and, you know, animating them across grids, you also speak a lot about kind of the digitization of things that we kind of take for granted in our real life. You know, even just the process of generating the music file and being able to map that out in JSON formats so that, you know, things can be effectively drawn, or, you know, how do we blend colors more effectively within a digital space? You know, talking about some of your journeys through the libraries that are available. As well as, you know, people have talked a lot about, you know, blending colors in RGB is like, is that one thing to do versus like blending them using HSL? And like, you know, I think that really speaks to learning how to operate within this digital-first space. It's very interesting, but I'd love to hear more about the process and the desire to kind of incorporate these elements like in the way that you did, especially in like a generative way.

Speaker B: Yes, I think I started Because I always start as if no one else has done it before, which is not the right way of doing it because you start creating something which is much slower and much worse than that was already there. But it's a way of working, I think. So when I started, okay, how do you draw a line or what's a line on a paper? And I started thinking, okay, so a line is actually when you move a pencil, it's actually a collection of places where the pencil leaves a mark.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Somehow. So this is how I understand a line, and that means it's a collection of circles. So then I create a code that draws a collection of circles following some kind of path, and it has some randomness. And this is how you create a line which imitates somehow an analog line, but of course it's not the same. And it's similar with the music, as you're saying, and the blending of colors. With the music, for instance, I was very interested in how You can link music with animation. And at the end, after many tries and tests, at the end I created this idea of using a MIDI file or a JSON where you have all the notes. But actually I wanted the music to sound natural. So for instance, the Infantine Species and also Fugatientas on Verse, the music are really recordings by an ex-student actually who plays the piano. So I asked him to play these pieces and also to record them with a MIDI file while he was playing them. So I have both the sound but also the times of all the keys. So this is how I mixed both things. I didn't want only to use a recording and analyze this recording. I wanted like precise synchronization somehow, so I came up with this way of doing it. And for the blending of colors, it's the same. I mean, when I first Draw two lines. One was blue and the other was yellow, of course. And then the blending of them—it was not green. And I thought, wow, how is it this possible? No, when I draw with my pencil, it's green, so it should be green. And this led me into a very deep rabbit hole, I have to say, because that's not how RGB works at all. So it's very complicated to do actually with coding, and I learned how to do it from Lars. wonder. And then I finally found my, my own way of doing it, and now I'm using it always. So I always draw with this realistic blending, let's say. So I'm not embracing completely this digital first, as you say. I'm trying to bring analog techniques somehow, always.

Speaker C: Fascinating. You know, I think maybe it's a good segue into talking about brush.js just briefly. There is kind of this— when you talk about like somebody's always done this before, but You know, as a child, you're always experiencing something for the first time and you feel like this sense of invention and wonder, and you don't wanna necessarily follow what somebody else has done before. You wanna like figure it out yourself. One of my former coworkers slash the worst boss I've ever had, he used to say that in math, for example, it's one thing to be taught what a proof is, but only the best students will figure out the proof independently. And that's really the best way to learn. So I don't, I don't know. That's just—

Speaker B: Hmm.

Speaker C: Maybe there's truth to that, first seeing what's been done before.

Speaker B: Yes. When, when you do things from scratch, you have to learn how to do them because you cannot.

Speaker C: I wasn't able to derive the Pythagorean theorem by myself, unfortunately, but standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank you, Pythagoras.

Speaker B: So p5.brush.

Speaker C: What is it for the people who might be listening?

Speaker B: Yes. This is something that I did while I was feeling less enthusiastic about the space, I think. At some point. And this was, of course, going back to how I started doing art on the internet, which is for free, basically. So it was a forum where I just posted, if you want a signature, just send me a message and I will do it. So it was always for free. Everything that I've done connected to the internet was always for free. I felt it always quite separate from my work as an architect somehow. So it was always for free. And then I started on NFTs And at some point, I really became— I really dislike this idea that everything has to be sold, that money is always the most important thing. We are always discussing about floors and prices and all these things. And I know it's an important part of it. And I know it's unfair to say this because of course I don't have to live out of my art. And it's unfair of me to say that it should be done for free because that's not true, because there's people living that need to do art in order to pay for the rent and for the food and everything else. But for me, it was a bit violent to sell my art because it was the first time I did it. So basically, at some point I thought I have to give some of this money— but not money— some of this back to the community. And this is how I created this library. So this library is basically the tools that I, that I've developed since, since infantile. So it's all these tools to draw like a child, basically. So to draw with analog techniques And I uploaded them open source completely so everyone can use them. And I thought it's my way of giving back something of what I received somehow.

Speaker A: It must have been an enormous amount of work, right? Because I mean, a lot of artists keep libraries of their various functions that they use, you know, that they've just found useful across projects, but very few go through the effort of cleaning up the code, documenting it, creating a whole website for people to read and learn how to use all the various functions that you've created. So it's kind of like this huge meta project, right? It's not as simple as like, oh, you just had some code and you made it open source. Like, you surely put a ton of work into packaging it in a way that was usable by people who weren't familiar with it, right?

Speaker B: Yes, that was the hardest part, I think, the documentation. And because when I was— when the library was done and it was working, I said, okay, it's done. And then it was one month In order to document everything and put it online. But I thought it was also a way of challenging myself to do clean code for once, to have some time to think about it, to really explain how it works in very clear documentation, and to see what's this open source about. Because I had never contributed like this to GitHub and these platforms. So it was my first time doing this. So it was also a nice learning process, how to create a repository, how to really do it in a way that people can contribute also. It was an interesting, enlightening experience. I really now appreciate the people that create open source projects a lot because I know how difficult it is.

Speaker A: Have people like picked it up and made meaningful contributions to it, uh, since you published it? And as a second question, have you seen any cool generative art projects that use it? Is there anything that you want to shout out? Anyone who's picked up Brush and There are a few projects that used it on fxhash.

Speaker B: I think there's one artist which is Julia Bergatova, who is in fxhash, I think. And she's been sharing for a while work in progress using the library. I don't know if at the end she had some problems with it because it— I don't know, the platform, it was not fxhash, it was a different one. But I thought the things that she was sharing were really beautiful.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I can send you maybe— can I send a link here? Yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, send it.

Speaker B: I thought it was a nice use because at the beginning, for instance, when everyone started to use it, it was basically squares and using this fill function which looks like watercolor. So it was a very direct way of using it. But this is the first time, I think, or one of the first times that actually someone is using it in a different way, in their own style.

Speaker A: No, it's very glitchy. It doesn't— it's not immediately apparent that it's using the library.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, but that's also what I like.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I think she's a, a well-known, well, relatively well-known fx hash artist. And a lot of the work that she does in other mediums is pretty glitchy as well. So it's interesting that you can take these like existing tools and assets and kind of put your own spin on them, so to speak. And it's like the extensibility of it, similar to, I mean, maybe even what you were doing with some of the color mixing, you know, it's figuring out how it works and how you can make it work for you. It's very cool.

Speaker B: Yes. And there's been also someone who did like a mixing— I don't remember the name. I can look for that later. But it was— I mean, there's been some nice applications of, of it, I think, but not a lot of published projects for now.

Speaker A: Let's continue on the music then, because your upcoming project, Fantasia, as we would say in English, because I think that's how we all learned to say it from the Disney movie.

Speaker C: We can call it Fantasio though. I mean, it's—

Speaker A: We can call it Fantasio. It's your creation.

Speaker C: You can call it whatever you want.

Speaker A: Well, that's coming out relatively soon on Verse. It's a Tender collab, but you know, you started this project a while ago. Like, I remember seeing some very early whips from you definitely in 2023. You know, we're recording this in May, so at least 6 months ago. And there's always been a musical component to it as far as I can remember, but for the first time now you're creating a generative music piece versus using prerecorded music. So why make it so difficult for yourself? And what was that like, right? I have to imagine that must have been a lot of like new learning for you to figure out how to train and create this AI model. Like, it is a— is it an AI model? Like, how would you classify it? How is the music even working? Like, just tell us about it.

Speaker B: Yes. So I would call it Fantasia, which is in Spanish. And at the beginning, Fantasia was not coming actually from the Disney movie. It came from a— again, from a piece by Satie. In French, I don't know how to pronounce it, but fantaisie or something like that. And then this was translated by an architect, a Spanish architect, well-known, Enrique Miralles. And in his PhD, there's a chapter called Fantasía muscular, which is muscular, but not muscular in the sense of being very strong, but from the muscles. So muscular fantasy, let's say. And in this chapter, he starts speaking about imagination, how you start drawing a line and then another line and then shapes. start appearing and he has beautiful drawings that he made himself. He was a really good draftsman. So I was interested in this emergence of shapes from nothing or from dots in this case, which is the— which are the musical notes. This is where it comes from. And then when speaking with Adam, he said, okay, but you're calling it Fantasia because of the movie, right? And I thought, okay, maybe that actually makes sense. And actually, I watched Fantasia when I was young, and I remember it like very strongly because it was this kind of IMAX cinema with 3D glasses and all these things. So it was a really nice experience for me as a kid, but I hadn't thought about it. So then when, when I thought about it, then I said, okay, this makes lots of sense. And the piece evolved in that direction, I think. If you— and if you check the colors and some of the shapes, they really resemble things from the movie. But initially it doesn't come from there. For the music, it's actually been super difficult. At the beginning, I was thinking about this work as an fx work, and I actually talked with some people from the fx hash team. What I wanted to do is that people could upload their own music piece and this music would create the composition. So it was again a different way of doing an fx project without sliders, only you drag and drop the music and this will create the piece. But at some point it really was a bit difficult because this music had to be a MIDI file, and this means that people need to learn what a MIDI file is and how to use it. So everything became very complicated. And I have been receiving criticisms— or not criticism maybe, but suggestions or questions about Enfantiens and Fuga Tientas, about if it's generative or not, or you should try to make it generative because this is generative art. So I thought, okay, let's try to do it. How do I do it? And of course, I'm not a musician. I don't know anything about music apart from that I like certain composers and these things. So I cannot really create a logic myself that can produce a nice music composition. And that's why I started thinking of AI. And it's actually AI directly. It's an AI model which is working in the browser. So when you open the page, The page loads this AI model and it starts working the AI model and it produces the notes. And it doesn't produce the sound, but only the notes. So it produces a MIDI file basically. And then I play this MIDI file with piano samples basically. And this AI model, I did not create it myself. I found a super nice project which is now abandoned more or less, which is called Magenta. By Google, and they started training AI models with classical music with different very huge databases. And they also created this framework for executing these models in the browser. And the problem has been that this is super old code from, I think, maybe 8 years ago or 7 years ago, so nothing works. So then it's been more a question of learning how TensorFlow These frameworks that they use, which are designed for AI training and AI models. How do they work? How do you make them work in a browser? And how can you load a model and these things? So it's been more about that than actually thinking a lot about the model itself, because the model is not trained completely by me. I started from a model that it was already pre-trained by the Magenta people with the Maestro database, which is a database of I don't know how many lots of compositions played by real performers. And this is a very important thing. So I started from this, and then I trained it a bit more with more composition. And the special quality of this model is that it produces not only this MIDI file but also dynamics. So it somehow simulates a real performer. So you can feel it. Sometimes the keys are stronger or the velocity is called, of the piano. So it has some dynamism in the way that it's played. It's not like a robotic way of playing it, all the notes in the same manner. It somehow emulates this natural way of playing it by a performer, and that's why it sounds so good sometimes.

Speaker C: Sometimes.

Speaker A: Yes, well, hopefully most of the time. But then how does that play into— so is that like a module that's going to sit off-chain that then at the time of minting, it's gonna call the model to then produce a MIDI file, then it's gonna get kind of injected into what actually becomes the art piece? Or is it all gonna be kind of wrapped together like at this point? Like I imagine the model must be very large, right? Too large to do that.

Speaker B: No, the model is actually 20 megabytes.

Speaker C: Oh wow.

Speaker B: So it's quite small, let's say. I mean, it's impossible to put it on-chain. So this is not going to be an on-chain project. It's going to be IPFS, but this is quite usual. I think there are things you cannot do on-chain right now because there are things where you need— the files are bigger, so you cannot do it on-chain. But it's like a normal mint. So the mint only produces a seed and the script, it uses this seed to seed both the model and the visuals. So everything happens as you open the page. There's nothing done before it. So everything is real time, basically. Because the good thing of this TensorFlow framework, which is the framework that runs the model, is that you can seed it and it becomes deterministic, which is actually quite handy, I think, for future projects also by other people. If they want to use the same framework, it's super useful to know that it can be made deterministic because this is like the basic thing that it needs to be in order to become a generative art project. as we are thinking about them.

Speaker A: That's pretty cool. So overall, what would you say between that and the visuals, like, was the music side of it more challenging? And I guess also to address the visuals, I mean, it, it feels like it could almost be a piece connected to the original Enfantine's trilogy, but it's also very different. Instead of having these brushstrokes, it's more focused on shapes and forms and kind of like layering them and creating dimensionality with like almost like this drop shadow effect that sometimes emerges, uh, in there too. So do you feel like this piece is like spiritually connected to those? Do you consider it something entirely new? Where does it kind of sit in your canon, you know, of work?

Speaker B: Yes, you know, I haven't said anything about that, but let's say that Enfanteens is somehow me catching up to the space or to creative coding, so learning how to code basically. Then Fuga Tientas, I think it's like consolidation, which is on verse, which is where I say, okay, this is what I've learned to do. I'm going to do it now more seriously somehow and look for quality more than learning. And I think in this case it's more experimentation, so it's more connected to Pensado a Mano, I think. And it's experimenting with how can you bring generative music and especially artificial intelligence in this case to a generative piece and do everything in the browser without strange frameworks that other platforms are doing. And the visuals, of course, they use my library, and it's the first time I use the library for a project. I'm using the library, but I don't do it— I'm not doing it trying to imitate analog techniques anymore, I think. Well, a bit, but I'm trying to search for its own style so it doesn't look like something that can be done by hand anymore, I think. So it's more embracing the digital somehow, or doing something that you cannot do with your hand alone, which is also connecting to the music and the animation and all these things.

Speaker C: What was it like collaborating with Adam on this and just really bringing this light through Tender? I would love to use this piece also as a transition point into talking about web development versus art, but I would love to hear your perspective with Adam first.

Speaker B: It was completely amazing. I mean, he's super— he has super sharp eye, I think, for things. All the suggestions that he has given me has been very helpful to improve the piece, I think. He's also very supportive, optimistic, and he understood what, what I wanted to do since the beginning. He's been really helpful also to have someone to interact with and to share things. He responds very quickly to everything. And he has like a very clear idea of how to launch things also. So he helps a lot in this, in this side, which I don't want to think about anymore because it's actually the thing that if I start thinking a lot about it, I will again become distant. So this time I'm not thinking about price, I'm not thinking about supply, I'm just leaving all that to Adam basically. So it's been a great Collaboration, I think. And what about web design, Trinity?

Speaker C: Like thinking about the process that you've gotten to in order to produce this, you know, not only is it working with defunct tools and libraries that are available for the sound side, it's about using the own library that you set up yourself and then trying to figure out a way to get this whole organism to really work within the constructs of IPFS. At what point is this, is Fantasia really about the art? Obviously it's about the art, but versus the actual construction of this system in order to make everything work. It actually kind of feels like maybe not architecture itself, but you know, the creation of a building where it's, you know, you need the walls, you need the plumbing, you need the electrical in order to make this thing fully habitable. That's one of the hot takes that you've had about web development. So maybe this is an opportunity for you to kind of talk about that process and also maybe go off a little bit.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: We love a hot take.

Speaker B: Okay. No, I think it's very sharp what you said, but it's also what happens a bit with Pensada a Mano, I think. In that sense, I wanted to experiment with something and then you need to create the framework, the tools to make it work. And at some point you are not so worried about how it looks, more how it works. And this is also what I believe of architecture, which is that it's much more important how it works than how it looks, basically. And how it works, not from this very limited functionalist perspective that how many square meters and all these things. I mean how you feel inside, how it makes you somehow behave. This is what I believe architecture can do. And I, and in this case, the difficult part was actually putting all these pieces together into the same thing and making it look cohesive and coherent and making it look simple somehow. Which it is not. It's also the first time I've used these, which I now hate completely, these web development tools like Webpack and these things. Super difficult to use. There's no one who has explained it clearly how it works. You're always navigating old tutorials and the new versions don't work like that anymore. So it's awful basically. And I now understand why people love p5. So much because P5 documentation is like a work of art in itself. I mean, anyone can understand it. Anyone can use it. Well, you know, you need to know a bit about coding, but basically anyone can learn through P5. And if you try to develop a website like this, which uses maybe seven or eight libraries from different people, each of these libraries maybe one is from eight years ago. The other one is last year. So they don't work the same. So putting all these pieces together is super difficult and it's completely web development. I'm using web development tools. I had to learn how to install through npm and things like that that now sound quite easy, but at the beginning it was completely— I didn't understand at all. And this is when I really started thinking, okay, this is what we are doing is web development. I'm quite sure about it now. So we shouldn't be making only some visuals. We should be thinking about the piece as an experience, which is the same way as I think about architecture. Basically, architecture is an experience. It's not a building only. It's how you feel inside the building. And for this piece, I'm very interested in how you feel inside the piece. So for instance, if you check the website, the background is not transparent. So there's a background color because I I'm thinking about the whole website, not only the piece. And the piece is not, it's not using the whole size of the window. It has some borders and it has like a shadow, so you can feel it like floating in the background. And then when the music continues, at some point some shapes start appearing behind. So yes, it's a website. I don't know if that's a hot take or not, but for me it's quite clear now that We should be making websites. And this really opens a lot of possibilities that we can use as coders or artists. I don't know if I like the word artist completely.

Speaker C: Ooh, let's talk about that.

Speaker B: Yes, but I think it's because I have very lots of respect for artists because my education, of course, I studied history of art and all these things. So I really respect artists a lot. So it's also Imposter syndrome, I think it's called. No, I don't know. I don't know if I can call myself that. That looks like a very difficult thing to to be, and I think you need to somehow give your life for not give your life in Spanish. It works better. Entregar your whole. I don't know how you say it. It looks like a very serious thing.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah, I think that's so funny to hear. I mean, because you've. done so well, right? Which is kind of what's so, I guess, ironic, which is like, you're like, I don't really know if I'm an artist and I really feel comfortable. I'm just making websites. And then, you know, you've got between the Enfanteens and Fuga and then Pensato a Mano, which was like, you almost didn't release that project if I remember correctly. You were like, oh, I think I made this weird thing, but it's probably not good. And now it's like regarded as one of the best, if not the best uses of prams that has ever been made. So yeah, I I think it's just funny to hear you. I mean, not it's funny, but also understandable because I think everyone struggles with labels and struggles with the confidence to say yes, I'm this or yes, I'm that. But um, it must be weird, right? Then to see success, have people get excited for your work, and have people like praise it when you're not really even sure that you fit into that category.

Speaker B: Yes, actually, for Pensada Mana, I think you convinced me to to do it basically. If I remember correctly, over DMs. Yes. Yes, but for instance, that project, at the end, I launched it and I did it because I thought it had to be done by someone. So it was not that I had this great idea on my mind of how I wanted it to look. I just thought there's this framework, params, which no one is using it. I thought, of course, this was my perspective, of course. No one is using it as it should be used, or no one is using the potential that it has. So this needs to be done, basically. That's what I did with that project. And maybe this one is a bit the same. No one is using generative art to create experiences, so it needs to be done. So maybe it's not the best project. The looks can be improved, whatever. Of course, I'm not— I'm an architect. And when I say I'm an architect, I also mean I'm an artist, but maybe an artist who thinks in a different way about things. Let's say, who thinks about, as Trinity said, more about bringing things together than really design. I would say I like meaning, not so much design. So when I create something, at some point I don't care how it looks anymore. I don't want to polish it more. I just like the idea and the meaning that it has, and then it's done for me, and then I become a bit bored with it.

Speaker C: It makes me think of a lot of the conversation that people have around the different chains between, you know, if it's Tezos, Ethereum, fx hash versus Verse, and what are the areas to experiment and just kind of get something out and maybe get that itch outta your system versus something that is like a place for art or elevated website creation, depending on how you look at it. Like you've released on, on both platforms. Is there a difference in how you, you perceive them? And like the types of work that you might try to push out on each?

Speaker B: Not so much, I think. Well, I've always thought that fxhash, what it had was an amazing community, which I enjoyed a lot. And I think that's also where you— where this podcast comes from, from fxhash and the beautiful community that it had. At some point when everyone started leaving, of course, this community is not so strong. Then Verse came and Jamie is a big collector of my work. It's easy to check. So he really likes what I do and he was the one who approached me for my first Verse release. And since I started doing things with Verse, it's like, I don't know, for instance, they print things sometimes, which for me as an architect, as I said, is quite interesting to see my work in printed form. You can see some of them. On the background. And I think they have a more maybe artistic— maybe it's not the right word, but somehow they feel closer to my background as an architect because of the culture, I think. So it's not so much about community, it's more about art, but also about curating and also about how you link this art into a chain of historical events. So it's about creating a history and a narrative, which is what I do as a researcher and as a teacher. And when you launch so few projects, I don't know, maybe it doesn't make sense. I'm not understanding fx hash as the place where you experiment and Verse as your place where you publish finished things. I don't think about it like that. I'm always experimenting, I think. So it's always something new that I'm trying to do.

Speaker A: Will there be more projects after Fantasia, do you think? I know at some point, you know, you've said that you worked on Brush because you kind of were at a low point with web3. And, you know, from chatting with you on the side, I know that at various times you've kind of come close to quitting doing art or website design or whatever we're going to call it.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And then, you know, this project popped up and you got really excited about it and now it's going to come out. Are you feeling a little bit reinvigorated? Have you come to terms with just, you know, yeah, I'm gonna make the project, I'm gonna let someone like Adam or Jamie figure out the economics of it, and I'm like, just divorce yourself from the market side of it? Like, what was bothering you? What were some of the things that happened that really got you down on it? And where are you resolved to now?

Speaker B: It was what I said a bit at the beginning. It was connected to how everything needs to be sold somehow, and it's always about money. And I was used to do things for free in that sense. But it was also an event in— I don't know if I want to say places and names of events, but there was an event which was really impactful for me. I was there and it was all about crypto things. So I thought it was going to be more about the art side of things, and then I discovered it was More about the money and crypto and trading side of things, which I didn't like. I thought there was not real appreciation for the art, the venues. There was lots of noise. The artworks didn't have space. So then I started reflecting, what am I doing here, basically? So I didn't go to the— there was a dinner that day. I didn't go there. I went home. So it was quite a bad personal experience. Let's say. And from then on, I tried to distance myself with this buying and selling side of the space. Is it going to be a new project after Fantasia? That's a good question. I think I would say, is there something else that needs to be done? Because this is why I'm doing this, because I think someone needs to do it. And then maybe other people think, well, okay, so you can do this and this and this. So If I think there's something else that needs to be done or that I think someone needs to do and no one is doing it, I maybe I will do another thing. I don't know if that responds to—

Speaker C: Infantines volume 3, that needs to be done or else you'll just leave us hanging forever.

Speaker B: That's a good one. I think I would say children never finish things. No, and you are both But, and so at some point I decided maybe it's, it's better if it stays unfinished.

Speaker A: That's more or less how I thought you might answer. But yeah, I think we're all excited to see at least this project coming out. It's super cool just hearing about your journey into using the AI music system and incorporating that and training it and just, yeah, I think it's gonna be really rad. And just as a, as a reminder, since anyone listening to this, it's gonna be on Verse. And is there a date yet? It's June something, right?

Speaker B: Yes, it would be mid-June. The specific date is not decided yet. It's going to be around the 14th or so.

Speaker C: Should we even ask about sizing, pricing, release mechanics?

Speaker A: Should we be asking Adam that?

Speaker B: Yes, we are thinking that it's better if it's something where people can have fun. So probably not a small size, not small supply. Let's say, and not high price.

Speaker C: Accessible.

Speaker B: I like that. Yeah, and we are thinking about going for collector-curated approach, but it's still not decided. And this is because if you've listened to a few of them, sometimes the music works very well, other times it's too quick maybe, or it's not really interesting. We want to give people the opportunity to really maybe pick a few by looking at the thumbnails before, and when they have 10 or 15 that they like, they can go inside and listen to them. And then you can pick based on the music also. We want to give some agency there.

Speaker A: I think that makes a lot of sense for sure, letting people explore. And then also the ability to— assuming there's a way to export the audio or like some like GIF or something— like being able to share, like, look at this one I found, like, listen to how good the music is, like I think Collector Curated makes a ton of sense there. Staying on the topic of Verse, do you wanna talk at all about the architecture exhibit?

Speaker B: Yes, of course.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean, that was one where I feel like, I guess I'll just ask like, what was the story of that? Because like you were kind of one of the curators or organizers behind it. And you brought together quite a few artists, all released basically on the same day within a couple of hours, if I remember right. So. What was kind of the arc of that? What did you learn? What do you regret? Like, or are you happy enough with how it went? Just what's the story with the whole exhibit?

Speaker B: Well, you maybe know this, there's like a big group of architects doing generative art, and we have like several places where we speak and we share things. So at some point, I think it was me and Ismahelio that we proposed the possibility of doing something together because we're always talking about things. We appreciate each other's work. And we all have the same background. And we thought somehow we architects can contribute something different to the space. And this is how we started preparing the proposal for Verse, which they loved and accepted. So it was more like a group of friends, not friends, because it started like a group of friends doing something together. At the end, we brought many other people from outside this group. Because we were looking also to have some parity, so more women, because there are very few women in the space. So we opened somehow to other people also. And regarding how we did it, it was an experiment, I think, also with Jamie. So it was something in discussion with Jamie how to do it. And we thought, because there were many artists, if we really extended it too much, it will become a bit tiring. So we thought Maybe it's fun to have everything happen at the same time. And of course, in terms of market, it didn't work so well. And maybe now looking back, it was also not entirely good for— we didn't give each of the projects enough space, maybe. So that's maybe my regret in that case.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was quite a whirlwind.

Speaker C: It was fun, though.

Speaker A: It was fun. And you did bring together some great— I mean, I just, I still go back and I check out a lot of the work that came out of that, you know, like, I really like Victor Dovall and like his piece I thought was really, really good. The Anaglyphic piece was really cool and different from them and just challenging time too. I think at that point it hadn't really fully hit everybody yet that the market was really slowing down and dying. And the idea of just bringing together a bunch of good art, well, yeah, of course people will show up for it. Like, that's just unfortunately is not how it it is these days. Do you imagine that you might ever get involved in that side of the space again? Organizing, curating, doing anything like that?

Speaker B: Yes, why not? Because in this case we had— I was involved in the conversations about how this drop will happen and all this. Maybe I will, I will not do that anymore, let's say like that. But as a curating or organizing some something like this, yes, I liked it. There was also some nice discourse that Ismahelio and I created around the drop. So, and it was also my attempt to connect my practice as a coder to my practice as an architect because they have been quite separated somehow. And this is where I said, okay, let's try to bring these 2 together because I'm the same person. So why am I doing 3 things or 2 different things that are completely unconnected? So I need to find a way of telling my story also, or the story of me as an architect, but also a coder, and how these two connect, which in my case is not so direct as others. For instance, Jacek, he has been working with generative practices also in architecture and design for a while. It's not my case. What I do in architecture has nothing to do with coding. I actually, I'm not so interested in these coding tools for architects. So I was trying to bring them together more theoretically, I think.

Speaker C: And even in the description of the exhibition, you kind of talk about that creation of spaces in a very meaningful and targeted way. Can spaces exist with or without architects? Who knows? And so I think that really kind of sings true from what you put here within the making of a room.

Speaker B: Yes, the website, the website does a space. That's a good one. I will steal that.

Speaker C: You already wrote it. I stole it from you.

Speaker B: I have forgotten, maybe.

Speaker A: On physical stuff, you've mentioned a few times, you know, you study history, you have this love for analog work, you know, you love to see your works printed out. And I know that just, you know, you were saying last night you were digging through the archives trying to find your old work to help tell your origin story here. So how do you think about preservation in this space then? There's always so much debate between on-chain and off-chain, and is something that's on-chain more likely to persist, exist longer? Like, do you think often about that preservation? Is that something that comes into play in your professional life a lot? You're saying this piece is going to be using IPFS, so you're not an on-chain maxi, it seems, but I don't know, like, do you have a strong opinion about it?

Speaker B: Well, actually, so I'm working in TU Delft, which is a university here in the Netherlands, quite well known for architects. And my group where I do research and where I teach is called Architecture Archives of the Future. So it's— everything is about archives and how you preserve documentation about buildings and how you also bring them to the digital world. So for instance, we are now working with— in a studio, we are designing the virtual a virtual museum. So the students are creating virtual spaces, but where it's also important how you connect, how you get into these virtual spaces through a physical space, and how this physical and the virtual relate and all these things. And they need to use archival materials to show, to curate exhibitions. So my work as a teacher is connected completely to archives and to preservation. And actually, looking yesterday, when I started looking at my own background, I realized that all my old emails from Hotmail, from my first Hotmail account, are gone completely because apparently they migrated to Outlook at some point and everything is gone, which I think is enraging, to be honest, that they did this because it's like people's lives basically. The email is like people's lives. So I couldn't find lots of things. So basically I only exist on the internet from 2007 up till now. So my first maybe 8 years on the internet are completely gone, which made me realize the fragility of digital archives. And this is something we talk a lot about in our group at the Faculty of Architecture, the fragility of digital archives, because we assume that digital things are much more strong than physical things. And this is actually the opposite. I mean, if you try to use a CD from 15 years ago, probably it won't work anymore. So, and especially archives now, when they are acquiring, for instance, architects' archives, now they are digital, the archives. They don't know how to deal with this. So this is like a new topic that we are all thinking about. And I realize it with my own life, with my own memories yesterday, that they are gone, some of them.

Speaker C: The capability of storing so much more in so much less space. But, you know, the preservation is— I have this talk a lot with people, mostly about music collections, especially, you know, as we migrate from iTunes and just, you know, as you move music from one laptop to another laptop to another laptop over the course of your life. And then all of a sudden you get Spotify, you stop migrating your music collection, and then all of those random mixtapes and downloads that you pirated 15, 20 years ago. They're just, you can't access them anymore. There's so much music I love that only exists on my iTunes because I haven't updated my music library there since, I don't know, 2012.

Speaker A: That's pretty discouraging to think about. And I mean, I think that's like also one of the reasons that we often don't try to get too caught up in the on-chain versus off-chain thing, because at the end of the day, like it's all going to rely on a web browser and those standards So just because you locked the code into a couple blocks of Ethereum doesn't mean that 30 years from now, it's still going to run on the computer, on the web browser you're using, right? Like that's— yeah, I actually don't even know, like, how do you begin to approach that problem or like what the vision is, or if any of these platforms are thinking about how do we— like, we're happy to sell it to you now, but how do we think about making sure that you can use it and view it forever? That's a daunting task.

Speaker C: What do you do? Or what precautions are you taking as the creator? To ensure that things continue to be available even outside of the platforms.

Speaker B: I think the safest is to print the code on paper. Yeah. Print and archive. And donate it to a good archive.

Speaker A: Well, let's, uh, I know we've been going for a while now. Let's wrap it up here. Maybe one or two rapid fires and then we'll call it an episode. So I don't know, Trinity, do you wanna?

Speaker C: Yeah. You might be familiar with them. Maybe the first question is, Who should we interview next, or who would you like us to interview?

Speaker B: I haven't thought about that one, to be honest.

Speaker C: Rapid fire, let's go.

Speaker B: Have you interviewed Lars Wander?

Speaker C: No.

Speaker A: No, we haven't.

Speaker C: Had to think about that one.

Speaker B: I believe he's one of the smartest guys doing generative art, and I really enjoy how he thinks about problems.

Speaker A: So we had to brush up on our coding so we can talk to him.

Speaker C: Color theory, for that matter.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, he seems like a glaring omission, but I'm sure we'll find a reason to get him on.

Speaker C: Special request. That's a great reason.

Speaker A: Uh, okay, then let me throw one out. We've already talked a lot about music. Is there anything that you listen to while you work other than maybe classical music? Is there any kind of like more contemporary stuff? Any recommendations, suggestions?

Speaker B: I used to listen a lot to Olafur Arnalds. I think it's from a Nordic country. I don't remember if it's Sweden. Now it's like contemporary classic music, but honestly, I also listen a lot to Queen and these like things that I like a lot because you, you can sing. But yes, I think Laforêt-Nals is like, if you don't know about him, is quite good.

Speaker A: Awesome. I'm always looking for like contemporary piano stuff. So anything else? I mean, I guess usually we say what, what can we look forward to from you, but I guess we should look forward to any problems that aren't being solved. Yes, that you're gonna then come in and fill in the gap.

Speaker B: Yes, and probably more open source things because, for instance, with the p5.brush, I've now made it without p5, which is what I'm using now, and this is still unreleased, but I will probably in the next months I would release it.

Speaker C: Definitely something to look forward to. Not for us specifically, but—

Speaker A: But for the other artists listening. And for everyone, you know, again, look forward to Fantasia on Verse, which will be high supply and affordable price point and hopefully collector curated. Well, thanks, Alejandro. It was awesome to have you on. It's great to see you face to face after all the DMs. Now, even if it is digital, let's call it there. So long, Trinity. So long, Alejandro. Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker B: Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker A: All right, that's it, everyone. Bye-bye.

Speaker B: The rail of the week.

Speaker C: Could be time.

Speaker B: We're waiting. Always.