Speaker A: All right, hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a special interview episode. We're joined today by Andreas Giessen, who is with us in advance of an exhibit coming up, the first Verse solo exhibit called Materialized. We're really excited to jump into that with him and talk all about it. Of course, Trinity here as well. Before we get into it, let's all just say hi. How's it going, everyone?

Speaker B: I'm doing very well. Thank you for that intro, Will. I can't wait to talk to Andreas.

Speaker C: Same here.

Speaker B: Andreas, welcome as well. We're so excited to have you here. Oh my gosh.

Speaker C: Hi. Hello both, and hello to everyone.

Speaker A: And I'm also super happy to be It's a real treat to have you on. You know, we first encountered your work through fx hash, which I think most of our listeners will know you from there, but you've got a much longer history in your art practice that we'd love to get into with you. And of course, talk about the Verse work that you're releasing soon as well. But before we get into all of that, for anyone who might not be familiar with you, can you give us a bit of your background in art and coding as a way of introduction?

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So I don't originate from art and coding. I originate more from graphic design. While studying graphic design and working on graphic design, I discovered the computer and code, and I realized that there was a great potential to use this kind of tool for the job and to use code to generate images that I wouldn't be able to generate with the idea of the job in mind. And so this is, let's say, the background. The art part Came much later.

Speaker A: So how did you transition then into, I guess, what we generally know as generative art? Your work on fxhash, of course, is like long-form generative, but you've done a lot of projects prior to that using things like signage that have been donated to you or that you've been able to buy from things like, you know, train stations that are decommissioning their analog signs and stuff. So what got you into, or what bridged you from the graphic design world into making these installation pieces and these more, this more conceptual work?

Speaker C: Again, I go back quickly to graphic design because there was a series of posters that got commissioned to me and my friend Sidi. We were working together. We don't have a studio, but we work together. We'll come back to him later. So we got commissioned a series of 4 posters for an electronic music festival, and we were kind of— could do whatever we wanted to. And so as this was electronic music and experimental music, we thought, okay. Yeah. This kind of poster needs also an electronic treatment. And this was the first time that we used a generative system, let's say, or a piece of code that would generate the images for this series of posters. We built custom software and we generated a lot of variations, a lot of possibilities. So this kind of long-form, let's say, idea was already in this sort of approach, even if I would call it now It was a parametric program where you could change parameters and the image would follow. But anyway, so this series of posters was the beginning, let's say, of this generative, of this image-making-through-code approach. A few other projects followed this, and they were all projects in print. These posters or these images were made for printing, and in print we considered the printing techniques like, for example, offset printing, where you have these 4 channels, or silkscreen printing, for, for example, where you have only one channel. And so also this notion of the final result of the final printing technique was somehow embedded in the thinking or in the ideas of these pieces that would then have been printed. And at a certain point, we transitioned, but quite naturally, into pieces or into projects that wouldn't have a commission an outside brief, let's say. There was no client that would come to me or to us to explore these sort of techniques, these sort of experiments. And so we went on, on our own when there wasn't some festival that we have to work to. And we started to do our own experiments, our own research. And this is an interesting aspect, at least for me, that kind of still follows nowadays. So the research that comes from working on graphic design projects, from projects that have a client, that have a specific audience and a specific context, but the research done for this sort of project very often shifts and becomes a new starting point for an art piece, but also the other way around. So a lot of research that we do in the artistic context, or let's say in personal context, somehow flows then back into a project into a commissioned work in a different domain that it's not necessarily artistic research. So I think there isn't really a distinction between these 2 fields, although of course if you have a commissioned work, you have a certain type of constraints that you need to follow. And but the research of both of these fields kind of nourishes each other. And also I think the, the approach or the, the methodology of the work is basically the same. So internally we don't see a big distinction between the way we work on these projects.

Speaker B: I love some of these early influences, especially with, or like the story that you have being introduced to this via graphic design. I think that we can really see that in a lot of the physical work that you have out there. Because you've already started talking about Sidi Vanetti, maybe we can just briefly talk about that collaboration of sorts. It would be wonderful to know how that collaboration began. You've been very longtime collaborators, right?

Speaker C: Uh, yes. So I met Sidi, we were both studying graphic design in a school where there were very few students, less than 20 or even less than 15. For logistic reasons, the class was split up in 2 classrooms. So there was the left classroom and the right classroom, and I was on the left side and he was on the right. So for the 3 years we spent together studying, we didn't really communicate much. And also he was far more advanced. So on the, on this other side of the, of the classroom, there were far more advanced students. On the left side, we were kind of the beginners. And so we didn't really communicate much, but we started to collaborate on the same topic for the final project. We had the same interest. And so we started to collaborate and to exchange thoughts around this topic. And this was, let's say, our first collaboration. And then we started to work almost by chance in movie theater. We were working there at night, just at the entrance and giving away tickets and popcorn. And then we started to work for the same graphic design studio as collaborators. And then we started also to work together on, on projects and Kind of never stopped. I managed to go away from Switzerland several times in my lifetime, but then somehow I always come back. Even when I was away, we never really stopped to work together. And still now we don't really have a studio or a legal entity that keeps us together on paper, but we just, we just work and we get things done.

Speaker B: I think one of the things in my mind, at the very least, When you're doing collaborative work, what is that collaboration like? What different things do you each bring to the table, and how do you really navigate that creative process when you're bringing new work?

Speaker A: In particular, what happens when there's a disagreement? How do you resolve it?

Speaker C: But disagreement is always interesting, and we always manage to resolve it. The simpler part of the question is We have certain roles. So for example, I'm the only one that codes. And so the software part is usually solved by me. This doesn't mean that Sidi doesn't understand code. He understands it very well. He understands the mechanism and he knows when I talk to him about certain aspects of a program, he knows exactly what I'm saying. So he has an understanding. He just misses the final part to actually write the code. And he on the other side is the guy that comes from print. So all these parts that require printing knowledge are his. He does a lot of book layout and poster design and exhibition design. So he has a huge expertise in this sort of pure, let's say, graphic design work. And all this knowledge often comes into our project.

Speaker A: Building on your practice and your collaborative practice, what is the difference between something that you might make by yourself Under your own name versus something that comes out as a collaboration. The projects that we know you for, like Towers and DeviceOne from fxhash, were those things that you worked on entirely solo? Are those also collaborations in some way, but people just know them, we just don't know?

Speaker C: No, they're solo pieces. So Sidi is completely unaware of, let's say, crypto art and NFT. He's not visible on any kind of social media. He lives in a very, very small village of 300 people and has his family. And the dog. This doesn't mean he's an outsider. He knows how this everything works, and he knows very well. But these particular aspects, or these more ephemeral aspects, they don't interest him, and he's not so much aware. Of course, I explain him about a few of these things when I first heard about crypto art movement, or this NFT scene, or all these other things. I started to publish things online, or let's say to drop a few pieces as an experiment. I was really curious. I saw these things happening a few years ago, and I also wanted to try. I had before this a website where I published interactive works or generative works that would run in a browser. They were just experiments that I could throw into, onto this website. And so was kind of natural to continue this kind of experimentation in this context with the difference that eventually some pieces could be sold. And this was a real novelty for me and of course for many, many of us. And so I just continued this kind of attitude on my own. At a certain point I told Zidi, hey, look, I'm doing this thing. And we have several things that go on that are not part of a collaboration, even professional projects. So we have our own lives.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And, uh, or our own clients and own artistic projects. And also he has all the different artistic collaborations, let's say. So we are kind of independent in a certain way.

Speaker B: Let's talk more about NFTs then. You know, you've talked about discovering the NFT scene and releasing things, but ultimately, when did it hit you that the blockchain was an incredibly legitimate way To release, distribute, and sell your work?

Speaker C: I saw things happening and for me, it's also just like this. It's a channel to reach an audience and to sell a few, and a mechanism to sell or to deliver pieces and to sign them digitally. This is also where my interest into the blockchain ends, to be honest. It's a fascinating piece of technology, medium complexity, I would say. There are pieces of software that are much more interesting and much more complex that could also merit this sort of discussion and talking that is going on. And unfortunately, they don't receive so much attention. For me, it's really just a distribution mechanism. I'm rarely interested in all these, the other things that float around it. And to be honest, there is also an aspect which I don't find so interesting, which is Unfortunately, this way to distributing software or to distributing images or clips to the blockchain also takes part in a much broader and in a much wider scene, which is this of crypto money, let's say. And I really don't like this speculative aspect. And I see this NFT part or the crypto art part is just a small, small part of it. And older digital artists, we were somehow waiting for or looking for some sort of mechanism or for some kind of idea that would allow us to kind of sell or to monetize a piece of software or something which is completely intangible. And then it happened through this mechanism. And I think most of us weren't so happy that it would happen exactly with this sort of weight of huge thing that you have to drag along if you want to sell a piece of software.

Speaker A: First of all, I think we agree it's a topic we explore a lot on the show, and I think we wrestle with our own kind of distaste for the broader crypto community while enjoying collecting art and learning about art and being a part of this generative art scene on the blockchain. And you're right, NFTs really have been the thing that have catalyzed the ability for artists to now make a living off this stuff in a much more accessible way than ever. Maybe that brings some bad things with it, but it also brings a lot of good things with it. Before we started recording, you said you had just been to a conference with a bunch of older generation generative artists. I imagine a lot of them have not yet embraced this technology. And in fact, we know some are pretty against it in general. So what pushed you across the barrier of even giving it a shot? You know, 'cause so many people just seem to say like, I'll never do crypto, I'll never do NFTs. Like it's all a scam. It's, you know, bad for this, bad for that. So. For you personally, like what convinced you to give it a try?

Speaker C: I didn't have a strong opinion. I just wanted to try it. And I saw it was happening around me. And when I saw a few people that I admired at the time getting into it, then I said, okay, maybe I follow these people that I respect somehow. And I want to see what happens with them. And it still didn't happen, this promise of these huge gains. It was more like something that is worth to try. I mean, before we had some ways to distribute this sort, I mean, some products or some artworks, they came in the form of screensavers or of apps that you could eventually buy from some app store. So artists were trying, software artists especially, were trying to find ways to distribute this sort of thing. And then this also appeared and we said, I told myself, okay. Maybe it's time to give it a shot.

Speaker B: And it looks like it's worked out pretty well, you know, financialization and the crypto market aside. But we do have to admit that the NFT scene and the entire crypto economy, it does bring a lot more eyeballs and a lot more interest. You know, Will and I were, you know, I say sidelines art appreciators who would go to museums on occasion before we really found out about what fxhash is or does. Especially since COVID people are appreciating things more digitally and virtually and online in communities, especially rather than the real-life communities. It's really changed who collects art, who appreciates art, and who has the ability to buy and sell art. How has this impacted you other than, you know, you now have a new audience and how do you think it would impact the, like, that legacy or traditional art world?

Speaker C: But you said it, I mean, I think one of the most important aspects is that The regional limitations were completely zeroed. There is no limit anymore. And being able to reach a global audience is incredible, not only for me, but for all the artists that I met in this space, let's say. Artists that were under the rock or that were simply invisible also to myself, people that I wouldn't even know that existed. And somehow this thing brought us together and I see much more happening and there is a lot going on. And of course, this is The total and absolute upside of this whole thing that happens. I think this is even more important than the financial aspect eventually.

Speaker B: Agreed. The financialization is, it's a bonus.

Speaker C: It's a total bonus, of course.

Speaker B: It's a total bonus, but ultimately a world in which there are more art appreciators and people who have the awareness, it's always going to be a better world. I don't think there's any doubt in my mind about that.

Speaker C: If you believe that art is able to change the world, then yes.

Speaker A: I wanna ask a question kind of on this same topic, but also starting to diverge into your artistic practice. In prep for this interview, we watched a more recent talk you gave on your work. I actually forget what the conference was that you were speaking at, but it's a great video where you were showing a lot of the work you did with signs. At the very end, you were showing some of your code-only work, which even looked like a prototype bit for Towers that was eventually released. And one of the things you talked about was working within the constraints of a given technology and allowing those constraints to kind of force you into a more creative mode, right? Both Trinity and I, we play this game called Magic: The Gathering, and the longtime head designer has this saying that restriction breeds creativity. You know, you should always look at a restraint as an opportunity, not a barrier. So the question here is, how do you connect your work with these analog objects where there's a lot of constraint in what you can do with your code-based work. And what, what do you feel are the constraints that lead you to be more creative in your code-based work? Like what kind of boxes are you putting yourself in? Or do you feel like working with something like JavaScript or working within the constraints of just NFTs in general? Like where do you find the creativity in that space?

Speaker C: This is a very important question for the way I work or that I work with CD also. So this aspect of these constraints. And there is already a problem when I work on software-only projects that are based on screens or on a normal computer screen, or let's say inside a browser, because there you kind of have to invent a sort of constraint to be able to use this sort of mechanism that then forces you into being creative, let's say. But let's start from the physical part, from the physical project where there it's It's very simple and it's very easy to work with this sort of elements because they are limited and the limit is in the object itself and the things they can do are not many. But there are a few things which they are extremely good and that's usually the things they are, they were designed to do. So especially these objects or these signage systems, let's say electronic or electromechanical ones, but even only physical ones, they are designed to work, to communicate a certain type of message and in a most effective way. And this is one of the aspects that we try to, let's say, harvest when we work with these kinds of objects. So we try to use this powerful language that these objects have, and we try to find a project that would push it, that would drive it to the maximum. So that's the way, let's say, we work with these objects. And with these constraints, we try not to work against them. There is another attitude when we work with this sort of physical or found almost objects is to be as conservative as possible. So when we find a display or some signage system or even an object, I mean, we try not to modify it, to alter it, to add extra features that weren't present at the beginning. We try to slightly alter the software so that it behaves a little bit different, but sometimes it's just enough to position it in a different way, to put it near something else. And then this object starts to express itself in a very powerful way. And so, yeah, that's more or less, let's say, the broader way that we work with this kind of displays. If you understand this way of thinking, then you can see what happens. When suddenly you work with a computer screen, which has such a high resolution that there is no grid, you can have whatever color you want. You can display whatever kind of information. So if you reason like this, you would almost say that the computer screen has no constraints because whatever you imagine, you can display on a screen. And that's how in some of my projects and even in some of our projects, we've put ourselves into the situation to build artificial constraints. And that's why. Yeah. That's the reason why I started mostly with the text art projects when I started with these NFTs, because I told myself, okay, I need some limit, I need some border, I need something that doesn't allow me to put whatever I want on the screen. So I told myself, okay, I'm going just to use text and let's see if I can find the boundaries of this constraint system and let's see how deep or how wide or how far I can move inside this artificial, in this case, limitation.

Speaker B: And we definitely see that with both your work on fx hash and your work elsewhere. Obviously Towers comes to mind as one that is working within those particular constraints, but also you have that one wonderful project that I think there are a couple of variations of where it's the code that is on the screen and just looks like a simple text editor, but then the text is always transforming itself and just undulating up and down and across the screen in beautiful ways. How do you come up with those constructs and what do you find inspiring about just the way that the text moves and how do you think of these ideas? How do they come to be?

Speaker C: All these text-based projects, maybe I also need to give a quick flashback. We started the text project with Sidi one more time. We were commissioned by an electronic festival to come up with a poster and a graphic system. This was several years ago. And then we designed a few prototypes and we said, okay, this could be a job for something similar to ASCII art. So let's quickly build up an engine that allows us to experiment with ASCII art. And then let's prepare a few prototypes of this poster and a few of these graphical systems that then would be used in this festival. The project got eventually rejected, but the seed of some of these projects that would come after was in this thing. And then we started, we continued to explore this kind of language on our own. And then Sidi, he gets annoyed or let's say bored by the same idea very quickly. So he stopped. I'm a bit more simple-minded. And so I was continuously fascinated by this idea of this text mode or this ASCII art. And it's also an interesting limitation or an interesting, let's say, language, because there is a lot of ASCII art or text art or typewriter art in the past. So I also started to figure out or to study the history of all these kind of graphical systems. And at a certain point, it was also a COVID project for me. So during lockdown, I told myself, okay, these ASCII projects, they almost all the time have the same sort of engine or a rendering system. More or less, the mechanism is always the same. What changes is the algorithm itself. And so I told myself, let's build a playground that lets other people also write their own code and publish it on this platform and distribute it. And so we can remix our own ideas and sketches. And so I built this thing and this platform is made by a preview on the left side, you have a preview and on the right side you have a code editor, you write the code and you can even make so that it updates while you are typing. So while you write, if the line of code, the statement you are writing is correct on the left side, the image would already be updated. So there was this complete real-time element. So you have always the code and the results together. And I think the idea of these projects that you mentioned before came while while working on this. And also Towers, by the way, the idea for this project came when I was working on this playground because it was a mistake. Instead of aligning all the text on the left, I made a mistake in a CSS declaration and I centered the text. And so all these lines of text, they formed this sort of tower and then the idea was born. So you can say that Towers was a mistake.

Speaker A: Or a happy accident. As we often hear from artists in particular in this space, bugs in code tend to produce some of the most delightful discoveries when people seem to be working. So that's a great story.

Speaker C: Just to complete this part of the code that displays itself, this is a known concept in programming in the more experimental side, and it's called— I don't know if I pronounce it correctly— it's called a quine. A quine is a piece of code that displays itself, and In JavaScript, so the language of the browser, it's not so difficult to obtain this because JavaScript allows something which is called introspection. So the code itself is aware or can access itself. So the code can access itself and not all languages allow this. And so writing a coin in a different language that is not JavaScript can become quite complex stuff, but in JavaScript, it's really simple. I always felt that I was cheating a little bit if I compare this coin project with the proper coins.

Speaker A: Very cool.

Speaker B: Amazing. How do you feel about fx hash and Tezos? Because I think that's something that's been on the top of our minds to a certain extent. Obviously we got into this world through fx hash, as we've said, and you've released a lot of this work and a lot of this ASCII art on numerous platforms such as Super Rare, Foundation, But those are all ETH-based. How did you come across the Tezos ecosystem and specifically fxhash and what made you want to release there versus, you know, standing in line to be on Art Blocks, for example?

Speaker C: I started on these ETH platforms because those were the ones that I could find. And some of them didn't ask any kind of questions. You could just create your wallet and start to release pieces on these platforms. So there was no gatekeeping or anything. So I started there. But these platforms, they were optimized for image, movies, and GIFs eventually. So I started a few ASCII projects. As I said, I wanted to start with text. And so I released a few of these projects on these platforms. I always created perfect loops. I already had this idea in mind that the piece shouldn't really have a beginning or an end. It should be something that would continue to repeat itself, even if the loop is a GIF or a video loop. It will repeat itself at a certain point, but the idea was this kind of flowing thing. And then at a certain point, Hic Et Nunc came along, which was even more wild because they didn't ask any question at all. And they allowed to publish basically any sort of media, not only images or GIFs, but also PDF files and text files and pieces of code. Of course, this opened a different kind of interesting playground because you could publish real-time pieces of software. And in my case, I use this platform to publish these SVG pieces. So SVG is this scalable vector graphic. It's a vector element that you could display in the browser, but that also allows execution of JavaScript code if it's embedded correctly. And so at a certain point, we were able to publish real-time pieces. And fx hash came along a bit later. It was a great surprise. It was well done. It was well documented. No questions asked. You could just release your piece. So the fact that there was no curation, that this barrier was somehow lowered, was for sure a great invite to participate in this platform. And why not Art Blocks? I think I was contacted a few times if I wanted to do something, but I couldn't really understand what was going on with this curation and some other aspects. So it wasn't so clear for me. And I saw a few pieces on this platform. I told myself that these pieces were not really interesting somehow. I really couldn't understand what was going on. So I was very ignorant and I saw this squiggle and I said, but this is too basic to be an interesting project. And so I said, well, maybe I will not consider this platform for the moment. This was probably a big mistake.

Speaker A: The flip side now is that you are kind of releasing in a curated fashion to some extent, right, with Verse here. Around the time this episode drops, the auctions or whatever mechanisms that you'll be using to sell some of the work in this materialized Verse solo exhibition, it's going to be ongoing. Can you give us the story of how then Verse got in touch with you and what inspired you or convinced you to work with them in this way? Because I imagine there was some level of curation, some level of collaboration where you'd have to kind of put your trust in them to a degree.

Speaker C: Layla from Verse saw the presentation I gave in Paris last year in NFT In, is the name of this event. And it was just from morning to the evening, short 15-minute presentation, one after the other, but with total focus on artists. There were a few more critical talks and a few roundtables, but it was just artists at the next one, the next one, and the next one. A few just talked about one single project. you did a small presentation. It was really an interesting moment. And it was also in an old, beautiful theater in the center of Paris. So this was the context and we all had a super great time. And I was towards the end of the day, I could also present and Layla saw me. And after the presentation, she ran towards me and she said, ah, you have to come to London. I will want to do a show with you. And they said, okay, let's talk about it. And also, as I presented several of physical projects that I realized with Sidi, not only NFT projects, but I went back to a little bit of the origins. I said, okay, if I come to London, then I will come with Sidi and we will bring these physical projects. I wasn't even aware what Verse was about, but I totally trusted Layla, so She was convincing, she was great. So we kind of had this sort of agreement. Then we slowly worked it out over the upcoming months. So we were discussing the kind of works and Leyla, she immediately almost put us in a super tough spot because she said, ah, we have this room here where you can put your work. And then she sent us the plan and this room was huge. We never did an exhibition in such a big space. before. So it was already crazy to imagine to do this in short term. And would you, we fill up this whole thing. And then she found a bit of a smaller room, but it was still very big. It's difficult to, to solve with projects. And so we started to work around what we could bring, what we could show. And of course she insisted that there would be a long-form project in some sort, but we insisted that We came from physical and we wanted to push this project as well. And especially for this kind of space, we wanted to bring a bigger piece. And the bigger piece for us is the central point of this whole exhibition, which is a piece that we remix over the years. So it's always a transforming piece. And this is, it's called Digits and it's a huge electromechanical piece that will basically occupy the whole diagonal of the room. And we even have had to shorten it a bit.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: To make it fit properly. And this will be the 3rd iteration of this project in a new form.

Speaker B: So looking through the description of the exhibition, it looks like you have 6 pieces that are, you're bringing to the table, and it looks like most of those are physical. And then the 7th would be that long-form piece that would then be sold as an NFT on Verse.

Speaker C: There is also 2 physical pieces that come with a digital counterpart. This is, for me at least, a super interesting topic, a topic that I'm thinking about a few years now, 1.5 years more or less. So this piece comes as physical and digital. And of course, this is not new in the, in this crypto space or in NFT space. A lot of artists produce a digital piece and then this digital piece can be printed, for example, if it's a static image. Some of these pieces are print first. So the physical part exists before, and then the NFT is almost like a way of selling it. And maybe the NFT display is a scan or an image of the object. So in this case, the NFT will just act more or less of a contract. And I didn't really want either of these 2 solutions. So I wanted something where the physical exists and the digital exists, and they can also live together somehow. And, um, So for these 2 pieces that we show, these 2 physical first, let's say, pieces, we found ourselves constrained. And this display of LED matrices, of 2 matrices connected together, which gives a total surface of 64 times 64 pixels. 64 times 64 pixels, if you look at them on a computer display or even on a newer phone, is probably a few millimeters wide. So The pixels on this sort of screen is such a small area, but if you turn these pixels into actual LEDs, then the surface becomes pretty big and it starts to have a presence in a space and it starts to exist as an object. So this 64 times 64 pixels, it's a bit more than 4,000 pixels in total, is kind of, again, an artificial playground that we build ourselves. And then we thought, okay. Yeah. On this context, let's imagine projects that work inside this ultra-reduced space of possibilities. So this is how the physical pieces were born. And then the digital counterpart in this case is a reflection of these ideas. And a thing which needs to be said to understand the digital part is that the ideas that works for this display are kind of simple ideas. So they are just a concept, a small story, a tiny story that we want to tell. And so this story can also eventually be transported, in this case, on a container that is not an LED matrix, but it can live, let's say, on a computer screen as well.

Speaker B: What's the process for creating something like 64 Pixels where you're, in one hand, you are coding it and designing it for an LED, but then to recreate the representation of that with these LEDs, into the digital format, is it the same codebase? Is it the codebase being run in different ways, or is it like a separate thing altogether? Because you have to, like, theoretically each pixel then has to scale to be, to fit essentially the constraints of JavaScript and like any sort of responsive device. I'm really curious about that actually.

Speaker C: This is a super question and I'm so glad that you asked it because, so there is a whole process behind this project and we also designed the hardware For the physical part, which doesn't mean that we designed the LED panels. The LED panels, uh, it's a commercial industrial project. And again, it's a beautiful industrial object because it lacks any sort of decoration, any, any sort of adornment. It's just this industrial piece, naked as it comes, dry as hell. And it already looks so good in this dryness, in this essential, uh, being just this piece. So we try to keep it as clean as possible. Of course, we need to build some structure around. So we have an aluminum backplate, which is custom made and folded and machined, which I'm super proud of. But also we designed the hardware controller. So this LED panel doesn't run itself. It needs something that obviously controls it. And so we designed the controller part. It was a bit of a way to sign the hardware to say, okay, this is a complete object.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: It's not just something that you can buy and then you program it. We really built the controller part. And this hardware part, we usually don't do ourselves. We work with engineers. And I gave the engineer some extreme constraints again. So this idea of limiting the possibilities, I transfer it also to the people that have the unluck to work with us. So I asked him to make it as small as possible and he almost got crazy, but now we have this super small. square that you can just plug into this matrix and it will start to turn on a few lights. And the code that goes into this hardware device is C. C is an old language and it's also pretty limited. So if you want, it's a bit low level, so it doesn't have so many instructions and it has a few types that you have to use when you want to work with it. And so to transfer this code to JavaScript is pretty trivial. It will be harder the other way around. There is also mechanisms that allow the automatic transcription of C code to JavaScript. And I was considering it because I thought this would be the conceptual thing to do. So you write the code once and then you, whatever algorithm you wrote, you would translate it automatically. You don't add extra parameters or extra choices. In the act of transcoding it. You let the machine do it and you are sure that what you wrote in C is exactly the same in JavaScript. But as this concept, these ideas are pretty small, once the whole system is set up, the algorithm, it's a smaller part of the whole setup. And so I decided to just translate them by hand, but it's really a bunch of arrays and a few pointers and basically that's it. So it's not really This is not the complex part, but I think the more interesting part of the question is how do you treat a physical pixel of the LED, which is a few millimeters big? What do you do with this on a computer screen? And this was really something that bugged us for quite long because it felt impure to represent this idea on a computer. What do you do? You, do you draw small squares and then you say that this square is a pixel, but on a computer screen, if you draw a square, then it's already several pixels. Yeah. Or would you imitate the roundness of this pixel and you draw small circles? So this was a question that we asked ourselves. And the first answer that we gave was we just use physical pixels for the digital version. This would mean that if you look at this project, you basically wouldn't see much because you would see a few dots on the center of the screen moving, but you, it would be too small to recognize any sort of composition in there. And so I wrote a renderer that takes this pixel data and in an arbitrary way displays them on screen. But I built in, maybe I shouldn't say it, an Easter egg that allows to display the pixels as 1x1 pixel data so that the version you have on screen is in fact using 64 physical screen pixels, even if it doesn't make any sense. Amazing.

Speaker B: So I can wrap my head around this then. If I have a viewport that is, I don't know, let's say 2000 by 2000, are you just subdividing that and kind of just lighting up a 64th of that pixel space on the screen?

Speaker C: Yes. So the piece is completely responsive, so it will run in whatever area is available of the browser. It also runs on a web app. And so I introduced a few scaling factors. And on. So, but at this point, it almost becomes a sort of a preview image. We agreed, me and Sidi, we were talking about these agreements before, after a long, a very long discussion, we agreed that it would be okay to do a representation of the pixel on screen. So we represent a pixel by drawing rectangles, which it's not a proper idea somehow, but we agreed Because the algorithms are for us the interesting part in this case. And they can also be told the stories, or let's say the things that these algorithms tell, the 2 algorithms of these 2 projects. One is 64 pixels and the other one is recursive tile. They can also be told on a medium that is not this physical piece that they were taught for.

Speaker B: And then, okay, conversely, if I were to buy 64 pixels and own it on the blockchain, but I'm also handy with a soldering iron and I have some LEDs lying around. Is there a way that I can then pull the piece that I have from the blockchain and then recreate it physically within a 64 by 64 LED design space? Or should I just like email you on the side and be like, how do I do this?

Speaker A: Or do we get physicals? I mean, as part of the sale, is the physical coming with the digital? It's both.

Speaker C: We are still discussing this. Maybe once the piece is aired, the choices have been made. So of course, the number of editions for the physical piece are extremely limited. We didn't want to produce a huge series, a bunch of them that we built, and the software part could be much larger. And so we are still thinking about how, if there is a larger part for just the software piece that you can own without having access to the physical one, So you can just enjoy the algorithm or try to understand it or watch it if you want. So maybe for some people it's good enough to not have extra stuff in their homes. But on the other side, the physical is the physical. It's what legitimates, let's say, the idea of these constraint algorithms. And so yes, they are probably separated objects. As we are standing now, they are still separated.

Speaker A: You know, if anyone's interested in other physical pieces from you, there's LCD one that you released at the end of last year, right? Which is a slightly different take on a device that displays— this one displays ASCII art. The floor is about 2.3 ETH for one, so go check those out for sure. I missed out though. I was looking at those when you released them. I was like, these are really cool. But let's talk about the long-form piece, which is probably going to be the most accessible piece, I'd imagine, of everything that's going to be sold in the exhibition. We actually don't know very much about it other than the description that's up there. And even in the notes here, you said the name is still a work in progress. So I know we're 2 weeks out. Is there a name for it? And what can you tell us about this piece in general? The name we have written down here right now is 256.

Speaker C: This is 256. The other piece we just talked before is 64 pixels. And the other hardware piece is Recursive Tiles. And the other physical pieces, one is called Digits. And another one which uses red-green LEDs, it's called Red Green. So usually we give these titles that are not real titles. They don't add any extra layer of information about the piece. It's probably the most obvious thing you can say about the piece usually becomes the title when I work with CDs. So it's— there is a certain honesty in this, and also there is a will to not add extra complexity or extra layers of things that you can think about the piece. So we try to just make a little space around the piece and not to pollute Let's say, or to add meaning to it through the title. And in this case, we found ourselves in the situation of an unconstrained screen space, let's say. We don't know what to do with the screen because you can do so many things. We usually don't know where to start because where do you start when you have to do something on the screen? And one topic we wanted to touch was to use gradients. It's not really the case of current screens, but in a usual model of the screen, you have 8 bits per color channel. So in an RGB space, you would have 8 bits, so 256 possibilities for the red, the green, and the blue channel. And the same goes also for grayscale values. So an average screen, but again, I say it's not true anymore, especially with the newer screens, you can build a gradient of 256 rays. And so we told ourselves, this is going to be the entry point, the kind of limitations, the kind of constraints that we need to be able to reason, to come up with something for this limitless surface. We started thinking about it and we— it happened again. We did a design project, a design research project for science fiction movies a few years ago, maybe 4 years ago. Where we were asked by the producers of this science fiction movie to imagine signage systems. So they came to us for a reason, I guess, to imagine signage systems of the future of society, a bunch of decades into the future. Some part of the society slightly collapsed, not in a Mad Max way, let's say, not in a completely dystopic way, but society is a bit like ours, but more complex, more problems, few robots and aliens and things around. And so society also needs wayfinding system, signage system that talks to machines, that talks to humans, that talks to extraterrestrial entities and things like this. And so this is a sort of a dream job, of course, as a designer, because you can go completely crazy. You can imagine things. They don't even need to function properly. You just, we were commissioned not to prepare things that would actually end up in the movie, but just to give ideas, to create imagery that then would eventually be picked up by the actual artists working on the movie. So it was completely a research project. And in one of these many ways that we imagined, we came up with this idea of having these gradients, these shapes, this original message, and then we just push it through a series of 256 layers in a grayscale way. And while pushing them through, we would also change their shapes. And the images we obtained were kind of interesting, kind of Strange. They were somehow familiar. If you work with 3D imagery and you look at the depth buffer, that's how more or less a depth buffer would look. It's just a black and white image. They look a little bit like a TAC or a scan of the brain with these grayscale shades where things that are closer to you are lighter and things that are a bit more in the background look darker. And so we remind We were thinking about this project and we said, okay, but we just explored this very quickly for this short project. And we were always in a hurry. So we just did it quick and we wanted to pick up again this project. So I tell this because it's again, a situation where a job, or let's say a commissioned project, then flows into a more free and more artistic practice. And so this is the idea that we are working on right now. So I brought this renderer that works quite well now in real time that allows to slightly modify the point of view. I think it's an interesting piece because, at least for me, because it's not really a 3D piece. I don't do, or I very rarely work in 3D, but it's completely 2-dimensional. But then the final result is this sort of stack. And so that's why I like to say that this is a sort of 2.5-dimensional piece. Because it's not really 3D, it's also not really 2D, it's something in between. It has this sort of limits. And so we are exploring right now still with 3D a lot of shapes that we can model through this sort of pipe. And we are pretty happy with it right now. Of course, if you do a long-form project and you already remove color as a way of creating variations, you limit yourself a lot already. So we decided to only go with grayscale, which complicates things a little bit. It's very easy for a long form if one of the parameters you can change is a color palette, then you can just draw a circle and you change the color palette and then you already have several very different looking projects. If you remove the color from the project, it's a bit more difficult to only work with the form. And the final thing about this project is that as all the projects in this exhibition and basically all of our projects, they are projects in motion. So they move, they're not images.

Speaker B: This is one of the pieces we haven't actually seen any previews of. I don't think we've seen it anywhere. Is this one purely digital or does it also have a physical component or the potential for a physical component?

Speaker C: To just negate what I just said, And in this case, we are presenting in the exhibition print output.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Whoa.

Speaker A: So are you curating stills that you enjoy, like out of various algorithms? Since it's a 3D piece that moves, is that how you're taking the approach?

Speaker C: It moves, it's continuous transforming shape, and you select one moment in this transformation and you print it. And as it's black and white, the CD already pops him with his almost unlimited printing knowledge of different ways to print this. But the print part we just use in this case for the exhibition. It's not really a part of the project itself. So we will find a good solution, but probably not one of these things, these weird things he has in mind.

Speaker A: You kind of alluded to this a little bit in your description at the end there, that it might be difficult to do a lot of outputs by virtue of it being a Grayscale piece. Do you have an idea in mind between you and Sidi, like what the quantity is going to be? Obviously the most harmonious number would be 256.

Speaker C: That's also what we are thinking about, yes.

Speaker A: And what about pricing? Is it going to be an auction? Is it going to be flat price? Do you have an idea about how to release it?

Speaker C: I try to leave these aspects, also the edition number, somehow to theirs because they know what they're doing. It's also something that I don't like to think about very much, so I can really concentrate on doing the piece. Of course, me and Sidi, we need to have a say on the final number because this number depends on the quality or on the possible variations the algorithm is capable of producing. If it's very limited, it doesn't make sense to make more than 10, of course. But we are aiming to 256. I think we are not there yet. But we still have a few days to fine-tune it, and we have a few new ideas that we need to experiment in the following days.

Speaker B: I think the entire thing sounds very exciting. Will, was there anything else that you specifically wanted to ask about 256?

Speaker A: Yeah, a little bit. So also continuing from, you know, you're saying these things have motion, a lot of your work has motion. A lot of your physical pieces as well have a sound component and a rhythm to them because they're coming from these analog technologies. I wanted to ask, kind of related to all of your digital work, and but in particular to Device 1, did you consider doing an audio component to it? Because as you watch it flow, there is so much rhythm to the way the digits move around the screen, and you can almost hear it if you're familiar with that sound from that type of technology. But the piece itself, unless there's an Easter egg I'm not aware of, it does not have audio. So is that something that you've ever thought about doing? Like, does it add too much complexity or difficulty to the work to add the audio? Is it just never satisfying in the way that you want it to be. It seems like a natural extension.

Speaker C: I think it is. It's very difficult for me at least to work with audio, to be honest. One of the first pieces I did with this split flap idea, more or less, that you mentioned— so these characters that don't just change to the proper one, but they kind of have to go through the whole list and then they will stop. So this idea, which comes from the fascination of split flap displays, displays that we used several times in our work as well. So this idea gives this whole movement and these whole rhythms to Device 1 and most of my ASCII art pieces as well. But there is a precedent. I think in October, this piece is 10 years old, and I published with a musician at the time I was living in Berlin. An electronic musician contacted me and he wanted a design for his album cover. And then I designed the album cover and a system of characters for the idea of the COVID But then this system of characters became also an animated real-time generative movie clip, let's say, for one of his pieces. And it worked pretty well because the way he made music was through a sort of generative system, even if at a certain point the result he would cut capture and put on a vinyl. He freezes this endless kind of composition, so he choose one, but then he puts it on the album. But the process for him to build these tracks, there was a lot of randomization, a lot of systems involved. And so I wanted to build a video clip for him that would also be driven by some initially randomized factors. So that's one time that I built an ASCII system that would react to the music, but not by analyzing the sound. But I prepared a way of putting cue points precisely on certain moments of the track, and then something slight would happen in real-time movie clip. So I'm, I'm not so new with in this sort of project with audio and video. I made several of these projects for musicians, and I consider them all a complete failure. I don't know exactly why, except this one. This one I'm really proud of, and I think it kickstarted most of my subsequent ASCII work. And yes, I get contacted by musicians. They want to do things with this sort of imagery, and I almost never have time. I sent a few video loops to a DJ in LA. I didn't know him, so I just sent them them, and 6 months later he sent me back these videos where he's performing in front of, I don't know, 200,000 people. And on the backdrop is this ASCII art and I was kind of blown away and I said, okay, this is what these loops were for. So somehow these musical aspects or these rhythmic aspects of the project find the way back to music. But I never managed a good combination of these by myself. I know that Leander Herzog just released a piece with generative imagery and generative sound. So I deeply respect that, but the generative sound part is also made by a musician. So I think this is a very interesting piece that I just observed and also collected. I think it's something to consider and to watch. It's probably something that doesn't have much commercial success, but that shouldn't stop the artist of doing it, of course. Strangely enough, the most commercial pieces are static. That's something that I really cannot understand. understand, this medium, computer screen at least, demands movement and not a still image. You know, still image, we know we had this since 20,000 years.

Speaker A: That was the core of the episode that we did with Leander. We had him on last year, and that's pretty much half of the episode is talking about that very observation.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, okay. I have to listen to it then.

Speaker A: You should listen to that one.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. Talking about Lenny as well, his most recent piece, DOM1, which we'll definitely be talking about when we record our weekly episode, it's using generative sound that's working in conjunction with the visuals. When I think about the work that you've done, both within the NFT space and also with using existing signage and physicals, his project called Very Large Array really comes to mind as like something that could be analogous to your work. Because it's leveraging the onboard sound card that exists within everybody's computer as a way to create super dissonant sounds that I can't stand, but Will loves. And so thinking from the perspective of how do we use the ASCII side of things in conjunction with the native hardware components that are available within these devices, I think there's something there. I don't know what it quite is.

Speaker A: I just want device 1 to click.

Speaker B: You know, I just want the click, but because like certain things on your sound card are being like triggered versus like using, you know, tone.js or whatever.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: You know, I think that those are 2 very different things.

Speaker A: Still great work without sound. It was just like, but I love the exploration.

Speaker B: Actually, I do have another question that I would like to talk about before we start wrapping up. And this is partially in relation to what you were already talking about with 256. You were talking about at the start of the show where you're using signage and symbols within culture to really drive a lot of the work that you've been creating over the last few decades. And they often are regional with a specific meaning, whether it's, here's what the train track sign looks like in France, or what a slowdown sign looks like in Germany. I don't know. But there is often a sense of a broader cultural meaning behind some of these signs. And obviously when you're using—

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: ASCII characters, those are things that we observe and that we interact with every day. It's a critical part of society. Is there any other inspiration or reason for using them? And also in conjunction with 256, with its like alien signage, and you're putting yourself in the minds of here is what would be relevant in a futuristic social construct. I would love to hear more about what some of the meanings could be. And the narratives that they help create.

Speaker C: That's interesting. It's semiotics almost. And so what do these symbols drag with them? And do we want this meaning in the artwork, in the final result? Do we want to push it or do you want to kind of try to reduce the current meaning of these forms? And I think one simple answer in the ASCII pieces especially is that Each letter, each glyph, each letter of the alphabet, or each of these symbols that some of them are a part of, of this initial ASCII character set, I don't treat them anymore as bringers of meaning. They are not letters anymore in these pieces. They become form. So I'm interested in an L because it has this sharp corner. I'm interested in a Y because it points down, and an A, on the other hand, points up. So the meaning there is cancelled. Of course, this can be quite simple, more or less, if you work with single elements and glyphs. In case of the train station piece, there is not a single character anymore. Each element of this train station signage has already a train station written on it. And so it's much, much more difficult To kind of remove the meaning of this train station from the signage if you can only display a full word. I think this is also then the beauty of the project itself. It kind of coexists in these 2 planes where you are looking at a sort of choreography. You are enjoying the movement, the sound, and the wind. There is a little bit of air movement as well. And these shapes, the compositions, the idea eventually.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But then also you start to read these places that are displayed and there is an effect. There is something happening in this brain. So you read Paris as a train destination, but you're looking at this choreography and this word, it sticks somewhere in the backside of your brain, of your thoughts. And it enters also this moment when you are looking at this choreography, at this composition. So yeah, it's different. I think each project has a slight different way of how these things are treated and also of how much you can control the amount of meaning that is carried. For the street signage, I think it's easier because street signage is completely abstract. I mean, all of these signs are abstract at a certain point, but street signage is really these simple shapes. It's basically high contrast, full color, ultra simple geometric shapes. And as soon as you start to take them out of the context of the street, they almost have a life on their own. They're already very abstract. I mean, if you don't find them close to a street or a car, they already are quite transformed, quite simple to quickly become something else.

Speaker A: That got deep. Trinity, was that the answer you were hoping for?

Speaker B: Yeah, and I guess because we haven't seen 256, we can't necessarily talk about science fiction futuristic symbols. But it sounds like the symbolism doesn't matter in a way. It's just representative of what is there and how do we leverage these geometries that they create in order to convey not meaning but a feeling, perhaps.

Speaker C: I don't want to add anything after this because it was pretty beautiful.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, that feels like the time to transition into ending the episode with just a couple quicker questions. And since you already talked about Lenny as someone who you enjoy their work and collect, is there anyone else that you want to shout out that you collect from in the space, NFTs in particular, artists that you admire? Maybe name drop some of the folks that from earlier you said that you admired, who you saw enter into the NFT space that inspired you to take the leap. So who's out there that Andreas likes to collect and what do you look for?

Speaker C: I like motion pieces, of course, mostly. And so, but Lenny, I talked about him already. He does a lot of things. I think Lenny is the guy, he has an idea and then he goes for the project, which is super interesting because he doesn't really have a style. And for me, this is usually a good sign. He explores different ideas. Sometimes they're very simple ideas. They're just almost like a small joke or a small poetry. And sometimes they're a bit more complex projects. And sometimes the language is very visual. Sometimes It stays back and something different happens. But he does a lot of motion pieces, and so I really try to collect them all. Another artist that I like a lot that mostly works with motion is Kim Asendorf. I think his pieces, heavily motion-based, have an aspect that I also try to reproduce and an aspect that I seek in the pieces. They are able to hypnotize me. They are able to put me in a state where I kind of forget about everything. I just look at the piece and at a certain point I don't even look at the piece anymore. I'm just dragged in and transported somewhere and some other totally unconnected thoughts start to appear in my mind. And he found, contrary to Landy, he has a little bit more of a style that is recognizable, but he's still exploring an idea that needs to be explored. So this His flip-flop, his back and forth moving of pixels is an idea that needs exploring. I think he didn't squeeze out all of it. So I'm super happy that we still continue this travel. That said, he is also capable of going different directions. That is not only this particular style or this particular technique. He demonstrated that he's able to think outside of this sort of parameters as well. Yeah, those 2 are very close to me.

Speaker A: Awesome. 2 of our favorites as well.

Speaker C: Kerem Safa, he's also very good. He generates repeating patterns. He's a musician and you can totally see this. And there's also some of these qualities. I think he works by hand, so his things are drawn, but this kind of repeating pattern, these oscillations, this back and forth, It's again, an aspect that I always look for in projects.

Speaker A: Haven't heard of him.

Speaker C: Yeah, go check him out.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. All right, Trinity, do you wanna do one rapid fire and then we'll wrap it up?

Speaker B: The question that I have for you is, what's the story behind your username? I feel like we should have started with this question.

Speaker C: It's in front of your eyes if you lower your gaze.

Speaker A: There is a sequence of keys that kind of makes sense, but how did you come to it?

Speaker C: I needed a domain name because I wanted to publish my projects. online, and then I was thinking about all these cool names, which involve some color, probably black or probably white or gray or dark or something and some cool words. And I thought all these names are super, super bad. And I'm pretty sure that they will work like a tattoo. I will get super annoyed one year after I go with one of these names. And then I started to say, well, I work with geometry, so let's find the geometry on the keyboard. And there was a problem. Keyboards are international and they change. So if something works on my keyboard, it doesn't work on an American one or an Italian one or a French one. And so I overlap many keyboards, the layouts virtually and not physically. And there is this area that doesn't change. These central keys, they don't change in almost all of the keyboards. Is the same and it builds a square, so I kept it.

Speaker B: If you had one of the, um, the people who make keyboards, sometimes they do do them square, then perhaps that's where it would be. Those people are a little bit crazy, but I appreciate it.

Speaker A: Trinity's a little bit of a keyboard fanatic.

Speaker B: Yeah, I go through waves.

Speaker C: Ah, you have a mechanical one?

Speaker B: I have 2 or 3, but I haven't used them since working from home. It's just not as ergonomic without a standing desk, but I love the clicky clackiness.

Speaker C: Uh, we should have talked about this.

Speaker B: All right, we'll do another interview, or you can guest host and we can have a side podcast about, um, keyboards.

Speaker A: Waiting to click.

Speaker C: Whoa.

Speaker A: It's also so fitting hearing you describe the, you know, the process for coming up with that name and having heard you just speak about deconstructing the meaning of letters or just ignoring the meaning of them and coming up with this thing that's really more based on— it's a string of letters, but it's based on form and function. and universality versus an actual meaning itself that's tied to the string of letters. It feels somehow connected to your work in a way after hearing you speak. Andreas, do you have anything that you want to say before we go? Any final words, any final plugs, anything else that we can be looking forward to from you after the Verse exhibit maybe that you want to preview here and talk about?

Speaker C: No, I don't know anything about the future, but I really want to thank you.

Speaker A: You're welcome. And also thank you for coming on the show. I mean, It's always amazing for us to talk to an artist like yourself and get your perspective and learn more about you. Greatly appreciate it. And thanks to Layla at Verse for getting you on the show with us. It's been great. Well, that's it for this one. I hope you all enjoyed. That was Andreas Giessen. Check out this solo exhibition coming up on Verse right around the time that this episode airs. Thank you everyone for listening.

Speaker C: Bye.

Speaker B: Bye.

Speaker C: The rail of the week. It's gonna be time. We're waiting. Always.

Speaker A: We're waiting.

Speaker C: To be signed.