Speaker A: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a special interview episode. We're joined today by Trinity. As always, I'm Will. And with us is Anna Lucia, or Anna as she likes to be called. She's a friend of ours now, so we have that privilege. Anna, how's it going?

Speaker B: Very well.

Speaker C: I'm doing very well today. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for coming on. It's generous of you to give us your time. It's always fun for us when artists are able to come on the show and help us kind of close the gap between our understanding as collectors versus you know, your expertise as someone who actually makes art. I'm sure everyone who listens to the show by now is familiar with some of the work that you've made, but maybe they're not so familiar with who you are. So perhaps you could do an introduction about who is Anna Lucia, you know, what's your background in art and coding and how you came to create NFTs and, you know, put stuff out on the Tezos blockchain.

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. So probably, yeah, most of your audience will know me by my 2 fx hash collections. One of them is Art for Walls and Public Spaces, and my second drop was called Perpetual Oscillations. And I also have an Art Blocks collection called Loom and experimented a bit on Hic Et Nunc when that was still up and running and minted some things on Foundation. And that's actually where I started with NFTs. But before that, I think, you know, NFTs is just what I've started doing since August of last year, and I've been making generative art already for about 3 years. And I kind of like rolled into that on accident. I went to art school right after high school. I studied fashion design. I was also always very much interested into textiles and fashion, as you can probably also see in my work. Unfortunately, kind of after 1 year of art school, I realized there's not a lot of math involved or physics, and I've also always been very drawn to numbers that I always Got like a kind of almost calming thing of working with numbers. So I went into studying engineering, which was great. Like I really got my fix in terms of like math and physics, and it was very creative. Like you have to be very creative to work in engineering, but it's not very artistic. And I especially noticed that as soon as I started working. You know, if you're an engineering student, often the projects that you work on are very creative and It's a lot of fun, but as soon as I got into the workplace, I was like, "Whoa, this is actually a lot of bureaucracy. This is not as creative as university was," and I was really looking for that creative outlet. For some reason, I discovered Processing. I don't remember how I found it, but so for the people who don't know, Processing is a Java library specifically developed for designers and artists to kind of learn code or work with code. And then there's like P5. JS, which most people mint on with fx hash, which is like the JavaScript version of that. And I discovered that and I was just immediately hooked. That was about 3 years ago. I taught myself how to code. I like, obviously studying engineering, I had a little bit of a basics, but really not that much. So I taught myself how to code and I haven't stopped since, just making generative art. I did that for a long time. I worked by myself. It was just kind of me behind my computer after office hours. Making stuff, and I didn't really share that with anybody. And then at some point I thought, you know what, maybe it's time to start putting this out into the world. And I started an Instagram channel, Anna Lucia Codes, and I realized that generative art was a thing. So before that, I didn't know that generative art existed. I was just playing around in Processing and doing my thing. And then this whole world opened up to me. I was like, wow, what I'm doing is like a genre of art and there's all these other people doing this and making super cool stuff in Processing and other, other software languages. Um, and I became part of that community via Slack group also, uh, which is the Generative Art Club, and met all these fellow artists. And that's kind of how I rolled into NFTs last year, because many of them started experimenting with NFTs, and it was like, yeah. Let's try that out. Let's see how it goes. And here we are almost 9 months later of minting my first NFT. I'm a full-time generative artist. So it's been crazy.

Speaker B: Congratulations on making that switch. I know that we've talked to a lot of people who've been able to do that, but going from, you know, being a full-time engineer to full-time artist, that is quite the accomplishment.

Speaker C: Yes, it's been— it's especially in the beginning. Now I'm a bit more used to it, but in the beginning I just woke up every day thinking to myself, I'm so grateful that I get to wake up today and make art. And that's what I do now.

Speaker A: That's, that's so cool to hear. I mean, and it's, it's so interesting that you kind of independently arrived at it through your exploration of, of processing and code and like creating art that way. Like What we now think of as like modern generative art, right? Like code-based generative art. Did you have any influences like prior to that that kind of brought you in that direction?

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Um, I think especially when I, in the beginning when I was making generative art by myself, uh, I did have a friend who is a graphic designer and he would always give me prompts. So he would come up with a prompt. He has no affiliation with coding or computer science or whatsoever. And then I kind of tried to implement that. So he would say like, oh, can you make like a pinball machine that creates art? Or can you do this with a sunset? Or yeah, he would always come up with these really creative prompts. And that's kind of how I learned. And I think what that has done, and you You can maybe you see that in my work is that I don't come from a computer science background or necessarily a software development background. So I often have in mind more like graphic work or art references or modern art references, and then I try to perhaps like find the algorithms that fit that and that are able to create that instead of there's also many artists that have more this computer science background that work from. starting point of an algorithm and that then creates the art. And with me, often the process is the other way around. I think in the beginning that made me quite insecure, especially when I found out there was like so many people actually making generative art and they're such talented programmers. Like you've had Piter Pasma on your show. Like, I mean, he's one of those examples. But I'm starting to get like a lot more comfortable with that nowadays to see like, okay, it is also a strength.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Which means that I often look at things from very far outside of generative art. Like for example, looking at the weavers of the Bauhaus and bringing that into generative art. And I'm starting to see that way more as my strength nowadays.

Speaker B: Because you mentioned that you have a pretty strong background and interest in more traditional art and graphic design and fashion. Is there anything specific that you find super inspiring that you kind of bring to your own work or just are inspired by?

Speaker C: I think in general, like even from when I was a very young kid and going to museums and stuff, I've been very drawn to kind of the modern and abstract artists from the '50s and the '60s. Um, like an artist like Sol LeWitt. I like, I knew his work way before I knew about generative art. At the moment, I'm looking a lot at the work of Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist that makes these crazy infinity rooms. I've recently bought a VR headset, so maybe that's also why I'm looking at her work a lot. I think Bridget Riley, um, also often people kind of bring her name up when they look at my work, uh, definitely. But kind of, yeah, that, that abstract work from, from that time period is definitely something I'm drawn to. But as well as that, I think I'm also quite inspired by the net artists of kind of the '90s and the early 2000s, like the first people who started to use the browser as a place where you could make art. Raphael Rozendaal is a great example of that, who I think is very inspiring, and that kind of aesthetic, yeah, I'm drawn to a lot.

Speaker A: I'm wondering if that would be a good— well, you know what, I think before we segue into some of your particular pieces and kind of what makes your work so special. A question that occurred to me to ask, you know, given, like you said, that you've only been in NFTs for 9 months. I mean, I guess no one's really been in NFTs for that long, right? Maybe the most someone could have been in is for a couple years if they're really like an original in the space. But I'm curious, like, do you have any understanding or like theory about how you kind of broke through in the space? Because I think there's a lot of artists out there who—

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: put a ton of work into their art and if they're throwing pieces up on this and that platform and they're never quite getting the traction. And I'm just curious, like, could you maybe, do you have any advice or could you kind of crystallize what you think enabled you to break through in such a noisy space?

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. I can, I can kind of break this question maybe up into parts, talk about my experience and maybe what I've done. But I'm not sure if that can be, you know, copied by everybody. And then second to that, I can maybe talk to a bit more kind of general advice that I would have for starting out generative artists. I think for me personally, I wouldn't be able to deny that timing is a big part of it. Still having been relatively early in the NFT space, and especially when I first came to NFTs was kind of during the Art Blocks summer when that was like a huge huge boom and all eyes were on generative art. So if you were a generative artist at that time and you would put something on Foundation, you were quite sure that your piece would be picked up. But yeah, I don't want to contribute everything to timing. I do think also just putting your work out there and making good work is important. But yeah, I'm not going to deny that factor. I think another thing that has been like a huge contribution is the fact that There is a huge community of generative artists and we support each other and we help each other and we talk about what are the best ways to go about it and sharing that information and supporting each other has been really, really helpful for me in breaking through. And I think, I hope that I also do that for other generative artists in this space. So having that community is really important. Kind of in a more general kind of advice that I would have for other artists out there that want to break through is to be kind of consistently show up. For example, social media is quite an important thing to, to get yourself known and to get yourself out there. I do make it a habit to share work in progress quite a lot, and I'm really quite generous with just like sharing quick screenshots here and there with without a lot of text. And I think this, for me, has been a great way to kind of get that ball rolling instead of not posting anything and then just doing a big announcement of like, hey, here's my work. But, you know, it's not only about pushing your NFTs or like selling NFTs. It's also about just being generous with the work that you make and just like share that. And then also sharing the work of other artists, you know, creating that community. I also always make sure to kind of support other artists. Another thing that's very important, and it's maybe a bit cliché, but I do want to repeat it here because it is really important repeating to artists, is to just really stay true to what you do and what you make. Like how I said earlier that, you know, certain things would sometimes make me really insecure. Like I've only like being a self-taught coder and I've only been making, like making art with code for 3 years. I'm doing things a little bit differently than all the other people, like other people that I would see making art. And then instead of being insecure about that, kind of just like push into that, like stay true to what you want to make and not what you see is trending at that moment, because, you know, that might be different again next week or maybe tomorrow already, you know, the space moves really, really fast. So it's a bit cliché to say like, stay true and follow your own voice. But I think especially for artists, as we have an inclination to be, We just doubt ourselves way, way too much. It's worth repeating to say that.

Speaker B: Well, talking to other artists within this space, you know, you've already mentioned the community, some of the Slack groups that are there. You know, when we were talking to Amy Goodchild, she was saying how it's such a loving and supportive community. Do you also find that community, what's the word, not inspiring per se, but a way of pushing yourself to improve yourself as an artist? I know that there have been a lot of things put out there, for example, January. I think you've mentioned that in some of your interviews before as a source of inspiration. What are some other things that kind of within the community that help push you forward?

Speaker C: I think definitely within the community, for example, there's a Slack, there's a Slack group. It has 2 channels that are very important to that. One of them is the work in progress where people share work in progress, and it's just like absolute fire in there every single day. You know, you see what everybody's working on, such such different styles and such different— but, you know, we work all with the same medium, but everybody is just taking completely their own approach. And having that all together is just, um, really awesome and inspiring. And then there's also a mental health channel in there, which I think also Amy has mentioned in her, in her interview. That is definitely a place where you're like, oh, you know, Other people are also struggling with this. So, oh, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one. You know, being an artist in the NFT space, being constantly online, being in this place that changes so rapidly, it's not always easy. And being able to share that is inspiring or gets you through a bad day again, or, you know.

Speaker B: It seems like the space has changed a lot over the last 9 months or like 25 years, which is how long it feels like, I have to say. What are some of the differences that you've really noticed in the space, if any? And, you know, how has it changed since you first entered?

Speaker C: Oh, that's a good question. Sometimes it feels a little bit of like I've lost a hobby, but I've gained a career. And I think that has been a big change for many artists and something that we also discuss amongst each other of like, Hey, we used to do this maybe outside of work to get energy or to find inspiration or to put our creativity, and now it's suddenly something that puts a lot more pressure attached to it because you feel like you have to maybe release something again, or you feel, yeah, you feel a lot more that pressure. That's something that has definitely changed. Also, just the insane amount of attention that generative art has given, like, If 2 years ago I would tell people, oh look, this is my weird nerdy hobby where I make pictures by writing computer code, people would have no idea what I would talking— would be talking about. And now people, you know, I tell people and they're like, oh, does it mean that you work with NFTs? And is that like the Art Blocks platform? You know, there's suddenly people know what it is and there's suddenly people interested in exhibiting that kind of work. And it's just a Yeah, absolutely exhilarating to also be part of that, you know, to feel like, oh, something is really happening for generative art.

Speaker B: Wow. You're lucky that you know people who know about generative art. I tried to explain it to my family and my in-laws, and if anybody said like, oh, like Art Blocks, my mind would be blown. If anybody mentioned NFTs, my mind would be blown. So that's really cool that you have like a more knowledgeable and supportive like community outside of the gen art space.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker A: Yeah, both my parents are art teachers and they have like a hard time wrapping their head around the idea that the code makes the output. You know, I show them stuff and they think it looks nice, but then they— I think they still don't fully grasp the connection between like what's going on here to produce these images.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm kind of curious. You know, this is a question we ask a lot of people. I'm curious if you've encountered a lot of resistance to the crypto aspect of this? You know, like NFTs can be very polarizing. Crypto can be very polarizing. The nature of the art itself is difficult to explain, although I guess, you know, you've said you've actually had really good reception to that aspect of it. Have you encountered a lot of issues in your personal life or even the professional world, like with the fact that you're putting your artwork on the blockchain like this?

Speaker C: I think in the beginning you saw a lot of that criticism on Twitter, and maybe that is something that I kind of internalized, and therefore I was really expecting to receive that criticism more in kind of outside the online world and more in my personal life. But in my personal life, I've been very lucky that people in general, people are very interested in learning about it or are just very happy for me that this is happening and really support it. I do have to say caveat that I have 2 brothers that are pretty nerdy. One of them also has 2 collections on FXHash, I believe, and another brother who was into Bitcoin already in 2012. So I like, they could tell me more about cryptocurrencies and NFTs already in 2017. So caveat for like my personal life might not be that average that I don't have to explain those things. And I think also, for example, here, so I live in Egypt. And I think for people who I encounter here, and I talk about NFTs, especially more people in the creative space and artists, they are very interested in NFTs and not immediately so critical because they feel like, hey, this is actually a way for us to maybe break through kind of, you know, barriers that either here in Egypt, they're not able to release the art they want to release because of like the political situation, or they're not able to travel, etc. So I think actually also here, NFTs can be such a force for good. And that's kind of also what I try to spread about it.

Speaker B: I definitely feel that it democratizes the art space a lot, both from an access to release and sell art. As well as an access way to collect art, both from the means of, hey, it's a lot easier to do this. And also it's just, I think it's great for raising awareness. I know that there's a lot of criticism around NFTs generally. I think specifically more from a market-based perspective, it's all like PFPs and apes and stuff.

Speaker A: Mm-hmm.

Speaker B: But I feel like those people don't really consider generative art when they're thinking about the NFT space at all, which is a A huge gap. There's so, it's so much more than that.

Speaker A: The only part we really care about.

Speaker C: Exactly. I'm also quite, quite quick too, when I kind of talk with people about what I do, I'm just like, yeah, you see all those apes on kind of the mainstream media, but that's really not what I do. And I quickly tell them, so there's this blockchain called Tezos. It's like this alternative artistic scene. It's really cool. We're all, you know, artists and creative people. supporting each other. So I always do give the caveat of like, you know, I'm not creating this promo picture.

Speaker B: Not yet.

Speaker C: Not yet. Oh yeah.

Speaker B: You don't have to announce anything right now, but we're just going to put that out in the universe.

Speaker A: Some of the colors on that unicorn drop, those could have been Anna Lucia colors for sure. I think maybe that— is this a good opportunity to talk a little bit about some of your work? I think, um, in particular, the, the use of color, I think, is something that I've learned, and, and Trinity, maybe you can back me up on this as well, like, as 2 people who really came into collecting art with fx hash and like not really, at least for me personally, not knowing so much beforehand, the thing that I've found I gravitate most towards are artists and releases that really seem to lean heavily into like construction of palette and use of color, which for both of your drops in particular on fx hash, I feel like really, really highlights.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: The sometimes complementary use of color, or— I see, this is where my language starts to break down, but I guess the core of the question— and Trinity, you can help me refine this if you want— which is like, what is the thing about color that I like? And especially in your work, like, how can— how could I get better at talking about when I'm looking at a piece like Art for Walls and Public Spaces and I'm vibing with it really hard?

Speaker C: Mm-hmm.

Speaker A: I'm like, this is so cool. I love the way this thing moves. I love the way the colors change. But there's a certain vocabulary, right, that I feel like I can never quite grasp. And you probably hear it on the show when you listen sometimes. It's like, yeah, he says he likes it, but he doesn't know why. Like, I would just love to kind of hear your perspective on color a little bit and like what makes it such an amazing tool for art and like how it's so— and how you use it so effectively in your work.

Speaker C: It is definitely something that is really important to me. I'm not sure Why, but it's something that I like. Making color palettes is something that I just enjoy doing a lot. And I can maybe kind of talk about like how I do that. But to back up way, way to my first Processing sketch, my very first Processing sketch that I made was a 10 by 10 grid of squares, and I gave each square a random color. And now this is what almost everybody does that starts creative coding. They start using random colors. And this is in a way absolutely horrible because you will never ever get a nice color palette. But it is some, an element of that I still have in my practice because I feel something that generative art does is that you can build a color palette. And then within the generative element, your system can put 2 colors next to each other or 3 colors close to each other that I would never come up with, but they just work really well. And this is kind of something that I'm always looking for in my systems, that it has that variety of colors in there that kind of, if you put them next to each other in the beginning, you're sometimes a little bit like, ooh. Oh, but I kind of like this. This is working. Um, this is something that I'm very drawn to. And I think something that is very important and also a tip really for generative artists is make your own color palettes, make it yourself. And I've seen Sable Ralph talk about this. He compared it to if you use a cookie cutter color palette, it's like using a spice mix from the supermarket. Instead of just working with your own spices and kind of finding that balancing act. So often what I do is I'm just like behind Illustrator and I'm just like mixing all these colors together and really kind of building it from there as if you are building your own perfect spice mix. And then, uh, in the algorithm itself, which is true for Art Provals and Public Spaces, there's also a probability algorithm in there that I actually define. So You maybe do want to have that little bit of lime yellow that gives the kick, but you don't want your whole artwork to have too much lime yellow. So to kind of make sure that those probabilities work out well in the algorithm. But I didn't do that for perpetual oscillations. And I do think you can see that, that Art for Walls and Public Spaces is kind of really curated and balanced and all the colors are very You know, nicely balanced, but Perpetual Oscillations doesn't have that. It has, it's way more on the really random side, which I often really like, but I do think it's also maybe an acquired taste.

Speaker B: No, looking through both of these works now, I absolutely see what you're talking about. You do feel that there's much more of like that consistent refinement in Art for Walls. But there is something satisfying about, um, it's not dissonance, that's not the way to put it, but it's like that random element that you talked about where it definitely, you feel that. I, I can't describe it either. Will and I are both equally terrible about talking about art.

Speaker A: Yeah. Despite the fact that we have an art podcast, we're really bad about talking, talking about the art, which, you know, I guess maybe sometimes that is actually useful for artists to hear, which is like, what do What does the lowest common denominator think of our work, right? And get really the common person's view of it. In Perpetual Oscillations, I can just see visually looking through the thumbnails, like a much wider array of colors in each given work, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And there's— looks like there's use of gradients here. And like, are there actually hardcoded palettes for this or is it kind of like a rule that starts with a color and then it like steps away from that color? In the little coding I've done, I've played with that where you just kind of, instead of, you pick a starting point for the color and you just kind of keep moving it around randomly.

Speaker C: I always hardcode my colors. I never work with colors that use any mathematical formulas to arrive at them. So whenever you see a color, that is definitely, that color is hardcoded in there. However, now with the gradients, obviously there's like a shader that calculates the gradient. Therefore you see kind of the color space between 2 colors, but those 2 colors on the extremes, these are like chosen by me. And in Art for a While in Public Spaces, those, it has a group of different palettes, but then also each palette has like colors of the other. You see colors recurring in all the palettes, but it is definitely a group of different palettes and each palette has its own like probability space for which colors can come up. Perpetual oscillations, it's just one array of colors that can be picked from, which is, uh, quite a balancing act, but I really enjoy it. But I do think that's also why I kind of chose to— why perpetual oscillations is a slower edition size, because often if you want to kind of just increase the edition size maybe of an algorithm, a very kind of easy way to do that is to add color palettes and add multiple color palettes because that kind of increases the diversity in a, in a collection. And perpetual oscillations, it's just that one color palette. So, or just that one array of colors, not all colors are in each perpetual oscillation. So that's why it's not a very big project.

Speaker B: You just released a collection on C-Verso. And how did your approach for that work differ from some of the stuff that you've released on fx hash? Because I'm looking through the, some of the outputs right now and you definitely see some of that signature color palette, but you also see some work that really diverges from, you know, at least what we've seen you do in the past, but it's really cool. I like it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm very, very happy with this project. And so usually when I start a new project or I start any Sketch. So as you can imagine, I have like one Illustrator file full of all my color palettes, and then I have like the associated GitHub file that actually has like all the arrays of all that colors. So I kind of have as if you're maybe a makeup artist that has like all her little boxes. So for Patchwork, I've got out all my my my colors and but assembled completely new color palettes from those colors, and maybe added in a few. New colors here and there. And that actually also is because, uh, something that I can mention now is that I created the Secret Garden for the Blind Gallery by Galo, which his idea was to release a set of NFTs that people can collect. However, they don't know who the artist behind the NFT is. So I was like, well, I can't really use my old color palettes for this. So I came up with like a whole new set of color palettes, but those are kind of reused again in Patchwork.

Speaker B: Yeah. Looking at Secret Garden, you definitely see some of that, but then like the introduction of more of like the greens and the bluish greens, it really brings forward that garden element. It's also weird because I just watched The Secret Garden the other day. It's a very comforting movie and I really just kind of get that sense of magic coming through it. Just looking at this piece.

Speaker A: I'm curious to know what that process was like working on this. It's been hyped for the last, what, week and a half or so that it's been out and people have been collecting the passes and redeeming them.

Speaker C: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It kind of in 2 parts. One, it was we as artists that were all participating in it. We were sharing kind of our work in progress with each other. So that was really cool to see, to to kind of see these artists that you admire, or I think make really cool work, to kind of see their work in progress and getting kind of a taste of that. That has been really amazing. And I think for me it was really great because for a while I have been thinking about the idea of that I wanted to make something a little bit more organic. And maybe it's, it's still really abstract, but I think especially on FX Hash, which were really like the landscapes and the naturescapes scapes and such are very popular. I kind of was drawn into that, and then I was in a bind of like, oh, but I can't step out of what I'm already known for. Or, you know, you start like, okay, but isn't this too far what I already do? And then Kalo was like, hey, you want to participate in the Blind Gallery? And I was like, yes, this is perfect because I can kind of maybe test out a little bit something that's a little bit different that I already had in the back of my mind. And then also just see the reactions on that by people without having me in mind. And that was really great because I do think the piece was very well received. I loved working on it. And I also talked with Kaloh. I was like, can I turn this into like maybe a small fx hash collection? So that might be, that might be next, hopefully.

Speaker B: Is this generative?

Speaker C: Yes, it is.

Speaker A: It's a curated output from an algorithm you're working on.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. There's just, there's just one. And this is the thing which, you know, I, I would really love to take this idea and turn it into a long-form generative artwork. But at the moment, as the algorithm stands, it's kind of where I'm like, okay, maybe 1 in 20 or 1 in 30 outputs is good. And, you know, kind of what you see in a blind gallery, that is like that one curated output where I was like, yes, this is the one. And most of them, I'm still like, mm, this is not really, you know, hitting the right notes. So I would have to find a way to curate, kind of tame that algorithm into where all outputs are where I'm happy with it.

Speaker B: Is that a process that you go through with all of your work? Obviously, to a certain extent, you have to be happy with, you know, a certain percentage of the outputs. But are there some algorithms that kind of come to cohesion more easily than others?

Speaker C: Yes, I think definitely. And there's also, I think, some algorithms that I therefore then I'm like, you know, this is not for fx hash. Maybe this can be like a one-on-one on Versum or OBJKT or Theia, you know, one of these platforms. And, you know, I think you can always like force an algorithm into being maybe long form, but you don't always want to do that. Kind of the concept behind it have to work for it to justify multiple editions. It has to contain kind of an underlying logic, I think, for it to be long form. And something that I'm very interested about is what's going to happen on C-Verso, because there's actually outputs in there which I might not go for, but I was thinking, but other people might actually like this output. What is cool in Ciphrso is that before you can collect, you can click 2 buttons. You can either click pattern or palette, and this will change either the geometry of the artwork or the palette of the artwork. And you can't go back, but you can be like, okay, give me another one. And I'm just very curious what people are going to mint. So, you know, there are outputs in that algorithm that I'm like, they're not bad, they're good, but they're not, they're maybe just not what I would choose. And I'm just very, very curious to see what collectors are going to choose.

Speaker B: Well, we've seen the first, I think, 15 or so outputs coming through here, and you can definitely see a really nice play through the different geometries and the palettes. Could you maybe talk a little bit about, you know, some of your thought process going into this piece? There's definitely a lot more variation here, I feel, than in some of the fxhash works. It's really cool.

Speaker A: To jump on the question as well, I feel like I see a lot of, um, I, I kind of look at this one and I see it as a marriage a little bit between your Art Blocks project and some of the stuff you've done on fxhash. Like, I get that same sense of like, uh, weaving, but also like computer circuitry and the connection to like electronics, but then like this the really cool stuff that you've done with the undulating of the colors and stuff like that that we've seen on fxhash. So is there a connection there or is that just me reading into it?

Speaker C: No, there's definitely a connection there. So this piece was specifically made for the Cortesi Gallery, which is an Italian gallery, and it was exhibited the last week during the Design Week of Milan. So there was like a really cool projection and also like indoors, We had a very cool installation of like different tablets showing the work together with Autoscope, who's also an fx hash artist. We were both part of that exhibition. And the question that we received for making the work was, is the metaverse free of waste? And how I took that question is when I started to think about that question, I first started to think like really, really big of like, you know, there's just like all the electronics that we work with. And then, you know, there's all the mines that we probably need to get the metals for our electronics. And then there's of course the carbon dioxide that gets into the air because we use so crazy amounts of energy for these blockchains. And, you know, I was starting to think about like all these really big things that are maybe part of the waste of, of, uh, being a digital artist or being an NFT artist, or— and then I, I started like zooming in more and more on my own personal process and kind of looking at my computer. And I am just like a very messy person for somebody that's so logical, I guess. But my desktop and just my hard drive is just littered and littered with screenshots. This is also what you often just see me posting on on Twitter, these are like all these screenshots and they're everywhere. And I was like, wow, I'm just surrounded by the waste, not the waste, but kind of these scraps of my, of my own projects. And I collected all these scraps and I put them into a machine learning algorithm, one of the kind of commercial machine learning algorithms that you can give a database of images and it creates a machine learning algorithm for you that can generate images based on the database you give it to see like, you know, what do you see in my work? What do you see in all these screenshots and all these like outputs that never made it? Like what, what does the machine see in these scripts? To be honest, I was very disappointed by the outputs. It really had this kind of machine learning output where it's always a bit as if it's colored with watercolor. It didn't have like the straight abstract geometry that I have in my work. The colors got very blurry. Each output was only one color. I wasn't really happy with that. But something that was very clearly coming back is that it was really a marriage of like, yeah, indeed my Loom project and my works on fx hash because yeah, that's where most of kind of the project scraps came from. So yeah, I looked at at those outputs from both just the screenshots itself and, uh, the machine learning outputs. And that's based on that I developed, uh, I developed Patchwork. So you can definitely, it's definitely a mix of those 3 projects.

Speaker B: I was actually going to ask for Patchwork, are there any patterns or palettes that you feel especially close to?

Speaker C: Yeah, there is one palette that's inspired by my, uh, new vintage pajama that I bought on a trip to the UK, which is, I'm really happy about. It's kind of green with orange, very, very vintage colors, which is very new as well.

Speaker A: There's a couple other topics that we had to cover here, and perhaps one that would be timely given some of the stuff we've talked about on the show recently, you know, your first release or your only release so far in 1.0, which is the use of reserves and kind of the marketplace. In general on fx hash. So I guess firstly, I'm kind of curious, like, to what degree do you follow the markets and like, you know, within your community of artists as well? Like, is there a lot of talk of like what's going on in the markets and how should we price things and what are our strategies? And then what kind of led you to the reserveless strategy that you use, which was like, hey, you actually need to own like multiple Art for walls and public spaces to earn a spot here. And, um, you know, I think at the time it, you know, that's like a little bit of opinion. I think at the time it came off as like, oh, that's like a little aggressive. You know, we were also new to the reserve list and we didn't really know how this mechanic was going to play out too, too well. But now looking back at it and seeing how much mania there is over reserve spots and how projects are getting over-reserved or like There's so many requests for reserves and it's creating this like weird asymmetry in haves and have-nots sometimes. It's actually starting to seem like it was a smart way to do it.

Speaker C: Yeah, we definitely talk about how to price your artworks or, you know, thinking about edition sizes and support each other in that way for the different platforms, et cetera. And it's also a reason, well, I really enjoy your show, but it's also a reason why I listen to your show to kind of get an understanding of the market and to know how to how to kind of design my drops because you can be like, oh, but I'm an artist, you know, it's not what I want to be busy with. And yes, I think your artistic intent is very important and stay true to that and that should come first. But then, you know, in the end, you do know that you're releasing your projects on kind of a platform that has a market associated with it. So to be conscious and mindful of that as well, I think is important. find a balance between those two. And then regarding the reserve list, well, it's funny that you say it came across aggressive. That was really not my intent. I knew, I know that Art for Walls in Public Spaces has an edition size of 144, and I knew that Perpetual Oscillation was going to be smaller than Art for Walls in Public Spaces. Now, I didn't want to create a situation where you could be on the reserve list, But then still not be 100% sure that you could actually mint an iteration. I want to be sure that everybody who gets a spot on the reserve list also actually gets the opportunity to mint and not still be in kind of a competition because it was also associated with the Dutch auction, you know. So I just really also want to make sure that then you also don't have to participate in the Dutch auction. And then I was like, well, but then the people who have collected 2 of my pieces, probably, you know, that, that just felt like a logical way to decide then who does get to be on the reserve list. Because, you know, I could also just kind of go through maybe the people that I have a more personal relationship with, or, you know, collectors that I, that I'm, yeah, have more of a connection with. But that also doesn't— I did also want it to be a very transparent process that everybody would be able to check, like, okay, look, Who did get a spot on the reserve list and why and who didn't. And it's also not based on some sort of favoritism. So that was really my thought process.

Speaker A: I'll recharacterize the word aggressive there and not meaning like, not meaning in the sense that like, whoa, like Anna Lucia is going super aggro on this one, but more just like for a lot of people, like holding one of that project is an achievement. Right. Because the mint was very competitive. It's like, was immediately held in high regard. The floor price has gone up and up and up. And so I think it was more just like, and this is, this is not a problem for you. It's kind of a problem for every artist, especially for artists who are very successful, like that success almost can become a burden in a way, right? Because you have so many people who are clamoring to get your work.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Desperately trying to collect it than to now realize like I'm one step away, right? Like I like sold a bunch of stuff. I got my 400 or 500 Tez. I bought my Art for Walls and Public Spaces. And now I need a second one. Like that, that's kind of what I'm— was kind of trying to get at there more.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's just going to become an increasing problem. I'm, you know, for all artists, probably even asymmetrically more for successful artists on the platform because they I think experienced the most criticism because everyone wants a fair shot at getting some of their work and just the most demand as well and the most hype. So yeah, I'm curious, you know, what amongst the artists you talk to, like, what is kind of the vibe with the way reserves are playing out? And, you know, we ran a Twitter, you know, we solicited comments on Twitter recently and a few artists popped in and We didn't really get a ton of positive comments. So I'm just curious, like, what your sentiment is or if you've heard anything in the community.

Speaker C: Not necessarily something that comes to mind now that has been discussed, but it is indeed, in a way, a tricky thing to balance and maybe in a way easier than maybe to not do it than instead of maybe people being unhappy with the way that you do use it. And I think what's maybe also difficult in my situation is that my edition sizes are relatively small, which, for example, in the case of Perpetual Oscillations, made it hard for me to just like give a spot for everybody who collected art for a while on public spaces. It's a hard thing to balance, I think. But perhaps a solution would be to create a bigger drop.

Speaker A: Well, that's easier said than done, right?

Speaker C: It is. It is because I, like, to me, the edition size doesn't, for me, doesn't depend on the marketplace or anything. The edition size for me personally, my work is very connected to the artwork itself and very dependent on the algorithm. And, you know, and at some point there's also variations or things that I can put in there to maybe like buff up the algorithm or make it bigger and withhold more, a bigger edition size. And then I always question myself, yeah, but what are you doing here? You know, are we designing a Pokémon card deck or are we creating an artwork? You know, so I think that's why I always end up with quite small edition sizes because I'm hesitant to be like, oh, I'll just throw in another color palette or just throw in like another variation with the background. Like I'm quite strict in these things. And then you end up with small, small drops. I believe there's only a few artists that can really design drops that can withhold 500+ artworks. That is just really difficult. And it is something that I'm working on. I'm working towards, I'm working on a bigger algorithm, but it's not easy to do that well.

Speaker B: I think there are 2 questions that kind of come out of that. One, maybe we can talk about this in a little bit, is more about who do you like to collect and talking about some of the art that's in your personal collection, because I know that you have quite a number of tokens in your fxhash wallet. But previously, we did see that you had a really fun collaboration with Sibyl Ralph, where it's a really nice blend of his classic gemstone styling in conjunction with some of the colors and some of the patterns that you often use. What was it like collaborating with Sable Ralph? And is that something that you're looking forward to doing more in the future, especially given the collaborative contracts that have come out with fxhash 1.0?

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Collaborating with Sable Ralph was great. He's very organized. And the way that it, that he had done it, because he has done a collaboration with multiple artists, is that he came with, he did the first move. So he created the first leg of the algorithm and then kind of sent it to me and said like, okay, now you can finish it with kind of, you know, here's the basic gem and you put your, your spin on it now. And he had just created this beautifully well-commented, super organized template. So that was, um, that was really great, a great experience, mostly I think because of, uh, Sable Ralph. And it was also a lot of fun to do something that you usually— maybe I wouldn't create, um, and that's just really nice to see. But I am a bit hesitant about collaborations because, um, yeah, it is in a way more difficult, but it can bring very beautiful things as well. And one of the biggest collaborations I'm working on right now is for an Art Blocks project. I'm not sure how much I can talk about it yet, but I can say it is together with a group of artists and they are not code-based artists. They are quilters and it is absolutely inspiring and very rewarding to work with their body of work and turn that into a generative artwork.

Speaker B: That does sound amazing and inspiring. And thinking about towards long form, because I know that Art Blocks often encourages more long form pieces, do you have any sense of the edition size there and like what you'll be looking to achieve from a long form perspective?

Speaker C: Yeah, so this is definitely going to be a large edition size, 800 to 1,000 pieces. So it's also something that I've been, that is It's kind of also a long-term project that I'm working on every week. And because it's— I'm working with the body of work of a group of artists, we also want to make sure that kind of the voice of each of those artists is represented again in that, in the bigger algorithm. So in terms of fx hash, I love collecting art on fx hash. Unfortunately, at the moment, I'm not yet in a position where I have a huge budget. To dispense on my art, but I, I want to get there. Or maybe I should just make that a bigger priority. Um, so I've collected a few works of artists that I just greatly admire. For example, I've collected a piece of Shvmbldr, if I pronounce his name correctly, and also Casey Reas, just in a time where I was like, wow, I can actually afford to own a piece of work by these artists. So kind of sometimes I take that leap and I buy kind of a bigger piece, but most of the time it's just when I'm in the mood, I start scrolling through the fxhash explore page and start opening all the tabs of works that make me happy or draw me in or I'm interested in. And then whenever it is below Let's say five tez or something. I usually just collect it because I'm like, you know, this is this is a cool work of art. I want to support the artist, and often it is work that is very colorful, very overloaded. That yeah, just makes me really happy. And then I thought that I wasn't spending a lot of tez, and then I found the other day this tool that you could put your tez wallet address and see like. How much you've spent. And then I was like, oof, that has like really added up. So maybe now I should start making better choices and just start saving up for these pieces that I really want instead of just going on these binges where I just start collecting all these like 1 or 2 Tez pieces. And I usually mint 2. It adds up.

Speaker B: I took a look at your portfolio actually. Yeah. And your cost basis is 999 Tez, which is a lot. But it's worth about 17,000 Tez if you're looking at the potential value.

Speaker C: But doesn't that include my own work as well?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, just the work that you've collected. So yes, it definitely includes your own work as well.

Speaker C: Yeah. So maybe I've, I've done some good investments along the way, but I've definitely also just have stuff that will just stay.

Speaker A: That's, that's the way you gotta think about it. It's, it's, it's investments. It's not spending. It's not, this is all investments, you know, not financial advice as we, as we always say, but.

Speaker B: And investments in the community.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Because I don't— I never really intend to sell anything when I buy a piece.

Speaker A: Anna, you know, I know we've gone for a little over an hour now, but I have a couple maybe fun, like off-topic questions if you're game for answering a couple more.

Speaker C: For sure.

Speaker A: All right. So first of all, and I know Trinity, you wrote, what is that in the notes here? I noticed in your Twitter bio, that you have a YAT address for your URL, which is actually like one of the very first, if not the first NFT I think I minted when I found out about those through a neighbor of mine. So like, one, I'm curious, has it been useful to you to have that? Because I have not found a use for mine yet.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: 2, like, was it one of your nerdy brothers who taught you about that? Or did you kind of stumble upon it? Like, I'm curious how you found out about it because I This is the first time I've talked to someone who actually has one of these. And so I'm just like, also, you made a really cool one. You made a generative art, right? That's how I interpreted it, at least. So yeah, what's the story of your, of your, of your YAT?

Speaker C: So, uh, one of— there is Madison Brill, and she works at YAT, and she is a collector of one of my looms. So we were chatting, uh, about different things. And then she's like, hey, do you want to have a yacht? So I checked them out and I had a Linktree and I kind of replaced my Linktree with the yacht because I felt I had a conversation with somebody who was kind of giving me advice. And I'm always a little bit in doubt with the Linktree. It's very helpful, but at the same time, I'm a bit like, is it professional or what does it say about me as an artist. And I feel like the yacht speaks a lot more to being kind of a digital native artist or being an artist that works in the NFT space. It kind of is a wink to that as well. And then I had a lot of fun just choosing my emoticons. They didn't have my favorites, but I did, yeah, found a really nice combination of a dice and then a painting and then a floppy disk, which I thought like, well, that speaks to generative art and then just chose the dragon because I think, I guess a dragon is just really cool.

Speaker A: That's one of the reasons I ended up making them to begin with. And so Trinity, and for everyone who's listening who doesn't know what these are, so a YAT is a, it's a, it's a tokenized NFT URL basically. Right. And the thing that makes them interesting is that you can use emoticons or emojis as the URL itself. So you do like YAT slash, and then it could be like you said, like Dice emoji, computer emoji, floppy disk emoji, dragon emoji. I don't know if that's actually that easy to type, but they're more for like embedding into things like a social media profile, like Twitter, right? So that way, instead of people associating maybe a longer URL with a bunch of slashes in it, they're associating this small group of icons. So it was really, really fun to like make them when they first came out.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And we, both my wife and I sat down and we made one. For ourselves. And then we tried to come up with one that seemed like really clever. So we did like, um, kiss, kiss, bang, bang. Like it was like lips, lips, bomb, bomb as like a, I don't know if you, if you're familiar with that kind of expression, but, uh, I was kind of like, oh yeah, in a few years these are gonna be worth like millions of dollars. Everyone's gonna be, you know, you, this is how everyone's gonna— Not too late. No, it's not too late. So yeah, maybe this is just, this is called like the Will Shills his yacht bag segment of the interview, but I just thought it was just really cool that you had one. So I wanted to ask you about it.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, and I definitely, it's more fun to have than a Linktree. Get a yacht. I'm on board. It's just indeed a shame, like they work on Twitter and they look really cool in your Twitter profile because they actually show the emojis, but they don't on my Instagram. So it just literally is like dice, picture, floppy, dragon. So people must think I have a weird link in my Instagram profile.

Speaker A: Oh, so that was the yacht segment. Here's— so here's another random one. Or Trinity, do you have any random questions that you want to ask? Because I've got one more.

Speaker B: You can ask your, uh, your random question. I didn't know this was part of the brief.

Speaker A: This is always part of the brief. There's always the random questions at the end. So I know, Anna, you said, you know, you're like, we're a math kid and just super into, you know, that part of academics. And I'm curious if you, um, In your education, did you ever come across like the, the date game that you can— this is something that we played a lot in, in my school in particular, and maybe it was just, just particular to my school where every day the math teacher would write the date on the board. So an example would be like if it was today, but let's, let's do like June 12th, 2018. So like 06/12/18 as we would write it in the US. And you had to come up with as many ways to create an equation out of that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So it would be like 6 12 18, or 6 × 1 2 1 × 8, and just like filling out and filling out, like coming up with like dozens and dozens of these things. Like, I'm curious if you did one. Did you ever play that, or did you ever have any cool like math games that you played as a kid that really reinforced your interest in the discipline?

Speaker C: Well, I've never heard of this game, but I'm sure I would've loved it. Something that I did when I was really a young kid, and I guess I luckily grew up in a time where mobile phones weren't weren't a thing yet. If we would go on really long car rides with the family, my mom would just come up with these story sums for me to kind of keep me quiet and happy and occupied. So it would be like these stories of. There's a farmer and he has a field of carrots. There's like this many fields and in each field there's this many carrots. Like how many carrots does he grow? And she would always, you know, I would answer it and then she would have like a follow-up question of like, you know, the farmer has harvested his carrots and now goes to the store. He sells the— well, you know, so these kind of stories. Yeah, I loved it as a kid. I'm probably one of the few people, but this is what really kept me happy and occupied. occupied on long car rides. So I've always been very much into numbers.

Speaker A: I love that. Thank you for indulging as a fellow math person.

Speaker B: I did find a random question, and this is coming straight from the price discussion chat in the Discord, but the people want to know, what is your favorite stroopwafel flavor? And why is it the best?

Speaker C: Uh, you don't mess with like different stroopwafel flavors. You just like, you have just the classic, just classic stroopwafel. Don't mess with it. No.

Speaker B: Classics never die.

Speaker A: I, I wasn't even aware that there were variations.

Speaker C: There probably are, but I can imagine that there's like variations in for the foreign market perhaps, but We Dutchies, I think we just eat the classic, classic style waffle.

Speaker A: Wait, you're Dutch?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Oh my God, everyone is Dutch. Wait, we have to ask, what is it about the Netherlands that everyone from the Netherlands is a generative artist?

Speaker C: Yeah, of course, in preparation of this interview and just because I like Peter Pasma, I listened to that episode. Great artist, great guy. But I think he has some right points is that we speak very good English. There's not, so it's easy for us to kind of participate, I guess, in places that are predominantly English speaking, well-educated. But then, you know, in general, the Netherlands has a really rich art history already dating back way, way longer. terms of like Rembrandt, and then there's Vincent van Gogh, and then moving onward, there's Mondrian. And also in the net artists, there was like a lot of Dutch artists. So I wonder if it's a combination of both. We're very present on the internet, but we also just have a strong art history and background in our culture. Those 2 things perhaps colliding. It's my theory.

Speaker B: I don't know. No, I think that's a really strong intersection of I guess education plus cultural awareness and history. I think the, the one counterpoint I might have is where are all of the English generative artists? I know that we have some, obviously RevDanCatt is a show favorite. Yeah. But just per capita, the Netherlands is just above and beyond.

Speaker A: I can think of far more Dutch generative artists on FX Hash than I can think of Americans also.

Speaker C: Really? Oh, wow. We're really, uh—

Speaker A: The Americans that come to the top of mind are like MJLindow and Nudoru. I'm sure there's more. I mean, there must be more, but I'm just trying to think of like, it is interesting that it does seem to be a discipline that is, at least as fx hash, on fx hash in particular, it's like very Eurocentric. And I guess in particular Dutch-centric.

Speaker B: And French as well.

Speaker A: And French.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: A lot of French. For sure. Like, I actually thought that Zancan was Italian, but like Zancan's in France also.

Speaker B: Yep. Ryan Bell is American.

Speaker A: Ryan Bell. Yep. Okay, so there's a third. So we found three.

Speaker B: But that's it.

Speaker C: Perhaps there's also an element of that. Also in terms of crypto, apparently within Europe, we are a country with kind of like a lot of companies with like Dutch companies within the crypto space. Compared to other European countries, we have like way more companies per capita in that sense and startups in that direction. So I think also in the crypto space, we're quite present.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: This is the part where Will and I promise that we'll have to move to the Netherlands at some point, both to further our own education and maybe that'll help us be better artists. That's how that works, right?

Speaker A: I have not coded in like I think over 2 months now. So yeah, it's going to be a while before there's another Will Pop original piece out there, I think. Yeah, maybe moving to the Netherlands is the answer.

Speaker B: 100%. I hear it's lovely this time of year.

Speaker C: It is.

Speaker A: Well, right on, Anna. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to speak with us and do this interview. It's really greatly appreciated. We always love talking to artists like this. It always educates us. Hopefully it educates everyone who Listens. I mean, I think this is a good place to wrap it up if that sounds good. Or Anna, do you have anything you wanna say before we go? Anything you wanna plug, any upcoming stuff or just closing statements?

Speaker C: No, thank you for having me. I think I've dropped some hints here and there in the episode of what's coming up. So I hope people paid attention and thank you very much for having me. Cool.

Speaker A: Well, I think that does it for this one. Thank you again, Anna. Thank you, Trinity, for recording 2 days in a row. And, uh, we'll catch you all later. Bye, everyone. Bye.