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 James Merrill, aka ToThePixel, aka LostPixels. You've got a couple of different handles there. Uh, Trinity is not here today. She is currently in Toronto fleeing lead paint, for those of you who have been listening. So she's not making it to this one, but that's okay. We got James on the mic ready to talk to us about art. James, how's it going?

Speaker B: Hey, it's going good. Really excited to be here and to finally chat with you.

Speaker A: Yeah, we met earlier this year, like at the end of 2023, I think it was, right? At a Station 3 event in the city and hit it off. And we've been talking about doing this episode for like 6 months or so, and here we are finally doing it. So super excited to have you on. Let's start off how we always do by asking you to introduce yourself, giving us your background in art and coding, and how you came to find like crypto, blockchain, NFTs as a way to distribute your work.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Hi, nice to meet you. I'm James Merrill. I've been a practitioner of digital art since really around 2003, 2004. I can actually remember the moment that I got into generative or just digital art in general. And I kind of found out about Macromedia Flash at the time from newgrounds.com. And I kind of loved like cartoons and animation and that sort of thing. And I was in New York City with my mom, who was like an art teacher and also a crazy bargain finder. So she would go to New York and try to find bargains for 10 hours straight and just walk around. It was honestly kind of terrible, but I feel like that was in my DNA. And I was like walking down the street and I saw a street vendor with a book that had the Macromedia Flash logo on it. I was like, oh, this is sick. Like I walked up and I looked at it and it was like, that's the book, but do you need the software? And I was like, yeah, I don't have that. Yeah. So he had this like bin under the table that was black and he like pulled it out and it was all this counterfeit software that he had on CDs. So I bought a Macromedia Flash CD from him for like $20 and it was like, had a printed on label with like the serial code on it. And I took it home and I installed it on my computer and that's when I really like for years straight just always made digital art every single day. And I got really into DeviantArt at the time and found other artists there and became extremely inspired and started working with them. And again, just like every day I made something. I also started illegally pirating all this other software too. So I got like Photoshop and Fireworks and Illustrator and 3D Studio Max and all this simulation software. I really just like immersed myself in creating digital media in various different ways. And then posting it online, getting feedback, finding interesting things. And it was really like a beautiful time in the internet. And that went on to start to spawn these digital art groups. So then I started to participate in these collectives and they would come together, they would decide on a theme, release artwork together, and there'd be like hundreds of members all making artwork that were thematically similar. So that was like deeply inspirational again. I did that for a number of years and that kind of fell apart after a while. So like 2012, 2013, a lot of these people went on to have careers in like the design world and the art world. And they basically matured out of the system along with myself. You know, the website started to fall into disrepair. The community started to fall apart. Social media came around and I think that really destroyed a lot of online communities as well. And DeviantArt became a lot of like manga and stuff. And that's not really my vibe necessarily.

Speaker A: Pregnant Sonic the Hedgehogs and stuff like that. Yep.

Speaker B: So I stopped posting there as much. And I went through a period of getting really into doing like physical simulations. So taking simulation software that maybe you would use for VFX in films, or creating simulations of maybe like an engineering project you're working on and trying to do like psychedelic artistic things with them. So I found myself doing these like 7 to 10 minute, I would call them short films of like various different weird like Reactions of different physics and, and that sort of thing. And I did that for a bunch of years and, and that was a lot of fun. And that was really just again to post it online. And my place then was Vimeo and you can go back and watch all these things that I've done. I've done probably about 45 minutes of, of simulation work that you could go watch right now. And that was cool. But then I, I was browsing Hacker News. I'll never forget, this is like another one of those watershed moments where I found out about plotter Twitter in 2018 or '19, I would say. And I was like, this is crazy cool. People were using code and they were using pen plotters to make art. And they were like visualizing sorting algorithms or taking raster images and doing like a hatch fill over them. All these just like very interesting things. And I was like, I need to participate in this. This is too amazing. And by the way, like my career had Gone into software engineering, so I had been like coding all this time too. But I never did it creatively. I actually didn't like generative art that much because I was, for various different reasons, not that interested in it. When I saw plotter art, I was like, "I'm gonna do this." So I downloaded Processing. I bought an Axidraw, and then I just started like coding every day and making generative art constantly and posting it online. In 2021, in February. Some of these old digital art collectives that I had been a part of started to kind of come back together. And then NFTs came around and my buddy Justin Mahler started working with Nifty Gateway. And at first I was like, whoa, like digital artists have never gotten any respect. They've never been paid. This is the first time I've ever seen this happen. This is like the exact right thing that I've been waiting for. And I was like immediately super just like FOMOing. I was like, I gotta do something here, but I feel like I'm late. In like February, I was like, This is— I had no idea what's gonna happen. I ended up getting on Foundation. That's how I kind of started. It was like invite only. And I went on there and I started posting some of my simulation work. So those were like my very first forays into NFTs. And it was really amazing because people would collect them and then they'd want to talk to me about them. And I'd have like video calls with people like this one dude named Todd, is a Christian rock band member that is like semi-famous, I think.

Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: Like, I think he has a Wikipedia and he bought an NFT from me and he was like so excited about it and he was like, let's chat. And I was like, this is mind-blowing as someone who just made work for 20 years and put it out there and people were really excited about it. So I did that for quite a while and then I found out about Art Blocks because I was a fan of Tyler's and we had talked a couple times prior just through plotter art because he did a lot of plotter art. Needed Fidenza and I was like, this is amazing, but I'm, I'm late. Like, fuck.

Speaker A: What did you like about Fidenza versus other generative art that you didn't like? I'm curious, cuz I think Fidenza is a piece that gets thrown around a lot as like being a great example of a very standard thing, right? A flow field is not in itself interesting. It's a really tasteful execution of it. Was it just the taste level and the color palettes? Like what was it about Fidenza that stood out to you versus like other generative art that you didn't like?

Speaker B: Yeah, so at least on DeviantArt, there's always a lot of bad generative art. So I mean, no offense, sorry people who put it on there. There's a lot of people who are learning to make generative art and posting like basically like noise maps with colors that might not be aesthetically pleasing, that sort of thing. Like I saw a lot of that stuff, and my impression was always that like you could never get the level of control through generative mediums that you could by actually digitally painting things. So I prefer to digitally paint things because I wanted to have that exact control. And then when I saw Fidenza, I was like, damn, this like really stands out. And I had been a fan of Tyler's prior to that. Like, Ectogenesis is one of my favorite generative art projects of all time that he did. And he did like a Max Cooper CD cover that I really loved as well. So when I saw Fidenza, I was kind of blown away just because I think the execution was really good, but it was the first time I had seen a really cohesive color palette as well. I think a lot of people look at Fidenza now and they compare it to generative art of 2024, and that comparison is like, you know, it's much simpler than what we see these days when you look at some of the projects coming out now. I mean, look at the project that you're talking with Entanglement, your last episode, I think. Like, Entanglement's fucking crazy compared to what Fidenza was then, but I don't think it's a fair comparison because Fidenza was something that came out really so long ago. I know it's only been a couple years, but So much has changed since then. So I think contextually it was a really important project.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. And yes, very excited for Entangled, which actually I think is gonna open up a few hours after we end this recording. So I'm excited to go and collect that. By the way, for your school, like, did you just study coding? Were you doing art like as a minor or just, was it always just a hobby throughout your entire education?

Speaker B: Yeah, so the school question's funny. So I hated school and I ended up dropping out of high school and I failed Algebra 1 3 times. I'll never forget it. I would just sit in the class and I'd either be sleeping or disrupting the class, and I would be like, we're never gonna use any of this in real life. Why would I ever pay attention? Now I use math every single day and my math teacher doesn't know that. I feel like it would make them feel very happy to know that cuz it was the biggest irony ever. So I ended up basically just using my knowledge of Flash at the time to get a job. in the advertising field. And I went on to do all these really weird websites. So I did Marilyn Manson's website at one point.

Speaker A: Whoa.

Speaker B: Part of Justin Bieber's website, because Flash was always this really amazing thing that you could do multimedia things with that were really interactive. JavaScript and HTML and CSS were always like really subpar. They were like great at making Craigslist, but never great at making these really experiential websites. This has since changed. But back then, I always thought Flash was like the coolest thing ever. And then it died. But at the time, that's kind of how I got into the field and how I started becoming a software engineer.

Speaker A: And it seems just the entire time you were making art, you know, do you kind of regret not making the I make something every day my gimmick? Because you could be a $69 millionaire if you had tried to bundle that all together at some point.

Speaker B: I mean, I feel like the thing that Beeple did that was interesting is he never really deviated from doing a specific subset of work. So it's all cohesive, I would say. My portfolio is like scattered all over the place. I just couldn't be fixated on one genre of digital art for that long.

Speaker A: So you got the Plottr stuff, you got on Plottr Twitter, did Foundation, and probably then you must have gotten the attention of Feral File, right? Because in 2021 you were featured in their Plottr— what do they call those?

Speaker B: Um, Graph. So it was basically a group exhibition with some of the most prolific and amazing Plottr artists out there. And it was amazing. I mean, like, Casey Reas sent me an email, which touched my heart. I mean, like, a true legend in the space. And I was able to work with him and all these artists and meet on a weekly basis to kind of discuss our projects. And it ended up being quite successful and quite a big learning experience because I was committed to doing 30 NFTs and 30 plotter works, which is quite a lot to do when you have just one plotter.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I had a newborn at the time and I had to send them around the world. So I had to deal with logistics and that sort of thing, really for the first time seriously ever. Prior to that, I did basically like a couple of Etsy drops and, you know, I would really cheap out on packing materials and supplies and the plots would get ruined on the way to the people and they'd send them back. And so I learned a lot of lessons there. And then I was able to kind of tap this group to learn about the right way to do it and spend the right amount of money, that sort of thing, which was really, really helpful. And I think really propelled me. And that was a big signal to me that I could commit to being a full-time professional artist as opposed to doing it really on the side while having a professional career.

Speaker A: What was it about plotters? Because, you know, I've actually in the last year, year and a half, I've gotten like way more into collecting plotter stuff for whatever reason. I can't, I don't really have a full grasp on it. I think there's something about that translation of code to the physical. To me, it's just like really intrinsically cool. But as someone who like actually is now making it and in that world, like what is it that's so cool about plotter work, do you think?

Speaker B: There's a multitude of things. It's really hard to put a single point on it because I think the artwork possesses different qualities when you know that, you know, it's generative in nature. So for one, every artwork made by a plotter from generative algorithms is unique. That's very interesting to me. 'Cause they can be of the same series, but they're all different and unique. So as a baseline, it's different than a print in that way. You know, you can print generative art, that's fine too. But I think for me at least, I was really inspired when I saw that, you know, people were using these vintage plotters, they were using modern plotters, they were writing really diverse subsets of algorithms that did different things. And there was always this kind of like distinctive physicality to the work that I just would never find in a printed piece of art.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And a lot of times when I look at generative art that tries to mimic traditional art by adding paper textures or brushstrokes, I think it's very intriguing. But for me, there's nothing better than actually seeing like pen ink or pencil or paint on paper and being able to hold up my hands and look at it and also writing the algorithm that made that happen. I just love that. It's hard for me to explain too. And I think really for me, I try to explore maximizing that little space. So For my new project, BAYC, I'm trying to make drawings that have just ridiculous amounts of detail because I want to trick people. I love this trick that people look at it and they think, wow, like you drew that, that must have taken a long amount of time. And it's like, actually this pen plotter I have did it. I think for the most recent one had 427 meters of ink drawn on it, which is just crazy. And it took 10 hours. So if I tried to replicate that myself, I would never be able to do it. It would take hundreds of hours, but I can kind of produce that in my studio.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And play that trick on people. I just love that.

Speaker A: You'd be like, yeah, it did take a lot of time, just I didn't do it by hand. It took 20 hours to plot it and a lot of pen swapping in between, I'm sure. You have this upcoming project. You just recently started sharing some stuff on social media, not really talking too much about it, just some videos of the pen plotter going. They look insane. The detail is definitely there. It comes through even in what you've shown so far. And you were nice enough to share a little bit of info. about the project with me before this interview. And one of the things that you noted, you said that you were seeking to use causality instead of random values in generative art, and that this project was kind of an expression of that, and that a lot of it was drawn by hand and then like, I guess, being algorithmically inserted would be my guess. So how does that kind of work here? Because these things are so complex. Like my, like layperson's understanding of generative art, I look at this and I go like, it's like a packing algorithm.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, we've seen other artists do this and Usually you see it with circles because that's really easy. Then you see it with an assortment of different geometric shapes, and that's a little bit harder because now you have to draw all these cases of like, how do you measure the center point to the center point and figure out the border? Like all the ways that you do a packing algorithm. But this is like, nothing here is a simple shape. So to have it all fit together like these really fine puzzle pieces, it does actually look like designed more than generative. In a way. So like, to the degree that you can, like, how does this even work with code? Like, it just seems almost impossible.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll tell you all about it. I'm actually planning on doing like a full walkthrough of how this thing is built at some point, cuz I get that question a lot. But I guess I'll start with, I want to get away from pure abstract generative art. I think that introducing maybe figurative elements or recognizable elements isn't done enough, and I really want to play with that. And I've been loving, like, Studio Yorktown posted some work in progress shots today where he's kind of creating these crowds of people. I love that kind of stuff. I've had that idea myself, but it's really hard to make generative people. Ask Harold Cohen. But I first and foremost want to get away from that. And I also want to get away from relying upon randomization for everything. So I've done some work where I hand off the randomization to MIDI controllers and just allow people to manipulate the parameters themselves.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It starts to become more procedural than generative when you do that, but I like the idea of having more say in what's going to happen and really only using randomization where then there's no other tool there. Prefer anything besides that. So I've been really trying to explore that. And when it came to this project, one of the things I wanted to do is build tools to make generative art. And for this one, I built a tool that is more of, I guess you could say, a pipeline that allows me to do illustration And then bring those illustrations into the generative algorithm and use the generative algorithm to manipulate those illustrations. So I'm not the first to do this. You can actually look at like going back to Tyler and Feral File, his work with Flight is a similar thing where there's a vectorization step. So I'm drawing a lot of these elements and then I'm using generative code to really turn them back into X and Y coordinates from SVGs and then manipulate them in various different ways. So maybe I'm changing their colors or their scale or their dimensions. So doing that sort of thing, but basically committing to drawing hundreds of these little tiny elements that when you look at them, they're so small the pen nib can barely render some of them, but I know what they are and I care. So I'll draw like 10 different types of cars or 100 different types of buildings, that sort of thing. And creating this pipeline so that I can just continuously do that. So when I'm bored, when I'm at the airport, when I have my iPad, I just draw and I draw and I draw and then feed it into this algorithm. And then the drawing becomes more and more elaborate. And it's really funny and tricky because the more you do this, the less you see of everything. So the less weight it has. So maybe I do this 1,000 times, you're probably gonna see one example of each sprite on the canvas. And like, that's kind of the trade-off is like there's diminishing returns. But I started playing around with this idea of doing like kind of a Where's Waldo type thing where it's so elaborate, but I'll place like one of a thing.

Speaker A: Hmm.

Speaker B: Specifically, and then not tell anybody and just see if people find it. So I think creatively it's been a lot of fun. But to go back to how the algorithm works, there's a couple of things that you asked about that I'll touch on. So the first thing is, it's basically a grid that I'm filling. There's random walkers that walk around. There's these sprites that get placed of various different shapes and sizes. There's this concept of a z-index, which is like notoriously difficult to do when you're not doing WebGL. Yeah. Because the z-index is going to give you things in front of other things. So if you think about a landscape, the trees in the foreground are going to occlude the mountain in the background. And to do that with vector graphics, it's challenging. So if you look at Zancan's work, he kind of does this to great effect. And he does it a specific way that I've tried in the past. And I basically found with this, it got so slow that I went ahead and I developed a mathematical way of doing it. So everything is using intersection detection essentially to stack. So it's doing like gazillions of calculations to figure out whether that tree is in front of that mountain, and if so, don't draw the mountain, draw the tree. So it's just basically doing that at a massive scale.

Speaker A: So that's got to be Algebra 2 at least.

Speaker B: Yeah, dude, I don't even understand what I'm doing. I didn't even know a name for what I was doing until recently. And I think it's called computational geometry.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: So I basically just use intuition and visual debugging to solve these problems and a little bit of ChatGPT on the side.

Speaker A: Oh, cool. So, I mean, I think, you know, hearing you talk about this, all the individual pieces, you're just like constantly adding these sprites to, to this library that it can pull from. It's probably going to be, considering how much time it takes to plot, like a smaller series, probably curated. That's kind of where that curation comes in, right? Because if this was just a long-form JPEG-only thing and you let people make 500 of them, then you might get some of that visual fatigue of like, ah, this one has like too much overlapping elements with that one. But by curating it and taking the time to actually plot them, you can make sure that the diversity and individuality of each is kind of preserved there.

Speaker B: I mean, there's no great way to do physical NFT releases that we've discovered. I mean, we've tried like redeemables. We've done it the Feral File way. They all work decently, but I think you kind of want to curate what you're making and release it because you can then preload your release with making some physicals, right? Like, if I do 50 of these, it's gonna take 500 hours of my time, my AxieDraw's time. And that's like kind of crazy to sell them all first, know what they're gonna look like, and then have to like download the results and then do it. I don't mind doing long-form work. Yeah. But for physicals, I feel like curation is nice. I'm experimenting with diversity within the algorithm. So we spoke a little bit about like having these rare things that appear only maybe in one of every 5 or 10 outputs, but also how I distribute color. So maybe it's completely random. Maybe I use zone coloring. Maybe I use different inks. So another thing that really attracts me to plotter art is the ability to acquire different art supplies. So I love buying like different pens and different inks and experimenting with them. And this is a good example of where I can use my vast array of like, I think I have like 60 different bottles of ink now to create different color palettes and that sort of thing.

Speaker A: I'm sure you know Schwittlick. He has this series called The Long Run. Have you seen that?

Speaker B: I don't know if I have.

Speaker A: Later on, go check it out because it's not— I don't think it's a project that people know about. It's on Foundation, I think. And they're really long. I think they're almost a meter long pieces of paper. And he had these old markers from the '60s. And so he would take like 6 of the same color, but because they're so old, all the inks have degraded in different ways and threw millions of dots just in a row, letting one marker completely deplete and then the next one. And so the one that's marked as like green has pink and red, and then some that still have a little bit of the green hue, cuz each of them has decayed in a different way.

Speaker B: Hmm.

Speaker A: And so he's really like kind of honoring these old inks, but also like the generativeness of it is in how they've changed over 50 years, right? Or maybe they're from the '80s. I don't know if they're from the '60s or '80s, but you know what, I think you get my point. Like, there's such an interesting aspect of this. And like Ken Consumer too is someone who plays a lot with inks and different materials and like how they can change on the canvas as they overlap right through the process of— but that's, that's an aside. I'm sorry. This is your interview.

Speaker B: No, I like it. I think that's amazing. I mean, I think that real life is the best generative system out there. So I really love like analog photography, for example, because digital photography is so perfect all the time. I like that imperfection in the things I look at, and it's really hard to do that on a purely digital way. If you can just make it in real life, oftentimes you'll just find those inconsistencies that are really the magic of it. And I think that's a great example of Really maximizing that and focusing on that. It sounds amazing. I gotta go check it out.

Speaker A: You know, the other thing, so looking again at some of your other works in progress here, it struck me how much from a distance these can look like circuit boards. And I was wondering if that's something that has kind of emerged that like just my eye, you know, it's not just like roads, it's like tubes and wires and all sorts of things connecting all the elements. in these huge drawings. So like, was there a certain point where you were like, oh yeah, this is also kind of like a nod to circuitry? It was kind of reminding me of this project on fxhash called Impressions of Order from 2022 by Nibswit, where that's very explicitly kind of an ode to circuitry. But here it just kind of really sticks out to me that there's like this connection.

Speaker B: So I love that project, by the way. I wouldn't say there's any influence of circuitry in this. It's just a happy accident, I guess. I hear that comment a lot. And for a second I was like, maybe I should put like some CPUs and RAM and stuff in this. But for me, it's more, I think, about cityscapes and order and really complex living systems and the appearance of disorder from a distance versus complete control and autonomy when these systems are actually used. So if you think about a subway system, Mm-hmm. It in some ways is extremely chaotic. In other ways it's on time, it's predictable, it's extremely measurable. You can wait there and it'll tell you exactly when the train's gonna arrive, all that kind of fun stuff.

Speaker A: Well, there's still time to put— that could be the hidden object is a tiny little CPU in the middle of it.

Speaker B: Well, actually, I will say too, so one of the things I wanna do with this project is this is kind of the first iteration, but I could see myself changing kind of thematically what you're seeing to be maybe more like a computer, for example, or a specific city. So I'm playing around with that idea and have some things in the works to further customize and explore this as more of a framework than a solo piece of art.

Speaker A: Right on. One other Plotter-related question here. You're releasing this as a JPEG. You know, the NFT is going to be like the JPEG and there's going to be the physical piece. So when you're working on a project like this where like so much of the work takes place on the screen, But then the final output is going to be this physical thing. What is that process like kind of between evaluating something on a computer screen? Are you able to connect and go like, oh, I have a good idea of what this is gonna look like on paper? Or are you ever just like wildly excited or disappointed by how it ends up looking in physical? Like, is that something that's easy to predict or does it just take a lot of experimentation and a lot of waiting for the plotter to kind of show you what it actually is gonna be?

Speaker B: There is a lot of experimentation. As you may know, mixing colors does not work very well on computers, so there's people who try to solve this all the time. Lars is a great example of someone who has done a lot in this particular problem. But computers, when you mix, say, yellow and blue, you might not get green, you might get gray. And when you try to mimic the physicality of, say, inks that are overlapping It's probably going to be unreliable, to say the very least. And there's still not great ways to do this. It's just like ongoing problem. So that's one thing that definitely bites me. Another thing is just like inks have all these properties that make them more than just kind of a 2D flat color. The angle you look at them, the saturation of them, how fast the pen is moving, whether it's skipping, whether the nib has an issue, like all these kind of fun little things happen in real life. You just can't do digitally unless you really want to focus on that, which is how I do not choose to do that with my time. So I do think there's what I would call happy accidents that occur a lot. There's a lot of experimentation and trial and error, and that's a lot of the fun, honestly. Like, if it was really, really accurate, like a print, I probably wouldn't be that excited. All those little sort of like discoveries is what I think sets people apart. And I look at like artists like Licia who really do this in a way where she uses a lot of watercolor and pigments. That you're just never really going to be able to like mimic that digitally. And that's kind of the joy of it. And the way she— that, that she chooses to render her work digitally, I think is interesting. And it's like a completely different pipeline than I've ever seen before. Like, I think some of her programs write programs. So her output is not like a static JPEG or an SVG file. It's a Python program with instructions of how to draw the thing you're seeing on the screen. And that's like so much more interesting to me than looking at like a static JPEG that kind of looks like a painting.

Speaker A: It's kind of got like a Sol LeWitt vibe. So I think to kind of transition into some of the broader topics, a really good way to transition here would be to talk about like being an artist versus being a craftsperson. And I think this is kind of a debate that we've been circling around a lot in the NFT art, generative art community of like, what is art versus what is craft and like which artists are like making high concept amazing art and which are insane coders who are able to pound out these really, really just impressive projects. But like the open question is like, well, is it good art, right? And so correct me if I'm wrong, you said that you consider yourself to be more of like a craftsperson than an artist perhaps. So I want to hear your take on like, how do you think art versus craft can or could be applied to code-based art like this?

Speaker B: I don't really know what I am, for the record.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And I don't really know if there's any line in the sand you can draw here. I thought about this a little bit, and I think the way that I would approach it is purely just writing code and making beautiful images is probably closer to craft. Coming up with a story about that work is more of art. And a lot of people, I think, in the contemporary art world need to see that backing story. And a lot of times that forces artists to come up with, frankly, bullshit that backs their work. And this is in the contemporary art world. I'm not pointing fingers at generative artists here. So you basically have to manufacture it. And that's kind of like the dirty secret. And whether people believe you or not, I think, is going to influence your success in that contemporary art market. There's a lot of room for authentic storytelling in any art form. I certainly believe that, and within generative art. And I think as an artist, you know, you really have to think about why you're making the work. And you might have a great story. It's a matter of being a good storyteller too. And I think that especially in this world, in social media and in Web3 and in long-form work, it's incredibly hard to tell stories. So that's one of the things that, again, I'm focusing more on, right? Like, and my avenue is getting out of doing purely abstract work. It's doing things that people kind of resonate with a little bit easier. So I think about that a lot. I think that's all I got.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that's a great answer. And yeah, I don't think it's a cut and dry thing either. I think it's something that you have to kind of almost grapple with, with each individual artist, each individual project, even because, I mean, sometimes the code itself can be so crazy that like the code is the art and maybe the outputs don't matter as much. There might be something so special about the way the code was done or something that the artist figured out in the coding process that maybe only a very few people can appreciate it. And you just gotta kind of take their word, right? That, yeah, this is really cool, trust us. And there's others where, yeah, high concept stuff, or it's just, hey, it's just purely beautiful and cool. And I really appreciate that. So yeah, I don't think we have an answer to this, but I really enjoyed your take on it. You know, back when we met up at NFT NYC, you were going to be going to this kind of like informal-ish artist gathering talking about the space, and everyone had kind of their own topics. I guess, what would you call it? Kind of like a salon-style day that unfortunately I didn't get to go to, but I know that you were going to be talking about this idea kind of like maybe almost unionizing as artists or like collectively getting together and Trying to take a little more control of your destiny, perhaps in the space. What was kind of your intent going into it? Like, what problems were you trying to address in that conversation? What were some of the goals? And did anything come out of it positively that you guys are working on? Or is it just kind of like still this big open-ended thing of how can we as artists maintain parity against the platforms and I guess to some degree the collectors too, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, so a lot to go into. So that was at TokenArt and it's an unconference. So the participants guide the conversations, and they're not necessarily like lectures or presentations. It's more of like you facilitate a conversation about a specific topic, and the attendees choose the topics. And I came up with a really provocative title because I think, for one, it is kind of funny whenever you have a job to threaten to unionize to scare your boss. Not that we have bosses, but we do have this relationship with platforms where there is a give and a take. And unfortunately, there have been a lot of stories that have come out over the last couple years of just bad behavior from various different platforms. And there's a lot of platforms who do a really good job too, I gotta say. But there's a lot of common issues and friction that artists experience. And because we're kind of like sole proprietors, we all have to deal with it. And it doesn't necessarily, for me at least, make sense for us to always have to do it solo. So a good example of this is maybe a negotiation or contract with the platform. We all have to do that. When we don't, I think historically it's been proven that bad things happen. So for example, I know of a story recently where a platform is holding an artist's physical goods and will not give them back until the artist pays money. That was not in the contract. You know, it's like all this confusing, terrible stuff that really to me makes me wonder like the reasons why these people operate this way. And it's because there's not a lot of oversight. What does happen is artists talk, I will say, and we will know about this kind of thing. We won't work with these platforms in the future. I certainly will not work with this platform knowing how they've treated this artist. So some of it is just that, right? Like it's having a community and a conversation about our experiences in different ways. Like that's going to occur, but there's like levels to it too. So I don't want to say union necessarily. I think again, it was a kind of a provocative title. It's almost like A cooperative, a collective, a guild. You know, in the conversations we had, it was more like, what even is this and what are the benefits? And starting a labor union, I don't think is the right answer, but it's more of providing a safety net for all artists who choose to participate here. Because what we want to do is we want to be a part of this movement of generative art, and we want to take it as far as possible. And in order to do that, can we work together in various different ways? That's a big part of it. And then again, the other part that you alluded to is how do we shape healthy relationships with platforms?

Speaker A: It's a really challenging issue. I think when I first thought about this issue, not unionizing so much, but kind of like the advocacy for artists and stuff around the end of 2022. So the market was still doing okay, but starting to cool down. We saw a lot of new platforms coming out. And, you know, being a show that talks to artists, we talked to a lot of artists and just like seeing who was going to be on these platforms. And it's like, cause they would always advertise like their Genesis drops. Right. And just kind of asking like, hey, like the platform builds legitimacy off of the success of your work. So what kind of like concessions were given to you? Like, were you given like a minimum guarantee on, or were you given like an upfront payment? And in almost all cases it was like, oh no, the people just seemed really nice. And I think they really love artists. And so I just let them have this project and we're— oh, and they're gonna market it a little bit, you know, as the genesis. And that's cool. And it's like, okay, but it's kind of the responsibility of these people who run these platforms to own it. And they should be participating, or they should be kind of compensating you for lending your voice and your legitimacy to it, right? Because that is unfortunately what makes platforms succeed is like, You have to have a series of good releases that collectors like, so then collectors build trust in the platform and the people who run it. And then it's kind of like this momentum thing, because then now more artists will want to come over and release there because they've shown— I mean, Art Blocks is like a great example of this, right? They've just shown that generally the projects mint out, usually the projects go up in value, or I guess until recently. So I was like, oh, this is where like a manager comes in. This is where like an agent comes in. And we've seen some people like that. Like, I don't know if you know, Simon Says, for example, pop up to help like manage and negotiate on part of artists, but not every artist, I guess, is gonna get representation like that. And so what would it look like collectively? Like you'd have to have probably one person whose full-time job it was to advocate for this group and just say like, hey, here's the standard of anyone who's like in this collective, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's just it. I think, well, for one too, just to kind of go back to the landscape, right? Like I think that if anything, there's just gonna be more and more consolidation of platforms. So we're going to really need to get it right in terms of how our relationships with platforms evolve, because there's going to be less options out there. There's not going to be another store to go to if you don't like the prices at this one. And that's just a matter of fact, especially with this down market. So I think in terms of the conversation we had, the way that we could look at that is it doesn't need to necessarily be someone who's within this current community. It's just a matter of finding sustainability through various different forms, and artists are kind of good at that, right? Like we produce a product that we could then use as leverage to purchase maybe time from, say, legal avenues or an agent of some sort, that sort of thing, and establish like a boilerplate that we share, that we update, that sort of thing. So I would like to see something like that happen. I think just the management of something like this is worth studying just to understand how you can do it. as an artist, I think, just to facilitate this sort of structure without it becoming your full-time job. I think that's the biggest challenge of any of this, honestly, is finding that level of commitment from people who might have to give away their free time in order to like further this whole movement.

Speaker A: Yeah. And is there anything in the works right now, or is that a secret?

Speaker B: I can't say anything that's gonna happen anytime really Soon is in the works. Again, I do feel like there's levels to it and we've built up a lot of different assets as a community over the last couple years, and that's just gonna continue to grow.

Speaker A: You know, I think the other side to do like a little devil's advocate is it's like, it's a hard time to be asking for more and trying to establish like a floor on artist compensation and artist rights because I feel like every platform is either breaking even or losing money right now. And I'm sure like the idea of Going to them and being like, well, it has to be this way and you have to sign this document and like you have to advance this stuff. And they're all gonna be like, well, we might be closing in 6 months. And so I think it's just a very, you know, cuz obviously we've talked to platforms, it just, it feels precarious. I don't know if you get that sense. Is that something that you even think about when it comes to like who you're gonna work with is like, will they even be around a year from now with certainty?

Speaker B: I think my art practice is, I'm not a crypto artist. So this whole thing is amazing. I'm happy to have experienced it. But in some way, I look past it, because especially with plotter art, there's no deep necessary connection to NFTs. And I would say to platforms who are like, you're definitely going to close in 6 months if no artist will work with you. We are the people who make the product which you sell. And that, I think, is going to lead to one of two things. Either they will come to the table and negotiate as well, or they're going to go to contemporary big-name artists with teams of ghost coders who make generative art, which is fine too. But I do worry that's the direction we're going to go in. And then I feel like a lot of the magic that we had will have matured in a way that, like, it's not there necessarily, right? Like, The best times ever for me were really Hic Et Nunc, when we were living in the warehouse as young artists doing amazing things, and there wasn't a lot of prestige or genderfication of the space. And I feel like that time is gone to an extent. But I do think that if things get bad enough, if collectors leave, artists leave, platforms shut down, that time will come again. And that's the exciting thing to me. I'm not rooting for anything to collapse, but I love the freedom of being a digital artist. And I don't know that the world we live in now is optimal for that level of freedom.

Speaker A: I mean, it feels like unfortunately the vibe has shifted towards AI stuff. And I say unfortunately, just because this is a generative art podcast and not an AI art podcast. Like, I know there's a lot of people who love that stuff, but if you look at some of the most successful releases from this year, they've been AI. I'm thinking particularly like what Verse has put out. Like, it just seems like every time they do these AI auctions, the stuff goes nuts. And whenever they do a generative art, it's like, did not do as well as I thought it would, or wow, that price is really low, and stuff like that. So it's interesting. Like, I wonder if like the trajectory of AI will kind of follow what we've seen with generative, which is like this, a lot of people doing it, everyone's just really excited. And then in 18 months, it'll be really sobering. Everyone will look at their bags and go like, why did I collect all this stuff? And why did I pay so much for it? Do you know what I like? I don't know. I don't know what your personal opinion on AI is other than that ChatGPT helps you with math. So do you have any, any hot takes on what's going on with the AI markets or that style of art in general?

Speaker B: So market dynamics, can't really speak on it. I don't follow AI auctions very much. AI art in general. I like a lot of it. So I'm really a big fan of this guy, Data Velvet. I really like what he's doing, but I gotta kind of think back to my past. So being that person 20 years ago, uploading art on DeviantArt, posting my analog 35mm photography on Flickr, that sort of thing, and then having it all kind of sucked up and used to power these machine learning algorithms doesn't feel good, right? There's no credit given to any of these artists. They receive no royalties. Not a fan of that. So I think if I had to really splice it, it's that the technology's cool. And for one, there's a lot of different types of AI, right? So like you can look at Casey Reas's recent work with GANs. You can look at Midjourney. There's so many different types of AI now. It's not all the same. So I think just in general, the technology is really interesting, useful, and cool. I do worry it's gonna kill all the creative jobs in the world, or maybe we all just become artists. I don't know. Yeah. But I think the training data is where I get a little iffy because if it's without permission trained on things that people put time and energy into and released freely on the internet, their intention was never to power this algorithm that's going to actually subtract the attention from maybe their blog or their portfolio and instead power something else that they had no desire to be a part of. And they were kind of just, this is done without any permission given.

Speaker A: Yeah. I have similar concerns about, I guess, like that particular genre of AI art, you know, the prompting stuff in particular. I've heard kind of the analogy to sampling in music and like early hip hop and like, yeah, like a lot of artists then were ripping samples and not compensating and, oh, well, they're creating something transformative and it's new, but now you have to like license your samples and you pay for it. Especially if it's a big commercial artist, they pay for that stuff. And there's an entire process the recording industry has gone through. And you could, as an artist, maybe take like a very kind of like punk stance on it. But then I don't feel like a lot of the art that's being made is very punk at all. Like, I don't feel like it's nodding towards the fact that we're stealing and ripping off. I feel like it's trying to be more serious than that and more refined. And so I'm not really seeing anyone leaning— I'm sure there are artists, but just like—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What I've seen as someone who's just like casually observing, I'm not seeing anyone leaning into the fact that like, yeah, you're, you're stealing and you know it, you know, like I think acknowledge that, or, or it should be kind of a part of the work because all of these faces, all of these places, like everything that gets prompted up is all coming from somewhere.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I, I think people are afraid to comment on this a little bit because it's okay to say you don't like how AI art is made. Like, for me, it's like, is it a transformation? Is it a derivative? To me, I don't even know if it really matters. I know back in my old days of being like a Photoshop artist, the worst thing you could possibly do is take someone else's JPEG, add like filters and transform it and turn it into something you made. Like, that used to get you blacklisted. Like, no one would want to work with you or like your art if you did that. And that's a maximal example. I'm not necessarily saying that's what's happening here, but I don't know. I feel like if you're training your own models, if maybe you have a portfolio of work that you're feeding these algorithms, like that's really, really cool. That is authentic to me. If you're just using like off-the-shelf stuff that is trained, I don't know. Like the hard part is a lot of times I really like the imagery I see. It's the kind of stuff that I find inspirational. It's the kind of things that I wish I could just make by hand that I could never do because I'm not that talented at painting. So to me, it's like the best digital art I've ever seen with the least amount of effort I've ever seen to make it, because it's trained on years and years and years and hundreds of thousands of sweat hours and equity put into this work by people who did paint it.

Speaker A: That's got to be partially why it's doing so well, right? Because you can just release a batch of like 500 images and People will buy them because they look cool. Like there's something cool about them. And I guess my thing is like, is there infinite demand for cool images or are we gonna fatigue on that? Because you can't just release 500 images every 3 months, right? Like, or maybe the price will come down over time. I'm not sure. A lot of people seem to not really care about the way these models are trained or who's making money off of it. Not even on the artist side, I mean, but like the intermediaries, right? Like the companies who scrape the data and are building up shareholder value for themselves off of great artists using it, the product, right? It's like every time an artist uses it and makes a splash, like, that's like great advertising for the product itself.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to art versus craft, right? Like, is there a strong narrative backing to this work, or is it aesthetically pleasing and kind of vapor? And I honestly, I know we talk about generative goods a little bit, and when is IKEA going to sell generative art? Like, IKEA is totally going to sell AI art before they sell generative art, right? There is such a big market for people who want to just have cool images in their house, and AI art is a great fit for that. I mean, that's why it's proliferating everywhere. That's why NVIDIA is like the number one stock right now, right? Because this is going to change everything we know about being creative with digital assets.

Speaker A: I think the worst case scenario probably for some of these companies is that, and there's like, there's some lawsuits going on right now. If it goes the same way that music has gone, I mean, already some of these companies are paying to license Reddit's data, right? Like Google's paying a licensing fee to Reddit to get that. I know Quora is another site that you don't just have access to the data, so you have to pay for it. Okay. So eventually they'll just pay for the data and there might just be really specialized tools that eventually there'll be one that just pays for like great art. data, and then it's just going to be the piece for like prompting up, you know, abstract art and landscapes and stuff like that. And we might just see that kind of this fragmentation in the market versus like these big AIs that seem to have been trained off everything. And then those pass the cost on to the people who use it because they have to pay for licensing fees, which means it's not going to be as free or as cheap to use as they are now.

Speaker B: The big question is like, do they have enough already to have escaped the velocity of needing to do that? Right? Like, have they sucked up enough free shit from the internet To have enough really to power what they need. Or from my understanding, it's a lot of like the specialized information. So if you are like a mathematician, OpenAI may hire you, or I think it was like Scale.io that may hire you to give expert summaries of things. Like that's where I see this going. But have we passed the point of it getting its fill of digital art? Which is kind of sad, right? Like then it's like locked into what it has and it's never really gonna evolve.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: The way we use it may evolve, but the training data is kind of there. I think we may be getting to the point where it doesn't matter anymore.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what some of these products would look like if they were just on purely free public training data. I can't remember if it was Midjourney or Stable Diffusion that got in trouble because they had taken Shutterstock stuff and people were prompting up images and they had the watermark on them because it was like so specific to what Shutterstock had that I think the model couldn't get around. Showing the watermark, and then that became proof that they had taken these images. Like, you have to license the images, you have to pay to use Shutterstock images. They hadn't paid, that's why they had the watermark. So how much worse will that model be once you remove that set of photographs? I have, I have no idea. That's a good question. But clearly the people who are making them think that they need it to the point where they're willing to just like not even ask for permission or pay the money.

Speaker B: This is the duality of being an artist too, right? Like, when you use social media, you're effectively giving up all rights on your work, and it's going to train someone's model. But you need to do that because otherwise no one's going to know who you are.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's like a common problem that you just see being exploited everywhere. And especially, I mean, like, slamming Adobe here for a second, like, they're like the worst offenders. Like, yes, they make good products, but they make a lot of awful products in their run. By people who are just trying to maximize value at the expense of creatives. And I absolutely cannot stand that.

Speaker A: I kind of want to jump back to platforms for a minute here. Platforms, chains, artists surviving this horrible market that we've been in. I think it was around the end of last year when we first met and we were talking about some of the Art Blocks changes. It's been quite a while now. They've announced a lot more stuff, including Studio and their new take on curated, even going like More focused, more revolutionary, you know, like they really wanna break the mold and probably only doing 5 or 6 releases a year. How do you feel now as someone who's done a curated release with them? You know, you're obviously like in the Art Blocks community. Do you like the direction that Art Blocks is taking here? Like, is Studio something that appeals to you? I know that you listened to our interviews with Eric too, so is his kind of vision there? And like, how would, how do you think about Studio versus say other open Yeah.

Speaker B: So friends of Eric, love Art Blocks, did Ori, a curated release, November 2022. And it was a life-changing moment for me. For a year I worked on that project. Immediately after I finished Feral File, I just committed to doing a long-form project and making it curated on Art Blocks. And I actually tweeted that, then I put my head down and worked like constantly every night on Ori to get it to that point. 'Cause I just really believed in the work and I don't think I've ever been so focused in my life. And, um, it's been amazing. Like, Art Blocks is great to work with, and they're in a really tough position. So I like that they're evolving. I think we need a revolution. Like, we need big changes. And it's really, really easy for someone like Art Blocks, who is the top of the heap, to get complacent and comfortable and stick with the recipe that's worked in the past. And I commend them for trying new things. I think that's exactly what we do need. And in terms of Studio, it's intriguing to me. I'm also big fans of Highlight. Like, I think Highlight is awesome as well. I know you've spoke with Nat, and I really love how agile they are and how they're really like leaning into open editions, low costs, working with Farcaster and Frames. Like, that to me, I think, is the thing that I'm going to measure Studio up against, is like, can Studio Introduce some of these newer features at a quick cadence to stick maybe closer to what the current sentiment is and try new and interesting things. Because that's the whole thing is like, it's supposed to be a place for artists to do experiments. And I really love like the die with the most likes drop on there recently. Like I thought that was very amazing. And it also spoke to me a lot because I hate Microsoft Teams so fucking much that I was like, this is great. Like this is a great usage of this technology. It's a great project. And I want to see more of that. I want to see artists do like really small editions, maybe even generative one-of-ones, like all these things that we haven't tried before. Like, that's exactly what we need to do in order to restart this market. So I love that, and I hope collectors come along for the ride there. And I think that both Studio and Highlight are compelling in similar and in some different ways as well. So I'm kind of measuring them together. And then with Curated The bar is obviously much higher now. I really am excited to see with what the first couple of releases look like, because again, they need to be epic. Like, they need to blow our minds and they need to be as good as good can be. And they can't necessarily be like a repeat of what we've seen in the past. So if Fidenza 2.0 came out on Curated, I don't think it'd be enough. It needs to be something that is as cutting edge as we've seen. With a really strong narrative backing, some sort of tie-in to performance art or an exhibition installation. Like, these sorts of things I feel like are where they need to mark. And I do think it's going to take a long time to produce that. So I understand why there's only going to be a couple of them a year. And I really think that Verse is doing a good job at a lot of this as well. So that's where the big competition is. And I think competition is good. Because it's going to hopefully create a lot of need for innovation to stay on top of, you know, your competitors and do that sort of thing. So I think they're again, super challenging position, they have a big team, they were really first to market, they have a lot of baggage, I think, because they had to innovate first. So the way their smart contracts are written, the things they've had to do battle with and solve, like creating Dutch auctions that are autonomous, like For a while, that wasn't really a thing, and artists had to go in there and change the pricing themselves, which is just crazy to me. So they were first to solve that. Now everyone does that. So there's like this commodification. So they just can't lean on the fact that you can publish NFTs of generative art there anymore. Like they have to do a lot more. And I think that they have some good ideas of how to do that. So I'm excited to see. I don't, I don't know where it's going to go, honestly, but I want to participate. I don't know if I'll be using Studio to start. We'll just have to see where it goes.

Speaker A: It's scary to me, and I kind of tried to get at this with Eric a little bit in the episode, because trying to run a platform, and probably of any platform, I bet they have the most staff, probably by a multiple. So to take your like marquee thing that probably was your biggest source of revenue and fees, now cut it down so severely and ask so much more, and also now make things that are more experimental that like People might not want to collect. Yes, like the Operator Drop was great and doing like this kind of generative dance performance and stuff. But again, like, yeah, you can't just do 6 generative dance performances a year. Like not everyone's gonna want to keep collecting generative dance necessarily. And so if it's something that's really like multimedia, off the wall and hard to enjoy because we don't have displays that really enable us to enjoy animated works or sound pieces as well as we do just like still art. You know, flat art. What happens if these Dutch auctions go to the bottom, only mint out half, they don't get the fees they were hoping to get? The compensation's supposed to be Studio, but artists have a lot of options for open platforms. And if Studio doesn't have exactly the tools they want, yeah, like you can go to Highlight, you can go to fx hash. Maybe the project's not good enough to make it into Curated because it doesn't have like a 1-year plan of performance and stuff. So then—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It goes to Verse or another curated site too. So I'm kind of like wondering, you know, whoever has the spreadsheets there, what are their projections for how much they're going to like make off of curated and how much of that's gonna be compensated for by studio? 'Cause it's not just the platforms that are consolidating, but it seems like artists too are becoming more precious with their work. And some people have been punished for experimenting and putting too much stuff out there. And so if like having this open side for people to put stuff on.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And hoping to collect fees that way. I know it's kind of like crass talk about it, but they need fees. They need fees to pay their staff and to exist as a platform. So I don't know how they make up for the volume on Studio, especially if they're trying to be experimental and take risks on the curated side. I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker B: It does. And I think that probably what they did is they analyzed the collectors, like they probably have the most analytics and the best information of the market out of anybody, because they understand and have relationships with a number of these big name collectors. And they've seen through, you know, their own private accounts, like what's happening. And I think they probably divided it into different groups. And one was like kind of these high-end collectors and other ones were maybe lower-end, more frequent collectors, that sort of thing. And they tried to make a place for both of those to exist. And what I'm curious about is the latter to turn people who are interested in low-cost editions, which I think is certainly a trend that's here to stay. And convert them into maybe spending 1 or 2 ETH on a single piece of art because they love it that much. Like, that's the real challenge. Because I think that the goal of getting more low-cost collectors in this space is a great idea that I think Eric is trying by doing these kind of generative goods things, by creating really low-friction experiences with his idea of like cards you can hand out and that sort of thing. And I think that's all great. And we need to continue to do that. It's the big question mark in my eyes is like, how do you turn someone who will buy their first NFT into someone who will spend a significant amount of money on an NFT? And I think we kind of saw that happen organically in 2021. And it wasn't hard to do that because people were buying these low-cost NFTs. And then all of a sudden, they were worth enough to go buy 10 ETH this or that or the other. And now it's a lot, lot more challenging. I'm curious how they kind of solve that. And I don't know what the answer is. Like I said, I mean, I think that another angle they're taking is starting to appeal further into the traditional art marketplace and bring over collectors who are purchasing, say, physical works and converting them to buying their first digital works in a way that makes sense to them. And I think it's a better time than ever to do that, right? Like, we've never had a technology that creates ownership around digital goods. Like, we finally, finally have that. And it's a matter of convincing people that it's worthy of doing. And I think they've done a really good job of, you know, working with places like Christie's and Sotheby's and other major institutions to show that it is possible and worth doing that. And I think that's another angle they're taking. Verse is also doing this very well, where they're putting that meaning and context behind this thing that's just an NFT that's so nebulous, and showing the value to people. by displaying it in specific ways, by presenting it online in a very curated and high-touch way.

Speaker A: 100%. I mean, we're big fans of Verse. We've had Jamie on a couple times, and in a lot of ways, like, their strategy is different from the direction that Art Blocks seems to be going. You know, the last time we talked to Jamie, he kind of made it sound like even though there's a lot fewer collectors, there's enough collectors still here who have deep enough pockets that if you just keep offering them really good art, They want to collect it. And he wasn't as concerned about like crossing over a lot of new collectors or building the base. It was more about like just being at the top of the heap for like the existing collectors here. And I think Verse has made a pretty good argument for that in the last year or so too. Like they've put out some incredible projects, like many of which I think would have easily made it into like the old Art Blocks curated. Have you worked with Verse before? I can't remember if you've done something with them.

Speaker B: I have not. I love them. I speak to them regularly, but have not officially released with them at this time.

Speaker A: Is there any possibility that that BAYC is going to end up there?

Speaker B: I don't know.

Speaker A: Is that, I don't know, you have to get your, you got to get your boilerplate contract out. You know, you got to get them to guarantee you, you know, $20 grand upfront and X amount of marketing spend.

Speaker B: And oh yeah, I'm a radioactive dude. Now I'm just trying to figure this out with everybody else. And that's why I lean on other artists. I need support because we're all trying to figure this out. Right? Like, it's such a new thing for so many of us that that's where the value of having that community to back you, I think, is a key thing.

Speaker A: I do think that whatever you do, having some kind of live show would be awesome for these, like getting them up on display somewhere so that people can like really come in and like look close at them. Or you'll have to create like a website tool that will really allow people to like make them big and zoom in close to really see the detail. Because even some of these lower resolution photos and images that you've shared, like, you can just tell there's, there's so much going on that would reward like a really deep viewing. By the way, what are some of these like wavy vortex looking things supposed to be in there?

Speaker B: They're fun.

Speaker A: I don't know.

Speaker B: They're supposed to be kind of like, I would say like a body of water in a sense, but there's like a little bit of a psychedelic portal element as well. That it almost looks like acid paint or something too. It's kind of up for interpretation.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Well, you know, we've been going for a while now, James. Maybe we can do some quick rapid fire here and call it an episode. What do you think?

Speaker B: Sounds good.

Speaker A: All right. Let's start off with, uh, what do you listen to while you code, while you work?

Speaker B: Lane 8 Summer 2024 mixtape as of yesterday.

Speaker A: I don't know. Is this, is it like hip hop? What is it?

Speaker B: No, it's more like deep, melodic, good progressive house music. But I listen to all kinds of stuff. I'm a huge fan of Burial. So, okay, do you know who Burial is?

Speaker A: Yeah, Untrue. I know the classic stuff. I haven't kept up with his more recent releases, but he doesn't do very much, right? It's very infrequent.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, he's like the world's coolest artist in my opinion. So he invented his own genre of art, like of music, and he is completely anonymous, doesn't play live. Makes just stellar music. He actually came out with something 2 days ago with Code 9, so check that out.

Speaker A: I mean, wasn't his original stuff what they were calling dubstep before dubstep changed? Like, I feel like that was dubstep first, and then it became like the kind of bass-heavy wubby stuff that it is now. Am I wrong about that?

Speaker B: That's accurate, but I feel like that was a sign of the immaturity of the dubstep scene at the time. So, you know, dubstep was to me, I think, more about like these really low-end frequencies that had this kind of magnetic effect. And Burial was— he really created future garage, which is not really dubstep, but there was just a lack of a term for it at the time. So I think he got slapped with that because it was quite popular to make dubstep around the same time that Burial came out.

Speaker A: All right, Lane 8, I'll check it out. I'm— I like house music and progressive stuff. Um, all right, another one here. Who would you like to hear us interview on the show?

Speaker B: I think you should interview Licia He, the person I brought up earlier. I think she's amazing. I think she does some of the best Plottr work out there and has a really interesting way of thinking about making generative art.

Speaker A: Okay. She had some stuff in the last Graph+ release with you, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, correct.

Speaker A: All right. We'll reach out to her. And let's see, last but not least, I mean, I guess we've already talked about what you've got coming up. Other than busy, is there anything else that you're working on? Anything else that you can preview for us? Are you working on another maybe non-Plottr release? code only or digital only? Like, what else do you have in the tank?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I do have a whole nother thing. It's a collaboration with another artist who I truly love, who doesn't do generative art, and it's playing with the idea of extracting randomness as well, but placing kind of this person's, say, mindset, their decisions, the way that they look at art, extracting that in a sense, turning it into data, and injecting that into the algorithm. So it's an exciting way, I think, just to play with the idea of like what happens if generative art isn't so random necessarily. And again, you use random to the smallest possible extent to achieve, say, long-form work or unique outputs, that sort of thing, but really not using it everywhere.

Speaker A: Okay, right on. Maybe that could be a studio release. Yeah, awesome. James, anything else from you before we go? Do you have a fun time recording?

Speaker B: I did.

Speaker A: Have you done podcasts before?

Speaker B: I've done a couple. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, cool.

Speaker B: I've been pretty silent this year because I've been heads down working.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But yeah, nothing else really. I mean, just say thank you guys. You're awesome. I love your podcast. Like, it's great to have people talking about this sort of thing in the space.

Speaker A: Glad to hear it. And everyone should be on the lookout. I guess they should just follow you. on all your social medias to keep up with BAYC and find out where it might be releasing eventually. And just to see more because it's a pretty cool project and it sounds like you've got some plans for rolling it out. I'm excited to see the video and some of the more high-res images that hopefully you'll share soon. Thanks so much. We'll call it an episode there. Bye everyone.

Speaker B: All right, see you guys.

Speaker A: Grail of the Week. Could be time. We're waiting. All they've said.

Speaker B: We're waiting to be signed.