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Kim Asendorf: Pixel sorting is more or less a technique I came up with in an art class. I was, I think, in my third semester at university, and it was a project-free class. So you can do whatever you want, and it was about generative and computational art, which was pretty new to me at the time. I only had a little bit experience in Processing before.
I wanted to create a work, and I remember exactly it was a very sunny day and I sat in my student flat, and I was just thinking about, okay, what can I do with an image, some easy manipulation, an algorithm that can transform an image into something else. I basically like to see it as a translator. You have an input and this input gets translated into a different image or output. And I was thinking about sorting numbers, sorting algorithms, and how you can maybe reflect that into an image, since an image is basically a table full of numbers when you think of it in the most simple way, and thought about, okay, what if I take each pixel and just reorder it by its color value, brightness, or hue, or saturation? Yeah, and it turned out to be a really interesting and beautiful effect.
At the time it was quite performance-hungry to calculate that. So I remember it took ages for my computer to spit out a result. But I did a whole series and then also wrote a little article, a tutorial how to use it, since it wasn't complicated code. If you know a bit about coding, you can achieve that in an hour or so. And that got picked up by a lot of people. And it took some time until it became a meme, more or less, or a trend in the community. A lot of artists picked it up. A lot of also non-coders started to use my code to produce visuals with it. And yeah, I would say some, one or two years later, it exploded and every showcase reel from whatever demo tool you can imagine had pixel sorting in it. On Instagram, there are so many accounts only dedicated to pixel sorting. It's still going on now and then. I even see fresh new accounts every year showing on Instagram pixel sorting artworks.
Trinity: We just wanted to add, and please correct us if we're wrong, but from what we understand and looking into it, this was a really pivotal and groundbreaking technique. It wasn't necessarily done before and applying that sorting algorithm to images was revolutionary in that sense, especially because so many people utilize it in some capacity within their practice now.
Kim Asendorf: There were things before, like, especially databending was a big thing. So people opened images in audio editors and used effects from the audio editors to transform the image. And there are other things like slit scanning, which is also a well-known technique now, especially through Refik Anadol and stuff. That was also, at the time, something I was very much interested in and inspired by. So there were other people also creating, let's say, glitch aesthetics through creative coding. But the pixel sorting technique itself, I would say, was fresh and new.
Trinity: We got a very specific and hilarious question from Ciphrd that we have to ask you, especially since he's been on the show before, and I feel like this is such a targeted question. But he wants to know, and I quote, "Does he," meaning you, "see any specific aesthetic quality to the pixel, or does he use it because it's the basic element of the digital image?" We'd love to hear you speak to that.
Kim Asendorf: It's both. I really love the pixel as an aesthetic. It comes back to my past. As I said, I grew up with older technology, so pixels were more present. Nowadays, if you don't zoom in, you can't really see pixels anymore because displays got so highly resolved. When I grew up, screens were low-res, so pixels were a visible thing, an element with real presence, and I built a deep love for that. If I do pixel-based artwork, I very consciously choose the resolution to make the pixel visible and part of the aesthetic.
Then, on a conceptual level, the pixel is the basic element of a raster image, and I like to work with the basics of things, or the atoms, let's say, of a medium, and use them to build a new language from the smallest possible entity.
Trinity: When we were prepping for this episode and speaking to some artists, so many of them cited you as an inspiration, not only for your history within the space and being one of the OGs, but also because they see something so unique stylistically in your work. Punevyr, an artist we love and have had on the show before, wanted us to ask you: how did Reading a Book end up on fx(hash)? Because we know it as an Art Blocks piece, but he mentioned there's a fun story behind an fx(hash) version too.
Reading a Book — Kim Asendorf
Kim Asendorf:Reading a Book was submitted to Art Blocks in, I think, April 2021. It's a project I'm very proud of. It's probably my most conceptual piece, where I used a neural network to create the visuals. Screens are simulated 3D objects in the work, showing text extracted from a book, mostly manipulated through a generative grammar, so it creates random sentences, which then get imported into the neural network to translate the text into an image. It's one of those works I'm most proud of.
Art Blocks rejected it, which is understandable since the tech is quite heavy. It uses TensorFlow.js, a neural network library for the browser, and it's a pretty large file since a full trained model is included. On top of that, it's a 3D render with real-time text-to-image translation, so it's a heavy calculation for a machine to output that in the browser. I fully understand why Art Blocks rejected it at the time, but I still loved the project. I already had the fixed idea, the concept, the whole vision of it, so I didn't want it to just disappear in a folder on my hard drive. I was looking for a way to present it anyway, and coincidentally, that was the time fx(hash) launched. I saw it as the platform to use for that, since the tech basically didn't matter there — you could publish whatever file size, whatever technology, which felt very freeing, especially after being rejected for using heavy tech. And it worked out pretty well. It's one of my most beloved projects, and I'm very happy it found a place to live.
Trinity: That's amazing, and it must be so nice to see the reception change over time, especially as more powerful machines become standard and more people can experience the piece as intended.
Will: Since you mentioned Art Blocks, I did want to ask about the differences in your process between working on fx(hash) versus Art Blocks. I know Cargo, more recently, was an Art Blocks piece. What is it like adjusting your work to fit the specifications and requirements of a given platform? I'd assume it's not one-size-fits-all — that you have to consider file size and technology requirements when choosing where to debut a project.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Kim Asendorf: It depends. First, I need an idea, and then I think about the right place to put it. Sometimes that decision happens quite late in the process, and sometimes it's clear from the start. With Cargo, for instance, it was clear from the beginning that I wanted to release it on Art Blocks, mostly because of the price range you can achieve there, and because I felt it was time to have a piece on the platform. I hadn't published anything there in a long time, and I wanted to bring something fresh.
Cargo was also, in a way, a piece made for Art Blocks, in the sense that I wanted to create something with a clear, comprehensible idea — a simple concept that unfolds through the algorithm, so anyone who looks at it can quickly understand the underlying idea, even without technical knowledge. That was very important to me for that piece.
With fx(hash), it's a bit different, since anyone can publish anything, so I feel freer to experiment. I did a project called Kill the Cartoon, for example, which was rejected everywhere else — Art Blocks didn't feel right for it, other platforms didn't fit either. So I used fx(hash) as an outlet for more experimental, weirder ideas that are harder to sell but that I still wanted to share.
Trinity: I feel like that's such an interesting distinction, and it aligns with what we've heard from other artists about their choice of platforms, especially the Art Blocks curation and price consideration. We wanted to ask about your background project, Monogrids, and its connection to your later work, Blockendoos. Could you tell us about the differences in process, and if you see them as connected? And why the jump into long-form generative art specifically, since I know your practice began, in some ways, more focused on single, static outputs.
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Kim Asendorf:Monogrids was actually my first long-form generative project, and also my first smart contract, the first project I put on the blockchain myself, without a platform, basically hosted on my own website and with my own contract. The idea was to challenge myself. I'd seen the first wave of these long-form projects on Art Blocks, and I wanted to see if I could do that too, to challenge myself in creating a system, an algorithm capable of endless iteration that still holds up, still creates good results throughout.
It was a self-challenge, but it also became a study in composition, since it's a pretty simple concept: a grid, and then a monochrome-ish approach to color, hence "Monogrid." The idea was to find as many compositions as possible with a very reduced setup, just a grid with modifications, and one color plus a background color. I was very deep into researching composition, trying to figure out an algorithm that could always find a nice balance, a nice composition, no matter the outcome. That was the main goal.
Blockendoos came later, as a spiritual successor, more or less, revisiting the same idea, but reduced even further to make room for a new element: motion. So it's the same grid-based approach, but instead of focusing purely on composition, I introduced simple animations, small looped sequences, to bring life to the piece. I aimed to keep the file size extremely small — I think it's about four kilobytes of JavaScript code, if I remember correctly — while still creating engaging compositions and motion. That was the main challenge with Blockendoos.
Trinity: That's so interesting, and it's really cool to hear you talk about your process, especially in relation to file size, because that's something that comes up so often when we speak to generative artists — that additional layer of the challenge, working with such small file sizes and still creating a beautiful, engaging piece for the viewer.
Will: I want to ask, when it comes to composition, and pushing boundaries in your art — because that seems to be a theme, whether it's the neural network piece we discussed earlier or something like Monogrids, where you're pushing the boundaries of composition itself — how do you think about pushing those boundaries versus what collectors might find beautiful or want to purchase? Is that ever a consideration for you, or are you really just following your own path and curiosity, letting the chips fall where they may in terms of collector reception?
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Kim Asendorf: It's a hard question, and it also changed a lot for me over time. In the beginning, when I didn't know much about collectors or how the market works, I was very naive and just did what I felt was right, an genuine expression of whatever was going on in my head. Cargo was actually the first time I made a very clear, conscious decision to think about the collector base and to create something with them in mind, something that could function well as a piece to collect, to show off, to flex, basically.
That was a new experience for me, and it worked out well, but it's not necessarily something I want to continue as my main practice. It was a fun experiment, and I'm still very happy with the outcome, especially the algorithm itself, the coding side of it. But I don't think I'm the kind of artist who wants to always think about collectors first. I did that once, quite consciously, and I'm satisfied with the result, but going forward, I feel much more comfortable just doing what I want, what feels true to me, and hoping that it finds appreciation. If I create pure and honest artworks that some might find weird, or that are harder to get into or to love, that's fine. I hope that over time, people will see the underlying idea and appreciate it, even if it's not an easy, beautiful piece at first glance.
Will: I think that's the perfect answer, and I'm glad you feel comfortable enough in your practice and your position to make that decision, because I think a lot of artists might feel pressure to only create pieces collectors want, especially if that's what pays the bills. It's admirable that you can say, "I did that once, it was fun, but that's not necessarily the artist I want to be going forward."
Trinity: Yeah, and it's such an interesting concept, especially thinking about beauty and how that's received by collectors versus really pushing the boundaries of new artistic techniques or expression. Sometimes what collectors find beautiful is more surface-level, whereas what you might find beautiful as an artist, in terms of the idea or the technique, isn't always translated in a way that collectors immediately connect with, especially on first viewing.
Kim Asendorf: That goes back a few years. When I first coined the term "pixel sorting," it wasn't about animation — it was really about finding an interesting algorithm. At the beginning, like everybody probably does, I worked with Processing. There's a very simple line of code where you load an image into an array and tell it to sort the array, and you get the image sorted by color values — turning every image into a sorted color palette, from red to blue, say, or by brightness. But that also meant the entire content of the image, except its color, was lost.
Still, I thought that was quite nice — conceptually very simple, but also elegant. Of course I found other people doing exactly the same thing, got bored immediately, and let it go for a while. Eventually I had the idea that I still wanted to work with the technique, but wanted to find a way to keep some of the image's information intact, so you could still recognize the original input. I wrote my own sorting algorithm — no longer a one-liner, but a more complex row-by-row and column-by-column sort that used a threshold value. So I could say: if a pixel in this line is too dark or too bright, stop the sorting here and find the next pixel below the threshold. I was essentially sorting around the content I wanted to preserve, and the outputs were something I hadn't seen before — and at the time, most people hadn't either. It brought out a genuinely new aesthetic.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Ten years ago there was a huge movement in the glitch art scene. I knew a bunch of artists from that world and had experimented myself with data bending — using text editors to edit JPEGs and create unpredictable distortion results. This played into that same territory. When I released the code on GitHub, the whole glitch art scene picked it up, and for a while it felt like every second glitch artwork used this algorithm. That's why the term ended up connected to me. As a German, I thought "pixel sorting" was a good, straightforward name. In retrospect it's a bit silly, since artists before me had obviously worked with sorting algorithms and sorting pixels — it's an obvious thing to try as a computer artist. But the way I did it created a new aesthetic, and that's where the term really comes from.
In my newer work, I'm still obsessed with the aesthetic of a pixel. A pixel is more or less the best abstraction possible — it can mean anything. It's so simple, just a tiny rectangle, but on a screen it's a tiny fraction of the whole, which means you can use it as basically anything: a person, a coin, whatever you want to see in it. That's still what I love about it — it's a very powerful abstraction tool.
I kept pushing to make my outputs pixel-perfect, or "crisp," as I call it. You can't really get that from a JPEG — JPEG always alters the image content a bit. You can't get it from a video file either. Animated GIFs balloon into huge files very fast. None of the consumer formats really translated what I wanted. Eventually I came to real-time coding — writing code optimized for the graphics card, the GPU. That's a real shift in how you think about coding. Normally, especially as a beginner, you work with object-oriented programming: you write a class, and all the objects in your code are instances of that class. Very structured. But when you write for the graphics card, there are no objects — you write code for a single pixel.
That felt incredibly interesting to me, since I like pixels so much. Now I could write code executed for exactly one pixel on the screen, and through that I found my own way of doing things. It's certainly different from how a hardcore coder like Piter Pasma, who you mentioned earlier, works — he's much deeper into the mathematics and the coding. I tried to find my own way, something I could understand and experiment with, while still keeping pixels as the main focus of my work. And the pixels move the way I hoped they would.
It's maybe still some kind of pixel sorting, but for me sorting implies something stricter — you sort by a specific rule, alphabetically or whatever. My recent work is more about shifting, moving, switching. But the term has stuck to me, and people still call it pixel sorting, which is fine — I'm not here to police the wording. That's also why I just call myself a digital artist. I don't like being put in a limiting box of any kind. It's playing around with pixels, but at 60 frames per second, and those pixels can be seen as whatever you want them to be. I think that's why the work resonates with people — everyone can find something personal in it because of that high level of abstraction. It's not a reference to anything already in the art world. It's really about the pixels — which feels very contemporary to me, or at least I hope so.
Will: I want to shout out a great example on OBJKT of the more classical pixel sorting you described — the release called Mountain Tour, which looks like a project you made in 2010 and later uploaded digitally. Seeing it makes your explanation click: it's a piece using found footage manipulated through pixel sorting that still gives you the impression of the mountain, but in a very glitched way — with a lot of logic to the glitching and real restriction of color.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
There was a moment in the early fx(hash) Discord, right after you released Reading a Book, when everyone started talking about your other collections on OBJKT — because Hic Et Nunc had just gone down and there was a frenzy to snap up that work. I regret not grabbing more, honestly, because those are such a great collection. Let's talk about Reading a Book and your animated work more broadly, since that seems to be your focus over the last two years. We already know how you found Tezos, and by extension fx(hash) — but did you ever consider submitting that project to Art Blocks instead? You did eventually release Cargo on Art Blocks last year — so how did Reading a Book end up on fx(hash) rather than somewhere more curated? Were you curious about trying Art Blocks with that project, or others before Cargo?
Kim Asendorf: The first project I minted was Monogrid. I built a website for it and manually minted 265 pieces on the Hic Et Nunc contract, about one or two months before fx(hash) existed. I just had the urge to do it myself, as independently as possible.
Building on that same principle — using a feedback-style system — I created Reading a Book at Ciphrd's invitation. He wrote to me: "Hey, look at this, I have a new website where you can mint generative projects." I looked at it and, no offense, Ciphrd, I wasn't that impressed by the design at first. It didn't feel quite right. But after observing it for a week or two, I felt it was actually pretty cool — more underground, more avant-garde, and open in a way that let anybody just use it.
Reading a Book — Kim Asendorf
I made Reading a Book with that in mind, but honestly it wasn't very well thought out on my end. I just wanted to make something for fx(hash) — no big plan, no idea what price to set or what edition size made sense. I just thought, let's try it: 1,000 editions, 10 tez, very experimental for me. Art Blocks wasn't really on my radar at the time. I knew it existed, but I didn't like the application process, and it just wasn't a serious option for that project. I simply wanted to be part of what fx(hash) was doing, so I tried it.
Trinity: With the original Monogrid series, you manually minted everything. For Reading a Book, was there anything special you had to account for in moving from manual minting to classic long-form generative art, where the outputs are entirely at the mercy of the algorithm — no curation layer, just random hashes?
Kim Asendorf: I didn't really curate the Monogrid outputs either. I built a system based on a big 16-by-16 pixel grid and distributed the parameters across it in a logical way, so the outputs were tied to that grid structure.
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Of course, in a long-form generative project you can't control anything that specifically — you just define ranges of randomness you want to allow. I don't think that's really the point, though. I struggle a bit with the term "long-form" itself; it doesn't mean much to me. Sure, you can write an algorithm aiming for as many possible variations as you can get, defining lots of parameter ranges. But doing that limits how radical you can be. If you want a wide range of outputs, only a few systems are really suited for that. If you want to make something truly interesting or new, it usually needs to be more specific, with less randomness allowed.
That might be why we don't see many truly innovative long-form projects — or why the interesting long-form projects often aren't that "long-form" in spirit. One of the most famous is Fidenza, a beautifully executed, well-made project, but not technically innovative. It's a noise field — something that's existed for a long time. Maybe nobody had made such a nice execution of it before; Tyler Hobbs clearly has a great eye for graphical style. But technically, anyone who's coded for ten years sees through it immediately.
Trinity: This is where you really see the collector base of generative art lagging behind the artists. We're all still learning and getting better each year, but the gap in technical knowledge is huge, and rightfully so — very few of us are trained coders or trained artists. So I can see a world where people are genuinely impressed by Fidenza, even if it isn't a technical marvel.
Kim Asendorf: I think that's normal in every art form—visual art, even music. You should be behind the artist. That's what we're looking for: somebody who surprises us or makes us happy. And that can only happen if those people are experts in their field. Tyler Hobbs is obviously an expert in a lot of things. He's been working with large-scale paintings and murals—that's his expertise. So he made a very good execution. But that was just an example; I could have taken any other work.
The successful projects are, of course, very beautiful. The question is what you, as a collector or art connoisseur, want from art. Do you want a beautiful image? If that's what you're looking for, there are plenty of offers on the table—a lot of beautiful things out there. I personally don't look so much for beautiful things. If I want to see something beautiful, I go out into nature—that's where I find real beauty. I'm looking for aesthetics that only computers can bring me. I don't imitate paintings or paper. I'm drawn to styles that only a computer can produce and that can't be replicated by anything else. It doesn't make sense to me to use a computer to replicate something that's already around—why should I simulate paper and then even print it on paper? That's all personal preference, and that's what I love about art: there's a broad field of possibilities and a place for everybody. I didn't want to judge Fidenza—it wasn't a judgment, just a little fact check, maybe.
Will: I think the general collector base is becoming more aware that a lot of early stuff on Art Blocks, which has been held up as the best examples of what's on the platform, isn't necessarily the most technically interesting. There's a lot more hype around being early and being first than around being the best. I think that's finally starting to turn a little, though I don't know that we're going to get people off Fidenza or Ringers very quickly—there's just so much economic value locked up in those projects that it'll be hard to get big voices to say, "You know what, this Ringer maybe shouldn't be worth a million dollars." There's a lot of incentive to keep those projects propped up.
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Do you hope or aspire to bring the community more knowledge and education on that? Do you get frustrated with or disappointed in the collector base? As bigger institutions—LACMA, MOMA—start dabbling in NFTs and code-based art, do you think their assessment of the field will shift sentiment toward more digitally-native, digital-first work like what you, Leander, and Andreas do? From a 10, 20, 30-year picture, how do you think it might shake out?
Kim Asendorf: It's interesting, because the blockchain isn't the start of digital art. The first blockchain-minted project is nice in terms of speculation, but in terms of art it has basically no meaning—coders, Photoshop artists, CGI artists have been around for many years before. So this hyping of "first" isn't valuable to me personally.
But I'm also not an educator. I don't want to educate the community. I'm happy if I get asked, and happy to share my story or opinions, but I don't want to change the world or the collector's mindset. Everybody should have the possibility and the time to build their own taste and opinions, and decide how deep they want to go into the topic. For me, it's often the same: I see a work and either I like it or not—an immediate decision happening somewhere in my head. I think that's very human and should be respected, so I don't want to educate anybody.
Of course, I'm happy if there's interest in my work, because that lets me keep going. If someone says, "I collected your work and now it's running for seven days straight on our kitchen TV," that's more valuable to me personally than the speculation happening in markets. I'm more interested in what an artwork really does with a person—if it catches you, opens up emotions, makes you want to be with it. That's what I'm looking for.
Long term, there's certainly a chance that bigger institutions will put stuff like this in their collections, because it's ultra-contemporary—using the computer at the maximum level of what's possible, pushing the graphics card at high speed while still trying to have an interesting output. I can see an LED wall in a museum someday possibly showing a Monogrid.
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Trinity: We've seen that with Andreas Gysin in some of his work, where it translates between the screen and light panels. That's very cool to see—you can look at both side by side and recognize, oh, this is the same piece.
Kim Asendorf: Andreas is the master of turning a digital algorithm into an object-like thing. He also does a lot of other object-like installations that are aesthetically and formally interesting. For me it's a bit different—I see my work as more digital native. It doesn't need the device at all. Of course you need some output to see it, but it should run on any device. The cool thing is that a pixel translates very well to an LED—it's basically the same thing, just at a different scale. That's why a lot of my work has a high amount of black areas or black background: it displays very well on LED presentations, and it's economically friendly too—saves a bit of current.
Will: When you're working on a project, do you take into account the average person's viewing experience versus the optimal one? People lucky enough to see your work installed at scale say it looks phenomenal blown up big on a wall, but most of us are probably looking at it on a laptop or, if we're lucky, a slightly bigger than average monitor. I know your work scales itself to fit, but do you have a preferred way you think it should be displayed? Are there projects that feel more appropriate smaller versus larger, or does it just not factor in?
Kim Asendorf: It's a compromise. Either you define a fixed ratio or resolution and play within those fixed dimensions, or you let your work scale to any screen size, which comes with a lot of difficulties but also opens up a lot of possibilities. At some point I just decided I wanted my work to fit on any screen.
I don't make work for the average person. The average person isn't the target—the most professional person is the target, if that's the right word. I don't want to simplify anything to make it easier to understand or more accessible. My target is other people who are like-minded, and I want to surprise them like I'd surprise myself. I'm not interested in explaining exactly how I did something—it's not important to me that anybody, even experts, understand each step. I don't want to write a big explanation. I love art because it's a bit mystical and not easy to explain. When I see something and immediately understand it, when I could do it myself without research or learning anything new, it's less appealing. If you show me something and I don't exactly know how you did it—maybe there's one or two questions I can't answer—it becomes much more interesting. I keep thinking about it, it becomes part of my mind, and then it's good art. I don't want to take that away from anybody, so I keep it at a level of uncertainty.
Trinity: This is a point of view we haven't heard much. How many interviews have we done at this point, Will—50?
Monogrid — Kim Asendorf
Will: About 50.
Trinity: About 50, and this is something new and unique. Thank you for that.
Kim Asendorf: Some people describe me as somebody who thinks out of the box, and I like that a lot. You can never really understand yourself, and you can never completely describe yourself. I just think, if everybody goes right, I have the urge to go left, and that's something I like to preserve for myself—a bit of childish behavior, being naive about what I do and just doing it without needing to explain why. That makes everything much more interesting for me, and it's also why I call this work expressive. It's a level of self-expression. I don't want to educate anybody, I don't want a message in it—it's something that's in me and wants out.
Trinity: With that said—at least out of the projects we know and love you for, whether it's Reading A Book, Cargo, or Zoom, which is one of my personal favorites—they're all incredibly unique, and I think there's a layer of storytelling you engage in to some extent. I've seen people on Discords say they've stared at Reading A Book for ten minutes and felt like they were reading a book. Is there any narrative imposition you put into your work? When it comes to the theme, how it moves, how it comes to life, how you name it—how do you get to the stage where you're producing it from a narrative point of view?
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Kim Asendorf: The narrative opens up to me only while experimenting and defining a concept. It's always a back and forth: I have a slight idea, a concept, then I execute it, which is already an experimental act, because the concept is so vague and technical that I don't really know how it'll look or what will come out. Seeing it is the experimental part—executing a concept, then usually going back and forth. If I see the output and think, no, this isn't really working, which happens too, I redefine the concept to push it in a specific direction. It's a constant back and forth between defining something, executing it, being surprised or not, and looking back at the concept. That process can take a week, months, or just a day, and while doing it, the narrative around the work opens up to me more or less on its own.
The naming comes from what I feel when I look at the work—it's not something that comes first. I don't say, "I want to make a work titled Cargo," and go that route. It's more the essence that comes at the end: now I see what the work says to me, and I decide on a title that's like a signature—the final step. Now it's done, I can fix it, put a name under it. I'm basically done experimenting; I polish the concept a bit. It's more or less the last step.
Will: When you talked earlier about being heavily influenced by early computer use and video games — in Transactions in particular, you cite the palettes coming from classic Nintendo, the NES, what that device was capable of producing — are there other games or early experiences that influence your work? Do you go back to when you were playing Return to Zork or other early stuff? What were the formative games for you, and how do you carry that nostalgia forward into your work?
Kim Asendorf: One game that's always on my mind is called Scorch, I think. It's very old, just one screen: it draws a 2D landscape, and tanks fall from above and land distributed along it. Each tank is a player, and you shoot around trying to destroy the others. The landscape gets destroyed over time and you fall. There are many remakes of it.
Will: It sounds like Worms.
Kim Asendorf: Exactly — Worms is the classic, probably from the '90s too, but a more polished version of the same idea. That's something I always have in mind. But I really stopped gaming around 18 or 19, and never looked back — except now with kids, you do a bit of gaming again, and I remember why I stopped: it takes too much time. Three hours would feel like nothing and suddenly the day's over. Still, the aesthetics of those early games — the way you'd use a Commodore 64, insert a disc, write a few lines to start a game like Summer Games or Winter Games — that's still part of my aesthetic. The pixel is always visible. Nothing's realistic, there's no real rendering happening. It's a game that's drawn, not rendered, if that makes sense.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Trinity: You did a project around SimCity 2000, right? I know that's one of your favorites, Will.
Will: Classic. Very formative game. I loved it.
Kim Asendorf:SimCity 2000 is a great game. A few years ago I got an emulator to play it again, and around that time I made a piece — I think it was called A Solo Show in SimCity. I wanted to use SimCity as a stage to make art within the game. So I started playing and building sculptures, doing performance-like happenings, screen-recorded them, and turned it into a series of animated GIFs — sculptures, performances, installations, that kind of thing. It's a collection of thirty GIFs: some funny, some inspired by classical art setups, some just single objects from within the game — like a house. If you build a house in SimCity and neglect it, it starts to crumble and becomes this broken house. A lot of it just felt right at the time. That's what I mean by creating little worlds — taking something, making it your own, and playing with it.
Will: We're already at an hour, so let's get into one of the main reasons you're here — your upcoming show with Andreas and Leander, both of whom have been guests on our show and who we enjoy very much. Right now it's titled AGH1, for each of your last names. What's the story behind this exhibition? In our minds it makes a lot of sense for the three of you to exhibit together, but we haven't seen anything from it yet. Give us the preview — get us excited.
Kim Asendorf: It's nice to hear that it seems to make sense to you — that's what we had in mind. It's a radical approach, in a way: naming everything just by our names, not explaining too much. The combination of the letters A, G, and H should already give you a certain level of expectation about what might happen. I like that the most about it.
The three of us first met in London, at the Vertical Crypto event at the Factory.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Will: We didn't go, so I don't know it.
Kim Asendorf: Right, you're American. It's a very classic rave location — old and prestigious. If you're into electronic music, especially from the UK, you know this venue just from hearing the name a thousand times. That was the first time we actually met, and we connected quite well on a personal level. This is an opportunity for us to work together as friends — a group of friends who share certain levels of aesthetics and ideology in terms of coding and using the computer, and who genuinely enjoy each other's work. So it's fun on two levels.
On the artistic level it makes sense for us — we've been in contact ever since, and I always ask these two for their opinion first if I want feedback on a new work. I think it was Andreas who, over a year ago, said, "Let's do a show together, just for fun." But it took a long time to grow, and the fun became a bit serious too, since art isn't just about fun but also about meaning. Even without a clear message, maybe what we three share is this: we extend the common space by putting out formal structures that aren't necessary or useful, just an extension — and maybe that's the purest, most honest form of art. It doesn't have a message or a clear purpose. It's just there because it needs to be there, because it needs to come out of the artist.
We took the opportunity to unite and call this first event AGH1 — a statement that it could continue after this, that there's more that can happen. We've been scouting rooms in Berlin for a while with help from Luke Montgomery of Greater Stau, who's based in Berlin and helped us enormously. Eventually we found a great industrial-looking room at the Funkhaus, which wasn't easy to get — the Funkhaus is very culturally particular about what they rent to. You really have to convince them.
It was important for us to get out of the normal white-cube setup — a TV screen on a white wall next to another TV screen, a room full of screens like a typical group show. We wanted to put our work in a different context, have more control, and create a setup that has the potential to unfold its own atmosphere. That's what I hope for, and what you can expect if you come to the event on December 7th in Berlin at the Funkhaus: an immersive experience, because we'll have one large-scale LED screen that we all share. It's not "everybody has their own screen" like a typical group show — it's something we can't even fully define ourselves. It's not an exhibition, not an installation, not a screening — a bit of everything.
For me, the most important thing is that it's an experience, with its own atmosphere, and that we create documentation that lasts beyond the event — unlike most NFT events, which are short-lived: after the event there's the next event, with a similarly not-so-thoughtful setup. This is an extension of our need to express ourselves formally. It's just something we have to do.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Trinity: For those of us who won't be lucky enough to be in Berlin on December 7th — I know I won't be, much as I wish I could — is there any way to experience this online? The three of you are, in my opinion, absolute masters of the web browser. I was looking at Leander's website while you were talking and loving each of the works up there, and the AGH site itself. Is there some digital expression of this show people could experience?
Kim Asendorf: Yes, of course. We'll make good documentation — that's one point, to have more control over what happens. We'll also be showing three new works, one from each of us, that will premiere there. The idea is not to show too much, or probably nothing, before the event, so the first release of the works will be at the exhibition. After that, the works are meant to live in the digital space, on the internet, the way our work usually does — they'll leave the rooms at Funkhaus and become part of the internet.
Will: You're partnering with Highlight for distribution, so sometime after the show all of that will be sold. We had Nat on — great interview — and Highlight is a platform we've enjoyed, one that's become more prevalent recently with what they did around Onchain Summer. Very cool — everyone should check it out. The website is agh.run.
You're using Highlight for this, but you just released your last work, Cargo, with Art Blocks. A question we've been asking a lot of guests lately is about the whole ecosystem of platforms to release work on. We're grateful you've released so much on fx(hash) — plenty we didn't even get to touch on today. How do you think about the current landscape — Art Blocks, Tonic, Verse, Highlight, fx(hash), which now has ETH support with 2.0? There's renewed debate around ETH versus Tezos with fx(hash) adding ETH to the platform. As someone who's very art-first, art-focused, but still has to think about getting the art into people's hands, accessibility, and longevity — chains, platforms, how their backends and contracts work—
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Trinity: On-chain, IPFS.
Will: Right, on-chain, IPFS — so many factors. What's your current view on all of it? What matters to you, what matters less, and how do you decide — Highlight for this, Art Blocks for Cargo? You mentioned earlier you didn't want to apply to Art Blocks, but clearly you did. So: big open-ended question — what's going on in the whole ecosystem for you right now?
Kim Asendorf: I really love the possibility to do everything on my own, and that's why I moved a bit more to Ethereum. I can write the smart contracts myself, which means the smart contract can become a real, meaningful part of the artwork rather than just a carrier. Mostly it's a carrier — people use a transaction hash as a seed, but the smart contract or the blockchain remains more of a vehicle than a genuine part of the artwork.
For the work I'm showing in December, I wrote the smart contract myself, which lets me extend my conceptual thinking into the contract itself. If you mint a piece directly from my own website, one NFT includes four versions of the artwork — you can execute a function in the smart contract to reroll the dice and change the seed used for the random values, retriggering the whole generative process. So it's essentially a four-of-one collection, and I really like that.
We're also working with Highlight for this show — Andreas and Leander are using it as the minting platform. They're a great partner, very professional, with deep knowledge of what's possible with smart contracts. I showed them my contract too, and they gave me tips to optimize it beyond what I'd have figured out on my own — or, honestly, beyond what I actually needed, since for a single artwork you don't need every possibility built in. But they helped me minimize gas fees for collectors way beyond my own naive way of programming.
As for choosing partners in general, it's hard to pin down — it depends on where you are at the moment, what's possible, who reaches out, and where the nicest people are. That matters a lot. Can you actually work with them on a personal level? And, as an artist, there's also some vanity involved — wanting to be placed in nice contexts. Working with Art Blocks is nice for that reason. I've also shown with Feral File, which is run by Casey Reas and a few collaborators who understand how artists with longer careers work, and what they need to be happy — that it's not just about being an outlet to sell work.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
That's where, long-term, some platforms will be in real competition with others: some are just sales outlets, a primary market and nothing more, while others genuinely care about the artist and the artwork, and look for ways to keep it alive beyond the initial sale. If Art Blocks does a show in two years and still features Cargo, that shows they care about work that's no longer financially important to their business — it's an investment in their own significance, a statement that they still care about what they did. So yes, if I'm making choices about partners, that's something I care about a lot.
Will: What about fx(hash)? With Ethereum in the picture now, could you see releasing on an open platform like that again — not tied to one big drop, but where anyone can come and release anytime? Any chance of a surprise release from you on either chain in the future?
Kim Asendorf: I still like fx(hash) for many reasons — they're the cool kids in the gang. I'm in regular touch with Paul, and we keep each other informed about what we're doing, so it's a relationship beyond just the commercial side. I'm very curious how their 2.0 launch will play out. Going multi-chain is smart on their part — relying on just one chain, Tezos, could be difficult, even dangerous.
I really like Tezos for many reasons, but over the last two years, those reasons have slowly faded. They're not really active in the arts anymore, not pushing limits. It's unclear where they'll be in two years — will they disappear completely? With Ethereum, on the other hand, it's always been clear: they don't really support art specifically, it doesn't matter to them either way, but that makes it a safe bet. Ethereum will very likely outlast the Tezos blockchain. If I had to bet today, I'd go with that.
It's also important to me that the artwork itself is preserved, with as long a lifetime as possible — and that collectors feel the same way, without worrying about the underlying cryptocurrency's future. Ethereum minimizes that risk. So I'm curious how fx(hash) turns out, and I could certainly imagine using it as a platform — it depends on what customization of the smart contract they can offer. I love playing with that and want to push it further. If I could use my own smart contract and integrate it into one of these platforms, that would be interesting.
Working with partners is also a form of validation — not just in terms of sales, but for yourself as an artist, and for the energy you get from it. Working alone at your computer all the time can get lonely, so it's good to get out and connect with these communities. They're fundamental to the whole space. It makes sense for artists to support the platforms and communities too — it's not just communities supporting artists. It's a two-way relationship.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Will: We're at time, but Trinity, maybe one last question, rapid-fire style — then I've got to go, my baby's waking up.
Trinity: Just one question, one we ask pretty much all our guests. Thank you so much again — who do you think we should interview next?
Kim Asendorf: That's a good question. I could send you an answer after doing a bit of research — recommendations always feel a bit unfair to me, since I'd inevitably forget somebody. I'm bad at recommendations on the spot, but I can look into it and give you a few names — people whose process or insights I'm personally curious about.
Will: If it makes you feel better, we don't have a very strong follow-up rate — you're not dictating who the next guest will be or anything. But we'll happily take those recommendations offline. You've got us on Discord.
Kim Asendorf: Spontaneously, I'd say: try to get more women on the podcast. They're probably a bit underrepresented — though this is a heavily male field, which makes this particular observation a bit uncomfortable coming from a guy like me.
Trinity: We try. It's been a while.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Will: Well, Kim, thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you on, learning about your work and the early history of fx(hash). I encourage everyone to check out Kim's website — it's not fully up to date, doesn't have all your projects on there, but it's a start. You can also find his work on OBJKT, fx(hash), OpenSea, and Art Blocks. Tons to explore if you haven't checked it out yet.
Kim Asendorf: Getting a proper new website is on my to-do list for next year. I've been putting it off for a long time — I really need to get serious about it.
Will: And of course, keep an eye out for the upcoming AGH1 exhibit — learn more at agh.run. We've now completed the trifecta, having interviewed all three of you, which feels perfect. We're big fans of everyone in that exhibit on a personal level. That's it for this one, everyone — hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back soon with another episode. Until then, bye.
Kim Asendorf: Thank you. Bye.
Speaker D: We're waiting to be signed. Always, but we're waiting to be signed. Grail of the week. To be signed.
Trinity: We're waiting.
Cargo — Kim Asendorf
Speaker D: Always.
Speaker A: All right, hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a very special interview episode. I'm joined today by Trinity of course. And today we've got with us Kim Asendorf, famed pixel-pushing artist. If you've been collecting on fxhash, you probably have seen a lot of his work over the years. If you are an Art Blocks collector, you probably know him for Cargo from just a couple months back. We're super excited to talk to you, Kim, and learn about you and your art and your practice. How's it going? Hello, everybody.
Speaker B: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker C: The pleasure is all ours, 100%. Thanks for joining. We really appreciate it on this Monday afternoon slash early evening for you. This is a big one for us.
Speaker A: It's a big one. You're, you're a, you've been a highly requested guest for a while that we've been like a little scared to reach out to because we really don't know that much about coding and your process and stuff that you do is so fascinating. So I think we're hoping to peel back some of that in the questions today. But before we jump into your work in particular, can you introduce yourself to everyone who's listening who might not know who you are? Tell us about your history in art and coding and how you came to find the blockchain.
Speaker B: Yeah, I'm Kim Asendorf from Germany, and I basically grew up with computers. So I'm a kid of the '80s and '90s. I was in the lucky position that my father got me a computer quite early. He has no clue about computers, but he knew, okay, this is the tool of the future. I need to provide computers. And yeah, so I grew up with computers and I think these early '90s aesthetic that the software had at the time is still something that is in me and it's more or less what all my aesthetics are built upon. Yeah, so that's how it started. I, of course, like every child, I started with playing computer games, but pretty soon I wanted to do more with the computer using softwares down— not downloading it. In the '90s, downloading wasn't really a thing. So I used tools like Paint or Adobe Animator to draw simple things, to design clothing even, and started to make music and use the computer for that. Then I became a bit obsessed with graphic design. And eventually wanted to become a graphic designer, which basically brought me to the School of Art and Design in Kassel. But there I quite fast figured out, okay, graphic design is not really enough. So I can use the computer in much more interesting ways when I incorporate automations. That's basically where I started to develop my own toolkit, yeah, that I wanted to work with. code to create graphics or also audio or interactive stuff. And, um, that's more or less the root. Another important component for me is the internet itself as a platform and as an outlet. So I was pretty fascinated by the possibilities that you can create an artwork and put it in front of an audience basically at the same day, yeah, by just coding a website and buying a URL. So it's like a release cost of whatever, €10 to put your art on the internet. And that's what I think made me, or is the fundamentals of my way of thinking, that I really love this easy outlet, the global audience, this technology that is very digital. So I consider myself more as a digital artist than anything else. So, um, Coding and automation just simplifies my way of working. I don't really have a clear vision of the output that I'm looking for. I'm more on a research and I want to find things that I cannot imagine. Therefore, the tools, writing code to find something became my absolute favorite in working. I still also use Photoshop or Illustrator or even build some kind of physical things, not so often, but now and then it happens also too that some works are printed or still works. But now, especially with the blockchain, it feels so native to the blockchain that you can put code on it. The nice thing for me is I can create an artwork that has a, let's say, footprint of 10 or 15 kilobytes of data. But it can unfold worldwide in an endless stream of whatever animations that would, let's say, compared to a video recording. Yeah, if I record, for instance, a cargo in high quality, it will easily end up in multiple gigabytes and will still look shitty. So if the code can run on a computer in real time and render the graphics directly to a screen, I can achieve a very high quality for my taste, and I can incorporate the blockchain as a carrier, and I can also use the technologies. I mean, a smart contract is basically just a very small program, and I can also use that in my favor in using conceptual strategies and building these, what I like to call worlds around my work. Yeah, so each work is a bit for me like a little world where I dive in when I create them. And I hope that somebody like the visitors or spectators see something similar in it and can get lost a bit in it. Yeah, not just on the pure visual first view, but also on a broader scope of the work. Yes, that it's, it's a little world and I hope people can see that and feel that and enjoy that.
Speaker C: That's an amazing introduction and thank you for that history. What you're saying is really just kind of reflected from what we heard from some other artists of I don't wanna say your era because like we're in this era, but, um, you know, people who grew up with computers in the '80s and '90s, like Piter Pasma comes to mind as like a great example for— it's a style, it's an aesthetic, it's an ethos. Before we get back into the art, I wanted to hear more about how did you discover the blockchain? What was your path to Web3 and releasing art on it? And we completely agree with you that it is like absolutely synergistic with the generative art and code-based art scene. Love to hear more.
Speaker B: I mean, as an artist who works like 90 or even more percent digital, it was more or less difficult to make a living from that. Yeah. So I worked as freelancer. I did web design. I did coding, front end, back end, all this stuff for agencies to make a living through art and all the exhibitions and stuff. I didn't make basically any money. And I think of my art is more like a bit like an objectification of digital. Digital items and has ever been. It's not, or mostly not, institutional or political. Also, I made a few political works and, yeah, made experiments in this direction. Eventually, I always came back to my own expressive work. Yeah, so it's mostly work that doesn't have a clear message and want to tell much. It's more really like Okay, there's this insane idea and I get lost in it. I get obsessed with it and I need to express it through that way of working. It was never really possible. And I basically went broke multiple times and always needed to pick up another job and quit basically the art world for some time until I got depressed and sick. And then I quit my job again and got back into art. The last time that happened was early '21. Before that, I of course had followed a bit the crypto hype, but never really participated in it because it's— you need a bit of money to just jump in and gamble, let's say. And yeah, I have family, so I need to take care for that and provide. So that was always very important for me. But eventually I again quit my job and basically a bit recovering from a serious depression, actually. And while doing that, when I found my energy back, I started to finally go back online, search what's going on. And then I saw, okay, there is a new world going on. Yeah, there's something different. There is a new dynamic. And a lot of artists I knew over the years or met even are participating in it. And I Started to look around and started to check my old peers. Yeah, what's going on? Tell me, explain me the stuff. 2 friends, Emilio Gomariz and Emily Gervais, pushed me to mint some stuff. Just try it out. They even sent me some Ethereum to get started. I just minted a few things on Foundation, but it was a bit, yeah, let's say Frustrating. Yeah, you you paid a lot of money and nobody really cared for that. And then one day I saw mostly over Twitter a bunch of people like Leander Herzog or Marius Watts talking about Hic et Nunc. So that was more or less the first contact I had that was really fun. Yeah, so you just need a few bucks to mint some stuff, and I would say for one month I minted old works, mostly GIFs and. a few selected outputs from, from various works and offered them through Hic Et Nunc. And there was quite interesting dynamic happening. I was literally sitting at my therapy with my therapist and we were celebrating that I sold, sold art for real money. And yeah, I think that was the point where I decided to start a new project and do something new and really wanted to create a new world, not just minting single pieces, unrelated or older works, but really wanted to put all my knowledge and styles again together and come up with something new.
Speaker A: How were you selling stuff prior to NFTs? I mean, were you putting files onto discs or were you taking stills out of animations or GIFs? Like, we've heard from people who worked in the traditional art space that that's how sometimes digital artists have to sell their work is like literally on a disc, right, that gets handed over to someone. So how had you tried to sell work like that? Or had you never tried to sell animated work before NFTs?
Speaker B: I, of course, have seen that and heard that. But it doesn't feel right for me. Digital art belongs not on a disc for me. Yeah, it's something that just exists in a virtual space somehow. Of course, there's a file, but this file can be copied to anything. And I didn't have the intention to tie it to a device and say, okay, this is the original, you need a disc or something like this. I sold a couple of prints, basically. That was more or less the only thing, which made sense for me since I like images on the wall a lot. And I like also these physical objects that can come out of it. But then it's, let's say, not the real original artwork. Yeah, it's like a replicate or replica of this work, which is nice. But also at the time when I have worked with galleries for some periods, it was maybe a bit too modern. Yeah, let's say my work. So people who were looking into computer art or especially coded art or generative art were mostly looking for pen plotters, drawings from whatever, the '80s and '90s or even older, or were looking to very established artists like Casey Reas or people like that. I was in a very small niche and didn't really get attention, and it just never felt like, okay, there is the possibility to make a living from that, which is also why I didn't really take a great effort in proceeding that. I know of Raphael Rosendahl who had a really good strategy in creating websites and basically selling the website inclusive the domain name. That's something, yeah, which creates the feeling of an original. Yeah, you own the domain name created by an artist, but you also have to take care to keep it alive. So I like that a lot. But I also didn't felt like, okay, I just copy that system for myself. So it was more for the arts over the years and not for the money.
Speaker A: Perfect. What do you think, Trinity? Should we talk some art? Should we ask some art-specific questions then?
Speaker C: Yeah, let's do that. Blockchain, as you said earlier, just makes so much sense with everything that you've been doing. It's true to the code. It's true to the digital ownership. Everything is there and available. It doesn't just have to exist on a website, although I'm sure that there are some fun things you could do with test domains and in addition to the NFT as the certificate of ownership. Speaking about prints and the physicals that you were selling before, a lot of the work that we know you best for is, sure, technically you could spit out a still for a print, but much of the beauty and most of the enjoyment in that level of immersion that you speak to is in the movement of the piece. And I think that all of your works, they are so different, but they're so cohesive. When we hear about you, you're famous for pixel sorting. Very specifically, it's like, oh, Kim, pixel sorting, which I guess goes into the movement nature of your work. Can you explain what that is to the idiots in the crowd? That's me and Will. If you're unclear.
Speaker A: The non-coders.
Speaker C: The non-coders. What makes it revolutionary or new in this space? And what was, what's the story behind it?
Speaker B: I think that goes back a few years. And initially when I coined the term pixel sorting, it wasn't about animation. It was really about finding an interesting algorithm. At the beginning, like everybody should maybe, I worked with Processing. And there's a very simple line of code where you just load an image into an array and then you just say sort the array and you get the image sorted by its color values, basically turning every image into a color palette sorted, let's say from red to blue or by brightness or whatever. But it also meant that the complete content of the image except its color are lost. And still I thought, okay, that's quite nice. I have something that's conceptually very, very simple and, but also nice. And I found multiple people doing exactly the same thing. Of course, then it, I was bored immediately and let it go for a while. And at some point I had the idea that I still wanted to work with this technique, but I wanted to find a way that kept some information in the image is intact. Yeah. So that you still can recognize the initial input image. I wrote my own sorting algorithm, which wasn't a one-liner anymore, but more or less complex row-by-row and column-by-column sort mechanism, which made use of a threshold value. Yeah. So I could say, okay, if a pixel in this line is too dark or too bright, Stop the sorting here and find the next pixel below this threshold again. Yeah, so I basically sorted around content that I wanted to preserve, and the outputs were something that I haven't seen before. And at the time, a lot of people haven't seen something similar before, so it was really bringing out a new aesthetic somehow. And 10 years ago, there was a really big movement in the glitch art scene. So I also knew a bunch of artists from the scene and have also, of course, experimenting myself with data bending or the use of text editors to edit JPEGs, for instance, to create unpredictable distortion results. And it played a bit in this direction. So when I released the code on GitHub, Basically, the whole glitch art scene made use of it, and for some time, yeah, it was like every second glitch artwork has made use of this algorithm. And yeah, I think that's why this term is a bit connected to me. Yes, as a German, I thought it was a good idea to name it pixel sorting. In retrospect, it's pretty stupid because, of course, there have been artists before working with sorting algorithms and sorting pixels. So that's very obvious to create something like that as a computer artist. But the way I did it, I think, created a new aesthetic in some ways. That's where the initial, or where actually the term comes from. And now in my newer works, since I've always been obsessed with the aesthetic of a pixel, yeah, a pixel is more or less the best abstraction possible. Yeah, it can mean anything. It's so simple. It's just a little tiny rectangle, but on a huge computer screen, or the screen size doesn't matter, on a screen, a pixel is just a very tiny fraction. That means you can use it as basically anything. It can be a person. It can be a coin. Yeah, it can be whatever you want to see in it. And that's what I still like a lot. It's a very powerful abstraction tool. So I proceeded to keep my outputs pixel perfect. Yeah, that's what I call it, or crisp. Yeah, I like these crisp renderings and you cannot have that as a JPEG. JPEG always alters the image content a bit. You cannot really have it in a video file. So all these formats that were, let's say, consumer formats could not really translated. And if you use GIFs, animated GIFs, they end up very fast in very huge files. So also something not so desirable. Yeah. And then eventually I came to real-time coding. That means you basically write code that is optimized for the graphics card. Yeah. For the GPU. And there's a bit of a difference when you think in terms of coding. Normally, Or every beginner starts, let's say, with object-oriented programming. That means you write a class and all the objects you want to use in your code are defined by classes, and then you instantiate class instances. I don't know if that's the right term even, but yeah. So it's something very structured. While when you write on the graphics card, you cannot work with objects. Yeah, there are no objects. You write the code for a single pixel, basically.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker B: And that felt super interesting to me since I like pixels so much. Now I can write a code that is executed for exactly one pixel on the screen. Yeah, by that, I tried to find my own way of doing things. Yeah, so it's certainly something that, let's say, a hardcore coder like Piter Pasma, you mentioned earlier, does completely different. Yeah, so he's, I think, much deeper into mathematics.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker B: and coding so that I really try to find my own way that I can understand and can experiment with, but still keep these pixels as the main part of my work. Yeah, so I found something that works for me. And the pixels are moving like I hoped for. Yeah, it's maybe still some kind of pixel sorting But for me, sorting is really—it's more strict. Yeah, you sort by a certain rule. I want to sort alphabetically or whatever. In my recent work, it's more like shifting, moving, switching. But the term is still upon me. So it's people call it pixel sorting, and it's okay for me. So I—I'm not here to ask for specific wording or anything like this. So that's also why I just call myself. Digital artist. So I don't really like to be put in certain, especially not in a certain limiting vessel or whatever the English phrase would be. So yeah, it's playing around with pixels, but at 60 frames per second. And these pixels can be seen as whatever you are up to. And I think that's why the work is interesting for many people, because everybody can see or find something that is personal in it because of this high level of abstraction. Yeah, it's not a reference to anything that is already around in the art world. Yeah, it's, it's really more about the pixels. That's a very contemporary in, in a sense somehow, or I hope.
Speaker A: Yeah, I want to shout out real quick. So I think a great example on OBJKT of what is, I guess, the more classical description of the pixel sorting is the release called Mountain Tour, which looks like it was projects that you made in 2010 and then you uploaded digitally. And you can see here, it makes more sense as you explained it, like that this is a mixed project with like found footage that then is being manipulated through pixel sorting to still kind of give you the impression of the mountain, but in a very glitched way. But then there's still like a lot of logic to the glitching and there's a lot of restriction of color. Yep. There was a moment in early fx hash Discord, I think after you had released Reading a Book, when everyone started talking about your other collections that were on OBJKT. Because at that point, Hic Et Nunc had gone down and like there was a frenzy to snap up a lot of that stuff. And I regret it because these are, these are such a great collection. But let's talk about Reading a Book and some more about your animated stuff, because that seems to be what you've been on a lot in the last 2 years. We already know how you found Tezos and I guess by extension then fx hash. But did you ever think about potentially submitting that project to Art Blocks? Like, you know, obviously you released on Art Blocks this last year with Cargo, but how did that end up on fx hash versus somewhere more curated? Were you ever curious to try that with this project or others prior to Cargo?
Speaker B: I mean, the first project I did was The idea of minting it was monogrid. I created a website for it and manually minted 265 pieces on the Hic and Nunc contract. It was, let's say, right before FXHash was around, like one or two months before, and I just had the urge to do it on my own as much as possible. That's how it started, and based on. The same principle or based on the idea I used for Monogrid, like using a feedback kind of system. I created Reading a Book more or less by the invitation of Cypher. He wrote me, hey, look up here, I have a new website. You can mint generative projects. And I was looking into the website. No offense, Cypher. I wasn't so much impressed by its design.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker B: It doesn't feel so right. But somehow, after observing it a bit, yeah, for 1 or 2 weeks, then I felt, okay, this is some— this is somehow still pretty cool because it's, it's more underground and it felt more avant-garde and it had this openness. Yeah, it's, it's anybody could just use it. Yeah, then I specifically created Reading a Book with that in mind. At the time, it was really, let's say, Not so well thought from me. I just started. Yeah, I just wanted to make a project for FXHash. It's not like I had a big plan. I didn't know about what kind of price can I put in on it or what edition size. I just had the feeling, okay, let's try it out. I put it online, 1,000 edition, 10 Tezos. Let's go for it. Very experimental approach for me. Art Blocks wasn't so, yeah, so much on my radar then. I mean, I knew that it was around, but I also didn't really like the application process. And it was just not really a serious option for me. So I didn't really have it as a possibility for this project. I just thought, okay, now I want to be part of this kind of project, let's just try it out.
Speaker C: With the original Monogrid series, you said that you manually minted a bunch of them. For reading a book, was there anything special or extra that you had to take into account switching from like something that you're manually minting to more of like classic long-form generative art where the outputs are kind of at the full mercy of the algorithm? You know, there is no curation layer. It's all based off of, you know, the random hashes.
Speaker B: For Monogrid, I didn't really curate the outputs as well. So I came up with a system, like a big grid, 16 by 16 pixels, and I distributed the parameters over the grid in a logical system. So the outputs are very much tied to the bigger grid and the parameters spread over the grid. Yeah, of course, for a long-form generative art project, You can't control anything so specific. So you define a range of randoms that you want to allow or not. And I don't really think that's the thing. Yeah. So I also struggle a bit with the name. I mean, it doesn't really mean so much to me. It's, it's, you can of course say, okay, I write an algorithm. I want it to have as many possible variations. So I try to write it especially with that in mind. Yeah. So I define a lot of parameter ranges here and there. And with that in mind, of course, I limit myself in, let's say, being radical. Yeah. So if I want to have a wide range of outputs, only a few systems are really suitable for that. And if I want to make something really interesting or new, then probably it needs to be more specific and allow less ranges of random. So maybe that's also a reason why we see not so many very interesting long-form projects, or why long-form projects, if they are pretty cool, are not really so long-form. I mean, one of the most famous is the Fidenza series, which is like a very well-executed and very nicely made project. But that's technically not really innovative. Yeah, it's a noise field behind it. It's something that has been around before. Maybe nobody else had ever made such a nice execution out of it. I mean, that's what Tyler Hobbs obviously also can, can put it into a very nice graphical style. But nonetheless, technically, it's for anybody who codes like 10 years, you immediately see through it. Yeah.
Speaker C: This is where you really see the collector base of generative art way behind the artists. You know, we're still learning more and we're getting better each month and each year, but the level of knowledge is just so different and rightfully so. You know, very few of us are trained coders or trained artists. And so I can see a world in which people are very impressed by Fidenza. Even if it isn't a technical marvel.
Speaker B: Yeah, but I think that's normal, or in every art form, both visual art, yeah, even in music, you should be behind the artist. I mean, that's what we are looking for, yeah, somebody who is— that surprises us or makes us happy. And that can only happen if those people are experts in their field. And yeah, I mean, Tyler Hobbs is obviously an expert in a lot of things. And he has been working with very even large-scale paintings and murals. That's his expertise. So he really made a very good execution. But yeah, it was just an example. So I could have taken any other work. Often there is— it is clear or not really innovative. Yeah, the successful projects are of course very beautiful. The question is what you as a collector or art connoisseur do you want from art? Yeah. Do you want a beautiful image? If that is what you're looking for, you are now, you have a lot of offers or opportunities on the table. There's a lot of beautiful things out there. I personally don't look so much for beautiful things. Yeah. I mean, if I want to see something beautiful, I go out in the nature. Yeah. And there I see, I find the real beauty. I'm looking for aesthetics that only computers can bring me especially. Yeah. So I don't imitate paintings or papers or stuff like this. I'm really much drawn to these styles that only a computer can bring me and it cannot really be replicated by something else. So for me, it doesn't really make sense to use the computer to replicate something that is already around. Yeah. So, um, It always lacks on something, or it's, uh, why should I simulate a paper and then even print it on paper? That's all a bit personal preference. Yeah, I think a personal preference. That's what I love about art. There is a broad field of possibilities and a place for everybody. Also, I didn't want to judge. Yeah, about Fidenza, it was not a judgment, just a little fact check, maybe.
Speaker A: I think we've heard more. I mean, not so much for Fidenza, but I think the general collector base is becoming more wise to the fact that especially like a lot of early stuff on Art Blocks, which has been held up as the best examples of what's on the platform, are maybe not necessarily the most technically interesting. Or, you know, there's, there's a lot more hype around being early and being first than there is around being the best. And I think it's finally starting to turn a little bit. I don't know that we're going to get people off of Fidenza or Ringers necessarily very quickly because there's just so much economic value locked up in those projects that it's going to be very difficult to get big voices to start saying, you know what, this Ringer maybe shouldn't be worth like a million dollars. You know, like that's just— there's a lot of incentives to maintain at least some of those projects at a really high level. On that, this is not exactly where I think we plan to go, but like, do you hope or aspire to kind of like bring the community more knowledge and education on that? I mean, do you sometimes get frustrated with or disappointed in the collector base here? Do you hope that over time, maybe as bigger institutions, like, you know, we've seen LACMA and MOMA now starting to dabble doing more stuff with NFTs and code-based art, that through their assessment of the field of artists here and what they're creating, that ultimately more digitally native digital-first stuff like what you and Leander and Andreas do, right, like might become, that the sentiment's going to turn? Obviously, I'm sure you hope that more and more people love your art and find you and collect you. But like from a 10, 20, 30-year picture, how do you kind of think it might shake out?
Speaker B: It's quite interesting because the blockchain is not the start of digital art. Yeah. So the first blockchain minted project is nice in terms of speculation, but in terms of art, it has basically no meaning. All these coders or whatever, Photoshop artists or CGI artists have been around many, many years before. So this hyping of first is not valuable for me personally. But I'm also not an educator. I don't want to educate the community. I mean, I'm happy if I get asked and I'm happy to tell my story or my opinions even. But it's not that I want to change the world or change the collector's mindset or anything like this. I mean, everybody should have even the possibility and the time to build its own taste and opinions and can even decide how deep they want to go into the topic. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's often also the same. I just see a work and either I like it or not. So yeah, it's an immediate decision happening somewhere in my head.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: I think that's very human and should be respected. So I don't want to educate anybody. I mean, of course, I'm happy if there's an interest in my work because then it enables me to keep going. And if people say, hey, wow, I collected your work and now it's running for 7 days straight on our kitchen TV, then it's like, oh wow, this is more valuable for me personally than just the speculation happening on some markets or anything like this. So I'm more interested in what does an artwork really do with a person. If it catches you, if it can open up some emotions in you, and if it does something with you and you want to be with the artwork, then it's what I'm looking for. And maybe in the long term, I wouldn't say of course, but there certainly is a chance that even bigger institutions will put stuff like this in their collections because somehow it's ultra contemporary. If you use the computer at a level that is at a maximum level of what is possible, yeah, we try to use the graphics card at a very high speed or max it out a bit while still trying to have an interesting output. I can see that at some point there will be an LED wall in any museum and then possibly showing a monogrid.
Speaker C: And I think that's something that we've seen with Andreas Giesen in some of his work where it translates between like the screen and light panels. And that's very cool to see. And also just kind of cool to see that you can look at both side by side and see that, oh, this is the same piece.
Speaker B: Yeah, I think Andreas is the master of this, turning a digital algorithm also into an object-like kind of thing. And He does also a lot of other object-like things and installations that are very aesthetically and formally interesting. I think it, for me, it's a bit different because I see my work as more, let's say, digital native. Yeah, it doesn't need the device at all. I mean, of course you need some output to see it, but it should run on any device. The cool thing is that a pixel translates very well to an LED. It's like the same thing, basically, just in a different scale. That's why a lot of my works also have a high amount of black areas, yeah, or black background, because then you can, yeah, use it very well on LED presentations. And also it's economically friendly, I think, to save a bit current.
Speaker A: When you're working on any of your projects, do you take into account the average person viewing experience versus the optimal? I know from some folks who have been lucky enough to see your work installed, like on a big scale, they say it looks phenomenal, like really blown up big on a wall. But for most of us, we're probably looking at it on a laptop or if we're lucky, like a slightly bigger than average computer monitor. So I know your work scales, it's made to scale and size itself, but do you kind of have a preferred way that you think it should be displayed? Are there any projects that you feel like actually are appropriate to be displayed smaller versus larger? Does it play at all into your work, or is it just kind of like, no, it scales, everything is good at all sizes?
Speaker B: It's of course a compromise. Yeah, either you define a fixed ratio or format resolution, then you can play within these fixed dimensions. If you want your work to scale to any screen size, that comes with a lot of difficulties, but also opens up a lot of possibilities. And at some point it was just a decision that I just wanted my work to fit on any screen. But yeah, to put it in another context, I always think of making the work not for the average person per se. The average person is not the target, but let's say the most professional is maybe the wrong word, but what's the right word? Yeah, maybe it's professional. Yeah, the most professional person is actually the target. I don't want to simplify anything that it's more easily to understand or more accessible in terms of understanding. So my target is really other people who are like-minded like myself. So I want to surprise them like myself. I also think that I'm not interested in explaining How exactly I did that? Yeah, for me it's not important that anybody or even experts understand each step. So I'm not interested in writing a big explanation. I love art because it's a bit mystical and not easily to explain. And when I see something and I immediately understand it and say, okay, I could do it myself without doing a lot of research or learning a lot of new things, then it's less appealing. Yeah, it's just a weird mindset that I have myself maybe, but yeah, somehow it's true. Yeah, if you show me something and I don't exactly know how you did it, and maybe there's just one or two questions that I cannot answer, it becomes much more interesting. And then I keep thinking about it and it becomes part of my mind, and then it's good art. So I don't want to take that away from anybody. So Keeping it a bit in a level of uncertainty.
Speaker C: I think this is a really interesting topic because I don't think it's a point of view that we have heard that much. How many interviews have we done at this point, Will? 50?
Speaker A: About 50. Yeah.
Speaker C: About 50. And this is something new and unique. So thank you for that.
Speaker B: Some people describe me often as somebody who thinks out of the box, and I like that a lot. Yeah. Because I mean, you can never really understand yourself. Yeah, and you can also never completely describe yourself. I just think, okay, if if everybody goes right, I have the urge to go to the left, and that's something I like to preserve for myself. Little child child childish. Wow, that's crazy. Normally I can say behavior. Yeah, to be a bit naive about what I do myself and just do it and not need. to explain why I do it. And, um, this makes everything much more interesting for me. And that's also why I call this work expressive somehow. Yes, it's a level of self-expression. I don't want to educate somebody. I don't want to have a message in it. It's something that is in me and, and wants out. Yeah.
Speaker C: So with that said, at least out of the projects that we know and love you for, whether it's reading a book Cargo or Zoom, which is, I think, one of my personal favorites. You know, they are all incredibly unique, and I think that there is a layer of storytelling that you engage in to a certain extent. I've been on Discords where people say that they've looked at reading a book for 10 minutes staring at it, and they feel like, oh, it's like reading a book. So is there any sort of narrative imposition that you put in your work? When it comes to the theme for how does it move, how does it come to life, how do I name it, how do you get to the stage where you're producing it from like a narrative point of view?
Speaker B: Yeah, the narrative is something that opens up to me only while experimenting and defining a concept. So it's always a back and forth of having a slight idea, yeah, like a concept, then executing the concept, which it's already, let's say, an experimental act, yeah? Because the concept is so vague and technical maybe even that I don't really know how it will look like and what comes out. And if I see it, that's the experimental part, yeah, to execute a concept, then I often, of course, or most usually go back and force, yeah? So if I see the output and say, okay, no, this is not really working, which happens of course as well, I redefine the concept to go in a specific direction even more. Or so it's always a back and forth between defining something, executing it, being surprised or not, looking back to the concept. And while doing that, that can sometimes be a week, it can also be months, or just within a day, the narrative around this work opens up to me more or less. on its own. Yeah, so, so the naming comes from what I feel when I look at the work. Yeah, it's not something that comes forward first. I don't say, okay, I want to make a work that's titled Cargo and I go this route. So it's more or less the essence that comes at the end. Okay, now I see this is what the work says to me, and I decide to go with a title that is like a signature. Yeah, it's something that is the end of the work. Okay, now I can— it's done. I can fix it. I put a name under it. I'm basically done with experimenting. So the experimental part is over. I polish the concept a bit. Yeah, it's more or less the last step.
Speaker A: When you talked earlier in the interview that you're heavily influenced by like early computer use and video games, and in Transactions in particular, you cite The palettes coming from classic Nintendo, like NES, what that device was capable of producing. Are there any games or like other ways that those early games influence your work? I mean, do you go back to like when you were playing Return to Zork or some of that other like really early stuff? Like what were those formative games for you and how do you access like the nostalgia there and carry it forward to your work?
Speaker B: One game that is always on my mind is I think it's called Scorch. I don't know if you know that. It's a very old game, which is just one screen. It basically draws a landscape-like setup, 2D, and then some tanks fall from above and land distributed on this 2D landscape line. And each tank is basically a player in the game. And you shoot around and have to destroy the other tanks. And the landscape of course evaporates or gets destroyed over time and you fall down. I think there are many remakes of this game.
Speaker A: It sounds like Worms.
Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Worms is the classic. It's even also old. Yeah, from probably also from the '90s. But yeah, that was the more polished version of that. So it's in classic form of Worms. Yeah, that's something I always have in mind. But then I really stopped gaming when I was like 18 or 19. Yeah. And I never looked back except now with kids. Of course you do a bit gaming again, but it took too much time for me and I realized, okay, no shit, the day is already over. It felt like 3 hours. So I left gaming, but still those aesthetics of the very early games, also the way you use a C64.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: Commodore 64. You insert a disc, you write a few lines to start a game, like Summer Games and these Winter Games. Those are still somehow part of my aesthetic in terms of, yeah, the pixel is always visible. It's not realistic. There's no real rendering happening. Yeah. It's more a game that is drawn and not really rendered somehow, if that makes sense.
Speaker C: You did a project around SimCity 2000, right? I think I saw that pop up. I know, Will, that's one of your favorites.
Speaker A: Classic. Very formative game. Yeah. I loved it.
Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. SimCity 2000 is a very, very great game. And yeah, a few years ago, got an emulator to just play it a bit again. And yeah, at the time when I did the work, it was called a solo show in SimCity. I just wanted to use SimCity as a stage to make art within the game. Yeah, so I just started the game and were playing and building sculptures, doing some kind of performance-like happenings, and recorded— screen recorded them and turned this into a series of animated GIFs. Yes, I think sculptures, performances, and installations or something like this. What's it called? It's like a collection of 30 GIFs. Some are funny, some are inspired by very classical art setups, some are just single objects from within the game. Yeah, like a house. So if you build a house in SimCity and don't care for it, it starts to crumble down and become, yeah, like a broken house. And a lot of things that felt just right at the time for me to do. And, um, that's, yeah, what I also mean by creating these little worlds. Yeah, taking something, make it your own, and play with that.
Speaker A: Well, we're already at an hour, so we need to get into one of the other reasons that you're here, which is to talk about your upcoming show with Andreas and Leander, both of whom have been guests on our show, who we enjoy very, very much. Right now it's just titled AGH, right, for each of your last names. What's the story about this upcoming exhibition? I mean, I think in our minds it makes a lot of sense for the 3 of you to get together and exhibit work. We haven't seen anything from it from any of the artists, so like give us the preview, tell us like what kind of stuff we're gonna see there, get us excited that we want to learn.
Speaker B: At first it's really nice to hear that it seems to make sense. I think that's what we have a bit in mind. Um, so that is also, let's say, a radical approach to Name everything just by our names. Don't explain too much. So it should the combination of the of the three names A, G, and H should already give you a certain level of expectations what could happen to you. And yes, that's what I like the most out of it. I think the three of us together have met the first time in London at the Vertical Crypto. event at the Factory. Was it the Factory?
Speaker A: We didn't go. I don't know.
Speaker B: You're American, so you're not so— yeah, sorry. So it's a very classic rave location. Yes, that is very old and very prestigious. So if you are into electronic music, especially from the UK, you know this venue just from hearing the name 1,000 times, basically. And yeah, however, we— that was the first time we actually met and we connected quite well on a personal level. For us, it's also an opportunity to work together with friends. It's, let's say, a group of friends who came together, and maybe this group of friends has another level of bounding somehow because we share some levels of aesthetics, some levels of ideologies in terms of coding and using the computer, some, some terms of the formal aesthetics that we all like. So we respect our works, each other's, or how to say, we enjoy our works. So it's fun on 2 levels. Um, on the artistic level, um, it makes sense for us. We are in contact since then. And always ask a bit for opinions. Yeah, if I want to have an opinion about a new work, I would certainly ask these 2 guys first to figure out if it makes sense or not. And I think it was Andreas who just probably over a year ago said, hey, let's do a show together. Yeah, just for fun. But it took a long time and it grew and The fun became also a bit serious, of course, since art is not just about fun but also something with meaning. Even if there is not a real message, maybe it's also something we three share. We extend the common space by putting out some kind of formal structures or things that are not necessary or useful but really just an extension. And maybe that's also. The purest or most honest form of art. Yeah, it doesn't have a message or a clear purpose. It's just there because it needs to be there or needs to come out of the artists. We took the opportunity to unite and call this first event AGH1, which is also maybe a statement that it could continue after that. There's maybe more that can happen. We've been scouting rooms in Berlin. For some time with the help of Luke Montgomery from, from Greater Stau, who is based in Berlin, and he helped us a lot to get all the things in Berlin done. Eventually we found a very nice industrial-looking room at the Funkhaus, which was not very easy to get because the Funkhaus is very cultural, let's say, limited. So they don't rent out to any kind of occasion that you want to do there. So you really need to convince them to get a room. And for us, it was really important to just get out of the normal white space setup. Yeah, especially on of these— okay, we put a TV screen on a white wall next to another TV screen and a room full of works and TV screens. So we wanted to put our work in a different context and have a bit more control and create a setup that that has the potential to unfold an atmosphere. Yeah, like a real— it creates our own atmosphere. That's, yeah, what I hope for and what you can expect if you would come to the event on 7th of December in Berlin at the Funkhaus, that it will be an experience, a bit immersive because we have a bigger large-scale LED screen there. And we share this, this one screen. It's not okay, everybody has its own screen and it's like a group show. It's more something we can even ourselves not really define. So it's not an exhibition, it's not an installation, it's not a screening. It's somehow a bit of everything. For me, the most important is that it's an experience. It will have its own atmosphere and we can create, I think, some, some nice documentation out of it that will last. Beyond the event, while most other NFT events are very, yeah, let's say short-living. Yeah, after the event, there's the next event, and it has a similar setup or has these more or less not so thoughtful setups. And, um, it's an extension of our need to express ourselves in a formal way that we, yeah, have to. It's just something we have to do.
Speaker C: Well, for those of us who are not lucky enough to be in Berlin on December 7th, I know I won't be as much as I wish I could be there. Is there any way that we can experience or see what's happening online? I know that the 3 of you, in my opinion, are the absolute masters of the web browser. I was looking at Lenny's website while you were talking and just kind of loving each of the works that's up there. And, you know, just also on the AGH site itself. Is there any sort of digital expression of this show that people could potentially experience?
Speaker B: Yes, of course. I mean, we will certainly make a good documentation of it. That's one point as well, to be more in control about what happens. That will certainly happen. And the works we were going to showcase are 3 new works. So each of us made a new work that will be shown there or will be primed there. Or premiere. How do you say premiere? Right. And the idea now is to not show too much or probably nothing before the event. So it will be the first release of the works will be at this exhibition. And after that, these, yeah, these works are also meant to be, as our works usually do, to live in the digital space or in the internet. And the works will also leave these rooms at Funkhaus and become part of the internet.
Speaker A: You are partnering with Highlight for distribution there. So sometime after the show, all that stuff will be sold. We've had Nat on, he was a great interview. So that's a platform that we've enjoyed that's kind of launched, or not launched more recently, but has become kind of more prevalent more recently with the stuff they did with the Onchain Summer. So it'll be very cool. Everyone check it out. And the website is agh.run. You're using Highlight here. You just released your last work, Cargo, with Art Blocks. And, you know, a question that we've been asking ourselves a lot lately and talking to guests about a lot on the show is just kind of the whole prevalence of all these different platforms to release work with. You know, we're super blessed that you've released so much stuff on fxhash, a lot of stuff that we didn't even get to talk about too much in our limited time. But how do you think about the current ecosystem with Art Blocks? Yeah. Tonic, Verse, Highlight, FXHash. You know, FXHash has ETH now coming out with 2.0 and ETH versus Tezos. I mean, there's a lot of renewed debate around that with FXHash adding ETH to the platform. So how do you kind of take all this in as someone who's very, very art-first, art-focused, but still you have to consider getting this art into people's hands or making it accessible ultimately, and also the longevity of it, right? Right? Like when you're choosing chains or choosing platforms and trying to understand the way that their backends and contracts work. So—
Speaker C: On-chain IPFS.
Speaker A: Yeah, on-chain IPFS, right? So many different factors. So like, what is your current view on all of it? What matters to you? What matters less? And how do you decide, hey, for this one it was Highlight, for Cargo it ended up being Art Blocks. You know, if you wanna also talk a little bit about that process of the application and You know, you said earlier at one point you didn't want to do that, but clearly you did decide ultimately to apply. So very big open-ended question on just what's going on in the whole ecosystem for you there.
Speaker B: I really love the possibility to do everything on my own, and that's why I also moved a bit more to Ethereum. I can write the smart contracts on my own. That really means I can incorporate, or this smart contract can become a real meaningful part of the artwork. It's not just a carrier. Mostly it's a carrier. People, of course, use a transaction hash or something as a seed, but still the smart contract or the blockchain is rather a carrier than a real part of the artwork. For instance, for this work I will show in December, I wrote the smart contract myself. And that gives me the possibility to play or experiment a bit and extend my way of conceptual thinking into the smart contract. So for instance, that would mean if you mint a piece directly from my smart contract, so I will have in my own website, you can mint directly from the website. If you mint one NFT, it will include 4 versions of the artwork. Yeah. you have the possibility to execute a function in the smart contract to basically reroll the dice and change the seed that is used for the random values along the chain or down the road of creating the output and can retrigger that. So it's basically a 4-of-1 collection. And that's something I really like. We also work with Highlight for this show, especially Andreas and Leander, will use Highlight as a minting platform. I think they are a good partner because they are very, very professional in what they do and they have a huge knowledge of what can be done with smart contracts. So I showed them my contract as well, of course, and they reviewed it and gave me a bunch of tips how I can optimize it somewhere beyond my own understanding, or maybe let's say too complicated for What I need? Yeah, if I just have one smart contract for one artwork, I don't need all these possibilities or go completely into the best choice. But yes, they helped me a lot to minimize the gas fees for the collectors to the absolute minimum instead of yeah like my naive way of programming. Okay, I don't think so much about that in general in terms. Yeah, it's it's hard to say. Of course, it's always a bit where you are at the moment, what's possible, who reaches out to you, who you aren't. Contact with? Where are the nicest people? Yeah, that's really something that matters a lot. Yes, can you work on a personal level together with them? Of course, as an artist, you also have this vanity. Yeah, the vanity of being put into nice places a bit. Working with Art Blocks is also, of course, nice. Or I've been in a show with Feral File. I think Feral File is run by Casey Reas and a few of his collaborators, and they know a lot about how artists with a longer, let's say, career work and what they need to be happy and, and what, what's important that all these things make sense beyond just being an outlet to sell works. Maybe that's where in the long run a few things will have to be in hard competition with other platforms because they are just an outlet, just a sales market or a primary market in the first place, while others really care for the artist, the artworks, and all this stuff, and really looking for possibilities to keep the artwork alive beyond the initial sale. Yeah, so if, let's say, Art Blocks does an exhibition in 2 years And still shows Cargo. That means, okay, they really care for works that are no longer, let's say, financially important for the business of Art Blocks. But of course, it's still an investment into the significance of Art Blocks because that's something that will stay, that they care for what they did and still invest in it as a statement even. So yeah, if I have to make choices, I would certainly, or will and do care about that a lot.
Speaker A: And what about fx hash? I mean, with ETH coming, do you imagine ever releasing on an open platform like that again, where they're, you know, they're not necessarily about getting behind one drop like that? It's just kind of like anyone can come and drop anytime. Like, is there the chance we might ever see a surprise release from you on either chain there in the future?
Speaker B: I still like FXHash for many reasons. Yeah, they are like the cool kids in the gang. Absolutely. And I'm more regularly in touch with Paul, for instance, and need to stay informed what they do. And they ask me what I do. So there's also a relationship beyond just being commercial kind of relationship. So yes, absolutely. I'm looking very much into what they will do now, how it will work out, how this 2.0 launch will look like, what they will do. And I think it's very smart from them to go multi-chain because just relying on one chain that is Tezos could be a bit difficult or dangerous even. Yeah, I really like Tezos for many reasons. But over the last 2 years, all these reasons slowly disappeared. They are not really active anymore in the arts. They don't really push the limits anymore. So it's not really clear where they will be in 2 years. Will they completely disappear? And with Ethereum, on the other hand, that was always clear. Yeah, they don't support art. It's not about art. It's no matter. But You could say it's quite a safe bet. Yeah. So the blockchain of Ethereum will pretty sure last longer than the Tezos blockchain. If I had to bet on it today, I would at least go for that. And that's also something that is important for me is that the artwork is a bit preserved. It has a lifetime that is as long as possible. It's also important for me that the collectors have the same feeling. That they don't have to worry about the underlying cryptocurrency in terms of what will they do, what is the development of that. So to minimize that negative impact, Ethereum is certainly a good choice. And yeah, I'm curious how FXHash will turn out. And I can certainly imagine to use that as a platform. It depends also a bit what they can offer in terms of customization of a smart contract. I really love to play with it and I certainly want to expand that even further. So if I can use my own smart contract and maybe even integrate it at some point in one of these platforms, that could also be nice or be an interesting kind of thing because to work with some partners is also a level of validation, yeah, even for yourself, not just in terms of sales, but also for yourself as an artist and in terms of getting energy out of it. If you're all alone on your own computer, you could be a bit lonely at some point. So it's good to get out and be in touch with, with these communities around. And I also think that they are fundamental, of course, to the whole space, yeah. So it totally makes sense that artists also support the platforms and the communities around, and it's not just communities supporting artists. So it's, it's a two-way relationship, of course.
Speaker A: We're at our time here, but maybe Trinity, if you want to do one last question on a project or a rapid-fire style, and then we got to go because I see my baby waking up.
Speaker C: Maybe perhaps just one question. And, you know, this is a question that we asked pretty much all of our guests. Again, thank you so much. Who do you think we should interview next?
Speaker B: Oh, that's a good question. Um, I could send you an answer after doing a bit of research because, um, recommendations are always, at least for me, it feels always a bit unfair, yeah, to, to say a name that comes to my mind. I would certainly forget somebody. I'm really bad at recommendations, but I can look it up and can, can give you a few names. where I just have my very personal interest in getting to know or learning a bit about their process or insights.
Speaker A: If it makes you feel any better, we don't have a very strong follow-up rate. You know, you're not actually dictating who the next person will be on the show or anything like that. Don't worry about that. But we'll happily take those recommendations from you offline. You've got us on Discord.
Speaker B: Spontaneous, I would say I try to get more women into the podcast that they are, yeah, probably a bit underrepresented. But oh yeah, on the other hand, it's also a lot of males in this field, which, yeah, makes this discussion as a male like myself a bit uncomfortable as well.
Speaker C: We try. It's been a while.
Speaker A: Well, Kim, thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you on and learning more about your work, talking through kind of the history, early days of fx hash. I encourage everyone to go check out Kim's website, which is not fully up to date, doesn't have all your projects on there, but it's partially up to date. And you can see a bunch of his work on OBJKT, fxhash, OpenSea now, you know, for Art Blocks and the other releases. So tons of stuff out there for you to explore if you haven't checked out his work yet.
Speaker B: That's on my to-do list for next year, get a new proper website. So I've been pushing that for a long time now. I really need to get something Serious.
Speaker A: And of course, be on the lookout for the upcoming AGH1 exhibit. You can learn more at agh.run. We've completed the trifecta. We've interviewed all 3 of you, so it's really perfect. We're big fans of everyone in that exhibit on a personal level here. So, all right, that's it for this one, everyone. We hope you all enjoyed. We'll be back again soon with another episode. Until then, bye.
Speaker B: Thank you. Bye.
Speaker D: We're waiting to be signed. Always, but we're waiting to be signed. Grail of the Week. To be signed.
Speaker C: We're waiting.
Speaker D: Always.
Change log
—Initial transcript — auto-transcribed (AssemblyAI) and readability-edited.