Speaker A: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a very special interview episode, one that's been a long time in the making, one that we're super We're super excited about. We're always excited about our interviews, but longtime listeners of the show will probably see this one on the feed and go, wow, finally they got him. That's right, it's Landlines interview episode time. Trinity's here, of course. How's it going, everyone?

Speaker B: It's good, it's good. Glad to be here finally. I was apprehended.

Speaker C: You were apprehended.

Speaker B: And forcibly removed from my home. It was, it was very, a very intense process.

Speaker A: Well, wherever you are, you're safe. I can guarantee that. Yeah, so we're super excited to have Landlines on the show, an artist we've talked about a lot and someone who's been fairly— I don't know if I would say secretive or evasive or anything, but you're certainly not very public-facing aside from the art that you share on your social media and stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we're really thankful that you've chosen us to kind of break the silence. This is Huge deal for us. So I guess the best place to start would be, you know, who is Landlines? How'd you become an artist? And what was your journey into crypto, Tezos, NFTs, and all of that like? Like, give us some of the background on yourself.

Speaker B: Sure. So maybe a good place to start would be, where does the name come from? Because it's kind of unusual in a way. And a lot of people actually, and this was not really even my intention when the name came up. But a lot of people think about like landline phones, but that actually has nothing to do with where the name originated from. It was my wife's idea. The first ever thing I was working on, which I'll never show pictures of because it's embarrassing, I guess, had to do with land and geography and data about like, you know, topological maps sort of things. And I was trying to do stuff with lines and land data. And so I put those 2 together and that is where the name came from. And now, you know, it kind of has almost nothing to do with what I'm doing now, I guess. Although, I mean, of course I'm still using lines, but kind of a weird origin story for the name. But now, you know, now it has like a special place in my heart, I guess. And same with the kind of incidental development of the little profile picture, the little yellow blob. It just came about one day when I was playing around, and I haven't changed it since. And now it kind of feels like, in a weird way, an extension of, of me. In terms of how did I come to crypto, I mean, it just came through, I think, Plotter Twitter and seeing other people in that space talking about Tezos. And I just thought it might be a good idea. There's a very low barrier of entry. So Why not see how things go? And, and then to my surprise, things took off relatively quickly. I guess, you know, right time, right place. I probably started in April of 2021. And by October, I had released this project called Art Cards. And that really got a lot of traction and was a ton of work and taught me so many things. So many unexpected things and just like managing this type of project and getting it off the ground and, you know, all the stuff that is beyond the art that has to do with just like interfacing with people, solving problems, so many problems, but also so many positive interactions with people. So it was really great. And so, yeah, that's kind of how things started. I started doing a lot of 3D stuff. I used Blender a lot to begin with. And then kind of once fx hash came out, I I mean, I was always interested in generative stuff. All my stuff in Blender was generative. And when FXHash came out, I was like, I guess I have to really learn how to use JavaScript. And since then, I mean, I've really kind of focused on what can I do with the toolset that is available, given like the common libraries that you can use on FXHash. And at first it was kind of frustrating, I think, because I was used to, I guess, the luxury of getting things to render for like 30 minutes or an hour, whereas you just can't do that on FXHash. Like you have to, you have to have things, you know, pretty quick. In fact, in the early days, the time was even shorter if I recall correctly on FXHash. So it was kind of a big transition, but one I'm really happy I made because anytime you'd make a change like that, then you impose new restrictions on yourself. And I think new interesting things came out of that that I certainly could not have expected, which has kind of been the theme of my whole crypto adventure has been just a lot of unexpected things. And, and yeah, actually, I made a note of this and then I completely forgot to say it. I wanted to just give a huge shout out to the 3,698 people that have collected my work over just the last year. I mean, it's just completely incredible. I'm so thankful that you all collect my work and support me Having fun, artistic exploration, creativity time. It's great. I mean, it's just amazing.

Speaker C: I think it's great from our perspective as well. And like major kudos to you for putting yourself out there and not just coming onto the show to talk about yourself, but also for just putting the work out there. I know that you were one of the first artists on fx hash, Acromat being number— project number 61. I mean, just everything that you've put out has been spectacular and we've been loving to talk about it and people have been loving to collect it. through and through. You know, we were chatting also just a little bit before this, and we came to learn that you are into coding first and foremost, and the creative expression through the code is something that kind of emerged a little bit later. Can you talk about the passion that you have and, you know, what made you kind of make that crossover into self-expression?

Speaker B: I think these 2 themes have kind of been like interwoven throughout my whole life. I did an undergrad in a creative domain in music composition. And then I kind of thought, if I wanna get a job that's a little bit more steady and consistent, I should do a kind of science degree. So now I'm just finishing up a PhD in AI and computer science. And then now all of a sudden in the last year, I've turned back to the kind of creative side and actually am able to produce all this art and do this. And that's been really fun. So things have kind of come like full circle in that way. So there's always been for me this like dichotomy of I really like, you know, just art for art's sake. And I really like writing code and thinking analytically and solving problems. And so generative art is just one of those perfect areas where you can put them both together and they can both work together. And that has been something that's very exciting for me because I appreciate both those things. And I really like putting those 2 things together and It's fun because it kind of, I guess, I don't know if, if, if you think of the brain as like the 2 sides of the brain, it uses both of them and it challenges both of them and it forces this kind of, I guess, dialogue between them. And that's, it's very satisfying, I think. So I still do always think code first. I think, how can I solve this problem? And then, you know, I understand those limitations when I think about what things I can accomplish creatively. But then I, you know, the other side pulls back and says, well, what if I could challenge you to figure out how to do this? And, you know, so there's like a back and forth. It's very satisfying. There's, I mean, I guess you have that in a lot of different jobs and disciplines, but to me it just seems so obvious how you have to employ both these skills to be successful. Like if you don't have a visual sense or a visual vocabulary or an idea of what you want to communicate, you know, you could be the best coder in the world and you might not produce that interesting generative art. And I think you also need to be a fairly strong coder to accomplish certain things. I think, you know, even if you don't know a lot of code, I think you could still make some pretty cool generative art, but, you know, you're going to have more limitations. And so the more coding ability you have, I think, you know, the more flexibility there is and the more kind of things you could try to produce.

Speaker A: So it's a very left-brained take on art, which was one of the Things we talked about in an interview we did with Zenika and Jamie Musings. Jamie was the one who came up with that term, like left-brained art. And I think it's really fitting for this particular genre, right? Like, and not just you, but a lot of other artists that we've talked to or heard other people interview talk about coding first, creativity came to me after that. Like it wasn't necessarily something that they even knew that they wanted to do or could do. And you know, some people just have innate taste. Some people just have a knack for it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And tying it together with that problem-solving ability. Like, you know, we both tried to learn some p5 and it's like, it's one thing to conceptualize, even like identifying the problem and being like, oh, I know I just need to like measure the distance between these 3 points and find the midpoint and then draw another thing and do this and that. Like you can have a very good order of operations in your head, but then actually executing it through the keyboard and having that knowledge can be a whole other thing. It's like you can map it out and know the math, but then actually getting the—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: computer to do it for you. It's like you need to really know what you're doing.

Speaker B: And there's so many ways of accomplishing the same thing. And part of what you learn in, like, with the computer science background is, well, you got to think about how efficient is a particular way, and is there a way to make that even more efficient and, and cut corners and accomplish those things. And that makes a big difference, especially for the types of things I want to do. If I want to draw, like, thousands of things on screen, I need to at least be somewhat efficient. Not that I claim to be the king of efficiency. I know that some of my pieces take a little bit of time to load, but if they were done poorly, it could take like a really, really long time, right?

Speaker C: I just assume that if anybody puts out something that crashes my browser, that is the art. You know, it's really just a statement about how we are so far behind societally and how we need to make things better.

Speaker B: It's the computer's fault. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. And how we just need to be present and, you know, not online. Yeah. Something like that. You know, that's a, that's a free idea. You can take that.

Speaker A: Well, isn't that kind of what Ciphrd was going for with iframes a little bit? That project, it's like kind of a project designed to eventually stop working on browsers and stuff like that, like intentionally.

Speaker B: That's an interesting thing to think about, like, 'cause that's the one thing that we don't really have much control over. The browsers will keep upgrading, but like our code. stay static. It's stored there on IPFS and things may change. So what does that look like 10 years from now? I'm interested to see.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, you would think most things would be fairly robust, but like, what if we start having to use older browsers to view certain things because browsers have moved on in some ways that are no longer compatible with the way we previously wrote code or things like that?

Speaker A: Those are the things we don't like to think about in the NFT space because it's like, it's hard enough sell just to get people to acknowledge this stuff is real, right? And not a scam. And then to be like, okay, it's not a scam, but also in 50 years it may not work, you know, who knows?

Speaker C: So the PNG file format is forever. We hope.

Speaker B: Yeah. I don't foresee big problems because a lot of, a lot of the stuff that is done is pretty basic. Just some projects may have some difficulties in the future, but I think for sure that artists can address that. I mean, I'd be happy to patch the code or change something or instruct people on how to make things work. But I mean, it's out of, it's out of my control really, right? It's out of all of our control. And so, so we can only kind of hope for the best, I suppose. But I wouldn't be too, too worried about it, I don't think.

Speaker C: You know, not to shift topics at all, but there was something that you were talking about through like your history of creating things for like NFT art cards and then like the fully generative side of things with fx hash. And I know that you have a couple of different profiles up on OBJKT. I see a lot of different styles with your work depending on the platform that it comes out on. For example, the Destruct series is like so different from what you've released on fx hash.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: What's kind of like your process actually, you know, speaking of the technology perhaps for creating the work and like, how does it differ if it's like the whole curated side versus like the one-of-one side versus like balls to the wall, like 8,400 editions that breaks fx side? Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, I'd kind of like break it into 2 categories. At least that's the way I think about it. It's stuff that I'm using Blender to render things, which is like what's for the Destruct project. And lots of things in the past that I've done have used Blender. And so then like the whole creation pipeline is quite different. I'm usually coding in Python and then I have, I can automate different actions in Blender using Python. And so I can just kind of automate that whole process just from a single Python script to go from the shapes or colors or whatever is being used all the way to like a final render. And so yeah, with Destruct as well, I wanted to actually put that code on-chain in the same way that fx hash puts code on-chain. And so I stored it on IPFS and have the IPFS link in a custom smart contract. I mean, the smart contract itself is not that complicated. It just really sits there and stores a pointer. It's like, it's even simpler than an FA2 contract. But I mean, if you're not familiar with smart contracts, it might seem a little bit alienating. And so, so one side, right, is this Python stack. And then on the other side, you know, is the stuff for fx hash, which relies primarily on JavaScript. And so of course I don't really have like libraries or dependencies that are common between those 2 workflows. So, you know, I have different tools that I've built for the JavaScript stuff and different tools that I've built for the Python stuff. So the whole process is different and my understanding of what's possible with those 2 things is completely different. And so it results in very different artwork. And I think that's interesting. It may be, I think in the past I've tried to get a sense of like, what do people like? I think maybe like 6 months ago or something, I put out some sort of poll on Twitter. And I think the majority of people, and maybe this is just because there's more of a community related to FXHash, it seemed like more people liked the 2-dimensional stuff versus the 3-dimensional stuff that I was producing with Blender.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And now just with the amount of time I've spent working with this FX hash stack, I'm able to produce much more interesting things in my opinion than I would be able to produce with Blender. I'd have to spend a lot more time and like build that up and build the tools up and and think of new ways. Just because I have I have like a nice code base now in in JavaScript and I've solved a lot of problems that I continually run into, and that makes it a lot quicker to to get somewhere and to get traction and to try a new idea out even if the idea is horrible. At least I can do that quickly. And I think that's an important part of my process is get something quickly so I can see it and then I can figure out, is it good or is it bad? Do I wanna refine it or do I just wanna throw out that idea completely? Because in the past, I know I've perhaps like focused too much on trying to plan it all out beforehand. And then either I'm sorely disappointed or happily surprised when the code ends up being finally written and producing something. And, you know, does it exceed my expectations or not? And so I think an important thing for me is, can I quickly prototype and quickly like filter out the good ideas and the bad ideas, especially when some of the things I might want to accomplish or some of the approaches I might use involve a lot of small manipulations or lots of shapes, like things that you couldn't necessarily readily imagine. I try to imagine it before I create it, but it always comes out a little bit differently. And so making sure that I have a way to rapidly prototype It helps guide the process.

Speaker C: When you're talking about like this constant prototyping, the throwing things out, the experimentation, and like the different levels of complexity that come with each one, are there any projects that come to mind that you could share a story about?

Speaker B: In terms of like being really complex or—

Speaker A: The surprise of arriving at the final piece that you liked and published or yeah, like happy accident type of thing.

Speaker B: It's hard to think about these happy accidents because happy accidents is literally every day. And that's part of my process is the more I can code, the more I can prototype, the more times I will make a mistake because I make mistakes all the time. And sometimes those mistakes end up being really interesting. So I can't necessarily think of a particular time where there was just this wonderful mistake, probably because they just happened so often and they just change what I What I'm aware that this algorithm can accomplish or produce or generate. And a lot of that has to do even with just spending time playing with parameters. All of a sudden, like, you go like one order of magnitude outside of maybe what you were thinking of when you designed the algorithm with a parameter or two, and all of a sudden you're in a different space and it's like, whoa, I'm in this space. What could I do to enhance that? With sedimentary dissolution, one of the, I guess, um, special things about that project was it was one of my first times really successfully being able to use a shader. I'd experimented with them in the past but never really produced something that was interesting. And the interesting thing, I guess, about that project is it starts out with, you know, this 2D grid-like shape thing that has like this— I use recursion— that has The same seed at several points in the recursion so that you get like internal repetition. And then I have this 2D thing constructed in that manner. And then the shader like runs these processes on top of it to, you know, distort it in different ways. I recall at least, I mean, this is almost a year ago, back in December or January of around a year ago. I recall many times just playing with the different ways of transforming and manipulating that input image, that grid. Hmm. Which already, you know, by all accounts, or at least by, in my opinion, looks good by itself. But playing with the parameters in the shader and it producing like such varying results. I mean, you can just do such dramatic things. I mean, you can see that when you look at the project, you can, you know, turn things on and off. And I definitely recall several moments where, where all of a sudden you could change half a line of code and you could make a very big difference in like the visual appearance. And so that was, it was very exciting. To me, because it was of course something new that I hadn't really been able to use successfully so far, and it ended up producing you know a lot of interesting things. And there was a lot of things that didn't make it into the project in terms of different ways of like manipulating that image within the shader and creating things. I had to pare it down, but I remember there was just a lot of fun experimentation there. I guess it sticks out to me because it was. Perhaps the most drastic. Sometimes in other projects that I've worked on, you know, the happy surprises are a little bit more subtle. You know, they still define the project in some way and inform how I move forward, but they're perhaps maybe not as dramatic. So I don't know, that's my best shot at trying to give, to give a story.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, like, I think almost every artist— well, every artist where the subject has come up has said the same thing. Where it's like a collaborative process with the computer. It's always discoveries along the way, right? Through prototyping or whatever their version of that is. And it seems to be a pretty common theme with fx hash artists in particular. So it totally makes sense that it's kind of like, yeah, it happens every day. It's kind of hard to pinpoint one.

Speaker B: Actually, I have another one. I just thought of it when I was working on, um, on Negative Space. I don't remember what this like parameter set or feature is called to produce this, but it has these like curvy lines in the background and then like straight lines with these polygons. They create these shapes. And that was totally some sort of glitch when I produced that. I was hoping to actually make just little like squiggly curves, but the way that I coded it all of a sudden like filled half of it in. So you have these like straight jagged lines on one side and curvy things on the other side. It was just a few changes and all of a sudden I was like, whoa, this is a whole nother style. And then I kind of felt like that became something that almost like defined that project. Zero anticipation of that happening, but it's the same type of thing, right? It just surprises you sometimes.

Speaker A: You know, one of the things we talk about a lot when we're discussing your work are the colors, and we often reference you as an artist, like, along with, you know, Lisa Orth, I think really noticeably too, as someone who kind of owns like a look on the platform. And even your work, I would say, is not necessarily just defined by the color, but there's like always this thing about what you produce that's like so instantly identifiable as Landlines. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about the origin of that color palette, because it does date back. I actually didn't go back and look at some of the final outputs from art cards, but I know it definitely dates back to the earliest days of your fxhash work. And then also the evolution of it, right? Because we've definitely seen new palettes introduced and iterations on that.

Speaker B: One of the main inspirations at the start was definitely Fidenza and Tyler Hobbs, and that definitely shows in the color selections of art cards. I mean, I admired the color palette that he employed and he employs in a lot of his works, and so I can't really take any credit for those colors whatsoever. But then over time, you know, I've kind of built off that palette. And but, you know, it's always like I see something that someone else has created or see something, you know, in real life, and those kind of color combinations appear stunning to me in some way or interesting in some way, and then I try to incorporate them. I mean, I look at color palette generator sites. I find those really helpful as like a starting off point. And then at some point, I don't know when this happened, I developed my own tool to quickly swap in and out extra colors, like kind of a color palette builder. And so I could combine a few color palettes that I liked, and then I could weed out the colors I don't like, and all of a sudden I'd produce something that, you know, was kind of this subset of a few palettes mixed together. And I found that that was a really productive way to create color palettes. But I've long been interested in like a purely generative approach to color palettes versus like basically hand selection, which is what it is. You know, I sit there, I, I play with the tool I've built, and I combine different things and figure that out. But I think that's a pretty big challenge and something that I would definitely like to continue to look at in future work because I think it would be quite rewarding. But I think it's pretty difficult not to do kind of like a hand-picked selection of color palettes. But that's kind of how I do it. And then I think also just The, I guess, geometry or the structure or the appearance of my work really lends itself to like making the palettes come through. Some styles of work or particular artworks or projects, the palette is maybe less apparent than the structure or the shapes or the strokes or whatever. It doesn't come through in the same way, whereas a lot of my projects, like, you can see polygons in some form, and those polygons usually have like a fill and that color. And it's so the palette kind of comes through clear in a way that you just might not get with different styles. So I think that's kind of why my work gives that feeling is just because I like to use color in that way, irrespective of what the palettes may be.

Speaker C: I mean, I think when looking at the generative art specifically, to me at least, the project that kind of stands out as your first really big foray away from like those traditional color palettes. And it does speak to more of like how you might fill things or have different like types of gradients in there or other sorts of particulates or particles would be textiles. Textiles to me, like especially from a color perspective, is just such a huge departure from your previous work. And not just in that one particular way, across many ways. It's so textured compared to exactly what you were saying before, just being more of like—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: the flat 2D shapes on top of each other.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it was definitely a big change. I mean, the whole project was based on this one kind of shader experiment where I wanted to recreate a textile. I wanted to recreate like that texture and that feel. And I don't even remember how I achieved it. It was some really strange, strange way. But I'm, yeah, I'm really pleased with the result and I always appreciate having the kind of depth that you can achieve using like the kind of a layering, if you will. Like if you look at textiles and you strip off maybe that texture, well then you're kind of back to like the thing we were talking about before. It's like, it's some like flat polygons with like a particular color, but you know, you put on the texturing and then there's like this other layer that does kind of shadows or something like that. You know, all of a sudden that creates a very different feel. In a lot of ways, I think I do think in this kind of like layered way. You know, I approach one layer at a time. And so Textiles was, is a great example of where I'm putting several layers together and that kind of achieves an interesting composite effect.

Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe that's one of the only ones that's not instantly identifiable as one of yours. And if I remember correctly, was it this one that you did reserves on based on, um, oh, the saltiness is coming in wallet holder, like how many pieces you got in the wallet and you did weighted reserves. Is this the piece?

Speaker B: Did I? I honestly don't know the answer to that. I'd have to check.

Speaker C: Yes, I think it's this one.

Speaker A: You had to connect to a website and it read your wallet and it gave you like a certain number of lottery entries. It must not have been fully reserved out because I'm not sure you would have done a Dutch auction if all of the pieces had been reserved.

Speaker B: I don't think that's true, but I would have to look. I think it was just a surprise, if I recall.

Speaker C: Oh, maybe it was Influence that had that.

Speaker B: I don't know.

Speaker C: It was one of those 2 projects.

Speaker A: I think it was the textiles.

Speaker C: Because I remember it was a very different project.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I mostly just remember Will being very—

Speaker A: I was salty because I was like, very salty. I've got like 20 projects, like I'm probably going to get a reserve. This is sick. And then I didn't get one.

Speaker B: Oh, yes, I recall. I recall. I do not remember the exact process I used. I mean, honestly, that is one of my least favorite parts about being an artist and like trying to distribute the work. It's like no matter how I constructed That formula to like determine who should be in or who should be out, like there's always going to be a bias or like an implicit advantage to some group. And I tried to make it as fair as possible, but clearly in Will's case, it was not fair enough. And I mean, I do, I take that kind of thing very seriously. In fact, it was a big concern when I released the Art Cards project. I remember things were just getting snapped up really quickly. There's issues with bots. How can we fix that? And so, you know, I spent a lot of time. I implemented allowlists and I had to like write a smart contract, you know, within a day to accommodate these allowlists and get— make sure that people who really wanted the art cards, you know, could get them rather than people who were just snapping them up using bots or whatever. And so I do take that thing very seriously because, I mean, when it comes down to it, I want the people who get the art to be the ones that are really—

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, looking for it and appreciate it. And, uh, it's a stressful thing, I think, because like it's kind of almost always a no-win situation, no matter how hard you try. Someone will always be a little bit disappointed.

Speaker C: Maybe that was the, the solution with Anno, your FX anniversary project.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Just release like 8,800 of them. Nobody's gonna be mad about it except for me, just for rolling the 90%. For missing 30-something times.

Speaker A: Yeah, but you fixed it, so we're good.

Speaker B: That was exactly one of the motivations for making that decision. I thought like one Tez, 365 editions, that's going to go very quickly. And I feel like you can kind of do one of two things. You can release it without telling anyone. And then, well, you've just kind of introduced a bias towards whatever time zone you happen to release it in. Or you can announce beforehand and then people start planning and conspiring and it becomes equally difficult to get one of these 365 editions. And so I thought, you know what, I've always wanted to do a really big project, and maybe this is the opportunity to do it. So I thought, okay, if we're looking at days, why don't we just switch it to hours in a year? And that's how I came up with that number. And I was like, you know, there's no way that someone who wants one will not be able to get one, and everyone's going to be able to get like a lot of different ones. And the secondary like motivation is just to be able to see what the algorithm can produce. I mean, those 1 of 8,000 possibilities, those things that you really don't see that frequently, it was exciting to see those come out and to see people post them and take a look at them. So, you know, those are kind of like the 2 motivations. Make sure that no one is unhappy, everyone can get something, and also, you know, just see what happens because, you know, we usually say, you know, 500 editions or 250 editions. Or maybe at most 1,000 editions, but looking at well over 8,000 is, um, is interesting. But I mean, it also has problems like crashing, like FXFAM and things like that.

Speaker C: But, you know, I mean, that's their problem, not yours.

Speaker A: When we spoke a little bit before this interview, you told us that you actually think about the market a lot. And I think you're kind of showing some of that here in this answer. And I'm curious, like, what are some things that you've tried and think didn't work that well? What are some things, you know, I think Anim is a weird case, right? Because it's like an anniversary piece. It's a, it's a callback to Achromat and some of the stuff that you did with Sedimentary Dissolution. Is this the type of thing that you might do more moving forward, but in a slightly different execution? Say a 10,000-piece project with, you know, a 40 tez flat to mint and then burning it after a certain amount of time. Like, are these things that you're now considering? And just, we talk about this so much on the show, it's like the struggle for artists, not just to make good art, but then you can get 99% of the way there. And if you mess up the release of it, your whole project can just be derailed by that?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a loaded question. There's so much I could say about it, and so I hope I touch on all the things that I was thinking of. I mean, the first thing is like, am I thinking about these kind of different unique release strategies? The answer is yes. I'm— I've always been thinking about what can be done and what can like push the envelope in terms of dialogue between the collector and me as an artist, or just like fun creative ways of doing things. And so I know the fact, and I haven't acted on this, but I know the fact that reserve lists can be allocated completely to a smart contract, allowing that smart contract to then impose whatever rules it would like, which would allow, like, for instance, let's just say off the top of our heads, we create like one project that has, I don't know, 10,000 pieces. And then we create another one that has a reserve list that's controlled by a smart contract, and you would need to burn 10 of those from that other project to create one of this other one. I mean, that's just not necessarily something I'm going to do, but that's the type of mechanisms that I think about. And there's so many different things that could be done. If anyone listens to this and has an idea or thinks something would be really cool, feel free to contact me. I'm always, I'm always interested to hear what people think would be interesting because sometimes what I think could be interesting might not be, but I'm definitely interested in exploring. Yeah. These different like styles of release and different release mechanisms. You know, I'm also of course really excited about fx for the reason of course that I did this Art Cards project, which the whole idea, if you're not familiar with the project, is you collect a set of cards and each card kind of corresponds to like an algorithm or kind of like a manipulation of shapes that are incoming and produces something else. Once that algorithm is applied. And so you can like stack those on top of each other and like get a preview of what happens. And then you could mint your artwork by combining these cards. And so that's like very similar to the idea of, or at least something you could accomplish using fx. And so I think, I think it's really exciting because there's some things that, you know, people might want. Sometimes people have great ideas that like I don't think of, and it would be accomplished via the algorithm I created. And I think that was, you know, one of the exciting things about art cards to me. And so, so giving people that power in some cases can be really, really interesting because they'll come up with something cool. That's something I'm definitely really interested in pursuing. Kind of back towards your question about like the marketplace. I mean, I think, I think a lot about what is the right edition size. That's usually to me, before I think about price, I think about the edition size. Because it determines so much. And I mean, I've done a little bit of research. I've looked at things. This is one metric of marketplace success, if you will. If you look at the ratio of secondary sales over primary sales, so you get like an idea of like, oh, did it do twice the amount of secondary as it did in primary or 3 times or 10 times or 100 times or whatever? And you calculate that for all the projects, what edition sizes are most effective in achieving like a good ratio? You know, the higher the ratio, the better, if you will. I mean, I guess the better for collectors.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right? I've been to better for everyone. I think everyone really likes a collection that like has a strong secondary. I, you know, I kind of plotted those out and it looks like, you know, it starts at 200, ends at about 600. That's like your gold range. You know, if you go too far above that, then the ratio starts falling down and too far below that, it starts falling down, which kind of makes sense intuitively if someone were to guess that. But it was interesting to see that in numbers and that kind of like informs what I do. I like to I like to be within that range. And then, you know, in addition to that factor, it's also like accessibility. I want people to get it. And that's how a lot of times I end up in that like $500 range because I'm in the sweet spot of, I mean, according to my quantitative analysis of all these fx hash projects, you know, that's the sweet spot range. But then also, obviously, as you increase editions, you increase accessibility. So that's kind of how I usually arrive at those numbers. And I mean, it's been a learning process. I've released projects as small as 25 editions, which has kind of been interesting because those have like very low liquidity, I guess. I mean, there's, you know, few people are selling and it's pretty hard to get one. The interesting thing about that one project that I released that was 25 editions is now I feel like I could never release another 25 edition piece again. And I felt that like a few weeks after doing it. It feels like it would compete with what that project was. And so that's another kind of factor that's maybe pushed me away from doing like too much low edition stuff, because it feels like that was something that made some of those early projects special was their like low editions. The reality is it's this like multifaceted decision you have to make. You have to take all these different things into consideration. And then of course there's the question of reserves, like, oh, do you reserve half of it? Do you reserve? And so that was something. That was kind of explored with like the final iteration because that was completely reserved for iteration holders. So it was interesting to see that and kind of what happens in those situations. So I mean, it's all a learning experience. And then of course, obviously there's like the macro environment and the economy that impacts like people's appetite for how much they would like to spend on NFTs. And so, I mean, you have to think about these things all the time if you want to be able to make a living from it and balance all these factors, because it's not just about the money that is made, it's also about the satisfaction of people who are collecting my work, right? So it's rare that everything's lined up and pointing to like, this is the decision you should make, right? There's— you have to kind of reconcile all these things. And so once I can wrap my head around like maybe how many editions I should put out, then usually it's pretty easy to figure out a price, I find. But editions is always the big choice because it also informs like what is the scope of the algorithm and like rarity and all these sorts of things. So figuring that out like earlier rather than later is really important because the artistic side of creating a project that just has 50 editions is very different than 500 and very different than 8,000. So it's a challenge and it's perhaps not my most favorite aspect of doing this sort of thing, but it's like, I mean, it is, that is how things are. And, you know, it's an interesting challenge. And I hope that people who collect my work understand that I'm trying my best to reconcile all these things.

Speaker C: I think that we can have a whole separate segment dedicated to the whole extracurricular activities, the iteration series. For me, the interesting thing is like, Finding that balance between primary success, primary thriving, so that you're seeing the most going to you, because obviously with royalties taken into consideration, like secondary is good, but you're seeing significantly less income from that. You have been somebody who has seen a ton of success on the primary, like as somebody who sits there and tries to mint your work, it's usually gone in 5 blocks, 6 blocks, which is 2 to 3 minutes. How does it feel personally, professionally, financially, whatever, to be somebody who sees that sort of success?

Speaker A: Perpetually flipped.

Speaker C: And also perpetually flipped, which is, you know, a whole other thing altogether.

Speaker B: It's a very strange feeling. It's a very stressful thing, honestly, because I don't want to come off sounding ungrateful. I mean, and that's why I wanted to start off this whole thing by saying, like, to each of these over 3,600 collectors, I'm very thankful because like what I get to do is amazing. But like the flip side of that and the flip side of like projects that go like this, it's very weird. If you think about someone who works an ordinary job, they're paid on an hourly basis, whereas I can work on a project and then I'm paid on a 3-minute basis, right? And so of course I'm being compensated for the work I've done over all these hours, but like All the pressure of, did I do all my work for nothing, comes down to those like 3 minutes, which is very strange. It's a mix of like the terror of hitting the mint button and not ever knowing exactly what's going to happen, because you never know. And then the, you know, kind of amazement of like, whoa, wait a second, this many people wanted to collect something that I created. And you're whiplashing between those things within a period of 2 and a half or 3 minutes or whatever. It's quite something. And it's been a big learning curve with the volatility of crypto and taxes and all this sort of thing. And like the manner in which you sell some of that crypto in order to like pay for taxes and all this sort of thing can make a big— it's something that was not front of mind when I started. And I know hasn't necessarily been front of mind for other people. And that definitely made things tricky and surprising in some ways.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And not realizing perhaps what taxes I would be liable for. Because I mean, I try to do things like the honest way. I'm not trying to hide my activity from the government. So I mean, like I said, I can't— I'm extremely grateful for it, but I would be lying if I didn't say it's like a very overwhelming experience. I mean, I don't think people are meant to make that kind of money in like such a short period of time. Just the psychology of it is not natural, if that makes sense. Even though it is compensation for of course, a long period of work, right? The reality of it is like, well, there was no compensation coming in until the moment that project was minted. And then all of a sudden, it all came in. It's very weird.

Speaker A: I have a statement and a question following up. Sure. Statement first, I'm super excited in particular about what you're going to do with fx. Because looking at a lot of your work, especially I would say from Sedimentary Dissolution forward, I think a lot of these projects probably could have gone higher in edition count. And, you know, from hearing your answers, it sounds like you're very conscious of making sure that there's like a product market fit with the stuff you release, which makes sense, right? It's kind of like a necessary evil of releasing art in this way.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I'm kind of optimistic as someone who personally loves when projects shoot for like 1,000, 2,000 and really let the algorithm flex and like do its thing, that fx will upend that paradigm a little bit and start to move that window of like what is optimal out. So I guess take that as an, as like a, a little bit of encouragement to Maybe experiment a little bit when that feature is finally released early next year and step on the gas a little bit and be ambitious with it. So the question, which might feel unrelated, but I think actually is related, is like, what is your postmortem on the Extracurricular Activities iteration series and how it all played out? The collect 'em all aspect of it, the work itself. Like, I'm kind of curious to know, did you start with one piece that had a lot of different options behind it and you kind of couldn't settle on one, which is why you did those iterations? Do you consider each a sketch and then the final one that was released the true project? Because the only thing we've been able to relate it to is the Ippsketch sketch series, which is a similar mechanism for collecting and occasionally getting reserves or airdrops. So where does it sit in your mind? What was the idea there and how do you think it worked out?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the idea was to have it more as a sketch. That's how it started. The first iteration The algorithm itself, I mean, if you explain it in words, was quite straightforward, but I found produced very interesting results depending on like recursion depth and that sort of thing. And so I was really happy with it and it actually came together quite quickly. I mean, to preface everything, it's kind of a continual thing I think about is like I create a lot of things that I just don't end up releasing. I'll post them on Twitter. And, you know, people be like, oh, that looks great. And then I'll try something else out. So there's a lot of things that I still like to look at that just don't end up in projects. And so part of like the motivation for something like this was to be able to, for like a particular theme, or like if you want to think of the whole like 4-iteration arc as a single project, was to be able to release more of that rather than having to just try and pick the favorite And so the first one came together pretty quick and I didn't really have exceedingly high expectations for it. And then perhaps how it was priced and, you know, things that were going on at the moment, it really took off. And then I felt a lot of pressure to really make the following 3 iterations like really, really good. I mean, that's always the pressure you feel, but I think I didn't have a number at that point. I didn't know there would be 4, but to have the following ones be maybe a little, you know, more, more sketch-like. The first one feels sketch-like to me. Maybe it doesn't look sketch-like to people, but in terms of just how it was implemented and what the algorithm supports. And so once I saw the reception for that, I mean, my ideas kind of evolved and I was like, okay, I'm going to push really hard and try and create a lot more diversity than I had planned. It was supposed to be like maybe more of a like linear, clear path from first one to the end one. Obviously there's lots of similarities about all the iterations, but I was expecting perhaps like the diversity of the whole 4-iteration project to be smaller than it ended up being. But given the response, I was like, well, I, that was a big response to the first one. I guess I'm gonna like open this project up more. I'm gonna like be more experimental, try and, try and accomplish more with it than I had originally.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: planned. I guess in my mind it started out as something simpler and then quickly became something that was a lot more than I anticipated. And so I ended up trying a lot of different things out, and I had thought maybe more I would like take elements from iteration 1 and have those like more obviously in iteration 2, but that really didn't happen. Like aside from obviously some of the color palettes and the ideas, the high-level ideas, but the code itself was like, you know, almost completely different for each iteration. It wasn't maybe as much of like a code iteration as it was like a thematic iteration is what it ended up being, whereas the intention was that it was going to be a code iteration when I thought of the project. So it really— I mean, and this, this is how it always is, and this is why this is a fun type of work to do. Things turn into different things, and that's, you know, I owe that partially to the community as well. I mean, I hear what people say about my work. I see the feedback. I take that, you know, into account. And so, I mean, in a way, I can't like take credit for how some of these things turn out. Like, it is a complex system that involves like a community of people. And obviously I have a big role in the art that I create, but it's not just me. It is this whole ecosystem that informs what I'm doing. And so, you know, it's fun for me that we have like a Discord that artists and collectors can so readily chat. It seems At least my impression is that doesn't exist as much in other spaces, like maybe on Ethereum or things like that. I try to make it that there's a pretty short loop between like the collector and me, and like that communication loop can move fast and like we can pass a lot of information through because it's important to me and interesting to me because I don't think I'm the smartest person. I think a lot of people have interesting ideas. And there's definitely been times in the past where maybe someone has suggested something or just the way they picked up on a particular aspect made me rethink what I was doing. And I was like, oh, maybe I underestimated that, or maybe I should lean more into that.

Speaker C: Is that in response to like a work in progress, or is it something in response to like a project that's been released?

Speaker B: I think both. I mean, I guess the reality is with a project, you don't have that typically. Only in the iteration series did I really have that, where it's like if someone, you know, had feedback on a release, it's like, well, I can think about that when I do iteration 2 or iteration 3 or whatever. Whereas with projects that are kind of standalones, it's kind of harder, I guess, to typically have that. I mean, it's, it's just interesting to see what people pick up on, what people like. Yeah.

Speaker C: Not to keep talking about the iteration series, but it is fascinating to hear you talk about how it was initially like that one idea of like the code iterations and then kind of going into like more of the thematic iterations. And, you know, this is a project that when it started, everybody was wondering how many there would be, right? You know, like just exactly like, you know, when we were talking about it on the show, like after iteration 1 came out, it was, this could be 3, this could be 5, this could literally just never end and be in the dozens range. Do you think you'll do another iteration like series again? Or would you, and would you try to extend it out more or is it more of like the wait and see? Yeah.

Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, there's so many things. The reality is there's always so many things I think of. I could do this, I could do that. So it's hard to say. There's a lot of things I like about it. And I think having done it once, I might be able to think about how I might do it differently. I think what could be interesting, like just off the top of my head, don't hold me to any of this. People did kind of suggest this, I think, at some points during the iteration process.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like, what if there was some sort of like burning element? And so you could burn iteration 1 and then get iteration 2. And so like, there is like this option for like people to pick which one they want to have type thing. And maybe that could be an interesting dynamic to add into it. I don't know. I mean, the thing is, even if you really think it out and like think how a particular release mechanic may play out, and you know, most of the time there's always these little things like you can't think of because it's like a complex ecosystem and everyone has their own motivations and their own reasons for being here. And it's always interesting to kind of try a release mechanic and see what happens. But if I could just be a dictator and just decide what I want to do and like not care about what people think, which I don't think is a good way to go, but if I could, I would be quite amenable, I think, to this sort of iteration type release. I think it's fun because you can give people a lot more of the algorithm. I don't have to like take so much away because I, I think there's a lot of interesting things. And I think the things that people connect with are always different. Like some people are like, oh, I love iteration 1. Some people liked iteration 2, or I like this aspect of the final one, whatever. And so had I wrapped all those iterations into a single project, I would have had to get rid of like a lot of variations that are in that series as a whole. And I think that would be less fun for people. You know, part of looking forward towards this fx is that I can give that to people and then they can just make the choice themselves as well, which will be interesting, I guess. The same with like the Anim as well. I like to be able to provide like lots of different outputs. It's fun. It's fun. And I think people think it's fun. Yeah.

Speaker C: I'm just thinking, you know, top of mind this weekend, especially For people who are listening to this months and months in the future or years in the future, because we're very cool and we'll have longevity like that. You know, this is the weekend that Zancan has released the open edition generative project on Verseworks.

Speaker B: Mm-hmm.

Speaker C: Just thinking about like that connection between fx where people can get what they want and the idea of there just being infinite editions for a set period of time, whether it's 10 days, 10 hours, go at it for the next 10 minutes. I think there's something there that kind of goes in line with what you're talking about, about giving people the ability to explore and take what they want and also not really being worried about, or being less worried about that immediate first 2 to 3 minutes of, I guess, minting and speculation.

Speaker B: I mean, in a way, I kind of think of Anim as an open edition because it kind of was. For most intents and purposes. And because I think the limit on fx hash is 10,000 anyways, unless I'm wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that's the case. You know, I wouldn't be able to get much beyond that in terms of edition size anyways. It's definitely something to think about and something that will be interesting about fx params. But I think to me, one of the most interesting aspects that we haven't touched on about fx params is one of the things that has maybe been a bit confusing to me or has been a bit difficult is picking rarities. Or why should we pick rarities? You know, sometimes I ask that question to myself. Shouldn't we just make everything uniformly probable? And then like, why do you make this one rare? And why do you make this one common? I mean, there's not necessarily always a clear-cut reason as to why that is. And sometimes these things evolve over time, like with particular colors or whatever. The interesting part of fx is that if you come in with a project that maybe has these uniform distributions and then you allow people to pick what they kind of gravitate towards, then all of a sudden the collectors are defining the rarities. And I think that's very interesting because sometimes, you know, the community at large might have a different opinion than me and might, you know, want to see more of a particular aspect of a project. And I think that is interesting. You know, it gives more autonomy to the collector to kind of shape that. And if you want to get into more like, you know, game theory stuff, there is those aspects as well too. It's like, oh, no one else has minted one that has a red background, you know, for a simple example. I'm going to do that. I'm going to stake my claim on that. And I think, you know, that's also interesting for a different type of collector depending on what you want to do. And so—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Part of the interest of some of these projects is beyond the art, is just the social dynamics of it. What do people choose to do and why do they choose to make those decisions and how do those decisions impact the outcome?

Speaker A: We had an interview with Ciphrd a couple weeks back where we talked a bit about that as part of the announcement of the params feature, and then we've covered it in like thought experiment territory since then, since obviously that's all we can do until the feature releases. But yeah, all that stuff is just is so interesting. And it just feels so like impossible to predict what's going to happen with it when it releases. We have so few data points, right? Just like QQL and some of the C-Verso releases in the past that have allowed small amounts of control over your outputs. It's pretty exciting.

Speaker B: Yeah, I do think the idea of like selling a seed is interesting too, you know, this would be under the assumption that like, basically, there is no randomness in the project. And it's purely determined by the parameters you select, which unto my understanding of how fx works would be possible, but would, I think, violate the ethos of what fxhash is trying to do. But irrespective, it seems like it would be possible. And so the idea of like selling a hash and having people that spend hours and hours, you know, kind of like curating a very particular look, and then other collectors who are like, I just want something that looks good, I think it could be interesting to see that sort of market develop. Maybe not, I don't know, but it's another possibility of something that we definitely saw a little bit of with like QQL, right?

Speaker A: Right. They built it into the contract in a way, right? Well, we have a bunch of like, I think, more rapid-fire wrap-up questions here, but before we move on, Trinity, is there anything you want to cover still on the project level?

Speaker C: I think the only thing on the project level, and this is only something I noticed this week, that your first 2 projects, Akramat and Aberration, they are currently broken, so to speak, because of the external libraries issue. I'm just wondering, is there a chance that they'll be reissued?

Speaker B: I would be happy to reissue them because it was fully my mistake. I didn't understand what I was doing, and I, I have an external dependency in those first 2 projects, and that's what causes this issue. Something I obviously know not to do nowadays. You know, I hate to have people who spent a lot of Tez on a particular one not— like, there's no way for me to give them that same one, unfortunately. I guess until we have fx. Interesting. If you had fx and you had a smart contract talking to fx, I could enforce like particular people so that, that, that person would have to own that particular trait in order to mint it. That, you know, that might be possible. I don't know.

Speaker C: It sounds like a lot of work for Ackermann. I think it's something that you can't do 1,000 times plus airdrop.

Speaker B: No, it's definitely something I am going to rectify in some way. It's just I want to rectify it in the best way possible. And so that requires seeing the lay of the land. But I am interested actually now to follow up on my idea that I just spouted out and see if it would be actually possible to enforce that sort of thing through the fx and some smart contract, because that'd be pretty cool, I think. But I don't know, maybe it'd be a ton of work. I don't know. I mean, it probably would be, but either way, yes, at minimum, if there is no other solution, re-releasing them is certainly a great way to go.

Speaker A: All right, next rapid-fire question. Prints, plots, physical editions. You know, you've released some plottable work, or at least one plottable project on Extracurricular Activities.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is there any plans to either enable printing for your projects through Tender, or are you looking at your own services and ways to provide prints to people, or are you just kind of like leaving it up to everyone else to use whatever? Have you thought about this stuff?

Speaker B: Oh, I have definitely thought about this stuff, and it's been perhaps, I guess, maybe more challenging and tricky than I anticipated, but I want to be providing prints Um, and providing plots to people. I'm just kind of figuring out the logistics, but I've been figuring out the logistics for quite some time, a few months now. So I don't really want to say too much more about it because I don't have anything solidified, but it's an area of active investigation.

Speaker C: So not tender is what we're hearing?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'd like to do it It's valid.

Speaker C: Always.

Speaker A: Yeah, always. So, okay. Another rapid fire one here, and this is speaking to my favorite project of yours, Additive Synthesis. I guess the current meta, for lack of a better term, or one of the successful projects or types of projects in the current meta are like very painted, realistic, like paintbrush style things. You were kind of on that for a minute, but like a year too early, almost more or less.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So have you ever considered or have you ever been tempted to go back down the path? Because I mean, in my opinion, like, I think that project in particular executed it so well.

Speaker B: I think, uh, definitely. I mean, this is something we haven't really touched on at all, but is something I'm always bashing my head against, is, you know, how do I create generative art that like renders in the browser on most devices? I mean, pretty much never on mobile, but on most devices in a relatively short time frame. Whereas, you know, I can think of ways to enhance or, or build upon what was done in that project. The challenge is always fitting it into the, like, you know, renders pretty quick time frame. And so I'm, yeah, I'm definitely interested in, in exploring that technique more thoroughly. I think knowing what I know now, there would be different ways to accomplish that sort of aesthetic. Perhaps more efficient ways using shaders, whereas I, what I did for that project was just a bunch of lines. Um, that was obviously very intensive because you had thousands and thousands of lines. So definitely something I'm looking into, but I mean, I don't just want to go do something because everyone else is doing it. That's, I don't think that's a good enough reason necessarily.

Speaker C: I'll take one rapid fire over here as well. When you collect work, what do you look for in the work that you might collect? You have like things like Dragons and Urban Flora and Grian, which were huge at the time.

Speaker B: When Dragons was coming out, I knew I wanted many of them. And unfortunately, being an effective collector in terms of like being able to get the mints when it's in high demand is quite difficult. And I just wasn't able to pull off getting more than one for whatever reason. I don't remember why, but I definitely wanted, wanted more. And, and I think, I mean, for a lot of projects, it takes a lot of time to like be on top of what everyone is releasing while also like doing your own thing. And so it seems like I'm always one step behind, which kind of makes sense because my primary role is not collecting, I'm creating art. And so I always feel like I'm one step behind, and then by that time, it's like the ones that I really want are at the top of the At the top of the secondary market and maybe a little bit less accessible. So, but, but in terms of what I like, uh, I mean, it's hard to say because it's a project-by-project basis. Like, some things just strike you and others don't, and it's hard to say because some things, um, sometimes an artist puts something out that I would not have expected I would like, and, and then there it is. And so, I mean, I have other accounts too, like anonymous accounts that I use for Collecting and that sort of stuff.

Speaker A: We should have asked you for that ahead of time so that we could see what you liked.

Speaker B: Well, I like for it to be anonymous though.

Speaker A: Yeah, but for us, come on.

Speaker C: We're basically anonymous. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay. Another one here. You know, you mentioned music, you know, you haven't released any music stuff. I think it would be, is that something that you've considered? Are you keen on any of the generative music projects as they exist on fx hash? And do you have any music recommendations for us? We always forget to ask this to people, and I'm remembering to do it here.

Speaker B: I've had one, like, longstanding project that I have worked on that has music, but I don't know that it will ever come out just because I have a really high bar for, for what I want that project to be. And maybe I feel a little bit more self-conscious releasing something that is musical. Having done an undergrad in music composition, I have a very particular sense of what I think is good and bad music. And so putting something to my name that has music in it, it seems really stressful. So I don't know, if I were a betting person, I don't think it will ever come out. And in terms of music recommendations, I also like to keep those to myself. I don't.

Speaker A: Wow. Okay, okay.

Speaker B: It's kind of a personal thing, I guess. It tells, it tells a lot about a person what music they like.

Speaker A: Limp Bizkit, Kitty.

Speaker B: Oh no, no, no.

Speaker A: Sevendust, Linkin Park.

Speaker C: I mean, Nickelback, you know. There we go.

Speaker A: All right, I think we've filled it out.

Speaker B: Okay, middle school, middle school, middle school Linkin Park. I'll give you that.

Speaker A: When you don't give answers, people fill in their own blanks, so, you know, it's just our imaginations.

Speaker C: And I also I also like that your own blanks, Will, is the shameful music that you know I listen to.

Speaker A: I'm trying to— well, you just— no one knew that until you said it.

Speaker C: Yeah, we talked about it before.

Speaker A: That's true.

Speaker C: That's true. It's like, I call it my pizza diet of music. It's not healthy, but it's delicious.

Speaker B: Okay. You know what? I'll give one that I really enjoy listening to. They're called Snarky Puppy and they're— I don't know what you call them, but they're like a 13 or 15 person ensemble. And they do like jazz stuff there. If you look it up on YouTube, you'll find it. But really liking music, I like a very wide variety of things. But then within each category, there's things that I despise and things that I really like. So it's hard to say like, oh, I just like jazz, or I just like insert your genre here, because there's examples in each of those categories that are great and examples that I think are not so great. And it's just, it's subjective, right? I mean, like, everyone has their own preferences, which— and it's totally fine. And I don't want to impose my strong views on other people when it comes to what I think is worthy of listening to and what is not.

Speaker A: I've heard of them, but I've never listened to it. And I'm kind of into like jammy jazzy stuff right now. So I'll definitely—

Speaker B: You know, and the fun thing is they have a song called Trinity, I believe. Listen to that song. I think it's phenomenal. Maybe you'll hate it. It's fine.

Speaker C: You know what? I have a playlist for dinner tonight and it's going to be perfect. We're just going to listen to best of Snarky Puppy.

Speaker B: All right. Well, let me know how it turns out.

Speaker A: Alexa, play Snarky Puppy.

Speaker C: It's Google, but yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, sorry.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Hey Google, play Snarky Puppy.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: I think one last one here that can kind of be the final wrap-up question because we've gone for Quite a while. Really generous of you, you know. Thank you for hanging around and talking to us. Um, why now? Why was now the time that you decided to break the silence, come on the show, opening up a little bit? What made this the moment to get out there?

Speaker B: Well, well, I think it's always something I've wanted to do and knew I would do eventually, which I think I, I communicated to you earlier on, that like it was kind of a matter of when, not Yes or no. But then, you know, after I said that, I was like, oh, it took a while to kind of work up the strength. And I think the interesting thing— this is just my speculation, I guess— but when you have like some sort of anonymous personality, I have like, you know, 14,000 people following me on Twitter or following this entity, this anonymous entity on Twitter. Everyone, I assume, builds up some kind of image about what I am or what Landlines Art is. You know, there's kind of like a little bit of pressure that I don't want to disappoint people. And I know that people would not be disappointed if they just look at the art. And so keeping it at just the art kind of feels like very safe. Maybe that's like thinking too little of people and how they perceive other people, who knows. But the longer things carried on in a kind of anonymous fashion, it kind of just felt easier to to continue in that fashion. And there's some fun about it too. There's, you know, I think there's some fun in the mystery. We've had fun about it. You know, people have tried to figure out if I'm a woman or a man. I'm in fact a man. And so, I mean, there's positive aspects to it too. But I think in the long run, you know, I want to, you know, be a part of this community. And that means, you know, pulling back the veil a little bit.

Speaker A: Consider the veil lifted.

Speaker B: Wow, it's like a marriage ceremony now.

Speaker A: This was excellent. You know, I hope everyone enjoyed listening. I know for Trinity and I, this is like, it was kind of a 2022 goal a little bit, like to get Landlines on.

Speaker B: Oh, perfect timing.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it really was. I mean, or maybe I'm, maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I was like, oh, this is great. Like right in the beginning of December, the timing is perfect. It's really been a pleasure getting to know you, getting to talk and hopefully helping to get you out into the public a little more, introduce yourself. I think people want to know, you know, I think people like to know.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I kind of get what you're saying. Cause sometimes I've listened to an interview with like a musician or someone I really like and it's like, oh, like they don't, they don't vibe the way I thought they would. It's not necessarily bad. It's just different. The stuff they make is still the stuff they make. I still like it. So thank you.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's been great. And once again, just to reiterate, anyone who listens to this, you are also great. And I really appreciate it. appreciate it. And I'm happy to, you know, answer questions. I love, I like having conversations with people in Twitter DMs or on Discord as people have questions about my art or why I chose a particular approach or what my ideas are, or hey, it would be crazy if you tried this thing out. I love that kind of conversation. It's very interesting to me. And, and I just greatly appreciate everything that has been given To me, speaking of like, you know, Thanksgiving weekend, um, I'm very thankful. So I guess we, we should leave it at that.

Speaker A: All right. That was Landlines. Thank you again so much for coming on the show. Thank you everyone for listening as always. Thank you, Trinity, for 2 days in a row of recording.

Speaker C: And thank you to you, Will, for 2 days in a row of editing and recording.

Speaker A: You know, I love it.

Speaker C: I know you do.

Speaker A: That's it for this one, everyone. We'll be back again soon with another episode. Until then, later. Later.