Speaker A: All right, hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a very special interview episode. We're joined today by the creative duo LoVid, Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus here. Unfortunately, Trinity couldn't make it today. She had a last-minute work thing coming up, so it's just me piloting this interview, but that's okay. LoVid, how's it going? We're really excited to have you on.

Speaker B: Hi.

Speaker C: Hi.

Speaker B: Good to be here.

Speaker A: This is the first time we've done a duo interview where you're both on the same mic. We've had multiple people join, but they're always calling from different locations. So this is, it's really fun seeing both of you there, like right In front of all the tapestries behind you, which is kind of why we're having this interview, because you've got another really cool, exciting project coming up that's going to include a textile element, but we're going to get into that soon. But first, as always, opening question, can you introduce yourselves? Can you tell us a bit about your backgrounds in art and also, you know, in your case in particular, the story of how you met and became collaborators in the first place?

Speaker B: Well, it's all one story, so that's great.

Speaker C: Convenient.

Speaker B: Yeah, it started right away.

Speaker A: The whole thing.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm, I'm Tali.

Speaker C: I'm Kyle.

Speaker B: And, um, we've been working as LoVid under the name LoVid for 20+ years. And we pretty much met and started working together like a week after.

Speaker C: So we were at, we were at a, uh, benefit for an organization, big party they were throwing that now is Wave Farm. At the time it was Free 103.9, a pirate radio station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And there was a puppet room. We each did puppet shows there. And I did one with like paper and cardboard that was late, very late at night. The last one actually in the room. And Tali was there.

Speaker B: You can talk about it. And yeah, and I did a video puppet show. And then I basically came to him to start talking to him. I was working on a video for a performance at The Knitting Factory. The Knitting Factory in New York. So I basically— and he had a giant beard. And so like a few weeks before that, I was like, oh, I need someone with a beard to do this one scene. And so I was like, both I needed to film him and he was cute. And then I filmed him and we started working together kind of very quickly. Now, so there was 2 things to that. One is that I needed a video mixer. I didn't have a video mixer. And so on the first hangout, he said he was going to build me one.

Speaker C: Which I never quite did, but I built a lot of other equipment.

Speaker B: A lot of other stuff. Partly the most special, exciting thing is that our whole meeting was recorded on video because our— my good friend Carrie Dashow and collaborator at the time was— had a survey. And this is 2001, 2000? 2000. So there were no— just so people know, there was no— there were no mobile media, there were no iPhones. So there was— video was not something that people could just do. It was not very portable, but there was this surveillance camera that was projecting the event to the other room, and it ended up that it was actually recorded. And so we have a beautiful recording of the moment we met, and I went in to introduce myself to him, and we've been sharing it lately, and we usually share it every year on our anniversary.

Speaker A: Amazing. And you both kind of had background in music, right? Wasn't a lot of your early work together had a musical live performance aspect to it?

Speaker C: Yeah. So I come from more of a music background, playing from classical music through jazz into more rock and experimental and noise. And Tali really came from more of the visual arts side. So she was doing paintings, drawing, single-channel video. And when she came to New York, she wanted to do video the way that people were playing music live. I was doing a lot of expanded music at that point. So it was sort of noise, but with a heavy performance element. So it was kind of a perfect way for us to come together to sort of fuse these different art forms and produce something more expansive than any single genre.

Speaker A: Also being a New Yorker, obviously like a big live music fan. I probably moved formally into the city like 2008. So a little bit after, I missed some of that wave of like the early 2000s scene, unfortunately, but Still caught a lot of great shows.

Speaker B: And even, you know, in the early days, I'm just thinking about that. So I, the performance I was talking about was with a musician, live band, and I had VHS tapes. There was no like laptop software. So I was just like kind of mixing video with tapes. And then in the early days before LoVid, when we were working together, we would do VJ sets at like big raves and bring in a lot of equipment and do live visuals. So even if it wasn't necessarily us doing the music at the time, there was I think from the beginning, a musical component.

Speaker A: I listened to Ken's podcast with you from last year too. So I would say anyone who wants even more LoVid, go check out Arbitrarily Deterministic. Ken was the very first guest we ever had on our show way back in the day. So we know him quite well. Coming from like a live performance side, was there an inciting moment where you decided to move more towards installation stuff, gallery stuff? Like where, because there was some point this transition, right? And I think NFTs are kind of a part of it. But where or how collectively did you make that move? Or were you discovered, right? Like, what, doing a performance, and did someone approach you and say, we'd love for you to do like a gallery thing? Like, how do you navigate that?

Speaker C: Our first real exhibition was a solo show at South First in, I believe, in 2003. Yeah. So what had happened before that, so, you know, as I mentioned, we were sort of expanding what the performance was and what it entailed, and we had done a tour in the winter of 2002.

Speaker B: A cross-country tour.

Speaker C: A cross-country tour. And we had built these helmets. We were embedding video monitors at the time, which were not there. As we mentioned, there wasn't a lot of portable video. So we actually were getting monitors that were designed to be built into or to be installed into the seat of a car. So you could kind of watch probably on your DVD or something in the, in the backseat of your, or, you know, while you're driving somewhere. And so we were embedding those screens into the helmets in that case. And so we had these helmets and then we ended up covering them with our fabric. We can go more into that, but we were doing these performances with just the helmets and we got approached by, by that gallery, by South First, by Micah, and asked to do an installation there to do more of a full exhibition. So we, we did a bunch of different things in that, but one of the things that we did was we built the whole video wear, which was the whole set of protective sportswear that we each would wear.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: We each were wearing 7 screens.

Speaker B: The other thing is that it was never separated. And it was not that it was not just that it was not separated for us, art and music and performing. That was the community that we were navigating. So it's not like you're in a music venue, which is really different than the art venue. The art and the music were one thing. In many cases, they still are. But so it's just a part of this interdisciplinary practice and it can be at some point manifest as an installation or performance. And in fact, our first solo show, we also performed within it and had various other like events and things like that. So, so that was definitely the community that was around us in 2000. So it was not like a one-off.

Speaker A: Well, you've been collaborating, like you said, for over 20 years now. I don't know we've ever talked to anyone who's done more than a one-off collaboration on this show. We've talked to a few artists who have come together for a project and then they go off and do their own solo stuff. So what's the secret to collaborating for so long, so successfully, staying creative, not coming to, you know, not, not butting heads on ideas, at least in an irreconcilable way? We certainly don't butt heads. Yeah, no, no, but not irreconcilable, right? Like, we're obviously all here doing this.

Speaker C: I think a good healthy, you know, safe environment.

Speaker B: Well, put a ring on it. Yeah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: I think for us, the important part is that kind of like what Tali was saying with the music and art and performance and everything being sort of one thing, that's sort of how our lives are actually. We're just integrated. Our whole lives are sort of together. So this collaboration as LoVid is completely integrated into the rest of our lives together.

Speaker B: Yeah. Also, you know, interestingly enough, there are a handful of like probably 5 to 10 artist duos who are couples, live couples around our generation. There was probably something in the era of that moment, a new media or net art that kind of sparked that approach to thinking expansively. And in an interesting way, we started working as LoVid in the beginning as a performance project. But we slowly expanded it to just basically be anything that we do. It doesn't matter who touches it first or last, it's just our artist name. And there was a moment where we were questioning, do we need to switch going under our real names, our names? Because some artists that we knew who started off with a group name switched to using their name, still a collaborative, but they used their names. And we decided to stick with LoVid and then It's really interesting now where so many artists use pseudonyms and handles. We've just kept that trajectory because it's like a record of all the weird things we've done under this name. And it's not defined by one project. It's not like LoVid only does performances. We can take on— I like to think of it like expand and contract as we want because it's just what we do.

Speaker C: Including bringing on other people too and collaborators, because that's also something that we do. I think in that time, early noughts and sort of late '90s, there was this era of a lot of collectives and things like that were very popular and it kind of fit with sort of our aesthetic of where we were coming from as well.

Speaker B: But we didn't answer the question of how do we do it? How do we survive it?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I think what works really well is there's a kind of in-house filtering, workshopping kind of mechanism. We have super different approaches. Luckily, we have some taste, so we usually like the same things, but we come from different places, not just from our background, but the way our minds work. And so we look at things like, I'm definitely much more process-oriented. Kyle?

Speaker C: I like to have a plan and stick to the plan. That's one area where we definitely differ. One thing that's convenient, our friend and frequent collaborator Douglas gave Tali a card once.

Speaker B: I was going to say, yeah.

Speaker C: That says, Tali wins.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I do have the tally win.

Speaker C: We have an argument. It's settled.

Speaker B: It's settled. But yeah, I think so. But actually negotiating, like, your sort of toughest critic is at home and is invested in the success of the work. So when we are ready to publicly present something, we've gone through that process already.

Speaker A: I think you could probably make a good business out of that, like a my partner wins card format.

Speaker B: Probably.

Speaker A: It would be quite successful. You know, but Kyle, as you mentioned, you work with other collaborators and, you know, this is an NFT show for the most part, generative art show. For some of the projects you've done as NFTs, you've worked with coders. Is that, that's correct? Right. And so I'm wondering, what is it like when you're bringing in a coding partner like that? Do either of you have any kind of like enough background in coding to kind of look and like participate, or is it just kind of like, make it like this and they go and they type some functions and you just kind of go, no, it doesn't look right. And also with generative art, a long-form series, or, you know, even a series where you're gonna be curating the outputs and trying to convey to the partner like variables and frequency of things appearing and obviously translating the analog side of like the background of your, your work too. So I know big open-ended question, but like how do you approach bringing in a coder to the equation?

Speaker C: So as we were talking about before, we've kind of had a long history of having various collaborators for different specific projects that, LoVid always involves us, but then it can kind of expand and contract as needed. And I would say in the NFT space, but also probably even more broadly, probably our most frequent collaborator is a great—

Speaker B: And a best— one of our best friends.

Speaker C: Uh, Douglas Rapetto. We've worked with him for a very long time, since, since the Knots, certainly making a lot of physical objects, devices, tools with him and installations. So we have this long history of collaboration with him, but we decided to bring him in when we did—

Speaker B: Time Predictor.

Speaker C: Time Predictor. And he's kind of stuck with us for a lot of our other generative projects, not all of them. We can do some coding, but it's good to have someone like him who just does beautiful work.

Speaker B: Yeah. And over the years, the 20 years, we've just worked with a lot of people and we just are very lucky maybe to be in New York or just know a lot of people. So we get to have a really amazing group of collaborators. And both developers, Douglas and Tyler, for the Tonic Drop, are people we've worked with for decades. So there's a trust, there's a shared common language. They know us and in many cases know not just our process, but our analog equipment kind of inside out. Also, you know, over the years, not so much in the past, maybe 5 to 10 years, but for a long time we were doing, when we were touring, we'd do a lot of visiting lectures at universities. And almost always a student would reach out to us after and say, hey, can I intern for you? So we've had over the years, like, just amazing interns also. And so many of them have moved on to do incredible things on their own. So that's just kind of how our network, I think, has grown also. There's a lot of back and forth. It goes from verbally communicating an idea. We definitely don't start a project. I mean, there's some elements that we know we want, but Because it's an exploration and we're doing a lot of experimental stuff, there's a back and forth. And then whether it's like looking through the code or actually doing a lot of like mockup and drawing and Photoshop and After Effects to communicate more visually specific ideas.

Speaker C: I was just going to say for the Tonic project specifically, there's 2 main elements of it. And so we had 2 actually people each focused on one specific part of it. So Douglas on the generative pattern part of it. And then Tyler Henry, who put together a whole portrait studio with different kind of software.

Speaker A: Which is a really cool aspect to this that we'll get to that project in a second. But I want to ask a little more on like, just like the coding side. And you've had a few projects, Tide Predictor, Augury, and yeah, the upcoming Heart Sleeves, which is going to be with Tonic. A lot of these, they tend to incorporate aspects of those analog devices that you use in your past work. You, and I know Ken kind of got you talking about this too, like making the synthetic synthesizer. And so I wanted to maybe build on that question and ask, what have some of the challenges been in trying to capture those aesthetics from those analog pieces? Like in that interview, you— I think you mentioned things like heat resistance, you know, being in a live space, it will actually physically affect the machines and what the outputs look like. So is there an element that sometimes gets lost in translation when you're moving into an entirely digital work? Were there any like happy surprises where you're like, whoa, it actually like really captures this well. Like, is there a heat variable that the coding partner is able to put in that actually kind of faux simulates that live environment? So I imagine like working in code, like you're clearly happy to do it. And so you must be scratching that same itch in a way that you're getting with analog stuff. So riff on that.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that idea. And obviously, yes, for analog, that stuff is super important for us. And I think There's something about the space in which the art happens that's really important. And so for analog stuff that we've done with physical tools that we've built, it really is those specific tools and instruments being in a space with us and often with an audience where there's this interaction that happens in a live sense that involves a lot of physical variables that affect the analog equipment. Based on the inherent parts of whatever the medium is. So in this case, in terms of Web3, the audience being more distributed, but also having a very clear interaction that's unique and different has been very exciting for us. And so that's one way in which we work with the medium itself in order to gain some of the similar features. And it definitely is satisfying in a similar way.

Speaker B: I think that translations really happens a lot in the concept of it. And there is a visual relationship. So we work off of old recordings or old images and kind of not so much like, oh, let's make an imitation of an analog texture, because analog is just very dirty looking. You know, like there's always like things inside things. It's kind of full of these signals and noise.

Speaker C: Noise.

Speaker B: A lot of noise. It's a noisy signal. Especially for Heart Sleeves, it was like, what are the elements that are going to make it look like a LoVid video? And kind of maybe minimizing or finding a few key points that we felt were really representational. But the way I think what Kyle was saying is exactly right, that it's not the digital versus analog, it's really the social space. So this is digital work for the blockchain. It's not digital work that would be existing in a generic space. This is a blockchain piece. So in that space of performance, of community, of people interacting with it, whatever that means, that's the zone.

Speaker C: One of the things that we've always been really into is sort of inconsistencies and errors or faults in the device or in the medium itself, and trying to work with those as a creative source. It's actually interesting. Obviously, a lot of our analog work dealt with that, and that was where a lot of the noise comes. And that actually was how we even got in the first place to building our own equipment, was from trying to find those moments where the, at the time, NTSC video would break down, just sort of, I guess, the analog video source. And then working to, from breaking it down for how we could build it up so that we could decide where and when it was going to break down and how we were going to break it down. Similarly, in Heartsleeves, we found some things sort of by happenstance that are really exciting for us in the way the actual video works. We're talking about the Portrait Studio, and there's certain things where there are glitches that can be exploited if people want to. And it's not, you know, that there are a number of things that it does that wouldn't make any sense to do with analog or would be incredibly complicated to do, like centering the video or things like that, that, you know, wouldn't necessarily be relevant. But as a result, there are other artifacts and interesting things that happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just like reminded of, there's a moment with technology, because when we built analog equipment, it wasn't because that was the technology of the moment. It was a conscious decision to look back to history where technology was more fragile and more organic. At the time, in the 2000s, where it was all laptops and that was that kind of push. I remember there was like a moment where It just feels like technology is just like so good and so reliable. And so the one place where you can really mess with it is humanity. You just like inject a lot of humanity into it. And, you know, not that the blockchain is like the most reliable web3 space, but there is a kind of like code functions as it should. And then you put people in it and that combination can create a lot of exciting, unpredictable things.

Speaker C: I think injecting humanity is really key, especially in this age of AI.

Speaker B: We want to inject a little humanity.

Speaker C: And I think Web3 really does have a hugely human component that's very important. It's distributed and there may be anonymity and other things like that, but the humanity and the community is key.

Speaker A: And is that what attracted you to blockchain in the first place? I mean, you've had a huge history of creating prior to it. And I think by and large, like the traditional art space is still really skeptical of NFTs, blockchain, you know, environmental reasons, the hyper-monetization of it and just how ugly those apes are. You know, there's a lot of reasons that people don't like it. So what was it that attracted you both to it, or maybe convinced you to it if you weren't instantly attracted to it, you know, and was it difficult? Talking to your peers too and kind of being like, hey, we're selling these dirty NFTs.

Speaker B: I guess before we go to that, I just want to add a little point to the notes you gave about the skepticism, is that I think the skepticism, a lot of it comes from institutions, museums, artists who have invested a lot in the past 40 to 50 years in making, preserving, distributing, selling so-called digital art. It's called media art. So it's a very destabilizing experience. It has been and it continues to be that in a sense, a whole community kind of came in and in many cases people felt like all the work over the decades was going to be erased because of this financial aspect. And so I think that is part of the skepticism that just like shouldn't be ignored. That it's not just like they don't like the art. It sort of like doesn't take into consideration the existing history of media art or art with technology.

Speaker C: I just wanted to make one point about history. I think for us, as Tali had also mentioned before, but like that historical component was always very important for us. And when we were building even our initial analog synthesizers, video synthesizers, it already was sort of an antiquated, archaic technology. That was at the time starting to become obviously much less convenient. Never was a super convenient or very portable or widely distributable thing. And even some of the early video people who we were in deep conversation with, we sought out a bunch of them as we were getting started to build, and we got help from the Experimental Television Center and other places and people like that. Our friend Matthew Schlanger, you know, just kind of talking to all of those people and figuring out where that was from and being very aware of that history. But some of the, some of the early early people even would tell us that everything that I was doing then with analog synthesizers, now I can do with a computer and I'm— I can help you build your synthesizer as software. And we were kind of like, well, that's not—

Speaker B: That's not what we're trying to do.

Speaker C: We're not going for technological advancement in that sense there.

Speaker B: But we also have someone like Gary Hill, like, you know, who's an artist we've admired early on who gave us— what did he say? Because he said that to you.

Speaker C: He said that technology is obviously very important in the world and something that's critical and interesting to explore in art, but it can't be just about the technology.

Speaker B: So, you know, we have a couple of good friends who we've known for a long time that talked to us about crypto and NFTs like early on, Kevin McCoy from Jennifer Chen and Kevin McCoy, and Benton Bainbridge, who's a video artist, and kind of like, I don't know, around 2014, 2015, they were talking about it and we just were not, like, couldn't see how that would be relevant to us. And then when the boom happened, we were definitely very aware of not so much people being upset at us, but that there were galleries and cultural institutions that have supported us that were feeling very concerned that this boom is basically jeopardizing what they've done. And so we were—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: going to get in only in a way that it will not devalue or reflect badly on those institutions and on some collectors who have bought some of our physical work. And we didn't want it to be, we're just going in for fun or for money. We wanted to think about it more long-term. So it was just practicing a lot of control and logistics. And so we ended up in the first year, 2021, slowly releasing Hugs on Tape, which is this animated series, only through select galleries. And at the time there were galleries in New York and LA that were experimenting with having like a blockchain branch to what they were doing. It was Postmasters, Bitforms, Honor Frazer, et cetera. And that was a great experience, but it was kind of complicated. It had a lot of technical and other complications. So I guess that was how we got into it, but really Thinking long term, I guess, is the way to answer that, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker C: I think it was really out of Hugs on Tape.

Speaker B: It was out of Hugs on Tape.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Which was a very decentralized, community-oriented project to begin with.

Speaker A: Out of necessity, right? Because it was the beginning of COVID I mean, I think so many people, you know, like both Trinity and I got into crypto at all because of the increased time at home and just being like on YouTube, on Twitter, like starting to learn about stuff because you just have so much more time in front of your computer. And likewise, so many artists that we've interviewed had day jobs coding and had never even considered art. And then COVID came along and they captured so much more personal time and they just started learning p5 or learning JavaScript in general and creating stuff and releasing it and seeing a community with maybe mixed motives sometimes, some speculators, but some honest art fans like in there willing to buy it and support it.

Speaker B: For sure. And if I can kind of get back into that headspace for a second. I remember just seeing so much analog-looking videos and glitch stuff and things that I know, just like a visual aesthetic that we have been a part of a generation that sort of popularized it, or like touring. And we know our work is being presented in colleges. And so there's this kind of idea that you make the work and then the work kind of goes outside of you. And we work with EAI, which is our video distributor and a distributor There's like a streaming program. So I remember kind of seeing it and being like, wow, I really can see this influence of our generation, if not us specifically, on this new generation of artists, which is really exciting to see. We were always into distribution, so we've done DVDs, we've done VHS tapes, we've done some stuff online, we work with EAI. And so we were like, oh, it's this new way of distributing work, which is really exciting, but we have to be super specific of what we put there and that it's relevant and it reflects this new media model. So the hugs were just this great vehicle for it.

Speaker A: The Hugs on Tape project also included physicals, right? Was that the first piece where you started experimenting with the sublimation printing, or was there one before that? I can't remember.

Speaker C: That was our first piece in web3, and then—

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Certainly. But we'd done a lot of work. We've worked with dye sublimation and fabrics for 20 years also, probably.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I was asking to transition into the Tonic project here so we can do a good chunk on that. So yeah, this upcoming release with Tonic heart sleeves, we've got 2 different NFTs, code-generated video, human-generated inputs, and then this physical component at the end. It's got to be the most ambitious thing Tonic has done to date, even beyond the chair, you know, sorry, Luke. So why don't you two tee it up and kind of just give us the background story? As I know, it goes back to 2003 in its earliest points of inspiration. So tell us a bit about the project and also how you came to work with Tonic on it.

Speaker C: Actually, the piece stems out of a project that we had done at iBeam, which is actually incidentally where we had built our first synthesizer, the Sync Harmonica. Our first full analog audio-video synthesizer. That piece was called Hack Your Face, and that involved people plugging their bodies into the synthesizer.

Speaker B: So Heart Sleeves, we started thinking about it in 2022, in the period between the time that we submitted Tide Predictor to Art Blocks and we were waiting to find out if it was going to go past through the curatorial board and how that's all going to go. But we were just kind of getting that delicious flavor of generative art. And that was sort of our idea. It's like, okay, what have we done? What we're gonna go kind of rely on our body of work and what are we missing? What's missing? And so we were like, okay, it's the body, it's the human interaction, it's bringing in the audience collector experience into personalizing the artwork. And so yeah, we were looking at Hack Your Face and actually we did a similar performance to that at MOMA in 2008. So there was like a moment where we were doing these Performances, I think we were calling them Wireful Interventions, various projects where people were touching cables and then affecting the signals that we were playing live. And also going back to this idea of immersion, which we're always thinking about, and that comes from spending time with moving image as makers and also sometimes audience members and like really intense enveloping artworks. We actually started a conversation with EAT Works in New York, which is like a kind of production studio. And we were developing it with their support and encouragement for like a year and a half. So this has been in development for a very long time. We had a pretty clear goal of what we wanted the project to be, which is this immersive portrait. But then after our Tide Predictor launch with Art Blocks, we got to experience that pace of a Dutch auction and this, how fast it is. That like whole adrenaline rush around a drop, right? And so we were like, okay, we wanna work with that energy. We wanna work with that fast excitement, but also how do we then create an opportunity to slow down and have an in-depth relationship with the artwork? So that's how this idea of these 2 parts, 1 artwork that can lead to lots of different things. Yeah. Developed. And then we, for the past year and a half, have just like privately shared it with so many amazing people, platforms, curators, museums, curators, like so many artists, so many people have nourished this work. Like, honestly, it's been amazing. And then Tonic came in kind of in the last few months as just the perfect partner. And we were already experimenting with the physical part of it before we met them. And of course, that's their emphasis. We wanted a partner that can give the work focused attention. They don't do a lot of drops. It's very curated. And we also have this long view with them. So they have some connections to, or at least an understanding of the art world at large. And this is how we're all contextualizing this piece. So it's a launch. There's so many layers and other things that are already planned to come out of this work. But the goal has always been, and because of the nature of this piece, that we're going to release it and see what people do with it, is that it's not like drop day and then you move on to the next thing. We're in it for like the next year or 2 with like evolving things.

Speaker C: One other part that was really exciting for us about Tonic is how they do the physicals. I mean, you mentioned Luke's piece. We can't wait to get our chair. And I think for us, where we've come from, and has always been critical for us is translation between different mediums. So for example, we generate an analog signal and then that gets output as either sound and/or video, and then that gets translated into something else and captured and printed as a still on fabric or on something else. So similarly with heart sleeves, we have the pattern, in this case code-generated pattern, That then gets translated into this portrait with the additional input source of the audience member, of the collector, which has always also been really important for us, that integration. And then from there, that can get output as a physical object on Fabric, et cetera. So this ability to fuse, to go from sort of Web3 to physical form and back again is really important for us.

Speaker B: Yeah, and in many cases, a lot of our physical work that can exist sometime in a gallery without digital component, but they are digital-born artworks have a presence of physical manifestation of digital culture. And so that's something that we've thought about a lot over the years, and we've been really in the practice of constantly thinking of the relationship between the mediated spaces and the physical spaces. And those are not one-to-one. So in our case, we've done a lot of print work, but usually if it's printed, there's some iteration on it. It's not just like you take something and you print it. And a lot of it comes from video and working in moving image, so it's not like instantly printable or plotted. You have to think about what it means to bring it into the physical realm and how you capture movement and participation, interactivity in a still image. And there's something really beautiful about having a physical work that is not ephemeral and can hang on a wall or you can hold in your hand or you can wear. But those spaces of, like I was saying, translation are really a core A philosophical essence.

Speaker C: Defining, defining classic LoVid.

Speaker B: Classic LoVid. Yeah.

Speaker A: I have to share some pictures of this. Uh, so do you know the artist Anna Lucia?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, so she did a project last year called Generations that was a digital quilt, and my mom makes quilts, and so—

Speaker B: I saw that.

Speaker A: Okay, okay. Yeah, so yeah, I'm right there with you on the physical connection side of it.

Speaker B: And actually, we have our collection at home of Physical art kind of focuses a lot of it on relationship between craft and digital media. And we have a few really amazing woven pieces here, other things that are in that space too. So we try to live with it as much as we can.

Speaker A: Weaving is a really common theme that comes up, or just textile, not just in like generative art in general, but in your work, right? And I've just noticed even in like looking back on your website at the projects that you have up there. The idea of like weaving wires, like, you know, circuitry feeling woven. It also calls back to the earliest days of like computers, right? The idea of being influenced by the Jacquard loom and like making that type of thing electronic. So is that partially why you feel like this textile is the way? Is that why that kind of manifests a lot in the physicals that you do? Is it this like ode to the history of computers?

Speaker C: I mean, that's definitely a part of it. Originally, some of the ideas of fabric were that it can be wearable in a relationship to the body, even if it's not being worn in the format, you know, if something's framed, it's not going to be worn in that way, but that that's a possibility, the softness of it relating to the fabric and also to the hardness of electronics often, which are often in sort of hard cases and things like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, we definitely have thought about weaving and like the memory core stuff from, you know, the early computing. In the aughts, there was a whole scene with like Kat Mazza and people like that who were doing really interesting conceptual work around knitting and weaving and early computing. So that was like a whole moment around there as well. And I think that just kind of became a part of what we do. The other thing, like Kyle said, is that when you see textile, even if it's like stretched as a canvas, people kind of project their body onto it. Even if you're not allowed to touch it, there's a very visceral feeling of this immersion of the body. And so again, this like being in these immersive spaces, virtually immersive, And then just like thinking of texture, textile is just a really good communicator of it. And there's just such a rich history for like, you know, forever and eternity of the relationship between craftsmen and artists interpreting the world around them, the natural world historically, but now the digital world into tapestry and the way that specifically has a relation to domestic spaces. And where textile exists. So yes, the technology evolution, but also more generally kind of industry and craft, I think, is also part of it.

Speaker C: I think that for fabrics, you talk about the sort of the material aspect of it woven into the fabric of it, so to speak, is the ones and zeros, right? The ups and downs, just like you would have in a binary or computational system. So for us, obviously, that's of huge interest. And what we did with some of the other, like the Woven Wire projects, that's an extension of the Wirefall interventions that we were talking about before. It was another way of getting our audience to have similar interactions with the technology that we have. And we love that. And that's a great thing in Web3 as well, in a different sense. But with these, we would have these installations where people could actually touch the wires that we were also using to carry the video and the audio signal. In the same installation, and they would make a weaving. And so that's sort of like a third component, right? So there's ones, zeros, and people, right? And they would make these weavings, and it actually said a lot about the space and the community they were in when they actually would make these collaborative weavings. They were sort of collaborative, made over time throughout the installation. There would be wires supplied at the gallery or museum, and people could kind of weave their component or do one row or whatever of the weaving. with the wires. And we found that it really just gave a really interesting lens into the local culture because they came out so differently from just the different places where they were installed.

Speaker B: The other thing I'm going to add, when we work on a project, we don't just reference things. We try to really work within a community. So we actually have some strong ties to textile-based artists in New York and have done shows with some textile artists. Liz Collins is an example of an amazing artist who also is a textile designer. And I spent a lot of time talking with her about patterns and repetition. So as soon as we started recording our videos in like 2003, there's just this inherent nature of repetition and pattern within the analog instrument. And so that relationship to this like continuous signal of the analog To the textile design, the tiling, the looping and repetition to get to this feeling of infinity, basically, cuz you're kind of designing something that's supposed to work forever. So those analogies of like video and the textile are super interesting and we really like to go deep into it.

Speaker A: You know, you've been in Web3 for a couple years now and you've interacted with, I, I, I'm not, are you guys in Discord at all? Do you ever jump into any of those communities? Okay. What is your impression of the Web3 community? And is it that collective impression of these people that informed some of like the ability to build in anonymity to the actual face portion, right? I mean, that is a huge part of not just Web3, but just living online in general, the anonymous or pseudonymous nature of it. What do you think of all this now that you've been here for a couple years?

Speaker C: I'll let Tali take the Discord, manage the Discord section here, but I just wanted to say that, yeah, I think In this medium, the access points that we have to get people's personal information, in terms of this case, I'm talking about traits, right? Their personal attributes to be involved in the work. The main access point that we have, the most easy access point that we have that's very personal is through the camera, right? And so obviously, yes, there are some other ways, but that's sort of a very easy access point to bring people in. And yeah, it does relate to anonymity because there's obviously concerns that various people will have there. You know, when you're in an in-person space, you see the people who are there, you know who's there. Maybe you don't know who they are, but you would see that there's a— what their face looks like. So same thing here. The only difference is that because it's tied to their wallet where they are, people could easily be doxxed by it. So that would— that was important for us in thinking about, uh, Heart Sleeves.

Speaker B: So it's amazing. It's like, I don't know if you— I'm sure you try to like explain this to people who are not on Discord and Twitter, but like, it's such an incredible experience. And the fact that people show up every day, all day, and whatever it is that they choose to give of themselves, they give it so much, right? Like, there is a kind of like, everybody's curating it, or everybody's very intentional, but sometimes people are just there. And so That idea of showing up and bringing it to maximum is a lot of what inspired this work. And so it's not just how you look and anonymity and how much you want to reveal, but it is about attention and presence. It's showing up, it's being there. And there's something, the energy of Discord, the energy around the conversation, the The speed in which things go through, the sort of emotional rollercoaster on display constantly is just so raw and incredible. It's an amazing journey and really like a privilege to be able to experience it. And part of what we want Heartstive to be is a reflection of it. We want it to serve and be enjoyed by the community and the collectors, but we think that there is a lot that the outside world can gain from seeing the humanity and the beauty. And that is a way that we think will be like really communicated. So the people that make the economy, that make the art, that supported that ecosystem, we really want to represent it. It's been hugely inspiring on artistic and human level. And because of things like Marfa and lots of events in New York with Bright Moments and Art Blocks, we've gotten to be very close with a lot of these people. So it's completely inspired by the garden of humanity that Web3 is.

Speaker A: I can totally imagine a Heart Sleeves meetup at Marfa next year and people swapping portraits, right? Swapping physicals of themselves and collecting their friends and swapping the NFTs and kind of that innate collectibility of it, right? Really plays into the community side. In a way that maybe you wouldn't expect immediately, but like, oh, like, not that I know Snowfro, but it would be cool to like own Snowfro heart sleeves, right? As like a reference to a potential relationship. So yeah, I really, really like that. So it sounds like that's what excites you both about Web3, but is there anything that you're fearful of too, as you've been here and observed? Anything that gives you pause sometimes that I think, you know, anyone who's been here like myself, like For a couple years, there are points where I felt like, ooh, maybe not everything here is so good. So I just wonder what keeps you up at night sometimes about it.

Speaker B: I don't think anything of it keeps us up at night. We've seen so many different aspects of the art world as this arc that it is, where, you know, we've been part in shows with sold-out rooms, and we really pride ourselves as performing in people's living rooms and having the most attentive small audience. So I don't think we're fearful of anything. What do you think?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think the one thing about Web3 and sort of the boom that happened, I think there are peaks and valleys of attention and energy and excitement of anything. And that's very interesting. But obviously when something gets a ton of attention really quickly and just really blows up super fast, there's also always room for some of that to back off. I don't think that's particularly scary for us either, because I think this is just something that one would expect. But I think that is some level of a concern, is that things naturally, they ebb and flow, and that mostly just to be fine with that and to kind of understand that that's a natural process.

Speaker B: And we balance it. I mean, we're full in Web3, but we're constantly also talking about it to the art world at large. And we really see the potential. It's not easy, but there is a lot that we're talking to people about. And so we're not like constantly looking at like, what's the next platform? How are the— how's this doing? How's that doing? We have a much longer view on this, but you know, we have that experience and kind of, we've created some like support systems that we've over the years. So yeah, we feel like we have long-term partners. Yeah.

Speaker A: We all know about the secret artist Slack also. So. So, I mean, it sounds like you really believe this is a bit of an inevitability. You know, during the bear market, I think people start to worry about the longevity of blockchains in general. And, you know, in particular for us, right, like we think a lot about Tezos too. I don't actually— don't know if you ever released anything on Tezos or have looked at it. But as the price of the coin goes down, people start to become fearful of the viability of the chain. But yeah, it sounds like you are believers in the tech. Would you actually advise like other artists who haven't gotten into it? Or have you said, like, you guys need to pay attention to this and consider getting in because this will be the way that provenance is tracked. This will be like the way that art will be preserved moving forward.

Speaker B: Our relationship with technology is dated to like VHS tapes. And then we have a lot of work on mini DV tapes that I'm constantly digitizing. We are doing, or have work in a museum coming up from like a DVD that we have to like rip. The resolution's so small. Like we're constantly in this, like, if you've done work for a long time, you've had to rethink constantly what is archival, what is preservation. Now, I do think that over the past 20 years, there's been just a boom of really smart, younger, super experienced media archaeologists, archivists, technologists. So we're in much more capable hands now than we were 20, 30, 40 years ago. And I do have faith in this new generation that a lot of them are really thinking about things carefully. So that's like one part of it. Like, we're like, it's great that it's here. It'd be awesome if we can still get a DVD player in like 2024, but if it doesn't, there's like ways around it. So that's one part of my answer. I'll go back maybe after Kyle says, I'll go back to talking with other people.

Speaker C: I mean, I think that blockchains and Web3 are here to stay. That's not going to go anywhere. I mean, it's possible they may shift around and the importance of various chains may change. But it doesn't seem like this is going to, you know, although there may be more or less relative interest at various times, I don't think the whole premise is going to go away definitely anytime soon. I mean, I don't know if I can take a 500-year horizon, but, you know, in the next 50 years, I don't think so.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of work has been done learning from history. So we're in a different place now than we were decades ago. In terms of advice to other people, We don't go around pushing blockchain on artists. That's not— if someone approaches us, we will share an experience. I mean, you'll be surprised, probably more NFT artists approach us about how to make it in the art world.

Speaker A: Go the other way.

Speaker B: Yeah, it goes more the other way because, you know, if you're not on Twitter and you're not on Discord, you might not even know that there's an NFT market. Like, kind of like no one really cares, you know. I mean, They're excited when there's something cool, but it's not like people go around thinking about it. And so actually my advice will be the same to the NFT artists who wanted to go to the art world and the art worlders who wanted to go to the NFT space is that you have to show up for it. And meaning that if you want to be in the art world, you have to go to openings, you have to do studio visits, you have to support the community. You can't just be there for yourself. You have to like know what's going on. And if artists want to go to the NFT space, it would mean you have to be on Twitter 24/7-ish. You have to join things and you honestly like have to show up for other artists and platforms. You have to experience what it's like to collect. You have to engage and support and share your expertise talking about other people's work. If people don't want to do those basic things, I don't think it's the right place for them, both worlds. You have to really believe in the mission and really believe in art and really believe in NFT art if you want to join it.

Speaker C: I think also just that it's really important to think about the specific aspects of the medium. And obviously for us, this is inspirational aesthetically, and I wouldn't expect that that has to be for everyone else or for anyone else necessarily, but for us that is important. But even Even if that's not a part of the work, even if you're just going to mint a JPEG, for example, I think it's still important for an artist to think about what it means to be working in Web3 and why is this going on any blockchain, for example, or in particular, a specific one, and what are the sort of knock-on effects of doing things in that way?

Speaker B: Yeah. And for NFT art, it means to own some NFTs. So everybody's always trying to twist themselves into pretzels being like, well, how do you answer someone who says, how do you live with an NFT? And it's like, well, Try to live with an NFT, like do it, and then you'll see what it feels like. So I feel like a lot of those questions, we have to be as a community just like really aware of it, not let it devalue what people have built in this space and the true incredible feeling that it is to like own art that's in your wallet. That's not not living with the art, that is living with it. Same as like, you know, trade some physical things with an artist friend and see what it's like to live with art at your home.

Speaker A: Beautiful. I love it. We like to end the episodes with some rapid-fire questions that are a little lighter. So I have one in particular for the two of you because I— you both have children and I saw recently a tweet where you're like, we raised our kids on noise music or at noise shows. Trinity and I both have kids, I think smaller than yours. Ours are both like 1 and 2. I know for me in particular, exposing my daughter to like a lot of different types of music and helping her get like a diverse ear and stuff. So what was the impact? Well, first of all, I don't know how old your children are, so maybe you don't know yet, but what do you think that experience did for them? Like, do they have really cool, eclectic, wild taste in music? Are they experimenting with circuit bending and making their own synthesizers and stuff? Like, Should I be taking my daughter to noise shows?

Speaker B: You should. Absolutely should.

Speaker C: Regardless of the outcome, but yes.

Speaker B: So we have a 21-year-old, a 19, and an 11-year-old kid.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: So yeah, we can report we survived. Yeah.

Speaker C: One of our daughters, our younger daughter, 19-year-old, has done a fair amount of, or a little bit, not a ton, a little bit of hardware work. Work with Arduinos and things like that. And, um, also does a lot of other work in art more generally. So she—

Speaker B: Curatorial.

Speaker C: Curatorial. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, our son does coding and he actually has worked on some generative projects with me too. So.

Speaker B: And our oldest, uh, she's not, she's the one who grew up probably most traveling, most on the road.

Speaker C: Deepest.

Speaker B: Like when we were talking about the cross-country tour, she was like, 6 months old or something. So she really grew up with the stuff and she is probably the least arty of them all, I would say. Or she enjoys it. She now started DJing a little bit.

Speaker C: She started DJing recently and she's been curating some hip-hop related events. Yeah.

Speaker B: She's more into activism, but both girls, adult girls, are organizers in their own way. And really, that's like, we didn't touch on that besides our personal art, but we've done for a long time, a lot of organizing. Kyle had a record label. We used to do this annual art fair thing called La Souperette that they grew up in. So really both of them, I think this idea of community, of collaboration, of thinking where art exists and not just taking what is already there as that it has to stay there and being creative. in making changes in their own art communities and peer group. I think both of them went to it and maybe touring in squats in Europe did that.

Speaker A: Love that.

Speaker B: But yeah, in terms of music or art specifically, I would say that we've also taken them to museums and exhibitions a lot. And just as parenting advice, you definitely want to have your kids be part of your world. So I think like the more you include them in what you love, you'll have more things in common and they'll just appreciate it.

Speaker A: Beautiful. Another music-related one, and this is one we ask, this is not custom for you. We ask almost everybody this. What do you two like to listen to while you work? Do you wanna do any shoutouts of stuff that you're really into? What do you like right now?

Speaker C: We talk mostly about noise, but we listen to actually a lot of different Genres. We did that Spotify playlist, right? A little while ago that we released.

Speaker B: For Ponyo.

Speaker C: For Ponyo.

Speaker B: Yeah. For Art Blocks, there's like a Friday music by artist thing. We did a playlist for that. We have a record collection and you do. What's the most recent thing you've been playing? The Mesher?

Speaker C: No. I mean, we love, we love Mesher anyway.

Speaker B: Uh, we play a lot of noise stuff.

Speaker C: Yeah, we do. We do play a fair bit. Yeah. Most of the vinyl collection that I have is noise or, you know, experimental, some drone, some other things. But, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, I used to, not anymore because that show ended, but when I do a lot of writing, I need to listen to drone music. And there was this great show on WFMU in New Jersey by Pablo. It was called Strength Through Failure, and it was just like mostly droney music. And I would just like play that and it's just like great for concentration for writing. But when I'm working on visual stuff, I have to have beats constantly to level up my anxiety. And so I listen to poppy, dancey stuff like disco. I have to be dancing and not thinking. And recently I found this French pop band called Yelle, and maybe that's kind of getting excited to go. I went to school in Paris, so it always triggers some kind of fun nostalgia for me. And also getting ready to go to Bright Moments Paris, I've been really rocking this French pop. Cool.

Speaker A: Who would you like to hear us interview? If we had a guest on the show, who would like excite you to come listen and check out the interview?

Speaker B: In like the generative art world?

Speaker A: It could be a collector, it could be a curator, another generative artist.

Speaker C: Of course, we'd probably have the easiest time With that, I would love to hear from Mitch, I think.

Speaker B: Oh, from Mitchell Chang. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, I've heard some great interviews with him.

Speaker B: Yeah, he's really good. I'm trying to be more original. We did not prepare for this question. So now I'm like, give me a second. Give me a second. I mean, it would be really cool to have someone who is anonymous or is more like in the backseat of things. Like, you know, we're pretty tight with, or I feel pretty close with the Art Blocks team. And so I think it would be really interesting to talk to people like Pompeii, the people who are sort of like deep in, really in like touch with artists, collectors, and this kind of background a little bit. I mean, what's one of the things that we, that makes Art Blocks really so incredible and is a show of Erik's leadership is that they have amazing people. that are in that team. So anyone from Matt and Sarah who are on the artist liaison to the community side. Yeah, I would say you'll get some really interesting perspective on the backend of it that would be cool to listen to. Yeah, same for like other platforms. I was just giving those.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're trying to get Erik, but he's very hard to schedule, so maybe we'll have better luck going for someone else on the team then.

Speaker B: Give the mic to the people who like run the Discord, who keep eyes on everything, who just kind of have that wealth of knowledge and insight and are really just like the most charming, generous people. Um, a lot of the heart of it all. So yeah, give a shout out to all those guys.

Speaker A: I like that idea. So lastly here, I would just invite you to do some plugs. I don't think we actually said the date of the Tonic release. February, is it 4th or 8th?

Speaker B: So February 8th is the event in New York. February 9th is the launch. And so many things are gonna be unveiled soon. And as we hinted, this project, it starts on February 9th, but it will be unrolling in various ways throughout the next year or 2.

Speaker A: Very cool. And anything else that we might be able to look forward to from you this year that you, not, not a full announce, but maybe a hint, like something to get us excited?

Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a couple of things that, one thing that we can sort of announce is the Museum of Moving Image in New York. We're going to have an installation of Tide Predictor. They have this media wall that we're designing a really cool way to exhibit 4 tokens at the same time in collaboration with the collectors, which is something we always bring into collectors whenever there's an exhibition. That's going to be on February through April with a couple of like really special announcements around that coming up. And that's going to be really fun. And something we're very committed to doing is, and we've been able to place some NFTs in traditional institutions, always thinking about them as exhibition material. So that's something that's going to be really fun and up in New York. And Ora Harvey has a solo show around the same time in the museum. That's the only thing I feel comfortable sharing right now, but lots of more things to come.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker A: So I'll just let everyone speculate then.

Speaker C: What else?

Speaker A: You've proclaimed your love for Art Blocks multiple times, so maybe we'll just say maybe there's an Art Block, you know? All right. Well, thank you both so much for taking the time to come on the show. It was so cool to just chat with you and talk about analog stuff. I don't think we've really ever talked about analog stuff at all on the show. So this is a big first for us. Definitely got me a little nervous coming in, but I think we, I think we killed it. I think we did a great job.

Speaker B: Wait, can I take a screenshot and post this or no? Am I allowed to?

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, you can. I'm doxxed. Yeah, it's all good.

Speaker B: No. Yeah, I'm sorry. I've seen photos of you, but also that I can say that, cuz I kind of hinted that we're doing a podcast. It would be cute to—

Speaker A: Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome.

Speaker A: That's it for this one, everyone. We hope you all enjoyed. This was LoVid. Look out for their upcoming drop on Tonic and TBD anything else this year. Bye. Bye.

Speaker B: Always. We're waiting to be signed.