Speaker A: Hello and welcome everyone to another episode of Waiting to Be Signed, a special interview episode. This week we've got Rudxane with us. On the show. A bit of a fortuitous booking on our part. We hadn't planned to talk to him yet. And actually, if you listen to our interview on Ken's show recently, I think I said that Roxanne was one of our dream guests for this year. And then all of a sudden, here he is. So very cool to have him. Trinity is here as well. What's going on, everyone?

Speaker B: Finally.

Speaker C: This is the interview you've been waiting for?

Speaker B: I've been waiting for the invite, but it's, it's been taking so long. I've been waiting until when, when was my time. Finally, we're here.

Speaker C: I mean, you're such a big deal, man. Like, you are a big deal. We're a big deal. You know, you have to get all of those riffraff interviewers and interviewees outta the way first, right? Ken was your warmup.

Speaker B: Yeah. We'll see if it helped.

Speaker A: Almost one year ago, actually, that you were on Ken's show.

Speaker B: Yeah. I have no clue and no sense of time anymore. So I guess you're right. It feels way longer already.

Speaker A: It was back on May 27th. Was the, at least that was the date that the episode Posted to, uh, so it came out May 26th. May 26th is probably the live recording. Super excited to have you here. I think enough time has passed since your appearance on Ken's show that we think that there's gonna be a lot more to talk about. And obviously you've released a bunch more work then, although maybe not as much as we had thought. It seemed like you had slowed down a lot, but we're gonna get into that first. For anyone who doesn't know really who you are, Roxanne, why don't you give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself, your background in art and coding? And what brought you to like the blockchain, NFTs, and fx hash?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm Rudxane from Amsterdam. My background is both in coding and both in art. I studied photography at the art academy here in the Netherlands, quit halfway down and just went into doing photography stuff. Mostly went into the music scene, so mostly did backgrounds following them along tours, along studio sessions. And that's been my main focus for the first couple of years. That slowly turned into a job in the negative sense where it actually became hunting for work and not really focusing on the creative output. So that sort of put me back into coding again. And I focused on how can we make artists more financially secure to focus on their creativity through technology. So we started a company 10 years ago where we helped artists manage their whole back office from calendar management, contracting, invoicing. The boring stuff that needs to happen in order to have to focus on creating. So that's been keeping me busy for a while, but I've always been interested in doing the more creative stuff myself as well. I've always been into blockchain a bit, dabbled around, did some coins, but never really got interested in that part. And I think 2017 with CryptoKitties was sort of my introduction to NFTs. So that is where I started following it, and I think like 2021-ish beginning is where I really dove in and got excited about seeing that more stuff, not just fun images, but more interesting art-related stuff is happening on the blockchain. Pretty much all my time has been going in there from then. Actually, since January of this year, I actually do it full-time now. So it's all I've been doing since then.

Speaker A: Wow. So only a full-time artist for the last few months then, technically?

Speaker B: Yeah, technically. There's no other thing taking my time away. It already felt like a full-time job. It already felt like all the time I have, but now I have nothing else to focus on anymore. So I can just focus on trying to make good images.

Speaker C: Good images, good PNGs. Love to hear it. How has that been so far without life distracting you?

Speaker B: Yeah, really good. It's been a lot of fun. It's been a huge luxury, of course, just waking up, no immediate stress on work, but just thinking about Trying to come up with more interesting stuff, trying to dive deeper into learning about stuff, but also trying to dive deeper into the concepts I'm working on, taking more time to create stuff. I have the sort of luxury that I have a buffer financially that I can actually focus right now. But yeah, we'll see how that goes once that buffer slims down. Up till now, it's only been positive, but it's only been for like 3, 4 months. We're still in the sort of early days and still in the happy vibes right now.

Speaker A: It kind of feels like the whole space is operating on a buffer right now. So it's kind of interesting that you made the transition in January, right? I mean, I guess maybe that was right around the time that people started officially turning bearish, even though maybe the signals were there in 2022. How has that factored in, or how's like kind of watching the market and just the whole space in general kind of in this downturn? Like, how has that felt for you now that, you know, considering you just decided to go full-time?

Speaker B: The choice to go full-time already happened like a year before because I have my own company, so it took a lot of time to get me out of the company in a good sense, and the company still runs and everything happens like it should without me. So it's already been a choice where it's not really on, yeah, I need to do it now because the momentum is there, but because I really believe in what we're doing here, and there's actually a big component that I believe in will have longevity and will have interesting developments over time. So I'm not that scared of short-term market cycles or what happens there. If I would have done it in a hype, yeah, that wouldn't be the right choice. I trust that it will work out at some point. I have enough belief in me that I can manage life whatever happens. And I try to steer away from having any financial component influence my decision, because if I go back to my photography time, the whole downside of that was that financialization sort of took over and worked against the creative side. And right now it actually feels like, hey, I want to do this because I have complete freedom as an artist. And that's sort of the big luxury. So it's important for me to keep that up and try not having financial part be a big influence in there. We need to eat.

Speaker A: So it's always—

Speaker B: we'll have to see where it goes and how it goes over time.

Speaker C: Eating is definitely financialized for sure. But it's interesting when you're talking about the financialization of the space within, I guess, the art and photography space and Obviously NFTs are financialized objects. How is it working with, in the NFT space specifically then? Because it is the financialization, it is the, I need to support myself as an artist. Even if I have a runway, it doesn't last forever. So how does that kind of play into some of your decision-making when, when you release, how much you release, that sort of thing? And how has that changed since becoming a full-time artist?

Speaker B: I'm already trying to pace myself in terms of releasing the last couple of months. So I want to dive deeper into the work itself and go deeper than just having a nice visual. So I'm trying to focus on releasing when the work is there. I'm not expecting to sell out quickly anymore like it maybe used to, but I also never really went into huge sales periods. My big series were sort of at the beginning where we didn't have the big mint prices. Like my big series were like at 2 Tezos or 10 Tezos, and the only things that I released when prices went higher was already like lower edition numbers. I don't need that much money to survive. I can do things on the side if it needs to be. I don't want to release with a focus on the financial component, but only on the artistic component. It all comes down from the luxury I have right now. So the market is going slow right now. I already feel it in terms of sales, in terms of royalties. Already feel less happening. So I don't know what it will do mentally over time when I try to release something and nothing happens and time keeps ticking. For me in itself, I just want to diversify, not just be dependent on one platform, not just be dependent on one market. And I believe that if I make work that resonates with enough people, it should be something that could turn into enough money to at least survive, eat, and do the things that make me happy. And that's sort of the choice that I started with.

Speaker A: We've talked to some other artists who have done it, and probably there's a lot of artists listening who are thinking about, like, I've had some success on fx hash or on ETH, and I have this feeling that I want to go full-time, but I'm not sure if I could or how I can. So considering that you've made this jump, what kind of advice do you have for others who might be in the situation you were a year ago where you decided to, like, you were making that decision?

Speaker B: You really need to think about why you want to go full-time. For me, I'm already used to, like, I have my own company, I was freelance before, so I'm already used to sort of the stress of Trying to make money and and not having any backing or not having any company that that you depend on for salary. So I think that sort of challenge is already exciting me always. So that's not really something I'm scared of. You need to think is that something you can handle? I do think that that stress can be really dangerous for your creative mindset. You want to have some freedom. You want to have some time to create something that resonates with you and build something that you're happy with, and not being dependent on the timeline because otherwise. Money runs out. So I think it's important to make the choice that do you want to be a full-time artist? Actually, in the sense that do you want to make art full-time? Do you want to focus on that? And do you believe enough that you can make that work? But I don't think it's a good choice because, hey, money is doing quite well right now. There's a big bull market. People are buying all my art. Yeah, I don't know if it's sustainable for like a 5-year period or 10-year period. And I think that's a really important part to think about if you actually want to make that move. It shouldn't be for like, hey, I want to just do it for half a year and then I'm going to do something else. But yeah, that's always also dependent on how do you see yourself and how do you want to position yourself over time. But for me, it's a constant choice of saying I want to focus on being happy where I spend my time in, and that's being creative, that's creating things that I like and seeing other people being happy with it. That's really been the focus of why I wanted to do this.

Speaker C: Did you have a really big arts background as a kid? For example, I mean, obviously you've been in the creative space for a really long time, but I think that being in the creative space versus being in like the quote unquote serious art space, is it a space that you feel comfortable in? And is it someplace that you felt at home at before you jumped in?

Speaker B: I don't come from like an artistic family, but my parents have always raised us with quite some going to museums and watching art, thinking about art. My brother is a musician. I've always been working on the creative end of things. So I think it's already sort of part of my life always. And that's also the thing that actually makes me happy. That's already sort of the corner of the world where I'll feel confident and where I'm actually happy and where I think I sort of understand what happens. In a lot of other places, I don't really get why people get excited about stuff. But with art, in some cases, it really resonates with me. So that's always been a big part of my life.

Speaker A: Your career on fxhash has been— it feels like it's been like a cornerstone of the platform. I mean, you've been around Since the start, you have some iconic early projects, in particular Bingo, but also Glitch and Onda. And then I feel like you have multiple grails to your name as well, you know, between Tych, Disrupt, Unfinished, Giant Steps. Like, as I think about those projects and just thinking about other artists that we know who have like released a lot on the platform, it's hard to figure out like, what is Roxanne's style? You know, like someone like Landlines has like their specific color palettes and style, and it's like always very easy to pick out what a Landlines project is.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But looking at your work, other than Bingo and Tich, where you know that there's that connection, it's very difficult to find the through line to it. So what do you think of as being like your style or your point of view as an artist so far? Like what defines like a Roxanne piece?

Speaker C: And how has that changed over time?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I don't think you can say I have a specific like visual style, but I do think like most of the ideas or concepts or thoughts about the work Sort of a line. I'm always very interested in sort of the push for people to create something perfect, but sort of the humanity, the sort of randomness that we as humans have always makes us feel. And those little sort of edge between those two parts where we're trying to aim for perfection, we have a clear idea, but we're trying to work it out into something. We don't draw a straight line. We don't do anything that's perfect, and that sort of makes it perfect. Whenever you have something that's perfect, that sort of feels like design. But when something feels starts to tell a story. So I think most of my work revolves around that sort of concept between where I'm really interested in— like, Tick was a series of how can I make a machine act like a human that would act like a machine, where it sort of doubles itself. And like, Disrupt is about weird gravity pulling like thin lines and how does it disrupt and break stuff. I think most of my stuff is trying to find some sort of beauty when things start to break down or trying to find a way that— how does our human randomness create some sort of imperfect perfectionism that you don't have when everything just happens like the instructions say? That sort of is a line in my work. But yeah, I also try not to create something that's like a Roxanne piece. I try to create something that really resonates with me, try to drive into something that I'm excited about. And if that's a totally different style, then it's a totally different style. I'm not trying to create a specific poster. And if you collect all my work, you can hang them next to each other and they're always an evolution of each other. That's not really the point I'm trying to make in my work.

Speaker C: The artist statement, really more than anything else, that kind of connects the pieces rather than any particular visual style, which is cool. You're striving for something.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're trying at least.

Speaker A: You probably don't get much economy of code then from that approach, right? Do you find yourself just starting from scratch every project or do you have really strong libraries built up? at this point of code that you can use?

Speaker B: Now, I used to do everything from scratch, also because that's sort of— want to dive into an idea, and going through coding sort of helps me unpackage that idea as well. So coding is also a big part of sort of the conversation I have with the work that I'm trying to make. So it's also an exploration through code. But recently, a lot of my work revolves around doodles. I've been building like a library internally where I have like all my doodles categorized and I have like a way of interacting with them, trying to see like how far can I break them. So I'm sort of standardizing that part to build like a big library of doodles that I can play around with. But in most cases, I'm just trying to start from a blank slate and work from concept and the code and concept together brings it to an end state.

Speaker C: I think that we really saw this kind of blank slate that pulls in these doodles come to a head with Hypnagogic. Which was your release on Verse, which was actually fantastic. And I think to me, that was the first project that brought my attention to Verse. I know a lot of great work was on that platform before, but seeing that and being like, ah, why didn't that come to fx hash? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because when you get really zoomed in onto those details, it's like those little glyphs that you would see in bingo. And that's really where you see that imperfection in almost an impressionistic type of way.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: When you're looking at it from way back far, it looks like something. And then as you get into the nitty-gritty details, it's something completely transformed.

Speaker B: Hypnagogic, Garabatos, and Tych, Bingo, those sort of align around that same concept of doodles, which is interesting to me because it can create sort of different levels of art in there. Like hypnagogic, at a distance, it sort of works around the idea of the dream state where you're seeing things, but you're not really seeing it. So it's sort of an abstract way of viewing things. But it's also, for me, it's a way of like, at the end of the day, you think about your day and you're processing all the things that happen in there. But it's all just a part of a really small interaction that each has their own emotion. And Hypnagogic was really a way of sort of the— when you zoom out, there's a sort of cohesive idea of a vibe or a moment. But when you zoom in, it's built up of a lot of different things that each have their own sort of emotion or stress or their Pretty calm, just like daily life or anything sort of feels to me. Little nuances in itself are really interesting, but if you zoom out, it still paints a total picture where those nuances fall away and you get sort of an average picture of it. That's why I think doodles are a really interesting way to play for me.

Speaker A: I'm super regretful that I wasn't really following Verse at that time and missed my chance to mint this one.

Speaker C: I think it went in like the Verse equivalent of one block, whatever that was.

Speaker B: Yeah, it went quite quick.

Speaker A: USDC only. The floor is quite high now. It's an amazing set of outputs, and I was just scrolling through them as you were talking, and I was getting this almost like AI vibe from them. They remind me a lot of some artists who like train models, like Thomas Noya, or who use like AI to make color fields and kind of the construction. So interesting that you're able to kind of like hit this aesthetic from a different angle, right? Like you're coming at it purely from a code-based angle and getting this very liminal, dreamy thing, whereas like others are doing it through an AI model. It's just super cool. No question there. It was more of just a comment that I think it's an awesome project.

Speaker B: Thank you. It was also a really interesting approach because it was sort of the first time where I did a curated output. It's still like very much long form, but I tried to keep it really minimal. It's not like doing a lot of things in terms of palettes. It's mostly monochrome with slight differences and a couple of colored pieces in there. For me, it was really trying to work around some limitations where the algorithm is actually pretty big. There's a lot of work in there in terms of what it can output and a lot of things people have never seen. And then just creating like 10,000 outputs and trying to find a way of curating it and bringing it into a certain direction was really challenging coming from sort of long form. So that was really fun as well.

Speaker C: What was the variety like if you were to release that as a 50-edition long form with the randomness built in versus the curation? I'm just curious about kind of the extent of the algorithm.

Speaker A: Or how many additions would you have done if you had done it as long form?

Speaker B: In terms of difference in output, I think it could be like 300, 400, 500 series. But I think for me it was really important that every sort of output here tells a story. For me, it's an abstract thing, but I see something in there. Some are pretty— I can sort of directly relate it to an image, but sometimes I can just have a sort of feeling. But if I leave that aside and leave it interpretation for other people, the output space that it could do, it could do quite a big series in that sense. But I think it would lose some sort of like the idea of trying to limit it, limit the outputs. I think that adds a lot of strength in this series as well.

Speaker A: I want to follow up on something. In prep for this conversation, I re-listened to your Arbitrarily Deterministic episode with Ken, which, yeah, like I said, came out May 27th last year, so almost, almost a year ago. In that episode, you mentioned collab that was either going to be great or really bad. That was how you put it. And I don't think that collab ever came out, if it was intended for fxhash at least. So is that something that's still ongoing? Is that project gone to the wayside? And is there anything that you can kind of tell us about that? Like if it didn't work out, what were the issues? Or even if you want to tell us like who you were working with, because I feel like we haven't had a really good collab on fxhash in a while now. So that's probably one that we missed out on.

Speaker B: Yeah, it started from the moment where fxhash started to do collabs. So that's where it originally started from, and it's still sort of ongoing but not really actively right now. And I still think it has potential to be something really cool, but it sort of needs to work out. And for me, the, the challenge that I learned from it is that my creative process is quite sort of strict, and I make something that I'm happy with, and it sort of needs to be like completely tuned out of any criticism, anything anybody else thinks about it, and just make something that I'm really happy with, and then it goes out there. And in terms of working together with someone else around that creative idea is really hard. And it's sort of like a constant state of, hey, I think I got something, but then somebody else comes in and even though I like it, it sort of breaks my own conceptual thought or the thing that I'm working on. So it's really hard for me to get in some sort of state of building and creating, but it's constantly thinking about it, constantly trying to readjust. So it never really got to a point where I feel like, hey, I'm actually happy with it and this is something I think we should release. I still want to keep pushing it, but it's not really like a daily thing we're doing right now. It's really hard to find a way where I can do something with somebody else where I feel that the other person can actually do the thing they want to do without limiting themselves, and the same side for me. And it constantly feels like it's sort of we're trying to create 50% of his work and 50% of my work and trying to make that fit together. But it doesn't really add up into something that adds a lot of extra value, but I don't want to do it just because, hey, we're, we want to do a collab. I really wanted to do something where it's adding something to my work and adding something to the other's work. So it's, yeah, it's still really hard to find a way to make it work, but it's still something I keep exploring and want to keep exploring.

Speaker C: So it sounds like you're not going to spill the beans on who this collaboration partner is, which is Fine.

Speaker B: Not yet.

Speaker C: I can respect it. But ever since collaborations have been available on the contract, there's been a lot of discourse, at least on this show, and I think in the broader community about what are some of the things that make for really good collaboration. We've kind of seen the gamut run in many respects of where it is that true partnership and collaboration. And I think that we both see Takata. as kind of the pinnacle of the fx hash collaborations, at least so far. But then you also have ones where it's like, oh, let's mix this thing that I do and that thing that you do. Do you think that all these approaches are valid? Do you think that one is going to be better in the long run, especially when it's— you're thinking about your portfolio because it's part of your body of work as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's, it's all valid. Everybody's own interpretation of how they see a collab working. But for me, it's actually when I work with someone, I don't just want to give them like 50% of the canvas to play around with, but I actually want us are sort of minds combining into something new. So I think for me, it's important to raise the conceptual output for both the artists when you work together. And otherwise it's just, if 1 1 is 2, it's not really that interesting. It's actually interesting when it starts to bring more to the table than I could do on my own or the artist could do on my own. And I think in some cases for me, being an artist is really important to be sort of like maximize on my sort of vision and create something that I think is really good.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And not trying to find the safe way for the art to work. And I think if somebody else works together with me, it should be even more extreme and even pushing things even more instead of trying to be safer around my work, just to have something that's recognizably my work. And together with him, we have something that's a nice visual output but doesn't really tell anything new. I don't think that's interesting for me.

Speaker C: So you're not going to put doodles on a color field, is what you're saying? I'm disappointed.

Speaker B: If it works, it works. You know, we don't know yet.

Speaker C: Uh-oh, it's gonna be doodles on a color field, as foretold.

Speaker B: It could be.

Speaker A: This kind of sounds like something where we should not expect it in 2023 necessarily. This is just something that if it happens, it's gonna happen on its own timeline.

Speaker B: Yeah, but it could happen within a week. Like, once it clicks, it can happen quite fast, but it can also take like 10 years and never happen. I honestly don't know. But yeah, that's also sort of the approach that I'm taking it. I don't want to push on deadlines. If it feels right, it's there. If it doesn't feel right, it would never come out.

Speaker C: If it comes out, it would be your first project on fx hash, I guess, since September, which at this point is quite a long ways back. And Garbados was more for a live event than anything else. So your first non-live event project for almost a year. Very exciting.

Speaker B: There's other stuff that I'm working on for fx hash as well. I'm still working on the TENDER collab. That's still on the list, and that's actually something I've been putting in quite some work. But it's also sort of, yeah, I haven't released that much on fxhash, but I also feel like I do want to release on fxhash. It's sort of my home ground still, but I also sort of want to be respectful to the platform and not just release anything that I have just because, hey, it's time for another release. I actually want to make something that I'm really proud of and really feel that it should be on the platform there. There's stuff coming, but once it's right and once it's good enough, I want to release it and not just Do another project because it's been half a year.

Speaker C: So we'll see about 3 projects come out in the same week.

Speaker B: Hey, who knows? Who knows? I don't think in the same week, but—

Speaker A: Let me follow up on that a little bit because this has been another hot topic on the show, which is just the general fragmentation of the space, which is not to say that every artist, as much as we would want them to only release on fxhash, like not to say that they should or have to, right? There's a lot of opportunity out there, but obviously you crossed over into ETH with your work on Verse and also with some of your foundation project stuff. You've even put a project on Bitcoin called Ordinal Chains. You jumped into the mix there with inscribing technology that I guess was discovered, what, at this point about 2 months ago. So I guess in 2 parts, what is your feeling as an artist jumping between chains, jumping between platforms? What do you view as the upside to that for you and what kind of motivates you to make those decisions? to get your work out all over the place? And then I guess sub-question, let's talk about the Ordinals project. I think the impression was hopping on a trend, but hearing you talk about your work, I don't think that it was just like, oh, Roxanne saw an opportunity to go get some Bitcoin from some easily fooled people, right? So maybe let's talk about what your feeling is on platforms and chains in general, and then let's talk about that because I know you had some drama over that project.

Speaker B: In general, me as an artist, I'm really excited about being able to own digital assets. I think the idea of verifying ownership and having ownership that's decentralized is something that's really interesting to me. And it's actually something I think is really big in terms of like historically owning stuff, but also being able to own something digitally. I don't think anything ever has been this solid in history. That's sort of the main sort of goal that I have, that I want to be an artist I really love digital work, so I think like the digital art is really interesting and adds a lot of new layers to work, and blockchain enables that. But I don't want to be tied to a specific chain just because, hey, that's, that's my chain now. I'm really excited about Tezos just because of the community, the people around it. I think there's a really vibrant art scene around that, there's a really vibrant group of collectors around that. But I'm also really excited about Ethereum, what's happening there about the collectors in there. There's also a really interesting part on-chain that's happening there. So that's really something that's interesting to me. And of course there's liquidity on each side. So that's, as an artist, it's always interesting to look, how do I fit into different markets? And the Bitcoin side was mostly coming from being interested in technology and being interested in what happens with blockchains and what happens with digital assets on-chain. And that's where it came out from. It was— Ordinals wasn't really a thing back then. It was mostly just us with a couple of friends trying to hack around. And it was just being able to upload a file in there, which is way more sort of flat than what we do on Ethereum or Tezos, because there's— on Ethereum or Tezos, there's way more interactivity with the thing that's minted in the end. And on Bitcoin, it was only a way to upload a file. So there was no dynamic component to it. And for us, it was mainly a way like, hey, can we find a way to pull in a hash from the inscription after we inscribed it. So can we make a way that generative art is generated after we mint it so nobody knows what the output is, even me, before we start minting it? The same way that we do it with generative art on fxhash or Art Blocks. But that wasn't possible on Bitcoin at that moment. So my series was a way of, hey, can we find a way of getting that hash after minting into the art and then generate the art piece? That's where sort of the idea came from, and then we inscribed ten of them, and then a lot of people were interested in can we buy it? Do you do an auction? So yeah, felt stupid to not do an auction at that stage. But it doesn't mean that hey, I'm completely bullish on Bitcoin or Ordinals. But I do think as an artist, it's interesting to look around what can the technology do. Maybe it's not in a way that it makes sense at this moment, but I still think it's interesting to. Look at the technology, play around with it, see what it can do instead of immediately thinking like, hey, it is proof of work. We have other platforms, so let's not look further anymore. I think this space still needs a lot of growth, change, experimentation, failure. And I think as an artist, I want to do my part in there. And that's also what excites me. That's the same reason I was early on fxhash. It's sort of the same thing where I'm interested in the technology. I'm interested in what are we trying to do? We're not there yet, but we got to keep experimenting and failing. I'm happy to fail first.

Speaker C: Absolutely. And generative art obviously has existed for way longer than blockchain technology, but the way that we see it now specifically is enabled by blockchain technology with the hashes, you know, really leading to the outcomes and the randomness that is inherent within the medium. Is there anything else that is exciting you either within blockchain or other places within the technology space that you think will be untapped playing ground for artists in the near to medium future?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the most frustrating side for me right now that it's a lot of blockchain things are aimed at the sort of technology aspect of it. Like how can we make it faster? How can we do more confirmations in a shorter period? It sort of feels like we're already tinkering on sort of the small things of what we're building here. But I still feel like decentralized ownership also as an artist not being dependent on a platform Being able to own everything yourself, being able to be in complete control. I think there's still a lot of experimentation we need to do around that. Things like on Tezos, there's almost no artist that has their own contract. Everything gets built upon existing contracts or from a system that will do a contract for you. So it's— we're still sort of part of the platforms in that sense. And I think it's the blockchain and decentralization of stuff is not just a technical hurdle that we have to come across, but also a way of thinking about ownership, thinking about— Yeah. What does sort of access to the whole world as an artist? What possibilities does it give you to release your work or control your work or own your work? I think right now a lot of focus goes to hey, how can we smoothen the process? How can we onboard new people in there and how can we sell more art? While my excitement is more about how can we change things? How can we go deeper into the whole idea of ownership there? And I don't feel like we're. completely there. I think like on-chain stuff, like how do we store stuff for permanent viewing over time? I think there's a lot of things to be explored there, and I think a lot of interesting things to be done there. More focus could be put towards that part.

Speaker A: Just jumping back on the Ordinals thing, you know, I wasn't in particular like mad about it. I wasn't a fan of the Ordinals trend in general, in particular seeing like just the mass essentially copy minting of PFPs over into Ordinals and people trying to like You know, essentially grift, right? And then seeing Yuga jump in with their own thing that was, at least by my eyes, like really low effort. The whole thing wasn't enthusiastic to me. I imagine that might have been one of the reasons why it sounds like you got some hate for the projects that you did. Do you want to kind of talk a little bit about the reaction to your Ordinals release and soothe some of the haters?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not here to soothe. Like, it's okay if people don't get it. Or are against it. There's a couple of things I could say that actually make sense to not release on Bitcoin at this moment. But from my sort of perspective, it's also stupid to not do it and not play around with it. It's a fine balance. And I do see that if I post something about the Ordinal parts, there's way less interactivity with it, way less people that are interested in it. And when it's a platform that I'm bigger on, or when it's about work on a platform that I'm bigger on, there's more likes, there's more interaction. But I think everybody is always focused on partially their bags as well, so it makes sense. But I think it's okay for people to say like there's a lot of things about Bitcoin that doesn't make sense or aren't good for the world right now, or we shouldn't approach it like this. But it's also like if nobody does anything there, the Bitcoin maxis will keep doing their thing, the mining rigs will stay there, and maybe if we are pushing more people towards a specific area, the focus will change as well and we can change things from there. But I always think it's important to keep poking around in there instead of saying like, hey, there's something wrong with it. So I'm not going to interact with it at all.

Speaker C: I'm sure at the start of Art Blocks, for example, there was a ton of like distrust or like a, what is this type of thing? Because it was new. That's just the natural suspicion around anything that's new. And same thing with fx hash where it's like, oh, this is trying to be Art Blocks, but on Tezos. There's always a risk, I think, inherent in going and trying something new on these new platforms, on these other chains. But ultimately, that's the thing that pushes things forward. If fx hash hadn't existed and if people hadn't been interested in releasing art there, the NFT space as we see it today would be, I think, dramatically different. We would definitely have a lot fewer full-time artists.

Speaker A: And one less podcast.

Speaker C: And one less podcast. The best podcast on the planet would not be out there. I don't know, like the Ordinals thing, it's kind of like that punk rock thing to do. And going back to our interview with Lisa Orth, And the same thing with the community and the culture around Tezos being so different from other chains as well. You go where there's culture, you go where there's experimentation. I think that's kind of the responsibility or it's in the ethos of the artistic community to go forth and not conquer per se, but explore and break things.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's also where, for me, there's a big part of the fun in trying to find out like what kind of sort of technology do we have here? Could be the implications, or where could we move things towards? And I think once we're being done with it and we just want to release new work on the same platform in the same way, I don't feel like that's gonna help anybody at all. I think we gotta keep playing around and gotta keep exploring and gotta make more mistakes. At this moment, there's a lot of potential to have a lot of backlash whenever you try to do something weird, and when it works, everybody thinks it's amazing, and when it doesn't work, Everybody knew that it was wrong and we already have this platform. You already see a lot of comments like, hey, we already have this, why should we have another thing? And I think that's sort of the death of experimentation and growth for this space if we think we're there already.

Speaker C: I can see it from both sides, you know, with the rise of Verse and generative art platforms on Solana and other chains, there is a fear, I think, especially within a bear market, that the fragmentation of the space, as you know, Will was talking about earlier, it can lead to the overall dissolution of the space. If fx hash loses momentum and people aren't really interested in releasing there, or people aren't interested in collecting there, and liquidity is moving to other places, who's going to be successful, if that is even a thing that matters? It's fragmenting attention. And I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing, but in a time of high volatility and uncertainty, We're just, everything is being FUDed left and right. At least when it comes to the crypto market, there's a tension, I guess is the best way to put it.

Speaker B: Yeah, but I don't think like the platform shouldn't be the only way of distribution. We have something really beautiful, which is called my wallet address and everything is tied into there. So if it's released on fx hash, if it's released on OBJKT, Abidu, Verse, Foundation, you only need 2 wallet addresses and you can see all my work. And I think that's also sort of the idea of the blockchain. Everything is on a single ledger, and maybe we should have somebody that focuses more on aggregating all that stuff and building a solid single marketplace around there. And maybe the platforms itself are a good way to distribute new work in different ways and novel methods. And I think that's for the platforms to give the tools to artists to release. But I feel it's a weird sort of idea of saying the platform is a good way to release, but everything itself, like the whole secondary, the attention, all needs to be from the platform, on the platform, in a small circle. I think it's interesting to widen that circle and say like, yeah, as an artist, I think I have a responsibility to think about what I'm releasing, when I'm releasing, and where I'm releasing. Also with a longer view in mind, if I want to link people to me on a longer timescale, how much am I releasing? Where am I releasing? And why, for what reason it makes sense for me to do a release at a certain platform, at a certain chain, and then do my other work on another chain, on another platform. And I think it's actually healthy for everyone to be sort of more distributed and not just being dependent on a single party that whenever they change for their reasons, they change something, you're influenced by it. I think it makes sense to have a wider portfolio in that sense as an artist as well.

Speaker A: I think that makes sense. I still have a lot of fear of the current fragmentation, but mostly just because I feel like I don't want the platforms that we love best to become victims of short-term market conditions and stuff like that. Also, I would hate for us to have to change the show from, you know, in the unlikely event that fx hash dissolves, we'd have to come up with a different name. So that would be really inconvenient.

Speaker C: Hey, we have a brand. That's our brand.

Speaker A: On this idea of platforms and being strategic about where you release your work, in a little bit of the pre-interview chat, we heard from you that you are working on moving into Also releasing non-NFT art, I guess what we would call traditional art, right? Maybe you can speak a little bit to your decision to do that. Like, what's that going to look like for you? Is it— are we talking painting, drawing? Is it still gonna be digital? How do you imagine releasing it? And as you're moving into this traditional art space, how are you going to relate your NFT work to your traditional work? And how do you anticipate talking to people in that world about your NFT projects?

Speaker B: I honestly don't know yet. It's still trying to figure it out. But I think as an artist, I don't feel like I'm an NFT artist. I do think like the generative side of art really speaks to me, but I don't feel like I should be focusing only on code-based art or only on NFT art. So for me myself, I'm already working on doing more physical work. Like I always did painting and drawing stuff. My background is in photography, so I always did stuff in different mediums and different formats already. But for me as an artist, I think it's really interesting to see like, how can I do more physical work and how can I give it a space inside the physical world, be it through like more traditional ways, like as a gallery, maybe see if there's a way to do more exhibitions at museums. Maybe it's digital work being displayed in a physical sense. Maybe it's physical work that finds its way digitally. Maybe it's existing digital work that goes into like a physical component, like Tyler Hobbs did with the QQL lately. I think there's a lot of ways for me as an artist to explore where my art should be, and I don't feel like I should be the guy that does code-based art on Tezos only or something. So I think that's sort of the upcoming year, something to explore for me as well. What can I do physically, and when does it reach a point where I feel like, hey, this is actually something I want to put out into the world? But at least that's sort of the focus for me partially as well, not just make more releases on NFTs in the same way that we've been doing. But trying to broaden my audience in the general sense for art.

Speaker C: How has that been going and looking more for the gallery and museum space? I know that's something that we as a community tend to hope for because it's very legitimizing for everything that we're doing. And that's one of the things that's so cool about Verse is that it's putting all these things that we talk about and then we collect into a real-world space where people from not just our little corner of the internet can go and experience it. But it's open to pretty much anybody who walks by. How have your efforts been in that regard?

Speaker B: I haven't been like actively reaching out to like traditional art scenes. I have a couple of projects that I've been working on that's NFTs, but we'll find like a way of releasing them physically as well. So doing a show there. So that's sort of my focus right now. But it really came from where I did Hypnagogic with Verse and that was shown physically. I did my grid studies work with Proof of People and there was also like a physical component. And it's really exciting to be able to stand in front of your work and talk with people about the work and not just chat on a Discord about it. So for me as an artist, that's something that's really fulfilling to do. That's the main reason why I want to focus on that. And it starts mainly from being NFT-related work and just having a way of releasing them digitally. You're looking at videos in the background to see a big piece that I'm working on that comes from a digital piece, and I'm sort of trying to completely remake it physically right now. And then once my physical works gets to a point where I think like, hey, this could actually be something where I want to put my name on and show to other people, that sort of feels like another step that I want to take. But I don't have like a concrete relation with traditional galleries and I don't feel it's my place right now at this point to come around there and say like, hey, I did really good on NFTs, so I think you should give me a shot. I think my work should either create that possibility or not. And that's where my focus goes on right now.

Speaker C: And I think in our recent experience and from stories that we've heard, uttering the word NFT anywhere near a gallery or museum is going to make them run in the opposite direction.

Speaker A: Trinity, I'm thinking, should we start getting into rapid fire? Is there any—

Speaker C: There's one question that I have. Go for it. That we didn't quite address yet. And that is how the heck did you find fx hash? Interview question number one, you didn't cover it.

Speaker B: So there was a really, a lot of cool stuff coming out in Art Blocks. But the whole sort of curation process and trying to submit it towards like a group that will decide felt very anti sort of the idea of why I came into this space. I was really excited about collecting on OBJKT with Tezos already, but there was no real generative platform. So I did some, a couple of things where I released work in sort of like a fake long-form-ish model on OBJKT where we use like the idea of OBJKT to treat it as a hash. But there was no platform just like Art Blocks that really solidified the whole way of releasing a long-form project, getting the hashes on minting. So I was working with a friend of mine to create some sort of contract and infrastructure so we can do that on Tezos, because financial-wise it was way more interesting for me to do it at that point. Tych was originally the idea of releasing that series in that way. And then randomly I came across a tweet from somebody like, hey, look what I'm doing on Tezos. I think it was Cypherd. I don't know. I have— I don't have the tweet anymore. I don't know which it was exactly, but that was when I came across fxhash. And it was actually like a day where I tried to get a project on there and it didn't work out. And then suddenly I understood what was going wrong. And that was when I minted Bingo. But it was really like, yeah, I don't know what this is, but this is actually something I'm trying to build myself at this moment. So it came at a perfect time.

Speaker C: I love to hear everybody's story and it usually does involve, oh, I saw this tweet from somebody at this At some point, and typically it's been around Blobby.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it could be like Sam's tweet, but I think it was something like Ciphrd's. I actually know that I opened like the RGBs and was like, yeah, I'm not gonna mint a lot of those. Oops. Even though we're free. Yeah, it wasn't the smartest choice, but we made up for it over time. But it was mostly just really an excitement about something like Art Blocks that we can finally have without the whole curation layer and the delay and having to be really serious about what you release, but being way more free. In terms of when and what do I want to release.

Speaker C: Amazing. I don't know if I have any follow-ups other than the, uh, maybe the first rapid fire, which were, what were some of your first early fxhash projects to collect?

Speaker B: I think in the beginning I was really excited about when sort of more established names came onto the platform. Gardens was a huge thing for me when it came out because I was already quite a fan of Zancan. So I know that there were like 2 releases from Michael Connolly and Zancan at moments. I still remember trying to get from the one minting page to the other and trying to figure out when does my transaction confirm before I can push another one in there. Contrapuntos was really exciting. I think like Towers from Andreas. I've been a huge fan of his work from ETH, but I've always been priced out. So that was a huge thing for me when he came on there. But early days, it was mostly just really the fun of being able to collect a lot of them. And being able to just dive into like a lot of work. Like if I look at my collection right now, there's so much stuff that I could collect back then because everything was like one Tezos and there was just really a lot of energy around it, a lot of people getting excited. Yeah, but at that point it was mostly just the big names we knew from Art Blocks that came onto FXHash. That was the thing that I ran after. But then after a while it got way more appreciative of people doing their own thing and being more focused on like a specific niche. And that's been sort of more the thing that excites me right now on the platform. The first couple of weeks, I don't think I slept at any point. It was just trying to collect all of it.

Speaker C: Those first 2 months were brutal. Yeah.

Speaker A: I remember when Towers came out, I think you were one of the people in #price-discussion because most of the people there didn't know who Andreas was, myself included. And he was using his name, ERTDF, you know, his, his long like pseudonym. I think you and a couple others were like, no, this guy is like an OG real deal. Everyone should be buying this. And I did, and I sold way too early, unfortunately, on the way up.

Speaker B: We all did.

Speaker A: This is kind of a rapid fire, kind of a your early work question, but I think one of the things you were really known for early on was like the little games. And I guess probably in your mind, like experiments that you did with your early work. So with Bingo, there actually was a bingo game. That was played for holders where you airdropped pieces from OBJKT to folks who got lucky. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of them. And same with Glitch, right? You wrote a script or a contract that toggled the minting of that project on and off, if I remember correctly. It would be open for one block and then it would be closed, but because the front end of fxhash was so slow, no one ever caught it, I guess, unless they were like watching it right at the contract level. Eventually you did open it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But do you imagine yourself returning to some of that more like playful experimentation of early Roxanne?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. I'm still doing it. And I think that's actually like a big component of the whole blockchain. It's interactive, it's dynamic, and we can read data and we can sort of read the state of the current collectors. If you go to my website and do /game, I built a way where you can provide a seed and it will automatically find random bingo. I'm still working on infrastructure for the whole bingo process because I definitely have more ideas over time to do stuff with it. I recently on ETH, I did a collab with UltraDAO where there was an edition where people could mint an edition without knowing which the artist was. A couple of days ago, I did a burn for that one so people can burn it for another piece and it will eventually go into one-of-ones. So there's still a lot of components that I like to play around with, but I just also want to be wary of not being like the gamification artist. I don't want to be like an entertainer and just have like big raffles every month and then that sort of being a financial part. But I do like the idea of always having like the current state of collectors, the current state of how are people interacting with my art, both on primary but also on secondary, on how long do they hold stuff. Everything is written down on the blockchain and everything is there for me to use and to play around with it if it makes sense. I still think there's lot of fun experimentation to be had with it, but I just want to do it in a way where it doesn't become like, hey, when is, when is the next burn or when is the next raffle coming up? But definitely a lot of fun to do those things.

Speaker C: It's so interesting because we're experiencing the space today. We're experiencing little games or other ways to stay engaged today. I'm always so curious as to, especially given the blockchain nature of it all, How those things will be remembered or experienced or cared about 50 years from now in real-world terms, not crypto terms, because that's just next week.

Speaker B: I think it can be really interesting. There's no way for traditional artists to have a complete insight and complete statistics of the distribution of their art and being able to use that sort of feedback loop to do other interesting stuff with it. I think a lot of right now in this market goes towards like the financialization aspect of it, like how can we increase supply that way and give it to other people. But I think It's being able to make your, your art evolutionary, where when somebody owns a piece and they're not happy with it anymore, it could change, or it could open up an avenue for something else that's only sort of available to people that have supported my work or have been a fan for my work for a specific period, without being too sort of exclusionary. I do think it could be really interesting if done in the right way, and I do think that's sort of a new avenue that hasn't really been possible previously. It's only been through like a gallery that knows their collectors and we have sort of control over them. But in this way, it's sort of like a clean view of it. And being able to play with that, I think, is really interesting as an artist if done the right way.

Speaker A: Another rapid fire here, one that we like to ask a lot. What do you like to listen to while you code? And do you have any recommendations for us? And I think actually you kind of answered this one a little bit on Arbitrarily Deterministic, but that's a year year-old answer now, so we can get an update there.

Speaker B: It's still pretty much the same. I'm trying to open up my Spotify, but it's like really just a random list of— like, I'm really into German rap right now. I can hardly speak German, I can hardly understand it, but it works for me at this moment. I listen to a lot of music on sort of loops. There's definitely weeks where I just listen to a single song on loop, but yeah, it goes so wide that it makes no sense to, to call anything out right now.

Speaker A: Well, how about, is there any stories that you can share about your previous career documenting bands? Any fun anecdotes? Or is that going to get too close to doxxing you if you revealed some of the people that you followed?

Speaker B: I'm not gonna dox any, like, specifics, but it's just been, like, quite a wild period where it's just, like, a lot of nightlife, a lot of middle of the night, 5 o'clock in the morning, standing somewhere and Don't know how the hell to get home in it anymore. Things like that, just been a lot of fun. But like, can I think of something extremely weird? Not sure, actually. It's mostly been a haze. Just a lot of fun being around like creative people in their sort of euphoria state and after, after gigs, drinking and just throwing away all barriers and just having fun. That's been a really fun period, but also a period where I'm sort of done with it. So I don't go out that much anymore. I don't go to shows that much anymore. I still really love the music scene. Like, my, my heart lies with music, but it's mostly just the creative process and being able to watch people being creative. That's something that really excites me. With music, I have the same sort of click that I have with art in that sense.

Speaker C: I think maybe then as a follow-up to maybe 2 prior points of conversation for rapid fire is you mentioned that you love at this point on fx hash some of the weird little niches. that people create art in and that they found for themselves. What are some of those niches and who are some of the artists that you could call out?

Speaker B: I'm a huge fan of Punevyr. I really love his sort of attitude around releasing. It feels like it's not trying to do something that's smart market-wise, but do something that resonates for them. So that's something that I'm really happy and excited about. There's a couple of artists that I'm always sort of feel like a relation in style. There's like Pixel Shard, White Cross, artists like those that I'm always really excited about. Reese is like a huge— I'm a huge fan of. Also, if I'm honest, I haven't been diving into projects like I have been like the first year. Things changed a bit in that sense. But whenever somebody comes up and does something weird, that's something that I always enjoy instead of trying to do another release, another release. I think there's so much art right now that Actually, I can't do the discovery tab anymore. I sort of have to hear other people talk about it, and otherwise I just don't have the time to keep following up, which also sort of is a bit sad because I really love that energy at the beginning. Those are a couple of the artists that I still really love.

Speaker A: Whitekross makes a lot of sense for you, another master of the scribble.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: No Hic Nude, shout out. They've definitely cornered the market there.

Speaker B: Actually, I do really love their dedication and sort the perseverance of keep going for it. And I think a lot of people can sort of learn something from that aspect. So I do actually have a sort of respect for them just keep on releasing whatever happens and just keep on going. I don't see the style fitting into my portfolio at this moment.

Speaker A: I half joked about interviewing Hic Et Nunc, but I think it would be interesting actually to hear like who they are, where they're from, what their goal is. And like, is this like a kid or is this someone who is actually trying to support themselves and they live somewhere where Making 6 tests a day is enough to do that. I'd be fascinated to know their story, to be honest. It might be a short interview though. Let's see another rapid fire here. Since Trinity, you're a little occupied, I'm gonna steal your usual question. Who would you like us to interview next? Who'd be on your dream list for a Waiting to Be Signed interview treatment?

Speaker B: You already had quite a lot of people, right? Yeah, I do really like when it's sort of also the people around it, not just the artists, but people like supporting the ecosystem, like interview with Ciphrd, interview with Charlie from fx hash or Ozzy from fx hash, sort of more on the managing side of the platforms, maybe people from Tezos. I think that would be a really interesting interview with people from the foundation and seeing what their sort of view is on the whole ecosystem and how much do they depend on the NFTs and art at this moment. Do they want to focus on it? Or do they actually want to change stuff around there? People outside of the sort of standard box would be really interesting to hear.

Speaker A: Well, we're definitely hoping to meet some Tezos people this week at NFT NYC. And we have at least one person who we might be talking to in the next coming months. It's on our radar as well to kind of get people who run the chain, like we need to know what they think.

Speaker C: I think they love F1. That's what I—

Speaker A: Yeah, I know they love F1 racing. And there's some other weird collab too, but I want to know what their view on art is for sure. You know what, I want to go back and ask one more quick project question here. Another project that you released kind of early on that I loved a lot was Rings. It was really cheap. It was like 0.25 Tez. And the thing that has stuck out to me, especially about this project that is, feels so special, is that it's like very locked in its form factor. There's very little variation in the project outside of the colors. And yet it works so well as a long-form piece. Whereas I think a lot of projects that try to achieve that similar thing can barely get to 50 or 100. They just become too repetitive or they just don't have that zazz that you need to like really carry a long-form project. To the extent that you can kind of speak on that for Rings in particular, because it really does stand out as like one of the few projects that has succeeded in doing that purely just variation in color type of thing.

Speaker B: For me, like the rings was sort of an exploration around variety. And I think like long form has— we're really excited about being able to create art based in code. But I think the big thing in long form is variety over a series. I think the single output gets way stronger once a collection has like a cohesive sort of story to tell. It could be quite wide or you can make it like really, really strongly controlled into like a couple of small parameters. And rings for me was sort of an exploration like how can we do almost no visual variety, but just use color in terms of creating variety around it, but still having like a cohesive series, but using like the minimal sort of input I have to still make everything sort of stand apart. And I think in some cases it worked, in some cases it is— it might have too much green in there, which is like color theory stuff on why it happened. That's something I'm actually working on right now, that the whole sort of variety of a collection to me is the most interesting thing. If we're looking at bigger projects like Ringers, Fidenza, I think those excel at being able to have nice individual pieces, but those individual pieces get way stronger because of like the cohesive total series outputs. And that's something I want to focus more on. And Rings was sort of like, okay, how can I limit myself towards something really simple? And it was sort of an experimentation. That's why it's also just minted. And I think it was like we were there for a year, or we had We reached some point with fx hash where it felt like, hey, well, let's do like a small celebration at that point. For me, it was really like, how can we— if I can change everything, I can use parameters to introduce randomness into a huge pool and make it do— like, how can I make that pool really small and still achieve something where none of them are the same? And that's still a challenge to me.

Speaker C: Where do you think projects like that fit into your overall portfolio moving forward? If you're going to look at your body of work 10 years from now.

Speaker B: If you look at my work over a longer period, I think like the first year you see experimentation in there. You see a couple of series that will probably connect to my longer-term work. But I think there's also a couple of things in there that are about experimenting with, hey, what are we actually doing on this medium? What are we trying to do on this platform? And what am I trying to say as an artist? And I think that's also interesting. I don't think like everything should be like my final portfolio, but there's also like sketches in there. There's more individual work that tells something about the path that I made as an artist and the path that this medium made. But it doesn't have to be like my stylistic output that fits into all my future work. I have 2 series, which is Rings and Loops. They both use like that infinity symbol. That was sort of the intent of saying like, okay, we're doing something around really strict parameters and have one thing that has infinity as output and then see how much variety can be in there. Mostly, if you look into my work, like Onda and Glitch, those 2 are basically the biggest outliers in there that are more experimentation. And I think the other works, they sort of tie together in most senses to my future work and the things that I'm doing right now.

Speaker A: That's a good segue to doing plugs as we wrap up the episode. What can we look forward to from you in the near future, or even just for the rest of the year? You know, we've talked about the Tender Collab, that you're working on, but what about fx? What about fx hash on-chain stuff when that comes in a couple months, hopefully? Are you looking at Art Blocks, your physical stuff? So like, what can we look forward to collecting from you throughout the rest of the year?

Speaker B: Yeah, so the things that I can say that will actually come, it will be the Tender collab, which will be something that will be out there probably this year. My physical work, like I'm working on a big 1.5-meter piece right now that should be out there somewhere this year. I have a Fold series that I've been working on for like 6 months already. I'm hoping to get that into Art Blocks at some stage whenever that's ready. And I'm working, or I have sort of planned, no specific date yet, at least 2 physical shows where it will be an NFT release together with like a physical location where it will be released. And I think that's sort of my main 4 pillars that I have right now. And next to that, a lot of like one-on-one work might pop up There's probably a project on fx hash in sort of the old sense where I feel like, hey, I've done something fun, let's release this. Yeah, but like 4 big series that I'm actually working on every day right now.

Speaker A: And thematically, what's interesting you? Is it still pursuing this humanity through imperfection theme, or are there new themes emerging that you are exploring with this work this year?

Speaker B: That whole theme of like the perfection of imperfection, I think that always stays something that's close to me, that's always been close to me. But I also, I really love for myself, it's really interesting to zoom in into like a really simple concept and trying to dive as deep as I can. Like I shared a lot of things with my Fold series, which basically goes around, okay, what can you do if you fold paper and what can you do if you fold paper in a way that's not physically possible? What can we do digitally around the same concept but really simple and trying to push that into an avenue where it's Suddenly becoming something that's not relatable anymore. So for me, it's mostly about zooming in, and that's sort of my focus where I want to be way more focused on a small thing and diving deeper into that, trying to find everything I can in that sort of concept that I'm working on. And I think that's sort of my main focus for right now.

Speaker A: Great. I mean, we could end it there unless you want to ask us any questions, comments, critiques, criticisms of the show, anything like that if you want, or just anything that you're curious of knowing about us. Or we could just end the show if you feel good about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm always interested in, from your standpoint, like, how do you feel? Like, the market's slow right now. I think your sort of business model, if you can call it a business model, needs attention, which is, I think, at a sort of low point in the market right now. Do you feel like it's a positive thing and it's healthy for this space, or do you feel like, hey, we're slowly dying out here? How does that sort of relate to you and what you're doing?

Speaker C: I think that Part of it has less to do with the business model. I mean, obviously that is an important component, but I think part of it is also just what's happening that's interesting. When we hit these lulls in the market, we often also hit lulls in people not releasing as much. There's not as much excitement or fervor in the space. And I think that it's important for us as creators, content creators, to be really excited about the excitement in the community. And so when things are feeling slow, it, it feels slow. I mean, obviously right now is not as bad as when we were down for a month between the fx hash beta and the full release, but it's fun when things are exciting. Yeah.

Speaker A: For the show, definitely donations have ground to a halt. People aren't minting the articles. We have a token release coming up soon that hopefully people will be excited to mint with Thomas Noya. So we're pinning a lot of hopes and dreams on that to at least be a signal that people are still excited to support us. But then as far as like the greater space. I mean, it feels needed. It's no secret that neither of us are really interested at all in a lot of the PFP stuff, and I'm happy to see a lot of that go away. There's a lot of bad actors on that side that need to be shaken out of the system in order to legitimize and rebrand NFTs as a whole. I mean, it's just so toxic right now because of all that stuff, and it's unfortunate that that stuff failing and collapsing also affects art because there's a lot of liquidity that gets taken from those places and then put into art. And when that liquidity all goes to zero, that's money that people don't have to spend on art or donating to podcasts or things like that. So it's definitely challenging, but we're super excited to like be talking to people like you. Like, I feel like we're getting bigger and bigger guests all the time on the show. Our listenership continues to grow. It's not going down. So there's still engagement in the space for sure. There's a lot of reasons to be optimistic as long as you're not paying attention to the money part.

Speaker C: And that's the short term, right? So I think it's, as you said, Will, it's— this is something that's necessary within the space. I think what matters is what happens next. Now is a time for introspection, potentially accumulation, and then just prepping. It's kind of like we're a field that has crops, but it's the wintertime and we are recovering for the beautiful harvest that will be coming in, I don't know, next year.

Speaker A: It's a time for building taste too. As sad as it is to see projects that we really loved, or at least like really strongly liked, start to depreciate, I think seeing the market shake out helps you take a more objective view and a less bag-oriented view of like, who are the artists and the art that we really, really, really, really believe in for 5, 10, 20 years from now versus who are the ones that maybe we bought because we thought there'd be a quick flip opportunity and now it's like, That window's gone. And maybe there's like, we're approaching what, 30,000 projects in FXHash alone? Like 10,000 of those are not gonna be relevant in the future.

Speaker C: Only 10,000.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: 29,000 of those won't be relevant in the future.

Speaker A: I mean, or even more than that.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so that there is a little bit of a hard reconciliation of here are the projects that I'm gonna collect knowing that I might be the only person who likes them versus here are the projects that it seems like general opinion is coalescing around. And Tick is definitely one of those, by the way. I feel, I feel like Tick is just gonna be a forever timeless project in particular on—

Speaker C: The only project that will matter, right?

Speaker A: I'm trying to trade for one more at least. So let's see.

Speaker C: Okay. I only have one.

Speaker A: I actually need a black and white one, to be honest, cuz I have 2 of like the more rare palettes, but I don't have a nice grayscale one. So that's my next acquisition.

Speaker C: I was promised a really nice complex Tick because mine was one of the ones that took like 3 months And you didn't get it. I didn't get it. It's a nice one, but I was promised like whatever that super rare feature is that I think only came out on one.

Speaker B: I'll blame it on fxhash infrastructure.

Speaker C: They gotta get their act together.

Speaker A: What do you feel, Rudxane? Like you've probably dabbled in some of the PFP stuff, right? So like, what is your feeling on the shakeout and the market in general? Do you feel like it's much needed or are you just like, it's just noise?

Speaker B: In general, I think it's interesting to have this moment. I think there's The actual component where I see value in, which we touched on, it's sort of like the cryptographically owned assets online and digital. And I think sort of the byproduct of that is like the hyper-financialization of everything. Everything became basically a shitcoin with content. So yeah, I do think like a lot of it needs to be flushed out. I do think a lot of it will be back when everything's positive again and everybody will be doing the same thing again. But I think underneath it all, we're slowly building like a base where people are actually accepting of digital assets. And then slowly, I think the assets that will have value over time will be interesting. And I think that what's interesting right now will probably have very little relevance. I think a couple things might be really interesting at that stage, but at least I feel like it's slowly building towards less and less talking about right-click saving and actually understanding that digital stuff and being able to own digital stuff actually Could make sense. But I think it's like a 10-year road that we're on until we feel like it's truly like a native thing. And we have a lot of steps in between that where it will probably be bull market, bear market. But I think slowly it will become more and more of a standard and more and more understood of why is this something that could have like big implications or big value over time.

Speaker A: Some giant steps maybe that we still need to take.

Speaker B: Who knows?

Speaker A: Cringe.

Speaker B: There's definitely some big steps we still need to take. Yeah, that's sure.

Speaker A: I know that we're used to everything going so fast, but like, it's not crazy to think that it's going to take 30 years for some of this stuff to actually like legitimately make its way into acceptance in the mainstream art scene and museums and stuff. Like, I know everyone gets excited over like, so-and-so donated 30 pieces to LACMA and look at this, like, this is the mainstream embracing NFTs. But it's like, is it? Or is it just like one guy donated some stuff?

Speaker B: I think it's mostly like pushing and I don't, I think like true value needs a lot of time. Like if we're talking about the internet, everybody orders online. But I know that we talked about not using your credit card in the '90s and so dangerous. But like right now it's truly a part of life to order stuff online. And I don't think that's something that could have been started in like 3 years. It's something that slowly grows and you buy stuff online on PayPal when it was early. When eBay came around, you started doing stuff and you got a brick sent to your home. And that's sort of how we learn and that's how we say like, internet and online doesn't work. But I think it needs to take time to slowly be like serious infrastructure takes time. And it's not just like a technical solution, but it's also like a society thing that we need to accept and build like consensus around it and understand why are we doing things like this. It's only healthy for this to take a couple of years, which doesn't mean that we don't have anything to do in the between spaces.

Speaker C: I think it's about understanding the use cases Because changing hearts and minds is one thing and fx hash was really my first, some of my first crypto experiences, not my first, but the ease of transaction and the lack of friction when it comes to transacting is just mind-boggling and magical the first time that you experience it. The use cases with eBay or Amazon or whatever, getting things that you need from one place to another without you going to the store. Is absolutely life-changing. But what are those life-changing experiences going to be for crypto, and how are they meaningfully different for how people operate today?

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think it takes time to find the ways to do it in a proper way and not just saying like, hey, we can put your driver's license on the Tezos blockchain and there we are, but actually feel like, hey, how are you having infrastructure to read all the data, to build like a profile online? There's so much more to explore, but I I'm really excited about the possibilities and the need for it over time. So it sort of feels like it's inevitable as long as it's built out in the right way. And yeah, being part of that whole thing, and that's also why I fail a lot and do stuff and experiment. And I hope we do a lot of weird stuff still. I think that helps really to find a way what we should do, but also what we shouldn't do.

Speaker A: Hell yeah, that sounds like a great place to wrap it up. Thank you so much, Rudxane, for Hope you enjoyed being on the show. Did it live up to your expectations?

Speaker B: It was way better.

Speaker A: Perfect. That's what we like to hear. Well, it was so great to be able to talk to you. Super excited to get this episode out to everyone. Super excited for everything that's going to come from you this year. Sounds like we need to get some more ETH and some more Tez ready for sure. Thanks again to Rixanne. Thank you, Trinity, as always. Hope everyone enjoyed this episode. We'll be back again soon with another one.

Speaker B: Thanks. Bye.