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 William Mapan, who Whom many of you know, longtime listeners know for his fxhash Project Dragons, probably for his Art Blocks curated work and releases on Tonic, and most recently with LACMA, and of course the upcoming first solos release. So William, you're kind of a legend in the short space of NFT generative art history. It's really amazing to have you on the show. How are you doing?

Speaker B: Good. So yeah, as you described, it's pretty intense. It's an intense year. Definitely intense. I hope next year will be more quiet, like normal, but yet it's just very crazy. And on top of that, with the kid, it's really, it's like a survival show. It's crazy. I'm happy to be busy and to just make art, so I can't complain too much.

Speaker A: That's good to hear. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to come on. We're really excited to talk to you. And let's just start off with the usual first question, which is to ask you to give an introduction to anyone in the audience who might not know you. What's a little bit of your background in art and coding? And how did you come to find the blockchain NFTs as a way to release your work?

Speaker B: I have a coding background, right? I did like all the world computer science stuff. At some point, I found another degree, which was opening up a lot more doors with marketing, graphic design, art history, Math, a lot of stuff, not really in depth, but enough for us to just choose a path and just dig in. And I just chose to dig in with graphic design animation, especially the infamous Flash software. Very great and dead now. But yeah, that's how I started. My first job was a motion designer, and then I slowly moved back to coding. And then I entered like a school of media art in Paris, and that's how I discovered all these things about media art and all this world of technology where we can actually know some history and some people doing it for a long time. So I got into it. After that, when I started to work and start my career, I just wanted to code graphics, to code images. With no purpose at first. Around 2017, I discovered the world, you know, tattoo art, and I was like, okay, that's actually a thing. And yeah, let's dig in even more. And then NFT came, and then things is crazy. The small story about the NFT, when I got into NFT, is very, very simple because at first I didn't know anything about blockchain and crypto, and it's Mostly through some friends, and I discovered the thing and they, you should try this. And I just tried. And yeah, here I am.

Speaker A: It's kind of amazing that you were open-minded enough to it because it is such a difficult technology right now to talk about. Generally, people have really strong opinions against it, right? I'm sure you've encountered that too socially. Have you ever had any like really intense, like not hate, but someone just Really telling you like, I can't believe you're doing that. Like, it's all scam.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. I know, like, the French people are very heated, especially in the creative coding community and the video games communities and the art communities. It's very— everything that touches money is very sensitive. And yeah, for me it was mostly like a technology thing. Like, you can sign your work, you can mint it, it's live forever on this whole big book of trust, which is a blockchain. And I was like, oh, that's a cool concept. So I wasn't really seeing the monetary side of it because at first I was on Tezos. It was mostly experimental. I just wanted my work to be out there and to be a proof of existence, basically. It's a complicated subject with friends. Some are very against, some are like, okay, that's okay-ish. And some are like, yeah, that's cool. But most of my friends, or the people I know are like, that's bullshit. So we don't talk much about that with the friends. It is what it is.

Speaker A: You mentioned Tezos, and of course, like your first project, at least that we were aware of, is Dragons on fx hash. I assume you were probably on Hic Et Nunc collecting on Tezos.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What was it like back in those early days of Tezos? And how did Dragons end up on fx hash? Because pretty quickly after that, you kind of crossed over to ETH with Anticyclone, Art Blocks Curated. So can you kind of tell us about that path from like being someone who like released this project on Tezos and then crossing over into these more curated platforms?

Speaker B: Well, my first contact with NFTs and blockchain was Tezos. With Ink and Ink. It was very Wild Wild West, crazy times. You had to hit the sync button millions of times before minting something or collecting. It was fun times. It was very feeling fresh. So that's what I liked about that. So that was Tezos. I was selling stuff for $10 and buying back some Other friends work, and it was mostly like a community thing for me at first. I heard about Art Blocks without really knowing what it was, but I knew it was something where you press a button when you mint and it generates something. I didn't know anything about the contracts, all the on-chain stuff, and I was like, okay, FX such FX such sounds like that, but for Tesos. And since I'm used to Tezos, why not try it? So I came up with Dragons. I remember I was having some FOMO when it came out because I was like, oh my God, I need to try this now because I don't know if I have time later with my baby and I need to put this out now. So I worked a lot. I remember some nights I had my baby on me. Chris wasn't sleeping. I was like, okay, I'm gonna drag on at the same time. So I like putting my baby to sleep and bouncing on that big ball to put it to sleep and coding at the same time. It was crazy times. It was really a good thing and it completely changed my mind and my way of working. Because before you're like, okay, I generate some output and you put it out there for people to see. It completely changed my way of working. Like, I don't know what will come out, so I need to make sure everything looks good. And when I realized that, I was like, no, I can't put my algorithm out there now. I need to polish it as much as possible before and to make a bunch of iterations, like thousands and thousands, and then release it. That's why I delayed my—

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Launch, but yeah, it was very good times.

Speaker A: A lot of crunching with a baby on the lap. I mean, this podcast has been recorded with a baby on the lap from time to time, so we totally get it on our end. You know, working with algorithmic art and making like one-of-ones and curating outputs to put up on Hic Et Nunc, and then the idea of transitioning into like a fully long form when the minter, they're getting a random output. I mean, I think that's such a fascinating side of this. practice is like, how do you think about things like palettes and rarity and the typical collector's experience, right? Like a lot of artists who especially are trying to push to 500 or 1,000 outputs, like you really have to think about what is the average piece going to look like that's gonna be representative, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So how do you think about things like traits, right? 'Cause Dragons has those rare traits. Like the gold dragons and the Iskis dragons, but they're extremely rare. So how do those intersect with like the more common palettes that are gonna be the more average experience? And like, are you trying to make sure that the most representative outputs are like the most beautiful and best? Or do you think that there should be an element of like the more rare a piece is, it should be more aesthetically pleasing? Like how do all these things kind of play, especially now? 'Cause you've been doing this now for 2 years, this long form generative stuff. Yeah.

Speaker B: First of all, my practice on this evolved a lot. When I made Dragon, I was like, okay, maybe 1% chance will be a golden one, and then I will just hardcode all the parameters to be golden. And that— the way of thinking about this was I don't want the whole collection to be golden. I want to be colorful and, you know, to be what it is currently, but still in the narrative In the story I wanted to tell, I wanted to have these whole stages for a dragon, and that's how I came up with those. But I didn't want them to be the main output. I just wanted to sit there and be like, okay, I'm here. It's not because I'm aware that I'm the most, you know, beautiful. It's just, this is not representation of the series. So I think it's more about how you wanna shape your algorithm and your series. And sometimes you can spice it up with some very rare traits. That was the idea behind it. But now it's a bit more complex in how I code everything, because with Ragon I had these rules of if it's, you know, less than 10%, this is the golden, and otherwise it is blah blah blah. And now it's more about components that I mix together. It's way messier, and I know that sometimes this mess makes something well, but I don't control it that much than before. I try to modulate and to control, but I'm much more giving control to the algorithm, like freedom to the algorithm, where even me can be surprised. So now I already tried surprise myself when I make an algorithm. While Dragon was very controlled, like almost controlled, like there's some I was like, okay, that's not normal. But now, especially with this one, for example, with this one, I made a bunch of iterations, a lot of iterations, and still at the end in the 250, I was like, oh, this one I didn't see it. Never. That's what excites me now. It's just discovering things in my algorithm that I create. So the traits, it's more about how I build the algorithm. A bit like alchemy, you know, you have some ingredients and some stuff, you have your table, you know, of molecules. I'm gonna take a bit of this and a bit of this and let's see what happens. And I know that when I take 2 stuff, this makes a third. thing, and this will be the whole series. But sometimes I will grab some things, I don't know what it is, but I know it's there. I grab it and put it in there, and something will happen. That's how most of the time the rare traits appear now. It's just a combination of random stuff I didn't plan. Once I find this, I will try to reproduce it and control it, but there's still this element of surprise that I I'm trying to keep. It's not about, I think, what the collectors want. For me, it's more about me exploring the algorithm and being surprised.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we hear that so much, right, from talking to artists like that. The code kind of becomes collaborator in the sense that you put in a piece of math and you don't 100% know how it's going to work, maybe at certain edge cases, and then looking at 1,000 and seeing like, whoa, that's where that really had a wild effect that I didn't think was going to happen. And that's such an amazing part of this practice, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker A: So after Dragons, all of a sudden it was like Art Blocks curated Anticyclone. What was the process like going from Dragons? Because Dragons is now, you know, by the way, I'm sure you're aware, like considered one of the quote unquote grail projects in FXHash. And like, there's a lot of really big collectors who own them. They go for a really high price relative to Tezos, but it wasn't like Immediately overnight going to, you know, 4-digit sales numbers.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Like there was a long time of people collecting them and building up like appreciation for it. So in that meantime, like, were you sitting there watching and being like, hey, like, I'm really onto something here. Like, at least my skills are good enough to go for Art Blocks curated. Like, how did you make that jump to just going like one fxhash project? Let's go for Art Blocks and see what happens. What did you learn? I mean, we already talked about that. It seems like you kind of learned about surrendering a little bit more to the algorithm from Dragons and not making it so determined through the code, things like the traits. But like, were there any other like big lessons that you learned as you transitioned from Dragons into Anticyclone?

Speaker B: Yeah, fx hash and the whole Tezos ecosystem was very something— is still something very community. And I wanted to have something, you know, about the community, about creatures, about something you can relate on. Great too. You can say, oh, this dragon, I could totally ride it into space or whatever. But it was mostly something I created where I would be the father of all these creatures. And these creatures are for you, for the community. And that worked, I think. I saw some people in the Discord where, when I was in the Discord, people fighting the dragons between each other.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: It's crazy cool because That's what it means to be, to be something, you know, don't fight, but use them as something you cherish and you're very attached to emotionally. So I think it worked in that way. But when I moved to Anticyclone, first of all, I never did the same platform twice yet. So for me, it's pretty usual to do. I'm a very curious guy. So I'm like, okay, I did that now. I'm gonna do another thing and just keep exploring for now because there is so much booming in the last two years. But yeah, with Art Blocks, people started to say maybe you should try Art Blocks. People from Art Blocks I think came to me like, hey, maybe you should try Art Blocks. And then they started to send all this documentation about oh you can't use any images. You know, it's very. Very hard compared to FX hash because you have much more constraints. So I'm gonna take the challenge because there is this debate with dragons where I use an image for the paper. Like I bought some paper, I took a photo of the paper, and I use it in my shader, blah blah blah. I can do it without any images as well. I took the challenge and I did that. About created or not, I didn't know about that at all, but I just I just give my best every time, like whatever the platform, whatever the people. I just want to give my best at all time because I think this is my legacy. So I don't want to be in 10 years and be like, I just did it for the money. I just did it for, you know, because I need to do it or because of the FOMO. When I release something, it's because I'm proud of it and I did my best. So it took a lot of time between the time I started working on it and I think it released in end of April. It was a long process. I did start this algorithm before Dragons and I released it like 8 months later, I think something like that. At some point Art Blocks were like, oh, this is something we never saw, so this is created. And then that's when the whole storm started to happen around me. Art Blocks was a good challenge because it pushed me into my practice of Making my code very compact, very performant, very everything with no assets at all. It's definitely stuck with me until now. Now when I'm starting a new thing, I'm like, okay, I need to optimize my code. I need to make it performant. I need to make it, you know, I need to find tricks and to make it better. It was a good experience to be on FXH and on Art Blocks. It completely 2 different ecosystems, 2 communities. Both of them are very important in my small career.

Speaker A: You said that you've never worked with the same platform. So how do you pick, right? Like, in this case, Art Blocks kind of encouraged you, or maybe some other artists encouraged you to try your hand at submitting. But you did Bright Moments, you did Tonic, you did LACMA. So I imagine a lot of those were either you reaching out and saying, I'm interested, or them reaching out to you. And probably after Art Blocks curated, I'm sure you had a lot Of inbound interest in people asking you to come do a drop with them, and so yeah. What types of things? Like when someone's reaching out to you and saying like, "Hey, do a release for me or with my platform." Like what actually interests you and gets you to say yes to those opportunities?

Speaker B: I think it's the idea and the vision behind the platform and people. I'm most into people than platforms. Usually, it's when I meet people. I'm like. Talk to them, you know, on a deep level, like what you want to do, what you see for your future of your platform. Because usually I don't even reply on the internet. I'm very bad at this because there are so many messages, especially since Anticyclone. There are so many things; it's hard to keep up. So I try to shut down as much as I can and sometimes show up into my DMs and be like, okay, I'm gonna answer this world ten first messages, and that's. Done for the day, for the week. But yeah, mostly when I see, when I meet people, you know, face to face, it's much more for me enjoyable. I can connect because beyond platform there is people, and I work with people first. So yeah, I want to try new things every time, at least for the past 2 years, because I was feeling there is so much things going on, I can't stay to only one platform. It doesn't make sense. And there's people all around, there's communities all around. If I want to show my art to all these people, I need to switch bubbles, I need to switch, you know, communities. So yeah, that's the main reason. Pitch me your platform, pitch me you actually, pitch me you. Well, who are you? Are you good people? Are you just greedy people? In that case, it might not work. Okay, if you truly believe in your thing that you're building, I think we can definitely work together. It was the same with Verse. I met Leila, I met Jamie last year. One year later, I can actually work with you because my workload is allowing it. But yeah, when I meet people, I'm like, okay, this is cool people. I can work with them. This is the only reasoning really. I just trust myself into reading people. And being like, okay, this is a cool thing that he's doing, so let's do it.

Speaker A: And are you pretty like blockchain agnostic, right? I mean, you had obviously the Tezos work in the beginning, but I think everything has been on Ethereum since then. And I'll add, by the way, that fxhash, their next launch, the 2.0 launch, is going to include Ethereum and on-chain to the contract. So yeah, you'll be able to challenge yourself on fxhash too. You can do a Tezos or Ethereum on-chain project there.

Speaker B: That's really awesome news. Awesome news.

Speaker A: Have you deliberately been putting work on ETH because there's a larger collector base there? Or is it more just a fact of the matter that a lot of these platforms that you've been interested in working on just happen to be on ETH? Like, do you have a strong opinion about the underlying blockchains at all?

Speaker B: I'm not a chain maxi. Most of the time people didn't want to be on Tezos. So that bummed me at first. With Anticyclone and Art Blocks, we're like, yeah, this is it, you know, from the beginning I knew it. It was a bit bothering me with all these ecological issues, but I knew that with ETH the merge was coming, so the chain is on its way. There is good people trying to be good, so I'm going to bet on that. But for example, Ordinals, I don't know anything about that, and I'm mostly being, no, I'm not gonna release something on that because ETH is good enough. Maybe I will change my mind, but for now, this is what it is. I heard about these collectors that they need multisig and all this techie stuff I don't know about. I'm like, okay, I understand. And I understand that platforms also listen to collectors. Apparently on Tezos, collectors are lacking some stuff. Now it's balancing better, but before, like 1 year ago, it wasn't the case. So I hear that collectors want to be on ETH, so it's okay. It's not the same as Tezos. It's not the same because, you know, the fees, the gas, all this, even the communities can be very intense compared to Tezos. Well, Tezos can be intense too, but in a funnier way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think it's up to platform to decide. If artists want to be on a particular chain, they can. They have the choice today. But I'm not a chain maxi. So I'm just gonna go with the people and just listen to that.

Speaker A: I know you were on Ken's podcast recently, Arbitrarily Deterministic. So there is, we heard on that show that there is hope for the Cyril Diagne collab potentially materialize in perhaps next year. And hopefully that would be on fxhash and potentially Tezos, which would be really cool.

Speaker B: The goal was to be on fxhash, definitely. So we tried to push for that. Let's see with Serial where we are next year. Yeah.

Speaker A: We'd obviously love to see it because on the show too, we're really big fans of Serial's work and have collected it on fxhash. So that would be awesome to see. Let's get into the Verse solo stuff, but I have one more question leading into it on distance. And you, we already kind of talked a little bit about trait distribution, palettes, and, you know, kind of letting the algorithm do its thing. So for that project, I remember you tweeting like things like, hope you like green. And you know, you actually talked quite a bit about this project on Collector's Corner as well. So for, I think anyone who wants more of a deep dive on it, go check out that podcast and hear William and Lady Cactoid talking all about that collab. But my question for you really on it is, yeah, it is a lot of green and brown and these like darker colors or more kind of like muddier colors. Right. And it makes sense when you're thinking of like you know, being in an airplane and looking down aerial view on like fields and stuff. But there were also these like really colorful, like rainbow palettes that were like more rare. And there's a pretty big divergence in the pricing on it. And so I'm kind of curious, like the kind of average piece, which contains more of those greens and browns, end up being closer to the floor price where like the rarer ones end up being more expensive just to the collector side. So is that something where you're like—

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Shoot, people kind of are not getting this piece. Like, does that kind of bother you, I guess, is the question, when people aren't reacting as strongly to the most representative pieces in a collection?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I think I was expecting it. Like, when something makes less appearance into an algorithm, people are like, this is rare, so this is more expensive. I get it, especially with the, you know, the Paris one. The Paris one is I gotta say it's special because the very 2 special for me palettes are the I Hope You Like Green and Paris, because this is the beginning of the journey to the end of the journey from my small village, which was very green, to Paris where I started to discover art and to be more colorful. And I also wanted to kind of match the reference of Berkeley and associate it with Paris, which is my art beginnings. But I think if people don't value enough the greens, it's— they miss a point. I think it's not all about the colors in there, but also a lot about compositions and what it means, uh, if there's cities, if there is like— if it is a suburb, there's a deeper level than colors. But I think it's fine if people, you know, don't find it attractive now. I mean, It's only been a month, not even months yet. So I'm hopeful that time will do its stuff, you know. People will appreciate the whole thing over time because they will— new people will come in and be like, okay, this is a cool series, hopefully, and it works as a whole and not only with this or that palette. I think to appreciate the whole series, you need more than one palette. Having only the colorful palette is having value is not what is intended. But I get it.

Speaker A: I think that's a very thoughtful answer. And yeah, obviously, like, we're so used to thinking about this stuff in the timeframe of like hours or days or weeks because it's crypto. But truly, we should be thinking from like the long view and where people decades from now might come to appreciate the whole body of it, right?

Speaker B: Some of my favorite outputs are not at all the Paris palettes. There's a lot of things I like because the composition is good, well balanced. The elements are well placed on the page. So yeah, it's not only about the colors. Art is not only about the colors. There is so much more, I think. I'm a baby artist, but I still think there is much more than colors in art.

Speaker A: All right, well, let's transition to talking about your upcoming Verse Solos exhibition. Intimacy is the title, and it— you're going to be releasing a long-form project called Sketchbook A and a curated one-of-one project called Through Your Eyes. Let's talk about the long form first. You talked a little bit with Ken on Arbitrarily Deterministic about being inspired by a childhood drawing that you found using crayon and kind of like the freedom and expression there and the textures, and then that kind of being one of the deriving influences for this piece.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If there's anything more to that story you want to tell, like—

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's this kind of medium is the first one you encounter when you're in the kindergarten. It's the easiest thing. Okay, take your crayon, take a piece of paper and do some stuff. And I think it's amazing how it can be powerful as an adult. If you observe kids doing that, it's crazy how free they are because the medium, you know, you take a color and just Start drawing and that's it. You just need that to explore what you wanna say or wanna draw or what you wanna express. If you're angry, if you're happy, you make a smiley, whatever. I think it's really amazing, and especially since I have a kid, I put some crayons into his hands, right? And I see what, what he's doing. I'm like, that's good, actually. That's really good. How like a 2-year-old can be so free of expression. It's really a question I try to dig in, how as an adult you start to build constraints around you, around your body, what you can do, can't do, can say, can't say. Sketchbook A, it's definitely something where I'm like, I want to go back there and have this freedom of exploration. It's an exploration, definitely. There's not much like a deeper level of like distance where like Yeah, I moved to the countryside, blah, blah, blah. It's just about exploration, being free. Just be free to explore things. I think the crayon medium is a way to connect everything together, to tie, like some glue to tie everything together. I think it would be a good starting point because I called it Sketchbook A because there would be a B, a C, a D. I don't want to stop there. Like, this is for me a way to say I'm going to explore.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: This is my sketchbook.

Speaker A: I want to follow up on that, but first I want to ask you about your process of— so you have done quite a few projects where you're using code to imitate a medium like a crayon or watercolor or oil paint, right? Like, you seem to have a knack for this and be considered one of the best at it. So what is that process like building brushes, building shaders? How do you start to come up even with the math that might define the way a crayon draws and trying to understand, like, because crayons are like this waxy material that breaks apart, and so you don't always get like that clean line, right? So are you like looking at physics books and trying to find like crazy descriptive formulas that might be used for this stuff? Or like, is it just trial and error? Like, how do you go about making these mediums in code at all?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm very bad at, you know, reading academic books because I don't know how to read the formulas. It's too complicated for me, my God. So it's mostly trial and error. I practice a lot with, like, physically as well. So it's a good bridge for me where I can translate everything I do with my hands. I can say it with my code as well. It just becomes a way to express. With physical, with pigments, with paints, you can build texture. And the way you build texture means something. If you're angry, you're gonna press more. If you wanna give more personality, you can Alternate between the smooth, the hard edges. You can layer thick paint, transparent, a bunch of things, just tools to express yourself. And I want to have this as well into my code because this is a way I express myself. So basically it's mostly me staring at my sketches, sketchbook, paints, whatever, and trying to come up with the math. It's a lot of errors. So that's why usually it takes a lot of months to get there. A lot of black screens, a lot of what the fuck is this? But that's good. It's part of the exploration, I think. And if you practice enough physically and you practice enough with coding, at some point your brain starts to make connections. You can make translations. You know, when I press the crayon, this works That is, you know, on the canvas, on the paper, it's diffusing in some ways. Oh, it looks like some noise. It looks like some transparency in coding. So if I had to do that with coding, I would do it like that. And it's mostly about between doing back and forth work. You go back to physical, you go back to coding, you go back to physical. At some point, your brain starts to mix everything up. And that's how I came up with this. Things, because I want to have the same thing digitally and physically. Not the same thing, because every medium has their own specificities, but I want the same base.

Speaker A: I mean, trial and error is a lot of how I tried when I first started learning to code. Not that I ever got anywhere good at it, but it's just encouraging for anyone who is learning to hear that it kind of never goes away.

Speaker B: Definitely. Don't give up. I've been doing this for 10 years already, so it looks like it's easy, but no, it's been 10 years, 12 years of coding. I think it's been 6 years of me trying to get to that point now. So it took some time and it was very not looking good at the beginning. And yeah, if anyone wants to do the same, I mean, like, don't give up. It will happen if you want it. Practice your coding skills, practice your physical, and your brain will connect the dots. I'm sure there's no other way.

Speaker A: Well, we've heard that this project— and this episode is going to come out just before the sale, so hopefully this will all be publicly announced by then, so hopefully you're comfortable talking about it— but we've heard that this is going to be 64 editions and collector-curated, or like minter-selected, depending on how you want to put it. So I'm curious how you came up with that quantity and like how you got comfortable with the idea of allowing collectors to have final pick over the outputs versus doing a standard long form or curating yourself. And also heard that instead of doing royalties, you're going to be holding a few for yourself. And so maybe we can do that part as the second, which is like how you came to that decision of doing zero royalties, but probably more interesting and more impactful to the work itself is like the idea of doing collector curated in the quantity. So let's start there.

Speaker B: That's where I start the collaboration with the platforms. Happen because I don't know anything about market dynamics, sales dynamics. And that's why I was like, oh, there is this thing. I don't even— didn't know the term. There's this thing, Collector Curated. I was like, okay, let's try that. At first I wasn't into it. I was about to say, I'm gonna create like 64 outputs and sell them. But I realized that Yeah, Verse was right about it's a good enough algorithm to let people explore, to let people, you know, refresh the page, explore, find something good. And also because 64 is not a lot, so it's possible that you won't see the whole spectrum of the algorithm. So having people to let play with the algorithm allows me to show to people the full spectrum. The workload is not on me. I will invite everyone to navigate my sketchbook. Basically, this is the idea. 64 because 64 pages of a sketchbook. It's just that thematic. Yeah, it's nothing deep. My sketchbooks are 64 pages. I'm gonna do the same because ideally I'd like to offer to all the collectors a sketchbook with the 64 means. So it would make sense, you know. Really cool.

Speaker A: If you were to do this project, do you think as like long form, just random, would you have wanted to keep to that 64 thematically, or would you have gone bigger to allow for just like the randomness? Because I'm thinking to some of your older projects, like Dragons was like 512, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And Anticyclone was over 800. So clearly you have this kind of like idea of like flexing the algorithm, right? And like really letting all the outputs get out there and maximize it. Here we're at the other end of the spectrum where it's like, no, it's like just going to be 64. Yeah, the algorithm is deep and there's tons of potential to find good stuff, but we want to keep it tight. So like, where's the balance in that, I guess?

Speaker B: I think with this one, I'm very into, uh, that's the sketching state of mind where I have this strong concept with the sketch and I want it to be cohesive about that in all the parts, you know, of the series. So it's 64. And we have a sketchbook. It looks like crayons. You can— when usually when I sketch, it's with crayons. So everything is connected and makes the piece cohesive. And but yeah, I had this issue with like, okay, but the algorithm is capable of much more. But if I open to everyone the algorithm, like people can refresh and see another, another, and another, and another, then you'll see the spectrum in a way. So that's why I keep my sketchbook concept and at the same time I can let the algorithm live.

Speaker A: I think a lot of people are getting ready to line up and bid and get excited for sure. So it's going to be a really fun week or so of watching people sharing their potential mints on social media and in Discord and talking about it as they get ready to try to get into the auction for the right to make one.

Speaker B: And also I think Verse was like, okay, that's also a way for you to not have the whole responsibility about creation. And I like this idea as well of being community-driven. Usually I do my thing. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna do the creation. This is the first time where I'm letting the community create actually, because I've never done that. It's a sketchbook, so it's something experimental. And we're like, yeah, let's do it. Why not? You know, it's like the royalties. You know, I think we're going to talk about that as well. The 0% royalties is like, it's a sketchbook. It's not a whole big thing. It's— there is some discussion with royalties. So as an artist, I think it's good to explore many options and to explore many possibilities about this issue that we have with OpenSea.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Once again, it was a long discussion with Verse and we're like, yeah, there is these options where you can apply your royalties, but you don't know what happens in the future because your royalties future is blurry. You can have zero royalties and just keep the works for yourself or a mix of both. And I was like, you know what, it's 64 editions, it's a sketchbook, it's okay to experiment with that. So let's see what happens. It's no big deal, I think. If it's a fail, It's okay. There is room for failure. And I think it's important to always try new stuff.

Speaker A: What would you consider a failure in that case? Because the issue that you're speaking to is that this platform called Blur that then allowed people to stop honoring royalties, and then OpenSea was losing volume. Now OpenSea has changed their policy around royalties. And since none of this stuff is baked into the individual tokens, like once you can get the token out of it, blah, blah, blah, right? Like there's ways to get around it. So in your case, or for this project, like by taking a 0% royalty, what would be the fail there? Like, it's definitely going to mint out, right? Like people are definitely going to go and buy them. So would the fail be if they go to like hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight and you didn't have a royalty or?

Speaker B: I think the fail would be that it would have a bad effect on my other series. Like people won't pay me royalties anymore. So that would be like a backfire. I'm very excited for the collection to be out, but this royalty stuff, I'm like, yeah, well, you know, it's 64, so we can experiment.

Speaker A: You're keeping 4 for yourself. Is that just so that you have some control over some of the pieces that make it into the final set, or do you kind of intend to hold those as like a bet on yourself? Like, if the pieces do massively appreciate over 10 or 20 years, that you'll have a couple that you could— they can basically function as your royalty, right? Like, you might be able to sell one later. So is that part of the idea as well? Or is it more just to complete the series and have your own hand in the creation of it?

Speaker B: I think it's complete to see the whole set and be like, oh, maybe there is some things missing so I can— I will add them. And also in the future for donation, if I want to donate to any institution or big collectors without having to look to track everything down and be like, okay, this is This wallet has this one, so maybe you can ask this, and maybe, but it's not answering. If I keep some for me, it gives me much more control about the future of it, where it could end up. So yeah, that's the main reasons.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really good place for me to plug that we are a donation-supported podcast, and you can donate to us at wtbse. Yeah, donate, donate. So yeah, we usually don't make those I don't usually do those plugs in the interviews, but might as well since you mentioned donating them. That's awesome. I think the idea of, you know, making sure that you do have some control of pieces, you know, because there could be some asymmetrical outputs, right? Like people might favor blue over red or like certain styles of compositions.

Speaker B: And that's definitely what I was— I am actually afraid of is like, okay, it's gonna be all blue. And like, oh no. That's a fail. I'm like, I'm not doing community-driven ever again.

Speaker A: All right, so everyone's on notice. Everyone who's bidding, you all better coordinate and figure it out or else William's out on you.

Speaker B: Please, please. But yeah, I think Verse had a really good point on this as well. They were like, everyone wants to be unique and we find something that people don't have. I'm like, okay, that's a good point actually. Should be okay.

Speaker A: I think it'll work out. And for anyone who's not participating in the Sketchbook series, there's also Through Your Eyes, which I can't quite tell by looking at the few that have been up on Verse, but do these derive from a similar algorithm as the Sketchbook series? And is the difference just that it's like markers versus crayons, or are there like other differences between the code base beyond just like the brush?

Speaker B: Through Your Eyes is Through your eyes of the algorithm. It's me who found some portraits, facial features into the outputs. But yeah, it's a different algorithm. It's the same base. Like the geometry is similar. It's from Sketchbook A, the geometry, the composition. And I started another branch, another code parallel to this where I want to be more digital, more of a straight hard edges, but still sense a feeling of texture without using any noise, any grain, nothing, just opacity and rectangles and strong colors. And that was a challenge because I wanted to live as a big print, but not having a very physical-like output, but very Digital. I'm always trying to have a double reading with my pieces. And with this one, I wanted to be like, okay, from afar you're like, oh, this is painting, very obvious. But when you're up close, you're like, okay, wait, it's just rectangles on top of each other. That's the kind of, you know, texture I want to have with this one. Basically, Through Your Eyes is through your eyes, the eye of the algorithm, and what I found And what if he could see? What is he trying to tell me? What am I seeing? Am I just making stuff up to myself? I don't know. But yeah, I found this stuff. I was like, this is good output to put out there. This is basically the high-resolution thing from the Sketchbook A, because Sketchbook A is not meant to be printed in, you know, super huge. It's meant to be as a sketchbook. Like A5 size, you know.

Speaker A: Gotcha.

Speaker B: But this one, I wanted to be like, this is the things that came out from Skatebook N.

Speaker A: I'm excited to see those displayed. We're recording this on October 2nd and the live show starts October 4th. So Jamie's probably got the printer running right now trying to get all this stuff ready and hung, right? And I'm sure we'll see it all over social media and the Verse Discord as these pieces are displayed. leading up to the sale. So yeah, that's really cool. William, we've already been going for an hour, so I hope you're okay starting to wrap it up with a few rapid-fire questions. Does that sound good to you?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: We like to end with these rapid-fires, and I have a couple ones that are unique to you here. The first being your physical paintings. You've been sharing a lot of stuff on Twitter of your actual painting paintings, not your code paintings.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: That you've been making. And I did see a couple people like replying like, are these going to be on sale as part of the Verse release too? Like, we'd love to have the opportunity to buy these.

Speaker B: Oh, really?

Speaker A: Yeah. So do you, do you have any— I don't think that they're going to be included in the Verse release, but do you have any plans for collectors someday to be able to like see these things? You know, maybe put them on Foundation as one-of-ones or like sell them, or are they really just for you?

Speaker B: So far it's been only for me to paint. But the last one that I posted, for example, this morning is a commission. This is my first commission ever, and it took a year to accomplish because I struggled so much to find a good recipe, a good balance of texture, of surface, to translate what I wanted to do. It's a generative system at the very root, so there is a digital output, which is the native format of it, and the painting is a representation of it. But yeah, it took a year, which is good because now I'm in a— into a place where I'm like confident with painting, and you'll see more because I'm gonna continue with paintings. There is one coming up with Kate Vass Gallery, I think in October, mid-October, something like that, in Paris. It's a way for me to say I'm not a digital-only artist. I can— I do stuff with every possible medium. I'm painting for so long, but I never released anything yet. This is the first commission that pushed me through this ceiling of, okay, you can do it now. And before that, I was just afraid or whatever. I didn't want to show my paintings. But yeah, this one is the first one. I'm like, I'm a painter too.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think I have a guess that I'm 70% confident in. as to who that patron is, but I'll say it offline. You know, we don't have to say it publicly, but I think I have a good guess at who might be asking you to make a painting like that. So that maybe gives people some hope for the future to see some physicals like that from you.

Speaker B: Definitely. I think, I think the— if I have some shows next year or the next, the year after, it could definitely include some paintings. Definitely.

Speaker A: Here's another one that's custom for you. In some of the other shows that you've been on, you've talked about your background and history in gaming. And even actually in this episode, you mentioned like, you know, blockchain applications for gaming and stuff. So how optimistic are you for NFTs and gaming and for this technology to proliferate? Because I, by the way, also work in gaming too. So like, it's something that I think about often. So like, what's your take on the current application of that stuff, if you're even aware of it, or where you think it might go?

Speaker B: I think it will happen. People don't like the word NFT. They don't like crypto. They don't like anything related to money, which is weird because they buy stuff in-game, so I don't get it. But just signed digital assets, I don't know how they don't see it. It's just so obvious for me that it will happen. If it doesn't happen, it's just because the lobby or people are too afraid of it. But it's an obvious choice, I think. And maybe it will be repackaged into some other word or Maybe different naming, but it will happen. I think it just makes sense for me.

Speaker A: Definitely a lot of people out there trying to make it work for sure. And I bet within the next big bull market cycle, we'll see some games that are being worked on now release and hopefully do some interesting things. To me, I think that's been the barrier is that people aren't necessarily doing interesting things with them right now. They're just kind of trying to basically do like shitcoin schemes with games from what I've seen. So it would be cool to see some games come up with some authentic, like creative uses for them. Here's another one. This is one that we ask a lot of people. What do you listen to while you code, if you listen to music at all? And do you have any music recommendations for us, stuff that you want to shout out?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think I said that to Ken too, but a lot of Kendrick Lamar, a lot, lot, lot. It's actually a big inspiration for me, not only as, you know, I like the songs, but as a person, I think. He's great with everything he does artistically. It's just crazy how he releases so many stuff, but it's always good and so much quality. The artistic vision is clear. When you look at his whole career, it just— the whole thing makes sense. And that's what I'm trying to do when I see his career. I'm like, my whole thing needs to make sense too, for me. So big inspiration. And his music is also an inspiration. And I also listen a lot of classical music. Recently, a lot of Sofiane Pammar. Classical is just these notes, especially when I paint. I love listening to classical music. It just goes with the vibe, goes with the notes. There's some piano going like, doo doo doo doo doo. It shows some violin, some guitar, and you have a different vibe with your body. I'm very receptive. The classical. So hip-hop and classical music. But because I dance a lot too, I think those 2 categories are very intense for me.

Speaker A: Between your work and your child, do you have any time for gaming? Have you kept up at all? And do you have any gaming recommendations if you're still playing anything?

Speaker B: Oh, the last time I binge played something was before my child was born.

Speaker A: But since then, no, I I kind of expected to hear a no from you, so don't, don't.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, no.

Speaker A: Mine is 18 months and Trinity's 18. Yeah, 10 months. So yeah, we know we're in it.

Speaker B: Oh my God.

Speaker A: The lack of time is, it's crazy.

Speaker B: Yes, it's crazy. It gets better, but yeah.

Speaker A: That leads me to my next question for you, which is, do you have any wisdom you want to share? What we can look forward to in the next year of development and challenges?

Speaker B: It's very cliché, but time flies very fast. I think the very first years are very important. You shouldn't neglect them because it's very important for your child to be with you. So yeah, spend as much time as possible with him or with her. Very important. Forget everything else. It's when they need you, they need you. Forget everything.

Speaker A: So be present.

Speaker B: Yeah, be present.

Speaker A: Awesome. Okay, who would you like to hear us interview? Who would be an interesting interview guest that would get you to like come listen?

Speaker B: Sofia Crespo, maybe.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: It's always fun when you talk to her. It's— yeah, she's crazy fun. So yeah, good vibes, good times with her all the time. But definitely I will recommend her.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, we have not talked to her. So we'll add her to the list. Thank you for that one. As we round it out here, last but not least, what can we look forward to from you? And you actually kind of maybe hinted already at Sketchbook B and C and beyond. So are those things that are going to be coming to Verse? Are those things that are going to be coming to other platforms and in different mediums maybe? So like, yeah, what is the future of the Sketchbook series and what else, to the extent that you're allowed to talk about it, can you get us excited about for the future?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely sketchbook. The sketchbooks one are very important for me to list them. And the title comes from when I started to study Vera Molnar. There's all these sketchbooks, at some point they were online and you can find them sometimes, you know, in museums and galleries. But I think it's just fascinating to just get into the head of the artist with the sketchbook. And I wanted to go that way as well. So yeah, BAYC, there will be stuff like that. Maybe it will be paintings, maybe like, you know, one sketchbook, maybe editions printed, could be anything. But I wanna say we need to explore as artists. We don't need to make, you know, crazy amount of editions, but have some, yeah, confined and very Not so many pages, not so many editions to just say I'm exploring. I think it's good because usually when people— when you release a big thing, big edition, it's like crazy algorithm you worked for so long. But this one, this one has been long too, actually.

Speaker A: It's okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, but next one will be shorter, definitely. The sketchbooks and the paintings, uh, I'm really getting into this. I like to move my body around, to not be on the computer. So I will be more in between, definitely. And also, I think way less releases next year. I think the last 2 years has been a way for me to see my limits, to test my limits, to see how much I can make stuff, at what frequency. You know, this world, supply-demand dynamic. Definitely it's too much right now. So I'm gonna slow down maybe for a lot of years and yeah, less stuff, but more exploration and commissions too. Like if people want commission, I can open. I will have more time for commissions as well because so far people are asking, but I'm like, no, I don't have time. So yeah.

Speaker A: So if you miss the mint, maybe a commission is the way to go.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And also taking care of my previous releases. Like, I know a lot of people want some dragons printed. Anticyclone is on the way as well with Artix Code. Distance, why not? We could explore as well with other artists— our art, sorry. So yeah, all these things I've done, it's not because it's out that it's forgotten. I think it's something on the long run. And yeah, let's continue to develop it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I hope you enjoy taking some restful years. Uh, it's well deserved. One option we also will give you, which is if you want to ask us a question. If you also want to get on with your day and wrap up the interview, that's fine too. But if you want to turn the tables and ask a question, we can do that, and I can do my best to come up with a thoughtful answer.

Speaker B: Interesting. What is your favorite game art series from anyone and why? The why is very important.

Speaker A: My favorite, favorite. I mean, I can tell you the one that I have the most pieces displayed in my house of, and that's probably a pretty good metric for favorite. I have a nice triptych of Coronado by an artist named Jeres, who actually just recently released a project in Art Blocks curated that did really well. But Jeres has been around since the earliest FX Hash days and just have been following, collecting their work for all that time. I still find myself going back to the fx hash page and like scrolling through and seeing which ones might have gotten listed recently towards the floor and trying to find some different colors or expressions of it. There's something about that piece that for as, I think, deceptively like simple as it is, just the way that it uses color and has this like very illuminating element to it that it really stands out to me. You know, obviously like I'm looking at all this art every week, every week, every week to make the show, right? And so that one has always felt really, really special to me. It's also one that I was in the fortunate position to collect, and it's still actually, I mean, compared to a lot of work, like very approachable to get in and buy some. So I find that can be a really hard question to answer because there's so much work that I'm like priced out of that I could never ever collect. So I find myself sometimes not even always taking those works that seriously because it's like, I don't have 5 ETH, I don't have 10 ETH, like I can't spend that much on a single piece. So I just kind of find myself not thinking critically about them, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's revealing my bias, right? Like I have a bias towards what I, what I can enjoy and own versus what other people seem to value highly.

Speaker B: That's something I struggle too with is the more I gain visibility and yeah, I'm exhibited here and there and my price are going up. And I'm like, yeah, but I liked when it was fx hash times where it was like 20 Tezos. And yeah, I'm still trying to figure something out to make that vibe back. But yeah, it's very difficult, but I'm aware of it. Thank you for the answer.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think there's a good solution, you know. Yeah, it's really challenging. Yeah, I mean, personally, I'm actually saving up for a Dragon during this bear market. So I do have that as like the piece that I feel like I could acquire of your work. You're one of the fx hash artists missing from my collection right now. You know, I've got at least something from Zancan, at least something from, you know, Marcelo and Andreas Rau and Sarah Ridgely and Lisa Orth. Like, there's so many amazing artists who have put work on fx hash, and then just somehow I never got a dragon. And now I'm like, okay, I need to save up and figure out. So I'm just—

Speaker B: every little sale I'm saving and saving and trying to get With the Zancan, it was crazy because I swear I thought I had one, and I think it was like 6 months ago, like, oh fuck, no, I don't actually. Because I think Gas Monolith was released maybe a week or 2 after Dragon, something like that. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna collect one, and I didn't actually. And I was all these months, years, I was like, I have a GM, and when I wanted to To show it to Zamkan, I'm like, oh shit, I don't have actually. And then I went to FXHash, I'm like, oh my God, it's so expensive. Oh my God. But yeah, I bought one anyway. I have one now.

Speaker A: I actually don't have a Garden Monolith. I have some of his other pieces like Bugged Forest and Kindergarten Monument and stuff like that. So I also, both Trinity and I missed Monolith when it released because we were, if you remember back then, FXHash was so weird where it was only open for like 8 hours and then it would close.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, true.

Speaker A: We were like minting other things and then the platform closed and then we looked and like saw that everyone else had been minting this from this guy called Zancan. And we're like, what is this? You know, flowers and grass. And so we completely missed it. The front end was so slow back then too. If you didn't know how to watch the contract, you could miss things. So yeah, wild days.

Speaker B: It was hard. It was hard. For dragons, I didn't have time to mint. I wanted like 10 copies for me and I didn't have time. Like, I uploaded the code, I minted everything, I went back to the front end and it was gone. Like, shit. But yeah, I know what you mean.

Speaker A: Yeah, I saw you have like 3. Did you mint those 3 or did you get them on the secondary?

Speaker B: Oh, secondary. Definitely secondary. It feels weird to buy back your own art, but I think it's important to just own it. Well, right on.

Speaker A: I feel like that's a good place to leave it, William. How do you feel?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good place indeed.

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. It was amazing to get to talk to you and pick your brain about your process and the market and gaming and the early days of FXHash. Yeah, really thankful for you giving us your time. We hope everyone listening enjoyed this episode.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure, really. All right, bye.