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Arranging Tangerines Episode 34 - A Conversation with Christos Makridis
5 Plays2 years ago
In this week’s episode, we catch up with Christos Makridis, the CTO/COO and co-founder of the Web3 multimedia startup Living Opera, to discuss how writing can be an approach to understanding the world, human capital, how NFTs and music are such a natural fit, the way Living Opera is working to support emerging opera musicians, the Magic Mozart NFT project, AI’s potential role in the arts, and the possibility of Web3 becoming a space for the common good.
Christos Makridis is the CTO/COO and co-founder of Living Opera, a web3 multimedia startup that brings together classical music and blockchain technologies to produce transformative experiences. Christos holds academic appointments at Stanford University, Columbia Business School, and other academic and policy institutions, and has published over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 150 news stories in the press. He holds doctorates in economics and management science & engineering from Stanford University.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Arranging Tangerines' Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
00:00:05
Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
00:00:10
Speaker
Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver, and Joseph Wilcox.
00:00:13
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I know what to do.
00:00:14
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I don't know what to say.
00:00:16
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I just know I don't want to be like you.
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I know what to do.
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I don't know what to say.
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I just know I don't want to be like you.
Introducing Christos McReady and Living Opera
00:00:35
Speaker
This week's guest is Christos McReady's Christos McReady's is the CTO, COO and co-founder of Living Opera, a Web3 multimedia startup that brings together classical music and blockchain technologies to produce transformative experiences.
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Christos holds academic appointments at Stanford University, Columbia Business School and other academic policy institutions, and has published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles and over 150 news stories in the press.
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He holds doctorates in economics and management science and engineering from Stanford University.
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Welcome Christos.
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Hey, how's it going?
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Good to see you again.
00:01:09
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Good seeing you as well.
00:01:11
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Great.
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How are you?
NFT Collection and Material-Digital Art Integration
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Good.
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Good.
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I was just talking with, for the NFT collection that we're launching on September 30th, I was just talking with a blockchain developer because I want to get like some third party validation around like what we've had produced and, you know, it's,
00:01:31
Speaker
like checking all the different pieces because it's like everything has to work for it to work and you don't want one thing to be kind of let loose so yeah i just had a good call with him and uh he's a nice person too so i'm like trying to find excuses to work with them because i want to learn more and uh but yeah it's going good what about on your end good uh we have an exhibition launching on the ninth um two two amazing artists uh
00:01:59
Speaker
And that should be interesting because we haven't seen the NFT that they're going to produce yet, but they're doing a combination of real objects and NFTs and relate to each other.
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So we're very much about material and material kind of like contextualizing both.
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So that should be fun.
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Yeah, it should be.
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I mean, I wrote a story on Vigitals about a week ago, and I'm really interested in those use cases too.
00:02:26
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And yeah, so I mean, I guess, yeah, please update whether on LinkedIn or on yeah, look forward
Podcast Format and Social Media Strategy
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to hearing.
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So how does the whole thing get recorded like video as well as audio?
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Or is it just the audio for the podcast?
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Or what's a norm?
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We just do the audio.
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OK.
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So don't worry about the video part.
00:02:49
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OK.
00:02:50
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I was unsure if I need to rearrange anything or I should put on some seat jacket or something like that.
00:02:55
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No worries.
00:02:56
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I mean, I'll post whatever you want for the socials.
00:03:01
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I usually do a screen grab, but it's up to you.
00:03:04
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OK.
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Yeah.
00:03:06
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Well, I mean, if you think this is OK, then good.
00:03:09
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Yeah.
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Perfectly fine.
00:03:10
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And you're standing?
00:03:12
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Yes, I am.
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I love it.
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Yeah, I like alternate during the day, like probably two parts of the day I'm like sitting and then, yeah, and then standing and this is in my standing time.
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So, yeah.
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So, yeah, I mean, like I said, just an organic conversation.
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Yeah.
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I know we met, what, it feels like eons ago as far as the crypto space is concerned.
00:03:41
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Yeah.
00:03:41
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Well, I mean, so many things happen.
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You like your perspective grows, you meet new people, you just like, yeah.
00:03:48
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So I know it's been, it's been great.
00:03:50
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Yeah.
00:03:50
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I guess November of 2021.
00:03:52
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Yeah.
Accessible Academic Writing and Communication
00:03:54
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No, I've been winning a lot and I feel like that's part of the, like the fact that we feel that way is good because it signals that there's been growth in our lives.
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And it's like,
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at any point where you look back and be like, I had exactly the same attitude or belief.
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It's like, maybe you need to, yeah, so, but no, it's been great.
00:04:14
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So, yeah, I mean, maybe we should start there.
00:04:17
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I know, I mean, there's a lot to cover, I guess, because you, for instance, you're, I'll put a proper introduction as far as your accolades and where you kind of come from, but from my perspective,
00:04:32
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search, you're a scholar, you're an entrepreneur, researcher, you put, you're always writing.
00:04:41
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It just amazes me every time you put out an article, because you're also doing academic papers, right?
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And you're also publishing books.
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So first of all, how do you find the time to do all of these things?
00:04:54
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Yeah.
00:04:54
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Well, I think we all have different gifts.
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Like Sula, perhaps its ability to sing is a huge gift.
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Now it's been trained in practice, but it's like something that she's able to do that other people aren't able to do.
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And likewise for me, I've trained and spent like thousands and thousands of hours writing and studying writing and
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studying what I think resonates, what doesn't.
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And so I've just become a lot more agile at writing.
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One thing I really believe in is that academics sometimes really kind of like close the book too early where they'll write something that's a journal article, but then they don't communicate it to a wider audience.
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And so I'm really passionate about everything that I do research over.
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It not only needs to be very timely and relevant and high impact, but it also needs to be repurposed to serve
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the audiences that it's going out to.
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And that's why whether it's one of my papers on the use of airdrops and writing a couple of stories about airdrops and interviewing people like interviewing Justin Blau and thinking about what Royal is doing and making it interpretable for a wider audience that matters.
00:05:58
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And then for books, like one of the books that I will have out in the spring is around basically how does rural America or just like the average American and this could go for any country for that matter, but take advantage of these trends that we're seeing in crypto remote work versus
00:06:13
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just letting it pass us by.
Democratizing Opportunities with Web3: Why is it Important?
00:06:15
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And actually, I'll spend a minute on this and just say the traditional theory among economists is known as skill bias technical change.
00:06:22
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And SBTC refers to the phenomenon that when a technology enters the marketplace, it tends to be biased towards skilled workers.
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Think about like the advent of the internet and computers, people that were in more professional sort of jobs were able to benefit from this.
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Whereas in factory jobs, you couldn't really benefit as much from it.
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And sometimes the rise of automation actually ended up displacing those workers.
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And so I really believe in that this new revolution that we're seeing with Web3, it's going to be crucially important for people to have the very least basic understanding of
00:06:57
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all of these principles.
00:06:59
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And I think that gives people a lot more confidence and courage around trying new things when you're like, oh, okay, this isn't that much different because it's like you get an airplane, you don't know how an airplane gets off the ground.
00:07:10
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At least I don't know how an airplane gets off the ground, but you still get in it.
00:07:12
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And so I think being able to use these NFT marketplaces, being able to trade digital assets,
00:07:17
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but know that you don't need to understand how a smart contract is written.
00:07:20
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You just need to be able to like trust different elements of it.
00:07:23
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So yeah, I'd say I love writing, but the core, I really just believe in around like strategy, communication, invention.
00:07:33
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I love inventing new things.
00:07:34
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And I just express that more through my writing that I do, like, you know, like an engineer, like builds a prototype or whatever, whatever.
00:07:41
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And so I, even though one of my degrees is an engineering, I'm not an industrial engineer.
00:07:46
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I'm more of a,
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writing, research, data science, that sort of stuff.
00:07:51
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I mean, that's, I guess, a good entry point for, I mean, you and I, I think we kind of entered the NFT space in a similar time.
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And we met at the NYC NFT iteration last November.
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I'm sure what you've seen as far as development and the direction of where this technology is going and what the usages are possible.
00:08:17
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I know I've been kind of like wowed and kind of astonished
00:08:21
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It just seems more and more
00:08:25
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First of all, I know that the crypto market kind of collapsed on itself or whatever, but for Joe and I, it seemed like it's for the better for the NFT space because now people can kind of like really delve into their ideas and really go full into and not worry about the speculation and not worry about people like waiting for returns on investment or whatnot.
00:08:46
Speaker
But going back to your, you're talking about like your ability to kind of simplify and
00:08:52
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information and get it to take jargon and just like take it out to the masses or whatnot.
00:08:58
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It seems like the NFT space is in desperate need of that, like having onboarded countless of artists into the space and trying to give them the tools necessary to kind of like utilize this technology for them to kind of use it for the practice or use it to augment their economies.
00:09:21
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I often think it's like, it's like, imagine the banking system was you had to, you had to create your own digital wallet to, to, to open a bank account.
00:09:30
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And then you had to, you had to figure out how to send yourself money instead of like relying on like Citibank or whatever you had, you had to figure out all those little minute details that are already figured out for you.
00:09:41
Speaker
It seems like because web three is so new, uh,
00:09:46
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The technology is at the point now where it's just like, you have to kind of, there's a lot of hurdles to kind of overcome.
00:09:54
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And yes, that usually gets taken care of with time, right?
00:09:59
Speaker
But right now we're not there.
Overcoming NFT Space Challenges
00:10:01
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So what do you say to people that are new to the space and kind of like want to participate?
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think so reading is hugely important, but also just obviously talking with people, but talking with the right people, because there's no shortage of articles, whether it's on Medium or wherever on Google, where you'll find like people just talking about NFTs.
00:10:20
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And what kind of frustrates me and one of the reasons that I want, I feel like really this calling to write is because
00:10:25
Speaker
There is this urgency to fill these different gaps of knowledge.
00:10:30
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And it's like it shouldn't be this hard to find an answer to a basic question.
00:10:34
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But it is because there's a lot of fluff out there.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so I think whenever somebody finds another person in your community, whether it's a digital community that you're part of or just like in your own metropolitan area, like be a sponge and soak up that information.
00:10:47
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And that's why I was joking with you right before we started.
00:10:50
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around us being on Zoom with a blockchain developer that I met at this local Nashville Web3 meetup.
00:10:56
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And I'm just like, I know a lot of stuff, but I don't know his stuff.
00:10:59
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And I would like to know more of his stuff because that makes me a more educated builder, engineer, strategist, whatever it might be.
00:11:06
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So I think point number one is just be a sponge and soak up information wherever you can get it and be sure that you're soaking from the right sources.
00:11:12
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Number two is that really don't be afraid to ask basic questions because oftentimes people don't know the answer, like in the same room and people are just kind of intimidated to ask.
00:11:21
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And I mean, you like you see all these new platforms that are emerging, different NFT marketplaces, different layer one, layer two scaling solutions.
00:11:29
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And it's like what really differentiates marketplace A from marketplace B?
00:11:33
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And it's OK to ask that question because
00:11:35
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it's probably not spelled out that clearly whether online or anywhere.
00:11:38
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And so, so number two is asking questions.
00:11:41
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And number three is like, don't be afraid to get involved, but get involved at an, at a kind of like baby steps.
00:11:46
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You don't need to have a Yuga labs launched by tomorrow.
00:11:51
Speaker
You need to just take baby steps.
00:11:52
Speaker
And so even, even just like you, you make your own digital artwork, you make your own music NFT, minted on OpenSea.
00:11:58
Speaker
If it doesn't sell, that's okay.
00:12:00
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We experimented in Living Opera with a collection back last November and,
00:12:04
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We didn't we didn't sell that what we were expecting, but that's OK, because it was like an experiment.
00:12:09
Speaker
And and then maybe a fourth point is just to say, I think everybody needs to have like a core that you are really strong in and you're not putting all your eggs into like one basket of.
00:12:20
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an NFT collection selling out.
00:12:22
Speaker
And so what's neat about, obviously, what you and Joe do is that you work with talented artists.
00:12:26
Speaker
So these artists weren't just people that woke up and said, I've got an NFT to mint.
00:12:30
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No, these are capable people that now express themselves in a new way, much like Sula as a world-class opera singer in Norman are just phenomenal opera singers that can do the things that they've been doing in the past 15 plus years.
00:12:43
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Or me, I can like, I mean, write, do whatever strategy, a professor, that sort of stuff.
00:12:48
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And so that way it also takes the pressure off
00:12:51
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And there's not like, oh, it's got to sell out within the first 30 minutes.
00:12:54
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Otherwise, it's going to not have momentum on social media.
00:12:57
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So taking the pressure off is really important.
00:13:00
Speaker
So those are a couple, I think, best practices that come to my mind.
00:13:05
Speaker
Those are great points.
00:13:07
Speaker
To go back to what you're saying about Joe and I, it's constant trying things and pivoting and asking people, like you said.
00:13:17
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I was around during the beginning of the internet, but I wasn't around in the sense that I was able to take advantage of it and start a company.
00:13:28
Speaker
A lot of people who have been in that space were saying that there are similarities where people are very open about exchanging information and not necessarily doing that for money.
00:13:36
Speaker
It's like they're not want to use the word utopia because that's a, I don't know, sometimes tainted word, but it's a it's a little bit more optimistic as far as the way that people are kind of like going about sharing information and collaborating and and and reinforcing their resources with others.
00:13:54
Speaker
That being said, can you kind of give us a rundown as far as your entry into NFT and then into Living Opera as well?
00:14:03
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Yeah.
00:14:04
Speaker
Well, when I was doing my doctorate, I remember seeing stuff about Bitcoin and seeing some headlines.
00:14:11
Speaker
And so one of my core areas, so what I'm most passionate about is the question of human capital.
00:14:17
Speaker
How do people live to their fullest in life?
00:14:20
Speaker
And so that has a micro dimension where you're studying the use of incentives.
00:14:24
Speaker
Like, for example, how do people respond to the use of performance paid contracts?
00:14:28
Speaker
But it also has macro questions around how do countries grow?
00:14:32
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What drives human flourishing?
00:14:33
Speaker
And so some of the research that I was doing at the time was more on that macro scale where I was looking at certain fundamentals like consumer sentiment.
00:14:41
Speaker
Well, I guess consumer sentiment is less of a fundamental, but I was looking at the correlation between
00:14:44
Speaker
consumer sentiment and GDP growth, unemployment rate and so on.
00:14:48
Speaker
And so you see like this new asset called Bitcoin that is, is, have these really interesting price dynamics.
00:14:56
Speaker
And so I started correlating that with the VIX, the volatility and certainty index, GDP, and showing these different correlations and doing a presentation on it.
00:15:04
Speaker
And so it was like, this is really interesting.
00:15:06
Speaker
And it was kind of talked to my mind and then
00:15:09
Speaker
around early, early, I think it was like January or February of 2020, I meet, who has now become a good friend, Ian Utilly, who told me he runs a company called Attention Live that does voice technology plus NFTs and they're helping content creators put kind of like an authentication stamp on their creative content.
00:15:31
Speaker
So I started talking with Ian.
00:15:32
Speaker
He told me about this vision of doing this white paper and, and, and NFT is being the bedrock of it.
00:15:38
Speaker
And so I started reading a lot more and figuring out what like ERC tokens are.
00:15:43
Speaker
And, and that was my main primer just by writing a paper.
00:15:49
Speaker
And that's one of the things I'll say about writing is that it forces you to learn more about the subject area.
00:15:53
Speaker
And I don't do writing for money.
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, like it doesn't pay to write an article in Newsweek or in, uh,
00:16:00
Speaker
forms or whatever, like that doesn't pay any money.
00:16:02
Speaker
And actually for academic journals, you have to pay money to write the article like journal of financial economics charges $750 and they have a 99% rejection rate.
00:16:11
Speaker
So it's like, yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
So for me, it's like writing is an opportunity for me to synthesize
00:16:17
Speaker
and then formalize what I've learned.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I think one thing that I think I need to get better at actually is like, you know, when you verbalize something that ingrains it more in your mind.
00:16:29
Speaker
So it's like writing is one thing and then verbalizing it another.
00:16:31
Speaker
I think I need to like start talking to myself while I'm writing.
00:16:34
Speaker
But point being was that that was a big entry point was writing that white paper that we eventually released, I think in November of 2020.
00:16:42
Speaker
No, I think it was like, maybe it was in 2021.
00:16:46
Speaker
Anyways, we eventually spent about six months on it.
00:16:50
Speaker
And then at NFT NYC, that and then our Basel really opened up my eyes and when Sula was there and just really excited us about the scope of possibility of the scene, that there was all these other creators like yourself that were kind of passionate about the same thing.
00:17:05
Speaker
So ever since then, and I'd say, yeah, basically since November and December of 2021,
00:17:12
Speaker
we realized that this is, I think, a key for the art community and the music community for remunerating these content creators and for creating more modular content.
00:17:23
Speaker
And you think about like, you know, when a big movie is like deciding where to license the music from, and it's like this really complicated process.
00:17:31
Speaker
But imagine if there was just a bunch of different NFTs where they bought up
00:17:35
Speaker
individual NFTs and then it was all composed on chain and then the individual artists get remunerated and it doesn't need to be some really high stakes negotiation around this fancy table.
00:17:45
Speaker
So I think that there's just a lot of possibilities, not only on the financial side, but also for the creation of new types of content and, um,
00:17:53
Speaker
The way you create brand partnerships and you're able to increase engagement because you're like, if you hold this NFT, you're also going to get XYZ perks.
Living Opera's Mission and NFTs in Music Industry
00:18:02
Speaker
And so, yeah, super exciting.
00:18:06
Speaker
And so about yourself, was that really what took the balance for you at NFT NYC or were you already on the train before then?
00:18:15
Speaker
I mean, we had been, I think since, I mean, we officially formulated our company in April of 2021.
00:18:23
Speaker
So we were pretty excited.
00:18:24
Speaker
And then coming into contact with people like yourself and others, not necessarily the board people that people typically think of in the NFT space, but actually people who are trying to make content with some kind of something actually behind it and utilizing it.
00:18:44
Speaker
Again, in creative ways, utilizing it for social good, utilizing it for, I mean, I love, I think a lot of people think music is one of the key places that NFTs might actually benefit because of the way that the music field, I mean, starting with the whole Napster thing and just like,
00:19:08
Speaker
My sister, she used to be in a band and it was just ridiculous to see the checks, the royalty checks that would come in.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
It's just so sad that the owners, the people who own the publishing rights are the only ones making anything off of things.
00:19:26
Speaker
And the people that actually create the content are just not getting anything.
00:19:31
Speaker
No.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:32
Speaker
And it's like, it's tough because I think a lot of people in the arts will feel like, what's the alternative?
00:19:39
Speaker
Like, if I don't go with the big label, then I'm never going to make it.
00:19:43
Speaker
And so you end up settling for something.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so, yeah, one of the things that we've been trying to teach and just share is,
00:19:49
Speaker
Shared from a position of like us trying to do it ourselves within living opera is that there are these new options that are available and it can be a win win for both sides.
00:19:57
Speaker
It's like not just a win for the artist, but there's a much bigger pie that the labels and institutions can also have at their disposal.
00:20:04
Speaker
Because you think about how like take opera or classical music in particular, where.
00:20:09
Speaker
there is a perception that it's elite.
00:20:11
Speaker
There is a perception that it's fading.
00:20:14
Speaker
Now, I believe, we believe in living opera that classical music is classic for a reason.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's beautiful.
00:20:18
Speaker
And Mozart is a genius.
00:20:20
Speaker
And
00:20:21
Speaker
that will stand the test of time.
00:20:22
Speaker
But I think that there is an opportunity for those institutions to say, no, we're not elitist.
00:20:28
Speaker
Like actually the ticket price is a lot cheaper than a ticket to see a Taylor Swift concert.
00:20:32
Speaker
And so when you actually get the facts and you start engaging with people and you start talking with people that maybe disagree a little bit, then you start widening that community and doing what you really want to do.
00:20:44
Speaker
Your value proposition is bringing beautiful music to people.
00:20:47
Speaker
And so I think there is this opportunity to broaden that audience.
00:20:51
Speaker
And one of the areas I think within opera in particular is that actually performing arts in general is that a lot of artists have been absorbing more costs onto them.
00:21:02
Speaker
So if there's an audition, they take that risk to go and like, whatever, maybe they have to take out a loan and they do an audition and then they don't get it.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so then it's like, okay, now I'm in a worse position because I didn't get it.
00:21:13
Speaker
I took out this loan and
00:21:16
Speaker
then even contracts are not that large for opera singers.
00:21:19
Speaker
So unless you're like one of the top five opera singers in the world, then you're not making that much.
00:21:25
Speaker
And even the top five, I mean, you take the top five opera singers compared to the top five, like sports stars or the top five, like executive, like CEOs or whatever.
00:21:35
Speaker
And it's like not even remotely a comparison.
00:21:37
Speaker
So
00:21:37
Speaker
There is such an opportunity to broaden the pie for everybody if we just kind of like sit down and we strategize about what this innovation can actually do when we go out and build it.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:48
Speaker
As a classically trained classical guitarist, I know the pains.
00:21:54
Speaker
It's just like everything starts off where I guess the, I mean, you listen to your favorite whatever.
00:22:02
Speaker
In my case, you listen to your Andre Segovia's and your
00:22:04
Speaker
Julian Breams, and then it's like you do your thing and you get handed off from teacher to teacher.
00:22:10
Speaker
And you could see the architecture of the it's just such closing, closing in on itself.
00:22:16
Speaker
And it's like you said, the amount of people who are actually able to do it professionally are so small.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:24
Speaker
But the benefits of live music in particular are so large.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah.
Art's Societal and Personal Benefits
00:22:30
Speaker
Joe and I are really big proponents of music.
00:22:33
Speaker
it's one of the more, I would say, as far as our senses are concerned, music is such a one-to-one thing.
00:22:41
Speaker
Even though I'm in visual arts and all that, but it's just like, it's so visceral.
00:22:45
Speaker
And so the energy transference of somebody on a stage to the audience, it's immediate.
00:22:53
Speaker
Which is why I'm sure a lot of people do perform because they kind of need that feedback.
00:22:57
Speaker
But it's just, it is a shame that
00:23:00
Speaker
we for whatever reason the music industry especially in the classical field has just got succumbed to this like basement yeah but it doesn't need to be that way and that's what we're really trying to change and so i mean one um interesting point is that uh well actually just on this point that you're making about like the actual kind of physiological effects i mean sula sending me this um uh article from sanford medical school around
00:23:27
Speaker
like blood cells that were being like moving around and changed as a result of sound.
00:23:32
Speaker
And so I'm going to be going there on like October 14th to present a couple of papers.
00:23:37
Speaker
And one of the experiments that we're really interested in launch is a randomized control trial where you actually see physiologically people that hear the operatic voice versus just something that's like not classical.
00:23:49
Speaker
And we don't want to like obviously bash any other genres or whatever, but it's like, there's a difference between classical and something else.
00:23:55
Speaker
And
00:23:56
Speaker
the effect it actually has on your body, on kind of neurological activity.
00:24:01
Speaker
There's something something there.
00:24:03
Speaker
The second thing is I have a paper that is going through a peer review right now about the importance of arts for social capital.
00:24:09
Speaker
And the headline result is that the areas that have more exposure to the arts had a let me put it differently.
00:24:16
Speaker
The areas that have there's a strong correlation between like exposure to the arts and social capital.
00:24:21
Speaker
And so when we think about how do we go forward as a society, whether it's United States or countries in Europe, and how do we just get along?
00:24:28
Speaker
I think coming together in places of music is very important because it attracts people that might have different ideological views, but there is a common grounding.
00:24:38
Speaker
And oftentimes people demonize each other because they just don't know each other.
00:24:42
Speaker
And so if you can bring people together and anchor it around conversations around things that you kind of like that you love, then.
00:24:49
Speaker
Boy, that's how that's how friendships form.
00:24:50
Speaker
That's how you depoliticize things.
00:24:52
Speaker
So we're really excited by that possibility.
00:24:55
Speaker
And with the NFT collections, it's like digital is great, but it's to point people towards in person, lower the barriers and allow new modes of consumption, but then to lead people to be like, hey, I have a taste for this.
00:25:07
Speaker
I actually like this appetizer.
00:25:08
Speaker
Now I'm going to get the full course when I go in person.
00:25:11
Speaker
So it's kind of an entry point into the broader experience of the arts.
00:25:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we haven't released it yet, but we had a music scholar recently on our podcast, Ryan Tanaka, who said that the most interesting things happen when the humanities meets technology.
00:25:29
Speaker
Like that intersection is usually produces very, very interesting, fruitful things for humanity, you know, and in the very way that you're talking about, for instance, the opera.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
Can you share a little bit about this project that's coming out?
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:47
Speaker
End of September.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'd love to.
00:25:49
Speaker
And actually just on that point, I think one of the first op-eds I wrote was in Quartz like eight years ago that looked at something like 10 million observations from the American Community Survey and the Census Bureau.
00:26:01
Speaker
And I looked at people that had double majored in disparate disciplines like STEM and liberal arts versus people that just double majored vertically to STEM, to liberal arts and whatnot.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I think it was like 10% earnings premium.
00:26:15
Speaker
So people that double major in disparate disciplines end up earning 10% more than their counterparts that double major in vertically, even after you control for like a lot of other factors.
00:26:24
Speaker
And so I think it pays.
00:26:25
Speaker
I mean, like, I think there's like literally an impact that it has on our ability to be agile, to understand differences of opinion and that sort of stuff that eventually show up in people's earnings in the long run.
Magic Mozart Generative Art Collection
00:26:36
Speaker
Now with Magic Mozart, well, let me say as a precursor to this, living opera believes that classical music can be a real source for good in the world and that there's a lot of beauty there and it can bring people together.
00:26:48
Speaker
And so we want to take that art
00:26:52
Speaker
and especially Sula and Norman as performers, Norman's a tenor and Sula is a dramatic soprano, to take that art and then to use technology to break down some of those barriers and just to make better business processes so that artists get remunerated.
00:27:07
Speaker
So Sula and Norman launched Living Opera formally about two years ago, more on social media, just by going live and sharing best practices with younger performing artists.
00:27:16
Speaker
And that was great.
00:27:17
Speaker
And then we made it more into a company with these online
00:27:21
Speaker
There's something called Beyond Your Big Break, which is a class for opera singers that want to figure out what is it that will really launch me into being agile in the marketplace.
00:27:35
Speaker
And what we've found is there's so many things that are not taught in colleges, in conservatories around how to manage an agent.
00:27:41
Speaker
how to just read a contract and have that financial literacy so that you see, okay, this is what's being offered, but basically this is how much I'm going to have as take-home pay.
00:27:51
Speaker
So there's all those things.
00:27:52
Speaker
And that educational aspect was very important in our early days.
00:27:56
Speaker
Now what we've moved more towards is producing multimedia because we realize like,
00:28:02
Speaker
This is not this this the way that things are isn't totally sustainable.
00:28:06
Speaker
You can't be instructing unless unless the foundation kind of changes and gets in the pie gets bigger for everybody.
00:28:13
Speaker
More educational content isn't going to help because you're just going to be funneling more people into this environment that only has so much demand.
00:28:22
Speaker
And so what we thought is what if we could, by example, start shifting that foundation?
00:28:28
Speaker
And so with Magic Mozart, it's a generative art collection around the life of Mozart.
00:28:33
Speaker
And we've got a couple of different layers, about five different layers that are all coming from the magic flute.
00:28:39
Speaker
So Magic Mozart isn't just some quirky name we came up with.
00:28:42
Speaker
It's based off of his composition of the magic flute in 1791.
00:28:46
Speaker
And it premiered on September 30th.
00:28:48
Speaker
So we're going to be launching
00:28:49
Speaker
1791 NFTs on September 30th, and we're going to be doing a live event in Nashville.
00:28:54
Speaker
And then there's about 6200 total that we'll be doing like a second tranche later on.
00:28:59
Speaker
So there is this novel artistic aspect where it's digital art that we think is really cool.
00:29:05
Speaker
There is on-chain a musical composition based off of Musical.Liz Werfisch spiel, which is a game that Mozart or
00:29:13
Speaker
Basically, most people think that it was probably Mozart that created it because his publisher released it like two years later or some years later.
00:29:20
Speaker
And it's like the publisher didn't come up with this.
00:29:22
Speaker
This is like something only Mozart could come up with.
00:29:25
Speaker
And so Sula discovered this back like in Christmas, Christmas Eve last year.
00:29:30
Speaker
And she was emailing me.
00:29:31
Speaker
It was like this eureka moment because it's like, finally, there's a reason why classical music actually has
00:29:37
Speaker
a case to make about generative art.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's not just like we're hopping on some bandwagon.
00:29:41
Speaker
It's like, no, Mozart was actually the pioneer behind generative art.
00:29:45
Speaker
And so that's the backstory and what the artistic aspect is about.
00:29:50
Speaker
But then we've got this utility aspect where we want to launch the Living Arts DAO.
00:29:55
Speaker
And so we're motivated by the fact that artists are struggling.
00:29:59
Speaker
It's hard to get access to funds.
00:30:01
Speaker
And why don't we launch a microgrants program
00:30:05
Speaker
that is fast paced.
00:30:06
Speaker
So you don't need to wait six months to figure out whether or not you got funded or not, but you can put in a proposal, $500, I needed to do this, this and this, and you put together a mini proposal.
00:30:15
Speaker
And so then we connect you directly with philanthropists that fund you.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it's fast, it gets voted upon, it's transparent, it's accountable.
00:30:22
Speaker
And that deals with a lot of the concerns people have had with traditional nonprofits where it's like they have this huge budget, but there's not as much transparency around how it's being allocated.
00:30:31
Speaker
And so we wanna launch the Living Arts DAO
00:30:34
Speaker
And then the other neat aspect is that it provides an opportunity to put to practice these lessons that you're learning through the online classes around how to communicate, how to present yourself.
00:30:44
Speaker
And so by doing this proposal, it's a bit of experiential learning.
00:30:47
Speaker
And then you get certified around our arts entrepreneurship certificate, which you have a verifiable credential around, and that can signal to others around
00:30:55
Speaker
okay, hey, you know how to do this.
00:30:56
Speaker
And that might be something that differentiates you when agents are looking for who to pick up, what emerging talent to pick up, or even like a mid-career professional for that matter.
00:31:04
Speaker
So we're excited about this new model for philanthropy, but that's not to say that everything is figured out.
00:31:10
Speaker
We're spending time talking to lawyers about how to set up the structure and how to do it right so that there's not, because like, we're not trying to make money out of this.
00:31:17
Speaker
We're trying to set up a new pioneering approach to
00:31:20
Speaker
arts philanthropy.
00:31:21
Speaker
And so we just are trying to ask the right questions, figure out what questions we need to ask that maybe we're not asking and then to get it off the ground.
00:31:30
Speaker
So no, that's a short story about it.
00:31:33
Speaker
No, that's a great case study.
00:31:36
Speaker
Very excited every time you post something about it and see.
00:31:39
Speaker
It seems like Sula is a very impassioned, energetic person with a very interesting Genesis story, right?
00:31:45
Speaker
She was kind of discovered.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:31:48
Speaker
So, well, I'll let you talk about that, but, um, yeah, well, I'm glad you brought it up.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:53
Speaker
Go for it.
00:31:54
Speaker
I was going to say, it seems like she's kind of creating something that she wishes she had access to.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:32:00
Speaker
Is that, is that.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, no.
00:32:02
Speaker
And, and so the motivation behind everything we do is kind of like based off of personal experience.
00:32:07
Speaker
And in her case, she, um,
00:32:10
Speaker
moved to Germany based off of having a grant from a philanthropist in British Columbia.
00:32:16
Speaker
And she wouldn't have been in that room at that time if that liquidity, if that grant wasn't there.
00:32:22
Speaker
And so while there are many barriers in the world, liquidity isn't the only one, but it is one.
00:32:28
Speaker
And it's an important one that we think artists are specifically facing because of stagnant wages, because of
00:32:35
Speaker
more cost being passed on to them and so on.
00:32:37
Speaker
So it really rings true to Sula's life story.
00:32:40
Speaker
And that honestly, that was like literally right after she got cancer and then recovered.
00:32:46
Speaker
And so it was at a very fragile moment in time.
00:32:48
Speaker
And this also is something that we think can build compassion within
00:32:52
Speaker
the broader community of non-artists where it's like you never know what somebody is going through.
00:32:57
Speaker
They might have just recovered from an illness.
00:32:59
Speaker
Maybe somebody in their family was struggling.
00:33:00
Speaker
Maybe they're struggling.
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean, like artists being kind of unable to perform for the past two years.
00:33:05
Speaker
And even now the industry hasn't fully recovered.
00:33:07
Speaker
So people are always going through something and it's important to build up that compassion.
00:33:11
Speaker
And we thought, what better way than to kind of start a new vehicle for providing micro grants to artists that just need an extra thousand dollars and don't want to take out debt to do that.
00:33:23
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:33:23
Speaker
I mean, that just opens as far as, I mean, my brain's kind of like,
00:33:28
Speaker
inspiring the synopsis because, because residencies, I think some of them are great in the sense that they bring, you know, different types of artists together into a space.
00:33:37
Speaker
And, but sometimes you don't need, you don't necessarily need to go into like the woods to do art.
00:33:41
Speaker
Sometimes it's just, you need a, like you said, you need an injection of funds or something to, to, to pull off a project or it could be, it could, it could, you know, this, this kind of help could be, could come in so many different ways.
00:33:52
Speaker
And especially in the visual arts, especially in, uh,
00:33:57
Speaker
we come into contact, visual artists, like, it's almost like you don't even want to, they don't talk, we don't want to talk about money, like, as if it doesn't exist, or it doesn't affect us.
00:34:08
Speaker
But it does.
00:34:08
Speaker
That's also true in academia, like, you would be surprised, like, or maybe not surprised, I should say, how many academics will start papers where it's like, what is the, like the value proposition?
00:34:19
Speaker
Wow.
00:34:19
Speaker
And it's like, you're going to work an extra 2000 hours.
00:34:21
Speaker
And
00:34:22
Speaker
There's not going to be like, I mean, we should be intrinsically motivated and there should be a higher purpose.
00:34:27
Speaker
But you also have to be able to pay your bills.
00:34:30
Speaker
And if you have income that allows you to do other things that are creative.
00:34:33
Speaker
And so we need to be able to talk about how you're going to pay for things.
00:34:38
Speaker
And you can't just like say yes to 10 different projects and not have a kind of a business plan around it.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:44
Speaker
And that's, I mean, now more, more so than before you start seeing, uh, uh, classes and MFA programs where they kind of teach you about economies and what you need to do to set yourself as a business entity and stuff like that.
00:34:58
Speaker
But before it was like, you're kind of like, you're giving no tools, um, you're kind of like kicked out the door and you have to kind of figure it out on your own.
00:35:04
Speaker
And,
00:35:05
Speaker
Of course, there's going to be a humongous failure rate.
00:35:08
Speaker
Not to mention that certain places are better than others for supporting the arts.
00:35:13
Speaker
I mean, Europe does have a different model than, say, the States.
00:35:16
Speaker
And it sounds like Sula found success in Europe.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
Are you thinking of the FES model or just like overall different?
00:35:23
Speaker
I'm just thinking about college debt, not having any grant systems, not having, I mean, there's all sorts of having dealt with European artists that were raised in Europe and had gone through schools.
00:35:38
Speaker
There's a different mindset, you know?
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:42
Speaker
You can experiment more, for instance, if you go through a European model versus American model, you don't have to necessarily, we talked about this recently in our last podcast,
00:35:53
Speaker
Oftentimes you see a lot of American artists turn towards more object-based because you can sell that.
00:36:01
Speaker
It's easy to translate into.
00:36:04
Speaker
But whereas most of the world has been producing work that is more immaterial, whether it be digital video, digital art, that kind of art up until recently did not have an economic model for being able to transfer and sell.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:20
Speaker
the NFT.
00:36:22
Speaker
No, it's true.
00:36:23
Speaker
I mean, there are a lot of advantages of the European system.
00:36:26
Speaker
And the FES model is one that Sula and Norm both know and where you really get to simultaneously improve your craft and have opportunities to showcase your skills and be paid on salary.
00:36:38
Speaker
And that's an aspect of the United States where you're always a freelancer.
00:36:40
Speaker
So there's so much up in the air and there's not that stability.
00:36:44
Speaker
I'd say, I mean, both systems have like pros and cons.
00:36:46
Speaker
And one of the problems is like, it's like you shouldn't have to go to like a completely another continent in order to get like some hybrid.
00:36:54
Speaker
So there might be a world where maybe in the future, there's a bit of both in each continent.
00:37:00
Speaker
But no, it's true.
00:37:02
Speaker
There's this concept around experimentation and finding what you're really good at, whether you could actually, whether you want to have a career, because also in opera, like your voice changes.
00:37:12
Speaker
obviously over the course of your career.
00:37:14
Speaker
In some roles, you're just not going to be ready for another 10 years.
00:37:18
Speaker
And so what do you do?
00:37:19
Speaker
Well, if you're in the United States, then you kind of have to figure
Business Skills in Arts Education: Why Are They Essential?
00:37:23
Speaker
out something.
00:37:23
Speaker
But if you're in Europe, maybe you start casting on a more stable, but slightly a little bit more under the radar, but you're still able to earn something.
00:37:31
Speaker
So there are these different approaches and there's something interesting about Europe.
00:37:35
Speaker
The last thing I'll say on this note around entrepreneurship is that
00:37:38
Speaker
I have a paper with a faculty friend at University of Michigan named Jonathan, and this paper is about the labor market returns to arts entrepreneurship.
00:37:48
Speaker
And so the first part of the paper, we hand collect data from all the different major colleges and conservatories, and we find that only about 10% have any arts entrepreneurship certificate, so not that many.
00:37:59
Speaker
And then second, we show that individuals that have some business exposure
00:38:03
Speaker
and are in the arts are earning a premium in the labor market.
00:38:06
Speaker
Now, the data isn't good enough to like be able to match individuals with specific programs, but we do find that on average controlling for lots of other characteristics.
00:38:15
Speaker
And so I think that there's something very necessary about being exposed to marketing, communication, business plans, whether you're an artist or not.
00:38:26
Speaker
And it can't be some like dirty thing that people don't talk about.
00:38:30
Speaker
No, and on the flip side, I often joke about on every corporate board, there should be some kind of artist or somebody in that field that kind of gives you a, can give you something from a different
00:38:45
Speaker
avenue or a different vantage point.
00:38:47
Speaker
I mean, obviously, diversity is one thing, but yes, even thinking from the humanities standpoint, as opposed to just pure profit or taking care of your investors or whatnot.
00:39:01
Speaker
I think there's value in that.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, just to say there's a lot of kind of group thing that happens in these different circles where it's like, it's super specialized.
00:39:12
Speaker
And so it just gets like really narrow.
00:39:13
Speaker
And you just need somebody to sometimes ask basic questions about like, what about this?
00:39:18
Speaker
I'm sorry, or dumb questions, like a very stupid questions that nobody is, or people are afraid to ask, you know?
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:39:25
Speaker
Exactly.
00:39:29
Speaker
you're saying?
00:39:29
Speaker
Oh, no, I think, well, I mean, there's plenty of anecdotes that we can probably both share.
00:39:33
Speaker
I know in academia, there is a, there's, there's one seminar.
00:39:37
Speaker
Oh boy.
00:39:38
Speaker
I don't want to go on this tangent, but just to say like, there's an area of macroeconomics that's about solving for optimal tax rates where you're like, you build out this complicated dynamic model and you are looking for like, given the structure, what's the optimal tax rate that maximizes consumers wellbeing and like, and then take into account everything else.
00:39:58
Speaker
And, um,
00:39:59
Speaker
And so I was listening to one famous person talk and yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
And so he was coming out with the result that the tax rate should be like 90%.
00:40:08
Speaker
Now, I don't know where you land, like anyone lands that's listening on the spectrum of like what the tax rate should be, but like, I don't know a country that has like a 90% tax rate and that just, it's like a little bit tougher to accept that.
00:40:22
Speaker
And like, the reason was the model didn't have any,
00:40:26
Speaker
any variables that captured how people accumulate skill.
00:40:31
Speaker
So it's like you're skilled today and then tomorrow you're not.
00:40:34
Speaker
And so in a model where there's no investment in your skill, like, of course you want super, super, super high tax rates because there's a massive amount of risk.
00:40:43
Speaker
And so if you wake up tomorrow and you're like handicapped, like, of course you want like complete redistribution, but it's like that basic question.
00:40:50
Speaker
And so I was like, I leaned over to somebody that like a senior faculty that was sitting next to you.
00:40:54
Speaker
And I was like,
00:40:55
Speaker
can you ask this?
00:40:56
Speaker
And he raised his hand.
00:40:57
Speaker
But it's like you really need like wherever you are in the arts, in business, in academia, you need people to ask sometimes what seems like a dumb or basic question because it's actually not so dumb and basic.
00:41:09
Speaker
But anyways, hope that detour was not too far out.
00:41:13
Speaker
No.
00:41:15
Speaker
In looking into your many, I guess, different hats, I guess, I saw that you also dealt with AI or deal with AI.
AI in Arts: How Can It Complement Human Creativity?
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:30
Speaker
Has AI and NFTs come together for you in any capacity or is that something that works?
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:37
Speaker
Most of my work has been not on the art side.
00:41:41
Speaker
I'll just summarize my work so far and then get it to where I think there's a really interesting future.
00:41:48
Speaker
So yeah, a lot of AI and a lot of statistics is around building predictive models, doing causal inference.
00:41:56
Speaker
And so one of the hats I wear is on something called the National AI Institute in the Department of Veterans Affairs in the federal government.
00:42:03
Speaker
And
00:42:04
Speaker
By all means, like my attitudes here don't reflect, you know, that the usual disclaimer doesn't reflect the views of the federal government or any affiliated institutions, I think is a verbatim quote.
00:42:12
Speaker
But what we've been focused on there is building predictive models that use the VA data and the richness of it, because it's the most integrated medical data that's available.
00:42:23
Speaker
So you can track individuals over time, but it's also very sensitive data.
00:42:26
Speaker
So you have to be extremely careful about how you're using it, but building predictive models that
00:42:30
Speaker
end up giving clinicians more information and empower them to make better decisions.
00:42:34
Speaker
And so we did, we did some predictive modeling around when COVID broke out and we were looking at how can you predict mortality and give clinicians kind of like early warning signs so that they could adjust their treatment plan.
00:42:46
Speaker
And so that was interesting.
00:42:47
Speaker
And then other AI work is more in the like financial space where you're building models to forecast things in the economy, whether it's consumption or unemployment or whatnot.
00:42:56
Speaker
But that's probably less interesting to readers or to listeners, but I'll say on the art side, I really think about how does AI compliment humans?
00:43:05
Speaker
Because if all you do is like AI generated images, that's not scarce.
00:43:10
Speaker
And what we as individuals really want and I think we need is interaction.
00:43:16
Speaker
So I think the question to pose is like, how can AI be a compliment to our experiencing and our production of beauty and truth and goodness?
00:43:25
Speaker
And with that, one thing we've thought about in living opera is using individuals to train AI so that if you need an orchestra, for example, and you don't have like however much money to pay an orchestra to find an orchestra, it's like you can get kind of like an AI substitute.
00:43:41
Speaker
Or if you're trying to coordinate digital art together with sound, that you can get sound pairings that match the imagery that you're trying to convey in the actual art form.
00:43:52
Speaker
And that can be done at scale versus like an individual like hand collecting or kind of matching it up.
00:43:58
Speaker
So, and that improves the end use experience for the user or for the kind of like buyer of the NFT or buyer of the art.
00:44:04
Speaker
So those are some of the things that we're thinking about.
00:44:06
Speaker
And there is one project where we're specifically trying to think how do we build
00:44:13
Speaker
AI to do exactly that.
00:44:14
Speaker
And it's like, it's not easy.
00:44:15
Speaker
And I don't know if anyone's listening and has an off the shelf solution, do, do send me an email, but it is kind of tricky because you have to, you always, this is the thing about AI.
00:44:23
Speaker
You have to have good training data.
00:44:25
Speaker
If you don't have data that you can build a predictive model around, it's like,
00:44:30
Speaker
all the fancy mathematical models can't do anything you need, you need, that's a fuel for the model.
00:44:36
Speaker
So this is a space where I don't think really data has been, well, I will say one thing, sorry, this is another interesting thing that we're doing.
00:44:44
Speaker
We're building a voice classifier.
00:44:46
Speaker
So we have taken data off of the web where there's like no special licensing and we've trained a predictive model to predict different things about the voice.
00:44:56
Speaker
And we're in the process of doing some, some,
00:45:00
Speaker
TBD work that will, you'll see an announcement over the next three to six months about that.
00:45:05
Speaker
But yeah, so there is some data out there, obviously.
00:45:08
Speaker
You can be creative, but yeah, big question with the AI is what's the data that's being funneled into the algorithm?
00:45:16
Speaker
I like that it also sounds like, because it's not like AI is going to replace the artist or it's, it's, it's the very best, very best artists will be able to utilize AI and use it as a tool as you would any other tool.
00:45:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:32
Speaker
I mean, think about economics.
00:45:34
Speaker
It's like when we used to do like, well, me, I didn't used to do this, but like, I don't know, 60 years ago, people would do their like vector calculations and be multiplying matrices and doing like just running a linear regression was like,
00:45:45
Speaker
10 days or whatever.
00:45:46
Speaker
And now it's like you just one second in state of R, Python, whatever it might be.
00:45:51
Speaker
So I think technology can be a big amplifier, but it does require design thinking among the architects to figure out how to increase the set of opportunities that are out there, because there's always that there will be some displacement.
00:46:04
Speaker
And I think it's like really incumbent upon us to think about how do we architect a system where we maximize that complementarity so that everybody is kind of benefiting from it.
00:46:14
Speaker
Have you come into contact with WALL-E and the AI programs that are producing these images based on prompts?
00:46:24
Speaker
I'm sure you've come across those.
00:46:26
Speaker
What do you think about that technology?
00:46:29
Speaker
Well, I think what, like, what is, I mean, it's super interesting.
00:46:32
Speaker
I'd say with any art, people need to understand what are the koozy audience?
00:46:37
Speaker
What am I trying to get people to feel?
00:46:39
Speaker
So I think one, that that's like an important discovery and just being able to do that technologically is kind of mind blowing.
00:46:45
Speaker
And then two, I think about like the user experience that you want to generate.
00:46:50
Speaker
And so, I mean, one might be like what's AI chatbots.
00:46:53
Speaker
If somebody is typing something in, maybe there's some imagery that actually might be therapeutic to them.
00:46:58
Speaker
or being able to match up certain songs that, and I think classical music is great for this, where it can be really soothing.
00:47:03
Speaker
So I do think that there are use cases around it, but I just think in general, sometimes there is a tendency to get really excited about the technological possibility when we really need to back up and ask like the, why are we doing this?
00:47:16
Speaker
And,
00:47:17
Speaker
That's why we always have like, what's beautiful about your agency is like you interact with artists and y'all are artists yourselves.
00:47:24
Speaker
And so there's never really a risk that you're gonna like forget about the end user because you are them, you're talking with them, but like where engineers and developers can sometimes fall short is that it's like, it's so exciting to be able to program this up that then we forget, well, what is it actually for?
00:47:39
Speaker
So that's the only cautionary part that I would say, but obviously what you just described is super fascinating.
Enhancing Classical Music with VR: Is It the Future?
00:47:46
Speaker
Yeah, that makes me think of VR and the promises that VR has kind of been making forever.
00:47:52
Speaker
And it just seems like there's certain use cases that it works really, really well for.
00:47:56
Speaker
Like, I love the fact that a surgeon can go through multiple iterations of a surgery in virtual reality versus on a real person.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker
Or even a mechanical engineer doing, swapping an engine on an airplane, doing it virtually.
00:48:13
Speaker
But then it still has, you know, it still has, it's still lacking in certain instances, like even performances or music.
00:48:24
Speaker
It's a different experience.
00:48:25
Speaker
And then people...
00:48:26
Speaker
That being said, the technology sometimes, instead of mimicking real life, maybe the answer isn't doing that and just taking advantage of what the technology can do.
00:48:39
Speaker
We laugh when we see VR galleries that show art and they take into consideration gravity and it's like walls.
00:48:48
Speaker
You don't need those in virtual spaces.
00:48:51
Speaker
Those things are not necessary.
00:48:53
Speaker
I know they ground us and they ground our experiences and it's because we, it's like, it's what we know, but it's like, you, you have to be able to kind of untether and just allow yourself to kind of think outside of the realms of possibilities.
00:49:06
Speaker
It sounds like you guys are kind of doing that with, with your projects.
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
In the, in the pipeline are like Sula just recorded, Norma was directed and Sula was singing something called Basin Donk Leader, which was composed by Richard Wagner.
00:49:22
Speaker
And,
00:49:23
Speaker
there is this part of one of the songs where it's about like the whirling wheel of time.
00:49:31
Speaker
And so we do want to create that kind of experience where maybe somebody is like looking up and it's just like it's really inspiring visualization or with our with the Christmas album that we want to do in full, probably probably more next year because we've been prioritizing Magic, Mozart and some other stuff that I will get into now.
00:49:48
Speaker
Um, but like, if you're listening to, um, Ave Maria, being able to, uh, like be in like the Sistine Chapel and like look up as if you were there.
00:49:56
Speaker
So I think that there's a way to do VR that is, uh, giving people the excitement, the desire to then want to experience that in, in real life.
00:50:05
Speaker
Um, but it also breaks down some of those barriers because so many people, it's like, they're not going to spend five hours in an opera, but if you can like show them 30 minutes like this, it's, uh,
00:50:15
Speaker
And then they're like, they fall in love with it.
00:50:18
Speaker
And that's actually, oh, this is another important point.
00:50:20
Speaker
You talked about the physiological elements of voice and art.
00:50:23
Speaker
And that's actually one of the things that really got me personally invested in this, where I was like, I don't view it as even a startup.
00:50:29
Speaker
I view this as a long run social reality.
00:50:34
Speaker
goal in one sense to help people see beauty here was when I had heard Sula sing.
00:50:39
Speaker
It's just like, it's really, both Norman and Sula, just incredible operatic singers that have been honing their trade.
00:50:45
Speaker
And it's like, it actually will make me cry.
00:50:47
Speaker
And so that never used to happen.
00:50:49
Speaker
And part of it is, I mean, I never was really exposed to beautiful opera.
00:50:52
Speaker
So I think, yeah, VR has a lot of potential and we do want to embed that in to our NFT collections.
00:50:59
Speaker
But
00:51:00
Speaker
it's like not easy to do and you don't want to just do it the wrong way because if you're, you don't want to be the reason why somebody is like, Oh, I'm never going to listen to classical music VR.
00:51:08
Speaker
And so you want to do it right so that people do say, Hey, this is cool.
00:51:11
Speaker
And it's going to take a little bit of time to get that off the ground.
00:51:16
Speaker
Um,
00:51:17
Speaker
So do you guys have live events that incorporate NFTs in any capacity, whether it's people having or NFT holders that are given access to certain performances or is there, you know, metaverse and reality kind of melding together in any situations?
00:51:34
Speaker
Not yet.
00:51:35
Speaker
So Sula and Norman both have their performance careers.
00:51:38
Speaker
So think of that as like,
00:51:39
Speaker
the web zero in the sense of like, you're actually going in person.
00:51:43
Speaker
And so like, for example, Sula will be doing her debut in Athens, the lead role in an opera called Iphigenia in the Maria Callas Theater.
00:51:53
Speaker
And we're going to be building out a collection around Maria Callas that is like, honestly, time providentially for that.
00:52:00
Speaker
And then Norm is going to be doing a production in Houston in a couple of weeks.
00:52:03
Speaker
And so they have that aspect of their careers, but we haven't done something that's just like,
00:52:08
Speaker
living opera holders.
00:52:10
Speaker
We specifically, because we want to onboard some of this community onto what three.
00:52:14
Speaker
And so you can't really come out and be like, Hey, we're going to do this and that.
00:52:18
Speaker
And we've got people that are part of living opera that are in Europe that are in the United States.
00:52:23
Speaker
And so it's kind of scattered throughout the world.
00:52:25
Speaker
So we want to start onboarding people slowly, especially through this micro grants program.
00:52:29
Speaker
And then when we do things like the, the Christmas album, or when we do, um,
00:52:35
Speaker
even Bazendonk leader, there'll be kind of unique benefits where there can be in-person concerts and performances and being able to partner with companies like maybe an organization wants to have like a certain event, a certain experience.
00:52:50
Speaker
And so there's a lot of possibilities and we're very eager to continue pursuing those.
00:52:56
Speaker
Sounds great.
Diversity and Collaboration in Creative Processes
00:52:59
Speaker
It's funny how quick time goes.
00:53:01
Speaker
We're almost at an hour.
00:53:04
Speaker
But is there anything that really is that you've seen that's exciting you about the NFT space that not necessarily you wish to incorporate into the living opera, but what do you see for the future, I guess, for the space and what kind of excites you?
00:53:24
Speaker
Besides everything you've said so far.
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think one theme is, and you touched on this as well, is just how do people
00:53:34
Speaker
that have different experiences, different backgrounds, maybe different ideological opinions for that matter, come together to procreate beautiful works of art.
00:53:43
Speaker
And I view every paper that I write, every,
00:53:46
Speaker
press piece that I write.
00:53:47
Speaker
I try to view that as my mini work of art.
00:53:49
Speaker
I want, I mean, I'm looking at the sentences.
00:53:51
Speaker
I'm looking at how it flows.
00:53:53
Speaker
I'm looking at how it looks on the page.
00:53:54
Speaker
I'm thinking about like every little detail, just like an artist that is making a painting or a portrait thinks about those details.
00:54:00
Speaker
And so I think within each of us, we have the desire to be excellent.
00:54:04
Speaker
We have the desire to create works of art and we have to think introspectively about where have I been uniquely gifted?
00:54:10
Speaker
And the answer to that will be, what do I love doing?
00:54:12
Speaker
And then also looking, being very honest about like,
00:54:15
Speaker
okay, this I'm good at, this I need more work at, and this I like, maybe I only did because I had this like social expectation or maybe people that I went to school with went that track or whatever.
00:54:27
Speaker
And so when you get people together that have those different giftings, those different experiences, they start colliding to create something that's truly unique.
00:54:35
Speaker
And I think within Living Opera, that's my example with Zula, Norm, and myself.
00:54:40
Speaker
It's like, we all had extremely different experiences.
00:54:43
Speaker
Sula growing up in British Columbia and very different upbringing to me.
00:54:48
Speaker
Although both our moms are Canadian and both our dads are Greek.
00:54:52
Speaker
Like we are very similar that way.
00:54:53
Speaker
But in terms of like our lived experiences, she had cancer.
00:54:57
Speaker
I did it.
00:54:57
Speaker
She moved continents.
00:54:58
Speaker
I did it.
00:54:59
Speaker
So we come together though with such a new understanding and an ability to communicate and understand each other.
00:55:05
Speaker
And Norm growing up in kind of like a more rural America and seeing, and you grew up in a town that like,
00:55:12
Speaker
it used to be a big manufacturing place and now it's not.
00:55:16
Speaker
And so he was like the one person in his town that had this profound gifting to sing.
00:55:20
Speaker
And so he's like, he'll talk about this, like not being fully understood by people.
00:55:25
Speaker
And so when we come together, we're able to do really cool things.
00:55:28
Speaker
And so I'd say in some to listeners, like don't be afraid of those differences and just being able to listen and to really hone in on where you really talented at, where am I talented at?
00:55:39
Speaker
How do we come together to build something really unique?
00:55:42
Speaker
That's great advice for anyone, right?
00:55:45
Speaker
For anyone in any capacity in any field.
00:55:48
Speaker
I mean, that's key, right?
00:55:50
Speaker
To follow your bliss.
00:55:54
Speaker
Go into that area that you love and you have
00:56:00
Speaker
either a talent for you have something a propensity for it uh yeah that's fantastic uh um i was wondering if for to we we tend we go off on a song at the end of the podcast if you wanted to have a sula song for you for this particular podcast
00:56:18
Speaker
Oh, that's a great idea.
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:19
Speaker
Well, why don't we put, let me put on as some homework to get you.
00:56:23
Speaker
I need to double check if part of the Vase and Don Glitter is done.
00:56:27
Speaker
That might be a neat one.
00:56:29
Speaker
So let me come back to you on that, but that's a great idea.
00:56:32
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:56:34
Speaker
Anything else you'd like to mention or talk about?
00:56:39
Speaker
I think this is good.
00:56:40
Speaker
I love the questions.
00:56:43
Speaker
I hope, yeah, I'm excited about more things that we'll be able to talk and collaborate on in the months ahead.
00:56:48
Speaker
And yeah, just appreciate the work that you're doing as well to kind of bring visibility to the space.
00:56:54
Speaker
And yeah, I had a wonderful time.
00:56:58
Speaker
Great.
00:56:58
Speaker
Thanks for talking to us.
00:56:59
Speaker
I'm sure we'll talk again because it seems like you guys are not just like one idea after the next and just trying things.
00:57:06
Speaker
And I love that.
00:57:07
Speaker
I absolutely love it.
00:57:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:09
Speaker
So definitely we'll touch base at some point in the future.
00:57:12
Speaker
But thanks again for agreeing to be on the podcast.
00:57:15
Speaker
And it was a lovely conversation.
00:57:16
Speaker
Thank you.
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah, you bet.
00:57:18
Speaker
Talk soon.
00:57:19
Speaker
All right.
00:57:19
Speaker
Bye.
00:57:20
Speaker
Bye.
00:57:25
Speaker
Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
00:57:35
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
00:57:43
Speaker
Thanks to Christos for taking the time to speak to us this week.
00:57:45
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about Christos' work, visit his website at christosmacreadies.com.
00:57:50
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
00:57:54
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
00:57:58
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
00:58:03
Speaker
Thank you.
00:58:15
Speaker
Thank you.