Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
Speaker: Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
Speaker: Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver and Joseph Wilcox.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I don't know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I don't know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I don't want to.
Speaker: This week's guest is Carlos Franco.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I think I'm rolling.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Can you say this?
Speaker: This week's guest is Carlos Franco.
Speaker: I have the unfortunate pleasure to say that this Wix guest, see, I can't even pronounce Wix, is Carlos Franco.
Speaker: It's this podcast in Spanish.
Speaker: You know, I've been making an effort recently.
Speaker: Forget I asked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've been making an effort recently to talk more Spanish and to practice in this exercise of, wait, what does it mean?
Speaker: And now my brain is doing...
Speaker: because I was just in France.
Speaker: I was just in France.
Speaker: I'm refreshing on my Python.
Speaker: So I was like speaking French, refreshing on my French, doing Python lessons.
Speaker: And then I'm working with C Sharp.
Speaker: And so I have like, and then saying like, oh, I'm going to stop speaking English and I'm going to start my brain in linguistics right now.
Speaker: It's like Legos trying to play with Roblox and you don't know if it's digital or physical or if it's like a blockchain or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: So yeah, there you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a good intro.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: This is going to be a MacBurk podcast.
Speaker: No, no, of course not.
Speaker: Well, also, like you can smash Legos and Roblox together.
Speaker: It just like turns into something else, right?
Speaker: I know that Lego, the company has been pivoting towards making digital assets like Amiibos and Nintendo and like trying to pivot that like space between physics.
Speaker: I don't know what they're doing, even though I should know because I have my cousin and my nephew and my niece.
Speaker: So around that age and they love Legos, but I don't know what's the recent development in the gap between digital and physical building blocks.
Speaker: Makes sense for marketing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My daughter just finished with Legos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's really sad.
Speaker: Why are you going to do with them?
Speaker: I don't know what we're going to do with them, but it's like underneath our bed is a huge bag of Legos and it's just unused.
Speaker: Plus a bunch of other ones that are built.
Speaker: Well, the funny thing in my family is like my brother-in-law is the big Lego fan in some sense because he collects like the Star Wars Legos.
Speaker: So if you go to my sister has like a huge collection, like there's no art.
Speaker: There's like Lego Star Wars.
Speaker: So it's like funny that I don't know if I'm buying them sometimes for my niece or am I buying for my brother-in-law for their purpose, especially if I get a Star Wars themed one.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Are we?
Speaker: Is this part of the podcast?
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: It started.
Speaker: We're in.
Speaker: We're in it.
Speaker: Okay, damn.
Speaker: I also like the idea of Legos being like artwork that's not made yet that people want to put on their walls, but they like have to put it together, which I feel like is like a huge chunk of the people who buy Legos.
Speaker: Yeah, and the specialty sets, people typically buy, if they're collectors, they buy two and they keep one unopened because that'll be a lot easier to sell way above what the cost was.
Speaker: You can actually recoup the cost of the second kit.
Speaker: Oh, like if you sell it when it goes up in value.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that idea of collectors, I used to do that with, and I guess I still do to a certain degree when I didn't have any money and I still don't have like money at all in the greater scheme of North American having money.
Speaker: But I used to collect just video games and this idea of like, oh, like physicality, digital and cultural assets.
Speaker: So I have a huge video game collection.
Speaker: Well, huge is not as big as other people, but especially in my mother's house.
Speaker: And now if you go into my apartment, I do have like a nice little
Speaker: between, but I never play it because I just don't have any time.
Speaker: But I like the idea of like spending at least five minutes or two minutes with a game, seeing like the general mechanics and like what is the trajectory of this cultural artifact?
Speaker: I'm thinking of user experience and usability, especially as now a lot of people don't start thinking about that gap between us and opposable Tom's and iPhones and controllers and that kind of evolution.
Speaker: And it's almost like the missing link.
Speaker: A lot of people don't make the connection of arcades.
Speaker: from our case into iPhones, usability, UX experiences, how do people react to buttons and whatnot.
Speaker: I guess one of the other things I can think about is cameras at one moment and certain TV controllers.
Speaker: But I think that it's directly required for video games is kind of like thing that
Speaker: especially as we're going into conversations about the metaverse and the transition about world design and architecture and interactivity and embodiment digital assets, I think it's something that people don't take a lot or not a lot of theoreticians take into consideration.
Speaker: Maybe Alexander Galloway.
Speaker: Yeah, Alexander Galloway does talk a lot about, or he used to talk about metal use solid and kind of like postmodernism and whatnot and trying to create like a
Speaker: Robust history of the importance of this cultural artifact.
Speaker: That being said, yes, collecting video games and pretty sweet thing.
Speaker: And now it's like a little bit of a nostalgia and change factor, the idea of having digital CDs and all the CDs because everything's going into cloud streaming and the physical aspect of it.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess lost.
Speaker: The idea of having a CD with data inside is starting to be weird.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like you have like or like a cartridge that has like so much packed inside of it that has become an object that never was before.
Speaker: It was a thing that you shoved in so you can play a game.
Speaker: And now it's like this.
Speaker: It's become something like totally so much back into it.
Speaker: 54 megabytes.
Speaker: What about so the lead in from that conversation would be what about the collection of digital assets via the blockchain?
Speaker: Before we do that, before we do that, because because that's too quick and it's too easy.
Speaker: I did want to talk about graphics because I'm not like a current gamer anymore, but I definitely was when I played video games when I was a kid.
Speaker: And so it was always better.
Speaker: Everybody wanted better graphics, right?
Speaker: So I think I bowed out during the 64-bit days and 64 came out.
Speaker: And now from what I can tell, it seems like there is a sect of gaming that wants really, really incredible graphics.
Speaker: But there's also like Ben...
Speaker: like a resurgence of like bad graphics, right?
Speaker: Quote unquote bad graphics.
Speaker: Is that true?
Speaker: Well, I think we reached a moment where Call of Duty and all of these shooters, how much realism can you get?
Speaker: And then a couple of things happening.
Speaker: And I am like, I'm not in the video game industry, although I'm developing with Unity platform.
Speaker: I'm like always like on the edge, like everything that I do.
Speaker: But I can do it reading about it, about the development tools like Unity and Unreal Engine becoming so accessible and quote unquote,
Speaker: democratize that you have a lot of indie developers.
Speaker: You don't need a big team like Nintendo 30 persons or 15 persons doing video games.
Speaker: You can just do it by yourself.
Speaker: So there's a part of it of like having more freedom and not necessarily pandering to a kind of like, oh, I'm going to create a video game and then I need Nintendo to pay licenses, fees to Nintendo and then publish the cartridge.
Speaker: I can just put it in HIO or Steam and as an indie developer so I can get away with doing more creative stuff.
Speaker: And I think there was like a pivot of like people just saying like, okay, uh, you know, kind of like video game theory and like, uh, video game theory, like development, uh, practices of like, well, does realism make better gameplay?
Speaker: What is the definition of like good gameplay?
Speaker: And I'm pretty sure like there are more nuanced conversations to this and whatnot, but that's my general reading from the outside.
Speaker: And for a while I was really into video games, but then
Speaker: uh for a while i did move to san francisco and then i basically saw now i saw another fan um and then during the pandemic i really started coming back and one of my projects right now i'm working with the unity engine and uh mba project that i joke around with you guys um it's kind of like oh holy shit like this has developed to such a degree and especially the engines to work with
Speaker: like object-oriented programming has reached a certain level where oh you don't really don't need to know all of the c-sharp libraries or whatever like really go that deep into it you can actually create something that's feasible at a really high tier like uh low knowledge level and just have fun with it so i think there's a lot of that happening where basically the process of democratization of like the tools and what does it mean and
Speaker: all of the development programs becoming really powerful.
Speaker: Actually, this links up to the weirdness about processing power and graphic engines and links to the blockchain and all this NVIDIA GPUs basically.
Speaker: I like my horsepower.
Speaker: I've mentioned that before.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, Carlos will get into a thing and then when he's actually about to talk about the thing, he just skips over it.
Speaker: It's like the yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: So this is Borgian thing trying to replicate the natural world one-to-one.
Speaker: I mean, how can you...
Speaker: Is there a point where you would get to that point where you replicate everything as is or beyond?
Speaker: The map as the territory.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I think that's the conversation about the metaverse.
Speaker: And that's like a whole conversation about processing power, development tricks and whatnot.
Speaker: And that's like its own field.
Speaker: And because I've been digging, because of my own project, I've been telling you so much into this space.
Speaker: It's like such a deep dive.
Speaker: I don't know if you can replicate it.
Speaker: I don't know if you want to replicate it.
Speaker: I don't know if we should replicate it.
Speaker: Like that funny picture of Zuckerberg in the Horizons.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: Well, yeah, is that your best attempt with all of these billions of dollars that are replicating this or trying to create a feasible user experience?
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I think that goes into my message, into this idea of representation and why do we, which is always one of my questions, I guess I brought up when we were talking about the
Speaker: project of leader starter like, oh, why do you want to replicate a physical space in Dorito?
Speaker: And then we're so bound to this like railroad of thinking of architecture and right angles and gravity.
Speaker: And sure, we need to do that because it's recognizable and we're assimilated to it.
Speaker: So you want that smooth transition in the user experience.
Speaker: But then again, what are the other potentialities that haven't been explored?
Speaker: So replicating, yes, no, like, I don't know, like, yeah,
Speaker: Well, also, like if you're going to replicate it exactly right, if we like if this was whatever, a simulation, the reasons for doing that would be so that you can like have fake experiences that feel like real life as opposed to experiences where you like know you're in a virtual world or something like that.
Speaker: So I think there's like value in both.
Speaker: But I think when you the idea of like being able to travel is like a really like fun idea.
Speaker: It feels like real travel and you can like go places for much cheaper.
Speaker: But I think there's like much darker psychological paths you can go down if you start living in fantasy worlds like and it feels totally real and it looks totally real.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I recently went to Niagara Falls.
Speaker: Not I hear not because of.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Long story.
Speaker: But anyway, we rode.
Speaker: He's wanted to go since he was a kid.
Speaker: It was like such a big.
Speaker: This is the third time I've been.
Speaker: It gets worse.
Speaker: Nothing I guess in Anger Falls, but it's we rode the Maid of the Mist.
Speaker: And then right now I have the the Oculus at home and I was checking out to see if there was any 4K video of the actual.
Speaker: And I actually found I enjoyed the the virtual version.
Speaker: First of all, I wasn't getting wet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you didn't have to be in Niagara Falls.
Speaker: And it was like the perfect day.
Speaker: They shot it.
Speaker: It was a beautiful sun.
Speaker: I think ours, it was really hot.
Speaker: And it was like, you know, so it was like, this was nice.
Speaker: This is, but I don't know if I would have felt the same way if I had experienced the real thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Well, it's like director's experience.
Speaker: So someone's curating your experience in the VR and directing it and
Speaker: And I think that's the whole thing.
Speaker: Maybe the problem is this idea of mimesis.
Speaker: We are so stuck within this idea of... It's almost like we're monkeys still in the caves.
Speaker: Kind of like, oh, look, a deer.
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to paint a deer on the wall.
Speaker: I made it.
Speaker: I made it.
Speaker: It's almost like you can basically enclose human evolution in this whole tradition of us trying to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-
Speaker: reality and reality reality again and again and maybe it's like the saddest thing for me but uh or like one of the saddest things especially when the cryptocurrency thing happened i think this is like the first conversation that we had like when you guys came to the studio like wow like look at human evolution and we're in the art art world quote unquote and um
Speaker: We have these amazing tools, meaning like hyperledgers without calling into blockchain that can have the memory.
Speaker: Imagine the implications of that for democracies, for all of this stuff, and the best that we can do is, oh, I'm going to own that JPEG, and it's mine.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like the weird, like, okay, so we're repeating the behavior that a lot of us are criticizing from the art role of speculative markets on the one, which I think that's one way to look at it.
Speaker: I can take also the other position of like, well, artists now can, the artists can now get paid and compensated for like gifts that they made on the one, which is like also like the good part.
Speaker: But just to make devil's advocate on this, it's kind of like the sad thing about this idea of like,
Speaker: What does it mean to reality replicate and what kind of experiences can you actually create or affordances can you create during the Niagara Falls?
Speaker: Having that experience, why are you like a steel camera?
Speaker: What happens if I start moving the camera, maybe a little bit up front?
Speaker: I'm sure it may make you throw up, but then there may be moments or
Speaker: future designers or designers that are working right now and like rethinking how those experiences or new kind of experiences that we still don't have any notion of happening within this like um this quote-unquote spaces and i even hesitate saying like the world spaces because that's another re-re but then how do you break out from these linguistic uh parameters or the map to go back into the map that we already have this cartography and then kind of like we can see reconsider reality we
Speaker: rearrange, reformulate, reset.
Speaker: Have you ever played Killer Queen?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Are you familiar?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Killer Queen?
Speaker: It's a video game.
Speaker: Okay, I'll book it on.
Speaker: It's it's the it's the best game I've ever played.
Speaker: It's like a head to head game, but the it's an independent video game and they have them at arcades now across the country.
Speaker: But the the graphics are like whatever.
Speaker: They're like pretty old school.
Speaker: But the gameplay is like the funnest thing I've ever I've ever experienced.
Speaker: And so it was making me think about like when you're saying like
Speaker: like trying to reproduce things that we already do here and it's like why would you do that because the only things that add value are things that have like new that is not the guy no but it's probably what it was named after
Speaker: But, you know, like there's like opportunities.
Speaker: And we talked about this with like, you know, with with blockchain technology or whatever, that it has the opportunity to present new experiences that people have have never had before or have never like thought of or can even like imagine what it can be.
Speaker: And I agree.
Speaker: It is sad when it just like retracts back to the same old.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It becomes like market speculation, again, which I get.
Speaker: And again, it does help to scale the technology and make it more, if you have like those kind of user use cases and people understand what does that mean, meaning like the layman, then you get like more technology adoption and then blah, blah, blah, and then it scales up.
Speaker: But then from the other side, it's just like, you know, oh my God, I want to do something more radical or like thinking to that.
Speaker: And it becomes a little bit,
Speaker: sad because along with any first wave of technology like dot com crash and whatnot then it comes to crash and then you're like something that we talked about before like what are the projects that were actually interesting and that could be able to pivot and then how do you position yourself or your projects within this complex landscape that is like fast shifting so yeah yeah because tricky tricky thing you can force
Speaker: humanity to a paradigm shift just because of a random project and whatnot.
Speaker: But then those random projects in the future are the ones that Tesla, not Tesla's machine, like Nikola Tesla's guy.
Speaker: Oh, OK, we're catching up with whatever this madman was doing, which is like a good and a bad example.
Speaker: But I guess those are the visionary things that crash.
Speaker: And then you're like, oh, holy shit, that could have been.
Speaker: We're doing that 120 years later.
Speaker: We're catching up right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a theory that he was from the future and he went to the past just trying to recreate things he saw.
Speaker: I mean, I can see it.
Speaker: Sometimes I read like random.
Speaker: He's like the dumbest guy in the future.
Speaker: He's not very smart.
Speaker: Sometimes I see those Instagram, well right now I'm taking my Instagram vacation to my serotonin and my synapse, as we said, but sometimes I see those Instagram posts like, oh, did you know Tesla invented this?
Speaker: Like 100 years, like okay, quantum computing, like he invented quantum computing, I'm obviously exaggerating, but yeah, you never know, I don't know, I don't know, it's like this, also like there's this weird thing about humanity, it's like
Speaker: projecting this behavior like Da Vinci with flying machines and whatnot.
Speaker: Like, whoa, Da Vinci embedded in the flying machine.
Speaker: Like when you actually read like his diaries or like do some research, he was actually doing theater props.
Speaker: So it's not like, oh, yeah.
Speaker: It wasn't out of nowhere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: And it's also like it worked under a specific condition.
Speaker: He wasn't trying to be an invention of a theater machine.
Speaker: If I'm not mistaken, somebody may come on the internet, most of the five people listening to this, like, no, you're wrong.
Speaker: I read this bio.
Speaker: But I'm pretty sure until his mid-30s, he was doing theater props and whatnot.
Speaker: And all of those drawings really come from trying to generate this kind of
Speaker: theater play stuff so it wasn't like trying to be functional impressive by itself but yeah how much more project can do the fast it's like 30 people by the way 30 people damn too many people yeah I haven't looked at the stats recently but yeah it's more than it's more you would think oh boy for sure but yep I mean there's so many ways to go but we're going we're going
Speaker: I think one thing that kind of touches all of it, and in particular the show that we recently worked with you on at the Living Stair Space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The grid.
Speaker: The grid.
Speaker: The imposition of... It sounds like a quote from Trump.
Speaker: The grid.
Speaker: The grid.
Speaker: Because you talked a lot about it and the imposition of the grid and the...
Speaker: artificial nature of it trying to impose category and space and can you kind of talk a little bit about that?
Speaker: Well, it's just like in a lot of sense, it's like efficiency.
Speaker: It's almost like they're like in my head, a lot of Easter eggs with aggressive kind of like this idea of the grid from the promotion and whatnot.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I wish I could talk more about this with one of my current projects.
Speaker: And you guys are like, oh, okay.
Speaker: Now it makes sense why you're talking so much about the grid.
Speaker: But it's just about thinking about efficiency and the whole narrative of human history and scientific thought and linearity and mathematics and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And going into Web 2.0 and a lot of things.
Speaker: And I hate saying Web 2.0 because it's such a generalization for a couple of things happening out there.
Speaker: But like...
Speaker: Just UI design, how do you present images within like this small space and effectivity and that.
Speaker: I don't know why not just thinking about the grid in general.
Speaker: And I know I'm not answering your question.
Speaker: I'm being really ambiguous around it.
Speaker: And I'm trying to grab a hold to it because in one sense, I'm thinking over here of
Speaker: the history of mathematics, going back into perspective, Brunelleschi, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then on the other side, I'm thinking about, I don't know, like binary thinking, which is something that I really thought about in the show, especially with the artists and how I selected them and also the conversations that Jordan asked within the work and how all of those mixed to create like a complex landscape.
Speaker: And why I'm not being really clear about it.
Speaker: is part of the problem.
Speaker: Part of the problem right now is me thinking of linear thinking.
Speaker: And this idea, oh, let me explain to you as A is B and B is C and C. Yeah, what's your thesis statement on the grid?
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That linearity, multiple lines create a grid.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: So yeah, it's just about efficiency and whatnot, how big it disrupt that.
Speaker: And one thing usually as I approach my projects is overthinking these kind of things in multiple models of like the average layman that comes to the space.
Speaker: So I'm just going to see a spectacle of images and whatever this is so overwhelming.
Speaker: thinking about interior design, kind of like within interior design, the body that also can be parallel into the idea of performativity within our discourses and agency of the spectator.
Speaker: And the fact that the user moves around the space is almost like a user experience, but you're not dictating what the user is going to share, the connection that he's going to make.
Speaker: So there's a lot going into it in how I approach disrupting the idea of the grid while also engaging and
Speaker: repositioning, uh, uh, uh, repositioning or, um,
Speaker: in relation to it as aesthetic values and conceptual values.
Speaker: I don't think I have an ideology of the grid, except pointing and history and then washing my hands and being like, oh, yeah, because I'm seeing also the grid interrupted back there.
Speaker: I'm seeing the spacing between the images.
Speaker: I'm like, is that mathematical accurate?
Speaker: Is it like a recurring or?
Speaker: I may have used a ruler.
Speaker: I tend to use I.
Speaker: I feel like my eye is accurate though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Your eye is intuition, bro.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like I can get those measurements.
Speaker: But I was...
Speaker: Thinking about the grid in New York City and Manhattan, right?
Speaker: That was a new idea when they did that, correct?
Speaker: And all the cities before that were like mishmash.
Speaker: I'm thinking of Boston and it's like a total mess of streets that go in all kinds of directions, right?
Speaker: So there's things that you gain from the grid, but there's also things that get lost when things are gridded, right?
Speaker: Um, and it's probably like too big of a jump, but it makes me think of kind of like, uh, collective and collaborative models always end up being so messy because they're, they're not organized hierarchically or they're not like organized, like, um, linearly.
Speaker: And so the reason why people like them and why I think a lot of artists like working that way is because they like,
Speaker: they're unexpected and they bring up new things, but they're also like they fail a lot and they they don't work, quote unquote, work half the time because like it's messy because like when you don't have an organizing principle, things are messy.
Speaker: But also like that's when like things can happen.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, it's almost like it's like I like Derribe.
Speaker: I like the situation.
Speaker: I like the idea of like getting lost in the city and you can
Speaker: have that in Paris for example the situation is international at one moment because also you have this tradition of housemen and also the whole idea of like city development and city development and planning towards specific ends being like military or avenues and whatnot and then how did you offset that and oppose it that it's um
Speaker: And where it becomes interesting because it's almost like right now as we're talking and one of my neurotic things, as I was talking about language earlier in the conversation was about, oh, I don't want to think through English.
Speaker: And it's not like necessarily an ideological thing.
Speaker: I don't have a political like, oh, my God, Anglo-Saxon language.
Speaker: I'm going to only speak in Esperanto and like whatever, like go like in this ideological.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Do you dream in English or Spanish?
Speaker: I don't talk in my dreams.
Speaker: When people speak to you.
Speaker: I only see brown people when I dream.
Speaker: Even if your wife, I see Joseph, you're completely brown-faced in my... But Spanish was your first language.
Speaker: Problematic.
Speaker: Spanish is definitely my first language.
Speaker: But you think in English?
Speaker: I don't even... I can't do that exercise of thinking because my mom was born in Rizizikawa and then my family, it was like completely Spanglish, a mix.
Speaker: So that's why I said I don't have any ideological issue.
Speaker: And just as a matter of fact, it's just like...
Speaker: Sure, I can say that I'm opposed to speaking in English and without losing track of what I was originally going to say just because of the, for those that don't know, I'm from Puerto Rico for political reasons.
Speaker: But then again, I know that the picture is a little bit more complex than that.
Speaker: So simplifying everything based on my language is like this kind of like thing of like Borges, I think it was like Borges and Garrega Siamarquez, them being sad and
Speaker: the comparative literature major that's listening to this.
Speaker: I'm sorry if I'm getting this.
Speaker: This is awesome.
Speaker: But they say like, oh, like, I'm so sad that we didn't start writing and reading in English because Spanish is such a bad language to write in.
Speaker: So it's like this funny because in Latin America and Hispanic culture, we already went to this conversation on this century and now in North America specifically.
Speaker: as we're talking about certain communities, Spanish speaking communities, that they kind of like simplify these conversations and not me aggrandizing the whole idea of like,
Speaker: English or Spanish in the one, it's just tools.
Speaker: So you can learn, although obviously a relationship to quote unquote identity and have a lot of problems with the word does come embedded with language and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: But also thinking beyond that, that you're not necessarily a hammer, that it's way more complex and more nuanced, blah, blah.
Speaker: That being said, one of my things about saying like, oh, I'm not going to speak in English is like going back to the grid.
Speaker: So if you have a language, it's like a tool and you're only talking in this way in language.
Speaker: I used to like a long time ago, I used to jump from
Speaker: say random words in French.
Speaker: I knew some rudimentary German because I studied philosophy.
Speaker: And, you know, you grab a word over here that can explain something.
Speaker: You grab a word over here that can explain something and you're not losing anything from your identity from it.
Speaker: I think challenging the whole idea of like, oh, sorry, I'm speaking too much English.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: knowingly not wanting to stiff yourself a little bit too much especially where the conversation politically over here becomes really specific and really in context and in situ and acknowledging oh wow there are like so many micro political environments all around the world like so it's like weird like just being stuck especially someone that's a quote-unquote immigrant I'm a United States citizen but like obviously I don't come from over here originally I don't
Speaker: you know, I don't live in this complex of level of assimilation that I can only think through North American terms.
Speaker: And because it's really specific how they see the world, the aesthetic value that they project, the political values that they project.
Speaker: So it becomes like kind of tricky, kind of like not losing perspective.
Speaker: So that being said, it's kind of like ideological, not ideologically.
Speaker: It's kind of like, oh, how do you unstiffen yourself and retain a certain kind of like
Speaker: plus the ACP because you always want to kind of like, you know, grab a new game and know that you can readapt to that game and kind of like play around with it.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I don't think, like, I don't even think if I think it's Spanish or in English when I dream.
Speaker: I think that's a complicated, complicated question.
Speaker: Like as someone that grew up with North American television,
Speaker: speaking Spanglish and then being like, I don't have... okay, you know, it is what it is, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's a great illustration of... I did see that you had studied philosophy.
Speaker: Language is inability.
Speaker: Just like the grid is this thing that is man-imposed, but it's not perfect and it leaves a lot to be desired.
Speaker: Language is...
Speaker: not exactly the, the inability to, to precisely say whatever you're trying to say, or to describe something with precision.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of what philosophy is, is like trying to pare down words to try to,
Speaker: equivocate something there and they spend pages and pages and pages and pages of spelling out like what they mean.
Speaker: Yeah, pure madness.
Speaker: Like German philosophers creating their own traps.
Speaker: Like I make this three words together and now I need to spend five books making sense of it.
Speaker: And you're like, dude, dude, I read all your shit and I saw the moment that you created that concept and only you.
Speaker: understand what you meant and then you're telling me five books later that you didn't understand what that meant so forget about it it's not a thing like what are you doing what are you doing right now um but i think that's like oh actually originally um and this is my my relationship with language if we're gonna go a little bit deeper into
Speaker: personal neurosis that when I was a teenager, I had a big question and it was like, I was obsessed when language becomes a chemical process.
Speaker: So as I'm talking to you, when does that become a synaptic and how can you do something that comes through your senses and essential experience of like, there's nothing here.
Speaker: It's just music and the meat slap creating like intonations.
Speaker: creates something embedded and becomes a memory.
Speaker: And that led to a lot of weird behavior as I was a little kid.
Speaker: But one of the things is kind of like, originally I was starting to be a neurobiologist and I ended up in philosophy because I noticed like, well, if you can study neurobiology, which I may be wrong about that right now, seeing how
Speaker: where the research is right now, but then I didn't think that I was going to reach really that answer.
Speaker: And not that I was looking for something more spiritual, but then I started studying philosophy.
Speaker: And then at one moment they told me, oh, well, if you have 12 more credits, you have a philosophy major.
Speaker: Like, okay, I guess that's the thing to do.
Speaker: And then it's me just thinking more aggressively.
Speaker: Well, if you're doing science, you're always looking towards the past in the sense of like, you're doing research about things that have already happened and the nature of the research
Speaker: phenomenology and experience and whatnot.
Speaker: And then what does it mean to create new ways or new potentialities of rearranging the future and doing this thing?
Speaker: So, oh, what is going to give me access to do that?
Speaker: Obviously becoming a quote-unquote artist, I still don't know what the fuck that means, in all honesty.
Speaker: But this idea of like, oh, yeah, where do you get a license to do whatever the fuck you want and work across disciplines and become just like a big weirdo that I was like, oh, let's talk about language on a podcast.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: Language on the grid.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: But again, going through a conversation about language and discuss a lot of people think and again how it is something about us and it's going into city planning also and the map and whatnot.
Speaker: But then it's like we understand each other because somebody said it already, right?
Speaker: Somebody used this word and put it upon us and you know, the structure of the sentence and then it may or may not make it, but if I may, but I'm not, okay, it doesn't.
Speaker: But then being divergent does frame, it's like neurodiversity.
Speaker: So how do you break up from like the pattern and reframe the pattern?
Speaker: How do you, I don't know, like anything.
Speaker: Well, there's fringes too, right?
Speaker: Like you can operate on the fringe of what language should be.
Speaker: Or it makes me think of music and visual art also.
Speaker: Like I feel like abstract painter is...
Speaker: are always like creating their language and as like a consumer of that person's work or whatever you have to like learn the language before you can like see or like understand what they're doing and i think music's the same way which is something i was like kind of obsessed with when i was a kid was like understanding like you can't appreciate or enjoy certain music until you understand the language of the things that they're doing and there's a history there but then they're like they're like pushing up against
Speaker: um the like limits of what people understand that to be uh and so i don't necessarily know how that happens with language itself like the language we're talking about like speaking but it does right it's like people like change words up and they like and it happens you know like on macro levels culturally uh but it also i think there's people who like play with words and and like change how we understand language in general um
Speaker: I think that's the thing, like, well, like, there's a lot of, like, 20th century writers about talking about the necessary of a poetry and this kind of, like, the approach of breaking the theme.
Speaker: But I don't know, something gets lost, obviously, because nobody cares about poetry anymore, even though I'd say, well, we're living in a poetic golden age.
Speaker: It's just, like, hip-hop artists or, like, musicians and whatnot.
Speaker: But then again, the conversation starts, well,
Speaker: what is the market determinant that is like forcing them into a kind of behavior and kind of like oh okay so stiffening up the creative use and whatnot I guess that's where it becomes interesting uh the state of the arts if you will and then the art world market is there like recently you know uh what's it Josiah Citradella uh whatever how you pronounce his last name
Speaker: I was listening to a podcast, and I think I mentioned it to you guys once, with Rachel Wilson, if I'm not mistaken, and him making this claim, which is pretty fucking obvious.
Speaker: Like, oh, there's no real original, the original thought happening in the art world right now.
Speaker: It's just like Mark and the one, he implies that there may be more happening in the tech industry or tech adjacent practices.
Speaker: And I don't quite agree with that, but I can see how that integrator says may be the point in the sense of challenging this idea of like, as if the art world itself has a,
Speaker: I don't know, like a dominance over what is creative behavior, not creative behavior.
Speaker: Well, also, yeah, it's like it's the stuff you see isn't fresh or new or different because that's like what the market wants you to see.
Speaker: But there's lots of artists doing weird shit all over the place.
Speaker: Right now we talk about the blockchain.
Speaker: But this relates to your work as well, because...
Speaker: you consume a lot of social media and some of those kids are making amazing work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And whether they call it art or not, the intention isn't art.
Speaker: The intention is to just do this thing quickly because they have these tools that allow them to edit really quickly.
Speaker: Tools that were never, these are tools that weren't accessible to people.
Speaker: Like 20 years ago, you would have to have like a degree or you have access to a editing suite or something.
Speaker: And now you can just pump out professional looking footage like nothing.
Speaker: I teach in college and one of the first things I teach into the computer are digital imaging and digital video for the last year.
Speaker: Well, this is my presentation, digital video.
Speaker: And then one of the first things that I do besides presenting my work and like leaving them confused as fuck.
Speaker: They're like, why is this guy teaching?
Speaker: Basically, but then one of the things that was like the big question, which is pretty obvious, of like, what is the differentiation for you between art and content?
Speaker: And then one of the framing that I do is like, you're not going to get any from me.
Speaker: You're going to, I mean, we're going to do the whole suite, like the whole suite, like Adobe and whatnot.
Speaker: I can teach you all of this technical shit.
Speaker: But to be completely honest, like, for example, the show that I recently had at ICP, Kira had like the most complicated thing was like the custom media player.
Speaker: but besides that those are videos that i do with my iphone and kind of like okay i just shared them on social media so this kind of value that you put or this idea that you're going to uh higher education to learn how to something the best thing that you can do is get a weirdo like me to make you think a little bit as maybe on the fringes and push you towards like reframing what's happening within the city as an outsider meaning like
Speaker: the greed, I hate that word, the greed and whatnot, and how do you frame that and how do you open that conversation in the anomalies and the neurodiversities that are happening to history, which is always like a reactionary to the current trends, or at least what we traditionally know as like
Speaker: quote-unquote the avant-garde or like whatever and then what is the position of the artist and being the artist artist whatever that means I hate that word but of being like someone that lives or reframes that social dynamics or reframe from the outside of the lens or like brings a new lens into it because it's like we're like you know kind of like digital imaging I'm pretty sure you guys are already producing
Speaker: photographs.
Speaker: So what do you want me to show you how to properly color grade like in Photoshop?
Speaker: Like, sure, we can do that.
Speaker: But what are you going to do with your life?
Speaker: Like, sure, we can do that.
Speaker: Here's a YouTube link.
Speaker: I have more comments on that.
Speaker: I feel like to like a manual Photoshop and I try to make it really a PDF that
Speaker: It's out there in the web, which is like making fun and kind of like my hacks with Photoshop.
Speaker: But yeah, again, it's just like, yeah, you know, all of it is online.
Speaker: Even Adobe, you can put the link and I do put it on my syllabus, kind of like go to Adobe and kind of like this is it.
Speaker: Like you don't need to get, I don't know if they're getting loans or anything, but you don't need to go into debt or anything.
Speaker: And it's weird because that's one of the paradigm shifts right now happening, right?
Speaker: Like this kind of idea of,
Speaker: culture, higher education, what does it mean to have a gallery?
Speaker: What does it mean, again, going to the conversation of like cultural agents, NFTs, blockchain podcast, democracy for those 30 people listening to this.
Speaker: 40 now.
Speaker: 40.
Speaker: It's going up.
Speaker: Yeah, that was my mom and her friends standing.
Speaker: A heavy chair, heavy chair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it just becomes interesting.
Speaker: And I hate
Speaker: Oh, well, I hate saying the word like paradigm shit like that, but at the end of the day, you know, there's a lot of happening right now and reacting to the contemporary media, contemporary technologies and conversations about the metaverse and so on and so on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, what I was going to say about the comment about the tech industry being like more avant-garde than the art market, that's also because like the tech industry puts money into that stuff.
Speaker: There's like money to be made.
Speaker: And so there's money put into...
Speaker: Avant-garde practices in tech.
Speaker: I want to clear up that I did not say that the tech industry was avant-garde.
Speaker: You're on it.
Speaker: It has been stricken from the right one.
Speaker: I'm just saying, right, the market drives what gets to happen and what shows up in the mainstream kind of culture.
Speaker: And I think it probably is true that tech is funding more innovative things right now than maybe the art market is.
Speaker: One of my rants in 2020, I had a conference or whatever, like pandemic idea-like thing.
Speaker: You had your own conference?
Speaker: I do my own, everyone has their own conference call.
Speaker: No, it was like, it was with ISDP.
Speaker: And then one of my rants was like, well, the artist quote unquote of the 20th century is not a content producer, but a network generator.
Speaker: So how do you pivot that shift into rethinking what does it mean to be a,
Speaker: agent of, I hate this word originality, but an agent of something, or having an agency culturally.
Speaker: But then also that's tricky because what is culture?
Speaker: Everything's culture.
Speaker: But then what does it mean to create and to create new potentialities or future readers?
Speaker: And it's funny that, again, we're still just into this paradigm about like, oh my God, like, you know, kind of like, for example, NFT is content producer, yes.
Speaker: But again, I
Speaker: We have different tools right now, so what does it mean?
Speaker: Maybe, and I hate that I'm saying this because it's not necessarily a good example, but Satoshi or maybe Vitalik, and Vitalik is not necessarily the developer of Ethereum, but him as a visionary of maybe pushing this forward and becoming the front face for this stuff, maybe more interesting as a creative agent than...
Speaker: any of the people creating dApps or whatever they're doing or like NFTs or decentralized within their network.
Speaker: One of the things for me when people ask me, which is always like the great question of like, what are these inspired?
Speaker: You know, like in the traditional art, I just usually say like Thomas Chase Horn and a weirdo like that that's just like out there doing whatever madness is doing.
Speaker: And I don't know how to get away with it.
Speaker: And then I really sincerely say like,
Speaker: and this is uh uh guys i'm i'm gonna put my sexy voice right now and say i'm sorry that i'm gonna say this but i'm being really sincere and vulnerable um then
Speaker: When I think about Tinkins and artists, I always think about Einstein.
Speaker: And not because he was like a thing or something, but like how his brain works.
Speaker: So the whole idea of visualizing when he was a little kid, what does it mean?
Speaker: Or if I was riding at the speed of light next to a next to like a light wave, I guess, I don't know the exact wording for it.
Speaker: Why would I?
Speaker: And I look to the side.
Speaker: Why would I see?
Speaker: And then the whole idea of having this obsession and then figuring it out through mathematics and like, oh, holy shit, and now we have general relativity.
Speaker: Or if two trains are going at the same speed and they're going on opposite, what would you see?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, obviously.
Speaker: And the whole idea of thinking visually and solving a problem, that for me is fucking amazing.
Speaker: And that's usually one of my kind of like, oh, yeah, like, you know, like, art world, like images, like, sure, but how do we make it weirder?
Speaker: How do we create...
Speaker: Recently I wrote, I was sent like this application, which I hate doing applications at all.
Speaker: I like being on the fringes of the fringes.
Speaker: But then one of the things is always like, I don't know, what artist statement?
Speaker: I usually do live, live, live.
Speaker: That's my artist statement.
Speaker: But then at one moment I feel like
Speaker: another moment of vulnerability?
Speaker: I was like, you know what I'm doing?
Speaker: I think I'm doing philosophy without the knowledge or love part.
Speaker: So no love to knowledge.
Speaker: It's just like, I'm just trying to raise questions and kind of like, what does that mean?
Speaker: And how do you become, how can you get away with it?
Speaker: It becomes tricky as the economic realities of New York.
Speaker: But yeah, how do you?
Speaker: I think you're supposed to answer questions too, as a philosopher though.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Not right.
Speaker: But your point before about... Just to clarify, your two biggest inspirations are Thomas Hirschhorn and Einstein.
Speaker: This is... Nice.
Speaker: False claim.
Speaker: We have it on tape.
Speaker: Are the only one that came to mind at the moment.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: long, long time ago, before the imposition of academia, the scientist was an artist.
Speaker: They were allowed to expand and do alchemy and do this and question, just go beyond scopes.
Speaker: Some might say the priests were as well.
Speaker: Well, that's a funny thing, right?
Speaker: Like the idea of the parliament.
Speaker: Like in Latin America, you have this whole tradition of the poet as the revolutionary or the politician.
Speaker: Even going into Paulo Neruda,
Speaker: Gilberto Hill right now in Brazil and whatnot, Ruben Blades, and it's still kind of like active.
Speaker: Pablo Duarte, the Dominican guy.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: So it's funny how, and again, that brings to the question of academia, professionalization, and almost like a crisis in democracy, right?
Speaker: Because we're in the United States, we're so embedded within this media ecosystem, losing perspective in like neurodiversity in other countries, what's actually happened,
Speaker: political diversity uh political ideology all that's happening out there in the world and worse and it becomes tricky because over here is so loud because we have so much media and the channels are basically owned by north american corporations we do have legacy media now working within social media channels so that becomes through a whole conversation about the power of hegemony global globally but then over here the simplification uh the conversation is just so simplified in so many levels or at least in the for the mass audience that we have a two-party system that's basically
Speaker: stiff as fuck and whatnot and really you don't have like actual political conversations because everything seems like too radical or too other almost impossible to think about like there but then again we have donald trump as president which in another sense is like a reality tv star and that's like the weirdest shit uh about it so maybe there's hope not that donald trump is not hope at all i'm just saying that maybe there's space for it's indicative of of something yeah something happening yeah which may not be necessarily in this uh
Speaker: Because I was just talking about artists and then me talking about a con artist as kind of like an artist, still an artist, I guess.
Speaker: I think that's more indicative of the whole evolution of media culture going from tabloids in New York to reality TV.
Speaker: So you can trace a history of media or legacy media in the United States and then social media with Donald Trump.
Speaker: But yes, the whole idea that there's a, and I've been trying not to say this word throughout this whole conversation about disruption, because it's such a strange word from like the West Coast, but that some disruption happened over there because of media and social media.
Speaker: Synergy is another one.
Speaker: I love to throw on some synergy.
Speaker: Also, when you're talking about scientists being creatives way back when, right?
Speaker: I mean, like painters weren't artists back then.
Speaker: They were historians or whatever you wanted to call them, right?
Speaker: So it's like the actual lineage...
Speaker: should probably be rewritten in terms of like creative practice.
Speaker: Um, a little bit.
Speaker: Cause I think it, I mean, I know people like to like throw art history references into their contemporary artwork, but to me, it doesn't really make any sense, except if you want to like support that lineage and that Canon, which, uh, is problematic.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It just like, yeah, I feel like there's a lot more in common with, um, uh, a scientist or a politician or whoever.
Speaker: I had a very, um,
Speaker: astute art history professor who said that the the idea of art school was a right-wing idea because he's like where do we put a bunch of lefty militant radical thinkers together to kind of expend that energy and just like so they don't ever actually do anything i know put them in art school it makes sense i'm not kidding like it just makes sense like it's weird that the art industrial complex um um
Speaker: It's just such a big thing in North America, especially when there's not an economic system to sustain because there's no public funding over here.
Speaker: It's just so weird and interesting itself as a phenomenon.
Speaker: And this discourse of art was just a bunch of boomers and hippies that started opening up art departments in all these universities because art and freedom and self-expression.
Speaker: And so it was just weird.
Speaker: And then the boomers were trying to make money
Speaker: out of all these young students coming into there and have like a stable career.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like it's just the implication of like, even like the whole concept of art is obviously like a really recent invention, just like art for art's sake, or then art as research or art is kind of like really weird.
Speaker: And that's one of the interesting for me I love.
Speaker: And I've had a lot of projects that are based on research, not necessarily all my, I will never call myself like a research based artist, but obviously research is important.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I do find a lot of interesting how the word research became kind of, I don't know what to call it, but like so many artists that say that they're doing research and then you see like, well, what's your research?
Speaker: Oh, I read a book.
Speaker: And like, oh, well, I read a book also last night.
Speaker: I guess I'm doing research.
Speaker: And it's weird because you can see how it's academia.
Speaker: and making artists trying to sound so the scientific and then kind of like, I'm not, I'm not being a creative, I'm doing research and I'm creating this other artifact based on the research, which is like two levels of alienation from the original research and the fact, but now invest time on my weird little artifact and connection that I made, even though it's not necessarily related to the important research and historical artifact that I had originally, it's kind of like,
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: And then the gallery show, the solo show, is the paper that's been submitted to the Scientific Journal.
Speaker: Well, the wall test.
Speaker: And then you have something weird happening in the gallery.
Speaker: What does this have to do with exploitation of migrant laborers in New York in the 19th century?
Speaker: And you're like, well, did you read my research?
Speaker: Again, but it's interesting.
Speaker: Maybe I'm sorry.
Speaker: There's a bowl of potato chips in front of me.
Speaker: Potato chips is probably not the best thing to have for a podcast.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: At least if we acknowledge it, we can actually.
Speaker: This is an ASMR.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: I haven't.
Speaker: I mean, some people hate hearing other people eat.
Speaker: No, this is good.
Speaker: But some people really like it.
Speaker: This is really...
Speaker: good ASMR moment.
Speaker: I want to thank the audience for being over here with us.
Speaker: As we think, as we talk, and Chinese talk with us.
Speaker: You're a Frank Zappa fan, correct?
Speaker: I'm okay with Frank Zappa.
Speaker: This is why we shouldn't give the guests the headphones.
Speaker: He wouldn't be doing that if he didn't, if he couldn't hear himself.
Speaker: Good thing he didn't bring like an effects pedal.
Speaker: delay and flange and reverb.
Speaker: You guys need to spend the podcast for, man.
Speaker: I'm okay with Frank Zaba.
Speaker: Why Frank Zaba?
Speaker: I haven't listened to Frank Zaba in a long time, but yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I was just going to say one thing about, so the touching about the, the
Speaker: The academic model is the European art model versus the American art model or the Western art model on this side of the globe.
Speaker: Like how different they are.
Speaker: There's public money in Europe.
Speaker: There isn't any money here.
Speaker: And the outcomes, I saw it best when Catalina, when Tuca told us about her experience in grad school.
Speaker: She's like, everyone I...
Speaker: was in contact with, was a painter.
Speaker: Whereas back in Chile, everyone was making video was making sites with epic, um, installations.
Speaker: It almost determined the economic model of the West determines that you have to kind of make object-based things because if you don't make object-based things, you can't sell them and you can't sell them.
Speaker: You can't recoup the price of the college tuition that you paid an extraordinary amount of money for.
Speaker: Um, anyway.
Speaker: No, but like, especially in North America, because it's all, you know, it's all for profit, like, and that's the system that we decided to live in.
Speaker: So it's okay.
Speaker: How did you, but again, like the absurdity of like going into student, it just seems so obvious looking at it from the outside, going into student, student debt for a market that's not really there.
Speaker: Even when you're educated, and I do believe in the, I do believe in going into students,
Speaker: cool to read and to just have space for doing whatever and just having like that kind of like social context of like almost like a playpen in the good sense of the word of like yeah like no pressure but then again yeah obviously they're saying
Speaker: there's an at odds happening, especially given the amount of schools that are out there and that are closing.
Speaker: For example, I did do my master in New Genres in San Francisco in SFAI, and now that school is completely closed out.
Speaker: And that's one of the oldest schools in our schools in the United States with a great legacy.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's just like reframe like the whole conversation on kind of like, what is the point?
Speaker: And I'm not saying that our
Speaker: artists should become developers or like kind of like but again like i don't think there's any answer to it like yeah like given like myself as a quote-unquote artist i don't know yeah but it's it saddens me to think that it determines in a certain sense the kind of art you're kind of like pushed to do yeah and you may not think about it yourself as being something but it's like
Speaker: I mean, I think this is my lead into the NFT conversation.
Speaker: If you're coming from a more European model where you're allowed to kind of experiment and do things that are more immaterial, then you can do more things that are in the digital realm or do things outside of the marginalia objecthood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then now to bring it all back, there's this vehicle that you could possibly use to kind of recoup or utilize it to fund your practice or
Speaker: Yeah, it may be that the United States model won at the end because we're talking about NFT market, and individual agency for anyone being their own collector.
Speaker: So it becomes like even like bringing that into conversation even complicates the whole conversation because it may be a thing, oh, like did the United States model for profit won at the end and now we got to understand every asset that we put out there digital or not as like an economic exchange and ownership.
Speaker: So yeah, maybe like the thing, I don't know if I,
Speaker: Oh, I just had a weird Deja Vu looking at the icing.
Speaker: Thank you, Nando Álvarez Perez.
Speaker: So yeah, like it's complicated.
Speaker: I'm trying to find a way because I started thinking about the history about
Speaker: New York and mid 20th century artists moving over here after the world wars in Europe and how it became actually a hotbed for culture, blah, blah, blah, or like the center of the art world and the market being over here, meaning private collectors, but so on, so on, so on, so on, so on.
Speaker: I think I hesitate talking about the NFT thing because of where it went.
Speaker: like relatively recently how it's crashing or like reassessing itself so it's kind of hard to talk about that landscape in that case now i do believe where it becomes tricky is like world content generators or content i have a potato chip in my mouth in a second uh
Speaker: Okay, so if we're all content producers and we're all putting images on the internet and all of these closed gardens like Instagram and whatnot, then the question besides artists doing art and art not being content or whatever value you're putting into this, then why are not all content generators being compensated for their content?
Speaker: or the productivity that they're generating within this platform, especially once their data and the same content is using to aggregate value for that same company.
Speaker: So besides the NFT thing, let's say that in the future, NFTs become the hyper ledger, the blockchain, whatever you want to kind of because optimized to a degree.
Speaker: that every content that I produce and every picture that I make automatically becomes an NFT.
Speaker: It's not even like questionable.
Speaker: There's no main thing.
Speaker: There's no anything.
Speaker: Automatically I hit share.
Speaker: That's my NFT.
Speaker: And then every time that gets re-shared, I get paid like, I don't know..000 something.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So it gets re-shared and then value generation.
Speaker: So that's why I'm not trying to think NFT in the paradigm that we're at right now, but thinking maybe 10 years in the future when kind of like,
Speaker: the technology has reset the map, and we're almost like the norm, and probably we're not going to be talking about content, blah, blah, blah, or maybe there's going to be a different consideration of that, or maybe new words for that.
Speaker: And that's where I'm at with this whole conversation.
Speaker: And I think I take a little bit from this from a couple of writers or
Speaker: There are teachers like Jaron Lanier and whatnot, and then how do you actually create more fair internet, which may or may not have to do with Web 3.0.
Speaker: But doesn't the idea of all of your activity that happens on the internet being monetized sound terrible?
Speaker: Because then everybody just becomes a 24-7 content producer to try and pay their rent.
Speaker: Well, the problem is it's already being monetized.
Speaker: You're just not making any money out of it.
Speaker: Well, I know, but as soon as you actually see the paycheck, then all of a sudden we're all YouTubers and we're trying to get clicks.
Speaker: And it's just... I mean, I don't know what that would look like.
Speaker: Yeah, me neither.
Speaker: I don't think... Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I think where we're at right now is where it becomes a weird thing where...
Speaker: where when you become aware of how the system is operating, then it's kind of like, oh, what the fuck is this about?
Speaker: Why do I have a shadow profile that I don't have an access to and it's being sold around?
Speaker: Why am I getting like this kind of ass?
Speaker: Why am I, for example, in the art world, there's so much pressure.
Speaker: In the most obvious picture, you guys go through it of like, oh, you need to be on Instagram and whatnot.
Speaker: Or if you're into NFTs, you need to be on Twitter chilling and whatever.
Speaker: It's kind of like weird, but then you're going over there basically to work.
Speaker: And there may not be generating the traction that you want, but then there's actually someone with the company or the third party aggregating their data and they're actually getting a revenue off.
Speaker: And I think Daryl Lanier put some samples in his book, Who Owns the Future, about if somebody just like a trace of your DNA, 23andMe,
Speaker: to fix traded drug down the line, then you get compensated for each one of those drugs.
Speaker: It's almost like a maximized DAO, kind of like where you're not literally signing anything, you're just participating in it because your data belongs to you.
Speaker: And then that's one of those examples that, oh, when we're talking about the blockchain or hyperledges and Web 2.0, that may be interesting and it may be featured that it's not so obvious right now.
Speaker: But then actually when I generate a content,
Speaker: What does it mean that actual ownership or actual DNA, your DNA cultural dress?
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's too much speculating.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think the current system and model is not fair to consumers.
Speaker: I just wonder... I would prefer that all of that money that gets made go to funding social welfare programs or something.
Speaker: So that I don't see the money, so I don't have to feel like I'm working for it.
Speaker: But it's not like...
Speaker: paying some CEO.
Speaker: So do you believe in UBI?
Speaker: I mean, I don't, I think I do, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker: I mean, I like, I like the idea of UBI.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: But you know, like who knows what something looks like when it actually happens.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I don't see why not, I don't see how it could not be good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially right now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there's so much money being generated that we are helping to generate.
Speaker: So it would be cool if I got a check every month.
Speaker: I think if everybody got a check every month, not just me.
Speaker: It might be the equivalent of what like artists get for their Spotify.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like you're getting like 30 cents, 40 cents, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would like it if it was like a thousand bucks, which like based on how much money is out there, that is how much it could be.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I think the important thing about this conversation is thinking about, as we're talking about the United States, that the Discord becomes so stiffened and not looking at the word talking about politics, artists being politicians, this kind of idea of polymen, that over here the Discord becomes so stiffened.
Speaker: And there's so much noise that even the idea of ideating any other possibility becomes completely radical.
Speaker: And I think that's one of the interesting things for me when...
Speaker: like the conversation about blockchain cryptocurrencies, that there were actually so many utopian projects and all these ideas emerging that was like really exciting and refreshing.
Speaker: And then it became all crumbling down because of market speculation.
Speaker: And then all of these other projects that were out there,
Speaker: uh yeah like basically disappeared one way or another or this point one of the price that i was participating in in puerto rico was a coin community base that businesses could use among each other and basically can to shorten the us dollar in puerto rico and there were a couple of businesses doing it uh and using the coin and then obviously it all came crashing down but it was like one of those uh exciting examples of like oh yeah an alternate future may be out there and like
Speaker: We are so bound into this shit, not to sound like too much like anything, but it was like refreshing for one moment being like, oh, holy shit, yes, let's all believe that the blockchain is going to change the world and democracy and blah, blah, blah, it's going to disrupt all this shit.
Speaker: And then NFTs.
Speaker: And ICOs and so on.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Well, you know, it's still early.
Speaker: No, yeah.
Speaker: Again, Latino technology.
Speaker: ASMR.
Speaker: And like it has to come crashing down, right?
Speaker: Those people who are speculating weren't in it for the quote-unquote utopian ideals or any kind of like social good, right?
Speaker: So they need to be gone for that stuff to actually happen.
Speaker: Well, wasn't that Vitalik said that it would be like a second time that I mentioned Vitalik, but that it would be a disaster if Ethereum is only like become like an expected coin, like the only application for the
Speaker: for the blockchain itself, would be like economic speculation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because like, yeah, it's like pretty fucking obvious, especially once we're going and just doing this conversation into more broader conversation about cultural manufacturing as we're going and you have these conversations and I think also, but Neil Stephenson is the one that created the word like metaverse.
Speaker: And I know that Facebook is trying to hijack that, but as we're going into this kind of like spaces of interoperability, I think it's like one of the great examples that
Speaker: NFTs are going to bring any value because if I, as a designer, I design a cape for me to wear on mediated reality glasses and whatnot, and then every time you have the glass, you can see two different glasses.
Speaker: For example, you have the Samsung glass, you have the Apple glass and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then in all of those,
Speaker: In all those glasses, my Nike shoes or my cape is also selling or reselling and whatnot and having that interoperability within different platforms is basically one of the great, or probably will be one of the great use cases of the blockchain.
Speaker: automatically knowing that it belongs to you and this acceptance of ownership and then obviously a smart contract throwing revenue at you if your designers are selling within the platform and obviously oversimplified the whole thing but in the future we're talking about cultural production the metaverse and the one it doesn't have to do with where necessarily virtual reality but interoperability and how do you have an agreement about value systems in which you can actually get paid for assets or as cultural producer being sold in all these different platforms
Speaker: So again, it's like talking about it in the space that we're in right now, it's almost like talking about it.
Speaker: And it's this in relation to, I don't know, it's like, it's like really weird because we're right now or like doing this space is selling avatar pictures for Twitter, which is like, okay, you know, kind of like profile pictures, it is what it is.
Speaker: But then again, it's kind of like, you can see how, oh, okay.
Speaker: When you actually read into the technology, then
Speaker: what's going to be cool in the future and whatnot and what's going to be interesting especially with the other things on the annex kind of like being figured out right now and whatnot so if i can wear my nike shoes
Speaker: My Nike shoes, my Tenki.
Speaker: Tenki is my design firm.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: You have shoes?
Speaker: Well, I've been thinking of doing some like digital renderings in the morning just to have fun with it and drop it.
Speaker: Actually, one of the projects that we're doing right now or I'm doing is creating, which is probably going to be the first drop that I do under the company's name.
Speaker: uh i thought it was gonna be like the big project but that's like a whole development cycle that we're going through right now but i'm gonna drop like a font which is like based on a a american sign language but it's all kind of like the i don't know if you saw the branding which is like hands and whatnot so it's all like little uh hands so basically that's finished i'm going to the refinement right now i'm gonna do like
Speaker: probably an NFT around it, like a hundred or something like that and just like drop it.
Speaker: So I'm just thinking like a little bit more outside, just doing like a JPEG, what is a normal care about the digital asset and so on.
Speaker: But that means going back into the conversation of like, if I design a 2 and I drop it into Call of Duty and you're wearing my 2, but then
Speaker: the user wants to resell that shoe just like a Nike these days and that's like an NFT and the other user is only playing Fortnite or whatever Destiny, whatever game is in the future, then that interoperability and value exchange, that's where a perfect example of an annex blockchain
Speaker: managing these transactions and then being accepted through all these multiple platforms.
Speaker: Obviously, you have the problem between different software, which is like the game, different hardware.
Speaker: So Apple, PlayStation 5, Xbox and whatnot, then there's an agreement, a new constitution that needs to be written.
Speaker: But if that happens and then you have transactions,
Speaker: happening to smart contracts and whatnot, then that would be a great example for this kind of idea of cultural production in the future and what would that mean.
Speaker: So yeah, just thinking a little bit outside of that field.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: Well, I think we've talked around all of Carlos's artwork, which I think is what he would prefer rather than actually talking about it.
Speaker: So if you connected to any part of the conversation, you'll hear his website address at the end and you can go look at the work after hearing the research.
Speaker: Do you have a website?
Speaker: I do have a website.
Speaker: It's hard to find.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very difficult to find.
Speaker: I like being Anon at the stream.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: No, you really need to know the URL.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You like typing Carlos Franco artist?
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: There are a bunch of Carlos Franco artists that are not him.
Speaker: They're not him.
Speaker: They're men.
Speaker: There's a gopher.
Speaker: I was going to do a project about this.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He's very good.
Speaker: There's a Bolivarian artist, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker: There's a famous Spanish painter that a lot of people confuse me for him, Carlos Franco.
Speaker: That actually sells pretty well.
Speaker: You should all meet.
Speaker: That was part of the project.
Speaker: Or at least you should sell some artworks to someone who thinks that you're this painter.
Speaker: I think he sold with David Swinburne at one moment or something like that.
Speaker: So it may be a thing that there may be a market over there.
Speaker: No, I met in Anon and I've been in a couple of
Speaker: I'm going to call it personal litigation between people that even post my photo online.
Speaker: Like you need to take that down.
Speaker: Like, and I just keep it really neurotic.
Speaker: Part of it being the conversation about identity and not being paid for being a data set and whatnot.
Speaker: Another thing just being neurotic of like, I like, I'm okay with not being,
Speaker: And recently I'm in a couple of shows and I was with the people.
Speaker: I just saw the bio for Lydian Statter.
Speaker: It's kind of like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: There was this there was an artist that I did a proposal with forever ago that was from New York, and I actually don't remember his name now, which makes sense because he was a filmmaker and he would use like a different iteration of his name for every single project that he ever did.
Speaker: So he like gave me a CV as part of this proposal and he had all those things.
Speaker: But like after everyone, it was like as X, Y or Z as X, Y or Z. And they were all like just like little tweaks or like different spellings that like if you saw them all, you're like, oh, these are a grouping of the same person, which I thought was kind of fun.
Speaker: I like Fernando Pessoa.
Speaker: It's like one of those, like, you know, like all personas and then writing a complex book about all these personas having their different perspective and kind of like maddening and oscillating, but you know, it's- And it's also this thing where like, if the internet is about being able to be found all the time, what happens if you can't be found?
Speaker: You have to like do it in order to see how it feels or what it's like.
Speaker: What happens to be off the grid?
Speaker: Well, it's also funny that if-
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: The best way to not be found on the internet is to be just ubiquitous.
Speaker: Like to be a John Smith or to be something that's like completely.
Speaker: And like we went to school with Andrew Yang.
Speaker: He had to give him his dot com.
Speaker: He did?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He probably sold it.
Speaker: He said specifically he didn't take any money for it.
Speaker: But for a while his Instagram was like Andrew Yang.
Speaker: Not the politician.
Speaker: Or something.
Speaker: He had to like specify.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: It's like an actual Andrew Yang.
Speaker: He wasn't Andrew Yang.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He is and he was.
Speaker: Is he an artist?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a scientist.
Speaker: Scientist first, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Similar.
Speaker: I am not a scientist.
Speaker: No, you're a philosopher.
Speaker: I do not agree.
Speaker: Well, Carlos.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Thank you for being on the podcast.
Speaker: If you call it a podcast.
Speaker: It's just a bunch of ones and zeros.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Any closing thoughts here?
Speaker: I mean, I was going to ask questions about the show, but I think if anybody wants to hear Mr. Carlos talk about it, we have an excellent hour-long Insta Live.
Speaker: Yeah, the Instagram Live's there.
Speaker: The essay for the show is on the exhibition page.
Speaker: It's all at our website.
Speaker: I feel like that's better than forcing Carlos to suffer through talking about
Speaker: his work or the show i did have one tiny question though el yunque yes sir that's junk that's the jungle in uh puerto rico yeah yeah um from from the little the work i've actually seen of yours in physical life i saw the very interesting
Speaker: Having to like growing your own jungle inside a studio.
Speaker: It's a waterclercidra with a growing platine tree.
Speaker: I love the idea of having your own jungle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like a waterclerc, guys, for those.
Speaker: We're still going to try and get one of those in the gallery.
Speaker: We have a solo show for 2023.
Speaker: I mean, I think we're still doing that.
Speaker: I guess so.
Speaker: I need to get a new studio before.
Speaker: I just came back from a long trip.
Speaker: So I need to resettle back in the United States.
Speaker: The whole thing could be about making that work at WeWork spaces and getting kicked out.
Speaker: That'd be fantastic.
Speaker: The weird thing about working for those that don't know, like for the last month, I've been working at WeWork.
Speaker: Don't tell anyone he doesn't have a studio right now.
Speaker: It's a big faux pas, you know.
Speaker: People, don't be insecure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um but it's funny because it's like it's funny that curating this show which is called post industrial digital dysmorphia and then being in these spaces because they're also empty and it's weird as fuck and it's weird kind of like okay uh i do it for my sanity basically just to not be in my apartment oldness but yeah i start teaching and then finally get a studio again but
Speaker: Yeah, it's like really, really, really, really weird.
Speaker: Like there's nothing happening there.
Speaker: There's nothing and nobody.
Speaker: Sad, weird.
Speaker: It's like these spaces, they have like full coffee bars and like nobody there.
Speaker: Nobody, nobody, nobody.
Speaker: Not even at the height because we used to do functions in those WeWork spaces.
Speaker: Yeah, I was surprised how little...
Speaker: Pre-pandemic, I went to a lot of spaces in New York and there were some that were pretty packed up.
Speaker: They had pizza Fridays and it was actually really cool to work in a space with a bunch of people, but it depended on the space.
Speaker: Some of them were very empty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting how everything's starting to get redefined or what does it mean to be remote work and
Speaker: I was in Tulum in the middle of the pandemic for extra wide reasons that I'm not gonna go to.
Speaker: But yeah, looking at all the quote unquote, D2NOMAS and whatnot,
Speaker: Just like breaking down of the jungle for all this Airbnb.
Speaker: And it's just like weird as fuck.
Speaker: But again, it's like a new landscape.
Speaker: And it's complicated.
Speaker: I know a lot of people talk about gentrification and so on and so on and so on.
Speaker: Very important.
Speaker: Don't marginalize communities.
Speaker: Immerse yourself within the communities.
Speaker: Respect cultures.
Speaker: But yeah, I don't know...
Speaker: you know like do we go back or how do you put the genie back in the bottle of like just like having a so the globalized economy with a lot of people having access to mobility and other people do not having access to mobility and how do you start closing down borders or uh passing laws that protect local interests uh and it's something that i think about a lot with my uh i have a couple of friends that are lawyers and the one and then what does it
Speaker: For example, in Puerto Rico, there's so many in the capital buildings that are historically protected, that are owned by people that don't live over there and they just turn into Airbnb.
Speaker: I've had the experience of renting out from someone that lives in Boston and I don't know if it's actually ever been there.
Speaker: And it's just like this really weird, beautiful colonial style building and it's kind of like, oh, okay.
Speaker: And I hate using the word colonization because it's like a trope by itself and it oversimplifies many dynamics.
Speaker: It just brings to the board like a similar conversation about what that means.
Speaker: That being said, like, yeah, like post-industrial digital dysmorphia, guys.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Fantastic show.
Speaker: We'll have links in our show notes to the documentation and the essay and the Instagram live.
Speaker: And thank you so much, Carlos.
Speaker: Thanks, Carlos.
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.
Speaker: You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
Speaker: Thanks to Carlos Franco for taking the time to speak to us this week.
Speaker: If you'd like to learn more about his work, visit his website at cfrancomaldonado.com.
Speaker: Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
Speaker: His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
Speaker: And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
Speaker: I know what to say.
Speaker: I know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I want to be.
