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Arranging Tangerines Episode 41 - A Conversation with Mitchell F Chan
6 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, we talk with artist Mitchell F Chan about his early NFT project titled Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, ideas of ownership and locating the source of value, techno utopianism, conceputalism within the NFT space and much much more.
Mitchell F Chan has created innovative works about technology since 2006. He creates large-scale public works, gallery installations, and digital artworks. He is best-known for creating one of the earliest non-fungible token artworks, which linked the immateriality of blockchain to the conceptual art practice of Yves Klein. In 2009, he was awarded the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Trustee Scholarship in Art and Technology Studies. His work has been covered and discussed in numerous media outlets including Artforum, Art In America, VICE, Canadian Art, Slate, the Toronto Star, and Gizmodo.
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Transcript
Introduction & Hosts Overview
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lydian 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.
00:00:14
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:15
Speaker
I know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:21
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:22
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:24
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
Guest Introduction: Mitchell F. Chan
00:00:34
Speaker
This week's guest is Mitchell F. Chan.
00:00:37
Speaker
Mitchell F. Chan has created innovative works about technology since 2006.
00:00:41
Speaker
He creates large-scale public works, gallery installations, and digital artworks.
00:00:45
Speaker
He is best known for creating one of the earliest non-fungible token artworks, which linked the immateriality of blockchain to the conceptual art practice of Yves Klein.
00:00:54
Speaker
In 2009, he was awarded the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Trustee Scholarship in Art and Technology Studies.
00:00:59
Speaker
His work has been covered and discussed in numerous media outlets including Art Forum, Art in America, Vice, Canadian Art, Slate, the Toronto Star, and Gizmodo.
Unconference & COVID-19 Impact
00:01:08
Speaker
Welcome, Mitchell.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hi, can you hear me?
00:01:11
Speaker
Yes, we can.
00:01:13
Speaker
Can you hear us?
00:01:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:17
Speaker
Hey, this is Joseph.
00:01:20
Speaker
He's my business gallery partner.
00:01:22
Speaker
How's it going?
00:01:24
Speaker
Good, good.
00:01:25
Speaker
Nice to meet you.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember.
00:01:28
Speaker
I was at the unconference as well.
00:01:31
Speaker
And I don't know if we actually
00:01:33
Speaker
chatted or crossed paths during that.
00:01:36
Speaker
It was busy.
00:01:38
Speaker
I saw you having a lively discussion from afar during the first session.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, you know what?
00:01:43
Speaker
It's funny.
00:01:43
Speaker
I was just talking to Stevie P yesterday, actually, about the next one.
00:01:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:49
Speaker
I've been on the Discord waiting for him to offer up people to offer up workshops because I'd like to or sessions.
00:01:56
Speaker
I'd like to do another one.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, me too.
00:01:58
Speaker
I mean, it was a really, really good crowd.
00:02:01
Speaker
Super appreciative.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, it was.
00:02:05
Speaker
It was awesome.
00:02:06
Speaker
I felt because we, you know, like we're fairly new to crypto.
00:02:11
Speaker
And so we dove in and crossed paths with lots of different kinds of people.
00:02:17
Speaker
And none of none of them yet at that point were those kinds of people in such a large number who were really interested in crypto.
00:02:25
Speaker
the more thoughtful artistic side of the artwork going into it.
00:02:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:02:29
Speaker
Stevie P is a great kind of lightning rod for that.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, it was cool.
NFTs: Art vs. Commodity
00:02:36
Speaker
Well, thanks.
00:02:36
Speaker
So how's it going?
00:02:37
Speaker
So what do you guys want to do today?
00:02:39
Speaker
Well, I mean, we keep it simple, very conversational.
00:02:42
Speaker
I mean, obviously, we like your work.
00:02:45
Speaker
We met at that conference.
00:02:47
Speaker
I had heard about your work on another podcast, Ipse Dixit.
00:02:54
Speaker
yeah with brian fry i love brian fry uh that's where i first saw your work and i was intrigued and then it was great to catch up and actually be in that panel or in the discussion room where you led uh last what was your what was y'all's group what was the discussion i honestly don't know i just remember it was really good
00:03:20
Speaker
I mean, I think that's what you want, right?
00:03:21
Speaker
You want people to go away remembering that it was really good and fruitful and rewarding.
00:03:27
Speaker
I need to talk to this guy at a future date.
00:03:29
Speaker
And here we are.
00:03:30
Speaker
Here we are.
00:03:31
Speaker
So happy to be here.
00:03:34
Speaker
I did contract COVID in that conference.
00:03:38
Speaker
Oh, congratulations.
00:03:40
Speaker
Everybody did.
00:03:42
Speaker
Everybody did.
00:03:43
Speaker
That was the big take away.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, everybody at NFT NYC got it, except for me, actually.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't get it either, but it's because I just had had it or something.
00:03:57
Speaker
I can't remember what the details were.
00:03:59
Speaker
I had it in May, so when that happened, it was like, I guess I was immune.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
But I did see that a lot of people got it.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
Who would have thunk that...
00:04:11
Speaker
a bunch of libertarians coming across the country to New York City to have an event.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's only the most obvious thing.
00:04:21
Speaker
They brought a decentralized virus with them and distributed it.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, that was fun.
00:04:29
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, we...
00:04:32
Speaker
We wanted to say, we wanted to talk about like your recent projects.
00:04:36
Speaker
We wanted to take your take on kind of like work where NFTs are now.
00:04:41
Speaker
That was a considerably different time.
00:04:43
Speaker
It seems like the crypto time runs in like decades versus six single years.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, things go pretty fast, right?
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, I just read your 33 page Eves Klein paper.
00:04:56
Speaker
That was fascinating.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's not that long of a read.
00:05:01
Speaker
No, it is.
00:05:02
Speaker
There's a lot of pictures.
00:05:03
Speaker
Double space.
00:05:04
Speaker
It's actually a fairly short read and there's a reasonable number of pictures.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, he told me he just read it and I opened it up and I was like, oh, this isn't 33 real pages.
00:05:13
Speaker
It's like 33 pages.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's totally consumable for anybody who wants to read it.
00:05:18
Speaker
It is accessible.
00:05:19
Speaker
It really is.
00:05:20
Speaker
And that was sort of, you know, my thesis that I was putting out there like five, five years ago, or just, you know, my observation about what crypto could be for art from a conceptual standpoint in terms of continuing, you know, explorations in the history of conceptual art and, you know, also as a potential medium for exchange.
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, I,
00:05:43
Speaker
Oh, sorry.
00:05:43
Speaker
Go ahead, Alex.
00:05:44
Speaker
No, no.
00:05:44
Speaker
Go.
00:05:45
Speaker
I was just going to say, I don't think that like formal training or education is necessarily that important for a lot of things.
00:05:52
Speaker
But I am curious.
00:05:54
Speaker
You don't have like an about me on your page.
00:05:56
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And I'm just curious how you came, how you kind of like came to how you came to art, how you came to attack if one came before the other or what your kind of like path was in like, I don't know.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah.
Chan's Art & Tech Background
00:06:09
Speaker
Briefly.
00:06:09
Speaker
I mean, I've been an artist for a long time and I've been making art with technology and art about technology for a long time.
00:06:17
Speaker
I'm a graduate of these art and technology studies program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
00:06:23
Speaker
Oh, that's where I went.
00:06:24
Speaker
So.
00:06:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
And so I graduated 2011.
00:06:30
Speaker
2003 for me.
00:06:30
Speaker
OK.
00:06:31
Speaker
So.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, and so they're, you know, obviously as an artist, I think anybody who is really trying to make art that is about the world that they live in today is making art about technology, right, and a society and a culture that is shaped by technology.
00:06:53
Speaker
And, you know, I'd also been fortunate to learn some of the tools to use technology as my medium.
00:07:00
Speaker
And that is a symmetry that I really like to have in my practice where I like to employ the medium that I'm critiquing.
00:07:05
Speaker
That's not a really uncommon thing
00:07:07
Speaker
practice.
00:07:10
Speaker
And so I've done a lot of that.
00:07:13
Speaker
And in 2017,
00:07:17
Speaker
I was looking at blockchain technology and thinking this could be something that is important to society.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I just wanted to think about it as an artist.
00:07:29
Speaker
But it's a weird thing to wrap your head around.
00:07:31
Speaker
The technology side of it is fine.
00:07:34
Speaker
It's something that you can learn about.
00:07:36
Speaker
You can go and you can learn solidity or you can learn how to spin up a Bitcoin node or whatever.
00:07:41
Speaker
but it was the conceptual underpinnings of it.
00:07:48
Speaker
As an artist, you're not just interested in, oh, how does this technology work?
Critique: Art, Finance, and Blockchain
00:07:53
Speaker
Okay, cool, now I can use it and make doodles.
00:07:56
Speaker
That's what a creative technologist does.
00:07:58
Speaker
That's an experiment.
00:08:01
Speaker
As an artist, you look at that, you do all that, and then you think, what does this mean?
00:08:05
Speaker
What does it mean that we're a society that produced this?
00:08:11
Speaker
And so it turns out that, you know, there were some precedents in art history and in theory that kind of pointed the way about actually why we as a society would produce this, why we would produce Bitcoin and Ethereum.
00:08:29
Speaker
And so in 2017, right, I made a project that was...
00:08:33
Speaker
trying to draw a straight direct line between the conceptual work of Yves Klein beginning in 1958 and Ethereum and saying that both of these things took a very similar approach to ideas of ownership and to locating the source of value.
00:09:00
Speaker
Thank you.
00:09:01
Speaker
That was super helpful.
00:09:02
Speaker
I like to get a little context on background because I think it helps me shape questions and it's super interesting.
00:09:10
Speaker
I had, and I think maybe connected to that Eve Klein piece, one of the things I noticed in a couple projects that was coming up was, or maybe it was just the most recent one, was the ability of the NFT to separate the expressive
00:09:29
Speaker
parts of art from the commodity part of art, right?
00:09:32
Speaker
Am I saying that kind of correct in the way that you've talked about it?
00:09:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:37
Speaker
And I'm curious, like in relation to conceptual art,
00:09:44
Speaker
you know, I'm Alex is actually the art history guy, but in my general understanding of conceptualism, it was really an anti market, anti commodity kind of action for a lot of the artists.
00:09:57
Speaker
And, and there was there was obviously like the reasons for that.
NFTs & Conceptual Art Commodification
00:10:01
Speaker
And it was part of that era.
00:10:02
Speaker
And it was part of the time that they were existing in.
00:10:06
Speaker
But so like NFTs allow
00:10:09
Speaker
art that was hard to be commodified become commodified, which can be great for like getting artists paid.
00:10:13
Speaker
I'm wondering if you have thoughts on kind of like whether that's a good thing for like the artwork in general, I guess.
00:10:22
Speaker
Sure.
00:10:23
Speaker
Well, I'll say, so I'll lead with a straight up answer, which is yes.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yes, it's a very good thing.
00:10:29
Speaker
And now let's look at some, you know, precedents kind of that you're invoking and pick them apart a little bit, right?
00:10:35
Speaker
Like this whole idea that conceptualism was...
00:10:39
Speaker
a rebellion against the commodification of art.
00:10:43
Speaker
I think that's pretty disingenuous, right?
00:10:46
Speaker
And when you read about it, like if you read, you know, Lucy Lepard's Six Years, which is, you know, is close to a, like, living history document of somebody who is there in the conceptualism moment.
00:10:57
Speaker
It's like 10 pages into that book, she just admits, like, yeah, this whole anti-commercialism thing didn't last very long, you know?
00:11:07
Speaker
And this is actually because it can't to write it like can't last that long.
00:11:10
Speaker
That's yeah, sorry.
00:11:13
Speaker
It can't like one of the ways that the world of art and the world of finance are similar is that they've both done incredible jobs of turning who knows what completely intangible abstract ideas into commodities, right, that can be bought and sold.
00:11:33
Speaker
And so
00:11:34
Speaker
This is actually a big problem because, look, I'm not like a huge like profit maxi.
00:11:40
Speaker
I'm not like a Gordon Gekko like greed is good type of person.
00:11:46
Speaker
But I believe in like navigating...
00:11:50
Speaker
thoughtfully, right, and conducting oneself thoughtfully, like as we all try to navigate this ever tightening net of capitalism, right?
00:12:01
Speaker
And we can't do that when we're being disingenuous about it.
00:12:05
Speaker
And the art world is very, very disingenuous about its relationship to capital.
00:12:10
Speaker
And it's also really tries to be very disingenuous about the ways that it is creating commodities.
00:12:16
Speaker
So that's one of the problems, I think, with art that has tried to be about finance.
00:12:22
Speaker
And it's one of the things that I found extremely refreshing about Eve Klein.
00:12:27
Speaker
When Eve Klein, like, Eve Klein never foregrounded the relationship between money and his work.
00:12:36
Speaker
Because, I mean, he was already at the level where he could just take it for granted.
00:12:40
Speaker
Like it was almost, it was not a thing that needed to be foregrounded.
00:12:43
Speaker
It was just obvious.
00:12:45
Speaker
So for instance, when he first sold his blue monochrome paintings,
00:12:49
Speaker
Right.
00:12:50
Speaker
These were paintings.
00:12:50
Speaker
They were all more or less the same thing.
00:12:52
Speaker
Right.
00:12:53
Speaker
All canvases painted in a signature international fine blue.
00:12:56
Speaker
But he priced them differently.
00:12:59
Speaker
They all had different prices.
00:13:00
Speaker
And when people paid different prices for them and didn't immediately go to the cheapest one, like he was thrilled.
00:13:06
Speaker
This was sort of a proof to him, like he was sort of like a validated experiment.
00:13:11
Speaker
where he said that, you know, people's ownership of something and how much they pay for something is a part of their emotional connection.
00:13:20
Speaker
For better or for worse, there's just no getting
Blockchain: Utopia vs. Reality
00:13:23
Speaker
around it.
00:13:23
Speaker
That act of buying something changes your relationship to it.
00:13:28
Speaker
And for Klein, art is nothing but a relationship between himself, the artist, and the collector.
00:13:34
Speaker
So that's important, like ownership
00:13:37
Speaker
and the process of transaction is an important artist's material for him.
00:13:42
Speaker
So that's really, really interesting, and that's another thing that we can sort of explore on blockchain.
00:13:47
Speaker
Whenever, you know, when I saw Ethereum, I saw we could make smart contracts, we can design, you know, not just our own assets, but our own mechanisms for how they are transacted.
00:13:59
Speaker
That is an art material.
00:14:01
Speaker
It is, because it's important to how we experience the artwork.
00:14:05
Speaker
Now, the other reason why I think art has had a really difficult time making honest work about capitalism, financialization, and its role therein, is that any sort of artistic experiment, even one done in good faith, and many of them, I think, are not done in good faith, right?
00:14:22
Speaker
Many of them are like, ah, capitalism, look at how much I can sell this thing for.
00:14:27
Speaker
I am making a statement about how vulgar the world is.
00:14:30
Speaker
And it's like, but...
00:14:32
Speaker
Like the joke is never on the artist, that's for sure.
00:14:35
Speaker
Right.
00:14:37
Speaker
But, but, but anyway, besides that, one of the reasons why it's difficult to make art that like meaningfully,
00:14:44
Speaker
disrupts or intersects or, you know, whatever, the world of finance is just that like, you can't really do anything at any impactful scale, right?
00:14:56
Speaker
Like sometimes you'll see artists and they might do some sort of like, you know, social aesthetics piece or performance piece where they create a little marketplace in the gallery.
00:15:04
Speaker
But like, surely we understand that sort of social coordination experiments that happen
00:15:10
Speaker
In this extremely sanitized and elite space of a gallery or an artist-run center, we can't really infer anything about the real world from what happens in there, right?
00:15:21
Speaker
But something that you deploy to blockchain that is completely accessible, like forever, could be actually an interesting format, an interesting medium for making an art piece that's about the financialization of art.
00:15:35
Speaker
Sorry, I've ran off on a few different tangents from that question.
00:15:39
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:15:39
Speaker
I think that was a very thoughtful answer and kind of where my head was at.
00:15:44
Speaker
And I was, I think, playing devil's advocate a little bit.
00:15:46
Speaker
But you did mention, I mean, not because you brought up the accessibility of the blockchain, which in theory is accessible to everyone, but is not at all actually accessible to 90% of the world, probably 95% of the world.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, you know what?
00:16:07
Speaker
That's a great point.
00:16:08
Speaker
That is a great point.
00:16:09
Speaker
And a great point where I should check myself because it's another thing that it's open and permissionless in theory, but you are right.
00:16:19
Speaker
There is definitely a cost to onboarding.
00:16:23
Speaker
The Ethereum blockchain right now is expensive to use.
00:16:27
Speaker
It costs a lot of money per transaction.
00:16:29
Speaker
It costs a lot of money to participate in.
00:16:32
Speaker
So I think that you are right.
00:16:34
Speaker
And, you know, I, I, I would also push against anybody who wants to put forward like a really simple utopian reading of this as like an open permission lists, you know, forum for, for, for art exactly for the reasons that you say.
00:16:50
Speaker
And it's like,
00:16:51
Speaker
And so if we want to go to the flip side, like sort of the ugly side of what we've seen about art on blockchain, right?
00:16:59
Speaker
It is that.
00:16:59
Speaker
It's that this world is populated by like a self-selecting group of people, you know?
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, and I think probably when we both got interested, the utopian visions were part of our excitement about it that are not that are not gone, but are certainly like curbed a little bit from when from when we became interested, but but also like complicated in like a nice way too.
00:17:30
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:31
Speaker
And I like, you know, I share that perspective that you have, like, you know, every now and then I get really burned out on this, like on this culture because and to be explicit about some of the utopian claims of blockchain, right?
00:17:44
Speaker
You know, blockchain is a
00:17:48
Speaker
you know, advocates talk about blockchain leading to, you know, the world that provides easy access to capital for people who are unbanked or they talk about it, you know, being able to create new systems of self-governance that look a lot like direct democracies and things like that.
00:18:04
Speaker
Right.
00:18:05
Speaker
And the thing is, is I know that the people who believe in that are real, like, and I believe in that and that there are many people who are truly
00:18:16
Speaker
like working towards that in good faith including like i believe you know the the founder and creator of ethereum uh you know vitalik buterin like i genuinely believe that he wants to create something for the public good the problem is that we were just talking about barriers to access right the barrier to access the blockchain is not
00:18:40
Speaker
It's not the case that anybody with a utopian, with a dream of techno utopia can enter blockchain.
00:18:46
Speaker
That's not the case.
00:18:47
Speaker
It is the case that anybody with money can enter blockchain, right?
00:18:51
Speaker
Sure.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:51
Speaker
So like, unfortunately, the gatekeeping mechanism is a little bit different from like, you know, what you would want.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think the gatekeeper is more just education and knowledge than it is like straight up money, but also like education and knowledge is connected to money.
00:19:09
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:11
Speaker
But that's like, you know, any time I have a conversation with people, it's a teaching slash learning thing a lot of the time because people just don't have the knowledge yet.
00:19:23
Speaker
I just wanted to first apologize that I look like a bad Rembrandt painting.
00:19:29
Speaker
I think that's cool.
00:19:32
Speaker
I started a new job at a museum and I'm actually in one of the corridors between a museum wall.
00:19:36
Speaker
So there's a hip hop exhibition on the other side of this wall.
00:19:39
Speaker
So I wanted to block it off and make sure that the sound wasn't pouring in.
00:19:43
Speaker
But I did want to mention or point out, it was interesting that you, obviously it was interesting that you went towards this technology to try to see what you could do with it and try to kind of like play around with the idea of finance and art.
Spirituality in Crypto & Art
00:20:00
Speaker
But the other thing in particular with Yves Klein was that he was very much into spirituality.
00:20:06
Speaker
And a lot of the talk in crypto, I've noticed, kind of like it almost has the feel of a spiritual talk because a lot of it is like in the future and it's like,
00:20:15
Speaker
um it's stuff that you can't prove and it's stuff that you can't really quantify it's like they they speak in these really grandiose kind of like forms and it's really good to excite people and for speculation and to kind of gather people around and make them uh open their pocketbooks and actually uh get some liquidity happening but it's it's interesting that it has a spirit it it's it's bordering on spirituality in my in my experience
00:20:42
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:20:43
Speaker
And so, um, like there are a couple of places we can take that.
00:20:46
Speaker
I mean, first of all is like this obvious, like a thing that you're pointing out about how like techno utopianism and especially like, you know,
00:20:57
Speaker
capitalist techno-utopianism is basically like the dominant form of spirituality, like at least certainly in the part of the world where I live and maybe where you live as well, right?
00:21:09
Speaker
And that was one of the things that I was interested in exploring, like
00:21:12
Speaker
particularly in that essay, in that 33-page essay that I wrote that accompanied that piece in 2017, that was directly drawing the parallels between Klein's mysticism, and particularly the mysticism that he assigned to his whole artistic practice, and the idea that he as an artist could conjure value from his force of personality.
00:21:37
Speaker
And this other type of mysticism that we see in blockchain culture and frankly in tech culture, right, which is that we can conjure value.
00:21:47
Speaker
I mean, interesting though, like it is that value is being conjured in a decentralized way, not from, well,
00:21:54
Speaker
I'll go back on this later, but the idea that the sentiment of a bunch of people can essentially put value into a Bitcoin, right?
00:22:06
Speaker
Like that value is created through however many decentralized nodes there are running the network and then other people
00:22:13
Speaker
investing in it.
00:22:14
Speaker
But there's other really interesting things that we can learn about society from this approach, right?
00:22:22
Speaker
One of the quotes that led my thinking when I was first doing art and blockchain was this quote by, I guess, the theorist or philosopher, Jean-Joseph Zhu.
00:22:35
Speaker
Is this the one about gold?
00:22:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:38
Speaker
I read that on your site and it blew my mind for a second.
00:22:43
Speaker
But please, but please quote it.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
Sure.
00:22:45
Speaker
Right.
00:22:46
Speaker
And he pointed, he points out this was he was noting that the rise of abstraction coincided with the same time that nation states were moving away from the gold standard towards fiat currency.
00:23:04
Speaker
And he says he's not trying to say there's a direct like, you know, causality or correlation between these things.
00:23:11
Speaker
It's more like the way that I read it is more like when there's something in the air, this same transition
00:23:19
Speaker
right, manifests itself in many different forms across different parts of our society.
00:23:24
Speaker
And like what he was seeing is one that people essentially like were able to trust, you know, abstraction, right?
00:23:30
Speaker
He's talking about the abstraction of money and the abstraction of images that like we are now okay living in what he like, you know, would call like a world of free-flowing reference, right?
00:23:46
Speaker
There doesn't have to be a direct one-to-one correlation between one banknote and one bar of gold that's stored in Fort Knox or whatever.
00:23:57
Speaker
And now, so that was also why when I was thinking about digital currency, all right, there's another...
00:24:04
Speaker
signals, you know, is a manifestation of, I think, a major shift in the collective psyche, right, of all of us, which is moving away from sort of like safe abstraction of value that is guaranteed by a centralized nation state to like now it's like, now it's really out there.
00:24:24
Speaker
Like now there's really,
00:24:27
Speaker
Like it's post post structuralist value, right?
00:24:33
Speaker
But maybe, I don't know.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then, but then, okay, so if that's the shoe dropping on the finance side, right?
00:24:40
Speaker
If we follow this lineage where like, okay, every time there's a change in monetary policy, that also indicates a change in how society is thinking about value in art,
00:24:54
Speaker
changes accordingly.
00:24:55
Speaker
So if this is happening now, this is another big change in how we think about currency and value in our lives.
00:25:03
Speaker
Surely art has to change as well, right?
00:25:07
Speaker
So
00:25:08
Speaker
I don't know what I'm thinking about.
00:25:09
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:10
Speaker
What decentralized abstraction?
00:25:14
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:14
Speaker
I don't have a cool term for it.
00:25:15
Speaker
I still don't have the answer.
00:25:18
Speaker
But, you know, that's what I'm looking for.
00:25:19
Speaker
That's a great point.
00:25:23
Speaker
So you're saying keep painting and making sculpture.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's always... Yeah, or you can always just go back to basics.
00:25:36
Speaker
That will always work, actually.
00:25:40
Speaker
Well, also on the point of spirituality is that, you know, if we talk about...
00:25:46
Speaker
The process of belief and and also cult like tendencies.
00:25:52
Speaker
You know, I think there's a lot of overlap in the crypto space with with cultish behavior similar to a very accepted cultish behavior that's in the art market and art world as well, because.
00:26:06
Speaker
You know, most people that I know who are not within the art world, when you show them any kind of painting that sold for more than a million dollars, it still blows their minds.
00:26:17
Speaker
There's still no way to kind of like understand...
00:26:21
Speaker
how that how that happens or why it happens.
00:26:25
Speaker
And it just it doesn't make any sense because it is a really it's a very abstract, complicated concept of how that value is created.
00:26:33
Speaker
And so like, then you take it even one step further, right, we're like going deeper down the rabbit hole.
00:26:39
Speaker
And there's, you like have to have this transition of belief in order to kind of like buy into
00:26:47
Speaker
some of the things that cryptocurrency can offer.
00:26:49
Speaker
And I still feel a lot safer knowing that I can like swap it out for USD whenever I need to.
00:26:58
Speaker
Like, I don't live in the Ethereum world like some people do because, I mean, I know it's challenging, but also there are people that are all in all the time, maybe less so now than there was.
00:27:12
Speaker
But, you know, like we haven't totally let go of the stability of state governments and those kinds of things.
00:27:19
Speaker
No, absolutely.
00:27:20
Speaker
But we are leaning that way.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean...
00:27:26
Speaker
I don't know how far it's going to go.
00:27:30
Speaker
This completely decentralized world that they use, the word that they use in blockchain a lot is trustlessness.
00:27:37
Speaker
We should all be able to go about our business without ever needing to trust another human being.
00:27:43
Speaker
That's a good thing.
00:27:44
Speaker
And it sounds like nightmare to me.
00:27:52
Speaker
So, yeah, I don't know if we'll ever get to that fully realized vision of the blockchain maximalist world.
00:28:04
Speaker
And I probably hope that we don't, frankly.
00:28:08
Speaker
Right.
00:28:11
Speaker
Because then we'll just kind of be robots, right?
00:28:13
Speaker
If we're not ever interacting with anyone or trusting anyone for anything.
00:28:19
Speaker
which I mean, maybe it'll be awesome when it happens, but it doesn't sound that awesome to me.
00:28:26
Speaker
Maybe that's a good segue.
00:28:27
Speaker
If you don't mind kind of talking about a little bit about the Sol LeWitt NFT that you had put out as well, which I think was a nice bookend to the Aves Klein.
00:28:41
Speaker
There's a recurring theme here because I know that I've just said, you know,
00:28:45
Speaker
a bunch of, you know, sort of like very skeptical things about blockchain technology and blockchain culture, like which, you know, I believe are warranted.
00:28:53
Speaker
Like, you know, I'm still, you know, largely an advocate for blockchain.
00:28:58
Speaker
It's just a thing that, you know, as an artist and frankly, as a human being,
00:29:01
Speaker
I have to approach critically.
00:29:03
Speaker
Right.
00:29:04
Speaker
And, you know, usually the way that I approach things critically is by just trying to check it against, you know, previous ideas.
00:29:12
Speaker
And like I said, I could understand I could understand blockchain a lot better when I understood it through the lens of conceptual art and on the very fundamental level.
00:29:23
Speaker
I understood like the value proposition of blockchain a little bit through Eve Klein's conceptual works and NFTs in particular.
00:29:31
Speaker
And so I made that piece.
00:29:32
Speaker
I made my first blockchain art piece.
00:29:34
Speaker
It was called Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility in 2017.
00:29:39
Speaker
And that was before the term NFT existed.
00:29:42
Speaker
It was before like the NFTs had been standardized as, you know, a data format, I guess you could call them.
00:29:49
Speaker
Right.
00:29:50
Speaker
And so it was, you know, one of the earliest NFTs by virtue of the fact that there weren't NFTs.
00:29:57
Speaker
But then sort of like three and a half, right, four years later, you know, NFTs were a thing and they were being widely used.
00:30:08
Speaker
And I got to think about these things as like not just a hypothetical like, oh, yeah, if ever, you know, artwork were just tokens traded on a distributed ledger.
00:30:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it would be kind of like this.
00:30:18
Speaker
You know, I could really like see them in action and I could see a lot of it going on and, you know, think about it again now that this was in practice.
Sol LeWitt & NFT Relevance
00:30:25
Speaker
And, you know, Saul LeWitt was an artist who was really interesting to use like as a sort of template for thinking about what's really happening with an NFT.
00:30:36
Speaker
And so the way that I invoked him was thinking about, and I'm going to come back to a theme that you mentioned earlier in this conversation, the separation of the commodity form and the experienced form of an artwork.
00:30:49
Speaker
And I think this is a really, really big thing.
00:30:52
Speaker
Now, Sol LeWitt didn't do a full-on split like this, not the way Klein did.
00:30:58
Speaker
Klein legitimately did it.
00:30:59
Speaker
He said his artwork is something this over here, it is this cloud of matter or whatever, and, you know, what you buy, like, you get this receipt and that's all that you get.
00:31:09
Speaker
You know, and, but, you know, Sol LeWitt famously, right, his best-known works are these wall drawings.
00:31:16
Speaker
And, you know, these wall drawings are a set of instructions that he, the artist Solowit writes, and then he signs the instructions, right?
00:31:25
Speaker
They're printed on a certificate.
00:31:27
Speaker
He sells it to the collector or the museum or whatever.
00:31:30
Speaker
And then, you know, the museum hires someone, I don't know, right?
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, well, really, I do.
00:31:36
Speaker
Like, there are, like, professional Solowit installers now.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's a little cottage industry.
00:31:40
Speaker
But let's pretend before that was a thing.
00:31:42
Speaker
Right, right.
00:31:42
Speaker
you don't know they hire like some some college kids or whatever to go and execute these instructions and draw the drawing on the wall right and in this way like there's a clear distinction made right and then me as the viewer I go in and I see that and there's this really clear distinction between what I'm seeing and experiencing and saying oh that's a solid width that's a really that's a really pretty artwork I really like those
00:32:06
Speaker
lines on the wall.
00:32:07
Speaker
That makes me feel happy, right?
00:32:09
Speaker
And then what is the actual thing that the museum paid a million dollars for or whatever, right?
00:32:16
Speaker
now I know that I'm subverting is thinking a little bit because he wanted to talk about his whole thing was that the idea is the artwork the idea is the artwork that's why it's conceptualism the concept is the artwork and the paper was the receptacle right the repository of that concept but again it's important to be
00:32:36
Speaker
honest about what the fact that art also is an asset and so there's another thing going on there so it is just like okay what did you need to do in order to make that work for you so you could you know pay for your Lower East Side studio or whatever which is that you know those ideas also became
00:32:54
Speaker
the asset, the thing that we're sold, which necessarily had to take on a different form.
00:32:59
Speaker
And so, boom, there you have it again, like that separation of what the viewer sees and what is bought and transacted.
00:33:07
Speaker
And Lewitt just happened to locate the value, like,
00:33:10
Speaker
He just happened to put the artistic value and the money value of the piece in the exact same repository.
00:33:19
Speaker
The certificate had both of them.
00:33:20
Speaker
For him, it had the artistic value of the piece.
00:33:22
Speaker
The drawing that was executed was just meh, whatever, right?
00:33:25
Speaker
I mean, I know he cared about it, but, you know, he would certainly prioritize that idea on paper.
00:33:30
Speaker
And that also is where the money value of the piece was.
00:33:32
Speaker
So that was really interesting.
00:33:34
Speaker
And it was really interesting for me to think about NFTs, right?
00:33:37
Speaker
Because NFTs are famously like the NFT is not the artwork, right?
00:33:43
Speaker
The NFT is a digital...
00:33:46
Speaker
it's three bits of data, really, that are stored on the blockchain.
00:33:49
Speaker
It's a token ID and a wallet address of who owns it and a field that tells you what this artwork looks like.
00:33:58
Speaker
But the artwork itself is elsewhere.
00:34:00
Speaker
It's a JPEG that's stored on a different server, probably not even on the blockchain.
00:34:04
Speaker
And this is an equivalent
00:34:06
Speaker
severance of the artistic form because that jpeg is over on another server somewhere and the commodity form which is the which is the token right which is the non-fungible token which stays on the blockchain is in a perfect form to be a liquid commodity right as a highly like tradable and resaleable asset
00:34:25
Speaker
And so anyway, I made, so I made an artwork that was about, you know, where I sort of like reinterpreted, you know, some Saul LeWitt instructions, essentially just as a way to put a pin in this idea.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, I you mentioned the solo at Mass Mocha, which I feel like that was like the first time I really like saw I've seen his work before, but that was like the first time I really saw it.
00:34:56
Speaker
And in relation to NFT, something we talk about all the time is like being able to like so.
00:35:06
Speaker
So those works are in a museum that anybody can go to.
00:35:09
Speaker
depending on if they can pay the admission or whatever.
00:35:11
Speaker
But but NFTs kind of like turned the Internet into a public museum for everyone.
00:35:17
Speaker
Right.
00:35:18
Speaker
So like anybody, whether they own the thing or not, can go see the work, which has kind of been the function of museums.
00:35:24
Speaker
for a long time, which is to create repositories for this artwork that normally would sit in collectors houses and would never be seen by people if there wasn't a public facing institution that was supporting it.
00:35:35
Speaker
And now like the museum isn't really I mean, isn't necessary if the work that's going forward is going to be NFTs, at least not the way and not the public facing way to give people access to the work because everybody has access.
NFTs & Democratization of Art
00:35:50
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:50
Speaker
And I think that is such an important point, right?
00:35:53
Speaker
Like we talked about, you know, the barrier to access to participate in the blockchain economy, right?
00:36:00
Speaker
Like to participate in blockchain technology.
00:36:03
Speaker
even but the barrier of access to access like the art that is being you know sold and transacted as nfts is ridiculously low right it's just like if you can go to a library and go online like you can participate and experience this art and that's i think really
00:36:23
Speaker
really important.
00:36:24
Speaker
So, you know, my most recent piece, you know, was commissioned by the Buffalo AKG Museum, the Albert Knox Gallery.
00:36:34
Speaker
And, you know, it was quite exciting for me because I wanted to make a piece that was, you know, you know, it was an NFT piece.
00:36:45
Speaker
And, but I wanted it to be like extremely accessible, which meant like platform agnostic.
00:36:50
Speaker
So it's a full piece of software, again, linked to a token so that, you know, the, whatever small number, relatively small number of people who wanted to buy it and own essentially the financial, you know, interest in this thing, like we're able to, while the work exists online, like,
00:37:13
Speaker
well, I don't want to say forever, like nothing's forever, but like for all to access, right?
00:37:18
Speaker
And that's whether or not the museum puts it on their website, right?
00:37:25
Speaker
And I think that that's really, really important.
00:37:29
Speaker
And for me, so for me now, like I'm even trying to make platform agnostic work.
00:37:34
Speaker
Like I want the work to present itself, whether you're on your phone or on your computer, right?
00:37:41
Speaker
for as many different people as possible.
00:37:43
Speaker
And, you know, this actually takes me back to another really important thing about my background, because as much as it was important for me that I, you know, had a background in art and technology studies, like learning technology, just as important is that I spent most of my career making public art.
00:38:01
Speaker
um and doing you know commissions for public parks plazas like you know spaces like that um where i was always thinking about how this would connect to like a a general audience and like what it would mean for like a really nice like heterogeneous group of people to interact with that work and so i hope that that spirit of kind of like
00:38:26
Speaker
you know pluralism comes back to to art because we're presenting in this very very public way and i think it's a really important point um about about nfts is that access and of course like i don't mean to suggest that like museums are going away like they're not museums are lovely spaces i love going to museums i love museums and they do important services and you know they conserve art and elevate art and everything and there's a lot of art that i really enjoy that doesn't translate very well to screens
00:38:56
Speaker
So that's all fine, but this is a really exciting kind of new way of distributing art, like both as an experience and as a commodity.
00:39:04
Speaker
That's interesting because the way that the Albright displayed that piece was very interesting because it was very, there's a bunch of components and they were very meticulous about the way they kind of displayed it.
00:39:15
Speaker
And methods of display is something that obviously,
00:39:19
Speaker
on your phone is going to be inhibited as far as the, you know, the size of your screen, where you have access, the resolution.
00:39:26
Speaker
So it's not necessarily exactly what the artist particularly intended.
00:39:32
Speaker
But it depends.
00:39:34
Speaker
It depends on what the artist intends.
00:39:35
Speaker
So I'll say this, like my philosophy as an artist, and again, especially as somebody who made public art, right, where it's just like,
00:39:43
Speaker
It's on you.
00:39:45
Speaker
Like, I make public art, it goes in public parks, right?
00:39:47
Speaker
It's on you to think about what happens if, you know, someone smashes your sculpture with a baseball bat.
00:39:54
Speaker
Like, it really is.
00:39:55
Speaker
Like, you know what you're getting into, right?
00:39:57
Speaker
And so, like, I also believe that, you know, when I make digital art,
00:40:01
Speaker
Right.
00:40:02
Speaker
It's, it's, it's on me to be like accountable for the different types of experiences that people can have.
00:40:08
Speaker
Cause it's not like you're always getting a perfect experience in a museum either.
00:40:12
Speaker
Right.
00:40:12
Speaker
It's not like it's great to go and like see the Mona Lisa behind three inches of glass surrounded by 300 other like heavy breathing tourists.
00:40:20
Speaker
That also sucks.
00:40:21
Speaker
Right.
00:40:21
Speaker
And digital art really, and all time-based art really, really sucks in a museum.
00:40:28
Speaker
It sucks.
00:40:29
Speaker
If you're trying to go see like, you know,
00:40:31
Speaker
the cremaster cycle and you like walk into it a halfway full like you walk into like a dark black box that's in the middle of a white box and you walk in halfway through like you know when the thing started and so you don't see the beginning and you don't see the end and then you never see it again because it goes back in the vault like that sucks too and with these different avenues like these different outlets for presenting art
00:40:57
Speaker
artists can and probably should be held more accountable
Games as Art Medium
00:41:00
Speaker
for that.
00:41:00
Speaker
So no, like is seeing my art on your phone a perfect experience?
00:41:04
Speaker
Absolutely not.
00:41:05
Speaker
I'd really prefer that you did it on a nice big 4k screen when you have like plenty of time, maybe you dim the lights in your living room.
00:41:12
Speaker
Pour a glass of wine.
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:16
Speaker
But you know what?
00:41:17
Speaker
Like, I can't tell you to do that.
00:41:19
Speaker
How like ungenerous of me, right?
00:41:21
Speaker
Like, I think it's a lot better to just meet you where you're at.
00:41:24
Speaker
You know, if you want to have a little like taste of this thing while you're on your morning commute on the bus, that's pretty cool.
00:41:32
Speaker
I think that's really nice.
00:41:32
Speaker
I think it's really amazing to be able to do that.
00:41:35
Speaker
And it is the way that people are interacting with things more and more, right?
00:41:38
Speaker
And so this like sustained...
00:41:42
Speaker
sustained presence of a viewer, you know, that doesn't happen anywhere, right?
00:41:46
Speaker
People, it's like the average time somebody looks at a painting is like four seconds or five seconds or something like that, right?
00:41:51
Speaker
So if they get it at all, that's great, I think.
00:41:57
Speaker
And you know what?
00:41:58
Speaker
That's an amazing metric that you bring up, right?
00:42:02
Speaker
To provide a little bit more context, like my most recent piece was a video game, right?
00:42:07
Speaker
It's a web app video game.
00:42:09
Speaker
Like I said, this is the piece I was just saying that anybody can play on their phone, on the website.
00:42:14
Speaker
And it's on feralfile.com right now, right?
00:42:18
Speaker
You can access it there if people are listening and they want to go.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, you can see the full exhibition organized by the Albright Knox Gallery there.
00:42:25
Speaker
or on my website, chan.gallery, or in a lot of different places, or by browsing basically any NFT market, right?
00:42:33
Speaker
And so, but like, so yeah, most people spend four or five seconds in between a work, right?
00:42:39
Speaker
But, you know, I tried to create this work to, you know, meet people where they're at, both in terms of how it displays and in terms of the types of, like, the mechanisms that it uses to attract the user's attention, right?
00:42:53
Speaker
Because it's a video game.
00:42:54
Speaker
It's a little croquet game.
00:42:55
Speaker
It's called Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge.
00:42:57
Speaker
And you hit your croquet balls around.
00:42:59
Speaker
And then this sort of, like, I think, sort of, you know, subtle narrative unfolds about social structures and reconstruction America.
00:43:09
Speaker
Now, if I told, you know...
00:43:12
Speaker
a thousand people who are sort of, you know, my audience in NFT world is like, come and see, like, I would really like you to see this, you know, provocative rumination on reconstruction era America and, you know, the social politics of that time, you know, it's not a great sell to be honest.
00:43:32
Speaker
Like you would feel bad.
00:43:33
Speaker
probably bad about not going to the opening, you know, so maybe you would go, but like, you know what I'm saying?
00:43:41
Speaker
But presenting it this way, it's on everybody's phone.
00:43:44
Speaker
I have people messaging me all the time saying like, I've played this game every day, like since I got it.
00:43:50
Speaker
Or people who are like saying like, I played this for hours straight.
00:43:53
Speaker
And I just thought like, can you imagine making an artwork that people were standing, like multiple people were standing in front of for hours?
00:44:01
Speaker
Like, it's awesome to make art that meets people where they're at.
00:44:04
Speaker
You actually get more attention.
00:44:07
Speaker
And I'm grateful for it because it's honestly, like, it's a thoughtful, subtle political piece.
00:44:12
Speaker
But that is, and that kind of stuff is usually a pretty hard pill to swallow for people.
00:44:17
Speaker
But I met people where they were at, like, through technology, through digital art.
00:44:22
Speaker
And I was able to do that from a financial perspective, like, because of NFTs.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, I also like that you mentioned in history that games like I think it was croquet, chess and video games have been used as a sublimation for for political and social unrest or something like that.
00:44:44
Speaker
In relation, you know, in the description for your game in this time that we live in, which is not ideal.
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
00:44:57
Speaker
We just finished the World Cup in Qatar.
00:45:00
Speaker
I'm just like, I'm watching the Saudi Southern Wealth, the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, right?
00:45:10
Speaker
Just buy up sports teams.
00:45:12
Speaker
And it's cool.
00:45:13
Speaker
And I don't know, they must be really good countries because the teams are just really good, you know?
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's usually how it works.
00:45:25
Speaker
People with the most money are usually the best people, you know.
00:45:30
Speaker
Awesome.
00:45:32
Speaker
I had a question about, I just learned about, and this is just kind of like a nerdy kind of tech question about generative
Ownership of Generative Art Algorithms
00:45:41
Speaker
art.
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:43
Speaker
which is like, so, you know, like the generative art in NFT form that like art blocks has been doing or has done the ones that I've seen you, you know, you mint the piece on the algorithm.
00:45:54
Speaker
You don't know what it's going to look like until you get it.
00:45:57
Speaker
Um, and then I just, I read about one artist who's doing some experiments where he's, he's minting the algorithm, but you get to keep the infinite iterations.
00:46:09
Speaker
Um,
00:46:10
Speaker
There was one that was specific that I found that was referenced on a Discord channel named Holonic, and he just has like three examples and they're really simple.
00:46:19
Speaker
But instead of minting the generative art piece and getting your kind of like still or moving image that's based on the algorithm based on the code, you get to own the whole thing.
00:46:30
Speaker
And I was wondering if that if you've seen any of those and what your thoughts are on this idea of like owning right that's like owning the instructions rather than owning the expression expression that comes out of it.
00:46:42
Speaker
So it's like, so I haven't seen that piece that you're referring to or pieces of that genre, but I can just tell you off the cuff what it sounds like to me.
00:46:50
Speaker
It sounds like a very old idea.
00:46:52
Speaker
That honestly sounds exactly like how generative art used to work.
00:46:55
Speaker
It sounds exactly like how digital art used to work, right?
00:46:57
Speaker
If you were exhibiting, you know, a piece by, you know, Marius Watts or Casey Reuss or whatever, handed you over a computer program and that computer program just sort of ran on the monitor in the museum, right?
00:47:10
Speaker
people could sit there and be awed by the infinite iterations or whatever like or or not right so that's like it's it's sort of funny like now in in the quest because you know generative art is such a big marketplace right in like the nft economy
00:47:27
Speaker
And it's so funny as people keep trying to find new angles to like, and that they just end up retrieving the old thing.
00:47:33
Speaker
That sounds to me like, yeah, exactly how code-based art used to work.
00:47:37
Speaker
Well, they had, they had, they had me.
00:47:38
Speaker
I thought, I thought it was good.
00:47:40
Speaker
So they got me.
00:47:40
Speaker
So it's good.
00:47:41
Speaker
They'll get some more people too.
00:47:42
Speaker
But doesn't that coincide with the, I think I saw on your Twitter recent, like a pet peeve of yours about people calling certain NFT art conceptual when it has nothing to do with, say, the original underpinnings or...
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, this is a big challenge.
00:48:01
Speaker
So look, we're into talking about, I think, the dark side of the NFT marketplace and NFT art culture.
00:48:11
Speaker
And like I said, like I've said, a lot of positive things about it.
00:48:15
Speaker
I do think that it democratizes experiences of digital artworks and that it incentivizes artists like me to make more open artworks because they can be financialized as NFTs.
00:48:26
Speaker
That's all great.
00:48:27
Speaker
So tons of great stuff.
00:48:28
Speaker
Now, marketplace in general, yeah, has this same sort of, like, problem.
00:48:33
Speaker
It's maybe a barrier to entry problem because, you know, like, not everybody who loves making art can kind of get into this ecosystem, but everybody who has money can.
NFT Market Narrative Critique
00:48:44
Speaker
But also just the fact that, like, look, and we have to be real about this, like, we're building this culture.
00:48:51
Speaker
There's a lot of culture there, but, like, there's some really, like, I truly think that many of the best artists
00:48:58
Speaker
working today like artists not digital artists not nft artists like the best artists full stop like working today are working in this field and i'm really excited about them
00:49:08
Speaker
But, like, it's also, you know, we can't ignore the fact that we're building all this on top of a financial technology, right?
00:49:16
Speaker
The thing that, like, it's amazing that we turned this financial technology into something that we could use, you know, for art.
00:49:24
Speaker
But, like, we'll never forget that this thing exists, was built purpose, purpose built for, you know, exchanging financial assets.
00:49:32
Speaker
Right.
00:49:32
Speaker
So that happens, right?
00:49:35
Speaker
And then, of course, like what art is great at is constructing narratives, belief, as we've, you know, that is a word that we've been bandying about a little bit in this conversation, that inflate the value of things, right?
00:49:50
Speaker
And it's like the art world is really good at it, but it's not hard to notice the pattern of that game.
00:49:56
Speaker
Like it's, you know,
00:49:58
Speaker
And so people figure it out.
00:49:59
Speaker
And so when people want to make their JPEGs, and it's kind of easy to pick up on the terminology and stuff that the art world uses to try to ascribe value to things.
00:50:11
Speaker
And so, yeah, you know, and also a lot of people in this space
00:50:16
Speaker
So, yeah, disingenuously, I think people assign art world narratives now to stuff where they just really haven't put the effort in.
00:50:23
Speaker
That's fine.
00:50:24
Speaker
Like, that's going to happen.
00:50:25
Speaker
I mean, whatever.
00:50:26
Speaker
That's also a thing that I would do in art school when I was a bad artist.
00:50:29
Speaker
So, you know, I don't like, I don't want to complain about that too, too loudly.
00:50:34
Speaker
And then also the optimistic take away that I truly do take is that, you know, this is a great moment for art.
00:50:42
Speaker
And a lot of people are kind of just learning about art, like through this moment.
00:50:47
Speaker
And I know that certainly like a lot of my audience and a lot of my collectors and the people that I interact with online every day,
00:50:55
Speaker
people who didn't come from an art background, right?
00:50:58
Speaker
They came from a computer science background or the finance background or a background of like just being a curious person who spent a lot of time on the internet, right?
00:51:08
Speaker
And then they were all sort of like through this moment became very interested in art.
00:51:13
Speaker
And you know what?
00:51:13
Speaker
Like, you know, so that's the people are, you know, start trying out assigning these, you know, narratives and like templates to their work.
00:51:23
Speaker
And some of that stuff happens in good faith as well.
00:51:26
Speaker
I got to say, that's one of the more satisfying components of our endeavor.
00:51:31
Speaker
Joe and I, our gallery is especially when meeting somebody in the crypto space and then introducing them to a traditional artist who's done something in the NFT world and then them going through that lens and then actually seeing the paintings or the originating work that actually
00:51:52
Speaker
was the thing that kind of like the genesis for the actual NFT and vice versa.
00:51:58
Speaker
So when it goes both ways and it goes and it opens up this doorway to like this world that maybe was intimidating or maybe was something that was outside of their purview or they didn't think they were interested in, but then they do become interested in.
00:52:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing.
00:52:14
Speaker
Yeah, we, I mean, our whole thing when we started and still is, was that we were taking artists who make really great work, who have never made NFTs before, and then teaching them how to do it and teaching the technology and everything.
00:52:30
Speaker
kind of like workshopping and doing studio visits about how that could look in a way that like serves their practice genuinely.
00:52:40
Speaker
And so that's been really fun.
00:52:42
Speaker
But like anytime we try and sell stuff to people from the traditional art market, we have a much harder time than when we talk to people who are in the crypto space.
00:52:52
Speaker
I would say that most of our collectors come from the crypto space.
00:52:57
Speaker
And so they are they're looking they're all they're looking for this like thoughtful, good work from artists and and they're willing to kind of like put put their money where their mouth is because both they're like less risk averse, I think.
00:53:12
Speaker
And also they're like they're curious.
00:53:14
Speaker
They're like they're they're willing to like take a risk on that, which I really, really appreciate.
00:53:20
Speaker
That has absolutely been my experience as well, which is that I found a lot more crypto people who are really excited to hear about art than there were art people who are excited to hear about crypto.
00:53:31
Speaker
Until, of course, crypto had this big boom cycle, and then everybody wants to hear about it.
00:53:39
Speaker
But yeah, weirdly, again, even people in the art world didn't really want to hear about it.
00:53:45
Speaker
you know, when there were legitimately interesting art ideas like that were happening there, you know, like, right.
00:53:53
Speaker
Like once again, it took like this big financial boom cycle for even the, you know, the art world people to, to be interested in it.
00:54:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:02
Speaker
Well, I know you have to go soon.
00:54:04
Speaker
I'm just wondering what's in the works in the future for you.
Future Projects: Games as Art
00:54:08
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for asking.
00:54:09
Speaker
I'm continuing to make games, right?
00:54:11
Speaker
And continuing to work in that ethos of being able to create works that are really open.
00:54:17
Speaker
Also works that where I can, you know, exert a lot of like, you know, control over the experience.
00:54:24
Speaker
I really, really believe in games as an artistic medium.
00:54:30
Speaker
I think that like now that we are fully entering the age of digital art, right?
00:54:36
Speaker
Okay, we got to move past the idea that, you know, art is just that, you know, digital art is just going to be JPEG images, or, you know, even algorithms that, you know, generate a whole bunch of JPEG images or moving images, right?
00:54:50
Speaker
When I move into a technology, I try to look at all the affordances of that technology.
00:54:57
Speaker
And so if I'm going to ask you to look at a screen, I'm at least going to let you put a controller in your hand, right?
00:55:03
Speaker
I mean, that's something you can do.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I've just learned that there are incredible...
00:55:09
Speaker
one storytelling opportunities you can do oh this could be we've gone such a long rant about this but you ever notice that like the art world hates narrative you know like you can't like if you're making video art like do not that's rule number one yeah and um like so but but but also like i've just learned the act of
00:55:35
Speaker
and this isn't just like a straight interactive art kind of like statement, but there is something about being able to run somebody through like a curated series of experiences that I just feel like I can really...
00:55:53
Speaker
bring ideas home in these unique ways, you know?
00:55:57
Speaker
Like, again, like the last piece, which was a piece that was about a very boring idea, like it was about gender politics in Reconstruction America, okay?
00:56:07
Speaker
Like, come on, that's a grant application, that's not an artwork, right?
00:56:12
Speaker
But,
00:56:14
Speaker
But like, but like through the medium of games, like, you know, I couldn't make it come to life and it didn't make the work dumb.
00:56:22
Speaker
Like it didn't make it like I didn't, I don't think it made the ideas any less valid.
00:56:26
Speaker
So that's just the format that I'm really excited about.
00:56:29
Speaker
And, you know, continue to sell them as NFTs.
00:56:32
Speaker
And that's what I'm really looking forward to.
00:56:35
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:56:36
Speaker
Cool.
00:56:37
Speaker
Thank you so much for taking the time out.
00:56:40
Speaker
Oh, it's truly a pleasure.
00:56:41
Speaker
And good luck to you guys.
00:56:42
Speaker
I'm a big fan of what you're doing and making these connections is so important.
00:56:46
Speaker
Thank you.
00:56:47
Speaker
And we'll see you soon, hopefully, at the next conference thing.
00:56:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:56:52
Speaker
Thanks, guys.
00:56:53
Speaker
We'll all get COVID together.
00:56:55
Speaker
I just want to give you a break point for editing.
00:56:58
Speaker
I got a couple minutes, but I did want to just genuinely say, like, thank you for letting me on.
00:57:02
Speaker
No, thank you.
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah, this is great.
00:57:04
Speaker
Yeah, that was perfect.
00:57:04
Speaker
That was nice.
00:57:05
Speaker
You mentioned the video game thing, and I'm excited to see film
00:57:11
Speaker
move more interactive because it hasn't I haven't seen a lot of like like movies and film being interactive and I remember they did that do you remember that Black Mirror episode that was it was about a video game and then you got to play the episode and like I I feel like it kind of flopped in terms of like their critical reception but I thought it was fucking awesome
00:57:30
Speaker
Okay, I have a recommendation for you.
00:57:32
Speaker
Okay, and this is like a legit, super strong recommendation.
00:57:36
Speaker
Okay, which is because you can get this on iPad and it's free because Netflix wanted to distribute it for free because they're trying to move into the gaming space.
00:57:45
Speaker
It's a game called Immortality.
00:57:47
Speaker
And you'll be able to find it on the app store.
00:57:49
Speaker
It'll have a little Netflix logo on it.
00:57:50
Speaker
And it's a game like, and the guy who made it, Sam Barlow, he's made other games before.
00:57:55
Speaker
Um, but like, it is in my opinion, like a full on like experimental video piece.
00:58:02
Speaker
And, um, I'll just say when you, when you open up the game, right.
00:58:06
Speaker
Or the app, it presents itself as like, you know, it's a archive project where they've, you know, they've there, they, they just show, they're showing you all the, um,
00:58:16
Speaker
clips from the career of this actress from the 60s and 70s.
00:58:21
Speaker
And you kind of just scrub through the clips, right?
00:58:23
Speaker
And as you scrub through, they will link you to, you know, another clip, another clip.
00:58:28
Speaker
You can kind of choose it branches off.
00:58:30
Speaker
And so there are three different movies that unfold in this nonlinear way.
00:58:36
Speaker
And then the sort of fourth narrative that, like, you discover through...
00:58:40
Speaker
you know, the act of scrubbing through them.
00:58:43
Speaker
Look, it's just, I think it's great experimental film.
00:58:46
Speaker
And if you, if you liked that, like you will love it.
00:58:49
Speaker
Like it's, it's well-performed.
00:58:50
Speaker
It's a super like smart, smartly executed.
00:58:53
Speaker
Great piece.
00:58:54
Speaker
Cool.
00:58:55
Speaker
That sounds awesome.
00:58:55
Speaker
I I'm going to check it out.
00:58:57
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:58:57
Speaker
Thanks for the rec.
00:58:59
Speaker
Awesome guys.
00:59:00
Speaker
If you have a preferred bio, cause I usually read a bio in the, in the beginning of the podcast.
00:59:05
Speaker
If you don't mind sending that to me or if you want me to just take something on the web.
00:59:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:59:10
Speaker
No, probably whatever's on the website is good.
00:59:13
Speaker
So you just send the same thing.
00:59:15
Speaker
But I will, after I'm done dinner with my family, I can send you something.
00:59:22
Speaker
Sounds great.
00:59:22
Speaker
Thanks again.
00:59:24
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:59:25
Speaker
Have a great day.
00:59:25
Speaker
Good to see you.
00:59:32
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.
00:59:42
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
00:59:50
Speaker
Thanks to Mitchell F. Chan for taking the time to speak to us this week.
00:59:53
Speaker
You can learn more about his work at mitchellfchan.com.
00:59:56
Speaker
Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:00:00
Speaker
His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.
01:00:04
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:00:08
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:00:11
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:00:15
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:00:43
Speaker
I know what to do, I know what to say, I know what to do.