Art in Conversation

Transcript

we are almost at the ending of these two beautiful days and uh like a mirror effect we can reflect on about i was all this journey i hope that you enjoy this please talk about yourself you want me to start so we'll start before the blockchain before the blockchain did the world exist before the blockchain i don't think so before i was on the blockchain and before you were on the blockchain so this is 2017 and officina sdk is also a micro publisher and i do a lot of

printed work so in 2017 i was doing mostly um selling stuff through my online store and doing urban markets so this is what i was doing um real art markets in rio in the streets on the streets yeah not on the streets but yeah on um on the open air and it was fun um because i i always tried to [Music] you know remain a bit on the side of the conventional path an artist should follow because i'm i'm a self-taught artist so i didn't go through the academia and the usual route for an artist um i

wanted to try different stuff and i wanted to do available make my art available at an entry price so i was doing urban markets and selling cheap pieces um and then so it was physical art physical printed one like the one that you gifted me today after two years of waiting yes and so you you was used to sell your stuff in these conventions in these places yeah with normal people like us without anything in common with digital realm no meaning my work uh since a few years from now has been based also on digital mediums so i so

like me that i have started let's say with kickstarter your has got another kind of digital rhythm yeah yeah so this this is what i was doing in 2007 but i would like to know what matia was doing in 2017 as well because i i know what he was doing and seven i was a graphic designer hoping to find my way to to express myself and to to expose my stuff to other people so i was uh unlike you because i i didn't sell my stuff in in physical places i was i wasn't lucky enough and maybe we are from different places here there is too many

people and so in my my place there is but in common we have got this digital thing because in 2007 i created my first kickstarter project that was gone was gone really well and it was my first um way to um to taste the digital way to do things because when the thing start is like it's like snow you take some piece of know and they there there's this effect where all the things are going down that is experienced also from people that is asking money for movies they told me that it's basically like the same i don't know if it was the same also for you

well i don't really know how to answer that you didn't notice this effect this mass effect with the community because since day zero i have i have i did this thing because in my kickstarter in 2017 before entry the blockchain and ft and so on i've got these 40 people but three of these are was completely around the world spreaded the mainly part was a friend of mine that we were close but the other three that was maybe from mexico from argentina from from whatever so i thomas said is it possible to unite not the world but different people um sure some umbrella okay

something i was doing abstract art okay but it can be appliable to everything else so yep the meaning i had this um since i was sorry thank you since i was also not only on urban markets but also selling online um i think this gave me the the appetite to discover new ways digital ways um so eventually i got into 2018 and found out about the blockchain and it all clicked it all make the the most sense in the world so i i i would try to distribute my art this way because

and for me though it's one of the things that's really important it's that my art is available to anyone and in zero seconds because when you put click then it's yours yeah yeah but this this thing now the on blockchain marketplaces there's a whole different ethos because the work is available you probably can right click and save it you can download it from the ipfs and this brought up a lot of interesting questions for me as an artist because a lot of people worry about their ip or copyright stuff and they don't want their work to be copied or redistributed or whatever but for me

that was an amazing amazing new tool yes this happened and also to me because i've said myself oh it's basically like doing a gallery in the old good days of deviantart and then the people push click and then they may put maybe a like yeah but it wasn't alike it was money it was money it was real money and that's the thing as an artist i think it was something completely mind-blowing we could actually sell our digital arts we could sell it without middlemen and this is amazing yeah we we i think this is the most

important every time that i think about this is like we have beta tested the system for two years and death because the first days of 2018 was like joking and talking to each other and saying okay you buy this and then you buy that i support you i support i remember that my first sale was to to buy one of your tokens i bought one of yours it was my first so it was like a circular economy yeah but in practice and in the art world then the things uh i suppose they become faster with more more platforms and more more people more collectors more

visionaries more visionaries as well of course and how is was 2019 how it was in 2019 it was great um because a lot of platforms had already proven their points i guess they were working really well and the world was beginning to catch up with digital art through nfts to be honest the world still hasn't caught up there's still a lot of fuzzy ideas about what art through nft means but that's the thing is i i think as soon as people start looking at nfts as a another canvas

or another brush because that's what it is they'll fully realize the potential of what kind of art they can do through nfts and we were talking about this earlier exactly because in the beginning we was doing only static and animations and for example adding audio is a big thing because you can you can do that on a canvas yeah or on a common movie and then i hope i hope always so they will implement interaction in interactive elements in this no and now you see these them it's not just about these sort of tiny technical limitations it's the

the fact that you can do visual i'll text there is no no boundaries there's no really no boundaries there's this fixed idea that we're all doing jpegs which is which is kind of true but and we're also doing a lot of different stuff and we've been at least me and matia and some who have been here since 2018 it was absolutely brilliant to see how platforms initially started supporting jpegs and gifs and then eventually they started supporting mp4 webm webp glb and all of that and as soon as the the platform started supporting these

new formats a whole new set of art was produced exploiting those farmers and then i suppose also new set of devices to show up over art yes because when you talk about 3d art maybe you need also some interaction and display like these ones is not enough yeah you need something to uh lock and look and what you move um yeah on the stage for example and then the things move around you for example i know for me uh one of the biggest deals uh at least with glb formats because i do some people i guess most of you who don't don't know my work so and it doesn't dlb is the 3d compatibility format for browsers so the

for me the because i i was doing 3d stuff but for me to be able to display them in true native formats you know interactive 3d models with no scale that you can overlay in augmented reality for example and you can make huge structures that don't obey physics law and this is amazing this is mind-blowing you also talked with me about geotagging these processes geotag geotagging these 3d pieces please tell us yeah well i have this um it's still not not done but i'm working

on a few sculptures that will be available on specific locations and there will be augmented reality so um and i'm hitting this this key a lot because this is really interesting for artists because we can do sculptures that do not interfere with the space but can be seen in the space because one thing is i display you a 3d model and you see it rotating it's all very nice but and if you're in the middle of a mountain because this is what i'm thinking this is going to be installations in wild places so if you're in the middle of a mountain and you're looking around and seeing the clouds in the woods and whatnot it's completely different and you can't replicate that in a gallery

you can't replicate that on a screen so yeah all of these few little steps that have been taken to introduce new formats they they seem they might seem trivial but for artists they represent a whole new set of tools to ponder about and to to think how how do we use them how do we crack this like is a new door like a new way express like like if they invented like you sell me today a new canvas made of metal instead of real canvas and then you use new kind of medias for example you use 3d in this augmented reality sculptures and i'm thinking about holographic screen for

example you know that i am experimenting with this kind of things and they are really more interesting for me because i i do physically think talk talk about your work so these holographics are are made using artificial intelligence are not existing and are like small sculptures like you do but they don't exist in this in this realm and they are created from artificial intelligence that for me is interesting because it's two times artificial the artificial because they are holographic and the artificial because they are made by artificial intelligence so i suppose that this kind of things will be

even more common in the future it is only the top of the iceberg because we are old guys and the young guys imagine more it's true this is this is i think it's a it's a point because we're from another generation and we have our prejudices about what art should be so we also took i guess maybe video games in the future will be like i think for for us it also meant a process of deconstruction of understanding uh what you're doing as an artist and how can you do it or what are you supposed to do as an artist because you know this is the kind of question that haunts us if one buys art he don't have to care what is art yeah

because we have passed through a a a lot of different kind of arts when you talk about conceptual art it can be everything so who cares is out yeah yeah and this this is one one really revolutionary aspect of nfts um a lot and i mean a lot of artists are producing incredible and they would never have have a chance in real life they would never be a part of the gallery and now they can and now these things and we have the proofs under our eyes yeah there is a beautiful uh auction during these days yeah about new

digital art where just remember the the liscon gallery and you have you find it on the website yes if you if you haven't checked the exhibition upstairs please do some really nice pieces being shown and this is only the top of the eyes back one more time and so we will see what will happen no of course i was completely blown away by by this this aspect um that a lot of non-artists were now had the possibility of sharing their art but most importantly and i know a lot of artists have are somewhat ashamed of talking about money but money is an important aspect of an artist's life as well it's what allows

us to buy food we play around we have said this in our conversation a lot of times money only helps you to do more art but you can do art with your mobile phone you can do our twitter yes with grass with them with whatever you find around you so basically it's incredible because thank you of these technologies and nfts for the first time everybody can be an artist everybody can be an artist the too then the thing is there's this whole idea of what an artist is i call myself an artist i mean since i was a teenager i realized that i was an artist so this is what i am but even if you do not see yourself as an artist

that doesn't mean that you cannot make art all the same this is all i'll tell you what this is a lot of that some institutions keep just shoving down our throats so we keep you know small clicks and small elite groups that part of a circuit and then go to the galleries and go to the museums and go to the institutions and nft artists basically said that and now they're being sold on sotheby's and christie's so this is that there was actually there are maybe some missing parts okay in the traditional [Music]

way of cell art and display arts but we don't care [Laughter] no we don't it's true it's true yeah maybe they will arrive maybe not maybe are necessary maybe not yeah yeah the system is sometimes uh you you know because we have talked a lot of time i really talk a lot i really believe in this chaotic way of out organizing the system and these it worked a lot of times you know out organized themselves because of artists asked at them and we have 10 royalties in every platform for example and uh or always happened like collectors escaped

but then other collectors arrived or no collectors and we started to buy from each other yeah it's whatever now there's another another aspect and i and i spoke a bit uh earlier on on my previous talk about this and and it's the the community aspect community is a big word these days community but um it is true um there is a community uh there's a really strong community and a really caring and loving community um and you should really all of you should really get involved more in the community and being involved in the community is either enlarging it bringing your friends explain people

educate people about the blockchain technologies or whatever but also caring for your family you know this is in 2018 it was a closed circle for sure but it can still be i mean there's some sort there should be some sort of moral obligation to give back to the community because we're all sitting on this and this was built by a bunch of guys that thought they could make better for everyone so you we can't be selfish in this community because this is i mean we're talking about open source technologies we're talking about people spending thousands of hours to build incredible solutions

um so if you're a part of this you know consider this aspect this was given to all of us almost for free let's let's repeat together how we can do to give back to the community and give back like your crypto yes spend your crypto with other artists but also you've said um in the previous talk talk uh about the the website where you can donate uh what's the billing blog yeah the giving block i'm not sure if you're all aware of this but the giving block is a really nice place where you can find dozens of charities that accept crypto so this is one way of giving back not

only to your community but to the rest of the world because we are all a community even outside of ethereum and we tend to forget this because we come from many nations different countries and different different cultural backgrounds but all of that is also a construct and now for the first time i suppose in the history of the award we have some common uh common money that is really liquid and really fast to transfer we have we have donated to the water project we are donated to to the girls in afghanistan to buy computers and i don't know if you have donated to other projects what a project yeah for the future for example as well these these

are my i know favorite causes i guess i'm i feel connected to them but we have a healthy ecosystem now there's plenty of room either to build more develop or support what exists but also outside our ecosystem there's a real world we can interact with and we can use this technology to make some difference uh material was talking about code to inspire we because we are a community indeed we talk to each other we talk to some friends let's make an auction and then we'll send the proceeds to code to inspire call to inspire is a coding school in afghanistan

so and they exist so they can teach girls and women to to code um this is also really important i don't mean specifically code to inspire the girls in afghanistan but it is important we have the duty i think i'm not forcing you anything i think we have the duty to support these guys too because they are also building our future so we we can act on the environment we can act on the social causes we can act on whatever you want or if you don't want to stay out of the community just buy art the important thing is giving back create of course have the money but giving back to someone else to make the same but that's that's common sense

matia i think the world but you know that common sense is not so common this end is not my words is awards from another guy the worlds would be much better if we all thought like this you know giving back it's not giving back it's just you know being a friend being a nice person be friendly to your neighbors or even the guys from other countries you don't know but you can help them if you can help them help them so we have started talking about art we ended about talking about philosophy like i've said yes i think i think we have to wrap up and i suppose that's all for today so yeah so i think we have to wrap up but feel free to approach us uh outside kitchen talk

if you feel like thank you and sorry for the informal conversation we really didn't have a plan we have no cool images to show you so but thank you for your time