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CURAT3D: Matto Matto - Network Aware Hypersculptures
In this episode, we're joined by Matto_Matto where we discuss the intersection of blockchain and contemporary art through his project Cycles, exploring what it means for art to be dynamic and ever-changing. Our conversation highlights the significance of using new materials in artistic practice and the implications of creating art beyond individual outputs.
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Website: https://material.work/
"Cycles" Art Explorer: https://cycles.material.work
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I do really think that we have like a real claim to being a real relevant artistic vanguard that's doing something new in this period of time in a way that's a little bit hard to find elsewhere, you know. So I feel pretty strongly about that and that's kind of part of why we're making this big bet with starting the studio and making cycles and all the things that we're doing.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Curated a series of conversations with the people shaping culture and technology, this big bet with starting the studio and making not be considered investment advice. We're hyped to share that season three of the Curated Pot is now powered by Towns. Towns is a permissionless group chat and protocol application built on base that allows anyone to create and own digital town squares on their own terms, available on web and iOS with full end-to-end encryption. Join or create feature-rich towns with native on-chain gating paid memberships and earn Towns points as you do so. We'll also be doing a little collab with our friends at the. We Do A Little Pod in a joint town, so make sure to tap in and get access to our town-exclusive giveaways, rewards and more. Check the description for more info and head to townscom to get started.
Speaker 2:Today, in the final episode of our third season, I'm joined by artist, game developer and co-founder of the Material Protocol Art Studio, matto Matto. We discuss everything from what it means for art history to be open to blockchain as a material, the dynamism of human beings and his latest project Cycles, which was released through the Material Protocol Art Studio, and I couldn't be more excited to have him on the show. Gm meta, how you doing?
Speaker 1:gm boone. I'm doing great man. Thanks for having me on absolutely dude.
Speaker 2:Uh, it is, yeah, it's. It's been a, it's been a treat to like really watch, um, yeah, like just like straight up, like been able to watch you ever like I think I found you in the 113 discord, you know, or the math castle's discord um, and it's been really dope just to like watch, like you and like that entire class of people, there's like an entire cohort of like uh math castles, like the math castles army, uh, just building the coolest shit now, um, definitely, definitely no, I was just talking to my brother about that this morning.
Speaker 1:you know, and it's such a good feeling to have this kind of cohort, this kind of class of people coming up with us and, you know, the having other people kind of alongside us that are doing great projects as well and making great art and and building great things, you know it's it's really motivating and uh, just feels great, you know, to do this stuff in the in the kind of context of a, of a little scene, so really appreciative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, absolutely. Uh, I remember there was not many. There was not many things to be excited about in 2023.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, a little bit of a dark patch.
Speaker 2:There it was. How many cycles have you been through, man?
Speaker 1:uh, encrypted, yeah yeah, my kind of crypto history. I I first, just as a total civilian, got interested in bitcoin and ethereum in like 2017, maybe late 2016, something like that, but, you know, just really had no idea about anything. But I but I got on ct, you know, and this was like when, like kobe, with kobe and stardust and like you know, we're like the real main characters and, uh, you know, and that was a very interesting, crazy experience. And then I, you know, I didn't actually end up losing money but almost, you know, and then sold. Of course I sold, like once it got back up a little bit, I sold and got out.
Speaker 1:But you know, after that I was like just paying attention, you know, or you know, half an eye, paying attention, kind of watching it happen, but kind of had internalized like, oh, this is really is something. And then it was really. I guess it was 21, maybe when, or maybe it was like late 21, maybe early 22. Um, a couple of months before terraforms came out, was actually an animator friend, kind of animator, art director friend of ours. Um was getting people hitting him up to do work on nft projects.
Speaker 1:This was like post board apes when like stuff was really going crazy, like kind of really like peak mania, yeah, I guess late 21. And then, uh, and he was like, hey, can you? It was like you're a developer and you like you know a little bit about crypto, can you like look at this like I'm trying to understand this. You know, maybe I want to do something. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll look at it. And you know, I mean I've told this story in public before, but most of what I saw at that time I was like this sucks, you know, like I was not.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know I've been, um, some form of artist. You know I was a musical artist for a long time, but I've always been very engaged with visual art and you know I had a lot of my friends coming up, were were artists and art students and stuff. So I've always been around visual art and had a passion for it and the stuff that was getting a lot of attention for me aesthetically just like sucked bad. You know there was like a lot of really, I mean, and that's not to. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a taste, it's a taste thing, right. It's like obviously, people like stuff. That I don, I mean, and that's not to. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's a taste, it's a taste thing, right, it's like, obviously, people like stuff that I don't like and I'm not just saying it's like objectively bad or whatever it but um, but I was not, like you know, excited by it, um, but then, um, loot happened, and loot was like very interesting to me because I was, you know, working in video games at the time and it had this game element to it and this open source, uh, kind of bottom-up world building thing, and that was very fascinating, and so I kind of got involved and I met a bunch of the people who were involved. Um, you know, dom hoffman and, yeah, um, three wave was making this thing called cribs and caverns and I kind of helped them a little bit with that. So that kind of got me engaged and and talking to people and and I was like this is kind of more like and also it felt to me that was, you know, one of the first times where I started to think about, um, what are the things on the blockchain that we can be doing, that we can't be doing somewhere else, you know, uh, and that felt like a real new thing under the sun. Right, there wasn't. I couldn't point to something else in like traditional gaming or whatever. That was like exactly like that. So I was like, oh, this is something new. And then so that kind of got me more engaged and kind of taking the nft space more seriously and paying attention.
Speaker 1:And then, pretty shortly afterwards, terraforms came out, and terraforms was really this combination of terraforms by math castles for folks who don't know. Uh was this combination of this rich um aesthetics that you know, this kind of like very digital, native aesthetics, which really appealed to me with all this kind of rich cultural background. And it turns out, you know now, later, I know 113 and I are like kind of the same age and grew up with like a lot of the same. You know liking a lot of the same age and grew up with like a lot of the same, you know liking a lot of the same things, and so there's like really a lot in there. That kind of like resonates with me aesthetically and culturally, and then also this deep technical engagement with the medium and this feeling of doing something. You know that even now, three, four years later, uh still quite unique in the, you know, blockchain, art, crypto, art world, you know, um, so that kind of like deep engagement with the, with the medium. It really felt like, you know, I had kind of gotten the idea of like, oh, okay, maybe we could really do something unique here. And then I was like, oh, wow, okay, somebody really is doing this and it's something good. So then really early on I met 113, and then I got in the MathCastle's Discord, started meeting all these other people started building some little things alongside Terraforms. I made this animation called the Long View. That was kind of one of the first visual, visible representations of the Terraforms hyper castle and and just you know, kind of went, went from there, kind of found that group, you know, of people that kind of were like on my wavelength and that was.
Speaker 1:I really don't think I would have stayed without that, you know, because, yeah, it wasn't. You know the dgen thing, I get it, I. I like making money too. I'm not as big of a degen or gambler as a lot of people, but I get it. I don't turn my nose up at that, but that's not what I want to build my life around. You know what I mean. Like that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning it's like sure it could be fun to gamble on some coins or whatever, flip something, but it's not something I want to really spend hundreds of hours of my life on. But the art side of things, it really does do that for me. So I kind of found that group of people who were approaching this in that way and that really kind of drew me in deeper.
Speaker 2:That's an amazing backstory, man, I mean. I think I really I was still just really green and such a deer in the headlights, uh, when loot came out, you know, I was, uh, first cycler, as I was, I came in and like at the very beginning of 2021. So, yeah, uh, you know, I really underestimated loot. Um, you know, I really didn't get it. I didn't, you know, I was still.
Speaker 2:You know, I think we're all visual creatures by nature. Obviously we have eyes and we, you know, everything is visual around us. But I was still just so I just I derived so much meaning, uh, from from visuals, you know, and really had a hard time with concepts, you know, um, especially when it came to like art or anything, uh, art related, uh, I really got a big unlock. It was probably about a couple years of being in this space that really, you know, allowed me to do that. So it's and the more and more it's funny, like I bring it up, the more and more I talk to people, like a lot of people always reference loot, you know, as like the kind of it's like really big watershed, you know, like kind of this, like big awakening for a lot of people, you know, um yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:No, and I think I mean and this is something that I really love that is kind of surprising is the number of folks I don't know maybe it's not surprising, but the number of folks who have really had this kind of art education through crypto and crypto art you know what I mean and started to appreciate all this different kinds of art, conceptual art, you know, non-visual art, all these kind of things that, uh, you know, through this, uh, this scene in this medium that you know. I don't think that's the first thing that a lot of people think of when they think of crypto, you know, but but it's definitely something I see happening a lot, you know actually yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2:I mean, we all joke, or at least the class that I was came in with. Um, I love how crypto like has, like you know, high school classes, uh, how we it's funny.
Speaker 1:I really think about it that way too. I'm like okay, this is like the. You know, the punks are like the seniors and, like you know, the m'ladies are probably like sophomores now, and you know, and everybody is kind of like competing against each other. You know, it's like kind of friendly competition oh yeah, it's really funny it was great.
Speaker 2:I I saw, you know, like that little, the meme, with like the little kid and the gun and he like puts his like hand to his face. You know he's crying like. Uh, I saw that. It was, like you know, the class of 24 experiencing their first dip.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, I mean that's important too, because it's true. It's like that was really true for me living through 17, even as a very casual kind of tourist kind of person. I, you see a cycle, you start to understand, oh you know, yeah, this is, this is a thing like, okay, yeah, and that gives you this different perspective and you start to kind of look at the space differently. So, yeah, it's really funny. It's funny now that we're talking about, like first cyclers, second cyclers, like I guess I'm uh. Well, what cycle are we in now? Are we complete? Are we starting a new cycle? Is that? I guess maybe I'm a third cycler?
Speaker 2:I would say so, yeah, I mean, that's the way I'm viewing it. Um, I see a lot of people calling tops and shit like that, but I'm just like, if I know, I don't know much, but what I do know is the feeling between, let's just call it, june and November. We haven't even gotten close, like, like I would say I wouldn't say we're not close to that, I would say we're closer to that than we are another. You know another bear market, but say we're closer to that than we are another you know another bear market, um, but like we haven't even, like we've like hinted at that, you know. And until that feeling comes back, we're like there's nowhere near. This is the top, um, so yeah, I would call this like a third optimism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I, I think I'm, I'm with you. I don't think this moment has topped out yet, although I do think that it may be that the pure reflexive parabolic cycle concept may actually be somewhat invalidated. So I think that's. You know, if I put on, you know, matto, market analyst hat, which we all are little amateur market analysts and crypto, uh, who learn all this like, learn about macro, learn all this funny stuff.
Speaker 1:You know the, I think the advent of the etfs and the tradfi kind of inflows being this new force in the market and the size of the market, like the market cap of bitcoin is going to be take a lot of capital for bitcoin to double. Yeah, from here, right, so, yeah, the idea that we're going to do a parabolic 5x on the majors and then another 80 drawdown or whatever, I just don't think that, actually, and I've seen some people like cl and other, like you know, crypto twitter ogs kind of saying things like this that like maybe the cycle meta is um coming to a close, you know, for these kind of reasons. So I think that's like an important thing to think about as well, if you're, you know, kind of trying to position and all this stuff is that like, yeah, don't just think, cause it's all happened and repeated really cleanly before that that's going to continue to happen, you know that's really fascinating.
Speaker 2:You bring that up. I've I've wondered that kind of quietly I've never really talked about it about like when know, is this idea or meta of like the three to four year cycle, you know, like, is this going to just continue? Um, or will there be a spot where we kind of take the guardrails off of that a little bit and maybe it's kind of like, it kind of goes, maybe not in tandem with the stock market, but behaves similar to the stock market, where it's just kind of a it's you know, it's more lendy, therefore it's not going to experience so many drawdowns exactly.
Speaker 1:I don't think, like, think about it if bitcoin has a drawdown now, think about a, the number of people who've been through cycles and the trad fi people. I don't think the trad fi people are going to panic. Sell on a 10% dip. You know, yeah, which retail used to do all the time. That's why it was like, so reflexive. You know it would be like a 10% dip down and suddenly everybody freaks out and then it's a 40% dip down. You know what I mean. Like, yeah, and and because you were talking about whatever, I don't know hundreds of millions of dollars as opposed to billions or trillions of dollars where we are now. So I do think the picture is changing and things are maturing and I do think we're starting now to shift over to the NFT world. I think we're starting to see that in the NFT world and please, as I'm going to speak frankly here and as I say this, any kind of NFT evangelists out there, please know that I'm speaking from a place of love, low effort, low quality work that was both on the art side, the pfp side, basically in any category. Yeah, that would, because it was an nft, just literally any nft would kind of get some amount of attention and, yeah, liquidity thrown at it, right, and I think we're going through and the kind of down cycle that we just went through the and the market, the people who are still around and engaged.
Speaker 1:I don't think we have a lot of new people buying NFTs. It's more still the same kind of core group of people now and they're better educated, they're more critical. A lot of people have started to learn about art history talking about the art category. A lot of people have started to learn about art history talking about the art category and so that kind of anything goes vibe that we had in the last NFT cycle I think is over and we're going to see a shift towards greater call it, professionalism, for lack of a better term. You know the the kind of anarchic, amateur throwing spaghetti at the wall mode of which I mean, I'm a I'm an anarchist, you know. So I'm happy for that kind of stuff to happen. I would rather that than a very gatekept kind of mode. But I do think we're entering a kind of a new second period where it's like no, we're not just buying any generative part of, of raising the standards and doing things with a lot of quality to kind of show that.
Speaker 2:Totally dude and I think you guys are doing a really great job at that. It's really refreshing to see as much as I like to make very similar to you, as much as I like to make very similar to you, as much as, like, I love to make money off vapor. Um, it's a, it's a wonderful part about crypto. Uh, is you know there, like there has to be something real for me to really get excited about? Uh, that is doing something that challenges, you know, perspective, belief, you know. And if I reflect back to one of the things I've heard, you know, one of the more coherent things I've heard 113 talk about is art history being open, you know? Yeah, and that is something that's really stuck with me for a long time.
Speaker 1:I mean that is such an exciting, motivating idea. I mean that is really a core idea for us and I think that's an idea that's really resonated with a lot of people. You know, and I really have a I've thought a lot about this and and spoken to 113 a lot about this you know, the, the I really think you can make and and a bunch of other artists.
Speaker 1:You know, like the, the, I've been kind of trying this out with people to see if people can kind of like invalidate it as like a thesis. But you know, my thesis is basically one of the kind of like minimum requirements for something to be entered into the artistic canon. Right, to kind of become a part of art history is some kind of novelty, right, a part of art history is some kind of novelty, right that there has to be something new, a new way of seeing, a new concept, a new technique, a new medium, uh, some element that differentiates it, excuse me, that differentiates it from what's come before and that makes it notable. Right that there's a, there's a kind of a news element to this. Right, it's like we're not going to report the 999th time somebody has washed their hair, right, that's not a newsworthy event, right, and with art there has to be some domain of newness, and that has become harder and harder as the body of art in the world grows. Right Now we're in this stage where it's really easy for anybody to be an artist.
Speaker 1:Art supplies of every different kind have been, like, extremely democratized, whether physical, digital, you know, access to an audience is extremely democratized through social media and the internet, you know. So we're in this stage where there is, just now, an ocean of creative production, and one of the kind of ways to make at least a kind of a minimal claim that something should be considered for inclusion in the artistic canon is to use new materials. Right, and and this, I think, is one of, like, one of our, one of the ideas that we're trying to kind of push on um with with our studio material protocol arts, is that using cryptography, blockchain, blockchain you know, this new world of cryptography that's coming through ZK, programmable cryptography networks, you know, using these new materials, kind of definitionally, is a way that we can make something that is inherently new, and then, of course, it has to be aesthetically pleasing, emotionally resonant, culturally relevant, right. It has to do all these other things to be a good artwork, right, and to draw attention and to, you know, stand on its own two legs in the context of culture, right, and to be important to people. But I think, as a kind of like a minimum, we can say okay, in a kind of like a blockchain formalist way, or like a cryptographic formalist way we can say look, this is at least deserves to be considered on the basis of the fact that it's new. And I think that is.
Speaker 1:You know, I haven't found, you know, any of my artists, friends, trad art or crypto art who have been able to kind of point out to me why that's wrong, you know. And so I think that that is like, uh, that's kind of my like elaboration on this idea that art history is open. It's like there are, you know, and I think it's it's something that we there is this it well, we see, right, um, dean kissick wrote this article, the painted protest, and there's this kind of discussion of this kind of malaise in the contemporary art world, in the chat art world, of this feeling of exhaustion. Right, there's this now, this kind of reaction against the like so-called woke artistic politics that have been going on, uh and this. But also, I think there's just an exhaustion with the with the 20th century artistic canon.
Speaker 1:People like what do we do with painting? What do we do with sculpture? Like what are we doing, right? How are we finding new territory, right? And I do think that what we're doing in crypto art, obviously it's not for everybody. Not everybody resonates with digital work. You know there's plenty of reasons for people not to like it, but I do really think that that we have like a real claim to being a real relevant artistic vanguard that's doing something new in this period of time in a way that's a little bit hard to find elsewhere, you know. So I feel pretty strongly about that and that's kind of part of why we're making this big bet with starting the studio and and making cycles and and all the things that we're doing dude, it's so hard to figure out, like there's so many places.
Speaker 2:I want to go with everything you just said. Uh, I mean I let's go, yeah, starting starting off with like the exhaustion point um around. Yeah, the exhaustion of the 20th century or the 21st century, um, I mean that in and of itself is like it's. It's such a refreshing thing to hear because it kind of uh, one thing I have a lot of trouble with is like discerning. You know what I'm feeling, why I'm feeling it?
Speaker 2:Because a lot of my emotions are are pretty strong and they're pretty fluid and I don't always, I can't always identify, you know, uh, or it's harder for me to identify some of these. So, like, when you say that, but when someone says something, you know it, uh, like the exhaustion of of this current century, or like you know every medium prior to this, like that really hits a strong note, because I've chatted about this with a lot of friends, or actually really a lot with one friend, and you know we're talking about the democratization of everything you know, and like what happens to things once they get democratized. You know, if you look at, if you look at music, look what happened Spotify democratized music. Now, I'm a musician, you look at it 100%.
Speaker 1:I mean that's my background before this. Now I'm a musician, you look at it. A hundred percent. I mean that's my background before this, you know, was as an underground independent musician. So this I mean that's a whole rabbit hole. We can go down if you want and I'll rant about I still don't have a Spotify account. Spotify, it's fucking on site. Daniel Ek, like I fucking hate Spotify.
Speaker 2:Do you have any streaming service at all, though?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, which makes me a little bit of a sellout whatever. But I'd use Apple Music, which I would not hold them up as being better. But just, I was running an independent label when Spotify came out and I got those checks for point zero, zero zero three cents and whatever. I fucking got those. You know like I saw those come up on my statements from my you know digital streaming aggregator service that was paying us, you know yeah so I fucking hate them.
Speaker 1:So and honestly, it's a lot of it's. That experience has a lot to do with why I'm in crypto, you know is fuck the platforms you you know, totally, dude, totally.
Speaker 2:I mean that makes a lot of sense. I'm a fellow title subscriber, let's go. Yeah, big fan of the flat quality. It's the only one that can do it, at least respectively, in my opinion. So, yeah, a big fan of that. But yeah, no, that's completely. Yeah, that's completely understandable. I mean it's cool to kind of hear, because usually when people find crypto, most people just don't stumble into crypto like really happy about the world, yeah, no, it's true, right, you have to be a little bit contrarian or a little fucking angry about something, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you talk about some of these concepts and even for me the funny part is I came in 21. I didn't understand crypto until you could put pictures on tokens. I'm like that makes sense to me. Yeah, as a fellow gamer, like I bought plenty of weapon skins.
Speaker 1:I bought characters, so like yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 2:This really made sense, but I still really couldn't. I still wasn't, didn't really understand the whole narrative behind Bitcoin, and the moment that I did was when the canadian government shut down, you know, people's bank accounts under like a. They declared like an act of war to do so, even though it wasn't yeah, and that's when I was like was this the trucker convoy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I was like oh okay, bitcoin makes sense now.
Speaker 1:Okay, this all starts bro, when they can de-platform you from your fucking bank account, like that's you know? Yeah, yeah, it's insane problem.
Speaker 2:It is a problem, um, no, while we're on this music beat, though, like one thing I've noticed and we're gonna probably jump all over the place here, so it's just uh, really, whatever rabbit hole life you know is is the current flavor. But something on cycles, uh, and it might help to maybe start with cycles. But, um, like, one thing I noticed is on your tweets, when you were committing, you know, these cycles to the chain, uh, or if I I'm not sure if I got that right, so correct me if, like, that terminology is a little wrong. But okay, like you said, listen here and there's like a website to listen to. Uh, there's like a there, there's a, yeah, just something to listen to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so let me break it down. I'll lay it out for you?
Speaker 2:I really need to know about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. So it's a little bit confusing because Material as a studio has two pieces that are out, but the second piece, which is called Modulation Studies, which was part of the World Computer Sculpture Garden contract show curated by zero xff, that ended up basically coming out before cycles fully released right, because cycles basically fully released in its final form yesterday, the modulation studies came out. Uh well, it's funny, I can tell you like 65 days ago because I've been doing, I've been doing these daily studies for it. So I know actually, or 66 or 67 or something. It's funny. I realized I like fucked up the numbering in there somewhere. Um, but the so, modulation studies is a piece that was commissioned by xerox fff. Um, last summer. Actually we were showing him. He was, so he's an artist and an on artist and he won the optimism art prize with his.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, piece which was kind of make, showing graphing connections of on chain movement across chains, and it was a pretty technically impressive piece. And then he did honest work, which was a terrific piece where it's like you, it's almost like a to do list, but with on chain conditions and pretty technically rigorous and also conceptually rich. And so he just was like around and I knew one when three was friends with him, whatever, and at a certain point it was like around and and I knew 113 was friends with him, whatever, and at a certain point it was like I forget I was in berlin for the summer and I I had like three different like whatever coffee drinks, meetings with different crypto art people and his name just like kept coming up and I was like yo, so I just messaged him. I was like hey, we like your name just keeps coming up and like I see you around, I, I respect your work, like we should talk whatever. So we had this long call him and me and Neocree.
Speaker 1:We showed him cycles because we were in the middle of working on cycles and and we really hit it off and we realized we were really exploring similar kind of like um, you know, network art, protocol, art type concepts and uh, so he invited us to join the world computer sculpture garden show, um, which you know had this pretty specific set of constraints that it was like everything was fully on chain. The show itself was a list of contract addresses which would then generate this website, um, and so we needed to come, we. He basically commissioned us to do a piece for the show and also it wasn't a requirement, but it was a kind of a suggestion that the pieces for the show would be on chain, pieces that weren't nfts or tokens or for sale, right, right, which was a very it's funnily enough, it's like quite a rare concept in our space, right, yeah, you know, or I mean, maybe for obvious reasons, but you know, that was a cool challenge and kind of like led us towards making a different type of work, and we had been interested in this kind of thinking that 113 had been putting out about what he was calling art chains, which is basically l2, like, uh, systems where you can do art computation and compute something and then bring it back to l1, right, store it on l1 or store a result or something on l1, and that you know, and I like just to kind of like disambiguate around the term art chain, like I think it's a, you could just call it a roll-up. It actually is like just technically meets the definition of a roll-up that, like, vitalik has put out or whatever Gotcha. But I think when you say roll-up, people are like, oh, yeah, and I'm going to bridge my money over, and then somebody's going to launch a shit coin and we're going to gamble, right, and it's like, yeah, sure, but that's not what we're doing here, right? So giving it a different name is just a way to kind of point people towards that. But technically, what we built for modulation studies is a, is actually a zk roll-up, um, a kind of a minimalistic zk roll-up, like a small and simple one, um, and basically what we can do with that is because it allows us to do things that we couldn't do on l1. Uh, like in this case I'm.
Speaker 1:Every day I go to this website, this little edit private editor website that we built for the piece, and I type into a text file changes to a modular generative synthesizer that is only editable in this text configuration file and the entire typing history including, like me, typing and deleting and is recorded. So every keystroke is recorded, uh, and then is able to be played back and is also recorded on the art chain and eventually vaulted back to l1 although, like usually, we do that like once a week or something like, and when gas is low because it's like it. So it's not just continuously updating on L1, but it is on the art chain and then on the modulationsmaterialwork website you can play back the, and actually I kind of want to change the UX because it's a little confusing, right, but there's a play button that plays back the typing and then there's a speaker button that plays back the typing and then there's a speaker button that plays the audio. Uh, and the audio is a generative musical system that is different every time you listen to it, based on the configurations encoded in the text file and the, the kind of like bigger art concept behind it is kind of drawing inspiration from.
Speaker 1:You know, there was this moment, let's say in 21, where a lot of artists were experimenting with nfts and there was the feeling that you could kind of do anything with nfts, like you could, yeah, tokenize your dance performance, yeah, you could. You know, your your documentary film like yep, and that didn't fully play out. It turned out that, or maybe that will make a resurgence right, and we'll see that become a thing with the art world, but for now, with the kind of crypto native audience which is the primary audience for nfts, people really are much more engaged with things that are kind of like more closely tied to the medium. And so what? This was a little bit of like like okay, we have this concept of like conceptual art and performance art, and how can we do that in a way that is like cryptographically verifiable and like kind of extremely bound with the medium? And so this idea of making an art chain where the, the very performance itself, is done within a cryptographically provable medium, using this zk tech, uh, we think is something that, um, you know, is a, is a new thing and is an addition to this kind of history of, in this case, kind of like performance art or conceptual art on chain.
Speaker 1:Um, and then there's just the, you know, kind of like, in contrast to some performance art, which might be like quite dry or theoretical or like imaginary, there it's like it's music, so there's something that you can listen to, you know, and that's something like I would say, in in the way we sit among all these different artists and many of our friends and so on. Like I am very kind of motivated by concepts and ideas, but I also do just love to have some music or some beautiful animated images or you know. So I like having kind of like visible and enjoyable and aesthetic surface, you know, and so that probably puts us like a little bit away from the like more pure conceptualist type. You know, I kind of like some, you know, at some points I'll say yeah, what we're doing is kind of like related to conceptual art, art, but I wouldn't call it like pure conceptual art kind of for that reason I got you we do like to have this kind of aesthetic layer to it as well so question on the audio.
Speaker 2:Though, one thing I did notice and this might be, I don't know if hopefully I'm not pointing out a flaw, uh, but like when I switch tabs it stops, yeah okay, yeah, I was like it is a flaw, it's totally a flaw.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just a I what I need to do. Yeah, I mean full disclosure and I don't I'm not embarrassed by that. You know the way that modulation studies came together. We stopped working on cycles, you know, or I mean neocree was like neocree and I are like always doing different things, so sometimes he's working on something, I'm working on something else, so we're not like always all working on the same thing, but the you know the way that, uh, we kind of did modulation studies in the middle of the development and this and the private sale process for cycles.
Speaker 1:It was kind of a sprint to get it done for the deadline of the show. So there are things I would like to go back and adjust and actually that specifically both on desktop and on mobile, it's like I try to play the sketches in the browser on mobile and my phone goes to sleep and then the music stops playing. So there's like a couple of things like that that I actually do want to fix, just as like ux type experiences. But yeah, right now what you can do is just pop. If you pop the tab out, and it's on its own if you change tabs in the same window, it'll stop, but if you pop the tab out and it goes in the background, it'll keep playing but I thought that was really.
Speaker 2:I thought it was kind of funny though, because like it, not that, it's not that it completely stopped, but it like paused no, it hangs. That was I'm like it hangs on a note, it like sticks on a note yeah, and I'm like I I kind of like that totally well it's real time.
Speaker 1:You're, you're, you're getting the experience that it's real time. It's not a recording.
Speaker 2:You know totally yeah, it kind of reminds me of like you know when, when, like games like halo came out, like, uh, halo 2 came out, uh, the game kind of just shipped the way it was and like there was a lot of bugs, but they became like part of the kind of like iconic, yeah, like the bxr, the bxb, the super jump, like all these things that were just clearly, you know, and it's like I think that the yeah, modulation studies it's pretty raw, it's like, and also the sketches that I make.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's like fucking crackling and noise and shit. And you know, it's like because I do them. You know, I spend probably between half an hour to an hour a day on them, but I can't, I'm not going to sit there for four hours. I can't, cause I'm doing them every day and sometimes I'm doing it like, you know, weird. Sometimes I'm like in my kitchen standing up doing it, you know, like funny, funny shit, and so it's got this raw quality to it which I do. Um, I feel like it's like seeing the breaststrokes and the fingerprints and you know, I see that as part of the texture of it and I'm totally. And the bugs and shit, I'm totally. You know, I mean, we want it to be good and to work, but some amount of that I'm like, yeah, this is what it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, like you said, the brushstrokes, and it adds a sense of like humanity to it. You know it's like Exactly to it. You know it's like exactly it's so it's still like kind of like what you've written and you know and like talked about a lot, it's like around. You know this. Uh, like you know blockchain as a material like, which is something that was really interesting, that I hadn't heard till it came out on the material website, um, and I'm sure 113 had talked about it for sure. Uh like, maybe blockchain is a canvas, but material specifically was very interesting to me. Um, so it kind of makes sense Like you have. Yeah, like, just the imperfections of humanity are imprinted everywhere, you know, and if it's too perfect we don't like it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, or it's. It's. If it's too perfect, it kind of it might be like an iPhone or something right, it's like I want my iPhone to be perfect. I don't want a bunch of dust and scratches on it until I've used it for a while. But a painting uh, you know, is something different.
Speaker 2:Yeah totally dude, Totally Well, I'd be remiss like if we haven't, if we don't dive into like uh cycles. Yeah absolutely so I. It's just something that I've been following for, yeah, for as long as material has been in existence. I remember what you, when Bernardo, interviewed you on early, early, early.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, bernardo Schiller Schiller was there right at the right at the outset right there, you guys were actually the first space the first kind of like thing we went on.
Speaker 2:So you know, oh man, appreciate it honored yeah, that's really dope. I actually didn't know that. Uh yeah, bernardo's got a hell of an eye.
Speaker 1:I'll just say that, uh, when it comes to shout out to fungi too. You know, like he was really.
Speaker 2:He's been down since day one, for sure, yeah, for sure man, but yeah, so just like, maybe, let's just like start start there, and I think there's a, there's probably a couple questions that I think you know I'd want to ask, or just things to maybe kick this off that I think would tell the story in a really interesting way. Yeah, and one of them is the tweet you know, or part of a tweet that you've talked about, you know, zero, zero player games, self-driving paintings on chain, kinetic hyper sculptures. Yeah, um, I think it's probably a good place to start, yeah that's a great place to start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the you know, as we were working on cycles, that was something that I was kind of starting to. Those ideas were kind of things that we were starting to leak out into the world and and and I like it as a little kind of and it's kind of evolved a bit over time to its kind of final form, but that's like.
Speaker 1:I like that as a little kind of whatever it is seven word description of of what cycles is and it's a little bit playful. You know the zero player games. Part of it is kind of two-part the, on one hand, you know, like the previous big project that I and seaweed did together before we started working with neocry, as material was was a game project called night run or it was like a yeah, art game hybrid. That was like a video game as an artwork with an nft component. Um, and you know, game development is something near and dear to our hearts. It's something that, like a video game, is an artwork with an NFT component and game development is something near and dear to our hearts. It's something that we've spent a lot of time on and it's informed a lot of how we think about all of this stuff. And one of the key ingredients in the cycles lens simulations is something called Conway's game of life. So Conway's game of life for some people it'll be familiar for people who are kind of like into these kind of cellular automata and math and stuff. But basically what it is is it's a two dimensional grid that you could do on a piece of paper if you want, on a piece of graph paper if you want to. Usually it's like a digital simulation nowadays, where you have a set of rules where, if spaces are filled or not filled, it'll say if this space is filled and the three spaces around it are filled, you know, the central space will become unfilled. So it's like a set of rules for filling and unfilling spaces. Uh, discovered by an English mathematician called John Conway in the 1970s. Um, and the thing that's amazing about it is that it generates these long running and unpredictable patterns Nobody has been able to uh conway to. You know, you can't predict from a starting state whether this is something that will run for. Um, I might. It's. It's not a solved problem, let's put it that way. It's like people can. It's deterministic, so you can experiment with it and build things and do things with it. But and people have like built alarm clocks and crazy shit with it. It's like almost using it as like a programming language. There's a whole world of cellular automata enthusiasts out there on the internet. So this is not something that we are like, and even there's other people in crypto have done stuff with it, you know. So this is not like something we invented or whatever, but it's something that I really love and it's this kind of idea of emergence, right, complexity coming out of very simple rules, and so that is a kind of a zero player game, right, conway called it game of life, right, and it's this kind of set.
Speaker 1:It was actually the very first version of Cycles was actually programmed by Seaweed, my brother, who's not usually the one doing the programming in our team, my brother, who's not usually the one doing the programming in our team, uh, but he was just kind of messing around with it. We were in the studio messing around and he was messing around with chat, gpt and and, uh, it was just two teams, two colors of conway, automata, uh, or automata, depending on how you pronounce it um, kind of fighting over a grid and like swarming around the grid, and that actually I was. That was the kind of like first commit to and like swarming around the grid, and that actually was. That was the kind of like first commit to the cycles repository 13 months ago. Um, that's amazing, yeah, which is really cool and fun and and so then, and you know, and then also it's like I do, kind of a lot of the way that we approached cycles of these like complex, layered, uh, overlapping systems, really comes from game development. Right, we're in games where you have all these different systems interacting and that's kind of where the richness and the the beauty of it emerges, uh.
Speaker 1:So we're kind of doing a lot of that, but the goal is to kind of make an animated painting, uh, instead of making like an entertainment experience for people to interact with, right, and obviously I mean there's like some light interactivity, but it's basically non-interactive, um, you know. And then that brings us to like the self-driving paintings idea, which is obviously like a little bit of a joke. It's kind of like a funny phrase, but you know, but the the it was this idea of that this is this autonomous art object, right, and that it has this life and movement and development inside it, but that it is a visual artwork. It's designed to create a visual experience for people and it's a kind of a detail. But I think it's worth pointing out that part of the visual appearance of Cycles, the way it comes out of the system, is that and it's funny because this is so the Cycles lenses are rendered in P5.js, the JavaScript creative coding framework, and it's a very simple kind of P5.js trick, but it's like something you kind of learn when you first start working with it.
Speaker 1:It's just not clearing the background. The background never gets erased, got it? So it's just building up, building up, building up, layering, drawing over itself again and again. And when you do that with moving things, kind of everything like leaves these trails and kind of leaves these like smears and residue trails, and kind of leaves these like smears and residue, uh, which for me was, is really, um, analogous to a painter working with paint. Right, it's like you're, you're not painting and erasing, you can't really erase with paint, right, like so you're layering, working the paint, smearing it, moving it, um and uh, and so there's this kind of painting illusion there, you know, and, and as I was working on cycles, I was looking at a lot of, uh, a lot of abstract painting.
Speaker 1:Um, you know one, I was in Berlin, right, uh, this was in the around Christmas time a year, a year ago, basically, uh, and I Berlin, and I was visiting the Neue Nationalgalerie, where they have a great exhibition of Gerhard Richter paintings and these squeegee paintings that he would make these abstract paintings extremely beautiful, where he's using these huge four-foot squeegees, scraping paint horizontally across the canvas and scraping off layers and it just produces this amazingly complex surface and colors and blended colors and just really, really beautiful and uh, and I think that's definitely something that kind of like seeped into cycles, um, yeah, that's very apparent.
Speaker 2:like that, that's that's very apparent. Like that, that's that's very apparent. Just wanted to like comment on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny Cause I like love those and I. But it was really only like late later that I was like oh, this, this is what I'm doing. You know, like I definitely like I was kind of like a subliminal thing for a long time and then I kind of realized I was like oh yeah's it's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a wonderful part about being a human being in it.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, totally, you never know what's going on in there in the old, in the old brain, you know what I mean. Like totally really funny yeah totally man, uh.
Speaker 2:And then on-chain kinetic hypersculpture like that that's a, that's a, that's a mouthful, uh, that's a big one.
Speaker 1:yeah, so the hypersculpture I think I was saying when I initially started saying it, I was was saying on-chain kinetic sculpture. The hypersculpture language actually is something that Neocry articulated in his article Hypersculptures that we published on the material site, and you know, Jacob from Zora wrote this great piece called Hyperstructures.
Speaker 1:Yep, I remember reading that, yeah, terrific, really influential article and line of thinking. And he was talking about more the kind of like Uniswap, Zora protocol, level of protocols, autonomous protocols that are deployed, that are open, permissionless to interact with, credibly neutral, unstoppable, and that have some kind of value component. Um, that was this very counterintuitive kind of logic. Right, it's like one of these things about crypto where it's like this works in a different way than you know, your literally anything that's yeah really like your sass business or whatever you want to, you know, put up against it, right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, that was a really fascinating um line of thinking that definitely got my gears turning, and and for neocry as well. And so his hyper sculptures article and, and I think you know, and then jacob couldn't, we've said you know, he tweeted out terraforms as a hyper structure, you know, um, and so terraforms then had this on-chain sculpture concept and terraforms actually is a you could call terraforms a kinetic sculpture because it does move and and actually change its shape. Uh, but that movement feature of it was was not the kind of like central feature. The central focus of it, um, and that was something that when we started working on cycles, we kind of knew we wanted to to hone in on was the fact that not only could we make some kind of a 3d sculpture directly on ethereum, but because it's a computer, it's a blockchain, we could, or a programmable blockchain, we could, we could make something that would move and change over time and and potentially over a long period of time, depending on how long ethereum sticks around.
Speaker 1:So that idea of you know, and and we were looking at, you know, kinetic sculpture in our history by people like um calder or um jean tingley. Right, who's making this great? Uh, I forget what he said. It's like it's a machine without purpose or something which I was like oh wow, I like this idea, you know, yeah, it's like cool, he made these crazy things of like machine belts.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like fucked up looking machines and putting galleries like really the swiss swiss artists 60s, 70s maybe, but great, you know.
Speaker 1:And so we were kind of like studying, yeah, what else is out there that you know is kind of like related to this idea and and and and that felt like the idea of making something that would run for a long time, that would move and that would evolve and change, really tied together a lot of the core ideas.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think one of the core, most central core kind of concepts of cycles is just this experience of change. Right, it's like we all experience change as as living beings who live in time and and the and that is a emotionally charged experience, right. It's like, if you think about the passage of time, that kind of has like emotional meaning for everyone, you know, Um, and so we wanted to kind of use this fairly abstract sort of technology and material to try to connect to something that is a like a real human experience right, which is this experience of like living through change and time, especially in this moment of the world right where we're really kind of buffeted by change, right, where change is like a hurricane. Now you know yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean especially in crypto. Right, we kind of signed up for it in crypto, but now it's like the whole world is getting on to this tempo right, where it's like we have so many different systems working and changing at the same time and the feeling is of this kind of like insane volatility across so many dimensions of our lives. And so that felt very kind of like topical as a thing to to kind of connect to and relate to.
Speaker 2:Um, I hadn't even made that connection so far. Yeah, that's, that's amazing man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean for me, you know, and obviously I'm one member of the team and everybody on the team has their own, and and this really was a all three of us had real major creative inputs into the project. So so whatever I'm saying should be taken as I mean I'm I speak for the, for the team, but, but also it's filtered through my own. Sure you know lens of it, but the um, but yeah, that kind of trying to do something that we and and then on a more formalistic level, the and this isn't the part that I kind of like would make the big headline of the piece, but I I think it's important as well. Is that something that I think we didn't think about during the previous NFT cycle of what is an NFT and what is a crypto? Artwork? Was NFTs? Are software programs, right? This is a running piece of software on a live computer, right? And you know, in that way there's a one lens that you can look at the whole thing through, which is that the artwork is what it does, right, it's what like.
Speaker 1:There's this kind of phrase from systems theory that the purpose of a system is what it does, right, and I think that the, in that way we've ended up with. You know, fundamentally, nfts for me are not about pictures, right, that's not what is unique and, uh, important about them. It's that it's this thing that has this dynamism, and the ability to collect and own and trade is this very important part of it. But then there are these other kind of like behaviors that you know. There's one lens, I think, that we can look at it through, which is like if we take the kind of like art block style, generative art, nft as a artistic gesture in my mind, then squiggles becomes really the, the central artwork in that genre. Right, because it was the. It articulated that as a gesture and a whole system.
Speaker 1:Now, once you get to the 999th um collection that repeats that behavior on art blocks, I do think you're starting to water down, at least looking at. Of course they could be beautiful and there could be amazing visual craft being displayed, you know. But I think you're starting to, you're starting to repeat yourself, you know, totally. And so that is a one point and I'm not, I'm not trying to start a fight with generative artists here. I'm. I have tremendous love and respect for that as a craft and a discipline, right. So I just want to say that, right, but, but I but that is somewhere where we would position ourselves to the side of generative art.
Speaker 1:Obviously, generative techniques and the language and the visual language of generative art is present in our work and I really enjoy it. I like looking at pretty generative pictures, right. So that is something that we enjoy too and it's part of what we do, but it's not the central idea that we're exploring, right. We are not trying to explore the idea of a hash that gets generated at the mint transaction time that then generates a still image forever, right. It's like we're trying to do something that continues that conversation and goes further, uh, which is why we kind of like identify more with the like protocol art or network art, like type language well it's, it's really interesting.
Speaker 2:this is a really fun thread to pull on because I mean, you know, you know there's in this conversation and also in some of you know, some of the writing that I that I've read, is this kind of like shift from outputs to dynamic, uh, you know, and like and like. Instead of like an output, like let's make something living and breathing, and I think, like kind of just unpacking my thoughts, real time here with you. Is that like? I think that was one of the challenges, if I'm being honest, for me to really, I guess, fall in love with generative art is like the single output, if I like, just you know, for like the single output if I like, just you know, like. There are a few that have really grabbed me and that I resonate with, but for the most part, I think that's what took me so long to like really understand it. It's like I just I just couldn't and it wasn't personal, it's not like it's a dig.
Speaker 1:It's just one. Well, it's just what do you resonate with right? What Captures your imagination?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it just I didn't fully. It felt like it was, there was a piece missing. So I think that it's I. This is probably a part of something, or this part of something I've been thinking about largely is like you know, when visuals like what, like what is considered beauty, when beauty is democratized, you know, I mean this is exactly the period we're in now, right?
Speaker 1:This is a very relevant question with the rise of image, ai-based, image generation, diffusion-based image generation. Like it's very we are in a different. It's very much like the advent of the camera that triggered the rise of abstraction. And painting right, you're like, well, painting representative, representational paintings has a very different meaning now that the. And painting right, you're like, well, painting representative representational paintings has a very different meaning now that the camera exists. Right, and I think we're going through a similar period of transformation.
Speaker 2:Totally dude, yeah, and it's kind of fun, but also just nauseating to think about at the same time, because it's just Big time it's upending everything we thought we've known. It's shredding.
Speaker 1:It's upending everything we thought we've known. It's shredding. It's shredding. I mean, if you don't feel the whiplash and the intensity of it, you're not paying attention. And this is where the image generation is kind of the tip of the spear. But look at the progress in robotics. Look at the progress in robotics. You know we're going to have generative physical manufacturing, sculpture, handbags, physical paintings. Robot hands are getting super dexterous and capable and you combine that with, like you know, I don't see a lot of people paying attention to it. I don't see a lot of people paying attention to it.
Speaker 1:But if you guys want to have your minds slightly blown, depending on your threshold for this, look at the new release from Google Gemini 2. You go to aistudiogooglecom I'll give them a little plug here and you push the stream live button. You can talk in real time over voice. You can share your camera, you can share your screen and the model sees, talks back, can read your text that you're showing it. You can. I showed it a picture of my toilet that I was trying to fix. You know like it's this and now it doesn't take a lot of imagination to be like okay, now we have a model like that. It can talk, listen, look, and we put that into something with really good robotic hands that never gets tired yeah, that's I mean on one, that's like two years, that's like two or one year.
Speaker 1:If you look like what unitree and all these companies in china are doing with robots the tesla robots like yeah, this all happening. This is not like some science fiction, future shit. This is like I'm sure there's like a lab in China right now where they've like got a robot walking around doing this.
Speaker 2:Well, it is, but it's totally a reality. You know, it's something that I think as, when I grew up, like one of the reasons that crypto made so much sense to me, um, was that it was really kind of at the edge of things and reinventing the world that I didn't really, I don't know, just a whole lot of the world, just didn't excite me. You know, up until this point. And, uh, as a kid huge sci-fi fan, I mean I would, I would. There's very few movies that like I really drill in on, but just the, you know, star Wars, I robot, you know like Minority Report, like that shit like that, like I, I ate that up as a kid, you know, and say, but there was, but there was always this kind of depression, if you will like, of like man will he ever even get to an idea of something like this world?
Speaker 2:you know like where's the future? Well, where is the future? Like here it is yeah, and so yeah, exactly, you nailed it. It's like we're coming into this age where, like that is becoming a reality. I'm like. This feels like the world that I was built for, uh, and I I'm so here for it.
Speaker 1:Um, so, same same and honestly I do think. I mean, I think there's plenty to be nervous about and there's going to be a lot of upheaval and and painful change, but I'm fundamentally optimistic about this stuff. I think that this will be, it will lead like, for example, you know, obviously, elon, super polarizing figure. I have my reservations about him, especially politically, but the uh like him supporting the fucking AFd in germany I lived in germany like these people are literal, like extreme right-wing germans, like do not like them and, you know, platforming them and shit. So you know, I know obviously I'm not going to get into politics too deeply because it's a divisive topic, but yeah, some complicated shit going on there. But then it's undeniable, unignorable, like what he's doing with Neuralink. Yeah right that's it's.
Speaker 1:This is world-changing shit and the way that that's going to benefit people with paralysis, people with vision disabilities, you know like this is. You know, literal life-changing technology that, uh, is coming into existence. You know literal life changing technology that is coming into existence, you know, through through this company and this team, and and really will make like a world of difference for this group of people and eventually it's going to become something widely distributed and then we're going to have to reckon with some really wild questions about the brain and computers and stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, totally, I I mean things are gonna get real crazy it's a great point about elon like it's like it's kind of like one of those things can you separate the art from the artist? Totally? Yeah, kind of like one of those kanye moments, michael jackson moments, you know things like that. Yeah, uh, it's the same thing with elon, like it's like what he has contributed is it's undeniable, it's undeniably good, it's undeniably good, it's undeniably net positive.
Speaker 1:Super powerful, super transformative. It's very confusing to me to have a figure like that that is so important and that I admire for those qualities, and then that he's got these politics that are so far from my personal politics. So it's a very strange one, but you know I also.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a little side note, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna interrupt you a little bit. Like I think that kind of that was like the one thing I really grabbed from cycles so far, like as I consumed it, is that, like you know, we are like there's, it's, the world has gone so far from black and white and this is humans. Humans are not one or the other, uh, while social media and flat surfaces, you know, can portray that, yeah, um, it's really not what we are like. Humans are like a mix of good and bad, you know, like we have, we have there's, there's always a few sides to us, that we're multi-dimensional, and I think that's really what I grabbed.
Speaker 2:Like you know, I remember I really, because one of the things I really love, one of the many things I love, how, like what you do, is like your ability to communicate this in a really simple format, like starting with the Terraforms video and then starting, and then with cycles. It was like there was this meditation on time space, you know reality, and I really like I really latched onto that idea and it's like the thing I came up with was like, oh, my God, we're entering into a world where, if you can't think critically like that, where you can't acknowledge that or tolerate ambiguity, right, totally.
Speaker 1:Both of these things are true, like this is a guy who's doing really amazing, important work and doing things I really disagree with and it's happening at the same time yeah, no, absolutely yeah, and doing things I really disagree with, and like totally, and it's happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely yeah, that's, that's the main thing I grabbed, you know, and it's like you can insert any you know, whether it's influential figure in history, like they're usually really complicated people, like it's they're and it's they're far from perfect um, absolutely, yeah, no, I I really appreciate that and I well, I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead yeah, yeah, yeah, man, and no, it's.
Speaker 2:I was really about to like finish up because it's just yeah, like that's if you. It kind of made me think, like, if you don't have that ability to, whether it's I don't know what you want to call it, call it emotional intelligence, call it, you know, like, larger IQ, whatever, the whatever going to be really challenging, and I think that's probably one of the things that you talked about around this big upending or this big shredding of what the world is, what it could be. That's going to be a really hard thing for people to do. However, I'm going to go on a little bit of a selfish rant here, please.
Speaker 2:The world, for people like us, the world never conformed to what we wanted, you know. So it's like, why would we, you know like, why should? Like? I have empathy for people going through change, but this almost feels like okay, this it's just kind of like a shift of like who is really benefiting from this or who is really enjoying from it? Um, and it's like I'm not going to bend, you know, or like stop what I'm doing or stop what I'm thinking, or morph my beliefs to conform to someone who's really struggling to adapt to this new world, if that makes sense. I don't know. It can maybe sound kind of harsh, but no one ever did that for me.
Speaker 1:You know, no, I can relate to that. I mean, I think it's an interesting framing. It's an interesting framing like the I don't know. I mean my, my version of that is I wanna that. It's a very delicate line, right, because we want to have empathy, as you say, to people who are suffering from, let's say, having their jobs made obsolete, right, that is, that can really fuck people's lives up and that's so painful, right. At the same time, I don't think we do anybody a favor by being dishonest about where things are going to go right, what is actually really actually happening, or like kind of has already happened. Right, and trying to pretend that you know, and again, not to go back into politics, but it's like there are there's this desire for the paternal figure to stand up and say everything's going to be okay.
Speaker 1:You know, the industrial jobs are going to come back to the Midwest, the rust belt is going to be made green again. Know, the industrial jobs are going to come back to the Midwest, the Rust Belt is going to be made green again. Right, and it's like no, it's fucking not, you know, and you're not helping that person that lives in that fallen downtown there by telling them that they're no, actually, you know, american industry is going to, is going to now start out competing China. It's just fucking not happening. Like the robots are gonna replace all of that, you know. So I do think that there is this balance of empathy and kindness with, but it's like the, the, the bitter medicine of the truth, you know, may be a kinder thing than letting people pull the covers over their head and be like no, no, no, it's going to be, don't worry about it you know, yeah, I feel that, and I mean, here's the thing, though you know, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you probably had some trials and tribulations in your life and probably have had a few moments where you know your world has been shaken into a new reality Um but like if you look back on that, I you know it's like anytime that's happened to me, that's when I've gained the most perspective and the most growth and the most insight you know, absolutely, absolutely you know, and I think the thing that I'll just add to that is I've experienced that myself and I'm lucky to be someone who kind of you know can receive very difficult, negative stress and and kind of grow out of it and become stronger. But I've also seen the people who are just crushed by it.
Speaker 1:You know, and I and I wouldn't call that like a moral failing or anything like that Right.
Speaker 1:It's like some people just, you know it's too much and they can't adapt and then, and they really need help, you know what I mean. So, yeah, it's a, it's a very you know it's a very complicated thing. But yeah, I definitely, and I do think you know. To kind of come back to our audience, you know one of the things I do think crypto being in crypto, the insanity of crypto, the volatility, the fucking scamming, the psyops, the narrative wars, all this crazy shit, right, like the meta changing every 15 minutes, I do think is more like what reality is going to look like in the next 10 years than compare it to trad fi of the past 10 years. Right, it's like we, we are living in this version of the future and building up this tolerance for volatility and insanity. I do think is like a really good gym to train in for the next 10 years.
Speaker 1:And I've seen people talking about this on the timeline. They're like, hey, if you're a trad five person and you want to hire some young guy to manage your fund, get somebody from crypto. They're not going to shit their pants when it goes down 2%. Like you know they're not. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know they're not. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Like they're like oh, 40 down in 24 hours, all right, let's see what happens, like you know, yeah yeah all right, good morning.
Speaker 1:You know like, yeah, let's go. You know, so it's like so I do think that that's, and that is something that I see as a real um, you have to have a stomach for the chaos and the wild west of it all, and that is really what I kind of tell people. I'm like listen, what do you think about the idea of living in the wild west? Is that exciting or is it terrifying? That's your, that's your little litmus test of whether you're going to like crypto or not. Yeah, you know, I like being out here with the fucking criminals and the anarchists and the crazy. You know people. You know the schizos and the libertarians and everybody. It's like I like it. You know, it's like but some people, that's like a nightmare, you know, and I'm like yeah, you probably won't like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, well, people seek comfort, people seek stability, people seek you know, there's a lot of things people seek, you know. But I think also what you're talking about and I just want to add, like one more thing, before we like, uh, bring it fully back, is you know, like I think you know they're that talking about that blend of not sugarcoating something but also having this line of empathy, like I think one thing that has been lost? Uh, and you know as much as I love the internet, I think there are some clear damages that it's caused like absolutely yeah's caused yeah, but it's like one of the things is like we've lost.
Speaker 2:I think and this is just my take we've lost a lot of capacity to have like into like there's like a I'll just give an example to help this make sense. Like you know, like back one thing, one thing our parents generation did really well was like this concept of like a neighbor. You, you know people were really neighborly and friendly and would just like give you the shirt off their back. You know, like that that I feel like that kind of individual level, like personal empathy, has gone away. Um, it's become very like.
Speaker 2:We live in so many apartments now, like obviously, but even in neighborhoods like people aren't as friendly with each other, you know, and people like aren't as just like willing to like help one another. Uh, unless there's like a natural disaster, you know, um, which, and so I I think that's like one thing that like I really hope we get back is this ability to be like okay, there's some change. That doesn't really it can't be affected on a big level, like on a social platform, but it happens at the individual level. It happens through conversation, it happens through like sitting down with someone, it happens through like having a friend to know how to help you and when to help you.
Speaker 1:You know, um, I don't know, man, it's just like something I feel has gone, gotten very lost no, I, I mean, I definitely, I definitely hear you and I think that the well, I have two, two kind of responses to that. The first is that I think that the having there is this, yeah, this kind of there's. There are multiple forces at play here, right. One of them is the kind of modern capitalist reality, right, the the emphasis on the nuclear family, atomized living, right like the move away from, like multi-generational living neighborhoods, all that kind of, you know, suburbia, it's like a whole, it's like urban planning, capitalism, the image of the family's, this whole, which a lot of it is America-centric, right Very much yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, on the other side, the more kind of like social media internet version of that. You know, one of the really key and this kind of ties us back to material and the whole conversation, like this idea of protocols. You know, if we look at social, we're all used to talking about protocols as crypto protocols, but if we look at instagram or twitter as a kind of a protocol uh, that kind of farms eyeballs to sells, to advertisers and where any kind of virality and engagement is going to maximize session time on the platform and therefore ads viewed and revenue the Matt Dryhurst who I think has, you know, along with Holly Herndon, has just been doing absolutely incredible work and and thinking, especially this year, their piece, the call was just phenomenal and and over the past number of years, I mean, I think, one of the best voices in AI, many different on many different levels, but you know he was one of the people. Dryhurst was one of the people who articulated this idea that that really had a big, big impact on my thinking and it's really kind of part of what we're thinking about at Material is the idea that in this era, media is downstream from protocols.
Speaker 1:Right, that Instagram, the photos are a kind of an output of the system. The photos are not the point of the system, and what people? The photos don't. The content doesn't shape the system. The system shapes the content. The photos don't. The content doesn't shape the system. The system shapes the content. So the decisions of Mark Zuckerberg and the product team at Instagram are what create the photos that are posted on Instagram and then the culture that flows out of that culture of images, right Selfies, filters, beauty obsession, all these kinds of things right.
Speaker 1:Influencers, right, like, there's a whole class of job and industry that is now kind of like arisen out of this like protocol design of Instagram and so among other social networks, of course, sure, and so this idea that media is downstream from protocols I think is a very is a good way to think about.
Speaker 1:You know and like. So Twitter, right, as a kind of like, where anger and outrage and hot takes become this kind of currency, uh, this outrage economy, right, which obviously a lot of people have talked about, but, but that's a product of protocol design, right, and and I do think that this flattening of social discourse is a product of the, the protocols that we choose to to engage with and specifically add monetized, uh kind of virality driven social platforms where the users are the product, the advertisers are the paying customers. Uh, my hope is that with crypto, we can start to see and build alternatives to some of few years of work is like, what does it mean to make protocols as artwork and what does it mean to think about these ideas in the context of a fine artwork and how can we kind of speak to this condition, obviously through the medium of art?
Speaker 2:That's, that's, yeah, I mean the, the thing that came up here, uh, yeah, and I love how we've kind of just we've we've looped back around, uh and um, one of the things that I thought about here is, you know, going back to the concept of, like, a hyper structure and a hyper sculpture, um, yeah, and the combining that with what you just said around the idea or the thought, I'm, what if art was a? What does it mean for art to be a protocol, that things are built on top of? What does it mean? Like you said, the media is downstream from the protocol. Well, if you guys are making protocol art, what is downstream from that? So that is the thing that really downstream from that. So that is the thing that really Like, okay, if there's a world full of new protocols, what is the immediate downstream effect, or how do they? I guess, even before the downstream effect is how do they interact with each other? And it had me thinking this is something I thought about before like around cycles.
Speaker 2:I know this is brand new and I'm sure you guys have a lot of of ideas planned and there's probably a lot more to roll out that we just don't know, know about yet. Um, but I'm curious, like the communication between you know, hyper structures are hyper cultures. Like. What does that? Like, what, like, like. What does that bring out for you when I say that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I'm just, I'm going to just pull up the. I'm going to just pull up the. I want to cause Neocree kind of like wrote this really well in his essay and I want to just pull this up. So, you know, he kind of puts forward this um, I won't read the whole thing, but he puts forward this kind of concept of levels of network awareness. Um, it's like level one, media stored off chain level media stored on the blockchain. Level three, blockchain computed media. And level four, hypersculpture. Right and hypersculpture. I'll just read the hypersculpture section a smart contract whose execution relies on data from its network, such as user interaction or the state of a composed contract. The media is reactive to external inputs, meaning that the final form of the artwork is influenced not just by the internal logic authored by the artist, but also by changes in the broader network, right. So and this is you know, I'm glad we come back to this Something, and this is something that Malta Rauch covered in his introductory essay for the World Computer Sculpture article, by the way, amazing yeah, amazing, yeah, he's a writer
Speaker 1:malta. I think you know I just cannot recommend his writing enough, uh, for people trying to understand malta just has a wonderful context of fine art history and just a great writing voice. You know, he really understands crypto on a deep level, understands art history on a deep level, understands art history on a deep level. I mean he's really one of like a small handful of people who really have that rich context on both sides and his thinking and writing. So, yeah, cannot recommend him enough. And just a wonderful guy. Yeah, the.
Speaker 1:You know something that he wrote in that piece which I want to kind of emphasize, is like for us, the point is what can we do with this new medium? Not to explore this medium for its own reasons? Right, that is a whole school of art. Right, this kind of formalist school of saying and there are it's not a black and white line in the sand I'm trying to draw here.
Speaker 1:We're on some gradient, some spectrum of this, right, and and there are formalist type things that that are in our work and and I'm not saying that that's bad or wrong, but but it's like, fundamentally, this is about how can we use this medium or these media to do and say new things right, not just, wow, what could we, you know? Oh, look, isn't that crazy. We did this thing on a blockchain that nobody's ever seen before and, like we figured out how to do some like blockchain tricks. You know what I mean. It's like that's not the point, right, and so it's like this hyper sculpture concept. The reason I bring this up is the hyper sculpture concept really articulates why would you want to do like, you know, not to kind of like pat ourselves on the back, but like the way that we did cycles.
Speaker 1:You know, like one detail, right. So the, the, what we call the posters, right, which are the, the image that's displayed on the marketplace, right, it's a kind of a thumbnail image, right? The? We had to build a whole new contract that composed SVG elements in order to have that be generated from on-chain data and to be usable on the marketplace, and it was this whole thing that came out of the constraints that we were working in. But we didn't do that just to show off no-transcript. Some of our, our other artists, friends about, you know, um, so this is, you know, this is not kind of like let's put everything on chain for its own sake or out of some like, which. Look, I understand the kind of value thesis no external dependencies.
Speaker 2:My.
Speaker 1:JPEG is never going to disappear. That's I get that, that's a that's a nice side benefit, but that's not the point, right? The point is this having this data in this way, you know, like I'll just talk a little tiny, little bit of shit here for a second Forgive me if you forgive me if you feel attacked, whoever's listening but like there was a whole phase two years ago, whatever where people were and I don't think this is like bad or whatever, but it's just not the point like people were uploading big ass chunks of, let's say, svg data to store it on the blockchain, right, um? And it's like, okay, you're putting all that stuff in storage, but you can't. You're using ethereum like a hard drive.
Speaker 1:Ethereum is a computer, right, it's like you can't do anything with that besides retrieve it right it's like so okay, yeah, that that fulfills the kind of like my jpegs are not going to get deleted function, uh, but also, you, that's not guaranteed because, uh, we see there's like the purge you know is on the ethereum roadmap they make. You know the protocol might change, stuff may disappear, so um, it's. But having media that's dynamically computed on the blockchain, uh, this very different thing, right, and I know it seems maybe it's like a kind of a pedantic distinction or like, for example and again, I love Snowfro, I have tremendous respect for him and Artblocks, you know, and they've undertaken this really big effort to store all of the Artblocks JavaScript, all the P5 sketches are now archived or they're moving towards doing it. I think maybe it's already done.
Speaker 2:I think it is yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I hung out with him and marfa and talked to him about it and I think he's got absolutely the best motivations and I think we're extremely lucky to have him in the space 100, um as a, you know, as an ambassador and our leader, um, but the? That's not what we're doing, right? Right, this is not a storage media for archival purposes. This is a live running program. Right, it's like this is the way that the cycles is constructed. Is that the, the visual, the, the P five script that runs the visuals is dynamically assembled, uh, to create the artwork, and that's why it can be dynamic and changing and all these kind of things. Right, so it's like it's a. I don't know how important it is to make this distinction, but I do want people to understand that the difference between what, what this is, versus some of the you know what's come before, which I think is all like good and valid, but it's like, but we're trying to do something different and I, you know, I just want people to understand that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, but honestly, at the end of the day, it feels like a logical next step. I mean, if you like, it feels like you know, like moving, like maybe like the best idea at the time was to 100% To use Ethereum as a hard drive, right, I mean, that's how I thought about it for the longest time.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, that was mainly what was going on, right? So it was a logical idea, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and now it makes sense of like, okay, well, what's the next step from doing that? And if you really, uh, if you understand or at least vibe with a little bit of ethereum being a world computer, it makes a lot more sense. Um, yeah, because, but I'll be honest, it took me a long time to really like conceptualize that or to really I mean you and me and everybody else.
Speaker 1:Right, this is a, this is a and it's kind of the beautiful thing about this, right, it's uh, these are ideas that are emerging from this scene. Right, this is not one person uh, although there we obviously have leaders, people like 113, who are really championing some of these ideas, but these are ideas. You know, things like ethfs. You know that frolic played a really key role in, I mean, that is a. You know cycles, uses. Ethfs, like that, is a piece of infrastructure. Um, that is really, you know, like there's a whole group of people moving both the ideas and then the technical um infrastructure forward together.
Speaker 2:Uh, that are like making this a reality yeah, I mean the again, the through line through all of this, for me at least, or one of the through lines is like art as a uh, like art as like a foundation or like I I had the word but like art as the infrastructure is really what I'm saying and that's. That's a wild thing to really unpack, um, and I think, yeah, I mean I, if I, if I look at you know terraforms obviously was my first exposure to that, but like the whole thing that you guys are doing, it feels like a continuation of that Definitely.
Speaker 1:And I'm proud to say that. I mean, I think you know, I will wear the Terraforms badge on our arm, proudly represent for Terraforms 113. You know, like Neocree and I literally met because of the intro to computing arts class at 113, taught in the Math Castles, discord, you know what I mean. So we're absolutely part of that lineage, part of that school and proud to be so.
Speaker 2:And you made literally the only comprehensible video on Terraform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And it's so funny, man, that that video I get so many people be like oh, you're the guy from the terraforms video. I'm like, I'm an artist, I've made a bunch of artworks and they're like, yeah, yeah, but we know you from that video. I'm like man, all right, dude it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like you know, uh like, artists are only known for, like their, their biggest sale, or something I know exactly exactly no, I, I did not expect that video to do what it did.
Speaker 1:You know it really was. It's funny, but it's great and I'm and I'm really proud to have done it and I'm proud to have played a a role in spreading this, this thinking. And, yeah, you know, and one, one, three, you know I don't think he would like object to this characterization. It's funny.
Speaker 1:He says, like he describes it as me like linearizing his, uh, his kind of like cloud of words that he puts out you know what I mean Like he has this amazing poetic inspiring kind of abstract way of speaking and thinking and teaching which obviously resonates with a lot of people, um, but I'm happy to be able to kind of be like yes, and here it is in like a five minute format that you can kind of digest, you know yeah, and I'll tell you we need.
Speaker 2:That's why I say it like. It's probably why it resonated, because I think people very similar to me. When I first found crypto I I remember there was a. There was a space I was on it was actually a clubhouse space when Beeple made his first sale and they had the two not his first sale, but he made that historic sale. Big sale yeah, and they had the two buyers on a clubhouse chat oh wow.
Speaker 2:And I was there for that. That's great. Yeah, it was my first intro and I remember talking to a friend because I had no, I was not in crypto, crypto, nothing.
Speaker 1:That's true NFT history. That's really like. That's like the big bang for NFTs.
Speaker 2:I have the local recording of that space on my computer. Oh man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, legendary artifact.
Speaker 2:Dude it is. And I remember talking to a friend. I'm like I don't know what, how to articulate what I'm feeling, but I'm feeling it, you know, and that's that was my. I say that to give the context of like that was me. With one on three, the entire bear market, I'm like there's this feeling and I can't quite put it into succinct words of like what it is I'm hearing, but it's it's kind of like that Will Ferrell meme, like it's provocative and it gets the people going totally no, and I think and actually it's funny and I hope this, you know, isn't like me doing him a disservice or whatever, but I think that's something that, um, it really what's the right way to say this.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time what he's saying does make linear sense. If you understand his universe of references and language and the way that he talks, you can really learn to understand it. And a lot of the time he's making kind of straightforward points In a really elaborative way.
Speaker 1:In a really beautiful way. I mean, he's got this amazing way with language, these kind of yeah, poetic is kind of like the best way I can describe it. And I think that it's funny because I've been like on spaces with him and some of the other folks from the Mathcastles team, or from the Mathcastles scene, not team, castle's team and or from the mass castle scene um, not team, uh, and I see people trying to kind of grab it and pin it down in real time, you know, and be like so it means this. And he's like, no, you know, and it's like so it's. You know what I mean. Like it's.
Speaker 1:I really think that there, in some ways, it's like you kind of have to appreciate it in its poetic form. And then, yeah, there are some people like me that kind of take it and make like a more pedestrian, linear interpretation, but that kind of um, you know it's funny, he would probably hate this, but it's like reading continental philosophy. You know it's like, it's like this verbal fireworks. You know what I mean and you get this feeling from it, and it's like it's like this verbal fireworks, you know what I mean and you get this feeling from it. Yeah, and it's inspiring and it's exciting, you know, uh, but you don't always fully understand it, you know, and uh, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I don't want and there's, and there's none of his faces that are recording, so you can't go back and listen to it you know?
Speaker 1:no, exactly, you had to be there, which I love, you know. It's funny like it's the beauty of it.
Speaker 2:Again, similar to that recording, it was before Clubhouse had recording, so it was like you just had to be there and it's a vibe.
Speaker 1:Right, that's a super vibe. It's also as the person talking. That's such a different. If you know, it's ephemeral and on those spaces there's always like weird people that come up and say weird, you know what I mean. Like it's like chaotic and goes off on weird tangents and it's super fun. I kind of love it. I love that like culture of especially the small spaces. Obviously you have your like big kind of like more commercial spaces, right, like the culture of the small, chaotic spaces in in crypto and in NFTs. I really love. It's so fun getting on at night with my friends and and then you just talk about weird shit and you know it's, it's so enjoyable.
Speaker 2:It's like the internet version of like finding, like a hole in the wall, bar, you know where.
Speaker 1:You find, like you know, a group of people that you're like wow, man, I would have never like chosen to hang out with you, like maybe on the street but, like, this is really cool that we have this in common and you get to listen, you know, and I, and I love the fact that it's public, you know, like that, anybody can, you know, come up and you don't have to be cool or famous, or you know what I mean. You don't have to get invited to the party, you can just show up, listen, raise your hand, you know, um, that's really democratic and cool, you know, and it's uh, it's a, it's a very cool aspect of our, of our space, and that's something I hope that we, you know, we continue with.
Speaker 2:Totally, man, I got to ask one before I know. Um, I know, I know you probably, I know you have somewhere to take your son. So I want to be mindful of of your time here.
Speaker 2:Uh and so on, the on the beat of time. One thing it's more specific to cycles that I really wanted to ask about and then we'll probably wrap it up is when I'm looking through the lenses on the website which, by the way, incredible, thank you. It's fun, it's just fun and it's addicting and it's yeah, that's the best, yeah, it's just really engaging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cyclesmaterialwork everybody. That one Click the random button, the little dice looking button, just oh see, I haven't.
Speaker 2:I haven't gotten there yet, but yeah, yeah one thing around that I found really interesting was the concept of time. Like you can move like days backwards and forwards on that. What, what does like what is that? Like what? Yeah, like what, like, I guess that's. Yeah, I was just I'm like what is this saying? What time scale are we on? Is this related to the time? It's like 1.39 pm today. What is time on this website? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the? I mean it's funny because the time controls evolved straight out of the development and kind of like debugging and testing process. Right, because the. So the way that cycles works is each of the 512 lenses is a a point in the kinetic sculpture, and the kinetic sculpture is composed of these eight rings that are rotating on Ethereum. Right, they're turning and changing and as they turn and change, each of the positions of the lenses changes and the lenses react to that change in space, right, so they will look different and behave different as they move to new places in their in their path, in their cycle.
Speaker 1:And so what I needed to do while I was developing was to look at how is this going to look on day one, how is it going to look on day 10, how is it going to look 100 years in the future, right? And so I added these buttons to be like go forward by a day at a time, go forward by a week, and actually we don't have this on the website, but in my dev tools I had random point in the future, anytime in the next 100 years, which is really fun, so we might put that in actually, but the no, no, promises, I'm not don't want to commit us to features that have not been agreed on, but the but the. So what that's letting you do and I'll a little bit of a fun Easter egg that not everybody knows about is that in the sculpture view, if you push T, you can pull up a trail renderer so that as you advance in time, it will draw a little green line and show you the path that your lens that you're following has moved on through space, and so you can kind of see where it's been and where it's going. And the goal of this is really to help people to understand the relationship between the spatial movement of the sculpture and the lenses. And what does that look like? What does that manifest in the lens simulation itself? How does the animation change as you do that?
Speaker 1:As you do that, and you know the it's funny because there was a like a decision point during the production where I was like you know well, I like this. This is useful for me as a dev tool, but do we want to force people to come back tomorrow and see what's happened, or it should it be that the only way to see your lens is to like come back and refresh it? And I'm like, on one hand, I kind of like that that there's like this, you know limitation and and you have to come back and see what it looks like tomorrow. But I'm like, is it, you know, feasible that people are going to be doing that every day? And I know people are busy and everything, so I'm okay, maybe we're going to give people the chance to kind of explore forward and backward on their own and it's been really not.
Speaker 1:And also I think it furthers understanding. Right, it helps people to see what the system is doing. That, you know, and I see some people in our holders group chat being like Whoa, I went two weeks into the future, like it looks really different, like, oh, you know, and to me that now is I can see that understanding starting to grow and sink in and for people to really start to realize, oh, this is not, oh, this is not an animation, this is this living thing. You know what I mean. This is not something where somebody a friend of mine asked me today how long is the loop? I'm like there is no loop.
Speaker 2:There is no loop. I love you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is no loop. I love you. Oh, actually, I'm going to tweet that that's good Stealing it. There is no loop, love you. Exactly like it's. It's uh. Shout out to the ladies yeah, uh, it is. Uh. It's a real-time system. It'll. You can take any point in time and watch it for as long as you want. I mean, there are features that will repeat. You know things will reappear, but the whole system is uh, there's no loop.
Speaker 2:I love you, yeah that's great yeah, that that seems like a wonderful place to to start wrapping things up here, man uh, because I mean I feel like we could go for for hours. Uh, this has been incredible. Man uh, matt, I just thank you, yeah, yeah, this is fun, uh, as well, from one yapper to another.
Speaker 1:Uh, yes, indeed awesome man, I want to keep. Yeah, yeah, this is fun. Uh as well, from one yapper to another uh, yes, indeed.
Speaker 2:Awesome man. I want to. I want to wrap this up. It's one of my favorite questions, uh and Uh, kind of tailoring it to maybe maybe we just broaden the scope uh, a lot. What is, uh, what is one of the kindest things someone's ever done for you?
Speaker 1:Oh wow, big question. Yeah, what is one of the kindest things someone has ever done for me? I got to really think about that one. Well, I'll just I'll come back to uh since we're talking about cycles and we've been talking a lot about 113, I think his mentorship, or however you want to call it, his friendship and his willingness to spend time looking at the piece with me, for I mean literally for months doing like multiple physical studio visits. And it's funny because at the time I mean I knew he was being kind, but at the time it was just like he was, just like you know, like basically like you've got to be better, you know, like you can do better, like this is good, this is really good, but you can do better, like go further, go harder.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, and that was like at the time I'm like, oh, fucking god, just say it's good. I just want to put it out. You know what I mean like, but really fucking pushing me and challenging me, um, to try to make it as good as I possibly could and as we could. Um, you know, and really you know, just spending a lot of time and energy, and you know it's it's rare that your friends will do that for you. You know what I mean Like to be like, yeah, this is good, but you go, I know you're capable of going harder, go harder.
Speaker 1:You know, like, yeah, that's that's not something that everybody will say to you. You know so many people be like wow, this is great man, good job. You know, like, whether they think that or not. You know what I mean. So that kind of like kindness to be tough and critical, um, and to challenge and say, no, go harder. You know um is something I'm deeply grateful for and I really think it's like a huge part of the reason that we got to the point that we got to with cycles and and obviously one with three, like you know, is just a tremendous influence as a thinker and as an artist and with terraforms and everything else. So, um, it really meant a lot coming from him and and so you know I'm just super appreciative and grateful.
Speaker 2:And so you know I'm just super appreciative and grateful and you know just can't say that too many times I love that dude, yeah, and I mean I that makes a lot of sense, knowing what I know from him. Um, there's just like relentless pursuit of this fucking hardcore. Yeah, like there is just like this relentlessness about oh it's exhausting.
Speaker 1:It's exhausting, but it it's. You know, it's what it takes.
Speaker 2:You need those friends to kind of push you from easy mode to hard mode you know Exactly, yeah. And because people love and appreciate and people will appreciate easy mode but people will be obsessed with hard mode, like that 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that really shines through and that's awesome to hear, man. Thank you for sharing that. My that's awesome to hear, man. Thank you for sharing that my pleasure. Yeah, man. Well, I always got to do at the end. Want to give you a chance to plug. Yeah, absolutely. Where can people follow along? What's the easiest way for people to get started if they're just hearing about you material work cycles? Where's the best place to jump off?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, I would say the real, the central place is, you know, the material website, which is materialwork, the material Twitter, which is at material underscore work. We've got a video there, a five minute video that explains cycles and shows some of the visuals, and that's kind of like where we're giving all the real-time updates on everything that's going on. I'm on Twitter, as at Matto double underscore Matto. You can follow me there and yeah, that's you know. And then I'm just, I'm around, I'm in the Mathcastle's Discord, I'm in a lot of other places, so if you want to find me, come chat with me. I always love to talk about art and everything else. So, yeah, reach out.
Speaker 2:Amazing man. Yeah, no perfect spot man. Well, Matto again, thank you so much for your time today and your energy and your thoughts. This is a fun conversation. Thanks so much, buna. Yeah, this was terrific.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, Buna. Yeah, this was terrific. I'm really glad to be here. I'm honored to be at the end of the season for you guys and congrats on finishing the season and can't wait to hear what you guys do next.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it, you.