Unlocking Artist Creativity – Panel Discussion

so my name is jessica angel I'm a visual artist and I'm taking over the whole artistic vision of this event so the lines that you see out there I was on my knees placing those lines all week I hope you're enjoying it as a visual artist I entered the block change space in 2018 because I was commissioned as artwork but trubin to represent the blockchain I make these large-scale installations I don't do any computer work I work with my hands but I'm interested in bringing a vision of what the digital space may look like even though everything is handmade are we good there so we have a makerspace on the sixth floor so please follow the purple line all the way there I want to give a shout out to our makerspace participants so we have Evan in the back he's doing Hardware workshops so if you guys are interested in playing with data or do we know stress berry pies mix it with art put it up on the walls we have an active space for experimentation and then I have my panelists here we have we have you here stand up thank you I worked with this person all week it's amazing to see this this collaboration all right so we have physical art but then we have art on the Block team so my introduction comes from physical art but my guests come from put a guard on the blockchain from different block tanks actually I want to bring the conversation a little bit on the broader scale on the broader spectrum from counterparty to Bitcoin to aetherium and kind of discuss a little bit what what it is that can happen between block chains of using entities so in my opinion art is kind of at the front lines of blockchain adoption if we see it we see a really active community of artists and I kind of want to enhance and talk a little bit about that I'm gonna give the mic to each one of you please introduce yourselves and then I'll I'll ask the first question okay Susie thanks Jessica well I'm goes I've been playing around with an F T since 2016 before it was even a thing we start tokenizing on counterparty but back in the day and we definitely see the demand for interoperability between blockchain so we are trying to develop a protocol there are different approach for this so creating tokens on one on blockchain a and being able to create some assets in blockchain be that that could be a way a way to go there I've heard in this same in the same event other proposals very interesting that we can go through with more time but I feel I definitely think that the digital art is going to move in a in a in a very important way into into crypto collectibles and scarce digit digital files alright first is gonna say Thank You Jessica for having us at then thanks to the Denver team for organizing such awesome event my name is John Krane I work on super air and super air is a community and platform for digital artists and collectors so we're built on top of the theory em big fans of all the work on counterparty and Bitcoin that came before but we were what we're doing now what we drew a lot of inspiration from and yeah thanks for having us thank you all so Jessica my name is Alex Atala I'm the CTO and co-founder of open seam which is a marketplace for crypto collectibles so you can see what you own without logging in so and buy from new collections that pop up every week so we started with the classic first collectible game item crypto kitties and that one kind of fell after the initial art projects that inspire the space including rare pepe and counterparty and also crypto punks so we've seen game items pop up but also art assets evolve over time and I think it's really exciting because it's a great way for any new industry to start if you look at like all the almost every major consumer company it started as like a toy or as I cannot serious Enterprise at like Facebook started as hot or not Apple started as a computer kit for hobbyists and think blockchain that could very well start with art because it's so incredibly easy to trade you don't have to know anybody it's not a who's who it's just here's the content do you want to buy it hi my name is Thea Goodman and I'm from the rare Pepe foundation which started back in the Dark Age is of crypto in late 2016 where we were making art tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain and yeah I'm also with elevated games and NIMH right now and I'm also a assassin for hire and yeah I think that a art definitely had will always have a future in you know Bitcoin blockchain whatever you want to call it because humans like to collect things that's just like what we do you go out collector gatherer go get berries and stuff bring it back to the cave and show everybody what you've collected and that's the same thing we like to collect stuff actually what it is is there's not a big difference from collecting different crypto coins as there are different NF T's because in the end it's it's very similar experience okay if you open your Bitcoin while you have a big be the big B Bitcoin logo or if you open your aetherium wallet you have the big etherium logo and it says how many you have and NFT is very similar it's like oh I have the rare Pepe and how many do I have when and it shows you a picture of it so really it's very similar to that except it's just resting on another blockchain so humans in general like to do things like gambling collect things trade make money etc and so that's one of the reasons that this is so appealing hello my name is James country and I've got invited here as a collector of NF T's I have my project on the seats floor I hope that I can see you're all over there it's called Our Lady of crypto or lavendar crypto and everything started having a conversation with my friend Carlos and we were talking how every Hispanic country has its own representation of the Virgin Mary and as a joke we were saying like oh very soon we will need our own Virgin Mary on the homeworld so we created this avatar that is called Our Lady of crypto and basically this avatar collects an FPS with religious themes and the whole the whole project is an exploration of intersection between our crypto and religion because as you may know people in blockchain they also have these kind of like fetish objects that they venerate and it's very interesting to explore how we can mix with the end of the world yeah and that connects right with what the deal is saying about collecting and acquiring so I want to pick you up to your brain goose you started in counterparty we're talking about different block chains we're talking about these collectibles that are somehow locked in places whether it is on an on your platform or open sea can be kind of a bridge between but if I have for example on arthelene which is your project and I have my token or I have my NFT that I buy in your platform for example I have another one in super rare I know that open sea may be the sort of window for me to see them both at the same time in this other place which I find it interesting to have open sea here because we want to we want to talk about this cross cross token flow like I want to pick your brain on that I know that you have a project that you're trying to bring tokens from counterparty to aetherium tell us about that process how you're envisioning what is the technology behind reaching this goal sure well I think that because this is where we're in a very early stage of all this ecosystem most people even most people in this kind of events don't understand the nature of of the token itself and the differences between those tokens so the more people learn about the details we will find better and better collectibles because the same as with money not all collectibles are the same so if we go back in history as Theo was mentioning and you see the first collectibles in in in the records we'll see that is not the same to collect a stone or a shell or a little piece off of gold right so it's a little bit the same with with the digital world the digital scarcity is not gonna be the same depending on the quality of the token so we believe that the more people start understanding that the nature of the token they would tend to collect the better tokens so we are focusing on that we want to craft the best tokens and not all tokens are the same so for instance going back to your question like what happens if I have tokens on one blockchain and I realize that there are better tokens on other blockchains I would like to make some assets on that or the blockchain maybe or try to send or block or burn my tokens on one blockchain in order to recreate them in another one preserving both scarcity and and durability which is important right so that's one of the main focus of the project is called arthelene we have a really cool stand on the on the makerspace with a yard so you can visualize it better [Music] mental way of playing with blockchain there's really not an end to this that requires total total precision let's say we in the heart of blockchain space give ourselves the opportunity to experiment how do you guys see whoever wants to answer the question these this experimentation that is taking place in the art and blockchain space to have an impact in other realms of the blockchain arena does that make sense sure yeah I think like one of the things that I think is the biggest benefit is just like it's all public data set and I think as far as like if you look at markets and especially like the art market it's all closed data you need subscriptions to run queries on it and so regardless of the chain you're working on or what you're doing we're creating a public data set about art which is super interesting and has never happened before historically so I think that's a huge benefit for the artists and collectors so like I can see like in the future people do want to move the token across chains this probably will be totally possible and like the biggest benefit is just we have a public record we can know like okay this certified art piece started over here it moved over here and the biggest benefit is just having this publicly shared data set about the experimentation that people are doing that kind of reminds me one of the hardest things to explain to people who are new to the space is this total shift that happened we're normally digital things advertised physical things like if I have a physical piece of art I'll like email a photo of it to someone or you can look up photos online and the photos advertised the digital good but I own a physical shirt with a Josie Bellini painting on it and that physical shirt is really easy to copy it and there's like tons of physical like Josie Bellini paintings there's one on the sixth floor or you can use Gus's app to kind of add augmented reality on top of it the physical things are now advertising for the digital goods it completely flipped and it's hard for people to understand that but it makes it really easy for collectors and really easy for people to discover yeah I still love the physical stuff like I like my shirt that I have with her painting on it but but the real value that's gonna stay forever like that's never gonna get destroyed that doesn't deteriorate that doesn't but that's very easy for other people to access and buy is not the shirt and that's like very interesting once you see collectors by artistic versus the other ones yeah so I'd say there's three main types of goods right now there's game items which are probably the majority of open C and some games aren't like crypto kitties which are kind of collectible games like Neopets and some games are like neon district which are more interactive like role-playing games we see cart like card games like Gaza Unchained all of those game items also have their own art associated with each game token we second type is names the digital like indicators of digital property so there are coordinates that you can buy the represent a property inside VR like decentraland or crypto voxels I think we have Jim back there who works on a lot of pills there and ENS names like wallet names and the last bit is art and arts kind of like the steady holdout and we just see like giant spikes every time an artist figures out a new type of niche to go after and double down yeah oh I just wanted to say as far as the you're talking about different tokens on different block chains and how D they really you also have to think about what do you want to do cuz if you just if it's for a game let's say it's for a game you don't need to change the blockchain to do the game it could have a game with the uses some tokens for a Bitcoin and some tokens for eath you could just you know just sign sign something from an address that proves you have ownership at least at that time so you could definitely integrate things into a game using several tokens from different block chains you could also do that for a really simple app for example just like my collection and I could have okay I've got my collection that can show you know all the ones that have on etherium and all the ones have on Bitcoin all the ones I have on iOS and all the ones I have on Theo's blockchain and so on and that wouldn't be that hard to do but what's not trivial to do is to do really say I want to erase so I have a token caught Theo's because like iOS but better and it's on it's on Bitcoin so if I want to erase all 9999 of those and put them on aetherium well that would be not really trivial to do but I could do it if I used it a trusted third party I could say hey Gus I'm gonna send you all of my Theo's and you burn them and tell everyone you did it and we all verify that and I think if we do that we should have like a burning ritual and make it like a really big thing because like in in rare Pepe chat before we did an auction we used to sacrifice Pepe cash to Lourdes Keck and send Pepe cash to a burn address and I think that's a that's a cool way to do it I mean we're doing art and nf teas well then let's do that so if anyone wants to transfer any of their a theory amenities to Bitcoin or the other way around then just talk to me and I'll decimate and destroy them and tell everyone I did and then we'll generate a new one say and feel can you can you point out any sort of big flaw that you think needs attention in this and if t artblock pain world a big flaw what it's just it's not that there is necessarily flossers just trade off some of what you want to do so you know so for example you know i think that right now most of the NFT contracts are you know are today they've been used a lot there's not going to be like some kind of hidden bug in them but that could happen if you're using a newer kind of contract for example yes you have to decide okay is that am i cool with that what's the what's the future of this in five or ten years is it changing or there's so many Forks that i don't want to have my art on this one or is it a okay trade off because there's a lot of liquidity in that market so i have to decide what it is that i want i think a lot of artists don't care they just want to sell it and really fast and get good turnover but from a collector point of view if i buy this thing am I gonna have to update my node every year because it's like on the right aetherium fork and then if i don't then I have to decide like where are my tokens and all this that's pretty complicated for an outside collector of this stuff so there's just trade-offs as far as you know what what you want yeah I think there are like it's like using you could like you know color coins on Bitcoin or something as far as like a property right you're like ship indicator like there are still questions about like okay what does the theorem look like in two years and like how are the tokens gonna migrate to these this future that everybody's working on right now but it is a interesting point and they can definitely see a scenario where your tokens start gaining value and popularity but they are in a semi centralized smart contract so you don't want an admin to post your tokens so maybe you want to have at hand a protocol to make a public announcement perhaps and just freeze those tokens or or or burn them if possible and just recreate them you know in a second blockchain so I think it's important yeah yeah so there's so whenever there's side chains or whatever they're gonna be called in in aetherium all these like you know theory i'm 2.0 things shards and all this stuff that's gonna happen there's gonna be trade offs some of those are gonna be permissioned and what if I'm in like a permission zone and I want to make Lubin cash but the people the guardians of that sidechain are all funded by Luton then I might get censored the same thing goes for a liquid network on on Bitcoin if I make token on liquid network which you know has you know certain companies in it and maybe if enough of them get together theoretically they could censor my my token now of course that's really far-fetched but I mean why are we doing all this stuff anyway right why are we using a blockchain we're using a blockchain because it's it's immutable because you can do it permission this lis if otherwise if it doesn't matter to you these things that we're talking about well then just use MySQL like it isn't more public data set even if it is like semi permission like I think there's some benefit there just like you'd have to like open up your MySQL like maintain an API versus like people can just index with smart contracts it's a little different okay thank you and I have one last opportunity here to speak and I want to talk to you James James I invited you because you're a collector and I would want you to perhaps ask the panel as a collector something that you feel that you need to know from them from maybe the technical side of things what what would you like to know from from these smart guys for behind the the stuff that you're collecting so from the user experience I will like always more suggestions than questions like I would like to see better options for example instead of having normal actions I would like to see for example reverse touch auctions these kind of things fracked fractal ownership for example sometimes I something that that is happening right now that you cannot see on the traditional art world is that I can do collaborations with artists so for example I can send a whole list of instructions one artist and then we tokenize that art and we divide the the revenue and right now we need to do all that manually and we know that we smart contract we can do most of these things automatically right and I would like to see these functions now when it comes to a question I would like to ask super rare like for example what happens if your node goes down as a collective if his node goes down right because when I talk when we talk in eyes are basically what we do is that it gets uploaded to ipfs right but right now as far as I'm concerned you guys running the only super like the only super rare node so what happens if that nose goes offline does that means that I don't have access to my collection at least two of course I can access the meta data but what about the image if you guys disappear if I'm not running my own node where where that art goes it's a super good question I think like the on chain our data topic is like pretty broad so right now we maintain a cluster of ipfs nodes and so like right now if those all got blown away it would be I mean you have like callback and redundancy but I mean it's still like definitely a vulnerability and so what we're working on is like a solution for people to be able to host all the data together so it'd be like kind of just like a simple set up on top of IP FS if you want to join and run a redundant copy of everything and it's easy to do so and let's say because I'm deeply vested on own super rare like 90 plus percent of my art is tokenizing super rare as a collector if I decide to run a node let's say from super rare is there any kind of to incentivize you know if I want to do such a thing so yeah right now that's all like R&D and experimentation but yeah I think that that would be part of the system okay well thank you everybody before we leave I want to remind you that we have the heart gallery at the very entrance we have all the works for auction the proceeds of these sales are gonna go to the artists and to route to read our partner for charity this year and we have tonight at the the clock tower downtown Denver video mapping projections from the art art art and crypto community it was an open call dad hashtag art project the community that I'm running artists and programmers we recruited a bunch of artists were video mapping the tower so yes this year art took over eath Denver inside and outside so thank you so much for being here [Applause] [Music] you [Music]