Heroes vs Villains | Robert Gray

our next panel is getting ready to go uh heroes and villains and I'll kick it off to our moderator Rob what's up everyone we got a full crowd got a full house thank you all my name is Rob I'm the art Steward for Eve Denver we have a beautiful Art Gallery downstairs just wanted to give a quick shout out to our partners openc Super Chief big shout out to Jessica angrew Justin who brought us all together to make this a beautiful event just wanted to give a quick plug for the art gallery we do have Art Gallery downstairs right by the merch Booth we are rewarding people just for bidding so when you place that initial bid you're going to get it rewarded with Spork when you make that winning bid you get rewarded in Spork and even if you're a runner up you're going to get rewarded in Spork so everyone's a winner when you come to Eve Denver so going to get some introduction to a few of the homies on stage we have um e Jennifer and Mike I'll let them all introduce their really fast hi everyone uh my name is eer Trey uh an artist from Denver mostly Boulder now um but I've been in the nft in ethereum space this is now my sixth eth Denver um was my first place I ever minted at nft uh in 2020 um in the art gallery way back then um and since then had been basically a full-time artist for the last five years um and just recently kind of dipped back into the more traditional art world as well but it's been a really fun ride and I work mostly in uh kind of augmented reality virtual reality and uh photography kind of space so yeah hello hi my name is Jennifer uh but I also go by my artist name which is siren AI um I joined the space probably in 2022 as a collector and then transitioned into being a builder and I built my own da which is one love art it's a collective it has like 300 artists it's really cool I'm also a gallerist uh so I own some displays in Miami and I try doing events that like onboard people into the space uh but then as an artist I create art that is like really ethereal and dreamy um and deals with like mythology so my piece is in the gallery it's super cool I've been um an AI and digital artist going on about a year and a half now and I've been exhibited in several places so I'm very emerging but I have like a nice collector base which is cool so this is my first eth Dumber actually yeah awesome welcome um I'm Mike um I've uh I'm a background and art director I found nfts in 2020 um and decided to launch my own collection in 2021 um about 10 months in the collection I woke up one day and it was all sold out um enough so that I was able to equip my job so that was four years ago um since then I've done artist collabs with the Chicago Bulls Adidas and Steph Curry um and so been working with them for the last four years and yeah still here still doing my thing so I appreciate you guys having me thank you so as you heard on the panel a lot of us we've been in the space since about 2020 so it's just a great thing that and a blessing that nfts has allowed people to be full-time artists be fulltime creators and make their dreams come true and as we all know nfts have there's been a a racky road for lack of better words there's been ups and downs some people say nfts are dead some people say nfts are alive nfts have changed my life so I'm forever grateful for him so that's one of the reason why we came up with the concept regen vers dejen and where we are in that Spectrum so I'm going to ask a question um cuz we never know in the road today where do you fall on the Heroes versus Villains where do you fall in the region versus de so if you all can share some examples from your work or experience where you intentionally bur those lines of not just being a superhero not just being a villain but a little bit of the mix between the two well for me uh like heroes and villains and then regen and D genen I think of like uh the way I've always approached this space is of myself I would view myself more of like the hero side of it where I'm not like Mass posting tons of artwork uh to the blockchain trying to get something to catch um instead I uh I approach it more from like the one of one kind of aspect where uh it's fine art that I'm permanently putting onto this uh the ethereum blockchain and in this case it's like uh it's more about my true self and being like an artist in trying to do things that I believe in and not trying to just chase the bag per se or try to uh make a lot of money by posting things that don't necessarily align with my vision as who I am as an artist and what I like to make and uh all this stuff is permanent too so I think long term with people that say nfts are dead it's like I feel like things are still in the birth Zone like this is still happening there's still so much room for growth for creative and intelligent people to kind of bring their ideas to the table um it's not all about just like Mass spamming stuff so yeah a little hero villain Arc I guess more hero I feel like I love that any anybody else want to add to that go for I think it really kind of comes down perspective for me I think when I quit my job it was purely like you're a degenerate what do you mean you're quitting your job for nfts but the regenacy side of that it's like I'm trying to do something Innovative and new and kind of lead the way for other artists so it really kind of comes down perspective I think you're kind of both in that lane where you're in the intersection of both where it's regenerates and degenerates both looking at you in feeling a certain kind of way but I think that's just conviction you kind of just have to go with what you know you know um so I guess the way that I would approach it is that I saw a lot of the extractive behavior behavior um and almost left the space and then before I did that I asked myself like what can I do to be like in value ad and so the way that one love art approaches a lot of the stuff that it does is heavy on collaboration so we just did a drop on transient using one of their multi- creation token contracts and we had 20 artists there and so by getting together you basically pull like The Collector base and almost guarantee like that there will be a sold out and like a sale and then you can divide those profits as a collective amongst the artists and that way I feel like you do more meaningful projects that impact the artist um and it distributes the wealth whereas there's other models where I feel like artists are getting left behind like these like massive timed open additions versus like more fine art that you can demand or sort of ask for a decent value and so I feel like what we're doing is trying to be kind of like the heroes in a way where we're looking for Creative approaches for Distributing the wealth and helping all of the artists do it and sort of like push against the system um a little bit and yeah a lot of the stuff that we do is inclusive I do open calls like we have one that's happening now that's for women to inscribe on bitcoin um because I believe that like first I don't see enough women creators on the Bitcoin ecosystem but also like they're going to get paid in Bitcoin and so in that way it's already like an empowerment move towards the women and so that curation is going to happen and that drop is going to happen March 8th so that's really how I like I approach it but I don't see like Black and Whites as far as like that dichotomy of like the bad and the good necessarily I just feel like there's extractive and like value ad behavior in this space and you should really lean towards finding a way to add value in whatever way that looks like for you yeah thank you that was such a beautiful answer thank you um next question we're going to move on in a decentralized community like we are in today like we all are here for how can we reimagine A Narrative of a regen and a Deen um I would like to think of it as as creators we are naturally Deens when I get into the space me and my friends we would call ourselves degens but that's before it got really negative to be known as a Degen but in order to paint pretty pictures or do art when everyone else is like get a job you have to have some djen in you so how do you see that we can change a narrative of a region or a Deion in your own personal opinion well um I would say that uh I'm not sure I would say the idea behind it is that like there's definitely the degenerate side of kind of going against the grain of the status quo of what uh we're told to do in life and like uh being an artist and trying to make art as a career is definitely a harder play um and it's like it's throughout time always been said that like you starving artist right is like the the long-term like joke long running joke on people so there's like some degener thinking there but in doing that like you find beautiful things and one thing that pops to mind degenerate Behavior Uh like when Nifty Gateway was dropping artwork back in the day um there was a guy named Pac that was on nifty gay way and he as a degenerate move posted the URL to Twitter for the back end like the actual buy button link for the web page to Nifty Gateway that avoided you having to click the actual button so you could when the drop happened refresh this web page and almost instantly buy the piece and and it was like Nifty Gateway went around and like 10 minutes before the drop happened like deleted made him pull down that tweet and uh the people that had that open got a Pock piece for like $1 and I just thought that was like when I think of degenerate stuff but still empowering people through the degeneracy like that was something cool so I don't know something that popped to mind that was beautiful that was a great example anybody else want to chime man yeah I feel like you said it in a way that I had like a thought which is that you need a little bit of a Deen in you to like actually push the entrepreneurial Spirit like you have to be a little bit gritty in that way so maybe in that way you know like you can Embrace that side um of degeneracy and I did do stuff I feel like in the space that was like constructive Rebellion um there was this one part well they still doing it but Super Chief did this one thing where it was like remote control and the Billboards and it kind of gamified the situation and made it more of like a popularity contest and a lot of artists started to complain especially in the collective that I am a founder of and so I was like well if you know like you have to go through this whole process of like grinding it out just to get on a billboard what if I just like get the billboard and so like we just did that instead and like I found out the cost and I curated like 130 people and I named it instead of remote control like in control so it was like that's awesome it was like a little elegant like kind of like you kind you know um the artists aren't feeling this so we're going to do like a counter kind of like movement but it's all love like I love it and I think Super Chief is great and super necessary but like I feel like where ever possible when you can like add and do it in a way that is like also provocative um and sort of keeps the balance in the space I think that's also something that should we we should be looking for the word that pops into my head is like subversive yeah right it's like you like always have to like all the best artists and all the the best art always kind of like pushes a little boundary in some way so a little dgen yeah love yeah I mean nothing these guys haven't said I think it's degenerate until it's not you look at like the graffiti scene like everybody looked at that as such a degenerate thing to do and now these artists are getting you know $100,000 commissions and people aspire to be them I like to think the blockchain in the nft space is similar where it's like why are you doing that until people start to understand like oh it's just art in a different form yeah thank you so Mike and I I and Mike are on the curator team so we help select the artists um and we have two of the artists who are featur in a gallery on stage so I just wanted um Jennifer anderra if you can tell me a little bit more about the piece that you submitted to the open call sure um so mine is called rise of the Machina and uh my name like I mentioned is siren AI so I use AI tools a lot and there's a downside to being sort of like a conceptual Creator um that uses Tech because you could literally lose yourself in space and time like on a computer computer just prompting and editing and just it's like a rabbit hole and I found myself like actually saying you are overusing technology like you are now getting to that point where it's unhealthy um and I was uh creating art right around the time of Miami art week and that theme kept on coming up and I felt like am I the machine am I the human or is the AI That's helping me co-create is it more humanistic than I think and so I created a piece that's a cyborg and she is holding a glowing flower and she's admiring it and she shouldn't be having these types of emotions because she's a cyborg and so it's almost like calling to question what is sentience and what is not um sort of like that Duality that intersection of like art and Technology um and so I see it as like a hopeful thing and if you look at the piece she's like very ethereal the light of the flower is like really present um and so I see it as like it's a positive thing so long as humans know how to control themselves and there's a balance um and that's a theme that'll show up a lot in my art um including in that piece so definitely check it out I'd love for you guys to see it beautiful thank you so much what about your SE uh yeah so my piece that's down there is a landscape photography piece a lot of my work is landscape photography uh with comp rendered 3D objects so the object in it is uh a golden D the name of the piece is the golden D J and uh the the guy that's standing uh in the photograph was actually I used AI as well um and did a text to 3D I've been using a tool called Luma Genie um and generated like uh basically the prompts were like a human suffering the human existence like draped in clothes like just like and then the AI was pushing out like just kind of like things that like make me feel kind of uncomfortable to look at and I was like all right it was basically like a shape of like a homeless uh scary kind of figure um ominous figure and then I put that in there uh made it gold um because for me like the whole thing is like trying to find the value and have uh not have to work in life just be an artist um but in doing that it's always like I'm trudging through life uh in the uncertainty and like this guy's in the snow and it's a beautiful landscape but he's lonely um and sometimes that's how it feels so yeah that's kind of where I with the peace represents awesome thank you so much any questions from the crowd we got about 100 150 people in the crowd any questions okay everyone seems uh not want to speak right now but appreciate appreciate all everyone putting their hands up um um I just wanted to talk a little bit about the nft and the web tree space one of my favorite things about it is the diversity and it's not just the diversity of our skin color but diversity of skill set of artist the diversity in our fashion sense a lot of times when you walk around in here you can tell who's creative who's Arty and a lot of us kind of like huddle in the gallery area so if you're looking to get into the web tree space you don't know how to code you know how to draw a picture you know how to draw a stick figure you know you you build on cryptox so whatever it may be the art world is a very opening place so if you want to get involved in the web three art scene feel free to hit up any of us up on telegram on Twitter Instagram and we're always going to walk you in Open Arms I really appreciate this our community it has changed my life it gave me a niche in the art world when it's hard to stand out I've been able to work with museums I've been able to work with big Dows I've been able to get my passport and go overseas just because I did a little bit of research on what an nft was what is blockchain technology what is web 3 so I highly encourage everyone if you want to get involved in the web Tre space going to an ENT through a art lens and it might be able to change your life you might be able to quit your job and work full-time in this Art Space just like we do and I am a College Dropout first person to graduate high school in my family and I've been able to do full-time art because of this web Tre Community thank you so much for all for being here thank you all for being on stage I hope you all have a wonderful day B out the gallery thank you so much bye check out the gallery downstairs peace