EthCC 2: Vanessa Grellet and Kevin Abosch and Judy Mam and Fanny Lakoubay

all right so I'm very excited to bring you three amazing innovators in the art and blockchain space we have an artist and then we have platforms helping the artists to create new art but also be able to digitize their art and sell their art in new ways that are going to shape the market so we're gonna start with a dialogue with Karen Bosch who's an amazing artist who has created a coin of himself sold potatoes but so much more so just to start I'm gonna ask a few questions to the audience who in the audience considers themselves as artists one two three four four artists all right who considers themselves knowledgeable in the art market a few more and who buys art as a hobby or as a passion a few so we have a great audience here so we're gonna start with a dialogue with Kevin Kevin and I caught up yesterday or two days ago and we had a great conversation about you know what is art what is the role of the artist and I want to start by asking you Kevin who are you are you an artist that knows about technical things or you're technologists that just became an artist what was your life purpose I I grew up I'm 49 I grew up I guess the first generation with with PCs in the household so like many of my peers and probably people here it was just technology was very much a part of life I was also surrounded by art my path led me through microbiology and cognitive science but I always kept sort of one foot in the world of art and one in technology and then I somewhere around 1989 I I decided that many of the questions that I wanted answers to I felt there was a point where science and technology started to break down and that I could get closer to those answers through through my art and and so for most of my adult life well pretty my entire adult life I've supported myself you know through my work as an artist and it's just it's part of who I am and what do you want to put out in the world as an artist you know what do you value what are your values as an artist what is your message and what makes you passionate about what you do yeah well whether or not I'm passionate is a whole other conversation but I it's it's more of like an internal obligation I like to think of it but you know I I like I like to I don't even called a photographer I'm called a crypto artist I'm called this I'm that at the root I think of myself more as an ontology slash anthropologist I pose ontological questions and and try to come close to truths sort of asymptotically never actually maybe reaching a truth but at least getting the sense that I'm moving closer to issues around existence value and and human currency and so what what is the role in of technology in yours you know you seeking the truth you're expressing yourself as an artist how has that transformed what you do or not sure well I mean as a photographer we we employ technology may not somehow it be as obvious but it's it's a technological medium you know again through my photography when I photograph faces or objects or through installation work with other objects or using alphanumerics as I do I'll show some some work III use all of these things as proxy distill emotional value I'm probably the least practical blockchain guy in this whole conference I don't look for practical deployments of the technology in fact I probably the most impractical but I also like to think that through that impracticality questions arise that hopefully would engage those who are deeply technical here and how is the blockchain technology different from other technologies that you've worked with how is it conceptually different or is it technically more challenging or not so my first like probably again like a lot of people here my first kind of engagement with blockchain technology was around 2012 2013 just you know amazed at the way I could generate these alphanumerics all day long at such a rate without you know ever ever having any any collisions and again I I saw these sort of magical stories of value I didn't know what I was going to do with it or how I was going to do anything with it but then cut to you know many years later and especially in it let's let's say about a little over a year ago in the face of many of my friends with their technology startups talking about I cos I found myself in an interesting position on the heels of some success I had in the art world where the attention was moving from the artistic value of my work to the monetary value I sorted to feel commodified as a person the art be an extension of the artist and so in order to sort of try to grab control of that commodification I I it's not an ICO but I did tokenize myself through this process where I had my blood drawn my wife's a doctor so that's easy enough to do and I I took the contract address that's generated when you create you know ten million pieces of virtual art divisible 218 decimal places made this physical work that sort of had this inextricable relationship with the virtual work in that sort of unidirectional way the I felt the physical work couldn't have a meaningful existence were not for the creation of the virtual work that's another thing and and and yeah on the heels of that all hell broke loose in January of last year CNN did a story and the next thing you know I found myself being Rika modified again not in a way that I didn't think was possible but in a much kind of greater sense you know wasn't one of these you know obscene ICO type of stories but yeah I was getting contacted by art collectors in Qatar and Hongkong and every Silicon Valley and the strange thing is that as everybody here could figure out the smallest fraction of one of these pieces of virtual art has the same artistic intrinsic value as all 10 million tokens in yet people wanted to buy 10,000 of these pieces of virtual art and a hundred thousand pieces so again it was very clear that there was this weird speculative crypto e ugly vulgar sort of commodification thing happening again so what was your experience as an individual and that overcomer that commoditization of yourself did you enjoy it did you like the attention did it change the way you perceived your role look-look being an artist who can you know support my family from the sale of my art is a beautiful thing and sometimes I exaggerate this this feeling you know this horrible feeling of being commodified and I had to you know take take over but it's just not ideal it's not ideal you don't like as an artist when it becomes more about the the monetary value than than the artistic value and and and we were talking about this the other day I've noticed that I mean pretty much any are any time you see an article in in in mainstream media about art you know in the first couple sentences there's some reference to you know how much it cost how much it's selling for and and and I and I spend so much of my time trying to separate this to that it's just gonna set it usually it's not like you know hey everybody look at this awesome art and there's no reference to that it's always about like how much it's sold for how much it might sell for so this extraordinary success led you to do other works of art with other artists and expands the concepts you know working with the blockchain yeah I mean I'll just brush over this real quickly I don't know if anybody saw this this was a project called forever rose on the heat for last Valentine's Day I contacted by an old friend of mine in in China and Andy Chan and and they asked if I would do something for around Valentine's Day he runs a platform that uses not non fungible tokens as rewards for streaming well on a streaming platform and I was like I don't think I really want to do anything around that but ultimately we decided we'll do something for for charity and we put this project called forever rose up for auction now this photo a lot of people thought that I actually sold a photo to ended up selling for a million dollars worth a crypto to ten ten different entities but actually there was no photo that sold this photo was some is my photograph but it's a proxy that in that inspired the token which has no physical or visual manifestation which is very challenging this disconnect between the worlds of crypto in the world of art is so funny because you'll get a crypto you know billionaire who made all his money investing in in Bitcoin and he doesn't understand how something that he can't hold in his hand could have value or that he can't hang on his wall and yet and then then people in the art world are like wait a second so you can't even see it or hold it wow that's cool but they don't understand those who put their money in Bitcoin so and and yet mechanically we're kind of speaking of the same thing and then other pieces the hashtag laughs well I never I was I never cared about cryptocurrency myself until I started getting paid in cryptocurrency and then I became aware of the you know the tribe out there on social media and the Declaration of hashtag Lambo and I sort of was intrigued by this is what I thought at the time was a very vulgar declaration that way I make a you know boatload of money and I'm gonna spend it on the Lambo but then I realized it was it was kind of ironic and and and it was just sort of this declaration to the tribe about this you know the insanity around the crypto zeitgeist and so in that case I create the series of proxies triple distilled value you have the hashtag Lambo I created a why Lambo you need touken and then I bring it back from the virtual world into the physical realm with with a neon sculpture called yellow Lambo and it ends up selling for more than an actual lamborghini aventador and twice actually and and so you know and then guess what it makes news another thing stealing the contents of this wallet is a crime just kind of public engagement seeing what happened was funny I thought it was all gonna get kind of stolen right away but it took about five days people were playing whether people were engaging with it in ways I didn't expect you know they take out 0.666 of oh by the way in that wallet wasn't either it was they were these I am a kind so there were pieces of me so ultimately when they were stolen not only was it you know grand theft grand art theft it was it was kidnapping I would I I suggested and then if things weren't surreal enough by the middle of the year I'm showing work at the ermitage in st. Petersburg you know like the greatest museum on earth I know the Louvre here is pretty good too but yes and that was a piece called personal effects and and that leads you to what you're saying then next thing you know a way way international artists activists friend of mine he calls me up because I see you on the cover of the New York Times I read the article three times I have no idea what the hell I just read and so we do a deep dive into you know blockchain and we we work on a project called priceless because one of the things I realized after a year of talking to people about art that doesn't really exist is how and why we value anything at all and I noticed another complication people's relationship with that which is priceless like life for instance and so we proceeded to tokenize our shared priceless moments seemingly banal moments but logically if life is does everybody here agree that life is priceless good well then in every single moment every little building block every little action should is also the priceless and that's that's all we did it was an exploration of the relationship with things that are priceless so it's really interesting to see that you go from as a as a buyer of our buying a physical goods to buying a concept to buying access to concept through technology I think that that journey is quite interesting and we still value that because we still value ideas and we still value engaging with those ideas we might not value ownership any more of those ideas we might just want to engage with them and I think that takes to the last project that you've done where it's even more interactive with your audience this is very fresh and the yellow-and-black should tell you you know danger danger warning warning it's nature's warning sign first commodification of self I am a coin then what is priceless and now I suggest that everything is a bank everything is a store of value and in in in the case that applies here today a private key is made public it's essentially I declare it as an open bank you can put stuff in you can take stuff out I'm not suggesting that we live in a perfect world where those who have a little extra would put something in and those who need something would take just what they need it's only two or three days old and and you know true to form I'm surprised at what's happening I figured again that you know somebody put some stuff in and somebody just takes it all out but it's quite complicated what's happening and then the the I mean what I what I what I want to see out of this is what I'm trying to study is this complication that arises with humans and trust systems I mean I think everybody here understands that this is doomed to fail there are those who think that all banks are doomed to fail but I had a guy who runs a hedge fund down in sugan Switzerland the crypto trader and next thing I know he's he's taken this new product or not another new product but I guess they made some news yesterday a melon port and created a fund and it's and he somehow made this public wallet the man at the the manager of the fund and so he's been I guess taking some portion of the assets that are in there and putting it in the fund and the fund pays back this wallet this Bank a management fee and some potential upside essentially creating an investment bank out of my bank would you know and I have done not I've done nothing I won't interact with this I won't put anything in or out but I'm watching and it's a you know it remains to be seen what's gonna happen with us so basically you created a wallet that's available to everyone you shared the public and private keys with anyone everyone can interact with them with it not exactly clever technologically I mean it's not like I don't profess to be this is not high-tech do you have any did you want to prove a point or do you just want this as an experiment and see how people behave I never I don't think I ever want to prove a point I I'm more it's more it's more an experiment and it's it's playing and it's a study I mean like I said I'm I'm it's more of an oncologist anthropologist I liked I think I understand how humans are going to react when confronted with with with with a certain system and and they always prove me like prove I prove I a prove to me that I don't understand them as well as I thought I did and and so that's that's what's happening here I'm also staging a number of interventions it's not just this their physical works where I declare that this particular object is a bank this person is a bank and I'm staging in banking centers around the world interventions to mitigate against human corruption across even our biggest financial institutions so when we spoke yesterday um you told me this might be my last project on the blockchain is this true it might be people ask what's your next blockchain project and I and I kind of recoil at that because it's like why do you think there there has to be a next one I'm using blockchain as a method I do like blockchain technology and I and I will always keep a keep an eye on what's what's developing and depending on how its to how it develops I may I may be reengaged with it but you know it's it's sort of like when somebody uses a different color paint it's it happens to be that these lovely alphanumerics serve well I mean that private key for me is a is a proxy for the human humans relationship with trust systems it's more than just this practical or impractical device so I don't know we'll see only only time will tell I mean I'm involved in tech not a lot of different things around AI and I'm interested in in where AI and and and blockchain intersect as well so it's a very exciting thank you so much for sharing your journey I'm going to invite two other panelists we're gonna have a discussion around blockchain and arts the art market how we can help other artists so fahnny and please join us the width is water all right so we have two wonderful projects one is called Dada and YC and the other go it's called snark art and I'll let their leaders presents their projects and what their initial vision was but before we start I want to ask how did you get into blockchain as leaders in the art space and what you know sparked your interest in getting into that space hi I'm Judy from Dada we started data about four or five years ago it's a social network where people draw with each other digitally and at the time we hadn't heard anything about blockchain so we were trying to monetize these with different strategies whether I don't know like merchandising and crowd sourcing talent and stuff like that and then at some point batteries our founder went to the ethereal summit I think in 2016 and she was blown away by the possibilities because she saw that blockchain not only could create digital assets from this incredible content that we have on our platform that you will see soon but also beyond that that you know we could just create a completely alternative reality for for artists that you know unlike people who can locally make a living as artists are very very talented but I have no chance on hell to get into a gallery to be exhibited in a museum to find an audience it could really create a new economic system for millions of talented people and that's where we decided to give it a chance oh it's a different story I've been I'm funny I work at snark Detroit and I come from other business in the art market background so not directly marketable more like art and text so I worked at you know websites like I'd net and online marketplaces and and then collection management system that was acquired by Christie's and I left Christie's in January of last year and a friend of mine also former Christie's was organizing panels and conferences on little like panels you know discussions meet up in the evening to explain technology to add people because in the art market like a lot of other industries everybody is like oh yeah yeah blockchain I know but then they all come to the panels because they have no idea so she actually won a firm with the Raiders canceled and she was looking for one and she asked me to come at the way to talk and she said well the talk is in two weeks and I was like look what so I spent two weeks reading about blockchain and it was like oh my god this is awesome and don't know if I actually said that but that was a feeling and yeah and then I got into a few projects including snog the dart that I met at one of these panels and when you started your initiatives did you have some preconceptions about the problems you wanted to solve in the art markets were you here to support artists were you here to change more monetary dynamic of the art market or was it something else I think it started gradually you know you go kind of from the particular oh look this is a digital asset that now the artist can have in the in the you know their their intellectual property protection the collector can know that this is in a hat but then we saw I mean when you see the possibilities you go you know in the real art market very rarely if ever those are noticed get something on a secondary sale for instance and with that smart contract you can actually include that so that with anytime there's a secondary sale of an asset of one of our drawings the artist will get a code and that is just like mind blown so you know it happened gradually and then if you issue a token and maybe everybody like you know the entire community can participate in making this token something like a vibrant economy so it was kind of I think little by little we saw more and more the possibilities and we just basically said we are we don't want to use the technology to replicate we're all ready for us isn't working we want to use the technology to push it to to a new way of thinking about content and collaboration yeah I think to continue on on the fact that you don't want to replicate something that has flaws and and reproduce it on on the blockchain or any new technology what I had seen a lot of odd people trying to do is it's pretty much that like it's very much using the technology to not be late into the game and and really you know like catch the train and and keep their little piece of the cake on the blockchain and for me like the other projects okay like there's a lot of technicalities that can be used for art registries you know authenticity provenance you know you guys know these use cases already but this for the tradition or art market like the physical artworks they're still a limited number of very interesting projects because you also have the link between the physical piece and and the blockchain or any other system to be solved and a lot of IOT projects trying to do that but it's gonna stay small I mean let's let's face it like the art market as we call it is like it's still a very small industry and most of the collectors are you know like over 60 years old and it is gonna remain so what I got excited about where the projects which were mostly like on the Digital side because what the traditional art market players are trying to do is you know like kind of reproduce the art market on the blockchain and find ways for the current art market to this new like digital art or is new technology I don't think it's gonna happen I mean I two years ago I was still trying to sell a collection management system to you know appraisers and literally someone told me well I keep all my client files under my bed and would never even put it in a Excel spreadsheet because I will die with this records and for hers I was like honestly it's the safest way she would do that so collection management system I mean blockchain come on so so what was interesting is it's kind of building up this new market and what I hadn't seen in a while was in technology was this concept of community I mean this is really the first time there there is blockchain this concept of of people who share this sale I can live and breathe these values I mean we're here for three days and you know even after they have conference we still go to dow stock meet up and listen to the X Dow until like you know 10:00 p.m. so it is passion and and and you know there were crypto collectibles and like early signs of collecting will and and there are some projects on that there's open sea alex is here you know super rare like all these platforms are really trying to build up tools to build the market and a digital art market let's not even just talk about blockchain and and this is good because it's not just the technology was gonna build that we have to get more you know artists and and many more players so at snarks they had an interesting take that they would bring established artists into this market because to build the market you really need you know like it's gonna be very drug honest but top top down with like bringing you know established artists and people who come with their followings and Adam Linden man with you know investor and and heavy collectors and then all the emerging artists from like the bottom up to build that so you know we're at the other end of the spectrum from that I think it's important you know to bring established artists because that's what will get people like attention you know it's like what you say about journalists only covering the sexy thing for them is the money behind the art and I think establish artists at the moment people like you or if Sussman whom you're working start making waves and more people read it in the mainstream media and they start asking but we are really about opening this market to people who no one knows but you know for millions of artists from all over the world who can find millions of collectors that have never had the opportunity perhaps to walk into a gallery or be intimidated to ask the price for something it's really like Fanny says it's really a completely new market and digital art you know that is tokenized is a whole new market there is a small there's a market for digital art the other day I went to Chelsea gallery hoping an hour of all the galleries there was one gallery showing a digital artist everything still seems to be you know the the more traditional way so there's there's a lot to to steal further experiment with I mean based on what I've just been listening to I think the jury's still out as to how blockchain is going to empower the art market and I was happy to hear you say I mean what I say to it I one of the things that but people purport potentially why blockchain could be good for the art market it has to do with transparency but no way there's a reason the art art market has been so opaque for you know as long as there has been an art market so I don't think that's that's much of a benefit and you know also a lot of the platforms that are out there to support the art market I think they need to differentiate between collectibles like crypto kitties and and and any any form of you know not not all not all digital assets are created equal and so yeah there needs to be a place for the the fine art market and and a place where the rest of this stuff and and then I think also you know is this idea about where does the value in art come from and is it a function of rarity and scarcity that's that's a long conversation I guess it probably does but I think you also find that there are a lot of companies in this space that are leading with you know we're going to engineer that rarity and scarcity not you know when I think they should be leading you know like like Fanny says about community you know this is about community this is about artists reaching an audience that they they didn't have before and oh yeah then we have this utility to help you engineer scarcity and rarity you know and it's different engineering scarcity and rarity in with digital art work is is different than say if I'm producing some little bronze sculptures because when I'm producing a limited edition of 10 I don't do bronze sculptures but if I did you know I should but if I do an edition of 10 sculptures that each one might cost me $5,000 I'm limited by how many I can create because of the amount of amount of resources it takes me to make them so there's a there's actually a real-world limitation at play whereas in the digital realm there's really no limitation you can decide to create 10 or you can decide to create a million so as an artist to really again tries to separate my work from the the monetization of it I think it's somehow a little bit vulgar the an overt approach to engineering this scarcity to drive up the price yeah so so we see two themes here the traditional art markets there are some projects out there that are trying to bring more transparency more accountability towards the the dealers and the auction houses to create price formation and this idea that more transparency will increase the market overall and and the second stance and I think my panel is not convinced about this proposition and is more looking into the digital art world which is a whole new asset class and a whole new way of interacting with the artists with the collectors and with the and so digging into the digital art we have to digital art platforms I would love for Fannie and Judy to go a little bit deeper on on how they what their business model is how they want to support artists and what their vision is maybe a few word before the slides is that okay we need technical help it's very nice Hajus sorry anyway I can start a about snark so snuggle art is a project so we were positioning yourself not as a platform but really as a production studio for artists is that the PDF anyway sorry so snuggle art is yes so we were based in Brooklyn not so decentralized and and we're the goal is really to bring establish artists and artistic projects to you know younger collectors and pretty much open the art markets to to this new like you know I hate the term digital natives but it's a lot of brothers and million years and and really new ways of collecting because I've talked with many many people a lot of even you know developers inand and developers are the creative like person and they were telling me like I don't really understand why I need to collect art and really there is like the art market is like entirely lake your niche like Geoghan ask like market where it's probably two separate world and and and so we're gonna do like a lot of experiments as we with established artists who are also bringing more people and as Kevin said a little bit more attention from the art market to the blockchain but also thinking of interactive digital projects in the case of the first one using blockchain concepts and and using new ways of owning art with like more community owned artworks not fractional ownership there is a real emotional attachment you actually own something it's not just an investment because I'm sure you can find much better investments out there and and really offer new things and we'll see some might fail somebody not be interesting and some might interest you more some might interest their art market more some might interest me more but um and so the reason why we do that is really to bring more creative ways to talk about blockchain I think when I like when you said like I'm the most impractical person but we really do need like impractical people to talk about these very complicated concepts and for the longest time you and Primavera de filippi you were really the only two people out there doing really conceptual projects and to explain those two you know like you could explain more blocks change yeah the press was interested in you exit rot so the first project we're doing or we launched last November is with this video artist if Sussman and to be very honest with you she's very established but I did not know her before working on that project so shame on me drew did this do you know her she's quite an established artist like in the video art world and her videos are it's MoMA the Whitney she premiered at the Whitney Biennial etc and she made one artwork in 2004 which was based on last last Meninas by Velasquez which is a painting from 1656 is that the problem in Spain and it's really one you know major master works of art she really wanted to be a fly on the wall and reproduce like a 10-minute of what happened before and after so she rented a warehouse in Brooklyn where you could still find empty warehouses that are not condos actually like that's pretty much they replicated the whole set the whole painting set as as they were gonna do a movie so there was a movie set they hired actors etc etc and you know that's still from behind the painting so they worked on it they hired you know like and they did a lot of research to do that I'm passing a lot of fast but that's a result like so so there's actually I don't know if you can see but there's a guy from Game of Thrones Peter they've replicated the painting and then what happened so there is this video like ten minute video and and this is the one that she took she only has a like one version left and she we splitted for her into like two thousand little and lefties and you can own a little square of that video and it's a ten minute video with a full soundtrack of that little square so it looks like one looks like that it's almost a little abstract piece that you have in your own wallet and that's interesting but not so much right so you the real interest is that you can actually there's a lending mechanisms that you can lend your URC 7:21 token for screenings so we will ask you before screening if you want to participate and if you don't well it will not play for the entire community of artists and we did one screening last week in New York play sorry we're not up to speed on the technical side here and and so you can participate it's kind of a ticket into like a viewing and and you kind of part of a community you know you can hear we had like a thousand people except like a pretty much half of them and two hundred people actually said like I don't want my item to be shown so yeah yeah thank you for letting you can show partially or showed this picture of the piece of art so the goal is that if I own an at home if you want an at home you can actually request a viewing to just you know show your friends on Friday night in your living room and you might get like and it's a different piece every time because you might get like maybe some people are like I don't know that person I don't wanna let lend him my at home but then MoMA might you know request a screening and you're like oh hell yeah like that's gonna increase the value of my you know nfg and and so it's different every time you'll get rewarded and paid every time you lend your at home and it's the same like it's gonna be you can sell your ottoman on the NFT on the secondary market and then the artists get royalties like forever and ever so from my understanding you buy a fractional piece of art you're able to interact with it in a more dynamic way than traditional art throughout its life and you can engage also maybe with the artists in different ways and other venues where they show the art and you can share the profit of the art which is a very different proposition than just buying a painting and having it in your living room right and just having it for yourself and that might not be interesting to everybody so then the next one it's going to be we're going to do also fortune cookies like with a poet on digital fortune cookies so they're very very different projects and yeah hopefully I mean it's a fun journey join like it's you know being an early adopter of something is also very nice yeah I want to stop is there any question on this particular project yeah so we're we just did a very simple showing a 10 ft NYC where it was us requesting to show it we're working on very much more advanced mechanism we were kind of waiting for the first feedback from the community on the on the first screenings to get their ideas and also like how to improve the players and maybe Hardberger taxes as well like to you know kind of encourage people to show their atom and not like have it so you could even there was an idea that people were could pay or actually acquire another nfg that is not showing if they really wanted to see that part of them on the screen or even like doing cartels or like you know like there's a screen like placement where there's a dog and on the secondary market I can tell you everybody's gonna want the dog because everybody asked us for the dog you you can't choose when you get a first like I got the primary sale it's face down but everybody wants the dog any other question before I continue so we've seen one one way of interacting with digital pieces of art Dada has another approach to this and Judy is going to take us through how they want to spark creativity amongst the artists and have them collaborate with each other and create art and digital art that is totally different the real difference here is that digital art you can record ownership on the blockchain which is not something that you could do before and trace that ownership so that's really the key difference yes well well again I'm Judy mom a co-founder of Dada again a social network where people speak to each other through drawings and something that Kevin said kind of resonated with me what's the value of art and we think the value of art apart from all the you know monetary value is actually in making it and so Beatriz Ramos who is the founder of of the LA she emigrated from Venezuela to New York some years ago and she was a pretty successful commercial artist she worked at Disney she worked on MTV she opened her own animation studio she worked for some of the biggest brands in the world so for all intents and purposes she did very well when she opened her animation studio the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were her first project a two million dollar project but she realized that even being successful she was only making a very tiny fraction of the millions and then billions of dollars in in value that the content that she helped create was was making and still makes and also she didn't retain any of the individual property rights to some of this content and she decided to do something about it and we got together and we created data and it's basically a place where artists draw with each other so here a person did a very simple flower and then this person in the United States somebody in Chile replied with an Aboriginal Indian and then the community took over we do not intervene in this these people didn't know each other at the time that they were making it and I I see it as a first of all we believe that this is a new form of digital art that as far as we can tell does not exist anywhere else we call them visual conversations and they're pretty magical so it's like kind of like a jazz improvisation or or you know like a music jam where just to show you a little bit this could be this is how my field looks I can see what people have been doing I see that this guy from Chile did a drawing and this guy from Kenya did another drawing so I can reply to the drawing with that you know with a white pencil or I could also start drawing myself one of the ways in which we make it work is that in order to reply to a conversation you have to have made a number of drawings not too many but you have to accrue like 200 points so that game if ID system allows for people not to just come in and under face something and it works pretty well so what you can see is that the people really just respect kind of like the original we don't know if the intention but like you know the original mood of whoever started it and sometimes it's really difficult to tell like when one starts and the other ends and many people think they look at this and they think it's the work of only one artist whereas it's really the work of several artists sometimes some artists of course repeat because they're really engaged on a dialogue with each other so we have around 160,000 users and last this week I think we reached our 110,000 drawing so that's a lot of wonderful content and that we feel has tremendous value so we decided to create a decentralized our marketplace on the prog chain where we tokenize these drawings and so artists retain their individual their IP protection and collectors can get proof of ownership we have a separate art gallery not in the drawing platform because in the moment that we put like a shopping cart there I think it's going to completely destroy the magic of what people are creating and so we have about tens of thousands of visual conversations are already talking to be tokenized and sold and one of the things that separates us from like we're not competing against gerhard richter you know or any like fine artists what because the art that gets made on Dada is not really made with the intention to produce or to impress a curator or to get into a museum although we will I know we will get into a museum but it is made with the intention to collaborate and to cook to create with people and to you know express yourself so it's kind of you know very pure we have a very simple drawing tool that everybody uses it's really rather basic and some people use you know there some people use like a drawing tablet but some people draw with a mouse so we launched our first collection in October of 2017 we basically took a hundred creepy and weird drawings from different conversations we called it Krypton weirdos we launched it in Halloween and we gave them five different levels of scarcity but last week at the NFT Conference we launched our first visual conversation collection so basically this this collection is called this control it's 40 drawings by nine different artists 11 different artists in 9 countries and this is the first time that we are actually doing them as like single enough tees so each one of these drawings is a unique NFT you buy one there is not one on another one for sale when you buy one of these drawings you're not only basically buying from the artist that you love but you're also kind of buying from everybody who is involved in the conversation because there's a co-ownership of the conversation by everyone so the way that we are coding our smart contracts is that on the first sale the artist gets 60% everyone who is involved in that conversation gets a distribution of 10% and we have a community phone for data of 30% on the secondary sales the owner if you buy it you would get 60% if if you want to sell it but the artist would still be getting a cut and the community phone but still beginning a code and all the artists and even the owners of the conversation so this actually involves everyone and it's a slightly different model from you know from what exists in the art world where it's basically kind of a one-on-one one artist one buyer one one collector what we are excited about is that the NFT is allowed allow so allow us like this great experimentation and levels of collaboration we did this collaboration with Kitty hats which are purveyors of accessories for cryptic kitties they came to us and they said well you know we were thinking if the cat can have hats and tattoos and glasses maybe they should have art and we said of course is true so we issued a collection of like masterpieces world masterpieces interpreted by our artists so if you own a cap if you own a crypto Kitty you can buy him a beret if you own at the limo stretch and you can also buy him a Salvador Dali by way over over there artist but what is what makes this interesting is that imagine and you know where we're starting to collaboration with music for instance you can animate some of these drawings you can add music and every layer is going to be tokenized everybody's gonna know we're you know every it's gonna be all you know known who owns what and we feel that there's a lot of potential for this and eventually we're going to issue a data token because we are building an economic system where everybody who participates including the collectors is rewarded and remunerated and the community fund will go towards a guaranteed basic income for artists eventually what we would like to do is you come to the other with the expectation not to sell but to play to engage to to express yourself to experiment and you were going to be getting you know some income monthly just for just for being there that is that is the idea so that we can help artists like Suzanna who is a very fantastic conceptual and performance artist in Chile she's a single mother she lives from her art she actually sold about three three thousand dollars worth of over art in the creeps and weirdos collection or we can help people like Alexandria North Carolina who is a stay home dad and who wants to live from his art we he wants to be able not to have ten other jobs in order to support his family or people like Maria in Venezuela who is would be considered I think like an outsider artist she has made more than ten thousand drawing some Dada we call her like the Andy Warhol of data but she lives in Venezuela and just basically getting $60 from some sales that she did of this drawing can actually help her leave for two months in that country so we see that this is a platform that can really change the game for for millions of certainly hope so the end yeah suffer through our art and experience and scarcity in order to produce amazing art right they're telling us that's nothing no I think that we have there is an alternative forming which actually another thing that happens is I guess art can be a very solitary experience you know for and here people learn like some people say that data is like their art school because they really learn from watching others too we even have tutorials in there somebody asks how do you draw a nose and people respond but also the fact that you get the validation from your peers and then the validation from collectors but the fact that imagine that you drew something and then you get a reply from Kenya or from China or from you know and you know you never know you could be drawing with a master you know graphic novel is that we have in there you could be drawing with with someone who is a well-known artist I just want to say it's very exciting to see how you can expand the type of arts the type of participants the type of incentives to create art I think those platforms are wonderful but how did the how do you make money how did the platforms make money before the question I just wanted to add two things that as a user of data and a collector like you haven't mentioned it's very important it's like first it's also a type of therapy like it's like if you I don't know how to drum a terrible drawer do not hook me up of an tada but it's it's very liberating like so drawing on that is super easy and really Sarah panic and when you actually purchase a an artwork from an artist the best part is that you actually get you know these artists and now I'm like you know how much friends with these people and let's say you know you have like when they come to New York dinners and it's like it's just it's just really nice to be part of that community which really is you know a good side of the technology allowing that thanks for reminding me of that well it's that's a nicer part and like talking about the money but but we do have like the we have created this amazing community and it's true that people engage with the artists and it's true that we see when people are feeling depressed we can tell because of the drawings that are making in terms and and they are lifted up by the rest of the community in terms of the money well we are experimenting with opening a market creating selling the drawings but also like there could be licensing opportunities for instance where like everything every and ft can you know be sold for licensing we are talking about collaborating with other platforms we're maybe talking with the crypto kaiju guys to maybe make like this is a platform that makes vinyl toys so we could you know do something like that we need to you know open the market and sell the drawings and make the money have some revenue you're still covered you still get a fee from yeah there would be a small transaction fee everything it is it is free for artists but it's a it's a small transaction fee on on the part of the collector Kevin would you use that type of platform to share your art and an experiment with other artists would i under the right circumstances I would but I I'm really interested I don't remember if you oh you didn't always have that the the not the storytelling what did you call it the visual conversation you didn't always have did you always have a I really like seeing that played out across on those panels like that I I could imagine doing something like that but also how do you know I'm not already on there with a pseudonym I'm sorry people use pseudonyms but we ask people to give their email addresses I mean I think that if you're gonna sell art you may you know I think people should be proud of what they're doing and they want to monetize their own creations but you could certainly be there with a pseudonym it would be really interesting to see what what happens you know one one thing that also happens is that we are the only platform of like our wonderful community of art in the blockchain where the art is actually made on the platform so we don't have it's nothing is uploaded everything is made in here so there's no real problem of first registry unless like somebody was throwing I mean there was a drawing and we were it was saying oh my god this drawing is so sophisticated the use of like negative space and I'm like that was done by a two-year-old and it turns out that it was the baby of one of our users so that could happen but but it doesn't really matter I mean it's it's open and we have different really we do have different levels of artists from people who are fine artists in their countries to like very gifted people who have never been to art school everyone in between and so your question we have a very traditional black online marketplace model which is similar to data like the commission-based [Music] so before I open it up to questions I wanted to ask you where do you think digital art will be in five years or art engaging with the blockchain in five years how many sentences quickly I do think that the enough piece could be a really great black way to collaborate between people and we'll have to see how that works out but yeah being able to buy some drawings and other animate and put music to them you know making your own memes or gifs or stuff like that it could be that there's also like the established artists who do digital art I think there should be more of that in galleries and there should be more of that in museum I know that every like Museum you know like the Whitney and new museum they have digital they have like digital department and I think that this may actually help people think that it's not only that kind of art that you need a screen but that it's also you engage you engage peer-to-peer with a collector or with other artists so I think that's working so everything I do right now like even like other projects out of snark is like to build up this digital art market like technology great we managed to make scarcity with blockchain but for art for digital art but that's not what's going to beat the market so and building a rocket it's it's about you know of course it's mainstream adoption and we all want that right and but it's bringing up more artists touching like you know bringing educating artists I mean how many artists you know you asked how many people consider themselves creatives there's a ton of them out there they now even painters like do their sketches on on their tablet and so it's a lot of education on that side educating them about how to make money how to talk and I have to share their amazing art with more people and then it's it's a perfect storm so it's like you need also like their good signs that Christie is for example like established art actors have shown interest they organized already one blockchain and art conference you you spoke there and you sorry not me and you oh my god I was the only one not invited and at the auction like an AI generally the artwork etc so it's a lot of PR obviously but it's showing the interest and their secondary art market and not even like the primary so we need more like people engaged and and we're doing a digital art fair yeah in New York in in the spring and trying to get more people to do that so quote me but in you know in two years well it's like we're working very hard at making everybody part of that and making it happen just to say like this conference it's such a relief that when we say an F T stand blockchain and smart contracts you all know what we're talking about but when you go to artists and and it's amazing but there are talking about Instagram like the holy grail and I'm like that is so 19th century you know and they don't know anything about this not only that but even people who are like crypto enthusiasts many of them don't know anything they don't know that there's art on the blockchain that is a proven use case and it's we feel that it's a really great way to onboard people to to do blockchain actually like you kind of we're on board and you are onboarding people as well just try it I mean bye-bye painting by an atom and get some crypto it's a that's like no it's not only PR it's really a whole educational you know program that we that we have so that artists learn that this is a possibility for them it's nice not to be to spend half the time talking about what is blockchain only to have after three hours of conversation people asking like so is it actually on the token is it on the coin expecting a physical token I think the future of blockchain as far as I'm interested in is adding more functionality to the native blockchain so the ability to embed you know high resolution images on the blockchain not using IP FS or or something some other mechanism but actually keeping everything as native as possible to the blockchain that's what excites me in the future open it up for questions one I I have a short little story about a moral dilemma I faced that leads to a question about metadata so as I was at eath Denver and I was looking on super-rare which is one of these nft based digital ownership of art things and I found a really cool picture of a buffa corn which was the unicorn buffalo mascot of ease Denver so I wanted to buy the piece and then tweet it but I had been fiddling with stuff that I probably shouldn't have been fiddling with during the hackathon so my interaction with the site was broken and but I still had the data of the image that I liked and wanted to buy and so I could copy that very easily and tweet it all the same and so that's a moral dilemma right if this is if this is art created by an artist and that ownership is on the thing am i doing something wrong so you say no okay so this is this is the question yeah because it doesn't change your ownership right anyone can take a photo of a piece of art in the museum right or at someone's house and tweet it and it's the same your ownership is on the blockchain and that's not that's not that's not something that's going to change so that I mean this is the the question that I that I have is what challenges are there and to me that these are very deep challenges of meaning is that when you say I own this thing what what does that actually mean you mentioned very briefly like intellectual property so could like if one of these artists from wherever they're coming in from sees that a company has made a bunch of money off of off of their art right intellectual property would be a process by which they could claim I have a right to some of that money well the company should be giving them money but in the case of you like let's say you wanted to buy the art for some reason it didn't work out you could still do a screenshot you could still but you wouldn't really I mean you could have it you can't really sell that you you don't have me I mean unless you start up with your own you know thing or you could sell that doing something very wrong with which would be claim that you made it but there's no I mean people are gonna still making making screenshots forever but now they have the possibility to actually owning it and maybe selling it and maybe getting a little profit and also getting the art is to profit thereby creating the market I think you also can't conflate IP and copyright with ownership and authentication two different things okay so use it they're entirely divor totally different than okay I guess that's sort of the last question about metadata is that given that it's technically not feasible or possible to actually embed these images on the blockchain the the actual information what they are but the essence of the art is something visual right or it could be it has to remain divorced from the ownership you when I buy an N of T I it's not necessarily linked to that to that image and I'm wondering if there are any other challenges that you're looking at whether it's legal or or just artists onboarding like what well so before the legal and all these onboarding there's like yes it's right now it's not the image that is store on chain and that's what Kevin was saying like you know in the future we're absolutely looking into you like easier ways or like ways to to do that differently it's an IPS F but we also work with you know it's not like an effort like it's not just me or just narc or just data doing that it's it's really the entire community so we're always watching for you know wallets who actually like show collectibles so we at the time it was trust that was the only one having a like Section four collectible where you could actually see and show your friends with your you know kind of your own little gallery and and yeah oh my god that can be done so much better and there are a lot of people working on that so it's a whole community effort to make that happen and I would say right now on the legal side I mean there's you know you can talk more about that but there's it's very much similar to current you know like trade me like IP rights and and and all this thing so nothing really changes with blockchain cool I just want to say thank you also for for talking about this stuff it's very complex and like yeah there's a lot of it's very stimulating I think the I mean if you look at like traditional paintings there is the original and there are millions of of copies so nothing nothing has changed and the big bet we are we are like working on is where the people accept like digital ownership ownership of digital originals you know because that's a tokenized digital image is a digital original and everything else is our copies and you can you can use them and spread them I would even say as pratham as much as possible but the more people know it the more the higher the value of the of the of the of the token is you know so it never have always been originals and copies and it's still the same except in some of the and all the work we're talking about the the copies are identical to the original they're not they're not digital facsimile is of a physical object for instance one thing that we're doing is encrypting signatures and we're actually the artists are gonna sign their work it's gonna be encrypted and a cryptographic signature but also with like drawn signature so that you get like the experiences you like you're buying an original and there are ways that we there there could be ways to separate like the original digital from the copies but it's true that it should be I mean people's use the word permissionless and like it's permissionless as as long as you know you can share you can you can as you were saying like share it so that people know about it what is not right is when you claim that you did something yet that you did not and it's the same in there in why if I went and I said that that yellow Lambo exactly you know at least now you can prove it it's mine that is not right to to know that you're the creator I mean claiming that you're the creator of something and profiting from that is wrong or profiting without like circumventing the people the creators is wrong the rest but and that is the same for plagiarism or is the same for you know that kind of stuff the rest is it should be exactly the same but people need to to learn that there is value I always say we we live our lives digitally people read books on on screens they watch movies I saw somebody watching Netflix on their phone you know we music everything is on the screen but when it comes to art everyone wants a wall you know and I'm like I understand that but there's also other wonderful ways to display digital art that can be streaming under platforms already that are doing that where you can not only stream art but also change to this place and curated that to to your will so you know digital also gives us a lot of possibilities yeah and I'm gonna I want to say we focused on ours traditional art and there are I think new ways that the artists the audience is going to be able to interact with the art and maybe ownership in 10 years is gonna be a relevance and people are gonna say no I don't want to replicate the existing the existing system and maybe I want to have something different than just the IP rights as we go into open source server technology we might even go to sors with with IP rights for art so let's maybe think creatively about it it might change in the future that we don't need to replicate everything that is in existence just because it's digital and like what kevin was saying platforms that are trying to create digital scarcity to replicate physical scarcity may not be the way to go to create value for the entire community hi I'd just like to say thank you to the panel for a very interesting conversation I think you covered quite a breadth spectrum of things I think it's terribly exciting and it's you know there's a lot of possibilities to expand and kind of grow this field and it's really actually I think it's just the beginning my particular question is I've got friends in my city in Brighton UK where they establish art is a part of some festivals or and galleries and I want to help them to kind of move on to this or maybe explore possible is how they can actually use a you know some of the new systems that are coming across to grow the audience that create more of a connection if you like with the collectors and the people who buy the art already but even expand the audience any advice you might have to offer in terms of actually building a local marketplace that's let's say identified with an area where the local artists and things that happen that people have connections around within their particular space so not necessarily digital but kind of local but it happens to be digital as well I think well in terms of blockchain in every city now there are meetups and you know if people are interested in that we also tend to try to organize to actually meet our community because what is interesting people are drawing with each other for years but they've never really met personally and when they actually meet in person they feel that they know each other like like brothers are like sisters and so it's important to have that side as well I think with the place like Dada would be a great place to you know you can invite your friends and start drawing together and from their movie from the digital movie to the - to the to the other realm but also people can just meet to draw together and it could be like this like this is kind of an exquisite corpse which is like a surrealist game where like you don't you know people draw and when you unfurl it you see like what was created that is you know they could do a number of things or do street art together just people just need to to come together somehow I don't know that is very helpful so so yeah so the education is very important and there a lot of great platform and we know about it like super rare I mentioned up and see like there there are many many things that but we know of it because we come to these conferences right like artists and your friends did not go to Def Con so they haven't seen you know like Pixar and and super rare so I'm working on a project with a few people Korean best over there and it's a different project but like the goal is to really gather the resources because there's so many things out there the oldest method that an artist is not a business person and yes fine like he works with to like different you know sides of his brain but it's like it's also no good resources out there like for artists it's just like if they can't afford going to very expensive art school well the only way is to like you know like find a new tube some videos or like type on Google like how do I make money from my art or how do I you know get tipped or something so and there are all these tools I mean you know it's like from patreon where you can like support an artist you tokenizing it to anything I mean I'm not just talking about tokenizing an artwork but anything that I always want to do like we need more resources and education and and you can ask all these platform including dada like there is a whole hand holding for every artist onboarding but it has to be more you know scaled up we need to take one last question and then we need to stop could there's actually a class here right after us because we're running late thank you hi great panel so I was wondering I have an economics question with physical art there's obviously a way to shift up the demand curve for a piece of art just when it gets more exposure and also a way to shift down the demand curve for a piece of art when it like it's damaged when it's like the window of origin is really dubious it's lots of different ways but with digital art and with crypto art it's like a lot of those ways of downward pressure on the demand curve are gone so what they're I can think of some like maybe if the artworks only relevant around Christmas of one year or something but I'm just wondering if you've found weight like digital art that that kind of gets around this inhibition it's not based on oh you know like story I heard but imagine if it still the same reputation risk for our list so the same way as if an artist is you know like there's a sex scandal and he like you know it was found guilty of some things and it's still a work of art attached to a person so the person still has to manage their reputation for the art to go up you're right there the risk attached to the artwork itself is very limited but attached to the person it is still very relevant I was thinking when when when Fanny was showing us Eve Sussman's work what if some of the holders of these Adams died and they nobody nobody got the transfer of the key so there's an example of supply vanishes no no don't no I'm just saying like you were saying I think there's ways to push it down that happened maybe naturally over time everybody want that artist like you know on wherever on data and that stuff can grow enormously and then you know the art world is fickle and it may be as fickle in the digital realm as well artists get like high curves of everybody wants it and then BOOM nobody wants it anymore so I don't I think in that sense it may mirror it's like human desire collecting is a very you know human thing and it may have the same kind of like ups and downs I have another perspective when you look at things that go viral on the internet and what drives that influencers the crowds things like that I think that's something that you are gonna be able to take into account for digital art so it's not just buying the art it's liking the art how much do you value the likes how do you manage how much do you value the number of shares and the dissemination of the art and I think we should look at other metrics to value an art which is not just a price tag it's how much you know convening power the art has what is the message of the art and how many people does it touch in the planet for example so I think you should look into other metrics and try to think outside the box to create new platforms or new concepts around digital art because really the value the monetary value again is what like it's the concrete thing that we attach to know that we feel that a work of art is priceless like you know Agora Drifter there is millions of dollars but the value that it gives you like we how can you quantify the value that it gives the artist the fact that as a collector you could come into a conversation for instance or Tyrande or in start art decide to play around with the rest of the community I mean and be engaged I like the idea of snark and I have an Adam because precisely because I'm really curious to see what's going to happen to this work of art with all the variables among the collectors so there as you say these are new alternative values when you co own or you co-create or you know there's gonna be a different kind of engagement on that but it's still you know and the digital life allows us to do that you know across the globe in ways that you know it's physical art can can do with these wise words thank you so much to our wonderful panelists and thank you for being here I hope this was interesting to you it was certainly interesting for me to be there thank you [Applause]