There's not anything in the world that is art today that wasn't originally on by the prior art thing: the garyvee audio experience, podcast nation. Let me just say this very simply: this is one of the most selfish podcasts in the history of the garyvee audio experience, because i want to be able to have my grandkids ask me what it was like to know this gentleman, because there is borderline 0.0 percent Chance, in my mind, god willing he stays healthy, um that that he doesn't become one of the most profound, most important artists of this generation, and it is my incredible honor to have videnza tyler on the show tyler. How are you oh gary, i'm doing great, i mean uh what an intro to the show uh, i don't know. I mean you're really setting a high bar there for me uh, but uh, i'm sandbagging, yeah yeah, maybe lower those expectations, just a tiny bit uh but uh.

No, i'm i'm super excited uh uh. It's it's a real pleasure to get to talk to you here today. So, let's, let's really go into nft art like that's the punchline of this most definitely you know. Obviously i have a lot of entrepreneurs, but i really really want to go into the history of you and this moment yeah.

You know for for people that see the title and click it. You know that are really deep in our nft world. I'm gon na i'm gon na say it so you don't have to because i know you're a humble kid like you know it's very difficult for me to think of 10 artists that have more of an opportunity to be. You know truly one of the names that people talk about in 30, 60.

90 years. I don't think there's any confusion for anybody paying attention that we're in this moment right now, where the four fathers and mothers, where the where the you know i read boom a couple. Some i don't read books and i read temporary art a couple five summers ago. Four summers ago, three summers ago, i can't remember now, but mainly because i wanted more insight to what i saw happening in the sports card world.

Okay, i can't believe what happened, because only a couple years later nft world happens and all and me mapped me not only reading that book, but googling my ass off about going deeper on the little bit. I already knew about pollock or warhol yeah yeah. You know yeah my uh, my friend kevin rose, who i know is a big fan of your work right uh and i did a podcast yesterday, we recorded, which will be coming out in a couple days. I don't know the timing, you can see this and he told me.

I had not known this one. I like this kind of stuff that, when canvas first hit the scene that people in the art world said that wasn't real art, because real art had to be on a wall, yeah yeah, yeah canvas could be damaged, and this and that right it was all frescoes And church walls before that right, correct, so humans continue to make the same mistake. This is an art. This is art and then that becomes the art.

That's right, so i kind of uh i kind of honestly. I'm surprised, like i thought, we'd seen that play out. So many times that uh more people would would kind of uh be looking for that same thing to happen again, and it seems like uh nfts are just like the latest incantation of that uh humans are incredibly good at seeing the world through their selfish frame or The frame of their own insecurity, yeah, not from the lens of history, most definitely most definitely yeah yeah so and the nfts are it's just it's a neutral technological platform on its own um. It's it's a sister system of record keeping um.

There is a particular culture. That's associated with it right now, but uh yeah, to say in any way that uh real art can't be uh published as an nft sold as an nft. You know design as a as an nft in mind. Uh seems pretty preposterous from where i'm sitting at me.

As well, my friend and when people listen to this podcast in 39 years, they'll be like wow. They do so to that point, let's get into it. Yeah uh! I you know what i'm really excited about is you're really one of those icons in my mind. So i think a lot of people are about to be inspired to start uh.

Others are gon na, be inspired to consider um and most and others will be inspired to collect your work or people like yourself. So, let's start with this: how the hell did you get to the place in your opinion using using candor? Not just don't be overly humble. Why are you, how did you get to a point where you're sitting on my podcast yeah community and i feel compelled to say these things about you? Not because i'm being nice, because i want to be historically correct, right right, how'd we get here uh, you know. I i asked myself that um a fair amount, but uh - i i think you know, i think the most important uh aspect by far is just the artwork itself.

So you know, most of my time has been spent um working on my artwork um refining. That learning about other artists trying trying to spend as much time as possible developing my work and making it as good as possible, and you know um. I did that, for you know a decade decade and a half before nfts were even something that i was looking at so um tyler that artwork was physical or that artwork was 100 digital yeah. So i started out in in the physical realm, so i started out with traditional, drawing and painting and kind of uh paid, my dues so to speak.

Learning all the kind of traditional backgrounds and uh graphic design and um uh yeah about 20 2014 is whenever i first started working digitally and that's when i started working with generative art with algorithmic cards. So this is uh. You know what i what i do today, which is, i write uh programs that generate artwork and um so about about 2014. I started experimenting with that and i got super hooked on it.

I i felt like it was much more interesting and much more relevant to our to our time uh and to me personally, and so that's really what i focused on since 2014. uh. I was 25. I think uh approximately.

What year was i born 1987.? So wait. Uh you're gon na make me do math live on air uh, yeah uh, something close to that i'll. Save you time. 27.

27. Okay, there you go! Thank you, yeah um, so spoken like a true artist by the way um uh talk to like take me further back you're born war, and what kind were you are we drawing at five years old and into it? Give me that yeah sure yeah? I grew up in central texas, so close close to austin, basically suburbs around austin i've pretty much lived here, my entire life and yeah growing up. I always liked making artwork. I was not uh some some kind of prodigy kid right, so i was good but uh.

I was not picasso making. You know incredible paintings at the age of seven um, but i was fortunate that uh, my parents, you know uh got me into uh painting lessons after school, where i was working with you know. Um are either of your parents into art, not really my dad's a doctor and my mom uh. Well, she um.

You know she raised us, my my siblings and i and uh she she did uh do some. Some really amazing quilting, which i think has had, has a stylistic influence on me, but uh, no, not not particularly creative, and they definitely didn't know about like the art, world and uh. So i had, i had a pretty average kind of um education along those lines, but uh yeah, i started you know getting books of like van gogh paintings and things like that, and it just really really resonated with me and say again: siblings, uh yeah. I have older brother who, who was kind of a self-taught hacker and that's kind of how i got into programming and uh.

My my younger sister has uh studied engineering um and has had kind of an interesting life, but not not really artistic either so um. Just me keep going, you start, you know you're into painting after school yeah yeah, i started doing things like copying: uh van gogh paintings trying to like recreate them. Um actually did some some pretty good versions of that. Those that's taught me quite a bit.

Yeah did a lot of this kind of um semi-formal, uh, painting, training and uh when it when it came time for uh college. I i wanted to go to art school, but uh. My dad was a little more pragmatic. He wasn't a super huge fan of that.

For kind of obvious reasons - and he encouraged me to go for computer science instead, which i had been doing - computer science at high school and and my brother was kind of doing that. So it made sense to me to do that as a career and it was interesting um. So that's that's what i studied was uh computer science at the university of texas at austin and yeah start started working as like a a programmer right out of school, but art was what i was always working on in my spare time and it's always what i Was thinking about long term and what i felt uh kind of had the most interesting challenges, long term for me, something i wouldn't get bored with and something that felt felt a little bit more personal and meaningful and uh. So, that's that's really why i've been pursuing art.

I think i love that so this is so cliche and obvious how we got here now based on that yeah, but when, when do the gears really get going you started talking about, i want to go back to it. Yeah make sense, you're programming, you're falling in love with art, literally like when i first heard about generative star stuff um. You know 12, 14. 15 months ago i was like literally the person that i thought was going to most win in.

That was literally the story that you just told of your life. Yeah, that's going to be for the kids that are nerds with tech. They can do it yeah they code, but they have an artistic streak. Oh, like i always love when the technology comes along.

That's made for a certain person when that didn't exist. Before look at your life, you were jekyll and hyde that you know you know bruce wayne batman. You had to live like these different lives because they didn't come together. All of a sudden, the blockchain is at the right time at the right moment.

Generative art movement happens and you're friends. Now yeah yeah, exactly i i felt like um. I was just teed up perfectly for everything that happened with nfts in in 2021, especially you know: art blocks, um platform for uh for creating generative artwork on the blockchain right. So the basic ideas you you write, the generative script itself, uh to the blockchain, and then you generate nfts uh from that script directly and you can sort of prove that the work that's coming uh into the hands of the collector is direct output from that script And so it's a really uh powerful way, uh to to create generative artwork, and it creates a really uh, interesting artistic challenge as well like this is uh somewhat different from the type of generative work that i and other generative artists were making prior to nft.

So it's actually really enabled a new type of artwork and i think the artists that have done well were ones that um, maybe were, were open-minded and had uh that that kind of that kind of work ready to go um as soon as uh. You know these technologies around the blockchain started to develop, um and, and then it just as you saw it, it took off like crazy in 2021, it was just like uh. You know the curve went straight up uh at a certain point and uh yeah. I feel i feel really fortunate that i already kind of had my together at that point, being empathetic to the crowd and and you're saying some things that i can follow along because i've been deep in this last year and a half.

But you know knowing that. Most haven't talk us through. We missed a pardon, i'm gon na go to it now to connect on where you just went so now, you're doing physical you're, jekyll and hiding it blah blah blah, and then you said 14 is when you started going digital right. Why? How and exactly what were you making yeah? Okay, so uh 2014 uh i've just been making traditional work.

I've been doing a lot of um. You know a lot of studies, a lot of like figure, drawing um kind of kind of getting all the basics. Uh really solid, and i felt like my art was uh good, but it was very generic, like it was very generically good. It wasn't really unique to me and uh some of the advice that i heard for artists that that resonated with me was that you really have to make it personal.

You have to make the kind of work that only you could make you have to involve. You know whatever special elements of your life, you can, you can bring to the table. Those are going to make your artwork more personal, and i highly recommend this advice for for every artist. But for me that was programming like that was such a big part of my life and, and it influenced the way that i i really thought about things, so i knew i had to involve programming in the artwork um.

It wasn't exactly obvious how to do that. I had quite a few failed attempts of like mixing math into hand-drawn things, but eventually i had the idea of you know. Uh can i just write a program that generates a painting and um. I kind of took the tools, software tools that i had uh cobbled something together and uh.

What were the software tools you had uh? This was a matplotlib which is like a scientific uh, charting uh library. You normally use it to draw like graphs but uh. You can you can kind of finagle it into making artwork yeah exactly so it's kind of a hacky approach. Uh.

I didn't know that there were better tools for it at the time, but what were the better tools for it at the time yeah so processing? This is something that casey reese and ben frye put together and and um. It's really uh enabled enabled a whole generation of uh of generative artists to work um, so generous, adore those guys. Oh absolutely they're, they're, legendary, um, casey's been so meaningful and so influential for the space, probably the most important, generative artist. Uh.

To date, i would say, is casey reese and uh and ben fry's still maintaining processing. So you know uh huge uh props to to them for doing that, um and that that's a big, that's a big reason why generative art is also having this moment um. You know that these people uh put so much time and love into into creating these tools that enabled a whole a generation of of artists. You know especially programmers uh to to to be artists and to express themselves and um.

I think uh yeah. I think it just it really resonates with people right now, because uh programming is so central to our lives right now like even if you're, not a a programmer, you probably spend at least eight hours a day in front of a screen interacting with software right. These are things that uh programmers have constructed and so kind of the those basic tools of code are what our whole environment is is being built with today. So i think it's really really important.

That artwork is also built with those same things and i think that'll just help to you know kind of humanize. Our digital environments help us to to have a a better and more enjoyable uh relationship with software. If it's not just all like written by, you know amazon and facebook right like i want artists to be able to fully utilize those same tools, and i think that's what's uh really important uh about generative, artwork and other art forms that they work directly with with Programming and code, you think the historical artwork felt that coding is too nerdy and two ones and zeros and two tech bro, and this and big time victim, yeah, so general of art started in the in the 1960s and man it got uh. They went through some hard time, like uh, really bad critical rap people were on it left and right.

I, i think, uh the reaction there was that they felt, like some element of humanity, was lost by creating yeah. It's easy to see like maybe why they they felt that, but at this point that feels like a really naive, um assumption right. I would argue that 95 of the people listening to this podcast right now, who are incredibly curious and open-minded and entrepreneurial, because my podcast, which is like i just know that community even for them. I think that they can easily feel the chemicals in their body of why.

Well that's kind of weird like weird, like write code hit enter and then there's art like that feels i'm empathetic to that. I just don't agree: yeah yeah yeah. I think it's, i think, um. I think it takes a mental uh shift.

A little bit right, like computers, are the most powerful and important tools we've ever come up with um and and they totally revolutionize everything and, and they enable uh. Just so much more that we haven't been able to do before and and and that same thing applies to artwork like it would be just such a waste if we didn't create the best artwork, we could, by by fully utilizing computers as well they're just a tool In the in the hands of the right artist, they can make incredibly beautiful things and i think right, it's really no different than paint versus a pencil like. Why is painting better than a sketch or vice versa? It's not it's not yeah. It's not it's not.

I mean this has been my biggest problem with the art conversation. The hypocrisy is disgusting, like you will literally watch someone talk about our eye of the beholder they'll talk about why they love something, and then somebody brings something completely different like that's. That's not art. I'm like what the don't you understand that your thing was on too there's, not anything in the world that is art today that wasn't originally on by the prior art thing.

Absolutely every single artistic movement, every new artistic technology, like uh cameras, right cameras, came out. Uh people didn't think you could make real art with cameras it took like decades for for that to be accepted, and now we don't even think twice about that being a possibility right, so um yeah. I think i think people will feel exactly that. The same way about uh, generative, art and uh, ten years, you're still a young guy, very, very young and i'm listening to you talk and my observation is the following.

I started with this, and now it's you're actually in those shoes do you have a, and this is where i'm going to need. You to you know like answer it actually and don't be too humble. Do you actually, you know you've got some momentum. Obviously you're like hey, i got a lot more work to do.

I respect all that sure, but even where you're at in the space now and you - and i can tell you, know the timing of it, do you think, like oh weird, i'm going to be 80 and 20 year old kids are going to be like tell me What you like in the old like like do you have a sense that you're going down that path, yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah, i think so i mean, i think i think here's probably what's going to play out is like the kids that uh that are growing Up seeing all this stuff uh being made right, even just the people that are teenagers right now, watching this going on they're going to absolutely uh dunk on my work in like no time right, like i'm, going to be the old old fashioned dude before no time. That's right from a technology advancement, standpoint they're going to dunk on it, but let me give you an actual dunk on it: okay, lebron james lebron james would dominate oscar robinson in basketball, yeah yeah because of the evolution of the human right and the queen. But i promise you, when lebron james, through the last 20 years, crossed paths with the big o yeah the ring of the legendary status of it and that's what's cool about the game? Yeah! Absolutely! That's! Right! The six-year-old today that will listen to this in seven years. Yeah that will crush you yeah 18 years from like a technical and did it right.

She will still always say that you like that's. What's so cool yeah yeah, exactly that's! That's how i feel about um all the predecessors right so like people like uh, casey, reese and and all the traditional painters that um have have massively massively influenced me. I know i've been caught on this. I'm sorry to interrupt.

I've been hot on this. I like to give out roses more often, you've already done a little bit of it just rattle off some names that you think deserve some googling from the people listening right now, and and do they have nfts for people to go, discover and who do you think's, Underrated as a pioneer that has nfts that people, because people love a good little alpha that might be nice for the community yeah, okay, okay uh, i mean the the alpha one person that just uh came to mind is uh. This artist, holger lipman who's, uh he's a german artist and he was making generative work uh before i was. He was one of the people that i saw um uh.

That really inspired me. I think he has a a great sense for for color and and for form and rhythm and uh, so he was making really beautiful, generative artwork that that i saw when i was first getting started and he talked about that how's that spelled holger littmann, uh h-o-l-g-e-r And then lipman is, i think, uh l-i-p-p-m-a-n-n and uh. He just put out a hundred nfts with uh bright moments in uh. Their berlin show that's going on right now, um.

I think he deserves a lot more uh recognition, um other other contemporary artists that are doing fantastic work. Let's see off the top of my head, uh, let's see sophia crespo is doing really amazing. Uh can work that i think, is just a super high quality who there's a bunch of uh there's a bunch of generative artists that uh, i think, are already uh uh. You know making amazing work: uh, dimitri cherniak and matt delaurier and uh chettle, golid and uh.

I'm gon na forget names ben kovach. These are all people from the generative arts team that i've been watching work for you know five years or more at this point and they've been consistently making amazing work, and so i think that that kind of uh you want that type of track record. You want to see that the artist has been serious for for a long time. I think that's a really helpful indicator.

You know i've, really, that's how you don't get rugged right. Yeah! That's right like i, as you could tell by my background, love collecting things. So i'm a little more chochkas collectibles comic book sports cards. So, as you can imagine, the pfp thing really works for me right yeah.

So for me, while everyone's chasing the 2021 2022 projects i want to buy, plasma bears like i want to buy. You know mooncat. I want to buy, like you know, strikers like i like the crypto skulls like anything pre-2021. It was maybe 2020 was like in between year but like for me.

If i find 2019 1817 ethereum projects, i get excited yeah, yeah, um, yeah, there's not a there's, not a ton of uh super early uh generative work, i mean uh, auto glyphs are kind of the the classic example, but those things are already crazy, expensive um. You know if you want to go: og uh, the original some of the earliest generative art from late 1960s. Early 1970s is still massively massively underpriced. In my mind, um, you can get amazing work for 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars um.

This is legendary. Tell me about that. Is that uh? Is that an nft, or is that just digital art? That's just uh in in most cases, this is work that uh was designed digitally but then plotted onto paper, so they didn't even have uh normal printers at that point. In time and these artists were working with plotters, which were kind of like a simple 2d robot, you stick a pen in it and you give it instructions for something to draw.

This is how a lot of generative artists started back in the day. You can get these plotter drawings still for very reasonable prices and um. All those artists had a huge uh influence on myself and many of the other generative artists that are working today and tyler. Those are those are framed, framed like on paper, yeah, yeah, yeah and and where does one find that ebay or is that more yeah? It's more, it's harder there, you, you kind of have to like uh talk to the galleries and and those types of places.

So i wish that it was as simple as nfts. That's that's. That's part of. I think why nfts uh have such a big price difference with some of this traditional work.

Is it just it's such a better marketplace like you can see everything that's out there. You can tell exactly what everybody else is paying, and you know how much they bought it for who owns what, and so it's just so much more transparent, and i think it just makes for a much healthier marketplace versus the traditional art world, where things are kind Of locked up and hidden away and sometimes uh, they only sell to specific people you they won't just sell to any dude who walks in the door with a you know a bag of money right, so um yeah. I think i think uh. I wish the traditional art world was as easy to collect as nfts um.

Not yet, though, not yet, i think they'll, i think they'll figure it out over time now right, because what you're alluding to is what i'm most excited about in this whole space, which is the nftization of physical items that sit in temperature-controlled fireproof houses and now i'm Creating an nft that represents the physical and, if i want the physical in my apartment, i burn the nft and get it otherwise. It just keeps trading correct. Yeah, i mean uh debatable about the burn. The nft part.

I think i think, we'll see multiple different arrangements of how the nft and the physical are are related right, like whether they're kind of like legally bound to be together whether they're allowed to to to kind of be separate whether you have to pick one or the Other right, like there's, uh the damian hurst uh project, that's really interesting called currency, so that was that was on launch where you made the decision. Where is what i'm talking about? I'm sorry, actually yeah, so so uh damian hurst uh, the richest artist in the world. Uh right now, uh last year came out with currency right. He made whatever it is three thousand of his dot paintings they're like this big and uh, so he sold all the nfts and uh.

I think this summer, in, like a one-year anniversary, uh everybody that holds the nft, has to pick. Do i want the nft or do i want the painting right and it's really really fascinating, to see what happens, because you're literally have the option to have a painting from like uh the most successful living artist, and i think i think most people are gon na Pick the nft over the painting - that's my guess and that'll be a really groundbreaking moment to to really demonstrate um. I think the seriousness of this, this new market um, so yeah fascinating project by damien, hurst yeah. I totally agree.

I think it's one of the more interesting things going on in this space. Um to me: it's the reverse because he launched it that way. Everybody knew from day one you were gon na, have a one year to make a decision burn or keep right to me. What i'm talking about is my michael jordan rookie card when i, when i sh whatever company or companies, you see where i'm going a little bit post game, my michael jordan rookie card or, for example, i'm like googling as you're talking like.

I definitely want to buy some original 60s generally out because it's just cool when i have that if one day in 15 years i want to send that into a company that creates an nft that represents that exact thing: yeah yeah, then then i hold the nft. Then i could actually trade it like if my friend mike buys it he might buy it because he thinks i undersold it yeah, but he doesn't have to take the physical he may continue to want to trade on it. Yeah yeah yeah, back to your thing on. I wish it was as easy to collect well, it can be if a comp, if companies and i believe the future ebay will be this or ebay.

Has this, i believe much like data centers for amazon cloud services and all you know: what's happened in your lifetime. Yeah, because you know a little bit about enough about tech to know what i'm saying, i actually think we're in the precipitous of having ungodly amounts of warehouses built around the world fireproof and temperature controlled to take on physical items to issue nfts that represent that physical Item they're traded, the sixth fire gal that gets the vase, actually wants it in their home. Thus they want to call the nft they have to burn it. So it goes off the blockchain to represent where i'm going yeah and now it's the vase and has it and if she seven years later, wants to put it back up.

She resends it. A new nft is rep and so they're tied together see what like a motorcycle yeah. I think yeah, no, i think you're, i think you're right, i think um uh. I think something along those lines could could could really really happen and one interesting element that will probably support this is uh.

You know what's awfully nice about, nfts is it. It makes it so much easier to show your collection off to other people right so normally, like you know, i've got like uh painting on my wall right. The only people that get to see this are people that physically come to my home uh. When you have this uh digital work, when you have something that's uh, especially in an nft there's so much uh, tooling, and platforms to share that work with other people like people are, are enjoying other people's uh collections so much more than before with nfts, because it's So much easier to show off your collection, so i think a lot of physical work will be in a tised and uh and shown in, like you know, virtual galleries, uh, just because it's so much easier to to for other people to enjoy that and uh.

You know a few a few people here and there will be able to see the physical work but really uh. You know, 99 of people are going to be seeing the work on the internet or virtual reality or whatever. So it makes more sense to have the work well documented and well um. You know uh shown in that space uh to me, so talk about the explosion of fidenza a have the name come up b, your entire nft trajectory.

Like i love these stories, i have a lot of collectors and i think people will enjoy like oh you put it out and it was a dollar. And now it's like oh give me that okay, okay uh i'll, try to stick to the facts here. Okay, so early 2021, i done nothing with with nfts and uh everybody i know starts dming me saying you got to get into nfts like this is this? Is the jam uh this one, and this is not working every march january yeah exactly like january february, yeah, uh and so uh end of february? I see i apologize real quick. I apologize because this is important context.

The digital generative art you were making up to that point. I was selling that as like unique prints uh rather than nfts yeah prints. So it would do the thing and you would print it out and sell it yeah exactly exactly and for everyone's contacts. How much would those be uh? You know those were selling between uh at that time, like 500 and uh, maybe 2500, something like that yeah a piece one of ones or yeah.

I was doing unique, prints, um, so regenerative art. You know i can generate multiple images. That's pretty successful yeah for an artist. I was able to support myself uh full time at that point, not not a luxurious lifestyle or whatever, but uh.

I was able to eke it out at that point and it had taken me years and years of work and building up my my collector base in order to be able to how much, how much were your original pieces on print going for um uh, you mean, Like whenever i first started the first prince i ever sold yeah yeah, they were like uh like 50 or 100 bucks, or something like that so and where are those and who's got those? And can you send them my yeah? I have records of it um honestly. I probably need to like email some of those people and tell them to like be careful with their prints. Yeah we'll talk, offline, video, yeah, all right, okay, okay, 2021., uh i've been selling these prints right. Uh people are telling me got ta get into nfts.

I see um one of my favorite artists, cheddar gola, do this. This project called archetype on art blocks, and i see the dimitri trainiac has also done ringers on art blocks, and these are amazing projects and it just i can just tell right away. I need to do this. This is this is like perfect for my work right.

You see two other people that you would say you aspire to be like you feel like like they're kinship they're, your people they did it. I mean ringers is such a beautiful project and you're like let's go absolutely yeah so like uh. That evening, i sent in an email to eric and jeff at art, blocks and uh and had you known, snow fro already, no, i had not known snow fro. Apparently he had been following my work, but i didn't know who he was and uh.

This was the first i'd heard of art blocks, and so i sent this email and uh. I was like hey. I have this project uh, you know it looks. It looks kind of like this, i you know uh, can i get in the queue to to be an art blocks project i'm still going to work on it, some, but here's what i've got right now and uh.

He emailed me back and he was like you can't believe you know how excited i was to to read your email like. Let's do this, so i still had to wait in line. It was like three months until uh fidenza would launch, but i was i was working every day, just uh really improving it polishing it doing everything that i could for it and so fedenza initially sold. So it's 999 iterations 999 uh unique nfts from the same algorithm.

So they're related, but each one is different and uh. The initial sales price was like .17 eth, i think um. So it was like something like 400, maybe 450. You can't remember um and uh.

So this this was like um going to be by far like the biggest project i had ever done, just just with those numbers, and that was really gon na. You know, in my mind, help me get set up as an artist working full time have a little more financial security um, so everything sold out in like uh 20 minutes, something like that and uh. And then people started getting uh. I think really excited about the work they started to dig in, and one of the cool things about fidenza is just.

It has a lot of variety and a lot of really interesting, uh corners and outliers to the algorithm. So as people started to look more and more at the output, i think they really started to to understand uh how generative r could work this way and and and really get a feel for the algorithm and so the price just uh. It just started going up and up and then it you know it was like at some point. It was like doubling every week, um and i mean the numbers got absolutely crazy.

They got crazy there. There was one point where um the you know the floor was like uh. I don't know like almost like 200 eth and uh. I remember like calculating the valuation and it was like all of fidenza the valuation.

The floor evaluation was like a billion dollars for the whole algorithm and uh. I was like okay. I know this is like that. You know seven eight months ago was that making you uncomfortable when they were.

You know i remember three. Thirteen for a thousand a theory right - that's right, yeah number, three, one: three! So a thousand each to uh, uh, punk, six, five, two nine hope i got those numbers in the right order: um and uh yeah i mean it was a. It was a total trip, like i felt like i was like you know, alice in wonderland kind of experience every day. Uh things were happening, they were just blowing my mind and, of course it felt great, but it's also you know, any sort of change is uncomfortable right, even if it's like positive change, and so i could feel that things were like uh totally shifting under my feet Did you feel pressure? Do you like? Is there a part of you that likes that we're in the 40 to 60 range right now um? Do you feel like a hair, more comfortable, yeah it it? It feels more sane.

It feels like it has more basis. In reality, like in relation to everything else, there's less mania going on right now. You know there was definitely a moment. Yeah yeah.

I think it's a healthier. I want that, like uh, you know plateau plateau of productivity and the hype cycle, whatever. I think that's what it's called uh. That's where i want to be.

I i want people to be making rational, healthy decisions about what to collect, not just uh fomoing into projects. You know, um, there were people buying. There were people buying your project that knew nothing about it. I was getting picked by people they're like should i buy a fidenza, i'm like and literally every time.

The first thing i would reply is: what do you know about it right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's great advice like uh. Don't just don't just like throw your money at a random project like uh, you know when i collect i collect uh. I collect artists who i know have been creating high quality work and are like committed to developing themselves as artists.

Um and tyler, do you feel pressure to justify how expensive this is like? Are you like this is awesome to like, like you know, just getting a sense of you right, we're going deeper and chopping it up like? Is there a part of you? That's like okay um, i you know this is amazing. This is right. I can't believe i can tell my parents. Somebody spent three million dollars on a piece of my art right, like my brother and sister, like what the like, oh friends, family, i'm sure, there's all these like fun stuff, but there has to be nights.

I mean i feel it with the friends yeah. I'm out here spewing that i'm going to build wall be walt disney and i'm like you know, i really believe it. I fully expect to do it, i'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it right, but occasionally in the shower, brushing my teeth. Yeah.

All right like this is like a real like it's, not even the walt disney i'm gon na build disney. I actually fully believe that it's the day in the day out that, like ping, you know my the v friends bought ping. Somebody - and it says somebody just spent 180 000 on this puffin right and i drew and i'm like man, i really have you know my brain goes immediately to i'm gon na kill it for that puffing yeah. Do you yeah? I mean i, i feel the pressure from like uh the perspective of i want to.

I want to live up to uh. I guess expectations in a certain way. Right like i want. I want to make the best artwork that i can at this point it's really helped me to raise the bar for the type of work that uh i'll produce.

Now you know i take take it very seriously um, but on the other uh hands. I i know that i have to divorce myself from the market and that the market doesn't uh doesn't reflect like the quality of the work right, like fidenza sold at one value. At one time they sold for a different value at a different time, and now they sell it another value and it's the exact same work um. So clearly, there's like some disconnect between the market and the quality of work right, and i think, as well as the artist like to let yourself sleep at night, just like uh, you got to be more hands off from that.

That's what i tell every founder of every pfp project, i'm like if you listen to your discord and you care about the floor price, your data, reliable, yeah yeah, most definitely most. Definitely like. That's, not that's not where your head should be at as the artist like. That's, that's not how you create good work.

That's not how you do your best work. That's not how you do the best um make the best choices for your collectors either. You know, i think you have to uh think long term and um and and and really make uh ethical and intelligent decisions about what you're doing you're here to that, are you working on more stuff? Now, oh god am i working first yeah the most stuff. I've ever worked on at once: um lots of cool projects, and will these projects have different names like you know, people refer to you as vadenza now yeah yeah.

Are you gon na keep that as your kind of monarchy, or you know, that's just one project and uh yeah? You asked me to explain the name and i i accidentally glossed over, that i was trying to pick a name for the for the work and uh. Sometimes i like to pick things that don't have a real, strong inherent meaning, and so sometimes i use town names, oftentimes small texas town names. I was looking around for one in texas that fit and nothing quite did so. I went in google maps over to italy and i was kind of panning around and this little town, 25 000 people called vadenza just stood out to me as a cool name.

I was like wow, okay, i'm going to call this project for denzel. So that's what that one was, but every work every algorithm gets. Uh gets a new name and uh before before i die, i'm making this promise to myself before i die. Hopefully, in 55 years i i am going to buy a fidenza while i'm infidenza yeah yeah.

You know uh the the mayor, the mayor, fidenza dm to me on twitter, so i can. I can help you set that up yeah yeah yeah. Where is it it's like? It's like northern italy. It's like three hours, north of rome.

It's it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's like there's, literally not that much. So what you literally are google mapping yeah you're, looking at names, you, like the name you zoom in you, make sure that you kind of get a little like vibe for it. Yeah, that's funny: yeah cool yeah yeah.

I mean it's, it's not like a special town. You know it's just some town uh. You know art art, really excites me. I i've re.

This has been such a profound moment in my life. You know i had so much more of it in me than i ever showed the world right, but if you really peeled the onion it was there i'll give you an example. I don't know what about you doing. Google map vedenza work made me just think about.

I literally was talking to somebody just now earlier this morning and realized. I love optimism more than anything yeah which led me to say wait a minute. I have not done enough character development around the optimistic otter and be friends, yeah and, like literally like, have been for like the last two hours, while i'm doing this podcast and thinking about my meetings and thinking about what i have to do, there's like three percent Of my brain that is working right now that i can feel that is ideating on how i have to make the optimistic otter a more important character in defense from a creative artistic lens, yeah yeah. What is what is the otter going to do who's the otters? It's going to be, am i going to make it a cartoon? Do i make that a video game, like i love creation yeah by the way? How does it feel for you to to be an artist now? Do you think of yourself as an artist? You know i used to always think of entrepreneurship as art like i, i really think being an entrepreneur is incredibly artistic, yeah, yeah you're, a poor, bred entrepreneur.

You adore artists, because you know your your your creativity, your lack of fear if you're pure, like the problem with entrepreneurship, is there's money right. What's also about art is like starving artists is romantic and respected the tough part of being an artistic entrepreneur is the money part clouds it and it can look dark, but it's much a pure game of art, yeah yeah, the motivation for the person running it. If they're doing it well, they almost certainly don't just care about the money right like i think, or they barely care about the money right, like that's just a weird place where it's it's outside collateral noise to the process: yeah yeah, i'm aware of it, i'm grateful For it, it's not like i'm, not demonizing it like. I love it for people.

For me, it's all about freedom, which i don't think is just predicated about money right uh, but of course, money is one of the pillars of freedom. Depending on how one looks at the world i just like, being artistic, yeah, yeah and - and it seems like you're thinking deeply about uh, at least the motivations for what you're doing right like optimistic otter right like uh, i love that we need more optimism. Why? Why, when i like, really i've been saying it, but only a few people are paying attention: they: okay, a million; that's a lot less than 8 billion when the world realizes what i'm actually doing with this project. I'm very excited about the positivity and practicality that i'm going to bring into the world because of it yeah yeah, i mean, i think, that's super important.

I think that's super important um i've got ta run to something ironically in befriend's land. I'm starting to cut surprises. Part two but you're fantastic, i'm cheering for you heavy and uh. If i could ever be helped, please let me thank you so much gary yeah.

Likewise, likewise uh, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks brother take care. You too.