Artz Friday w/ Mikey de la Crème

Recorded: May 2, 2025 Duration: 1:23:15
Space Recording

Short Summary

In a vibrant discussion on Artsy Friday, Mikey De La Creme shared insights into his artistic journey, the impact of AI on creativity, and the importance of community collaboration in the NFT space. The conversation highlighted emerging trends in crypto art, the financial challenges artists face, and the ongoing growth of the Tezos ecosystem.

Full Transcription

Thank you. What's going on, everybody?
We're just getting things fired up.
We're going to get Kryptonio up here.
We have some amazing songs for you this week and an amazing guest coming up today.
Getting things fired up for another Artsy Friday.
Thank you for being here.
Make sure to share the room.
To get things started, let's go ahead and rock this song that I discovered for the first time personally by Support J. Byrne and Cliche Draws.
This is called OK Pepe. Take it away when you're ready, Kryptonio.
Rain or shine, it's all good. It just takes time. It'll be okay. It'll be alright. Ain't that right?
Hey, tell him, Pepe. The sun is shining so it'll be okay
The sun ain't shining so it'll be okay The sun ain't shining but it'll be okay
Always vibing so it'll be okay When I'm rhyming I know that it'll be okay
The sun is shining so it'll be okay The sun ain't shining but it'll be okay. Always vibing, so it'll be okay.
I'm in the prime and I know that it'll be okay. Oh Again, that was support J burn and visuals by cliche draws.
We posted that to the comments of the tweet
where we're sharing the spaces and at the top here,
definitely as always, best to go listen to it on headphones
and enjoy the full experience on object.
Thank you guys so much for coming to another Artsy Friday.
Today, we have Mikey De La Creme here.
Really, really excited to chat with you.
I've seen you do some amazing things within the space.
I've been part of many communities, but we've never really had a one-on-one chat. How are you today?
I'm good, man. How are you doing? You hear me all right?
I can hear you just fine.
Appreciate you coming up today.
Thank you for having me, man. Appreciate it.
If you want, you can go ahead and just do a basic introduction in your own style your pace
all right i'll try and keep it short um so uh yeah trying to think where to even start
i was just actually looking um i was actually just looking at some stats on NFT Biker to see when my first collect was on Tezos.
So I'm coming up on my fourth year now with collecting art.
That's amazing.
And then in November, that'll mark four years of me actually uh like putting my stuff
out there as an artist too so yeah a lot of the anniversary one was your genesis yeah i came you
came in swinging with that one i like yeah okay yeah that's that was kind of like uh so if you
guys don't know what that is it's um basically there's like a famous uh photograph um
from like the from england back in the day when like eric clapton first came out and uh people
were just spray painting like clapton is god like all over london and stuff and uh someone took a
picture of like a dog urinating right underneath the spray paint and like uh at that time i think uh like i still don't
understand what the hell uh you're right uh but that dude puck is like i don't know if that dude's
a legit artist or you know a really complex scam artist um jury's still out there but like um
i just didn't like the way people were like agile like just idolizing this
dude and i was just like i don't know something just felt sketchy about that whole scene so like
it's almost like a a way to kind of rebel against what was happening yeah so yeah that's what that
whole i put uh i just repurposed it and then analyze it in my own way it's a very very um valid use of of the space
in nfts you know minting your frustrations and um that's a lot a lot of artists you know we we
have our own little rebellions through our art oh totally man and like that i'm glad you mentioned
that because like all right let me yeah i'll start at the beginning. So like,
obviously that first piece was like, I made that by hand.
And just like with editing and stuff like that.
I never actually got into playing around with like AI assisted arts,
like tools or anything until I think midney had been out for at least a year
um before i really really got into it um like i dabbled in it and like at first when like when i
started seeing people mint um like the first artworks i saw minted using like mid-journey um one of the
first projects i saw was like rodness did like a like a big pfb like statue project it was like
vaporwave kind of inspired and it was i believe the first project you know done using mid journey, uh, throughout the process. Um, like that was the, I think the first time I actually bought something that was
like, uh, that used AI in it. Um,
besides like some like early game stuff that people had already been making.
But, um, yeah, basically I kind of sat out.
I didn't know what to make of like from like a collector's standpoint.
I didn't I wasn't sure about the stuff at first.
There was a shift shifting phase where we were all kind of figuring out.
Yeah, no one do. You know, some people embraced it immediately.
There's some people that still will not touch it to the day.
Right. I'm one of the ones that went pretty headfirst and just instantly saw how it could be another tool towards the things that I wanted to create and just in general as somebody that believes
that anybody should be an artist that they want to be and like put you know just putting in the
effort and the time and the diligence you can be an artist and uh manifest manifest what your
mind's eye sees as I say in one of my songs yeah but you get it exactly but what i find really
fascinating looking through your collection is uh i relate into the fact that the first half of
your collection is very creatively raw mixed media experimentation very obviously pre-ai
yeah and then all of a sudden there's this shift where your ideas are still coming from the
same mind but way more clean and like artsy if you will you know i don't know how to put it but
like there's no you put it great that you you got perfect man because like i had limitations you know
i mean like i didn't grow up as making digital art.
I didn't even consider digital art.
It wasn't part of my life until I discovered Tezos and NFTs.
I mean, yeah.
My main things growing up, obviously, were music.
You can tell that from the art uh but like i could like i was limited in my technical abilities and it was super frustrating
because like i had really great concepts and like i didn't even have like other like bigger
artists in the space like tell me like your your your concepts are up there with like anybody else's, but, um, you know, I just didn't have the technical skills to see them through.
But like, like you said, um, you know, AI really opened up a lot of doors for people like me.
Um, I mean, I pretty much consider, consider myself like a frustrated artist my entire life um i just
never had an outlet um like i can like i mean i i can play guitar i tell myself how to play guitar
you know i just never like i've been in bands and stuff like that but
i've performed on stage but that just wasn't for me um it's a rough lifestyle yeah it's not even just that
it's just a rough freaking lifestyle right that's how i was my first half of my adult life honestly
i was just gigging and gigging and gigging and it's it's exhausting very oftentimes not rewarding
and um you know one of the things that got me so hooked on this space is
the uh the instant accessibility to listeners and people that actually appreciate art and music and
like want to interact and like want to talk about the nitty-gritty details and like aren't just
will you play some free bird yeah you just nailed it man you summed that up perfect um yeah i mean that is exactly it um
it's so cool um yeah like i like i i've never had like i don't know how much money i've spent
on music in my life i mean it's got to be hundreds of thousands of hours um lifetime between concerts oh yeah
that's crazy then replacing all your cassettes with cds then you know i mean i'm quickly catching
up on what i've spent on digital visual art though yeah yeah totally oh so i want to hear
here let me let me kind of shift this for a second what i really am curious
about and maybe will help people kind of introduce you um the scene a little bit is your story about
the de la creme and you know health i believe if i'm not mistaken findle uh introduced you to
tezos am i remembering that right uh not me um i mean he's he i'm sure he's introduced a lot of people uh oh yeah tons
that's probably i met him very early on though um like within a couple months i think of me
collecting on tezos uh i think me and fendel became friends at that point like almost a coming up on four years wild um no actually i found says it was because i pretty much maxed out
all my credit cards on nifty gateway um that sums it up and um i was a big dot pigeon fan
and uh i got pulled in to like i'm sure you know about threesomes um so he made like a dot pigeon card and i
i basically at that point had learned how ethereum works from like january 2021 to like may of 2021
i just knew about ethereum that was my experience with blockchain uh that and a new flow because of like nba top shot but whatever um
but basically for the art scene i didn't even know there was other blockchains where art was
um like i heard about like bitcoin ordinals but i didn't really feel like figuring all that out
um this gateway was easy you could you know use the debit card credit card and uh you know the
whatever the bubble burst on there,
and I was left with maxed out credit cards and, like, nothing to show for it.
So, but I still had to, at that point, I just got addicted to digital art, and, like, it got me instantly.
And luckily, I got pulled into Tezzer through a semi, I would say, bad character.
But it doesn't matter how I got pulled into Tezza through a semi, I would say, bad character. But it doesn't matter how I got there.
It matters how I stayed and left that bad character behind.
And, yeah, man, I got pulled in.
I had to figure out how to set up a Kukai wallet.
And that time it was the hen days, man oh gee days uh i think it had
been up for two or three months at that by the time i joined that's awesome let's see those were
you in before that i had minted object 17 uh was helping beta test hen before you could even list
stuff it was uh absolutely i was there for every step of watching it all go down benefited from it
lifelong memories made for sure you got a front row seat
i still kick myself often thinking about how i watched john mint his first windows
on the live feed uh just didn't know what he was just didn't know what it was you know i would love
to meet that dude because apparently he's from philly too man but i don't know what he was just didn't know what it was you know i would love to meet that dude because apparently he's from philly too man but i don't know these were some wild times public
no he definitely doesn't seem uh very public i mean he's more public than a lot of artists
the fact that he's doxxed and has like a real name out there and stuff but yeah i got lucky i
was born with like a really common name so like i'm doxxed but like
i'm kind of anonymous because there's a million of million mike wilson's out there
real quick though i do want to know the backstory to de la creme oh yeah yeah my bad i got sidetracked
it's all good um so that started out uh that's the do you know basaya the artist i i only know them through you mentioning
that you collabed with them on the piece that i was writing about yeah so like on that thread you
had there's like a collab you posted uh like that rocky piece with like in front of um like what
is supposed to be mixed gym it's that an actual place in philadelphia we're gonna dive into talking about that that here yeah for sure okay but uh he's he's who i collabed with on there
and he's like one of my best friends uh one of my favorite artists like i legit sleep with a
besaya blanket uh every night um like it's my security blanket like a lot of these people i've met has just become literally
like in the fabric of my life uh like literally um so he had this pretty cool idea um
he created a piece and decided that like it was i think a 15 edition one
and he just created a group chat for the 15
people who collected the piece um and in typical like you know tezza's fashion uh it was a mix of
collectors and you know other artists so uh it was just like a really cool small group of 15 people
It was just like a really cool small group of 15 people.
And then he kind of like just stood back a little bit and let us run with it.
And I just started inviting like a bunch of different artists and collectors who I've met and I thought were pretty cool.
And like it was, a group effort. We all did a bunch of recruiting
and kind of just pulled in, like, minded artists.
Like, we tried to get, like, a nice variation.
But it was just, like, a very chill group chat.
You know, and that led to, you know,
some people might get friendly in that
group chat and then go off and do like a collab or something or you know whatever it was a lot
more lively like i feel like group chats in general have kind of like the activity has
died down a bit um you know i'm still in a couple that are active but like must not be in the WTF game show. I was in there, man.
I got somebody in there, but I had to turn the notifications off for my sanity.
That was too distracting for me.
I couldn't hop in there.
I wanted to be more involved in that, but I just had too much going on in my life.
So that was super active.
But whatever. on in my life um so that yeah that was super active um but like uh whatever like i feel like the activity comes and goes in group chats um like it's nothing like get like sad or worried
about but a lot of them you know people just kind of check in but uh i feel like people start talking again once like,
I don't know.
That's one of the things that's really great about this space is people can disappear.
And when they come back,
people aren't really mad at them.
It's like,
welcome back.
We missed you.
I'm that dude that leaves the light on for you.
You know what I mean?
Real quick,
just to reset the room.
Thank you guys so much for being here for another Artsy Friday.
We're here with Tezos Commons, chatting with Mikey De La Creme.
We're about to do a deep dive into his art and the inspirations behind it.
If you are enjoying the vibe, make sure to retweet the space and tell your friends.
We really appreciate you being here.
Thanks for being here, Skuni and Tara and Hastie and Blangs and Ryan and the Telos community and findle and mb hash brown c there
rubisco and t rick thank you for the follow stick around we're gonna have some good times here um i
do want to dive into this gem thread here as well because for me i'm just super curious about
your thought process your inspiration and your workflow more than anything because i know that you started using ai
but something tells me you're using it similar to how i do where you're kind of using components
made with ai to compose scenes yeah right yeah you got it let's talk about it yeah so that's
kind of like my new direction with ai is like, I had just been making still images for the first two to three years.
I thought it was really cool when a lot of the video stuff came out.
There's a lot of great artists that are doing really cool shit with that.
But like, for me, I just, again, I just kind of stood up to the sidelines.
And I tried out a couple of them, just dabbling a bit.
But just more recently, I found, personally, I found, like, using runway with, like, basically, I'll create, like, a still image with mid-journey in my normal style.
And then I'll take that image and then create a video from it in runway.
And then usually I'll hit up Sendl and be like, yo, buddy, I got a new idea.
And he comes along and comes up with some genius music that can fit along with the image uh with the video but like
i mean that's just what i've been doing very recently um mark by the way i got a new idea
last night so i'll be hitting you up um but uh isn't it great how you can just hit up and be
like hey i got this thing it needs music he's like yep i'm down a couple days later boom it's
done you love it no notes he's awesome seriously one of like the nicest dudes i've
ever met and just fun to work with and it's like it's just fun man like that's that's all right
let's get into that that's like my that's really like some of the funnest parts is the collaborations and like um like i got one coming out soon uh
uh i'll keep that a secret well no here you can figure it out here's my working title for this
piece it's gonna be called i don't give a fuck zine blues all right so you might be able to tell
who i'm gonna be working with in that one. That's exciting.
And like you said, like, it's just,
there's so many different like type of artists.
Like Fendel's a great musician.
I can go get advice from like isolationist is one,
one of my best friends. Like I love running stuff by him.
You know, we. Me and him
got to do a collab at some point.
The collaborations are just tons
This year,
and at this point, yeah, I just want
to have fun again.
I think I'm just going to be doing a lot more collabs
for the foreseeable future.
That's awesome. That's exactly where I'm at.
I don't know if you've seen, but I've made some
really arbitrary rules for myself
where it's like, I can only mint if it's a collaboration
or an event or a commission.
You're on a definitely
unseen way place, man.
It's been hard, but also fun and
meaningful. Maybe we
should collab.
It helps to set like limitations on
because i mean it's amazing that we make any fucking decisions at the end of the day
like you know i mean like so sometimes you gotta self-impose some limitations
and uh see what happens it really is something that i don't feel like we get to we got to experience and like be a part of those stories and experiments as much as we do in this digital world where people get to like post their thoughts and their what they're doing and why.
square on the wall that says a little bit about it but i really do feel like we're so drastically
evolving what art is and can be through um this digital nft version yeah 100 like this is the most
informed audience like of all time for art you know what i mean it's exactly what i'm trying to say yeah um yeah i 100 agree so with this piece okay i want to talk about your wilson collection
yes i'm talking about save wavelength we're probably the same age i'm guessing just based
off of the fact that you did this you know and um i definitely would like to know more about the inspiration behind the wilson
character as somebody that also just recently uh created my first recurring character nice um
yeah my favorite artists at that time like three of my favorite artists at the time when i came up with the wilson concept
were uh besaya um rat cloak and the myth and all three of them had like recognizable characters
like besaya has his ricardus character he made different themes on you know the myth has his recognizable like yellow masked guy um
and he was the third person oh and raclo you know he he had his figure like that looks kind
of like the dude from kiss with like the star eye i forget which character from kiss it was
might have been east or something um anyway they had had recognizable characters. My last name is
really Wilson.
Duh. I don't know why I didn't
make those dots.
No, sorry.
After Castaway came out,
I would get people
yelling Wilson shit at me you know and on the wednesdays
because my name is mike you know i get the mike mike mike mike because of the that commercial so
i had a lot of people referencing castaway towards me and uh i kind of ran with that like i was like yeah like like i because like when i started making the wilson
character like i had just gotten like my mom had just passed away like the year before that
and um and a couple years before that i was like in jail for a whole year because i was like
an out of control heroin addict and like um while i was in jail my dad died so like all this like bad shit kind of
like happened all at once but like it uh all those events saved my life instead of like
destroying my life and uh like i've been cleaned for coming up on like nine years now um that's amazing and yeah i mean just
just to interject i feel like that is a common story where people's hardships become
a kind of blessing in disguise 100 like i mean like i i was just thinking about this the other
day like i remember like the panic attacks um and just wanting to like kill myself before
like i had an entire year that i knew i was going to be locked up and i just had to wait for it for
like an entire year okay so like over the course that year like it i went through like a lot of
stress and like uh i i thought jail was like the scariest fucking thing i've ever heard of um like i and i had to do it basically
i got a third dui all right i didn't kill anybody i didn't assault anybody you know i kind of hurt
someone a little bit in a car accident but like nothing major you know i mean like someone got
banged up a little bit but they lived um like i didn't do, like I wasn't a criminal or anything like that.
Um, I mean, I'm an illegal drug user, but whatever.
Um, but like, like I said, man, like I was terrified to go to fucking jail.
Uh, but once I got through that, um, it wasn't that bad.
Um, like I pretty much got my ass kicked by Mike Tyson by life from 2016 to 2020.
And, you know, like you mentioned the Rocky piece.
Like, Rocky, like I just have that spirit in me where I can't give up, man.
Like, I just have a fighter in me where i can't give up man um like i just have a fighter in me uh and it's
something common i feel for like people from the philadelphia region like we really identify with
that rocky character like we have a statue of him in our city you know i'm saying like it's
kind of in our dna and uh i just had that fighter in me so like yeah i felt through all that stuff like i just felt
like i'd never i didn't really have a fucking story until that stuff happened a little bit
and then they were like my greatest fears my greatest fears were going to jail
the death of my parents like i got all that shit at once and could you say that the going
the jail was your version of becoming a castaway?
Oh, there. You nailed it right there.
So Wilson character recurring is symbolic of you.
Yes. Like I was completely in like one of the first pieces is just the volleyball.
Wilson floating in the middle of the sea.
And that's just how I felt at that point man i was just adrift i think wilson and heartstrong man need to go on an adventure together hell yeah i'm down with
that man oh yeah i'll be hitting you about that that sounds awesome but that was the genesis of
the wilson character i i was re kind of inventing myself uh as like a human being again man like i that's the story that goes
through that wilson thread of of the art pieces it basically takes you from him washing up on the
shore new jersey and and he's making his way across the state of new jersey through different
scenes like there's sopranos there's a scene from clerks so like like you yeah like you mentioned that i'm
big in the pop uh culture um like there's so much great fucking culture from my from the region where
i grew up like clerks is from you know new jersey across the river um so that was the whole thing
with wilson was i was just bringing that character from being lost at sea to come back home to philly and like that was a late i actually had a pen like an ultimate
piece that was going to finish it but i got it was actually going to be a collab with guys with
the most likes but like it was nothing on him i i chickened out um that's a that's a pressure yeah you know what
i mean because i'm like because like he he was a very early friend of mine here and uh
like we all like i love that guy um but like i just felt like i didn't want to like
bring his shit down a bit by working with me. You know what I mean?
So I just kind of,
he was like,
I'll do a clap with you.
And I was just like,
all right.
And then I totally checked out and I got scared and I never did it.
But maybe one day,
you never know.
I could always revisit it.
The door's probably still open if you want it.
that was the whole thing with the Wilson thing is I wanted my own character.
like you said, you, I mean mean you got your character now um it's fun to have like your
own little guy right it's it's like um it's it's actually very empowering and allows me to
put myself a whole extra several layers into the story and uh scene and it's it's actually pretty cathartic therapeutic
in a way yeah yeah yeah i totally get it but um yeah so there's another recurring thing that you
have in your work that i guess would be a good segue from that and that's the baklava yeah tell us about that all right um i mean i'm just going to trace back i i think i'm going to
chase this all the way back to snake eyes from gi joe like i was born in 1978 i might be a little
bit older than you i don't know um actually yeah you're i'm i'm usually one of the older people
around yeah you're like nine years older than me all
right cool but like i mean you you grew up with you had like gi joe cartoons like on reruns and
shit like that right or you too i was like right when i was born i still had like you know saturday
morning cartoons and bucks funny and like the old school stuff yeah good old days so like snake eyes
was my favorite character like i was just i was obsessed with
like ninjas and any i just liked masked characters as a kid i was obsessed with them
so that's basically where that, like, Nifty Gateway.
Like, I got onboarded into Web3 through NBA Top Shot.
And then once, like, I discovered Nifty Gateway not long after that.
I discovered Nifty Gateway not long after that.
And the first artist that really sunk their teeth into me really was Dot Pigeon.
Are you familiar with him?
Not familiar, but I can picture the artwork.
I mean, most of his artwork, I mean, not all his artwork, but like, uh, the stuff he was making AMTs from, uh, usually contained this character called, uh, the balaclava guy or, or, uh, he also called him riot guy.
And like, I did, it was just awesome. Like he, like he was the first artist I completely fell head over and heels love with. And like, I, like i even have a tattoo of it on my arm
right now um because i'll tell you that quick story so like nifty gateway was gonna have um
dot pigeon be part of like a group drop um i forget it was like of june of 2021 and uh
we had like a discord group of a bunch of dot pigeon fans and
we kind of stormed the uh the nifty gateway discord and demanded that they give him his
own solo show like he he's too good to be you know displayed with other people so and then i just
opened my big mouth and said uh if they you know meet our demands then i'll get this tattoo on my arm and
then they met our demands and i followed up with it so that was my first tattoo is like inspired by
nft related
uh tattoos oh me too dude i just keep putting it off me too i'm not gonna. The last tattoo I got was like 10 years ago. And it was actually a retouch on the one that's on my calf.
And I don't know if people know this, but when you retouch a tattoo, it is so painful because you're essentially tattooing over scar tissue.
And I never had it retouched.
It ruined it for me.
I'm deadly terrified to go back
all right i will not be retouching my current tattoo yeah it was rough guys just to reset the
room we're just having a great time chatting with mikey thank you for being here as we
discuss mikey's work his inspirations his backstory and thank And thank you. This is Artsy Friday with Tezos Commons. Make sure to retweet the room.
So what else would you like to talk about as far as within your artworks?
I'm thinking when it comes to your tributes pieces, for example, you seem to put a lot of energy into those and they seem to almost all incorporate music um
so let's talk a little bit about those some of these tribute pieces
and uh where that inspiration came from all right so like i said i was born in 78 um
and i had like two older sisters um
And I had, like, two older sisters.
So, like, as soon as I can remember, I was playing records at that time.
I think cassettes maybe just came out.
But I was playing, like, all my older sisters' records, my parents' Beatles records.
Like, my parents were from, like, the 1940s.
They grew up with, like, Elvis and shit like that.
Like, Happy Days um oldies music
like i'm very fond of uh oldies music um basically from like 1950 on to like the late 60s um
like i just grew up admiring the the album covers you know i mean like back in the day
like with streaming shit now like you don't get the visual aspect like with with music as much
anymore like that's true i mean i was buying albums or i would put put on albums as a little
kid based on the cover you know i mean like it was
because i'm just discovering i've never heard of this person but damn that cover is fucking amazing
like where did i gotta go wrong where's where's the middle ground that ruins that i don't know
man because i don't know i still think like people should be you know pulled in by album work as you
know especially in the digital realm and like see the little
important yeah and then see the little play button and oh my god there's more to it this
is like twice the nft in one i get this awesome art and this music but i know man that connection
doesn't seem to happen no and like like i like i was obsessive with music, man.
Like, if I found a band, then I had to find out who inspired them.
So, like, I was a big classic rock fan, and, like, all those roads for, like, rock and roll lead back to the blues.
So that's how I got into the blues music.
And, you know, as far, far like i was just thinking about this
earlier today you take like the blues you take jazz you take rock and roll you take punk rock
you take hip-hop like all that stuff was born and bred in america man like um and they mostly like
one of the purest forms of any of those musics is the blues like everything
like it was the first one you know i mean and all the other ones are kind of just like uh
variations off of that one so like for me that was like just the source of like american
fucking culture is the blues so that's why like i kind of focus a lot of that in my artwork um
like i'm not the biggest like i'm not a like a lot of that in my artwork.
I'm not the biggest, I'm not a student of the blues.
You know what I mean?
I'm a student of music, but I just love the stories, the photos,
reading about all these blues musicians, learning all the histories. You can watch that Robert Johnson documentary on Netflix about, like, going to the crossroads.
And, like, that mixed in with the way I feel about AI.
So, like, you take the Robert Johnson story, you know, he – long story short, you know, he was a subpart musician.
And he goes and meets the devil at the crossroads at midnight and gives the devil
his soul in exchange for you know otherworldly guitar skills and he comes out and you know
is an incredible musician so like do i think that honestly happened no um but i love the
fucking story man it's it's incredible and that's kind of like that was my breakthrough piece was uh
my first blues piece i made in the tribute series um that was me actually trying to
that was a i got the prompt wrong for me um i was trying to talk about crossroads and it literally
cut the road in half and give it a cross section of a road.
But then that also made it look like this dude was sitting literally at the end of the world, end of the road.
And it was just kind of like a happy mistake.
And that really opened the doors for me with what I could do with AI and tell stories and stuff like that um but like that's that was the genesis of like
uh like you'll see some more of the tribute pieces i do like the ones with the blues in the title
um some of them might be based on real songs like uh like i did one that quoted like a talking head song like okay um and it's a picture of
the dude burning down the house you know so like i actually intended if there's like a song title
like an existing song title in my art piece i really want you to go out there and put that
like on your screen and listen to the actual song. But you know, for copyright reasons,
I can't do that.
You can't do it directly.
Exactly. I can't do it along with the piece.
But like on Instagram, I recently,
like you can post something with the track behind it.
So like I get around that on Instagram by doing that.
But that's also what led me to start working with like Mark and make like
original music.
That way you can't get sued.
And I mean,
plus it's much more fun to make your own stuff than just cover someone
else's work.
But if you're going to do a tribute based off of visual inspiration,
why not do it with the music as well?
So like I would be sitting here listening to the song looking at the
piece on my like i have white walls on my tv screen so i can post my work on there and just
listen to music and uh like i was i was just sitting there looking at the still images like
god damn it and i go into apple music and i don't know if you noticed this but like sometimes they
make like the albums the the album cover move now like they add motion into it i guess i don't know if you noticed this but like sometimes they make like the albums the album cover move now like they add motion into it i guess i don't know if they're using
ai or what on apple music yeah i wonder if it's actually the artists being able to input that
when they submit now or something like that i have no idea but like they'll be like it's i
noticed that even on like some old albums so i have no idea how that works but that was like
what got me thinking i was like you know what um i just want to make something that
i i just wanted to go down the audio visual i need to hit both of those inputs um
like i was thinking about this shit yesterday um like like music's my number one art medium
like i was trying to think of this like what makes you cry man like what pieces of art
have made you cry before like is it easier for a song to really get to you is it easier for a book
i don't think visual artwork has ever made me cry
externally it's made me feel emotions that are similar right but when it comes to music
it is absolutely sent me to my knees right tears before and there is something to be said about
that right and like i really been thinking about that lately man like i've been moved close to tears by
a visual on its own you know i mean but like i find it much easier to cry like the music just
hits me personally i don't know if it's for everybody but just it's direct it's like a
direct route to my soul you know i mean well i mean we're starting to see all sorts of
even like science proving that as far as uh you know i mean some of my favorite movie moments are
like when you see someone with a disability who's like lost their memory all of a sudden be able to
remember something because a song gets played yeah you know like that kind of stuff and
then you think about the fact that everything in existence is a frequency you know yeah
you start to realize that music's kind of creational energy and it's the fabric of the
universe itself yeah you know what i Yeah. So like technically without frequency,
you wouldn't even be able to compose things visually in theory.
So it's like music is actually the predecessor to visual art in some
really condoluted way.
Anyway, you guys are letting us go into this rabbit hole.
I hope you're enjoying it in the audience.
Appreciate everybody that's joined in. I see you're enjoying it in the audience. Appreciate everybody
that's joined in. I see some new faces.
Thank you guys so much for joining. If you're enjoying
the chat we're having with Mikey, make sure to retweet
Where are you at, man?
Do you mind me asking where you're at?
Where I live?
Yeah, I'm born and raised in Georgia.
Oh, awesome, man. in atlanta for most
of well suburbs for most of my life and now i'm in athens uh where the university of georgia is
man you got a lot of music history from athens georgia dude amen i've actually gotten the
pleasure of performing at the 40 watt wow yeah i never got to play at the georgia theater
but yeah i do like rem um yeah also love john mayer who was discovered here and uh yeah it's
it's a great music town when i first came here i was gigging a lot around town
the atlanta's crazy too man atlanta's just too much it's just too much i've been thinking about moving down south man i like georgia sounds nice man
i gotta tell you um and sorry for our tangent here guys but i gotta tell you i left georgia
um for a very brief time i think it was 2022 yeah and i went out west and there i got to see
the country you know like it is beautiful i absolutely love everything about it but very
very very quickly i realized how much i missed trees and bodies of water and bodies of water
yeah and that's one of the things about georgia that like i didn't actually appreciate
till i left for a while it's like it is ridiculously green and yeah dude and waterfronts everywhere
but now that we've gone on a tangent let's let's go full circle here i want to talk about the piece
that we wrote in the gem thread from the tributes uh the samara Blues. Really, that one struck me.
I'm curious, who's the figure first of all?
Let me pull that up real quick.
That's got to be looking at it.
I'm trying to think if i even based that off of anybody
so like what where that one came from
yeah i didn't really base that off of any like known like famous musician or anything uh that's more like a just a generic guitar player but um
so i live like i said i live in pennsylvania and like i don't know if you ever heard of like uh
the three mile island uh like event or whatever it's um it was like a nuclear power plant and uh i guess it was like
either there was like a meltdown scare or something like that and uh you know nuclear
technology was still like relatively new in the late 70s um so there was like a lot of fear uh
i just remember that from from being a baby like there was something very local and
scary like no one really understood nuclear power as much as we do now it was just kind of more
scarier back then and uh um and i as you guys know like uh they so you can buy tokenized uranium
via Tezos blockchain
I've got a bag
my girlfriend really wants me to buy some of this
she thinks it's the coolest thing ever
so I probably will end up
helping her to buy some
did you guys in the audience hear that?
a girlfriend thinks that the uranium tokens are cool so all you haters making assumptions
and mind you she thinks i'm a dork so you know i mean like she thinks that's cool that's saying a
lot but um and like i work for uh like uh like my in real life job is, like, I'm a tech support manager for, like, one of, I'll just say it's one of the biggest software companies.
So we are kind of AI, indirectly involved with AI stuff.
indirectly involved with AI stuff.
And as you know,
a lot of companies are building huge data centers
all over the world.
And some of these are going to be powered by nuclear energy.
So apparently I think Microsoft just set up a deal
to purchase all the power coming from this three-mile island
old power plant that's been shut down for a while.
They're going to be the exclusive customer to power a data center or something
like that. All these events
kind of happened at the same time. I just thought it was a
crazy cycle because like
i'm minting this piece of art on tezos um and then i can take that to those and buy tech and
like buy tokenized uranium and i'm then that uranium is go goes into creating like nuclear energy and that nuclear
energy is powering the ai that helped me create the artwork in the first place so it's just like
a huge cycle that just can keep going and going going i just thought that was cool there it really
is a pretty immaculate piece in the thought process because not only are you showcasing that level
of depth but to people that are let's say somebody that has no idea what taso says looks at this
artwork they're still going to have a whole layer of possible interpretations just based off of the
juxtaposition you know so you did a really good job at making this personal to our community but also relatable to anyone
thanks man and that that's that was that was like my most favorite part about ai
like is the ability to create faster and more timely things like so if something's affecting
me that day if i work all day on a piece like i can create like a work of art uh within like a
day like that sums up something that just happened that morning and have it out there you know and
mint it later that day 100 it's one of the first things that got me really excited about um
utilizing it for content not just art of course you know just content in general
because something happens you know you're in a group chat somebody says something super funny
and you want to meme about it but there's no meme for it right you know like those are some of the
those were some of my first super exciting moments with ai i was like oh i can literally go make my
own like version of this joke that just happened you yeah it's so cool and then something freaky uh
like uh my sister sent me like a bunch of like old photos from like back in the 70s of like my
parents and stuff and it's like i took one of them and like animated it and that shit's really fucking like creepy man like it's like you're i don't know
it's cool but like kind of unsettling at the same time like you can basically like you're making
living ghosts sometimes like with some photos like there's so many things that we hadn't even
considered doing with ai you know what i mean like all right for you all right
for you like most of my pieces are like text prompts okay but i do love using the blend function
like in mid-journey and taking the two different completely juxtaposed images and mashing them
together and seeing what comes out like that's
the most fun i have i've actually never done it in that way because for years before ai i was
graphic designing and creating album covers and so like i learned how to use uh that must have been
so fun yeah so pixel mater pro is the program i've been using for god probably almost 20 years
it's like a budget version of photoshop does everything that Photoshop does once you learn it long enough.
So, like, I use that, and I'll take, like, sometimes just a few, sometimes up to 20 different AI-generated images that I've put together into a folder for a composition,
and essentially collage them together digitally into a scene yeah like
doing that too yeah absolutely using blending functions and absolutely absolutely masking and
all that kind of stuff sweet but i actually did not know midjourney has its own version of blending
and that's pretty cool to hear yeah so you could take i don't know up to i don't know how many images it is um
it might i mean you have to at least have two images like two it might be like two to five
images and i mean you can get some really cool uh i mean you can take take your five favorite
artists and take one example from each blend them all five together and see what comes out uh sometimes it's awful sometimes it's genius have you done that with uh ai music yet
i only started dabbling with that like a little bit um it's impressive man like i asked it to
make some like mf doom like wu-tang beats and stuff like that and it's like holy shit man yeah when it
comes to blending genres yeah that's where i've had the most fun it's like okay what would it
sound like if i put together dubstep and reggae and pop you know you know it's a little stuff like
that i love the experimentation of it all thank you guys so much for hanging out with us as we
just continue having
an unfiltered artsy discussion here.
Appreciate every single one of you for being here.
And I think now actually,
we've been having such a good chat, I didn't realize how much
time has gone by. I think we should actually, if you're
okay with it, Mikey, open up the floor to anybody
that might have questions for you.
And a reminder, we are
going to open up the stage to requests.
If you have questions for Mikey about his process, today is his day.
And as always, if you are looking to share something about your own personal projects,
the last Friday of every month, we do a community call,
and we'd love to have you up here to hear all about what you're working on.
But of course, I'm going to call him out. i think i want to hear from fendel
i was expecting that but no anybody's welcome to come up and we'd love to hear from you
just real quick just to remind everybody the um at tezos handle did post their weekly art on tezos recap some really
great stuff going on there make sure to check it out and be up to speed on all the amazing
things happening within our art community did i just see somebody come up
yeah vendle what's up what's going on you guys what a great program mikey just want to throw
some flowers your way and say thank you for everything and thank you for being you and
and tezos is just i like i told yoshi earlier i was like we are so lucky to have you here
much love king it's always a pleasure.
Thank you, brother.
While I have both of you here,
sorry to interrupt the flowers,
but I would love for you guys to talk about
what is the most recent mint
for Mikey,
y'all's collaboration.
What was that?
That was our fourth, yeah.
Our third 420 piece.
Our third 420 piece. third 420 piece so yeah this
has become like an annual tradition with uh me and mark um and it's really evolved over the
three years like i mean obviously fendel killed it every time but like my skills have gotten better
each year definitely i mean it started out with a picture
of me like in the balaclava i think hitting like a fucking bong or some shit and mark just came up
with some nice uh stony vibes on that one and then um like our newest one uh is called Seeing Some Squatch Smoking
What the Owls Saw.
It's basically just two Sasquatches
sitting out in a little weed field
doing their thing, man.
Just sitting there smoking weed.
Where did the Sasquatches get the papers
i don't know man it must be some some type of like some type of bark or something
and i'm guessing the what the owl saw part is like kind of hinting that like
this view is i would say maybe from an owl's eye yeah it's also like
a slight reference to like twin peaks like okay we're both uh like fans of twin peaks and like
um you know you guys are from like he's from like the pacific northwest so like um that's kind of like the setting i try and put
our collabs in i try to i try to make the the images be like kind of like a pacific northwest
thing and uh we usually try and throw like a little david lynch uh you know twin peaks e vibe
into into the tour stuff that's become like our unofficial. And just so everybody knows, it is still available on Primary for 4.2 Tess.
Really, really cool piece.
Fendel, do you want to talk about the music on there for a second since you're up here?
I just, I mean, I love that kind of Twin Peaks vibe.
And, you know, like we kind of like live right here.
North Bend is really right where that cafe is.
I mean, that's really the sign from the show.
It's not like the inside of the set or anything like that. But it has that, you know, every time, Mikey, every time you send me these pieces,
it really does look like North Bend.
does look like North Bend like it has that same vibe and North Bend just to
Like it has that same vibe.
give you an idea is about 30 miles east of of Seattle you see how I did that
blanks I did this right instead of time I used distance anyway it's a joke that we have going. But it's like, yeah, 30 miles east of town here.
And the city kind of like melts away into trees and, you know, beautiful second growth forest
pretty fast, actually. And the piece really looks like that to me. Every time I drive through there, I'm like, wow, man, Mikey would really dig this.
You ever seen any Squatch out there?
No, I have not seen. Well, there's a new film. I can't remember what, I don't know how to see it, but there's a new film about Bigfoot.
It's called Finding Bigfoot.
I love Bigfoot.
And it's filmed right in North Bend, right there.
And so that's kind of a fun film about that.
So you kind of get the feeling of the area a little bit.
I appreciate you explaining the backstory there.
So, you know, I'm always trying to do sound design, you know,
especially with these pieces that has, you know,
a lot of like cinematic kind of quality to it and,
and kind of mysterious, you sounds and samples and and um yeah i really just enjoy
you know going out and collecting those samples and then sharing them that way these pieces because
it just makes it have like a real kind of um of you know vibe you know yeah it totally and like like ryan you mentioned you mentioned like uh
ai music like i did dabble trying to get ai music to kind of sync up with my stuff and like
i stopped very quickly and it's hard i dm mark immediately um It is hard. You need a human to, like, really – it makes the world a difference.
It's cool that, like, I used AI on my end of things,
but, like, I wanted a human to make the music that went along with this.
Well, and I think, you know, using AI for, you know, getting ideas for music.
Yeah, that's cool.
And, you know, like, I'm always interested in like using prompts and
like having it prompt some things just to get ideas going you know for for you know my sound
design you know and music that i especially in that in that way it's a stream extremely powerful
tool because it's gonna know what's popular sounding, what's catchy.
So it'll give you kind of a hint outside of our own bias when it comes to directions we can take with an idea.
It's one of the things I've noticed.
But sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
I just wanted to add to that. Oh yeah. I guess the other thing that I was going to say is that there's a lot of different ways
that I'm using AI now to kind of go with my music, not using it as prompts to like prompt
Although I have, you know, to get ideas, but like, you know know more like having it like um write beats out for me and then i
program you know and then i make the decisions you know but it gives me like an idea to work
off of and like i can go off of a vibe you know and it takes you down some pretty creative, you know, journeys, you know, that way.
So I don't know.
It's just a cool tool, you know, like I'm like all for it.
We just got to learn how to use it right.
A hundred percent.
And right.
It's going to be different for every person and what they're looking for.
But I mean, like right for you, you you know like using it as a creative
tool like to you know put you on this journey i've had a couple now where it's just like i like this
instrumental so much that i'm just gonna use it as is and sing and write my own lyrics over it
and that's been fun it's like being a singer and using AI instrumentation to like complete a melody idea.
Like that's been fun.
It's like one day I feel like I just want to retire and just play with AI music software all day.
And just make some huge like awesome album of all the influences I've had over the years.
I've kind of already done that.
I just haven't released it yet.
Oh, I would love to hear that, man.
I'll share you the private link.
Yeah, I've created a whole album worth of dubstep reggae.
Yeah, it's really interesting i just saw juniper walk into
the room thanks for hopping in juniper paisley and hello carmelo are going to be our guests next week
nice yeah another another way yoshi is like uh you can have chatPT code you your own, you know, virtual instrument, you know, VSTs for, you know, for, you know, your dot, you know, your digital audio workstation.
And that is pretty powerful.
That sounds powerful.
You could just say, like, code me this reverb, you know, plug in, you know, I mean would you use logic right yeah i use logic yeah
you can like have it like code yourself like uh your own plug-in i hadn't even thought about this
that's cool now you got me thinking like maybe it can be used as a tool to minimize the size of audio
so that we can start doing some on-chain music wow that'd be cool and that's
where i'm currently at trying i'm with uh working with skulls army and uh para to create a piece
for the zero contract contest i gotta tell you it's i that's a whole nother ball game trying to
get things down to 20 kilobytes i can't imagine that
i like going big dude yeah same here like i'm excited about tia because of the two gigabyte max
you know and now i'm like totally on the opposite end of the spectrum trying to figure out how to
get things down to like nothing i'll tell you what this space really takes you on some adventures. 8-bit.
I tried to bounce out something in 8-bit like a complete noob.
I had no idea what it was going to do,
and it just spat out a bunch of awful sound at me.
I just ruined my own recording by sending it out as an 8-bit.
Guys, this has been a lot of fun.
Quick question, Mikey.
Yeah, man.
I was curious about what you're working on next with the music,
with these music pieces,
because I was so excited about that last piece and working on that slap.
I was just like, oh my goodness.
Oh my God. piece and like working on that slap i was just like oh my goodness i do have a new idea um for a music one but uh yeah i don't want to talk about that yet but i do have something else i do i can talk about um you guys probably know santiago
so i don't know if you guys noticed but like he he can make like pretty cool custom tools for
people um if you've noticed like some of like the myths recent works he's been using like a custom
made like myth brush okay so like he's basically painting with uh his hisith head in different colors and making pieces with that.
And I thought that was, like, the coolest thing ever.
So I DMed Santiago, and I was like, yo, can you make me an Allen Iverson brush?
So now I want to make, like, he made it for me.
Like, it's really cool.
Like, I just started kind of playing around with it.
I haven't done anything with it yet, but, like, I'm going to start some –
I'm going to start working with that to make what I'm going to be calling, like, handmade AI work.
But, I mean, where I'm from, Alan Iverson is AI.
So it's not artificial intelligence in my area.
So even in, my sister's a high school guidance counselor.
And when they talk about AI, they don't call it artificial intelligence.
They don't call it artificial intelligence.
They say, oh, Alan Iverson's coming.
They say, oh, Allen Iverson's coming.
Like, so, yeah, basically I'm going to be making like handmade pieces of art.
They're hand-drawn like I originally started out with.
But I'm going to be using AI's face as the paintbrush.
So it will be AI art that's handmade.
Does that make sense?
No, that's super cool.
And I'm looking at the piece you're referencing as far as
uh with myth oh yeah i was going to ask you about is uh it seems like you have a pretty
strong connection with myth as an artist yeah um for some reason i got like a really strong
connection to argentina um in general like i have a ton of artist friends from argentina it's just
outnumbers any other country by far.
I don't know how that happened.
But, like, yeah, The Myth, Basaya, a lot of people from Argentina.
Wait, what were you asking me about The Myth?
He's, yeah, we've been friends for four years
with the myth.
He's a very cool
and mysterious
kind of character.
Very nice guy, man.
Some of the artwork might look scary,
but he's a really
nice individual.
It's just cool how you make those connections and again one of those
things that probably could have never happened without it being uh a global uh nft based thing
it's so cool the global part is like the coolest thing man these i would never have any connections
to anybody in any other country if it wasn't for you know digital art and web 3 i'm always trying
to like make that clear to like family and like local yeah it's like you do know that i interact
with people around the world probably a lot more than you i use this experience in web 3 like
because i i've done like i've curated the jobs before and I've organized group jobs before.
And like, like I got promoted to a manager in my real job, in my real life job.
And I, in part of my interview process, I said, look, like, uh, I I've been, I've done group jobs.
There were 60 artists before from across the globe.
All right.
Organizing 60 artists in itself is the globe all right organizing 60 artists
in itself is hard but around the world like that's even harder like we do some difficult
stuff in our web3 like lives 100 people are going to start realizing how to add this stuff to their
resumes for sure yeah i didn't have it on my resume but i mentioned it for sure and like i
definitely got some points for that they're like you're you don't have it on my resume but i mentioned it for sure and like i definitely
got some points for that they're like you're you don't have management experience but you know
that's that is management experience kind of amen yeah it's like kind of how i feel about um
being a team captain for test tones right you know that was one of those experiences that
didn't realize was going to be so relevant outside of that little
quirky moment right you were just following your passion having fun yeah you guys thank you so much
for hanging out with us we're reaching towards the end of the show but mikey's been awesome if
there's anything else that you want to share with us i'm not trying to rush you off the stage
you're welcome to continue sharing anything that you want to get out into the world while you're here.
And again, thank you, Findle, for coming up.
And a last call if anybody else wants to come up and ask some questions.
So, like, actually, I'm curious with what Findle was saying.
Is there anything that you do
feel comfortable with sharing that you've got in the works that's not out yet um
no the only other thing is
like i did uh yeah i actually um i recently actually did a physical print I made available.
It's like a tribute to – like the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl this year in case anyone follows football.
And it was actually funny.
If you know the artist Helio Santos, he's from Mexico.
He actually flew up – my buddy Micheleele he's in the audience right now he has a gallery in philadelphia and uh you know helio came up to
visit because he had a solo show there and uh he actually came to town when we um did the
the eagles parade for like the super bowl victory and um i actually made a piece of art um that
commemorated that uh it's kind of like a shot of like broad street in philadelphia with like the
crowd celebrating everything like that um so i i'm doing like an open edition print of like physical
prints for that um and i'm gonna have that available in uh my buddy michele uh it's called
coluna contemporary just the gallery and it's just in the like the mainline area of philadelphia
and we're gonna have like a local artist group show coming up on i think it's may 16th
um so i'm gonna probably show uh that print there and i've already sold six of them to family and friends.
This is more for my Philadelphia people.
But if there's any Eagles fans out there,
be on the lookout for this Eagles print.
That's all I have really going on right now.
I'm just going to be working with the AI paintbrush.
Mark, I'll be hitting you up soon with a new musical idea probably next week or so I gotta see but I gotta see if it works out
before I tell you what it is that sounds great excited and I'm gonna hit you up
about yeah potential scene that has Wilson and heartstrong Man. Yeah, gotta bring Wilson back.
That'll be fun.
Time to bring him back.
One last thing, if you have any thoughts about TezCon 2025.
Where's that at?
We're going to be doing it again in Seattle.
Sorry, I thought you would have known about it. My bad.
No, like...
Come on, Fendel. Do your job.
Fendel tries to get me to go to Seattle at least once a year.
It's an open invitation.
It is. It's always an open invitation.
We need to get Mikey to TESCON 2025.
Man, I don't think I've been on a plane
In over 10 years, dude
I wasn't allowed to leave the state for a very long time
Let's put it that way
So I keep forgetting I'm allowed to leave again
I was on parole for a while
But I'm, yeah, I can
As long as it's not in Canada
Yeah, I'm good
I'm not allowed in Canada for like another year
But Seattle? Yeah, Seattle, I'm good. I'm not allowed in Canada for like another year.
But Seattle?
Yeah, Seattle, I can go there.
Well, I'm hoping to show our piece, you know.
The Zach's Watch piece. Because it goes right with, it's like Twin Peaks theme, actually.
Hell yeah.
That'll be cool.
At the very least, you'll be represented there through your collaboration.
I'll be there in spirit, maybe, if not physically.
Well, we would love to have you.
That's June 28th.
I'll tell you about it more in DMs.
You'll be finding out, really, everything is coming out this week,
all of the digital assets and the poster.
That's going to be so great. We're going to be pumping that this week all of the digital assets and the poster that'd be so great well we're we're gonna be pumping that this week so yeah everybody in the room you hear that keep
your eyes open we're gonna be posting all sorts of cool tezcon 2025 info very soon yeah man you
got a lot of uh tez soldiers up there in the pacific northwest i appreciate that i'll be
flying out from the opposite corner of the country nice yeah i'll see what i can do man
well definitely appreciate you coming up today mikey really appreciate it i know that you were
nervous you did great job yeah i always get nervous talking about myself it's like my least
favorite subject sorry no i No, totally understand.
Thank you guys so much for coming to another Artsy Friday with Tezza's comments.
Kryptonio, appreciate you co-hosting.
He's about to take it away with our outro song.
This one's very fun.
I think this is actually, I didn't look at the full backstory,
but I think this is one of the competition winning things
where Mike Shinoda collaborated with uh artists so this is a collaboration between mike shinoda muumuu
pixels and an anon tz account that i couldn't find the name for but this is called space boots
and again thank you guys so much for coming and we hope to see you again next week enjoy the song
later much love fans cheers guys Oh Ooh, my hair is loose.
I'm a little feeling right when I'm headed to an astro-wide.
Orion got his pants up tied and I drug my cigarette through two life years.
Never mind.
Never mind what the years might say.
The universe is my astray. This world is just a resting place, if we're left out enough, that's okay.
Please I'll catch me out in a mason drawer, spend my Saturdays on Mars.
The galaxies I feed my songs, I feel this voice, I cry, feel this band
And I love...
It's not painful
My hair is thin.
See, I'm all spant upicked, starlight, you might have been saved.
Now, I'll get you, shit, I'm sorry. oh
oh Oh nothing nothing
nothing And as always, if you enjoyed that, make sure to listen on some headphones.
Follow the link. We've pinned it to the top.
Thank you guys so much for coming to another Artsy Friday with Tesla's Commons.
It was really a pleasure to chat with Mikey De La Creme.
And we will see you again next week. Same time, same place. I hope everybody has an amazing and artsy weekend. We love you.
We'll see you soon. Thank you.