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Artz Friday w pocobelli
Recorded: June 13, 2025 Duration: 1:38:21Space Recording
Short Summary
In a vibrant discussion, artists and community members explored the evolving landscape of the Tezos ecosystem, highlighting trends in digital art, the importance of community support, and upcoming initiatives like the Fear for Tez event, signaling a promising growth trajectory for creators in the NFT space.
Full Transcription
. Hey guys. Thank you. share the space y'all thank you for being here right off the bat gino tech mental the tesla's community mb and pokebelly appreciate all of you we're about to jam to some music here for a minute
this is from uh we've played a few songs from this actual kind of like mixtape that's going on right
now on object called nostalgia 2000 uh this specific song is called comunidad web 3 by
roberto az hope you guys enjoy and then we'll get to the show
afterwards
volv铆 al pixel donde el alma brillaba en un hit bailando entre l铆neas doradas
antes del feed antes del scroll cuando so帽谩bamos todos con nuestro rinc贸n
Quem谩bamos CDs, cre谩bamos blogs
Zumbidos en el messenger, amor en photolog
El mod encantaba y abr铆a el portal
De un mundo sin filtros, real y plural
Pero lleg贸 el algoritmo, nos vendi贸 la atenci贸n
Nos quit贸 el caos hermoso de la conexi贸n
Pero en el blog que hay memoria, hay rebeli贸n
Y un coro de artistas con otra intenci贸n
Mi nostalgia 2000, no te fuiste de verdad
Viris en la cadena, vibrando en cada drop
M煤sica W3 nos vuelve a conectar
Latinoam茅rica unida, creando sin parar.
Desde Cali suena Yoshiro Mare, con Wat Wat Reto Her X para sanar y liberar, Golden Tuning
que eleva el ritual, transmutando el dolor con un beat celestial y esta ex Gonzalo so帽ando
en pixels vivos, hipermedia que respira en sus archivos Sol 7, construye puentes de visi贸n
Con Shine Web Breast y un teclado de explosi贸n
Esta es la comunidad que no se rinde
Que transforma el c贸digo en arte que vibra libre
Cada drop colectivo es una revoluci贸n
Donde la independencia canta con coraz贸n
Y en el hostal, Gallo Steel, no te fuiste de verdad
Viviste en la cadera, vibrando en cada drop coraz贸n y mientras tal que yo si no te fuiste de verdad
y dice en la cadera y tanto en cada otro
m煤sica w 3 nos vuelve a conectar latinoam茅rica unida creando steam parar No somos freaks, no somos views Somos almas que suenan en tonos azules
Y en cada espacio, en cada canci贸n
M煤sica babobres es la evoluci贸n Thank you. I'm just really loving the music I'm finding on Object lately.
You guys are rocking it out there.
Really, really awesome, this mixtape.
Definitely worth following over to the Object link that we posted at the bottom of the comments of the actual Spaces post.
Because right now, oh, it looks like it did work.
We got it pinned at the top now.
Definitely the Listen With Headphones, as we always recommend.
That's the best experience for the music.
And a lot of these songs actually have really, really amazing visuals, too.
That being said, let's get the day going, y'all.
Thank you for coming to another Artsy Friday with Tezos Commons.
Super, super excited to be talking with PocoBelly today.
How are you?
Hey, guys.
I am doing great.
I am in the middle of kind of on the coast of Greece in a small kind of beach town.
And yeah, just wrapping up a two week two and a
half week vacation here working vacation and yeah just sort of sitting here you
know the Airbnb internet was pretty bad so I went to some cafe in the little
town and just sort of reflecting on the last two and a half weeks here and uh trying not to waste
the battery so i was just forced to sit in silence which was pretty nice actually especially after an
adventure that can be really really nice and that sounds so lovely so you said you're you've been in
greece yeah yeah it's like a kind of it's like perihelion or something,
whatever the Greek word for beach is, avlita.
Wow.
And it's close to, if you know the Trojan War,
it's where they sacrificed Iphigenia, Agamemnon.
And it was really cool, actually.
The Airbnb host took me over to that, you know,
what they claim to be that archaeological site.
Pretty cool.
So yeah, Greece is always awesome.
I go every year for the last four years.
It's cheap and it's just awesome.
That's really, really amazing.
Especially that you got to see a site like that.
Sounds like it could be inspiration for an artwork.
Yes, always.
Yes. There are so many things. I mean, Delphi is not that far away from here. I go to Athens on Sunday morning and just got the Airbnb last minute sort
of thing. It was nice and cheap, this thing with a view of the Acropolis. So let's see how that
turns out. Yeah, I know it's awesome. Have you been to Greece?
I have not.
Someday.
And when I do, I got to visit the people that I know out there, like Para, for example.
Yeah, it is a real, like the luxury of living in Europe is cheap travel to so many amazing sites.
It's definitely on my bucket list and um absolutely feel like it would be really expansive
for my creativity and just you know worldview as well yeah absolutely and uh the islands
are spectacular like some you know the first time you go you sort of go okay i'll stick to athens
you know but once you start going to the islands uh that's where you see santorini you know, the first time you go, you sort of go, okay, I'll stick to Athens, you know, but once you start going to the islands, that's where you see Santorini, you know, in the pictures, those
white, you know, apartments or whatever they are, structures looking off on the hillside towards the
sea. And the islands are spectacular. I was actually in Naxos about a week and a half ago,
which was pretty cool, you know, and again, it's just loaded with history. It was like an 8th century site to Demeter, 8th century BC.
So pretty old for Greek temples and agriculture, Demeter.
So it was like old school.
So yeah, no, I'm in heaven out here.
So yeah, you'd love it.
That's good inspiration for me to hustle even harder
and figure out my way out to my wife we all gotta hustle harder i feel like i'm hustling from like
6 a.m to you know uh 10 p.m i am actually but anyways go ahead yeah you should you should
no i absolutely agree and especially right now we all probably
should have our heads down building as much as we can you know the opportunities will come
and we want to be ready for them and that's one of the things i love about tezos is that i was
just saying i want a couple of my friends this morning that the morale feels up right now you
know and that's a sentiment to the community.
It is interesting, isn't it?
You know, if I was to, it's really fun, actually.
Like, of course, I do the YouTube, and a lot of it is really,
like, the foundation of the show is Tezo's, you know,
object, really, because of the notifications and because there's so much great art.
But it's fun, you know, taking two or three weeks off
and then taking a step back.
And to your point, I think people get the sense that there's something here.
And you even see it with, like, artists who are doing really, like, surprised, I wouldn't say surprisingly well.
I'd say it's about time, you know, well, but, you know, with Waffles and RJ really starting to make some big sales here from the underground, you know, in what I'd say, you know, closer to the main, you know, mainstream Ethereum, for lack of a better term, collectors.
You know, I think we've earned our respect here is sort of my, you know, zoomed out thoughts after three weeks of taking a step back.
I don't think anybody that actually stops and catches up on the world of Tezos and our story and the community here, I don't think anybody that actually catches up could not respect our resilience.
Yeah, like it's real.
And you know who I think in a weird way deserves,
like, of course the artists, you know,
deserve a lot of credit.
But a lot of the reason the artists are here
is actually because of the collectors.
You know, like the people who are buying the artwork.
And a lot of the collectors are artists,
you know, like I'm a massive collector.
But the collectors really deserve a lot of credit
because they're the ones who are really putting their money on the line
and buying the work
I think I saw, there's Neon Monk
shout out to Neon Monk there
I absolutely agree with that
and you know, on a personal note
there are collectors in the space that kept
me going and really kept
you know, the vision alive
and the support is something I'm ever forever grateful for.
One of them's in the room, actually, Scooney, really a life changing friend.
And there's a lot of people like that in the space.
And I do agree that I think that keeps a lot of people coming and a lot of people interested and inspired,
not to mention able to put food on the table so that they can continue creating.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'll never forget, like, I think Sky Goodman, you know, maybe
two years ago, put it, almost put it best. It's like, you're not necessarily gonna live off this,
but you can pay for a haircut oftentimes with like art that you put on Tezos and you know buy
some groceries and that's pretty amazing uh just in and of itself like you know again like I've
been in the art scene in Berlin for eight years now almost nine and uh you know the amount of
times you hear of someone selling a work is like I want to say like once a year you know, the amount of times you hear of someone selling a work is like, I want to say like once a year, you know, like, that's the reality for like most artists, if they're lucky, you know, and I'm talking like once a year of everybody, you know, and now I do know people who have a couple of people who have made it, but, you know, that's in eight years, you know, so yeah, there's a lot to be grateful for. It's a totally different grind. You kind of triggered me there with something that I'm really passionate about, which is
I'm curious, maybe you have a good thought here.
How can we...
Let me give you a backstory.
Sorry.
So pretend you're walking through an art fair at a local venue or the streets even where
there's just a bunch of different vendors showing their original art and in my experience when i do this and there's a lot of those in athens georgia
actually outside of um you know university of georgia there's a lot of um annual art fairs and
stuff so i go to them excited every year and there's always this moment of like shock at how literally none of the vendors
I talk to have any clue about NFTs or Web3 or what it could be for what they're sitting there
waiting to sell all day physically. And like, how can we relate to those individuals that
there's nothing wrong with while they're doing that also having digital
limited editions for sale on somewhere like Tezos and get that message across so that we can help
these artists get more sales than like you said a couple of years a lot of times.
It is an interesting question like the whole onboarding question.
I have a couple of different angles on it.
I remember I was lucky enough to go to Bangkok in November with this accelerator thing,
just kind of random sort of thing I ended up at.
And this one group of people had basically where you could set up a crypto wallet using with basically a Gmail login.
And I thought that was one sort of kind of way because these put it this way.
And it brings me to my other point.
Like I remember like I was making digital art pretty dedicatedly since 2015.
I made it before, like even in 2000, betraying my age here.
But like in 2007, I made some series,
but it was really 2015 with the iPhone 6s
and I made this Pelopon Asian War series.
And I wanted to like,
and I actually went to Super Rare's website in 2019 and i just didn't put two and two
together like i just like i was like oh it looks like a place you can sell digital art but i just
did not get it and i think that's where everybody is like who is not onboarded because the first
question i get from friends of mine who are in art who want to know
is so how how does this work like you know it's kind of like what is it that you guys are doing
like it's like so it's uh and the only way I'd argue to really understand it is you actually
have to participate and so it's just like this catch-22 so I don't actually have a good answer
to your question no that's that's really where we're a lot of us i think are at within the logic and
thinking about it and it's definitely an obstacle that we should continue having a conversation
about um and i like to see that it is being actively had um one of the things that i think
that i touched on in a past show and i don't want to go too deep into this because really the shows
i want to learn more about you and talk about your art but um in general it's just a fascinating
topic and somewhere that I feel like we can all push a little bit more to try to innovate ways to
help people understand um and like one of the examples I gave on a um in an interview recently
was from my mom for example who just kept saying who just kept saying, I don't get it.
I don't get it. And I finally just like made her a wallet, sent her, you know, a digital version and then like talk to her about what she would want if I were to print it out physically on canvas.
And so like I literally ended up printing one of my artworks on canvas and putting it on her wall and now she says she gets it you know so maybe it is that easy maybe she's just saying that
trying but you know like it's pretty interesting uh like even like and there are stages i'd argue
to this um sorry let me know if it's too loud here. I'm near the square in the little town where all the motorbikes are. But there areare basically right before everybody was trying, like all my art friends wanted to get into the NFT thing.
And I was selling art on there, here and there.
But I made some actually nice sales.
nice sales but the uh i didn't really get collecting nfts until like i got onboarded i
think in either october or march and i didn't buy an nft until the following october and that's when
i got it until then i was like look if you guys want to buy my jpegs okay go ahead you know like
i was like i didn't see the value in it and i was
selling them you know what i mean so it's definitely a learning curve just thrown into it
with you know just mincing stuff because you could and not really understanding it at first
and then all of a sudden this whole world unfolds you know and and this is the thing yeah yeah and
sorry to interrupt but it's like and
then once i did it and then the guy was all happy and then i had it in my collection and i just
became completely addicted and hooked and i went from kind of like not really believing in it or
just kind of skeptical that this was even worse to like you know spending literally all my money on it you know like so i so there's
two stages to it so no wonder when like my art friends like show up they're just like they're
two stages behind because they've never even set up a crypto wallet right so like what i'm doing
it's like that's a whole other pair there's two paradigm shifts right and I think that's the
issue I totally agree and it reminds me of the kind of meme that's kind of true which is that
like one day in crypto world is like a week in the regular world you know as far as how quickly
things go happen um and I try to keep that in mind when it comes to like newcomers
it's like i've been in this space since 2017 like i'm like an old man in crypto years
you are like true og it's like you know i don't know how old you are, but you must have white hair just from the from the intensity of the whole thing.
You know, even if you're 25.
Yeah.
So this has been a lot of fun.
I appreciate the back and forth here, but I do want to kind of get more focused on you and appreciate you coming up today.
And everybody, this is Artsy Friday, and we're about to chat with Coco Belli about his experience creating art, being on Tezos, and anything else you want to talk about.
So I would kind of like to, let's restart in a way.
And if you wouldn't mind, pretend like nobody in the room knows you, and just give us an introduction, if you don't mind.
an introduction if you don't mind yeah no problem uh so i am from saskatoon canada which is in the
Yeah, no problem.
middle of canada and i come from a little actually we lived just outside of saskatoon so it's kind of
my joke is just outside the middle of nowhere and uh yeah i grew up there and it was quite, you know, remote and isolated, but it was cool.
My dad, he's from Rome.
And so we went to the Vatican when I was like six years old.
And interestingly, like I found, you know,
most kids find it pretty boring, but I was kind of,
it left an impression of like this strange part of reality,
you know, going to all these rooms of paintings
it just left an impression and so also on that trip I was given my grandfather who had never
met because he passed away before I was born I was given his stamp collection and also I was given
like a Leonardo book that I was like you know copying the drawings from is like classic you know six year old and uh and uh then yeah then it was just like then i became a huge stamp collector
and then a trading card collector with baseball cards and then hockey cards and then i became
completely engulfed in comics for about six years before it was cool you know where you almost had to keep it
quiet so I've always been obsessed with what I'd almost loosely call the bordered image
and I always knew I wanted to participate you know as an artist in whatever it is like you know
whether it was comics or art or you know baseball cards i'd try and design baseball cards like i was just
obsessed with weirdly the static image so i and so yeah so all to say went to art school did a
master's in english literature because there's more brain food uh on gg Ballard's Atrocity exhibition. And then I, yeah, did graphic design in Montreal when I was 25,
my first real job, other than working in the comic store.
And that was always in the pursuit of being an artist,
to learn the discipline.
There's a real science to art and design.
Like, it's not easy making things beautiful i'd argue
uh and so i did that for five years and uh then i moved to toronto from montreal
and became an editor at a mining newspaper in toronto the northern minor i still work there
i'm the podcast host i do a weekly podcast for them on natural resources and geopolitics, hilariously enough. And that was
also very unglamorous at the time, but nobody wanted to hear about mining, but now it's like
top of mind with all the rare earths thing. Anyway, while I was working as an editor there,
I bought an iPhone 6S and I realized that, you know, I'd go for lunch pursuing my little art dream and I
realized you could make art on the iPhone the iPhone success was what I call the first art phone
because you could they had better apps that were more specialized and you could export between the
apps and you could actually get some pretty darn interesting and what I'd call fresh outcomes because of the smallness of the canvas. You know,
you're using this little phone, but you can magnify and you're also using your fingers rather
than a paintbrush. And I was doing a lot of painting too since 2010 really intensely, even
though in the 90s, late 90s, early 2000s, I did a degree in visual arts with english double degree then i
did a master's in english i so i that's when i really got hooked on digital and the trick to
digital i started making the palapinesian war series is 200 uh work 200 trading card art book
I worked 200 trading card art book that I mostly on SuperRare.
It's a quarter on SuperRare, three quarters on OpenSea.
It's kind of a botched launch that I had there that I'll hopefully fix at one point.
But it was all made on the phone.
And the challenge in the late teens, 2016s, 20-teens was to make your work physical so that you could actually sell it.
I moved to Berlin a year
later. It was actually 2015 when I started with the phone. 2016, I moved to Berlin. And yeah,
and then basically it was making my art, always trying to make it physical, which is a really good
practice and discipline for artists, I think. You learn a lot going from medium to medium.
Trying to kind of make my way into the contemporary art scene in Berlin.
Got some shows, which was nice. No major galleries, but community, but very respectable kind of community galleries in Mitte, you know, Berlin's scene there.
So, you know, did pretty well with selling works here and there, which is actually not a small deal in Berlin.
And yeah, and then the crypto thing happened.
And then I was, you know, made way more money than I'd ever made in physical art.
And it costs you nothing.
And it was exciting.
So it was just like, even still, I'd like to make physical art.
But it's so hard to make physical art when you're spending all this time and money.
You're always going to the art supply store when I can just open my phone,
literally waiting for this space to start and start making what I feel is the most cutting edge thing I can make.
So it's really hard to go back to physical, even though with the, you know,
starting from the phone and going to physical,
I think I can actually do some pretty darn interesting things. Like to me, it makes
physical still relevant, but starting with digital these days or quoting
digital or however you want to put it. So anyway, so then
luckily, as I was mentioning earlier, I got onto SuperRare, which was awesome because it
helped the sales. It was really hard to get onto platform in
2020 and 2021.
And I rode that wave.
And then in November 2021, people were really trying to get me onto Tezos.
A couple of people on Twitter.
And I really nice.
Appreciated it.
Because then I finally got on December 2021 and was totally impressed.
Well, actually, I wasn't impressed right away.
It was chaotic for me. And I think that's what a lot of people like when they show up at Object
or just when they think of digital art, almost to our other point, you know, of the difficulty
of for people. So not only is there the difficulty of the crypto side of things, not only is there the difficulty of the crypto side of things not only is there the difficulty of the nft
paradigm then there's the visual paradigm of learning how to organize all of this stuff
intellectually all this digital art because people don't know what to make of it it's chaotic and i
spent a couple of months there and i remember it was the collection of haiti rockette who i just
liked his nintendo rom works glitch rom it was easy for me to understand it was the collection of Haiti Rockette, who I just liked his Nintendo ROM works, Glitch ROM.
It was easy for me to understand.
It was kind of punk rock sort of thing, visually speaking.
I just thought they were cool and fun.
And so I started looking at his collection, and I started realizing, oh, there's other good artists here.
It's not just Haiti Rockette and Ratta.
And then I became obsessed.
Like, I had been with trading cards, stamps, and comics.
Then I just, like for six months,
I just was like trolling, you know,
going through everybody's collections.
And like, I don't know, like I got pretty darn familiar.
So then I learned to speak the visual language.
I started to learn to understand, I should say,
the visual language of started to learn to understand i should say the visual language of uh art on the blockchain and yeah and then basically august 2022 i've lewis osborne
the kind of illustrator guy out of bristle uh who's doing quite well he blew up on tezos and i
was like oh shit this is all gonna blow up now I you know I should start a show and
ride this wave you know and I'd been trying to start a little show for a long time and so then
I did my artist journal thing and surprisingly to me people actually want to watch it you know
people in the community it's like Popple would say look mom I'm on tv sort of thing and so it
just became this hilarious thing and yeah here we are three years later
amazingly in august it'll be three years doing the youtube show on you know and the foundation
really was like object so anyways that's kind of my you know summary here in short
it's a fantastic summary really it's really fun to hear um kind of a start to finish all at once like that
honestly that was one of the best best like summaries i could have asked for uh and really
when it comes down to it um i really relate to a lot of the moments that you've talked about as
far as like especially going from physical to digital and then the struggle to go back to physical
and then like the evolution of oh how can i go physical digital right that that part to me is um
what i think is the most magical aspect that we haven't even really seen fully about
blockchain based art is the the pure full circle innovation that I think we'll see in physical art world too soon,
where people are completely combining what they came
to the digital world and learned and experienced
and grew from.
So without that-
Sorry to interrupt, I was on mic. I wanted to just respond to that before I forget So without that... It's literally this kind of visual paradigm coming back into the physical, traditional art world, so to speak, but with where all of a sudden this kind of visual language starts appearing in the physical works and all of a sudden it's going to be like, oh, and then there's all this stuff before on digital where this all came from.
You know what I mean?
Like that could be the breakthrough you know and i think really like
we're we're at kind of this awkward middle phase right now where we just revert to and there's
nothing wrong with digital screens displaying digital art at all like that is a great place
for us to be but i kind of imagine kind of more literal sense of digital influencing physical to where we're going to start seeing
painters embedding little like mini screens with like digital aspects to their painting
and like just like complete multimedia and mixed media like the world's never even imagined.
I think you're right that that could be what sparks the connection.
Yeah, I've even seen hints of this, and I'm sure you have too,
but just for example, like I saw someone
who painted it.
You're rugging a bit.
Will you say that last sentence again?
Where they did a glitch ROM.
And am I still coming through?
Yeah, I can hear you now.
Okay, let me know if I start cracking up.
There was a glitch ROM that was painted, right?
And that was, just to your point, an example of...
That's a great example. And you did have a little bit of a cut out there too actually i'm
sorry to interrupt you just want to let you know that that it was choppy for a second but that is
a good example i'd want to see that um i don't want to put you on the spot to find me a link
right now but i'm curious to see that yeah i will maybe afterwards
please do yeah you can always i'd be happy to in the comments see that and in the comments of yeah
in the of the space yeah you know i've done like a hundred spaces and i still don't know how to pin properly it's like it's too complicated for me
when you're on the spot in the middle of a space it's hard to feel comfortable
doing any sort of clicking or experimenting or exploring
yeah troubleshooting technical yeah totally let me just check the code here
just a reminder guys this is Artsy Friday.
Thank you so much for being here.
What a beautiful room filling up here.
This is Tezos Commons Weekly Space
where we have different artists within the Tezos ecosystem
come up and tell their stories,
anything they wanted to talk about when it comes to their art,
upcoming releases, current drops, inspiration behind the art, workflows.
It's just about getting unapologetically artsy. So thank you for being here. It really means a lot to see the room here.
Make sure to tweet it out to everyone so that more people can join in on the vibe.
Art Chains, appreciate you. And one of the things I was actually going to say towards the point we
were just talking about is that recently TechMental, I caught on,
was doing some really cool integration with VR and AR, which I think is another example
of how we could continue pushing to integrate.
And then even further, I feel like even in some insane way, there's a way that that could
combine with literal physical art sometime
and really make that extra connection.
Yeah, I mean, you could see it as like, I mean, there's a couple of angles on that.
Like, I mean, it's a culture to a certain degree, or you start to, like, it's a space,
right?
And it's a visual paradigm paradigm too, to your point.
So you could also just start to, you know,
because you can still two-dimensionalize that, right?
I mean, oftentimes we'll see that stuff on a two-dimensional screen and you can still put it.
It's like putting Minecraft in a painting, right?
Like it's 3D in the space, but you can still put it on a 2D surface.
Great point.
Yeah, and I love Santiago's Minecraft AI works.
I just loved what I saw recently.
Do you know, just totally random,
do you know that Tezos community
has their own Minecraft server?
I had no idea.
You know, it's funny what I don't know about so many things.
I had no idea.
That's pretty cool.
That is being managed by our very own Blangs down there, who has created this wonderful Minecraft world for the Tezos community.
And there's a handful of people within the community already building some pretty epic things in there.
And just recently, I created a little AI version,
like you said, of a Minecraft world
with an AI version of Minecraft blangs.
And I'm going to make a little TikTok short out of it
to help advertise the server.
That's awesome.
And, you know, like the breakthroughs that are happening in AI, I mean, it's, and I mean, we're not here to talk about that.
But I mean, that's kind of like, that's been a big part of my trip here has just been like really exploring these tools for writing and everything.
And it's pretty unbelievable.
It's pretty unbelievable.
Like ChatGPT 4.5,
the writing,
which is the experimental one
or it's like the new one
that they just give you a little bit of
if you subscribe.
It is unbelievable,
the writing capacity of that thing.
It's like it can read your mind
because you're uploading all your files
of this project,
of whatever project you're doing.
And it's pretty astonishing. Anyways's not i could totally go down that tangent with you forever
uh because it's where i'm at yes artistically ai is blowing my mind and expanding my world and
helping me create the things that are in my head and uh in top of that, when it comes to ChatGPT, there's a whole world there of ways
you can get it to learn your persona
and save it as a JSON file so that you can import it over
to a new chat and hack the system's memory apps.
And definitely could go into that.
Connectors.
Yeah, exactly.
But it is interesting too, though, like the AI for visual.
Like I've experimented a little bit with just combining old, you know, different series, like my own artworks with interesting results.
But like I haven't even really gone deeply, but the way you can...
There's a lot of implications and discussion.
I have to do it really just for research for the show, as well as just as an artist.
I mean, the way you can lift anyone's style, like David Hockney, for example.
You can just take the style and apply it to whatever drawing you have.
I mean, yeah, so It's all pretty wild.
It's definitely going to push people to expand and innovate and keep up.
I think that at the end of the day, it's going to be what we were talking about,
where it honestly expedites something the world and Web3 kind of need,
which is that connection to happen. So I'm pretty excited for it personally.
Yeah, me too.
And I think the moral of the story for all of us
is you just have to use the tools.
It's like the internet.
It's like the internet in the 90s.
If you didn't learn how to email
or you never learned how to use a phone in the 2007,
like where are you in this world?
You know?
And I think it's just one of those,
like it's like a paradigm shift.
That's a brutally honest and real example.
And I do think it is kind of like that
when you say it that way,
it's like, don't become the people
that we kind of tease
that don't know how to use the computer today by not playing with AI now.
And that's the thing.
Like, I tell people, and I've just started to really kind of take it seriously.
Like, I did before, but I'm taking it seriously in a way of I'm spending time with it now.
Whereas before, I'd kind of dabble here and and there treat it like a google search here and there
but now i'm actually like using it uh subscribing to different models and going back and forth
between the models and what i tell people is don't even worry about what you're doing just
like spend time with it like just just play with it you know and improv is a big part of it
yeah and you'll find your way and you'll find out what you need to do and all that sort of stuff.
You'll find your working method.
You know, like I'm coming up with like weird little working methods where it's like I get the output from Claude.
And then I will compare it to my previous output, you know, for writing.
And I'll take a paragraph and I'll compare the two
paragraphs, I'll read them together, and I'll pick the words that I want from each one to make the
final result. So you start just making your own, just by spending time with it, your own process.
It's like art making. Absolutely. And that's a great segue, actually, because there is a piece
that we put into the Jim thread today that, if I understood right, you basically deconstructed a mid-journey output and created this stunning piece within the pixel art sketchbook.
It looks like, essentially, you digitally created it based off of that output.
looks like essentially you did it based off of that output.
That's an interesting thread of just art making.
Yeah, that was in the sketchbook, right?
Where you try out little experiments,
you don't worry too much.
Tezos was perfect for the pixel art sketchbook
because I had put out work on SuperRare.
And then all of a sudden, it's like, well,
what am I going to do on Tezos?
I want to put some art out here.
I was thinking purely pragmatically.
It's like there's different collectors out here.
And there's almost a different visual vibe here.
There's a lot of pixel stuff.
And I was like, I like the pixel stuff.
I want to do something, my own kind of flavor of that.
And so the pixel art sketchbook was very much a Tezos kind of series,
even though a lot of it now I put on Bitcoin just recently because it works so
well with Bitcoin because the files are so small.
But what was interesting, bringing it back to the AI thing,
is one of the very early mid-journey experiments I was doing,
it's like, okay, create like a Bacchanal painting, you know, like one of these Renaissance paintings,
like the big wine parties, you know, in the 16th century in the middle of nature, you know, pastoral sort of thing.
And I started getting some really interesting results.
And it's kind of like the most obvious thing ever,
which is, oh, you know, which most people I think think it's like,
oh, I can just create compositions.
But then if I just use that as a reference,
then I can still have it in my style or whatever,
but just have it, but have a fresh, use it as a composition machine,
so to speak.
I love that phrase.
Yeah, there's a title of a youtube artist journal show i could make composition machines yeah that's exactly how
um i try to explain it to people when they're like oh this this is lazy this is this is just a sin
of a prompted sentence and one click is that most of the ai art
that at least i find myself stopping and being moved by is more than that and there's like
really a thought process behind composing a message and a scene with it
it's a great point you know and like that can often be lost it's no we're back to our
original discussion like you have to just use these things in order to understand and i think
a lot of the ai debate it's like the same thing it's like the same thing why people don't like
nfts because they've never actually perhaps really aggressively used it or you know participated so because like to your point like
that bacchanal scene that i liked like that was probably i'm guessing like at least 80 you know
images later if i had to guess 80 100 images later of editing and picking you know mid-journey
produces the four images and then you pick that image and say make some like this you know really cool workflow actually it's fun right because it just starts giving you stuff and then you edit your
way it's the artist's editor right and that's kind of what it is with uh writing as well like
just as i was describing it to you like you have i have two paragraphs and i'm literally just being
an editor and going that word and then no i no, I like that descriptor slightly better.
And then I'll use that.
And you just, and then you have your output.
Then maybe you put it into a different model and see if it gives you any variations.
Or maybe you add some of your own writing into it.
So it's kind of like it's a collaborator, you know, at the end of the day is the best way to do it.
at the end of the day is the best way to do it.
Because if you're to do writing
and you just try and get the AI to do all of it,
it's not very persuasive.
People can tell.
And even with the newer stuff,
sure, it's going to be better with 4.5.
But it's kind of lame.
It's super lame.
You really have to humanize it.
Otherwise, it's very obvious, for sure.
Yeah.
It's kind of like everybody says, garbage in, garbage out.
Or you kind of get out of it what you put into it.
That's why I want to use it so much, because it really is a point of leverage.
I've been writing for the last couple of weeks here
for a project, and it's like my writing
is so much more powerful and better
than if I had just been working on my own.
And I think the visual is going to be the same thing.
So it's just interesting.
So when it comes to this specific piece,
I am really curious, now that we've talked about
the generations that came to what you used as a reference can we talk about more like quite
like literally your digital method of recreating it and which device you used and stuff like that? Yeah, so I'll go into basically the process.
I'm not going to go into the apps just because there's a lot of copying in the space.
No, I hear that.
I'm just going to be blunt about it.
And I don't want, yeah, yeah.
That's kind of one of the, it's just part of the thing.
But I can go into the process, which is, it's interesting.
But I can go into the process, which is, it's interesting.
You know, so basically I'm tracing it out, but loosely, as you can see if you look up close in that work, using two different apps.
And one of my favorite techniques, and let me know if it's too loud in the background here.
One of my favorite techniques is blinding myself.
And so oftentimes when you're tracing, you can actually see what you're tracing.
Like you'll have a rough idea, but you'll not really see what you're doing.
So you fill in some areas and then you export just, then you remove the underlying layer
and you see, oh, that's what I made.
That's cool.
So it's very unselfconscious mark making because you're blind to basically, you can't really see what you're doing.
And then you export that, you put it out as a layer and I'll use, I'll use two different pixel art apps, let's say.
And then I'll, and they'll have slightly different kind of styles
of export, even though it's all pixels at the end of the day, they have different kinds of styles
of export. And then you get a kind of a weird organic feeling because you're using two different
sources of, you know, it's like using two different brushes, let's say, or using a medium
and this sort of thing. And so, yeah, so I don't know if that answers the question.
It does. It's really, it's a really awesome piece. I'm not going to, I hope everybody takes
a look at this piece within the gem thread. And I think either you really, really portray
a message within it, which is that pixel art doesn't have to mean pixelated or um you
know little pixel block by pixel block and that there are ways to kind of even trick the eye into
making it feel painted and that that's what i really caught my eye about this piece is it feels
like it's all brush strokes in a way it's kind of fun isn't it like it's uh yeah like and i'm really glad to hear that because it's just
a reminder it's like oh you know like don't forget about that experiment uh over there and but there
is like a painterliness and a looseness which is something this is another kind of really interesting kind of aspect, you know, coming from the physical art where like I learned, I took a degree in visual arts.
It was like a double degree, as I was saying earlier, with English literature.
And I didn't really learn how to paint in that class.
Like I made some interesting paintings, but it was kind of like typical art school at least
back then where it was all super conceptual and that's why i ended up doing a master's in english
because i felt like it was actually more brain food than the art stuff but i or is i going with
this the uh yeah so then in when i was living in montreal let's call it 2008, 2009, I went to Toronto a couple of times to this, what was it called?
The School of Realist Art or the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto, where they would teach how to oil paint.
And they'd do these two-week workshops.
You'd pay, I don't know, 600 euros, 700 euros, and they'd teach you how to oil paint. And it
literally like in two, two workshops, like, I mean, you can almost teach someone how to oil
paint in like three days, amazingly, because it was always just this mysterious thing to me.
to me um and so i all to say that when you learn realist art and a lot of people who
when they learn how to paint realistically will attest to this is it becomes a trap
because you learn how to make something like to, it's almost magical. You can, like, almost make this photographic type of image.
And it's kind of amazing.
But then it's really hard to break out of that and get back to, like, you know, something like an abstract expressionist painting.
Because it's the completely opposite mentality.
Like you kind of train yourself away from that.
Like, you kind of train yourself away from that.
And so I had to, you know, in like 2012, 2013, I had to break out of that, like in a kind of hard break.
It wasn't easy because I knew all of a sudden how to paint.
I could do oil paint.
Not many people can do oil paint, you know, generally generally speaking especially who I went to art school with and I really had to just break that and embrace the brush strokes and the looseness
of style so I kind of learned the hard way of the beauty of you know just being loose and just final
point on the story is like I you know I'd struggle with these kind of
realistic surrealist paintings I'd do I'd spend like a year on them for on each painting and I'd
made like maybe I made six paintings in three years or something so maybe it was two paintings
I'd work on a year at the same time driving myself totally insane then I just out of frustration one
night I was like i'm gonna make a
painting i'm gonna make it in one day and i'm just gonna have a time limit you know and i was kind
of desperate about it and i did and i was like i think i like this painting as much or more than
these works i'm spending a year on and so i never looked back i never picked up those other paintings
ever again just because i was just like more excited to make a painting that was fast.
And so I really kind of learned the hard way.
You know, so when you look at the looseness and the painterliness
and the embracing of texture in the brushstrokes, the unfinishedness,
it really, like, that's kind of the genesis, to speak of the of that whole you know i kind of
learned that one the hard way let's put it that way it was beautifully said and it's um it's an
interesting thing to process as somebody that is primarily a musician because when it comes to
music i feel like the music art world isn't isn't like that at all where it's like you know you really want to hear
um something polished but at the same time like some of my favorite songs i've ever written
were written in a few hours on a strong kind of urge after right kind of moment
so there's like this back and forth that puts my my mind in
it's a fascinating like you know the artistic process like i mean here's another kind of take
on it where just like while i was uh just a couple of days ago three or four days ago i was
uh i'm working on a series on this show uh and and someone asked me to do and I was like okay I'm so I was
working on it and I was like okay I'm just gonna make like 10 backgrounds here in one day because
I was like had my little process of making these backgrounds and what was really interesting I was
like I'm just gonna force myself I don't feel like doing 10, but I'm just going to force myself.
They take about 20, 30 minutes each to get the basics of it.
Just do it.
And what was interesting about this is when you work on just one piece,
you're almost always trying to recreate the masterpiece.
You're almost trying to repaint the same painting.
Whereas when you make 10, all of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, I made that one.
I can't make everything the same.
So then it's like, okay, then you start doing more experiments.
So then I get to like the 10th and I'm like, okay, just one more.
Just make something that's good enough.
Don't worry about it.
Kind of already starting to get tired.
And you start putting your things together.
And so then, okay, I did it.
Great.
And then I open it two days later and it opens on your things together. And so then, okay, I did it. Great. And then I open it two days later,
and it opens on the 10th,
and I'm like, whoa, what the hell is that?
Right?
And so moral of the story,
it's so, like, when you,
it's kind of like blinding yourself,
removing the self-consciousness,
removing the preciousness,
removing this thought of like,
I'm trying to create this masterpiece, anxiety,
usually results in much better work.
And so this is why I'm always sort of like,
prolificness is really the name of the game,
I'd argue, unless you're Leonardo. But Leonardo was prolific at the end of the game, I'd argue. Unless you're Leonardo.
But Leonardo was prolific at the end of the day.
Look at the notebooks.
Sure, maybe he had 18 paintings,
or however many it is.
Maybe it's 20, I don't know.
But ultimately, almost all the great artists
are super prolific.
Sorry. Are you there we are here yeah we dropped sorry i i my phone just uh fell on the ground but it's okay my art my my studio is my studio is okay okay good You dropped your whole studio.
It's true. It's true. But, you know, now I'm totally mobile. Like, I can make art on the go, my iPad and phone and laptop. It's all I need, you know, thanks to this digital art scene. You know, I don't need a studio. You know, this is my studio. spice studio it is um the literal version of decentralization and within art is that it takes
away that limitation that some people might have that others don't and kind of opens up the floor
for whatever you can do that's kind of why i find myself saying make art by any means necessary
it's because i feel like that's kind of the name of this movement.
It's just like,
no more excuses, just create.
I love that.
I love that, and I totally agree.
There's no reason
with these supercomputers in our
pocket that we take with us everywhere,
nobody can make any excuses.
You can do it on the plane. I do that sometimes,
or on a train, or at the cafe. All you have to do is a search in the App Store, or the Google
Play Store, or whatever. And there's even websites if you don't have that, right?
Absolutely. A lot of it's open source, a lot of free stuff out there you know it's it's it's an
exciting time that i think we will look back at as like the very beginning and you got i'm speaking
on like a societal time frame like where it's like five ten years not gonna matter but at the
end of the day i do feel like this is the very first steps towards a revolution
in the art world and in sharing globally and expanding and innovating and collaboration.
I think that we are really living the very beginnings of something very special.
I totally agree. I mean, I kind of, I call it the second generation of digital art or painting with a computer, you know, like, and it started with the Mac and the user interface and the mouse where all of a sudden you could start to, you know, use your hand movements.
Because the first generation is more like the technology wasn't there. It's all algorithms or like you have to code it, you know, you program it and that's cool and it's its own kind of tradition so to speak but uh it really the
floodgates open when all of a sudden your hand gestures or you know your finger gesture or
whatever uh where you can start painting physically rather than just purely conceptually
and going or thinking about things ahead of time
and trying to program things but you can be expressive and i think that's huge and it's
coinciding you know with the video game culture and so and then also this kind of retro irony
thing where it's like all of a sudden we like all these old softwares because of the pixelation
which i think is a result of the video game uh growing
up with these video games and uh the aesthetics that are inherent in that so it's i agree with
you like i think we're at a i think it's a golden age actually uh of sorts i the only thing i would
debate there is that we're pushing our way out of a dark age you know
and like that's where at the beginning of that and I only way reason I say that is because when
you really think about the the overall state of the world it's really not great how few people
get to stop and think about art and creativity and exploration right now but we're part of i feel like the
creation of a path forward where we can enter into that golden age for sure well especially i mean
this is a tezos kind of this is a tezos themed space here uh tezos i'd, as far as blockchains, has made that more accessible.
And basically, I think that's why Tezos became such an important place for artists.
100%.
It's because it was so cheap to mint.
And it was a reaction, really, to the Ethereum and the big fees, especially in 2020, 2021.
You hear all the stories i paid at
1.250 bucks you know to mint a work but when you're selling you know i sold for five and six
thousand bucks i was like yeah i'll take a chance and mint the work for 250 bucks you know absolutely
empowering you know accessible easy to use less intimidating, more open-minded community, more welcome.
And I do feel like I completely agree with that.
I actually have a question related to that for you.
Yeah, go for it.
Being somebody that's been active in Tezos for a while now,
what's something that you would like to see on Tezos to make the art scene even better?
Ooh, that's an interesting one.
You know, it's so rich.
I don't know.
Like, it's an interesting question.
You know what I'd like, I mean, at the end of the day is,
like, when I go to art fairs and once in a while you see Tezo's booths, you know, to their credit.
But I do feel like it's always kind of like, I feel like it's not wide ranging enough, like the curation.
Like I feel like there's all sorts of artists that they could put in that they, I don't know, they just kind of stick with, I don't know if it's the top selling or whatever it is.
I don't know if it's the top selling or whatever it is.
I think there could be more variety in the curation when Tezos goes to art first.
But that's a very specific kind of improvement.
It's because there's nothing else.
I think they're doing wonderful.
And the collectors are...
It can be an interesting conversation because within our own world, that's a valid question. How can we do better? How can we be even more inclusive? But when you compare it to other blockchains, it already is doing a pretty fantastic job. I mean, I mentioned that because there's actually very little that I would actually think needs to be adjusted.
I think Object's doing an outstanding job.
You know, like, what you often see is, like, is people getting in their own way.
And I think in, like, I feel like, not to talk badly, but I feel like Zora kind of did that with the artists.
Like, we've seen it kind of did that with the artists.
We've seen it kind of over and over.
You know, Foundation, they kind of basically, they didn't quite abandon it, but they tried to get everybody on rodeo selling for 30 cents, whatever it was.
And both of those ecosystems had really good artists using their platforms and they kind of just you know i felt like they got in their own way all they had to do was do nothing and i think objects done
a really good job of not getting in their own way and that's you know not to be underappreciated
because it's pretty common especially in the crypto world but just in
the world in general uh people like you it's all the time things get wrecked and there's a good
thing and they'll just get spoiled somehow i think it really how i feel it's like a lot of the passion
kind of kind of go uh get in the way of logic and all of a sudden you you create
these exciting things to do that were unnecessary.
Yeah, for all sorts of reasons, right?
Within an offering incentive, when you release an NFT,
you want more people to know about it,
all of a sudden you realize, man, i don't know if that was necessarily necessary
you know it's interesting and like i don't want to talk about zora too much but like i tell people
like they were i felt like zora was about to go mainstream like i felt like especially like they
were kind of riding because machine was doing a lot of work with them and she was kind of blowing
up and like i felt like they like all they had to do was just keep the servers running.
And so, yeah, I mean, it's quite a morality story.
I mean, I'm sure they're happy
and they're probably all doing very well.
So maybe they're not concerned,
but just from my vantage point, yeah.
So anyways, yeah.
I find it to be a really important thing to note
and it's good to hear it.
And, you know, there's always room for improvement,
but there's two scopes.
There's the within the ecosystem
and then there's comparing it to the outside ecosystem
like we talked about.
And, you know, I think it's pretty exciting
to have things like Reject popping up
and offering like a companion app to help people with discovery of object NFTs.
And we actually are about to release an article about Reject that'll kind of help people understand how it helps improve your discovery process for art on Dezos.
improve your discovery process for art on Tezos.
So with that being said, actually,
I do want to let everybody know that if you would like to come up and ask
PocoBelly any questions, we will open up the stage here in just a moment.
And just a reminder that this is a specific for PocoBelly space.
We do a community call every month. This month,
the community call is actually going to be next week because the week
after that, the last Friday of the month, we're going to be at TezCon. So if you want to come
share what you've been building, share your project, your workflow, feel free to come up next
Friday for the community call. If you have any questions for Pokebelly, you are more than welcome
to request coming up here as we continue chatting and goodness thank
this is such a beautiful room just want to say thank you again for everybody that is here
i see some legendary names in the space that i typically don't see and i appreciate every single
one of you for tuning in thank you teslos commons for making making it possible kryptonio our legendary co-host and uh dj with some of the best
audio playback you'll hear on x we've got a pretty pretty great closing song for y'all here after we
have a few questions and uh just a little bit more chat and again thanks for everybody tuning in
today make sure to share the space reminder thatinder that they are recorded. So if you have anybody
that can't be here and they still want to check it out, they can. And just a reminder real quick,
make sure that you're utilizing the Tezo CRP program. Hashtag Tezo CRP to nominate people.
Let us know why you're nominating them, what category. And there's also a site you can go and just fill out a form if you want to do it that way,
or you can do it on Twitter under the comments.
Just make sure to tag Tezos CRP.
And thank you guys so much for making it such a great program.
We had a lot of great nominations recently,
and it's really great to see people turning up and nominating the people in the space
that they think are going above and beyond. So tesla commons.org slash rewards
is where you can go if you don't want to do it through Twitter.
And again, anybody that wants to come up now is a good time. If you can request,
we'll have you come up here and you can ask PocoBelly any questions you want. We have just
a little bit more time, no rush. PocoBelly, you're more than welcome to just share anything you want as well.
I was actually going to ask,
do you have anything that you're planning on dropping on Tezo soon?
That is an interesting question.
There's always the AI Girlfriend series,
which I really enjoy and feels very just now. I have a few of those
in the pipeline, but they're still being kind of work, you know, massaged, so to speak.
Pixel art sketchbook. I was really happy with those cool object art packs or like the trading
card art packs. I thought that was really cool and uh well executed i don't know if you saw that i imagine you saw it uh and so maybe i'll do some more just i want to
put a little bit more pixel art on uh tezos because i've been putting like a ton of it on bitcoin
just because i felt like i had an urgency to put it on bitcoin before all of a sudden it's at $500,000 and it's just going to be too expensive.
So if that, I have quite a few series that I do.
I've got eight or nine series that I work on.
And so I'd say AI Girlfriend, Pixel Arts Sketchbook.
And I have a secret.
The show I was, those backgrounds I was telling you about,
that's part of a show that I can't talk about.
But other than saying there's some show that's in the pipeline that's actually probably the main thing secret show in
the pipeline which I'm really excited about actually that is really exciting and I do think
that it would be really cool to see more of your pixel art especially after having such a good talk
about it um today um and again like um definitely thank you for coming up today
and sharing so much about your art and your story i think it probably will inspire a lot of people
well i appreciate it and thank you for asking me and you know i do i basically broadcast for a
living uh doing a podcast for this mining newspaper and then i do the youtube like you're a very good broadcaster
just for my uh you have good voice and everything and just good vibes uh just so you know i thought
i'd just mention that so anyways i appreciate the invite and and all the questions uh interesting
questions definitely just try to keep it comfortable and casual and give people an opportunity to
on their own share what they want to share and not force anything um i think it's important
you know i like i'm a musician and artist myself so i know how it is you know i know what kind of
gotcha questions i don't want to be asked you know so it definitely helps And not to mention just the personal passion I'm growing to, you know, really just be so grateful to you guys and continuing to share your stories and inspiring and encouraging the rest of the community every time, really, including myself.
I've never been more inspired as an artist, and I got to give that full credit to this space, the community, and the artists I get
to talk to. I totally agree just on that point. Like I mean it's incredibly exciting. Like
almost where we started this you know conversation with you know the sense that something's happening
here. I feel like we're both kind of lucky and privileged
and but everybody kind of earned their way here like you know it's not because uh all your friends
are doing this that you ended up you know in this space or you know selling work on tasos maybe
because one of your friends did but uh but a lot of people just kind of made their way on their own and found themselves.
This community kind of found each other.
This international, you know, as I like to call it, visual arts underground community.
And it's awesome.
So anyway, just to your point, Yoshi.
It really is.
I could reminisce over what we're living and doing right now.
Like, just for hours and hours, really.
Because it really is something that I feel like we're part of something so much bigger.
And sometimes I feel like I can get annoying.
Because it's like totally revolutionary talk, you know?
Right, right.
Yeah.
It's better, as they say in writing it's
better to understate rather than overstate yeah well definitely appreciate it um i i um
want to make sure everybody knows that you're welcome again to come up and ask any questions
don't be scared um vocaleli doesn't bite a couple of things that I do think
you mentioned art packs
something I definitely wanted to bring up today
before the end of the show is a reminder that the art
pack initiative is going on through
July 31st even though all of the
pieces within have been revealed
definitely a
really amazing incentive.
If you had any need for an excuse to collect on object,
there's an extra one right there.
It's really, really fun to open those packs.
You know, I was really impressed
at the secondary for the packs.
Like, at least when I opened mine, I think, like,
I got one because I bought a bunch of work,
and like a week ago.
And I was like, wow, people are offering 50 Tezos
for one of these art packs.
I was almost like, I was tempted to sell.
But I was like, maybe that's not the greatest PR in the world.
But yeah, it's an impressive secondary for the art packs.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie.
I got FOMO and ended up just buying one directly off of secondary
and unlocked one for buying that one.
So I ended up getting the...
That's hilarious.
And I opened both and still had FOM fomo so i bought another one off of secondary
and it happened again so i got to open four yeah awesome awesome
oh man it's been a lot it's actually been a really fun week in tezos land we got some open calls
um we got fear for tez that just started
you know you could probably throw something in got Fear for Tez that just started.
You know, you could probably throw something in for Fear for Tez even, Poco Belly.
I don't know if you got something ready or not.
Fear for Tez.
That sounds like Fear for Tez at this time of year?
Because it's Friday the 13th.
Oh, it's today. It is.
Shit.
I'll have to.
I don't have two hours here in Greece, but I guess
in the Eastern...
Maybe I still have another 12 hours
with the
time zones here.
I don't think it's just today, though.
Maybe have the weekend.
Yeah.
But no, Fear for thez is going on right now
seeing some really really cool entries
we got our community member
Lily White's actually been on TikTok
going live and sharing a lot of
the artwork with people that otherwise
wouldn't see it I thought that was really cool
and brave oh that's cool
very cool
so yeah guys definitely tune in.
Just so you know, Fear for Tez is going on right now, the fifth edition.
And we do have somebody up. Loop Art Critique.
How are you today?
Hi, I'm pretty good. I'm glad to listen.
I have a question um for poco belly um
you you mentioned that you know the the older computer art you know was doing more things that
were related to um you know related to coding and things like that and i'm assuming you're talking about people like uh charles surrey
or verna molinier no oh it's next miss up her name but um yeah i i encounter a lot of people
in this community who don't know that you know computer-based art was first even exhibited in
a gallery in 1960s you know so it has a much longer, you know, it's not new.
It's not a new thing. You know, AI is new. NFTs are new, but making art with computers
is not new. And that's wonderful to hear that you know about that. I also wanted to know, like,
you referenced a lot of art history as well in your work. I went over to look at your work on your, on your Twitter page.
So how important do you think it is for artists in this kind of new NFT art world
to know about art history?
And then also to know about the world world like from the 1960s to present that came before
all of this yeah that's a super interesting question isn't it i mean you can almost go
like put it this way i have a few answers to that like you know I've always kind of long maintained like if you want to be
a part of the tradition you kind of have to be a have a conversation with the tradition
and it's basically the way I define folk art is or outsider art is art that basically isn't having a conversation with the tradition.
And so there's some really great outsider art.
There's some really great folk art.
But I love the tradition.
I love the almost like the high stake-edness of the whole thing.
Like, I mean, I love how seriously people take it.
I take it seriously.
I love, like, you know, and it's kind of gigantic, you know, like, and you see it through, frankly,
whether it's like, you know, people spending half a billion dollars for some, what I think is like a
student work of, like one of Leonardo's students, you know, the Salvatore Mundi, or, you know,
Leonardo being, you know, shipped over to France to paint in the king's court there.
This is, so all to say, like, so, you know, bringing it back to the art history, like,
I love the tradition. I love, I don't want to say the elitiveness because i think it would be misunderstood i think because it's not like i love elite uh you know but i do love how uh
you know this is really sophisticated entertainment and it's full of meaning
and at the end of the day it's kind of all about meaning and this is visual meaning and so
when you attach yourself or having a conversation with the tradition there's a whole bunch of
meanings that you can start to play with and so by quoting the history in different ways uh and so now how important is
it for you know a glitch rom artist to be quoting you know do they need to put a mona lisa in their
work or some other thing it's an interesting question then, like, a completely different angle on this is, well, you know,
you look at Jeff Mills and techno,
you know,
like, it's, if you want to make
an early Jeff Mills track, what you do
is you hit a whole bunch of random keys
on your synthesizer,
and you kind of
have a techno, like, it's like anti-music
almost. So, is
that quoting Bach and Beethoven and whatever?
Like, no.
So, you know, you look at punk rock.
And, you know, the Ramones actually were fairly traditional in their own way.
Kind of 1950s-ish, you know, in their own way.
Phil Spector influenced.
So, you know, there's all these kind of smaller traditions, you know,
and you can have outsider artists quoting other outside artists.
Like, you know, you look at Hasdrubal Waffle kind of quoting Sam Doyle,
you know, and it's like, does that start to become its own tradition, right?
So there's no absolutes here.
I do think knowing the history, though, gives you more intellectual dexterity. It gives
you more range, like conceptually. And I think it just gives you a bigger vision at the end of the
day. And so I think that's the ultimate reason. And you could argue the same thing with,
and it's kind of funny.
You mentioned, say, what about the early computer art, right?
What's interesting about it is I'm kind of weirdly not into it.
In the sense of it always feels kind of cold and emotionless to me.
And that's painting overly broad brush.
And I actually quite like some of Vera Molnar's work and, you know, other people's too.
So I don't want to overgeneralize here.
But oftentimes, you know, if I go to the Digital Art Museum in Berlin, it can sometimes leave
me feeling a little, it's a little too conceptual for me sometimes and not enough,
just like Jack Kirby comic cover for me.
Like I like a good colorful, you know,
or action packed image, so to speak,
that's balanced and whatever in its own or imbalanced in a beautiful way.
So I don't know if that answers your question but so i think
it's it just increases your intellectual vision i like that yeah thank you so much i mean it's been
you know i um i off i go to a lot of different spaces and i deal with artists um all the time
and it's so nice to just sort of randomly click into one of these spaces and here's somebody that has so much background and so much appreciation for art and is, you know,
it's really great and it's refreshing. So thank you very much.
Well, I appreciate it. And I appreciate the question and yeah, it's awesome.
Right. Like, I mean, significant, it's all about meaning, you know,
and so I feel like you appreciate, you know, that too, you know.
Absolutely.
So thank you.
Great question. And, you know, there isn't a better space to become informed and learn from the people around us like Paco Belli and like people that really are well versed.
All we got to do is listen and
we'll become better individuals over time it's one of the things I really love about these
discussions is that everybody has something to offer to the table insight wise and experience
wise and just knowledge base everybody has such unique taste and interests. So thank you for sharing
that and great question. Looks like we do have Findle Delacrim up here. How are you today?
I am great. Hey, thanks for such a great program, Yoshi and PocoBelly. It's funny,
I was just going to say thank you for hosting all your programs.
I have learned so much about art from just listening to you and, you know,
just listening to you and, you know, you interviewing artists and talking about their work.
So I just wanted to throw you some flowers on that.
Maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know,
your favorite outsider artist since since you were talking, you know, mentioning it.
That's a, well, first of all, thank you. I, yeah, maybe we start up the,
you know, we did the spaces with Ruin Tune there, who's crucial, the co-host.
How long did we do that? Like, I think two years.
I took a break in, I think it was early April, late March,
just because I was just doing too many things. For the reason I went on vacation, I just had break in, I think it was early April, late March, just because I was just doing too many things.
For the reason I went on vacation, I just had to, like, yeah, I just had too many things going on.
I just had to chill.
But I appreciate that.
And I'm really excited about that as a historical document, those spaces we did.
So I appreciate that.
What was the second question that you asked?
Oh, I was gonna,
I just wanted to find out more
about your favorite outsider artists since you-
Oh, right, right, right, right.
And how important that is.
And I'm a big fan too.
So, you know, I'm just kind of curious.
Yeah.
You know who the classic outsider artist was?
Like the first to really break through.
And it kind of shows how it's not an absolute term.
It's not like a black or white issue.
It's more of a shades of gray sort of issue.
It's Henri Rousseau.
And maybe that's the most obvious thing you could say.
But the guy who did the jungle paintings and whatever.
But he was kind of like to a certain degree one of the first like
real like because who is he quoting right like you know in terms of who is
he imitating you know this guy's work and but when you see like I think it's
that MoMA I think it's called Dream, and you see the astonishing color.
And color, you know, his use of color, but also just his compositions, the mystery of them.
Huge fan of that.
I am impressed with Sam Doyle, who I learned from, from His Drupal Waffle.
In a sense, I really like Hasdrubal Waffle,
the artist on Tezos. But Sam Doyle, as far as painters, I find interesting. I've been looking
at those works more recently. But yeah, I've kind of like a bit of a boring answer with Henri Rousseau there. No, I appreciate it.
No, it's, and I think it's really fun
to just learn, you know, from artists,
you know, that you admire, you know,
who is inspiring to them, you know.
And maybe we don't,
maybe we don't ask that question
at all around here.
It's great to learn from who we really admire, right?
Well, it's quite interesting, you know, and it's great to be asked because then you're forced to come up with an answer.
And it's funny, I've been thinking to myself, it's like, sometimes I forget who my favorite artists are
and then I'll remember and I'll be like, oh yeah.
And like, here I was saying like Rauschenberg
and whatever, but I was like, no, and then I forgot.
And it's like, I was trying to remember,
it's like, who is my favorite artist again
that I was thinking about the other day?
Like, I mean, I don't know if that says more
about my memory than anything, but yeah.
It's like, and I was like, yeah. So yeah, it's like, yeah.
So anyways, to your point, the conversations are quite valuable
because it kind of forces you to take a kind of a position, you know,
on these things.
And then you learn your own and it helps you develop.
Like, I mean, speaking like as an individual, like myself,
it helps me develop my own views by having these conversations.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, these conversations happen to me all the time and I, and I'm just, it's just very inspiring, you know? So yeah,
I really appreciate you friends. And I don't know,
do you have any plans to, to start your,
to start a program like that up again?
I, well,
I told Runtune and the community basically that we'd take another look at it in September like the weekly artist artist journal life kind of like the title too.
So put it this way like I am potentially I'm working on a sponsor right now someone approached me and so that always makes things easier if you're actually like getting
paid and it doesn't need to happen but put it this way you can start putting other stuff aside
or you can start making it's easier to justify uh because i i would like to but it was just like i
do you know i do a weekly podcast for my real job.
Then I do the three YouTubes a week, which are not an insignificant amount of time.
And then I was doing the weekly.
That's five shows a week, right?
Now I do four.
And that's like, oh, that's so much easier.
So yeah, it's hardcore broadcasting.
That's like talk radio.
That's like Art Bell, Rush Limbaugh type schedule, you know.
So, yeah.
So I'm in no rush because I do because I still want to make art.
And I feel like, hey, you know, part of the reason I started that show is so I could get more attention on my art.
And then it's like, oh, great.
Now I don't have time to make the art. So and I'm really excited about the art. And then it's like, oh, great. Now I don't have time to make the art.
So, and I'm really excited about the art.
And then it's like, oh, I'm working on a book.
And so it's, you know, there's a Steve Jobs quote that goes around every so often, which is like,
what are, you know, some of the most important decisions
are the things you decide not to do
that seem like awesome ideas, you know,
that seem like great ideas.
And like, I wrestle with that seem like awesome ideas you know that seem like great ideas and like i
wrestle with that like enormously because i just have all these things i want to do and so maybe i
make it monthly you know this sort of thing uh and then there's the gallery that i started you know
which is now called pokebelly collection excitingly uh know, we put out the show with Elby.
We're going to have another show coming up in a couple of weeks.
Maybe I'll put it.
It's going to be with Cap and I'll announce it here.
And that's going to be an awesome show.
Wait till you see what he does.
So, yeah, that's coming up in the next couple of weeks.
And, yeah, so there's a lot going on.
So I'm not against it.
Put it this way.
You know what I'm, my hybrid is, you know,
because, like, I want to do a space with Elby about his show.
I want to do a space with Kappen.
So maybe I'll do it, like, relating to the, you know,
digital gallery that I'm doing.
Do it kind of like that for starters.
So I'm open to it
and if people really want it
well let's see and maybe there's a sponsor
who knows
well I really hope that happens friend
because I really
really value those shows
it was just great fun
and I know
I see Mikey down there
I know that Mikey is a big fan as well.
Yeah, well, Mikey de la Creme, big shout out.
Hero of the scene, as I like to call him.
Yeah.
Yeah, Mikey's king.
Mikey's the king for sure.
Yeah, it's hard to put into words.
But yeah, it's a big shout out to Mikey there in the audience.
Mikey de la creme.
If you don't follow Mikey,
you should.
Absolutely.
We had Mikey on the show very recently as well.
Oh really?
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That was one of my favorite shows I did of those weekly spaces was with
Mikey de la creme.
That was a moving show.
I got to make sure,
you know,
like this is the thing,
like I haven't even uploaded these things to like spotify and youtube because yeah so like it's almost like i want to do that
first and then i'll look at maybe because it yeah and make sure they're all downloaded from twitter
before all of a sudden twitter erases them all or who knows what right so yeah i think it's on the
list recordings only last a month so it definitely is important
yeah so i'm pretty sure i have them all but yeah it's uh they should all be uploaded on
my own spotify at this point well guys this has been an absolutely amazing space thank you again
poker belly for coming up and chatting with us today. Thank you to everybody that came up and asked questions, everybody that's been here tuning in
and adding to the vibe.
Really, really a very fun space.
Yeah, that was awesome.
Thanks, Yoshi.
And thanks, everybody, for coming out here.
What a great crowd here.
And so, yeah, big shout out.
Thank you, Tezo's Commons.
Cool space and good to learn.
Maybe just before we go, I mean, what is Tezos Commons at the end of the day?
What a question.
Tezos Commons is essentially here to support anyone building on Tezos.
Its number one goal is just to be part of the helping hands that are available for anybody in space.
We write articles weekly and it's just a community focused nonprofit entity.
Very cool. Yeah, I feel like you guys could.
It's almost like you should say that at the start of the show.
It's like, put it this way. I've been around Tezos for how many years now, right?
It's like, yeah, I was genuinely asking, like I wasn't sure, you know, so I had a vague idea, you know, so I'll say very cool.
Well, I appreciate that.
And it's a good reminder that, you know, as an entity, we could still be louder and let people more often know what's being contributed.
And that being said, great opportunity to plug the Tezos Commons Twitter handle.
If you go over there, there are tons of articles in the articles tab sharing all sorts of information about things going on in the Tezos ecosystem.
And just make sure to follow along, set the notifications.
There's tons of stuff that we put out every single day to try to help you guys
navigate the space. There's a newsletter
that just went out just now, actually, called
The Baking Sheet. So that should
be one of the first things you see when you go to
the handle.
Again, thank you guys so much for coming to
this space. Pocobella, you had something else you wanted to say?
Just
thank you. Thanks, Yoshi, and thanks, everybody.
It was very fun. And it's always
nice to be asked about your art.
Absolutely agree. And it's a pleasure. And thank you again, Tesla's Commons, for giving
me this outlet to do things like that and ask these questions. Just a reminder, guys,
there's a lot going on in space. If you go to the at Tezos handle, you'll find the regular art on Tezos
Friday recap. Some really great stuff to catch up on there, including the Fear for Tez event
that is going on until I believe the 16th. And then on top of that, Crago just teased
GIF art day coming up this Sunday. So if you've got any gif art that you've been holding off or something that you want to make,
it'd be a good day to drop that.
We do have an incredible
closing song for you guys today.
This is called
World Consumption by Wyatt
Trash. Hope you guys
enjoy. Again, thank you.
As always, if you enjoy the song, make sure
to go listen to the link that we'll provide
on object with headphones for the best experience. so so Thank you. Oh E a铆 That was amazing.
I agree. that was amazing i agree i've just been really like we've we've seen a new influx of some extremely dynamic and well-recorded music on tezos and it is just bringing my heart joy for sure
we will pin that to the top again thank you so much poco belly thank you so much tezos community
thank you so much tezos comments this so much tesla's community thank you
so much tesla's comments this has been an amazing space we appreciate every single one of you for
tuning in we do this every week next friday will be our community call for this month we usually
do it the last friday of the month but this month we will be at tescon on the last friday of the
month so definitely stay tuned keep in touch guys make sure to set notifications on for the Tezos Commons handle so that you stay up to date on all that we're putting out to try to help everyone stay informed and help navigate the space.
Again, have an amazing weekend. Stay artsy. Love you all. Take care. Thank you.
