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Exploring “Overture” by @mitchellfchan w/ Art Blocks
Recorded: July 17, 2025 Duration: 0:45:48Space Recording
Short Summary
Mitchell Chan's 'Overture' launches today on OpenSea, featuring 555 unique pieces in collaboration with Artblocks, marking a significant moment in the NFT landscape. The public sale starts at 3 p.m. Eastern, reflecting growing interest in interactive digital art and innovative storytelling within the crypto community.
Full Transcription
Thank you. I always had a vision, always had a heart I had no idea what you're living
Didn't know how I always had a feeling
I was gonna be like, I'm gonna be the man
Always had a heart
Mama say, I better go to sleep
Do something bad, go make a legacy
Matter of course that's what we need
Back in the days we wanted everything, wanted everything.
Mama said, build your biographies, rewrite your history, light up your wildest dreams, music victories, everyday we give up, it's a little complicated.
All tied up, no more love, and I'd hate to see you waiting.
Had to have a long time.
Still a brother, still a brother, couldn't make a killin'.
In an hour time, always had a vision, always had a hope.
Had to have a long time, still a brother, couldn't make a killin'. oh
they I don't want to be the winner, but not the deal. Don't ever change, we wanted everything.
Wanted everything.
Stay up on their rise, stay up on their rise,
never come down.
Stay up on their rise, stay up on their rise,
never come down.
Mama said, don't give up.
It's a little complicated.
All tied up, no love. and I hate to see you waiting.
You see, it's all been done, but they haven't seen the best of me.
Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome back to OpenSea Spaces, where we spotlight the artists, thinkers, doers, creators shaping the future of Web3.
My name is Adam.
I'm the community and events lead at OpenSea, and I am so glad that you are here.
Today we're going to be diving deep with someone whose work fuses conceptual art, code, and
blockchain brilliance, in my opinion.
His name is Mitchell Chan, and he's up on stage.
Mitchell, how are you doing today?
Oh no, Mitchell, I can't hear you. Is it me?
Can I get emojis in the audience if we can hear Mitchell. Maybe thumbs up, maybe thumbs down. All right, Mitchell, I'm seeing some thumbs down,
which is not anyone's fault.
Thank you in the audience for giving us that.
Mitchell, do you mind leaving the space and then maybe
coming back just so that we can get you to be able to speak? Because there's a really exciting
release happening today from you, and I'd love to be able to have people hear about it.
All right. So while Mitchell is figuring that out, I can give...
Hey, I'm back.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Oh, my gosh.
Hi, Mitchell.
You want to know what's happening?
So I'll tell you.
I'm pacing around, and I walked out of a Wi-Fi zone,
and then I had to reconnect.
That's all.
That happens.
Totally understandable.
My first question for you today is, how are you feeling?
I'm feeling great. I am. I'm really, you know, it's actually a really fun feeling. I was telling
this to Aaron on your engineering team, saying in my career, you know, I've installed, you know,
two tons of steel, like,
above areas where children play.
I have, like, had to dangle
from a crane 60 feet in the air
to hang sculptures from a ceiling.
And still, there is nothing more terrifying
than deploying to Ethereum mainnet.
I believe that.
Well, it's funny, as I was sort of meditating and preparing for this conversation today,
I was thinking that the body of work that's dropping today on OpenSea and powered by ArtBlocks is called Overture.
And it made me think of this feeling of an orchestra kind of getting ready as the audience is shuffling
into the orchestra hall and there's that like nervous excitement as they're about to perform
and I'm wondering if you're feeling any of those jitters. Yeah yeah I am it's because it is like
I was just saying this is this is my first Mint day in almost two years.
Like, it's the first time I've had something available for Mint.
And it's not just because I'm one of those artists who only builds when ETH is above a certain price, just so you know.
But yeah, so it's always fun.
Like, it's always exciting.
And I hope I, like, never lose that feeling of being slightly nervous when something is about to go out into the public.
Yeah, two years ago was Boys of Summer, correct?
Yeah.
That is so good.
I would love to start the conversation there.
I know that that's not the first artwork that you put on Ethereum. But I'd love to start with Boys of Summer just because that,
at least according to my understanding,
was one of the collections and bodies of artwork that you brought to life
using this gaming-centric approach to your sort of conceptual practice.
So I'm wondering if you can help the audience understand a little bit more,
first about the practice, and then second about Boys of Summer.
Sure.
Well, I'll tell you what.
So with Boys of Summer, it's actually a really interesting case study to look at in a bunch of different ways because it wasn't my first video game that I tokenized on the blockchain.
But it used blockchain mechanics in some interesting ways technically and also conceptually.
It also used blockchain mechanics as a subject to meditate on, to comment on.
And so when I go to bring gaming technology to blockchain, first let's talk about the way that I don't do it.
I'm not making these play to earn games.
I'm not making these economies. I'm not making these play to earn games. I'm not making these like economies.
I'm not making these kind of like gimmicks.
You're going to like stake and get, you know,
all these kind of like leaderboards and win stuff.
It's not like Axie Infinity.
It's just like, it's about trying to use those blockchain mechanics
to make something interesting happen in the game.
So what I did with Boys of Summer, like that project actually had two parts.
There was a PFP collection and then there was a game, right?
The PFPs obviously tokenized and the game was also tokenized.
It exists as a blockchain token as well, but you can plug into it.
And anybody can plug into the game Boys of Summer, right?
You don't need to own anything.
That's another important part of what I do.
I want everybody to be able to experience it
regardless of whether they've bought something or not.
But if you connect to the game Boys of Summer,
and like you can do this right now.
You can go to boysofsummer.chan.gallery.
And if you have a wallet that has a Boys of Summer PFP,
then that character is playing the game.
That's your character that shows up on the screen.
But there's like a sneaky thing that is happening when you play that game, which is that the boys of summer PFPs were minted with hardly any metadata attached to them.
any metadata attached to them.
And the archetype of how the PFP,
you know,
metadata thing works is punks,
obviously,
which actually,
I mean,
don't have literal metadata,
but a community kind of built it around them.
But,
you know,
it's like there are attributes,
like,
you know,
if you have like a,
you know,
a wild hair punk or 3d glasses punk or whatever, there are prices that are, you know, a wild hair punk or 3D glasses punk or whatever, there are prices that are,
you know, assigned to those traits, right? We know like a 3D glasses punk is maybe worth more
than a spotty punk or something like that. Subsequent PFP collections formalize this,
put this on the NFT metadata.
So you could just sort, right?
Now, you know, when Bored Apes come out, they sort.
So you can sort all the police hat apes from beanie apes or whatever.
But Boys of Summer came out with no metadata traits like that at all.
I didn't want anyone to be able to sort them by aesthetic categories.
The only metadata they had was name and a baseball position, shortstop, center fielder, catcher, whatever it is.
And as you play, as you connect, when you connect the PFP to the game, boys of summer,
you start playing, you build up stats. You get stats for what your batting average was,
how many home runs you hit that season.
And then you start to get like weirder stats.
Like you get stats about what your SAT score was.
You get stats about like what your resting heart rate was
and things like that.
And all of those traits get written to your PFPs metadata
as you're playing the game.
So that means that really like all data, all qualitative
data for a PFP on the blockchain or for really any aesthetic object on the blockchain, all
qualitative data is also market data, right? It's like, you know, you look through your Fidenza and
it's like the, you know, the qualitative property of whether or not
they are pink or something, it's also a market point. And so that was sort of like a way to,
to comment on all of these characters that are your avatars are just kind of a collection of
market data. It's so cool how you thought about these metadata traits kind of transforming based on the performance in the game.
It almost becomes part of the art piece itself, the performance, if you will, over time.
And that's one thing that I love about your work is how thoughtfully you approach how you want to offer it to the world,
as well as how maybe it changes or how it stays in sort of a state of permanence.
One other project that you've created that I want to talk about
is Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge.
This is another one of the sort of gaming-inspired pieces that you've created.
And this will eventually, of course, lead us to talking about Overture and Santar.
But I just want to make sure the audience
has a full understanding of the historical works
and sort of your commitment and passion
around the gaming space.
So I'd love if you could also explain that one a little bit
because that was one of the lesser known works
to me personally before we started working on Overture.
So I want to make sure the entire audience
gets a chance to digest and understand your work.
Yeah, so Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge
was a huge watershed moment in my career
because it was the first video game artwork that I made.
And later on, when it was like seeded into the collection
of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, I believe it was like seeded into the collection of the buffalo akg art museum
i believe it was the i believe it was the first like video game that they've ever seeded into
their collection so that was really cool but the way that that came about was like it was actually
a commission piece the buffalo akg asked me and some other digital artists to create some work
that responded to other work in their collection. Now, this is 2021.
And, right, I was sort of, like, very, to whatever extent I was visible,
I was visible for pieces like, you know, Digital Zones and LeWitt Generator,
pieces that were really building on conceptual artists.
that were really building on conceptual artists.
And I knew that I just didn't wanna do another
like conceptual art connector to blockchain
because I'd done all that.
Like I'd said everything that I needed to say there.
And so I was like, I just wanna do something unexpected.
So I chose this Winslow Homer painting And so I was like, I just want to do something unexpected.
So I chose this Winslow Homer painting.
And it is, don't tell the people at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum that I said this, but it's not even my favorite Winslow Homer painting. Like, I don't think it's a great one of his paintings.
think it's a great one of his paintings. Like for the benefit of the audience, Winslow Homer was
this, was a painter who's, who worked in like the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, around then. And he rose to
prominence actually doing commercial work, painting and drawing scenes of the Civil War
for Harper's Magazine. Afterwards, he had an illustrious career as a landscape painter,
and he's considered one of the foremost landscape painters in American history.
So anyway, the Buffalo AKG, they have one of these paintings.
It's called the Croquet Players.
All right.
And now everybody who's listening to this, you can close your eyes.
You can visualize this.
It is this.
The painting the Croquet Players depicts some rich people playing croquet in like 1863.
It's super duper straightforward.
And I thought, well, I mean, one of the interesting things about this, and this is like a very
apolitical painting, right? It's not depicting the Civil War or anything like that. It's just
depicting a bunch of rich people playing croquet after the Civil War is over. And what I wanted to say with this was, well, actually, it's still a very political work
in some ways, because it is depicting like a socioeconomic condition that exists following
that incident, following the Civil War. And then, oh, sorry, man, I'm rambling on. But basically,
the bottom line is, I turned it into a
video game where you turn on the video game and it looks like somebody just made a little digital
painting of this painting and then you click around you realize you can actually play the game
you can actually like play croquet with all the characters in the painting but also if you zoom
out you start to see that something is amiss and that
there are conditions that are just outside the frame of this painting that are easy to skip over.
But if you browse around, if you explore the video game artwork, you can discover them.
That is so cool. And you never need to worry about rambling on spaces, particularly
with me, because these are the types of details that are maybe not online or on Twitter or are
not things that we could act like look up and know. And so just having you explain and give
some of these like sneak peeks almost behind the curtain of your practice or your approach or the way that you built something is really valuable. Am I correct in saying that you also wrote the dialogue and recorded sound
effects and created things like shading and lighting for this game as well? Yeah, I'm laughing
about the sound effects. That was my favorite part of Winslow Homer's croquet challenge.
Actually, my favorite part of creating that artwork, right?
And so this was, it's not my first video game artwork,
but it's like my first artwork that I know is going to a museum, right?
It was made, like the museum specifically requested it.
So my favorite part of this was meeting with the curator right before I was about, like, the museum specifically requested it. So my favorite part of this was
meeting with the curator right before I was about to unveil the work. And I was just, like,
making sure, I mean, not that she ever would have told me otherwise. She's too respectful of an
artist. So I just wanted to give her a heads up of what she was getting. And in that game,
and again, you know, it's very, you know, I have serious messages to say about the politicization of historical art.
But also, if you aim the croquet ball at one of the guy's groins, it will hit him and he will keel over.
And it plays a sound effect that I recorded of a guy keeling over in pain for getting hit in the groin with a ball. That was
the single most important, that was the single funnest part of my job, making that art. I highly
recommend giving it a shot. You can go, you can play it right in like OpenSea if you want,
Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge, and you will hear my, I to give myself a pat on the back, my stellar voice acting as man hit in the groin with a croquet ball.
It's so good.
But the bigger thing, so that's the most fun.
But yeah, I do everything, right?
I write all the shaders.
I do all the programming.
I write all the dialogue. I write all the shaders. I do all the programming. I write all the dialogue.
I write all the scripts.
For me, I just have this ethos about my career.
And in particular, like, you know, look,
when Digital Zones hit,
like when it was kind of discovered and really took off,
I was like really fortunate to be one of the people who, you know, got a lot of
attention in like the critical space, but also a lot of attention in the market. And when that
happened, there were a lot of artists that happened to, and they professionalized, they
started up studios and they hired assistants and things like that. But I look, I've been doing this for a
long time. And I recognize that your reward for having some success in art should be that you get
to keep making art, right? My reward for that, for having success in art was never going to be,
oh, great. Now I can be like a manager of an art
studio. So I very deliberately just never hired studio assistants, like I never hired coding
assistants, because it's fun to do everything myself. But the downside is that I only really
get to do a mint every two years. Well, your commitment and, dare I say, mastery of the craft is really apparent here.
And how much love and affection you pour into these artworks is really just astounding.
We've been describing some of the artworks and collections that you've created that are gaming-specific, inspired.
And so I know that yesterday on A Space with Artblocks
and the Shiller team, I see them in the audience here,
you gave a really great explanation for why gaming
and these gaming mechanics are so central to your storytelling.
And I'm wondering if you can give a similar explanation today.
Do you remember what it was?
Sure.
Dude, of course. No, I mean, because I actually live by this stuff, right? I mean, it's like asking me, what are my children's names?
These are just ingrained into every part of my day. So it goes like this, but I'll try to razz
it up a little bit so I don't just repeat yesterday. All right. And
actually, I'll tie this back to kind of where we like first kind of got to know each other a little
bit was in Marfa, right? And I did that talk in Marfa. And one of the things that I talk about in
Marfa is that there are these kind of like levels that modern art has gone through. And there is
like the kind of most basic formula for making modern art is modern art that
talks about the unique properties of its own making, either the unique properties of its
material or the unique properties of the process through which it is made. Essentially,
short version of this is there is a lot of art that is just about that artwork itself.
art that is just about that artwork itself. That's fun. That's interesting. But the next step
in, I think, making interesting art is to make art that uses its own unique medium or uses
the unique qualities of its process as an analogy for other things out there in the world, things that
are important to other people. Because if I make a drip painting that's about how interesting paint
is, hey, you ever notice that paint is goopy and drippy and colorful? And it's like, yeah,
all right, thanks, man. The rest of us are out here trying to make rent this month. It's more interesting to figure out a way that this
material can be an analogy for other systems in the world. Okay, so that's what I like in art.
Now, video games. Where do video games come into this? Games are systems, all right? And this is true of board games. This is true of, right, it's true of sports
as well. And if you really look at those systems, you might find that those systems contain
little pieces that are analogous to other systems that you see elsewhere in your life,
right? We know this is true because people use,
it's so true and so obvious
that people use this as lazy metaphors.
People often say, oh yeah, he's playing 4D chess.
They understand that chess is a system
that promotes outflanking your opponent, right?
And thinking ahead, preparation, things like this. That's a system
that has an analogy for other things that you do in the world. Now, a great board game is such an
elegant system and a really, really great board game is an opinionated system. It's a system that
is designed to deliberately lead the player towards acting in a certain type of way. All right. There is no way to play the game
Monopoly without being a capitalist. For example, it is an opinionated system. It's not a great
example of one because it's like, it doesn't go too in depth about that system, but you get where
I'm going. Video games are amazing because you can create
all kinds of rule sets in a video game.
You can create all kinds of systems
and you can mold and tweak and distort them.
Shit, you can even change the rules of a video game
while a player is playing it.
And if you're an artist and you are not just good
at your craft of making video games,
but also good at thinking about the world around
you, you can make that system analogous to another system that exists in the world. So all of my games
are actually, they're about capitalism, or they're about social systems, or they're about economic
systems. And what's really fun is that you can just not push that in the viewer's face
right off the bat. You don't have to come out guns blazing with your artist statement,
being like, I'm really interrogating the legacy of capitalist interventions in emerging diasporas,
blah, blah, blah. I can just say, look, I made this video game.
It's about baseball.
And someone will sit down and play it.
And after 20 minutes, hopefully they'll realize
that they were actually playing a game
about quantification of personal data.
And that's what you can do.
And that's why video games are the best.
Yeah, it's a really good explanation
that I hadn't thought of too deeply before yesterday when I heard you touch on this topic about systems and rules.
And one of the things that stood out to me was this sort of suspension of self when playing a game.
You almost inhabit the character and you would do things that are in maybe the best interest of the
character, or you believe to some degree that you are the character, you've become the character,
and then you automatically just accept that you are a part of the rules and systems
of the game and how transformative of an experience that is. And so with your art in particular,
that is. And so with your art in particular, it sort of lets people into this world. I mean,
just thinking about Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge, none of the people that are alive
today, I would imagine, unless you're really, really old, were alive then. But you're seeing
and you're believing that you are there playing this game and then as you zoom
out and you start to see some of the social critiques or you see some of the economic
critiques, it really causes you to think about the artwork and history and the time period
in a new way, which is exciting for me because Mitchell, you've heard me say this before, but
understanding what conceptual art is and experiencing conceptual art is something that's fairly new to me, but it's something that I'm so excited by because it's causing me to see the world and my experiences in a new way. of the check marks of success for art. So I don't know. I would imagine that you're intending to do
that. Maybe you're not. Maybe it's also just a fun game by itself. But I really do think you're
helping people to see beyond just the contents of the game by using the game as a medium.
Yeah, it's absolutely intentional. And Adam, I love to hear that. I really love to hear that. Like, I really love to hear that. That means so much to me. That to me, you know, what you just said about, oh, being new to this, but now feeling like you can engage with it. I mean, that means more to me than like engagement with, you know, some sort of like highfalutin art audience that already exists. Not that I have anything. I'm actually very, very, very grateful for them and the parties are great, so please keep inviting me. But it's like,
we just, we, you know, all that stuff that people say, you know, about democratization of art and
being open and accessible and all that stuff, I might be the biggest sucker in the world because I actually believe
that stuff.
I believe in it still.
And I also believe in art.
It has the ability to enrich people's lives.
And you can do it in a way that just makes it there and accessible for people and not
intimidating.
And I also believe most people, if you give them time and space,
like they'll get it.
They'll appreciate it on a long enough timeline
if you just stick around.
So I love to hear that.
Well, it's my pleasure.
This kind of leads us to Xantar,
which is another video game inspired artwork
that takes the form or medium of a game but it's also kind of a series
of things in its own right. It's not a drop but it's like a collection of artworks as you've
called them. So I'm wondering if you can sort of explain the concept behind Xantar and the
triptych and then maybe we can explore the individual pieces that make up the triptych, and then maybe we can explore the individual pieces
that make up the triptych.
Sure.
So it's a big week,
and it's a messy week to talk about.
This is what I learned.
I thought it would be a really good idea
to put out four different artworks in five days.
What I didn't realize
was that it would make talking about it a real mess
because there's so much to talk about.
Bottom line is, over the next five days, I got four artworks coming out.
Now, the good news for you, Anon, listening along, is that for today, you only got to worry about one.
And only one of these is available for public sale.
for public sale. So there's not, don't worry, I'm not coming back and hitting you up again and
So, I'm not coming back and hitting you up again and again and again.
again and again. But I want to make a whole body of artwork to explore this idea. I'm really,
it's a story. And it's, I don't mean that story in like the metaphorical sense, like a story,
a journey. No, it's literally a story. There's actually a story. It's a story about this company
called BebeSoft. This company, BBsoft has a CEO.
His name is Bran Hutchison.
And he's getting ready to release this fictional video game called Xantar.
And this fictional video game called Xantar, this game is going to be huge.
Everybody in my fictional world is super excited about it.
Xantar is a gelatinous cube that eats warriors in a medieval village, and every time he
eats a chieftain, you ascend to a higher level. That's the theory of the game. However, the big
deal that people are excited about is that in this fictional game, Xantar, there's going to be this
digital economy, and all of the coins that you earn in Xantar are immediately redeemable on eBay or Amazon or OnlyFans or whatever. And all the
divine robes or whatever that you earn in Xantar are immediately transferable. They're really
owned by people. The creator economy around Xantar, all the streamers, they all get paid in Xantar coins and all this
stuff. So that's the story. I'm telling a story. And I want to tell that story across four artworks
that would all use different narrative techniques. And now that's what we're getting. And so that's
what we're getting. And so Overture that comes out this after in a few hours is like the first
chapter of that. It's one style of storytelling that I'm employing to begin
this story. And then the story will wrap up in five days and everything after today will be just
just like, you know, free for people to, to, to plug into and enjoy. That's one of the things that
I love about your practice is you really put accessibility up there in terms of the things that
you are accomplishing, wanting people to be able to interact with the artworks, whether they own
them or not. They can just show up on OpenSea or any other platform that sort of supports
this way of engaging with your art. I think that's really admirable.
And personally, I think it's really cool.
So is Xantar something that is minted
and that is out that we can play around with yet?
Or is that coming later?
Or how will that work?
The game Xantar, all these artworks were on display
at the gallery Winwah Head in New York City in May.
And then they're on the internet now, but they're locked, just behind a password.
And I'll release the locks over the course of the next five days.
I didn't want to dump all the artworks in one day.
So today, it's just Overture.
Overture is the only thing that you can
do today. And then over the course of the next few days, I'll unlock the other chapters of this
story. Maybe that's the easiest way to think about it. Chapters of the story. Overture is the first
chapter of the story will come out today and the rest will come out later. Very cool. Yeah, I'm
pumped for Overture today. And then there's also these sort of endless runners
that are different from the concept of like a,
well, maybe not different,
but in a different style, you might say.
So I'm curious, can you talk to us a little bit
how you came from more of the,
what sounds like an RPG kind of game with Xantar
to more of these like runners,
which both are very successful types of games.
So it makes sense that you'd delve into both,
but curious how you decided on those two sort of styles of games within
Xantar.
Sure.
Well,
okay.
So overture that comes out today,
it's kind of,
it's very much just like kind of an interactive artwork,
a lot more so than a game.
And then two days when we put out the runners,
so remember how I was saying that games are systems
and systems have metaphorical value,
like systems have allegorical value, right?
So an endless runner is a very popular genre of game,
particularly on mobile devices.
And most people listening, you know these games.
It's a temple run, subway surfer. The thing where the camera's behind the character,
you are just running forward in a straight line collecting coins forever. It never ends. You just
got to run. You can swipe in between lanes. You can go to the left. You can go to the right.
Sometimes you can even jump. But no matter what, you are going forward and you are just trying to
avoid obstacles and collect coins.
Now, I'm looking at that and I'm thinking to myself, hey, this sounds like a metaphor to me.
Hey, that kind of sounds like an apt metaphor for a certain type of life that we're all locked into.
Sometimes I myself, do I myself not feel like a temple run character at junctures in my life? Why, yes.
Verily, I ought to create some sort of clever artwork about this. So anyway, that's what I've
done. And I wanted to make two runner games because when you make two of something, you put
them in contrast and you can show even how two other, how two kinds of stories are analogous to
each other. So those games are, one of these games is pretty fun.
It's called Moonboy.
And you're literally just driving a Lambo,
collecting currencies, going long and short,
flipping coins for profit.
You're trying to get leverage
so that you can be buying currencies on margin
so that you can make money faster.
And then the other game that comes out at the same time with that is called Lady Boss.
So we have this duality, Moonboy, Lady Boss.
And that's going to be a runner game.
Also about another character who is trying to swap between social currencies and digital
currencies.
But this one has a story because you know how I said like Temple Run,
Subway Surfer, these are popular genres of mobile games. But there's also a really popular genre of
TikTok that is people just playing Subway Surfer on the screen while a story is read over top.
And sometimes a story is just reading and I'm using Reddit thread. Sometimes the story will be
a Bernie Sanders speech or something like that. So I made my own runner game and I'm using Reddit thread, sometimes the story will be a Bernie Sanders speech or something like that.
So I made my own runner game and I wrote my own story.
And this story, you'll sit down, you'll play this game.
You can zone out for 15, 18 minutes.
And it'll tell you the story about a young woman
who is a video game streamer who plays Xantar for money.
And that's what that's all about.
I think it's so fascinating to hear you describe the real world systems or structures or narratives that you've packaged within your artwork that at first blush, someone might be like, oh, you know, this is a runner. There's like, you know, a couple of these out there that are popular, like, okay, I get it. And then when I hear you talk about it,
Mitchell, there's so much more underneath. There's like layers and depth. And that's why I love these
spaces. And I love that I get to do some of these interviews because it's not always immediately
obvious, but when you sort of lift back the curtain, even just a little bit, you realize
that there's a thread there that you can start pulling and you can start actually getting deeper into the artwork and asking those questions like,
what does this mean? What could this mean? What are the reasons these things are here?
All of those start to lead to some very interesting answers. So thank you for giving us a little bit
of a picture into that. In terms of overture,
some of those really intentional elements
that you have helped craft are things like the dialogue,
are things like the music, are things like the instruments.
So I'm curious, how did you decide
what ended up being inserted into these artworks?
And if you can tell us what they mean,
I'd love to get some hints.
Oh yeah, I'll tell you everything you wanna know.
So Overture is a funny piece
in terms of how to decide what goes into it.
Being that, well, overture, right?
I say in an opera,
overture is that first experience the audience has.
And the overture is that first experience the audience has and the overture really exists just
to introduce the themes that are that are going to recur later on in the story you know typically
you're introducing the musical motifs and things like that so overture was the most fun to make
because you want to know what it is adam of course i want to know what it is, Adam? Of course I want to know what it is.
I like to think of it as kind of a cosmic gumbo is what I like to think of it as. And
I just kind of threw everything that I'm going to be using in all of the subsequent artworks into this cosmic gumbo of an artwork. So it is like, you know,
I just like threw in kind of some of the like, you know, character sprites that would that would
appear later, some of the musical motifs, obviously, and you will you'll see them again,
if you keep on following this story. So it was the most fun piece because
I could be a little bit more indiscriminate about what I put into it. I wanted something that was
fun and bright and poppy that would draw people into this world. It is just chock full of stuff. Like that artwork is just so jam packed full of things.
And then we can kind of unpack them all
over the course of the next few days.
And then once I had created that big,
that kind of big, big mixture of elements,
then I just have a few,
like just tried to be really laser precise
in the stories that kind of come out of the Minter. And so there's that scattershot
world building that happens across all 555 Minths.
So you're kind of like the dungeon master who also met with the game designer who is also a chef creating a cosmic gumbo.
Thank you for repeating the word cosmic gumbo. there's usually some sort of intended outcome or experience that they want for whoever is consuming their food or their artwork.
So I'm curious, what sort of emotional or even existential states are you hoping that Overture and by extension Xantar causes the viewer to experience?
were to experience? So I don't want to, I don't want to give too much away, but basically every
artwork that I've made, uh, in like the video game medium is, is a comedy that turns into a tragedy.
Um, that's kind of how, how they all go. And it's like, you know, we've talked a little bit about not that, you know, I don't feel like
I have to be over the top, explicit right out of the gate about, oh, I'm addressing serious,
serious themes here. I can take my time and let it sink in. So the first experience that I always
want people to have with my artwork is delight.
I wanted Overture to be something that was just fun and delightful and it draws
people in and it welcomes people into my world.
Cause then once you have people like that, then you can do something
interesting with that.
So it's just intended on so many levels to be a kind of a low barrier to entry piece, right?
It's just a fun place.
It's just this fun virtual space to click around in.
But if you hang out with me for a little bit longer, we're going to take you some places, baby.
I want to go there, but I'm scared of going to the sad places.
You said there's going to be a tragic end.
Now I'm worried.
I don't want to give too much away.
I don't think I've made a single artwork that isn't a bummer if you think about it for too long.
I shouldn't say that.
Sorry, what I should say is everything is great.
We're all doing, wag me.
We're all going to make it. And all this artwork is about how hard we're all doing we're all wag me we're all gonna make it and this
all this artwork is about how hard we're all gonna make it it's great um i hope that to be honest
the experience i hope most people have with this artwork is is laughing to be honest this was the
most fun that we had when we were in the gallery because so when you if you get an overture there
will be there'll be a little story that runs along the bottom that you can read.
And when we were doing this at Winwah Head in New York, we had this big screen.
And people would come in and they would play, click around with this interactive artwork.
And people started just doing line readings of the story as it was scrolling through the game.
as it was scrolling through the game.
And people were laughing and having a great time.
And people were laughing and having a great time.
Personally, I think the stories in the game Overture are very funny.
And I can say that because while I was just talking about how I do
almost everything myself, I do occasionally,
especially for this body of work,
I ask some friends to come in and make contributions,
like little kind of secret guest artworks that are hidden inside the artwork.
So like one of the stories was written by, you know, my friends,
Simon Denny and Maria Paula.
That one's my favorite one because I didn't write it.
So I get to genuinely just think that it's funny.
And they're hilarious.
No, it's so good.
I am so glad that we were able to hop on today
and just get a layer deeper into the artwork.
What I would imagine happens most conversations with you
or perhaps other conceptual artists
is once you get that layer deeper,
you reveal how many other layers deeper there are.
And I'm hoping that when people
see Overture today, that they really enjoy exploring the pieces, because that's one part
of it, is really just going in, experiencing that levity and that joy, and to a degree,
maybe even some absurdity, and then thinking a little bit deeper about all of the things that come together.
It's really like an exciting thing to happen later today. So I'll give everyone a little bit
of a rundown. The Overture by Mitchell Chan. There's 555 pieces. These are dropping on OpenSea
powered by Artblocks, which is also a very exciting part of this partnership here.
We have the Allow List starting at 2 p.m. Eastern.
And those are for collectors of Mitchell's previous works.
And the public stage will start at 3.
So we're really excited.
I don't know, Mitchell, is there any sort of last thoughts you want to leave us with before we wind down?
No, I just want to say that I'm really grateful and appreciative
to everybody who's worked with me on this,
including and especially you, Adam,
and everyone on the OpenSea team, everyone on the Artblocks team,
and of course Mimi at WinWiHead,
and all my friends who contributed little cameo snippets to this artwork. And I
think, you know, hopefully it looks and sounds like nothing that you've seen in the space,
and I just hope you enjoy it. All right, everyone. And with that, we are going to close. Thank you,
Mitchell. We're very excited for Overture. We're extremely honored that you chose to work with us
and that we were able to get art blocks in the mix as well.
They've been amazing.
And so I'm excited to see people's reactions to the artworks on Twitter,
in Discord, everywhere,
because I want to see people's reactions in ways that maybe I didn't react to,
and that will help me understand the piece a little bit better.
So all that to say, very excited.
We will see you later today, again, 2 p.m. Eastern for the allow listed folks. These are collectors of Mitchell's
previous collections. And then the public stage is at 3. So with that, we will end. Thank you,
thank you. And we look forward to seeing everyone at the next space. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Adam.
