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Fidenza with @tylerxhobbs
Recorded: Sept. 23, 2025 Duration: 0:48:21Space Recording
Short Summary
Artblocks celebrates the monumental impact of Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs, marking a significant project launch within the generative art community. The conversation highlights the project's growth, unexpected trends during minting, and the importance of strategic partnerships in the NFT space.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hi, Tyler, how's it going?
It's going good.
Can you hear me okay?
Awesome.
Yeah, I can hear you just fine.
And how about myself?
Sound great.
Okay, amazing.
I think we'll give it about a minute before we get started.
Just let the room fill up a little bit, but I appreciate you being here and I'm glad we're not running
into any technical issues. So things are looking good.
Yeah, I got X installed on my phone, updated the permissions, good to go. And I'll just
re-delete it as soon as we're done with this space.
Amazing. Nice call. Well, yeah, I'm gonna go on mute for about a minute
and then we can kick things off.
Sounds good. Thank you. All right.
Well, GM, everyone, thank you so much for joining us today.
Last month, Artblocks announced the Artblocks 500, which is a celebration in retrospective
on the 500 Artblocks flagship collections.
As part of this celebration, each month we're recognizing landmark collections that stand out in the history of Artblocks.
We're proud to be spending the month of September celebrating Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs,
and we couldn't be more excited to look back on the series with him today.
With that, GM Tyler, how are you doing today?
Hey, GM, GM, I'm doing great today. With that, GM Tyler, how are you doing today? Hey, GM, GM, I'm doing great today. Today's a good day. So
I'm happy to be here talking with you talking about our work.
Always a good way to to spend the day.
Absolutely. Yeah, it should be a great conversation. It's been a
really fun month so far, celebrating Fidenza. It's been
coined September by a few people, which has been,
but yeah, just a fun celebration and excited to dive into things with you today.
Absolutely.
To just go ahead and get started, you know, Fidenza released in June of 2021 as part of
Artbox Curated Series 3. Before we really get into the algorithm and everything else,
can you just give us a short explainer of what the series is to you?
Gosh, a short explainer of what the series is to me. I mean, that's a tough one to do
succinctly. I mean, Fidenza, at the time that I created it it was very much the culmination of everything that I had worked towards in generative art up to that point.
You know, it kind of put the best of my skills to use.
And, of course, obviously it was the most wide sort of reaching algorithm.
It's very expansive in terms of what it did so
it felt it felt like quite the accomplishment artistically uh just on its own and then of
course uh you know you can kind of divide my life now into like pre-fidenza and post-fidenza
um because it had such a you know dramatic impact on on everything for me so um yeah i mean it's it's it's easily the most
important project i've ever um done and uh one that i'm one that i'm super proud of and um yeah
still still plays a big active role in my in my life today i mean we're we're here talking about
it right now so uh for whatever that's worth so that's the short version, but happy to. I mean, there's so much
more there. So there's so much more. And I think that's where the rest of this conversation will
come into play. I know that's a huge question to kind of kick things off with. So appreciate the
relatively succinct version. Yeah. Just, you know, diving into a little bit more about the algorithm, I'd like to focus on the art behind Fidenza. Flow fields play an integral role in the system that you've created. If you just want to talk to us a little bit about how flow fields operate in the system and also just kind of what inspired the concept to play with that.
the concept to play with that yeah so flow fields are something that that i started playing with
in like 2016 i think i remember being in a coffee shop and kind of having the idea
for them i think there's even um uh in that tash and nft book you can find a little doodle
of the first time I kind of sketched out the idea for like a flow field algorithm.
of the first time i kind of sketched out the idea for for like a flow field algorithm
And really, it's just a simple, you know, it's not full fluid dynamics.
It's a very simple model just to organize curves flowing across the canvas.
And I like to do it in a particular way that
Avoids collisions or kind of makes it so the flow
Kind of works in this very harmonious way, so it's not
Even when it's very turbulent that there's no sort of like lines crashing into
Into others are always kind of running
you know parallel or nearly parallel in a certain sense. And
so, flow fields are, as I said, I started working with them in 2016, and I just found
them over and over again to be a really great kind of skeleton structure to use for generative
art. And so a lot of different works over the years that I made use them and
really Fidenza the the part that is kind of iconic is this combination of the
flow field with these non-overlapping rectangles that are drawn along the flow
field and that allows the the canvas to get you know really filled up
it has all these shapes moving and flowing and changing direction but it
really preserves this sense of harmony because it feels like everything is kind
of working together and it's all part of one system and so it keeps the whole
work really really unified very very harmonious, of course, except for the anything-goes Fidenzas,
but obviously that's an intentional diversion away from the harmonious effects. So,
yeah, flow fields are really super central to Fidenza and everything else just built on top of
them. Yeah, thanks so much for that explainer.
I mean, I just, I'm a big fan of the anything goes.
I think it's a really like cheeky trait to include
or attributes and you know, the other thing
that kind of stands out aside from just the core concept
of flow fields are some of the color palettes
that you've explored.
Things like golf socks, rads, bates, you know, they all stand out as kind of integral components
of the series.
As with many generative art collections, the colors can really play a huge role.
But I think especially in Fidenza, you know, it's something that people recognize immediately
about the series.
So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you went about creating these
palettes, what that was like.
Yeah.
And then, you know,
just how you work them into the overall composition with these flow fields.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So the colors for me have always been a really important part of my work.
And I think that,
I think that they are like particularly
challenging to do well in generative art um and so i feel pretty proud of my ability to
to to work with color as well i felt like i feel like that's always been a strength of mine
um and so fidenza was like the fidenza was you know the next level test of like uh you know, the next level test of like, you know, what can I really do? So, so Lux was really kind of like the starting point for Fidenza.
And the Lux palette is something that for me evolved over multiple years.
So if you go back in my work, you know, a few years before Fidenza,
you'll see parts and pieces of the Lux palette kind of come together.
You know, I've always liked to use the kind of reds and yellows that you find in there.
And then just figuring out that I couldprint beige type of color just to sort of
absorb some of the high contrast and saturation in those colors. So yeah, you'll kind of see if
you really look at my work leading up to Fidenza, you'll see the Lux palette kind of come together
piece by piece and then really just kind of crystallizes in infidenza.
So that was the starting point and that's what I was really originally working with.
But I was interested in doing multiple color palettes.
I think I probably was pretty inspired by Archetype. And, um, which I think is amazing.
I think the color palettes in that are absolutely outstanding.
He has a really, um, uh, a very different way of working with colors for me, but a very,
very successful way.
Like, I think it's super cool the way he does it.
So I was inspired to, to try to work with, uh, multiple color palettes.
inspired to try to work with multiple color palettes.
And I kind of just used it as an opportunity
to really experiment and try out new things.
I think there was probably a period of, I don't know,
maybe a month where I was doing a lot of this experimentation
and designing the color palettes.
So I would just kind of try things like, well, you know, what if I couldn't try and build a color palette around a really saturated green?
And maybe that kind of turned into the baked palette.
Or I was wondering about doing this, you know, maybe what's it look like if i do a really restricted color palette
that um that's basically just two colors but very strong contrast and and that was the you know the
um the party time uh color palette or what about doing one that's uh that's you know black and
white but but very low contrast and that kind of turned into dark lifestyle. So it was, I kind of tried to just find like different starting points to, to push myself to, to experiment with these color palettes.
Often it would be trying to pick a color that maybe I didn't normally work with, like, you know, a strong green or a purple or black.
Those aren't normally colors that you find in a lot of my palettes.
And so it was fun to kind of, yeah, test myself that way.
And there were a number of other colored palettes that I came up with it that uh didn't make it into the final uh project
so definitely there was an uh an editing step there as well where i thought that you know only
the most important ones go in um the other thing that i that i that i did was the algorithm behavior
is actually a little bit adjusted depending on what color palette um you get selected. So things like outlines don't happen on some of the color palettes.
I'm trying to think. Now it's been a few years since I wrote for this, so my memory's starting
to get a little bit fuzzy, but there are other behaviors in the algorithms that are
in the algorithm that are restricted by color palette.
So some things, it was kind of just a fine tuning.
You know, I just noticed that certain behaviors didn't really look good with
certain color palette, so I made those not happen.
Yeah, this fine tuning that you mentioned, you know, it's something about the long
form curated generative art release that I think we've all become accustomed
to over time as collectors and generative art appreciators. But it's something pretty unique
to generative art. You put out a great article just on the long form series, you know, the curation
that goes in from the artist to create an algorithm where you generally know what to expect but that all outputs are you
know somewhat uh random or you know you can't necessarily predict uh where you're going to get
until it's minted um and with that i'm curious if there's anything that stands out to you that
truly surprised you as fidenza was minting um things from mint day or that week that you know
stand out as as outputs that you were not expecting?
Yeah, I think what's interesting is there were quite a few that stood out and really surprised me.
I think that, like, this is just a guess, but I think maybe artists, you know, post Fidenza or a little bit later,
like, actually maybe spent even more time doing, like, bulk Q, post Fidenza or a little bit later, like actually maybe spent even more
time doing like bulk QA than I did. I tended to kind of like, um, focus on particular combinations
of traits and kind of like, uh, really refine those. And then I move on to a different combination
and then a different one. And that's how I did a lot of my fine tuning and i didn't do a ton of uh huge bulk generation like i wasn't generating
a thousand at a time uh and and looking at all those i've heard from some other artists
um that they would you know while they're developing they generate you know a thousand
every day and look through them and i didn't that. I was kind of worried that I would burn myself out on the aesthetic of the algorithm if I looked at too, too many of them.
So I think as an interesting consequence, there were a few what you might call bugs that slipped through, but what actually ended up being really interesting features.
what actually ended up being really interesting features so um you know i think the i think the
most well-known one is is 938 um aka god mode which is um besides being the the like statistically
rarest fidenza actually is you know can only happen because of of buggy behavior um it's like
the the combination of the what is it the relaxed it, the relaxed overlap with what's supposed to be a micro scale.
And so that was a really interesting behavior.
Some of them were just really beautiful and I hadn't seen them.
Like 612, the spiral that the deaf beef has, um,
easily one of the most beautiful outputs.
And, uh, like I hadn't seen anything like that in my testing.
Um, yeah, there are other ones like that.
I clearly didn't, didn't test like, um, the combination of soft
shapes with anything goes there's like, I think there's four of those in the, in the set.
And, um, those ones, you know, they take like multiple minutes to render, um, just because
there's so, so many lines in there.
And, uh, yeah, there's a number of like pretty, like kind of strange for densas in there.
There's like the ones that look like the giant, uh, and like so um yeah for me it was there were a lot of surprises um it was just like yeah i knew
what to expect out of a lot of it but some of these combinations just worked um in in really
interesting ways so for me mint Mint Day was really exciting to see
how everything turned out.
And I was not quite as surprised as everybody else,
but I was still pretty surprised myself.
MATT BONGIOVIERIENOVSKY- Thanks
for taking us through that.
Yeah, it's really magical what can happen.
I mean, we saw, to your point, quite a few examples
from Fidenza, just kind of magic happening from the
Minter, from just a really well-created and curated algorithm. We've seen this in other
collections as well. I think some very notable things stand out just from the Artblocks canon
that I think people can point to. And it's just such a magical thing to experience. And I'm sure
for you as the artist on Mint A, it was really exciting to see all of that come out. And, you know, you had mentioned 938 is the god mode Fidenza.
There's been quite a handful of others that collectors have kind of coined terms for or
named themselves. There's countless galleries of people who have curated amazing collections of solely Fidenza that all have a
theme and go so well together. And, you know, with Mint Day and the weeks and months that followed
and now four years on, what has been the response like from collectors and how have you received
that? Can you take us through that a little bit, just how the Artbox collector community had received Fidenza and just points that stand out to you there?
I mean, that's a long story on its own.
I mean, gosh, if I just go back to my memories of like, you know, the immediate release and a couple of days that followed followed like it was just pure mayhem like um
i just remember people more or less like losing their and and like i just remember like people
being in yeah being in a frenzy to to to collect and like everybody kind of collectively discovering
these different um mints and qualities and special things about the algorithm and
yeah and then you started to see like certain collectors being really you know passionate and
and starting to build interesting sets and you had like for sure whenever Han showed up and
started collecting that was that was amazing just seeing somebody um you know i
think han started collecting fidenzas my memory's a little vague but i'm gonna say like somewhere
between one and three weeks after the after the collection minted and so the price had gone up a
bit they weren't they weren't you know free right um uh and but but han showed up and um really started collecting
passionately and and with the purpose he was like he clearly had a vision about which ones
um he was he was interested in and um you know he he he put in a lot of resources to really
collect um hard on on fidensa and it was it was amazing seeing, you know, collector,
and Han was not the only one,
but seeing a collector like that passionate
and that confident in the artwork,
had never really experienced anything like that before.
And yeah, I think that kind of was a little bit infectious.
I think other people really felt that enthusiasm as well. So that,
that was a really unique part of the Fidenza experience.
Obviously it's, it's, it's been amazing.
The longevity of Fidenza and how passionate collectors still are.
There are still, you know,
new collectors entering the space that are building up really amazing collections of Fidenza.
Kind of in a settled state, it's still evolving.
People are still interested in this work and in trying to build new collections out of it.
And so, yeah, it's just, I mean, it's hard to cover everything on this topic.
But does that answer the question pretty well?
does that answer the question pretty well?
Definitely answers the question. Yeah.
Definitely answers the question, yeah.
I mean, with something like this space,
even a written interview, you're never
going to capture everything. I think that's
the point of taking a
full month to celebrate
a collection like Fidenza's. You can get
a lot more throughout that time, but even then,
you're never going to get it all out.
It's this ever-help-ing story.
So thanks for taking us through that. I mean,
yeah, midday,
such an exciting thing to always see the outputs that come out, but then the weeks,
months and years following,
just seeing how collectors receive series
and what they do with it
and how they kind of incorporate
an element of themselves into the series,
I think is just such a beautiful thing.
Absolutely.
And I think that's something so special about the Artblocks community specifically.
And one question that I have for you is, how did you know Fidenza, how did you know Artblocks
was the right home for Fidenza as you were creating this?
Can you take us through that story of meeting the team and, you know, applying to have this
project release on the curated platform?
If you could talk to us a little bit about that.
Sure. Yeah, sure.
I mean, it was kind of interesting.
So, you know, I'll admit that I was a little bit hesitant to the idea of of nfts at first i think um uh sometime around the end of 2020 though i started
having a lot of friends um you know send me messages and they're like hey if you consider
doing nfts like i think you should check this out and i was like yeah yeah, I might do that. It sounds, sounds interesting. Um, and I, I did do,
you know, um, a small NFT release on, on Tezos because Anne Spalter was curating a show there.
And I thought, I mean, Anne is awesome. And so I wanted to, if she was curating it,
that I wanted to do something. So that, so that was me dipping my toes into,
into the water of entities. But, um, but at that point i still hadn't heard about art blocks and i
think um i think i you know i can't remember exactly how i heard about it but i remember
hearing about uh ringers and you know finding archetype very quickly as one of those two
projects was was you know my my first glimpse because i you know followed the work of
dimitri and shuttle like for for years and so um and i really respect both of them and and so
i remember seeing those two projects and being like okay dimitri and and chel are doing work
here like i gotta take a closer look at this and so i remember looking at those uh projects and i mean
the obviously that work is amazing um i think i my memory is a little fuzzy but i think i even like
checked out block talk and like um you know got a sense uh i remember i remember really getting
a sense that the community was super like vibrant and passionate and just
seeing that kind of discussion about generative art from people collecting, people who weren't
artists was really wild. Like I had not seen a group of people doing that. And so that's when
I kind of like, I was okay there's something there's something
really special here and uh i think all this happened over the course of you know one maybe
two days and and i applied for art blocks like right away like i want to say i applied for our
blocks the same day that i that i found out about it um Um, and, um,
I can't remember. I think maybe Jeff got back to me by email or Eric. I can't,
can't remember. And, uh, and they were excited, but, uh,
but I had to, uh, you know, I had to wait in the queue like everybody else. And I think at that point, uh, the weight was like, let's see,
I think I submitted my application in like late february and so i had
to wait until until the middle of june and um so i'm just like i'm like okay i've got uh
i i had an algorithm that was kind of the bones of fidenza i knew that that's what i was going
to work with but but then uh uh the weight ended up being really perfect because it actually gave me the exact right amount of time, I think, to, to, to work on the algorithm and improve it and get it ready.
Um, and yeah, I just remember, you know, uh, talking to some of the team, like, um, Aaron Penney, I had, I remember having a call with him and he kind of, you know, helped explain how things would go and it was very nice and
reassuring and gave me great, great tips.
And, uh, it was just, I was just so cool.
Everything at that time was so fresh and new and exciting.
And, uh, it felt like, you know, you weren't really sure what would, what
would happen, anything could happen.
Like I remember, you know, feeling like Fidenza was was really good but um but you never know how how collectors are
gonna respond to it so i was even you know i was nervous before it before it came out so um
but you know it went well and i guess rest was rest is history there. So that's, that's kind of how I
got connected with Artbox. Yeah, no, that's an awesome story. It's so fun to hear. And one thing
I'm very curious about is so you applied in February, you had to wait in this queue, which
was a queue that was getting increasingly longer over time. And so you may have gotten the shorter end of the queue, but you finally released in June.
Months had gone by and the space had pretty much accelerated at this rapid pace that I don't know if anyone was suspecting.
And, you know, you said you had hopped in BlockTalk and were kind of seeing the chatter.
Right.
From what you recall, how did things change from when you originally applied to when you released in June?
And I'm talking about just your observations in the collector space and maybe the broader NFT space.
If you can kind of take us back to that moment in time, you know, spring, summer 2021.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a good question.
I'm trying to remember exactly. So I'll admit that I had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life at the time. So things were actually completely crazy in my day-to-day life so i was kind of like uh just just managing that
and then working on fidenza as much as i could um and so um i would check in on on on block talk and
things like that from time to time but uh i didn't have so much so much spare time that i was
you know really um able to to tap in and follow the community and everything. But, um, my,
my mostly my memory is just everybody being really positive,
really excited. Like, um, every, at that point, you know,
every new project is doing something, uh, and it was so so cool to to see collectors and and fans
um just just like taking in this new work and and trying to digest it and same for me you know i got
to see other artists um uh other great artists release their work in the meantime like uh subscape uh came out uh during
that time and you know i've been a fan of of matt for for years at that point and so it was really
cool to get to see you know an artist like matt uh make a make a project and of course while i'm
working on mine you know that's that's um that's gonna have a big impact on me as well. And so,
um, yeah, it was just, I, I was mostly focused on the art block space. I don't think I even really looked at the broader NFT space because art blocks
just felt like, man, that was, that was the spot. Like that was exactly, uh,
where I should be putting my work. And so I mostly just stayed focused on the Artblocks ecosystem at that point.
And I wasn't really paying attention
to the broader NFT world yet.
Sure, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And you've talked a good bit about some other artists
that have influenced you and some other collections,
such as Archetype you had mentioned
when we were talking about colors.
And I'm wondering how Fidenza has influenced your own work now going forward four years on.
You've put out a few other collections and just curious how you felt that evolution has played out and what role Fidenza has played in your more recent work. Yeah, for sure. Good question.
recent work yeah for sure good question um uh it's played a kind of a diverse set of roles for
me so one thing which many folks have probably heard me say is i don't really like to repeat
myself and so um i tend to kind of keep moving and exploring new artistic spaces so in some sense like Fidenza checked a big stylistic box that
I don't need to need to revisit
like Fidenza is its own thing and it's not something that needs to like live on
in my in my later work.
Like I feel free to just keep doing whatever else I want to do.
But I've also learned a lot of lessons from Fidenza for sure.
One of the things that I think about a lot now about long form work or about just kind of bigger series of generative art in general
is thinking about the output space and how sort of, how much it's divided into like little
separate areas versus being like kind of one big continuous space so
just to give you an example you know with fidenza things can either be soft shapes
or not or they can either be a spiral or not um and it's this kind of like black and white
uh or you know binary um division of the of the output space and there's nothing in between
soft shapes and and normal right it's not
a it's not a spectrum of possibility and so um since like post-videnza you know for a while
like projects like incomplete control um i was very interested in switching to a much more kind
of continuous output space and consciously avoiding you know chopping up the
output space into these kind of distinct buckets um uh but um and qql kind of contended continued
that um that direction it's a very it's a pretty continuous output space there's a little bit of
um that type of division but today i i i kind of see the value in both approaches um i definitely
don't think that one is better than the other i think it's it's it's you know it's a matter of
aesthetics and um i think one of the nice things about fidenza and having these kind of clear
divisions is that you can recognize those at a glance and it and it gives you a very like concrete vocabulary to talk about um about the piece you know it's either it's it's it's you know is it a micro is it a jumbo is it soft shapes is it super blocks like um i can say all those things and if you're familiar with the project you know exactly what i'm talking about so it kind of gives you this like vocabulary and it gives you a a mental model for how you think about the
algorithm so from that regard or in that regard um that kind of division can be helpful to to the
viewer or to the collector um so that's just kind of like one interesting um aspect of it um other
things that i think about so you know fidenza Fidenza, I, I, I offered the prints,
uh, uh, the official prints from my studio Fidenza and the largest ones you can get are 40 by 48
inches. And, um, prior to Fidenza, I very rarely printed at that size. I would do, I did a few
prints that were that big, but it was pretty rare. And, um, when you print that big, uh, the rest, you know, the resolution, uh, is like
super high.
And so, uh, there are actually like some, some little tiny, you know, rendering things
that start to happen in Fidenza at that scale that I'm like, well, if I, if I had known
that, you know, Fidenza was going to be so popular and everybody's going to be printing it at these like huge sizes, I would have like cleaned up some of these issues of presentation and things
like that, preservation. So, Fidenza taught me a lot there. Gosh, man, there's interesting
things too about collector dynamics and how collectors sort of receive and, and
organize themselves around, you know, 1000 piece collection versus a, versus a one of one or
something like that. So, um, yeah, it's been, it's been massively educational, I think, in just a lot of uh a lot of different different ways and um yeah i try to i try to like both learn what
what you know what what made fidenza good in some sense um but i try not to also like
stay stuck there i try to also feel free to let to let it go at the same time. So I love that. Yeah, I mean, so much to learn upon so much to be influenced on
that maybe you and no one else could have predicted. And it's really cool and fun to hear
those reflections right now. And really appreciate you taking us through those.
You know, another question that I have,
and I really only have a few left,
but you were talking about prints and printing Fidenza.
It's not the only physical way that we've seen Fidenza.
You've done murals as well.
And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit
about the experience of putting those up
and just how that's been.
Oh, for sure yeah um
so i've done two two murals that are like pretty closely related to fidenza so i did one actually
uh in december 2020 maybe november 2020 um that was obviously prior to fidenza coming out and this
was kind of the the algorithm that was leading up to Fidenza.
I did a black and white mural in Austin. And that one was amazing. I really enjoyed doing that.
It's about 30 feet tall. And I want to say it's about 15 feet wide. I can't remember exactly,
but it starts like 12 feet off the ground.
So it's, it's, it's very elevated.
So I was up on a lift, uh, doing that one.
And, um, for that one, I really, um, uh, wanted it to be very, uh, precise.
And so I use this technique that's like, um, uh, stencil pasting.
So basically I, um, went to this like shop that normally prints out like architectural blueprints on big sheets of paper and had them print out at scale the entire mural on like, I don't know, 40 big old sheets of paper.
sheets of paper and um and then uh made this like uh sort of wheat paste by hand that would allow me
to temporarily glue all these big sheets of paper up on the wall so i basically glued up the entire
printed mural onto the wall and then went in and and cut out hand, uh, all of the shapes in there.
Um, just using like a kind of exacto knife, uh, like a little razor blade.
And, um, which is an insanely tedious process.
And, uh, uh, fortunately I had somebody helping me every, every day.
Like I kind of went through a rotation of friends, uh, helping me out.
Um, but, uh, I just remember like my fingers going completely numb, me every every day like i kind of went through a rotation of friends uh helping me out um but uh
i just remember like my fingers going completely numb like pushing this razor blade uh trying to
cut all these little shapes uh out and um but it it it worked it worked really well like um
it came out super precise and you know it's it's it's a flow field piece and Fidenza has all these like
this algorithm has all these these shapes that need to get very close to the other ones but
but not touch them and so maintaining that kind of precision is really crucial to the aesthetic and so
yeah this like stencil paste approach was was, was, was very helpful for that.
Um, so, uh, you can, you can find that mural on my, on my website.
Um, I believe I've pinned it to the top, unless this is not what you're referencing.
Uh, no, that, okay.
The one that you, uh, pinned there, uh, that's a, that's a printed uh indoor mural so i've done some of those too um
where you're printing on um uh gosh i'm blanking on the name of the material right now but it's
like a vinyl adhesive um large-scale printout um yeah that that one uh anetta also even closer to actually uh fidenza but that one's
printed not painted by hand um but i'd have to say my my favorite of all of them is probably the
of course the classic uh fidenza mural in marfa um at the art blocks building. Uh, that one was, um, that one was such a fun experience to do. Um,
used a bit of a different, uh, technique for that one. Um,
I'm just going back in my memory a little bit. I remember like,
so I love painting murals.
I love getting out there and putting paint on a wall.
And so I remember sending it Eric a message and, uh, somehow like, I don't know, asking him about painting a mural, or I don't know if he asked me if I wanted to paint a mural, but somehow we landed on this idea of doing a Fidenza mural at the Art Blocks building.
And I was originally going to actually take like three Fidenzas from the set and kind of do them side by side because that, that building there is you know,
it's kind of a stretched out horizontally.
And I just remember showing up and like looking at the wall and trying to
imagine this, this happening and,
and just really not thinking it was, it was going to work well.
So I remember like I sent a message to Eric and I was like, I'm like,
I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry to change the plan on you, but, uh, I'm going to take the algorithm.
I'm going to, I'm going to change it to generate something new at the right aspect ratio for
this wall.
And, uh, I'm just going to pick a design that looks really good and I'll, I'll make it,
I promise I'll make it look as good as I can.
And he was like, dude, do whatever you need to do.
And so, um, so yeah, I kind of kind of made a made a new design on the spot
and rather than doing the stencil paste um this this was uh set up uh this allowed for a different
approach that was a bit easier which was using a projector so um you can actually find a time lapse
uh on my website of this mural being painted so you can see how the technique works.
But basically, the first thing we did, you know, me and my assistant painted it.
And so we go, we clean up the wall, paint it kind of the white that we want for the background and then project at night the outlines of all the shapes onto the wall and then we used um i think we
used like china markers which are kind of like a black crayon to outline all the shapes on the wall
so we spent the first night doing that and then uh kind of just started painting uh painting in
by hand one color at a time and we would just look at the look at the image
of the fidenza and just be like okay we're we're painting red you know look for all the red blocks
you can find and we would just do our best to to paint all the red blocks and then we would mix the
you know the yellow and then paint all the yellow and um there's something so satisfying about putting paint on a wall. It like really scratches this kind of like primal itch in a way it's like,
you know, it kind of connects you to like the cave paintings a little bit. It's
like, um, it's nice to get away from the computer. It's nice to be out in the
world. It's nice to be using your, your hands and your body. And, um, you know,
before generative focusing on generative art i i really
did a lot of painting and so for me it's kind of like getting back to my roots as well and
um it's it's very laborious it was like very long days um painting from uh you know 8 a.m until
uh you know 8 a.m until i think we painted until like 10 or 11 p.m um every day and so you just be
you know brutally exhausted at the end of the day but it felt super super satisfying and just being
able to see the whole thing come together in front of you is amazing and yeah i just um i think that
one works so well um at that scale at that location and you know marfa is a
really special place for me too and um even even before art block set up shop out there i was i was
a big fan of marfa and so um so yeah everything really makes that one particularly uh special to
me and yeah i'm hoping to do to do more murals. I got to do another
one in Tokyo a couple of years ago and I love doing them. So if anybody out there is aware of
a nice wall that needs a mural, let me know and I'd love to make some more of them happen.
I absolutely love to hear it. And yeah, it's such a special thing. And
Absolutely love to hear it. And yeah, it's such a special thing. And thank you for taking
us through that story. I pinned the final mural at the top as well as a whip of a nighttime
scene that you can kind of see the projection process that you were talking about. It's
such a cool story. So thank you for taking us through that.
Absolutely.
I just have one last question. I know we're coming up close to a one
hour mark and want to be respectful of your time, but my last question is a little bit of a reflection
on this journey, the Artblocks canon. This month is a celebration of Fidenza, but it's really a
celebration of all things Artblocks. And I'm just curious from your standpoint,
with Fidenza playing this role in the Artblox 500 Canon,
what does that mean to you?
And yeah, just what does that mean to you, Tyler?
Yeah, it's a tough question.
I mean, I think mostly I just feel,
I just feel that it's a tough question. I mean, I think mostly I just feel that it's a big honor. You know, I think what ArtBlocks facilitated was this gathering of all of the best generative artists of this generation, or almost all of them, let's say at least 95% of them uh all in one spot you know working on the same format and um it's just incredible to see that kind of like coalition
build and like very rarely do you see a scene crystallize in that way. And it's just like,
it really is a really special moment in time, um,
both for this medium, but I think, I think just for art in general, I think,
you know, sooner or later people outside this space will,
will really recognize how special of a moment this is and how cool it is just to
see all these artists like
really thoroughly exploring this this art form together and um so there's there's there's too
many there's too many artists to to name i would just end up leaving out a bunch if i tried to
name all the ones that that i that i feel honored to be in the same uh set as but i i really do it's
it's a it's a great set of artists and I'm
really proud of not just my work, but the work that we all kind of collectively did, you know,
making the AB500. And so yeah, for Fidenza to have a special place in that is amazing. I love
it. I'll be proud of that forever. So, yeah. Amazing. Thank you for taking that question and for taking all of our questions in stride today.
I know we tossed a few bigger picture ones at you. Of course, a few pretty specific ones.
But just thank you so much, Tyler, for not only your contribution to our blocks, but taking the time with us to speak today.
It's been a really fun exploration and yeah, fun to go back.
I hope it's been a cool trip down memory lane for you as well.
Absolutely.
I just want to thank you so much for taking the time.
For sure. My pleasure. I've enjoyed it.
And thank you everyone for coming and listening.
It's been a great time.
The rest of the month we're going to be celebrating Fidenza.
We definitely invite everyone to, you everyone to share their favorite outputs,
anything they've collected, or any special stories they have about the series.
And appreciate you so much for spending the time with us today.
And we'll catch you next time.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, y'all. Thank you.
Host
Art Blocks
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