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𝙊𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 with @mitchellfchan 🎮
Recorded: July 16, 2025 Duration: 0:56:21Space Recording
Short Summary
Mitchell F. Chan's 'Overture' launches tomorrow, marking a significant project in the generative art space through a collaboration with OpenSea. The recent sale of his artwork for 300K underscores the growing interest in digital art, while the upcoming release of 'Xantar' promises to deepen the narrative established in this innovative series.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hello?
Hello?
Can everybody hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you, Mitchell.
Yeah, I think Ryan is getting him like already.
How are you?
Ah, I'm doing great.
It's a beautiful sunny day here in Toronto,
staring out on Queen Street West, my old haunts.
I was just recently accosted by a man who was telling me
that the Grand Canyon was created in four hours by the same
electromagnetic powers that produced the Stonehenge. So I've got a lot to think about,
and I think my art may be taking a strange new direction very soon.
That's insane. What's the level of accuracy to that statement?
That's insane.
What's the level of accuracy to that statement?
Do you know?
Well, I did push back on this a little bit with questions like,
why has no one else in the fields of science or commerce
harnessed this awesome power?
And he explained to me that people just, you know,
people are just not thinking.
They're just not going through life with their minds open.
Wow.
Incredible things.
This is something we'll definitely need to dive into after this space.
What if the Grand Canyon shows up in Overture at all?
It does not because I didn't have this information.
I did not yet have this information.
Hey, Mitchell. Can everybody hear me? Sorry, I had a bit of a technical problem.
Hi. Yeah, I'm here. I hear you loud and clear.
Fabulous. So shall we get this show on the road?
Let's get going.
Perfect. So let me just check everyone's on stage.
I wanted to bring in Adam and Boona.
Whilst we do that, I'll start off with introducing the space.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm Joanna from Schiller, and I'm so
excited to be speaking to Mitchell, who's an artist
that I really admired, and he's consistently reshaped how we think about conceptualism,
interactivity, and digital media.
Also joining us on stage today, we have OpenSeason Adam and my teammate from Schiller and co-host
with the most Buna. So let's get started with
some introductions starting with Mitchell and then Adam and then Buna. Sure what would you like to know?
Literally everything. Okay great so look my name is Mitchell F. Chan, right there in the Twitter handle. I'm
definitely not one of those pseudonymous artists. Looking down through our listener list here,
I think most of the people here are probably pretty familiar with my practice, or at least
familiar in some ways. I've been here in the blockchain space for a long time, since before there was such a thing as NFTs.
I've been an active, practicing, exhibiting artist for a lot longer than that,
working with technology for most of the almost 20 years of my career.
And recently, I'd say in the last five years or so, that art practice has
pivoted to video games as artworks. And the ways that video games as a medium are capable of
creating some experiences for users that I think are very much artistic, but had not previously been considered as such, and that frankly expand the boundaries of what art can do in really exciting ways.
And so I think that's why we're here, is because a whole bunch of those artworks that
employ those ideas are coming out this week, starting with Overture, the first piece in my new series of artworks
that is coming out via this Artblock OpenSea collab tomorrow.
Incredible. I am so excited to see it. I love music. So when I saw the title Overture, I was immediately blocking a little operatic reference.
So really excited to dive deeper into that. But before we do so, let's hear a little bit from Adam.
Thank you guys. Adam from OpenSea here. Big fan of Art Blocks. Big fan of Joanna.
Art Blocks, big fan of Joanna, big fan of Mitchell and his work, which spans from, I mean, digital zones was Mitchell, was that your first work that was like NFT focused?
Yeah, it was. I mean, we didn't call them NFTs way back then. But, you know, I had an onion on my belt, as was the style at the time and i decided it was
high on time to tokenize some artwork so yeah that was the first one so cool so been a fan of
mitchell not since 2017 when i believe that collection came out because i didn't actually
know about like web3 nft still closer to like 2020 2021 um but have been uh with openc for
almost three years now and and really excited to be having Mitchell and generative art represented on OpenSea.
This is actually going to be the second truly generative project
that's ever going to mint on OpenSea.
And so it's just really exciting to have Mitchell be a part of this
in collaboration with Artblocks, of course.
This is such an exciting partnership
and I've been dying
to see this happen
for a while. And of course
Adam, so happy
to hear your voice. It's been a while.
I know. I need to move to Lisbon
so that we can hang out
every day. Absolutely.
I would love that.
Buna, my brother in Yap, do introduce yourself.
Hi, thank you, Joanna. It's wonderful to share the stage with you again. Last time we did this
was a few other media things we did last year for Schiller, which is a lot of fun. And yeah,
so I'm the director of media, Sch Shiller and also big fan of Mitchell.
I believe we got to host.
I don't believe.
I know this.
That was a weird social cue.
But it's cool to be reunited with you, Mitchell, of getting to host the launch of The Boys of Summer, which is really, yeah, that was incredible.
So it's been a long time.
Or what feels like an eternity.
So really cool to be able to circle back and kind
of have this experience with you again. Video games were ironically what drew me into the space
as a native gamer. Someone who spent thousands of dollars on artwork and video games and doesn't
own them. NFTs just made a lot of sense. But I know that's not what you're doing. But you took
that to, you take that consistently to a much larger level
than I think what we could have ever anticipated. So long video games, long video game art,
and long people finally waking the fuck up to video games.
Damn, Boona. Incredible intro. That's going to be hard to segue from, but I shall try my best.
So for everyone who's joining us today and who might not be super familiar with Overture,
you might know Mitchell from Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility,
which was a landmark in the early NFT space, or even one of his releases with Artblocks, which was
Lewitt Generator Generator, which was one of my favorite projects.
I thought that was so cool, especially if you know who Lewitt was.
Anyway, today we're diving into Overture, which is a really mesmerizing generative operetta,
really mesmerizing generative operetta, which means tiny opera in Italian.
which means tiny opera in Italian.
That's also part one of his newest trilogy, The Xantar Triptych,
which will also be released on OpenSea tomorrow at 1pm CDT, this part one.
So let's start at the top, Mitchell.
Overture is part of Xantar Triptych.
And I would love for you to walk us through what this triptych is and
what's the world of Xantar and why did you structure the work in three parts? Sure, so the
work is structured in three parts because you know I wanted to make an exhibition of works,
right? I didn't want to just make you know one collection because I don't know. I think it's really difficult for one artwork, even if it is an artwork, which contains hundreds of editions.
Those are all just kind of hundreds of iterations of one statement.
I mean, hundreds of iterations of one algorithmic artwork.
algorithmic artwork. But over the course of the last few years that I've spent doing work in video
games and doing work very much in the culture of digital economies, right? Because digital economy,
this is a culture of digital economies we live in here in crypto, right? You just, you end up with
big ideas and you realize that your opinions, your ideas about topics like this, they're nuanced.
They have more facets than you could express just sort of in one artwork. And that's why an
artist makes an exhibition to be able to come at ideas from different perspectives, to approach it
along different vectors. So I knew that I wanted to make a body of work
that could all present different facets of these ideas
about games and digital economies.
Some of those ideas could be contradictory.
Some of those ideas could reinforce and amplify each other,
but it was gonna be a body of work
and that way it could be an exhibition.
And so we first presented this work in an exhibition
at Winwah Head in New York in May.
And that's how it all came about.
That's what the central idea is,
and that's why this triptych is structured the way that it is.
That's so cool.
I'd love to know more about the idea behind using this game world to kind of explore real mistakes.
Because this feels really timely and I wanted to know why a game.
Well, you know, because this is a little bit of a cliche, I'll be honest.
So it's the opportunity to make a game about a game.
You know, it's a little bit meta in that way.
But I still have a little bit of that old school new media artist ethos in me where if I'm commenting on a particular technology, if I'm commenting on a medium, I want to be using that medium.
So if I want to comment on how video game economies work,
I should do that in a video game.
Now, that's kind of the simple, easy answer.
And like I say, it's kind of a new media artist cliche.
I think in the years that I've been, you know, working with technology,
I've developed some, I've developed a few other tricks in my repertoire
in terms of how I think about and conceptualize an artwork. And what I learned also in, um,
over the course of, of, of all those years was that when you start to gain mastery over a medium,
you get to not just talk about that medium, but you get to talk about other systems
and other structures that are analogous to that medium, right? So if you can keep on making video
games until you're pretty good at it and you're an artist, you can make video games that are not
just about video games, but that are about aspects of life and society that look a lot like video games,
which like look around and it's everything. All right. It's like, it's the point system that I
rack up at the coffee shop when I go and buy my coffee in the morning, right? Like my loyalty
rewards programs. It's like the gig economy that my Uber driver subscribes to,
just constantly getting quests from some anonymous quest giver
in exchange for gold.
And so that's why all of my art is video games these days.
And, rewinding, that's why this particular artwork about games is also a video
game that is so so interesting and you know I I know you've always interrogated systems and you
know digital zones kind of asked what we're really buying when we collect art. So I kind of wanted to know how those overtures set the chance for what's to come
in the rest of the Xantar Triptych.
Sure, and there's a couple different ways.
Let's start with narratively.
All the works that are coming out, all the works in the Xantar Triptych,
all tell stories based in this one fictional world that
I've created. And so this is a fictional world where there's this company, the company's called
Bibisoft, and they're about to release this new game called Xantar. And Xantar has the business press and like the gaming community electrified,
teaming with anticipation.
This is going to be a real revolutionary software product
that features not just dynamic gameplay,
but also a real functional economy that plugs right into other e-commerce sites right and so all of these
artworks tell stories within that narrative framework overture what you'll get tomorrow
um is a generative series where i thought okay how do we start to lay the groundwork
for for this world how do we do world building the groundwork for this world?
How do we do world building?
And I'm really interested.
Look, I play a lot of video games.
I'm really interested in the different techniques that video games use to tell stories, to do linear narrative, but also to do world building.
One of the reasons I'm interested in them is because it's a really small bag of tricks.
They all use at the same time.
There's environmental storytelling.
You get the player to walk through the part of the map. And then there's a vista that reveals, oh my gosh, the world has been burnt to a crisp and overrun with zombies.
Or you find an audio log in somebody's desk.
Because the scientist was recording an audio
diary like the moment before he was murdered by a monster. Like, there's all these kind of lame
ways that we do world building and video games. And I thought, okay, well, actually, hold on,
like, you know, I dabble in generative art a little bit. You know, what I could do is actually
just drop a bunch of these little story vignettes in different generative art a little bit, you know, what I could do is actually just drop a bunch of
these little story vignettes in different generative mints. This is basic generative
art, one-on-one, different mints will pop out these different little mini stories. And then
across the entire body of work, you'd have done a little bit of world building. You'd have given
a few little windows of insight into your world. And I thought, well, that is actually a pretty
good reason to create a generative mint, to be able to scatter little miniature stories around a whole
bunch of collectors. That makes sense. That's not a cheap cash grab. We should do that. And so that's
like what you're getting. Different mints will come out tomorrow. And like there's a ton of other
stuff that's going to be in them, but there'll also be like a few little story fragments that'll
just kind of whet your appetite, let you know about the world that we're entering for the next week.
This is so, so cool. I'm not gonna lie, I'm so excited to see what it looks like
when you play with it. I know it's described to be an interactive generative operative, so
each Mint generates its own musical score, right?
With different instruments and arrangements.
Could you tell us more about that?
Well, the music thing,
I'm going to be honest with you a little bit here.
The music thing,
that's just showing off a little bit.
I'll be honest with you.
It probably didn't need to have music in it,
but I was really interested.
I was really interested in playing with the audio libraries that come with game engines.
And I thought, well, if I'm going to tell a story, all right, I might as well put it to sound.
Might as well put it to music.
And I've been doing this.
So just so you know, I made these projects put it to music. And I've been doing this, you know, I've been doing it. Like, so just so you know, like I made these projects that are coming out.
I made over the course of about like two years.
Because Buna, like when we released Boys of Summer, like that's the last major release that I've done.
Right.
But in the two years, like I scrapped a lot of projects that just weren't working out.
Because, you know, that's a nice luxury to have. And you know,
some of them were music and rhythm rhythm game related. And I thought, Oh,
let's just, let's just, let's just give this a score. So that'll, that'll,
that'll be cool. And so what I,
what I ended up doing was and I did this mostly cause it was fun.
I got in touch with two guys I know from two of my favorite bands here in Toronto.
There's a hardcore band called Mets and a kind of like electronic experimental band called Holy Fuck.
And I got Alex Edkins from Mets and I got Graham Walsh from Holy Fuck.
And I said, you guys want to like make a score for a generative artwork?
And they said, well, we don't know what that is.
How does it work?
And I was like, well, you just look, give me a whole bunch of stems and give me a whole bunch of like,
and give me a whole bunch of one shots.
And I'll like write a software that can stitch them together and like
different patterns, different arrangements from different rules. And like, we'll see what works
and like, we'll come back to the studio and we'll make it all, all fit together. So, so that's what
we did. And so it's like, it's one song, but every mint has a different arrangement of it.
One mint might have a string section and the other mint might have like a disco bass
kind of playing different songs.
I didn't want it to be like different compositions every time.
It's like, this is the same song,
but you're getting a different performance of it every time.
That is fascinating.
And I actually really liked the idea
of people getting the same song
because there's like an aspect of consistency
to it. Yeah. And it also helps to like, one of the things people have different, I'm not like,
I'm not like a real hardcore, like, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a guy who's like really into the
music of say like Arnold Schoenberg, you know, I kind of LARPed as that person for a little bit,
you know, when I was younger,
but generally this kind of like,
it's not my thing to listen to like,
well, this song goes,
and this song goes,
like, no, no, no, just give me a song
and put different,
just put different flavors of stank on it.
And that's, that's fine.
Incredible.
I kind of want to create a soundboard
of the sounds you just made.
My next art blog drop is the Carl Heinz Stockhausen simulator.
And it's just me doing different
like avant-garde serialist music effects.
Listen, it sounds like it has potential. But let's talk about the interactive side of things
here as well, because I know the viewer isn't supposed to be passive here. So can you tell us
a little bit more about the interactive aspect of it?
Sure.
All of these artworks in the Xantar Triptych employ different kinds of game mechanics to different degrees, right? Some are really like, oh, this is definitely a game.
And some are minimally games and more kind of interactive little fidget spinners.
Overture is on the far left of that spectrum
of being an interactive fidget spinner, all right?
So you're not going to have to shoot any zombies
or anything like that.
It is just you're in a virtual world.
You're going to click around to explore.
And as you click around,
it will advance the little story vignette
that you're getting,
and it will activate or deactivate
different instruments in the composition.
So you can just kind of leave it.
Like if you like the song as it is,
where it's like just a percussion line and like a synth line,
you can just leave it like that, all right?
Or you can like turn off the synth line and turn on the horn section.
And that's fine.
That's just like really, really basic interactivity.
And so like you can leave it
alone. So it's just kind of like a video artwork that is up there on your screen. And you'll just
kind of, yeah, and you'll click through. So it's just like time-based media experience. And then,
and then, you know, like, like the story has, has an end if you want to keep on going.
And then you can just, just leave it as, you know, they obviously produce really nice static image additions,
or it's just this kind of animation that happens on your screen while you go and, you know, make lunch or whatever.
That's so, so interesting.
And, you know, I feel like there's also this tactile aspect to interacting with the work.
Was that important to you?
Um, it's important.
It's more, yes, it is very important.
And like I say, I kind of unsheathe that interest in interactivity as a medium
over the course of this series, right? Where overture is
like the first step of this and like Xantar, the last piece that will come out in this triptych
is, is the final, like ultimate part of that. But, and that's very, very deliberate because this is a, this is a different type of art.
And I think it's,
it's so weird.
Everybody gets video games.
Like everybody gets it.
Like that's why it's a multi,
multi billion dollar industry.
That's why it's an industry that's bigger than Hollywood.
Right.
Everybody gets it.
And yet somehow when we attach the word art to it, people don't get it.
They really don't get it. Oh, this is an artwork. And so it is like another reason why I wanted to
release these as a series. Another reason why I wanted these pieces to span a variety of different
levels of interactivity, levels of storytelling,
is because I'm slowly bringing my audience along with me
to, you know, the kind of level of, you know,
appreciating video games as art that, you know,
me and some of my friends have.
Actually, I wanted to pick up on that
because I saw that Lynette wrote this incredible thread
about Overture.
We love Lynette, by the way.
Big fan.
Everyone does.
And I just wanted to know, you did say there were going to be some cameos.
Yeah.
Please tell us more.
Okay, okay. So there's some cameos. I mean, this was just fun
for me. I mean, first, like, like two years sitting alone in my studio, making art by myself
is a long time. And at a certain point, I started to go a little bit nuts. And I just thought,
and I also just get sick of looking at my own stuff. So I needed other people to just contribute a little bit to, like,
keep me excited so I could see, like, somebody else's words
or hear someone else's voice up on there.
So Lynette, who you mentioned, she actually, we met in Marfa,
actually at Artblocks Weekend last year, and we hit it off immediately,
largely because we had very similar tastes in
video games. And over the course of chatting with me, she told me that she was a choirist.
All right. She's a vocalist. And I said, well, you should, you know, we have so much in common.
You're a great person. You should be in the game. So Lynette, there's a choir in this generative artwork.
There are 16-part harmonies in this artwork.
And a couple of the voices were recorded by Lynette.
And she just did it from her home and wherever she is.
I gave her the kind of basic vocal track.
And she recorded a couple harmonies and so
she's in there so she's a character in the game which i think is very cool and um there are there
are some other there are some other cameos i should if you go through the um credits of the
artwork like you know i i i credit everybody but um there's a very rare color palette that is just like, it's just straight up progression by Jeff Davis that I minted.
And I really liked.
And I asked Jeff, I said, hey, can I make this a rare trait in my game?
my game. And he said, that would be fun. He gave me permission to do that. So that's really cool.
And he said, that would be fun.
He gave me permission to do that.
So that's really cool.
And there is one of the stories that pops up was written by my good friends, Simon Denny
and Maria Paola Fernandez as a collaboration, which as far as I know, is the first artistic
collaboration that they have done since they were married, which that was very nice for me.
And there's a little bit of a Gremplin cameo in this artwork as well.
And he may make an appearance later on in the series as well, is all I can say.
Oh, I feel like we just got the inside scoop. It feels very exclusive.
Yeah, that's the alpha right there.
That's 1,000%.
I kind of wanted to loop Adam in also
because one of the things I've noticed
was that there was a lot of really interesting content
around this release, and Mitchell, you speak so well to it.
But I also wanted to kind of
understand what supporting work like Overture means for the broader vision at OpenSea and this
is for Adam. Joanna this is a great question and one that I'm going to have a lot of fun answering. I'll start first by sort of my appreciation towards Mitchell and his practice.
Like before I got to speak to Mitchell at Artblocks Marfa weekend last year, I really
didn't get conceptual art in the way that many like deep artistic people get it.
I had heard the names, you know, it's like,
oh, you have Damien Hirst, you have Marcel Duchamp,
you have Sol LeWitt.
Like, I kind of knew the names,
but I was like, I don't really get what this art is.
And then after speaking with Mitchell
and after looking at his work
and thinking more deeply about his work,
sort of what I came to,
with my understanding of conceptual art,
is that it sort of asks the big question of like, what is art?
And it's an exploration of that through a variety of different mediums.
And I think here, as we heard earlier, Mitchell talks about how like his love of video games transformed into making art that is based in video games as a commentary on video games and economies and value
and all of these other sort of sub themes. So that was really exciting for me because it expanded my
understanding of what art can be. And my hope is that this collection does the same for others. But,
you know, as I consider what this means for OpenSea, It's been a real pleasure and joy working more deeply with the ArtBlocks folks,
working with really awesome artists such as Jiwa, who dropped a couple weeks ago,
and now Mitchell, to sort of bring generative art and the practice of general art onto OpenSea.
This is not something we've been able to do before, just given how our launchpad works, given how our drops work.
And so through this partnership with Artblocks, we've been able to empower artists, which is huge.
But we've also been able to expose our audience to a new type of minting and a new type of work that they can come to appreciate and collect and own.
And that's been like a dream for me. Like when this Art Blocks
partnership came together and we started throwing around names and we were able to get this Mitchell
drop, like I just was so over the moon because of what it means for the people who don't get it yet,
but once they see the artwork and experience the artwork, they will. And that was me. So I'm really
excited for that light bulb to go off in these people's
heads. Magical answer. I bet you agree, Mitchell. That was so inspiring. That was lovely, Adam.
Thank you so much. But I want to add to that. I want to jump on that. It really has been a pleasure for me as well from my perspective.
And I do just want to say that, you know, being able to exchange emails and messages with Adam every day for the past couple of weeks has been one of the highlights of my experience here.
Occasionally panicked emails as I troubleshoot things. He's been very calm and great at it. So thank you,
Adam. Thank you, Aaron, as well. He's also been a real big help. But regarding this partnership,
you know, this is actually, I was really happy to do it. And this is a very deliberate decision
by me as well to be a part of the Artblocks OpenSea partnership because I knew I wanted to do this generative artwork.
And it was one of the things I was really
like a little bit nervous about is
this is not the kind of archetypal Artblocks release.
I am really taking advantage of the, like the Flex,
Airplux Flex contract that they've created,
allows external assets in here.
Like an artwork like this in a video game engine without that.
And so it's going to, it's kind of this crossover artwork.
And so the crossover release with OpenSea made a lot of sense.
And one of the things that appealed to me is that OpenSea is like,
it's kind of like it's a clearinghouse for all types of digital assets.
And all types of people are there for different reasons, right?
Some people are looking for gaming assets.
Some people now are looking for tokens.
Some people are looking for art.
And a big part of my ethos is as an artist who did a lot of public art projects,
like, you just, you go to where the people are, and it's okay if some of them don't like it.
It's okay if most of them don't like it.
You just, you try in earnest to tell your story in public spaces, like, where people are.
And you can do that without ever compromising,
and you can do that without pandering.
And this collaboration really gave me the opportunity to do that.
So I was really excited about it.
Amazing.
It sounds like that was a really good combination
between freedom to kind of do what this piece needed for you to do.
And Artblocks and OpenSea coming in very clutch for it.
And I'm sure you've probably shared or given people a sneak peek
outside of the exhibition setting in the gallery, of course.
But I'd love to know, like, what was one of the most surprising reactions
you've gotten to Oure so far I think the best the best we had and in terms of
sneak previews actually here's I want to say that everybody's listening is you
know we I minted token number zero it's it's active on the items page right now
on the open see website and on our blockSea website and on the ArtBlock website.
So you can go and see all this crazy technical innovation we're describing.
Go see it with your own eyes.
Don't trust me.
So it's there.
It's in preview.
The best time that we had was when we were in the gallery.
time that we had was when we were in the gallery and the way that I had this set up in the gallery
at Winwah Head in New York during freeze week was I had a special version of the software that
just every time you restarted it, it would simulate another random hash. So it was just
automatically spitting out new versions. And we had some people come in and in the artwork,
you know, the story dialogue pops up on the bottom of the
screen they people were in the gallery they started reading it aloud like they were doing a live read
like a theater troupe or something or like an improv club and it was really funny and like people
were laughing and i was getting a big kick out of it because it was all being delivered in somebody else's voice.
And that was that was really fun.
So, yeah, it makes for a good a good theater theater script.
I want to quickly jump in here.
One of the things that I think is fascinating about video games, and this will build on Mitchell's point,
is that there are people who like to play
kind of like the solo role-player game.
Like, it's just them and the storyline,
and they will beat the game multiple times.
They will play as different types of characters.
There are also types of people who like to play
more group-style games.
Like, you know, if you consider, like, like Fortnite where you can have squads or like,
Oh gee,
I'm sure there,
I would,
I'm not like really a gamer,
but there's like,
world of Warcraft where you can create like a guild and run around.
And this artwork,
I think,
you know,
in the way that Mitchell described it,
can be ingested and perceived as like an individual experience where you
click around in the game, you go through it, you read the storyline and you hear the music and perceived as like an individual experience where you click around in the game,
you go through it, you read the storyline and you hear the music and you're like, oh,
you know, this is really awesome.
In the way that they did it in the gallery, which I think was so genius was it was a group
of folks who were all experiencing it together.
And that group dynamic kind of came out as both like enjoyment, but also connection between the people who were there.
And so being able to witness that and see it, and it just was, it was really cool. And that
gave a new depth, I think, to the artwork that I hadn't previously considered, like viewing artwork
and experiencing artwork in a group and what arises in that environment was really, really cool.
Oh, that's so nice. Yeah.
Sorry, I was just going to say I'm experiencing FOMO big time.
It's just fun to look at, I hope. I hope it's just fun to look at.
From what I've been able to see in all the incredible videos that you can find in the
OpenSea project page, it looks really fun to look at.
And I'm so excited to hear Lynette's voice on the background.
And I'm sure everyone who loves her will be very excited to hear her vocals on the background. But actually, on a completely different subject,
I hear that congratulations are due, Mitchell.
I heard someone made a pretty incredible sale today.
Do you want to tell us about it?
I think I'll let you go ahead with that.
That's so fair.
I'll let Adam go ahead with that. That's so fair. I'll let Adam also chime in,
but I know the video game has been sold
for quite a shocking amount.
Was it 100 each, Adam?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, I saw Mimi's tweet,
so I was just going off of that from this morning.
But I don't know the exact amount.
I don't remember off the top of my head.
But I think she tweeted about it, right?
Let me see if I can pull it up.
Yes.
300K.
Yes.
That's awesome.
Mitchell, that's unbelievable.
Congratulations.
Obviously, I am extremely grateful,
extremely excited about that.
And for some context,
people who are listening,
I'm trying to figure out what that means
for the overall project
and the release we have tomorrow.
Like I said, these are...
I made four different artworks for this exhibition
to be this body of work.
Overture, which comes out tomorrow, is a generative series,
and there'll be 555 editions of that
for reasons that I explained earlier on.
Like, that was a cool way to tell a story.
But the other artworks that I made really didn't,
there was no reason to make them additions.
They were like, they're single stories, they're experiences, I'm really didn't, there was no reason to make them additions. They were like, they're single
stories, they're experiences. I'm really proud of them. I crafted the heck out of them and they were
going to be one-of-ones, right? And so at Winwah Head, when we first showed these works, you know,
we showed all four of the works and of course the overture wasn't ever going to be available for sale
until it went online um tomorrow
but we did have uh yeah we had some collectors who are interested in these one-of-one artworks
um and xantar is the final and biggest piece in this art series and i'm just so lucky to
you know that it resonated with a collector who wanted to support this. Because it takes a lot of vision.
Like, these aren't easy artworks.
They're not easy artworks in any way.
Like, Overture is the easiest, and that's still pretty weird.
Like, it's pretty weird.
It looks pretty different than anything else, I think,
that's kind of been in the space.
And so like Xantar is, it's the last one,
it's the biggest one.
It's in a lot of ways the weirdest
and most challenging one.
And that collectors are wanting to support this.
That collectors are seeing the vision
of what artworks can be.
It's extremely, it's just, I'm extremely grateful.
I have to say like aesthetically, I like the maximalist aesthetic it has.
And I think it will probably resonate with a lot of people in my generation,
like younger millennials are kind of very appreciative in Gen Z,
super appreciative of maximalist um Joanna do you mind if I ask a
question while we're on the Xantar topic I'm so sorry oh my god please no no no not at all
please go ahead we've talked about Xantar we've talked about uh the collection dropping tomorrow
but Mitchell I don't know if you are interested at all
in talking about Moonboy and Lady Boss, which are...
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because I think there are different interpretations
of this game concept that you've been describing
and that we've been talking about.
And so I think it would be interesting, if you're willing.
I mean, you don't need to.
But I think as people seek to understand the whole of the triptych, having that that middle piece is also pretty important, I think.
whole, you know, series
thing, because there's like so much art to talk
about, and I don't want to clutter
everyone's brain up, because it'll all come out in time.
But, briefly, yeah, so
what Adam's referring to is, I made
like one post, I made a tweet about it, it's now
buried between all my tweets. I said, all
the artworks in the series, Overture
comes out tomorrow, and then
the games Moonboy and Lady Boss
come out on Saturday,
and those are more game stories that continue to build the world that we build on in Overture.
And like I said, those are one of ones.
But I'm not putting them up for auction or anything like that.
Just go log on.
Just play them.
Just play them.
Just enjoy the story
enjoy the experience right those are different types of games they're more gamey than overture
also the narrative uh is is longer you're gonna you're gonna sit there you're gonna you're gonna
play a little kind of endless runner game you're gonna hear a story the story may entertain you
it or may it may discuss you i don't know. And then the final piece
will come out on Monday. On Monday you'll be able to play Zantar, that piece that
my gallery, Winwah Head, just announced
had a big sale. That'll come out. You can all see what all the fuss is
about with that one on Monday. So the idea is over the course of
three days, with one day gap in between,
so people have time to catch up and enjoy themselves,
we'll release this whole body of work.
And I'll have told my story.
I will have told the story
that I spent like over a year crafting.
And then you won't have to hear from me again
for like at least another year, I promise.
No, Mitchell, that's not true
because they're going to hear from you most likely, I'm hoping,
at Urplox Marfa Weekend, if you're willing.
Well, yeah, but only a few people will have to listen to me there.
Only a few people will have to listen to me there.
I don't know.
There might be a stampede for your talk.
There certainly was last year.
We'll see.
Actually, speaking of Marfa last year,
I'm going to pass the mic to our resident Texan over here
who was in Marfa last year.
Bruna, I know you have questions.
I know you're reaching to ask them.
Off you go.
Thank you so much.
Yes, it's always funny.
It was funny the first time I went to Marfa.
I live in Austin and everyone was like,
oh, you must just come here all the time.
And I think people don't really have a concept of how big Texas is.
Like, this is an eight-hour drive.
Like, no, I don't just like casually go to Marfa as much as I would love to.
But, but yeah, this is, yeah, definitely had a few questions here.
A lot of like on kind of how you think about the idea of continuing to add versus leave the video game as it is.
I know it's always a constant tug of war kind of like just in the general gaming community about, you know, the devs having an incentive to continue to keep the, like keep adding new things that the community
wants versus kind of wanting to move on to the next project and that interesting balance
between that. There's only really been kind of a few games that like have like a lot of
longevity in that sense, but just kind of really curious, like how you, do you ever get any, I guess, I'm not sure if FOMO is the right word, but any sort of like itch to add something new to anything you've ever created?
Or are you just very like comfy with like leaving the thing the way it is as it was intended to be?
So I'm really lucky in this respect that I don't really have a lot of opportunity to screw myself over with the constant adding of things for two reasons.
One reason is that I know I'm not that smart.
Okay.
I am a fairly, I am a fairly like mediocre programmer, I think.
All right. So I kind of like, like ultimately I'm not here. Like I'm, I'm not going to be making call of duty for here. All right. I know what is
in my wheelhouse. I'm just clever enough to figure out exactly the things I need to learn in order
to execute this artistic idea I have in my head and no more. I do not have the capacity to learn in order to execute this artistic idea I have in my head. And no more. I do not have the
capacity to learn any more than what is necessary. So that's helpful. And then the other thing that
is helpful is, oh, God bless blockchain. Blockchain is forever, bro. So once it's out,
man, I guess I won't be pushing those quality of life updates. So that makes it a little bit easier.
I love that, man.
Yeah, I think there's something,
and I think there's something with where we're headed in the world around,
especially with, you know, I know yours was all created,
like you created it yourself.
But we're kind of in this, like I'm going to draw a parallel conclusion.
Maybe this is just me projecting about, you know, like AI is becoming a lot more prevalent, and people are vibe coding things in a day or two, and things are kind of just really ephem gaming might actually or could have a potential
to change as far as like what people want to do and how they spend their time and we may not have
the time to get invested into a world of warcraft you know or like play 69 call of duties you know
uh that are that are the same thing over and over and over yeah you're you're absolutely right and
i was being a little bit flippant and and actually a little bit disingenuous in my answer
because the truth is like even with me like even with the software art right like they're like i
do know like and especially taking advantage of the art blocks flex contract where i can have
external assets i will and you know and art blocks has actually implemented this in other ways too
with their post params feature right that was unveiled with G was dropped.
There is actually some potential to tinker with some things after the drop.
And I do strictly, from a conservation point of view,
believe in retaining the right to, like, you know, modify or replace elements
just so that they're always exhibitable.
Like, nothing matters to me more than the fact that people in their given time
and place can enjoy the artwork.
So that will happen.
A little bit of that is, in my opinion, the nature of any digital artwork.
But coming back to your other thing where like, and again,
just being a little bit more serious, a little bit less flippant,
when it comes to changing like the difference between an artwork and a live service game is like the artwork is
the, like, it's the expression of an opinion of, and I like, I take a long time to make
these artworks partially to make sure that this is a fully formed opinion.
Like, I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be embarrassed by having
had this opinion later.
I'm not just throwing stuff out there like, oh man, I think like, you know, AI is something that like people like should want to
marry in the future. I'm going to vibe code something like that. And then like three weeks,
that's not what you believe in. It's this thing like with digital zones in 2017,
that piece was very much like my opinion on what a crypto economy is and my opinion about what a crypto asset means to society.
And I was really proud of expressing that opinion. I think it was well developed and it turned out
to be, I think I can say somewhat immodestly prescient. And when that project hit in like
2020, right, like it was like a few years afterwards that people paid attention.
And I like, you know, people were being like, Oh, you should add this. You should add that. Oh,
you should update your essay. And I was like, no, like I made the, the, like I made the statement
like that was my, that was everything I had to say. It's out there. It's on wax. And the only
reason I can have a career as an artist, the only reason why people will take me seriously as an artist is because I stand by the things that I've said, right? And people were like, oh,
are you going to make more blockchain art? Are you going to make more? And I was like, no, I said
my whole bit. I unloaded my whole clip. It's over. And so I believe in that. I just believe
in that as a matter of artistic integrity.'s a fantastic response and that just made me like it it gave me recall
back to like when it wasn't common for gaming to games to have updates you know like when you bought
the game boy game you got that's what you fucking got like and when we loved it you know uh so no i
just nothing really more to add to that. That was a fantastic response
and love the way you think about that.
So yeah, back to you, Joanna.
That was a fantastic interaction and a joy to witness
and understand a little bit more about Mitchell's Law,
which is profuse and so interesting.
We are getting a little close
to time, so I wanted
to make sure
Buna, Adam, Mitchell, do you
have any closing remarks
or anything you'd like to share before
we say goodbye? Can I ask a
final question before
we hop off?
Yeah, I have one more.
I have one more, whether before or after you.
So, yes.
Okay, I'll go quickly.
This could either be very quick or not quick.
But I'm curious, Mitchell, as, you know, Xantar is rolled out and you get to experience all of the wonderful emotions of your art kind of being put out into the world.
of your art kind of being put out into the world.
Is there a world in the future that you see
where you either keep meditating
on the medium of video games and blockchain
or you sort of diverge
and sort of go in another direction?
Has that crossed your mind at all?
At this point in my career and in my life, I cannot imagine wanting to make art that wasn't a video game.
Like this medium is just so rich.
And the more I get into it, the more I realize that I can do things that aren't possible in any other medium.
And I don't mean that on the obvious surface levels, right? Like,
you can hear them think, oh, yeah, like, you know, you can create these interactive worlds,
and people can walk around. Like, sure, sure, sure that, but a video game imprints itself
on a viewer in a totally different way than any other work of art does, right? A video game, a game takes over a person's sense of
purpose. When you sit down with a game, you temporarily become a different type of agent
in this world. You accept it. You accept that now you are a plumber whose job is to jump on the
heads of mushrooms, or you accept that you are a race car driver,
and it is your obligation to ignore rules of safety,
and you go off the road or this or that.
It's such an incredibly powerful thing to do that no other medium can do.
And I cannot imagine, having figured this out, that I would ever give it up.
Very well said, and very inspiring.
Can't believe no one else got the Mario reference on that.
Like I was the only one who reacted on that. So shame on everyone in the crowd here.
I'm going to publicly say that and stand by it.
One last question I really had is with these games, like obviously people are going to have the ability to mint tomorrow.
But with the other two games, are those going to be mints themselves?
Who can access these?
Are these available to the public, only to mentors?
Kind of curious about that aspect.
All open to the public.
Everything I make has to be open to the public.
Anybody has to be able to get their mitts
on it and experience it whenever they want. So those links will go live and they are tokenized
for reasons of ownership, attribution, and provenance. So all these video games, I mean,
probably like you'll go to the game URL, right? Like that would be the best way to experience
some, right? You'll be able to go to, you know,
game address dot Chan dot gallery.
And that's how you play Lady Boss.
That's how you play Moon Boyer.
That's how you play Xantar, but they're also tokenized.
They'll show up.
You can play them in the item page on OpenSea
because they're tokenized.
They're all set to run in like anyGL instance. And as artworks, they are
digital assets that can be bought and sold and the ownership of them can be accounted for.
Incredible. I'm going to wrap it up. Even though this was such a fun discussion, we do have to say goodbye. So first of all, thank you, Mitchell, so much for all of these super interesting explanations and kind of a little glimpse into this world of Xantar and Overture. I'm super excited and I'm sure people in the audience are also
super excited to see and interact with it tomorrow. Also thank you so much Adam for
the super thoughtful questions and once again it's such a pleasure to hear your voice. And
of course to my brother in Japuna, Thank you so much for co-hosting.
Thank you guys. Thank you all.
I just wanna say thank you to all of you.
Thank you to the Open Scene Art Blocks team
for supporting me throughout this drop.
I wanna say thank you to Mimi of my gallery,
Winwah Head for supporting all of this
and making our sale happen.
And you're all terrific.
And I hope people really enjoy their mints tomorrow.
Beautiful.
Thank you so much, everyone.
And don't forget, Thursday the 17th, tomorrow,
Overture will be out on OpenSea powered by Artblocks.
See you all then.
Host
Art Blocks
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