Latest / TezTalks Radio - Tezos Ecosystem Podcast / 83: Johnny Dean Mann

Transcript

83: Johnny Dean Mann · TezTalks Radio - Tezos Ecosystem Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Tez Talks Radio.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I am your host, marissa True, and today I am joined by Johnny Dean Mann, who is an artist, a writer, as well as the editor of the Tickle.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: So the Tickle is a monthly magazine for digital art and creative writing and also the history of computer art, and it's supported by many Tezos artists' community favorites, including Object and FXHash.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Already on its 93rd issue, the Tickle is available to read online at thetickleart.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So, hi, johnny, thank you for being here first of all, and how are you today?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Good, thank you.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: You got me up slightly earlier than maybe I was expecting, but there we go.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: It's fine.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: You're in Singapore, so it's all good.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, juggling time zones has been the bane of my life when it comes to coordinating the show, but the good news is that we always find the middle ground and then I do get the people I want to speak to on it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So I hope the coffee is kicked in as we sort of branch off to this conversation, and if not, I'm sure it will have done by the end of it.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: So to start off the conversation, as we typically do on the show, I would love to better understand your personal story so you know how you came to enter the web3 art world, initially and specifically Tezos, and also if you could share a little bit more about how the tickle got started.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been a writer, primarily, I'd say, for most of my life digitalized for about 20 years, I'd say and I think my sort of story about getting into NFTs is quite similar to a lot of people really.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: They sort of heard about that people thing where you sold the thousand days or whatever it was for a few million quid and thought, oh, hang on, I've made zero money from digital art, so maybe this is a thing, but it took me a while to figure it out.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I minted some random stuff on ETH without really knowing what was going on and wasted hundreds of dollars random stuff on ETH without really knowing what was going on and wasted hundreds of dollars.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And then I heard about Tezos on I think it was on Twitter, maybe I can't remember and so I sort of set up an account and was a bit confused by what the hell this HicketNunk site was.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: It was just like text interface.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Back then it felt you were um back in the 90s or something, and so I'm into the couple of things, sold one immediately for like 100 tears, which at the time was, uh, a lot of money, which enabled me to then buy loads of art and which was a new kind of profound thing for me, having this huge collection, and so, yeah, just used those proceeds to buy stuff, kept minting new stuff, just sort of got joined in twitter groups and kind of got immersed in the sort of community in a in a really kind of natural, organic way, helped by some some really cool people early on.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Um, so, yeah, it's really.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: It was just a whole new kind of scene, I think, for a lot of digital artists that we've spoken to.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: They've they've sort of referenced this idea of they're not being a super strong like online community.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Before that it was more a kind of set up your Instagram or your Behance or whatever you're using and just kind of push it out to the world and hope that people see it.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Maybe you get a little bit of a following on Instagram or Twitter or whatever, but I don't know.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: It seemed like with NFTs the digital art community really came together, and especially on Tesla's, in a really super worldwide kind of sense.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So that was really interesting and I thought that it was perhaps quite a unique moment in history, certainly in terms of digital art, maybe contemporary art as well, and possibly even, as time passes, the general art world as well.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Possibly that was the way we were kind of looking at it back then.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: So, after a few months sort of interacting with the community and doing lots of different events and speaking to lots of different people and selling and buying, there was the object for object thing, which was huge A lot of these early Hicca and hunk events which are really, really fun to take part in, the hickathon, for example, as well, I think it was.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: It was a really late night at one point because, as with you were mentioning with the time zones, everyone is like a diaspora, uh, of digitalized all the way around the world.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: So, uh, you were speaking to someone in the philippines one moment and then in turkey or I don't know, australia and it was, I was up at crazy hours talking to these people and I was on what was that app called?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: That was like Twitter Spaces before Twitter Spaces.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Clubhouse yes, yes.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: It was a Clubhouse space with someone called Maya.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Melia is an irish, uh, digital artist and poet as well, actually.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Um, and we were just having a little natter after that about you know, why don't we start like a fanzine, you know, like a sort of old school, like punk kind of fanzine, um, and just distribute it as an empty.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: It seemed apt at the time and so I was like, well, you can do it, so I will do it, and I just interviewed well, I just sent some really super basic questions like three artists that I'd sort of interacted with over the past like few months, and they gave us the questions back and I just put this really basic design together.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I think the first issue was like back and I just put this really basic design together.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I think the first issue was like maybe 20 pages maximum.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: But one thing we had as well was a sort of focus on creative writing as well, because that was sort of coming into play a little bit.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just necessary about the digital art, and that's something that for me was like really interesting, being primarily a writer most of my life.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: So from issue one, we always had a poem.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Um, we sort of kept that going for for the vast majority of the issues.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: We even released a um, a sort of limited series called tickle lit, which is purely writing.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, and literally the very next day I had this thing minted and then just sent it out randomly, just sort of hoping that people might appreciate it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, it just got picked up straight away and these sort of scattered Twitter groups and this sort of algorithm-based interaction on the social media apps, which is always a little bit frustrating.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe you'd feel like you're not really being seen or being heard necessarily.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it sort of gave everyone, I think, who was aware of it a little bit of a focal point, I think.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And it sort of took off from there, really, and we, yeah, we're now issue 93.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: We were weekly for a while, I think, up until can't remember what issue we transferred, probably 70 something, 79.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: There we go, I know my own magazine, um.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, after the 79 we were monthly, I mean that's a lot of additions at a very, very quick pace.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: One thing I want to touch upon that you mentioned earlier was, of course, the classic tale of sort of being sucked into the Tezos world through Hick at Nunk, and what I always find fascinating about that was how rudimentary the site was but how much of a profound effect that it actually had in terms of drawing people in and establishing this instant community.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Because I do think, you know, there was a world of digital artists who were putting their work onto the internet but just praying that the algorithm would service them that day.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And arguably, if you're not in the Web3 world, that's precisely what we're still doing on platforms like Instagram, for example.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So I think it's quite incredible to see how that wave has sort of carried through up until today.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Going back to the evolution of the Tickle, going from 20 pages in this weekly edition to this monthly but much more elaborate publication what was sort of the editorial evolution of the Tickle over that time?
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: If you joined in early 2021, which is when things really started going a bit crazy um, the pace just seemed unbelievable.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: It felt like if you, if you took a day off twitter, you missed everything.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: And so there was this kind of furious pace and people were mincing left right and creating really interesting stuff, um, and starting events and just crazy stuff was going on.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So we felt like we sort of had to do a weekly edition of this thing, um, in order to kind of just keep pace with what the hell was going on at the time.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: That was a good decision, I guess, because it was only 15 pages.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I I exaggerated, by the way, I just checked it's uh, it's 15 pages, not 20, uh.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: So you know, I figured well, I can do 15 pages a week.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: It only took me one night to the first issue, so it's fine, um.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: But as we kind of, as we moved on, I think, and as, uh, as the sort of pace of the space slowed down slightly I know all sorts of different reasons for that would be going to I kind of thought well, I was a bit frazzled, basically because we went from a few a handful of really quick questions that were answered in a paragraph by three artists to kind of much larger interviews with considerable amounts of text and lots of images and lots of layout and design and topography and stuff that we had to think about.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of work.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: And then, as it developed, when people kind of were sort of seeing that Tickle, is this kind of important I say important thing within the community, I felt a bit of pressure to kind of give back something a little bit better, especially when we started doing a subscription models um, where we sold a token and people were guaranteed, like I've.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Initially it was like three issues, I think, or something like that um.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: And then there was a lot of pressure to kind of make it more quality, make it a bit better.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: So we had to redesign it like issue 14, which made it a lot longer, but it was still weekly and I was still working full time and it was becoming a little bit onerous, to say the least.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we transitioned to monthly when basically it was necessary for my mental health, but then obviously with a monthly release you have to justify that a little bit like taking three weeks off every month, by making it a bit more extended.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: So it's a kind of um, it's a two-sided thing.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: It's nice having more time off for the magazine, but then it's a lot more work nowadays I.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's thinking you're taking time off by shifting this to a monthly magazine, but you mentioned that.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: You know it was quite an exhausting process.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: You clearly felt a lot of pressure to basically not only maintain but to improve upon the quality of the publication as it continued.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: What was the moment, if there was a singular point, where you basically realized that people were paying attention?
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: You had a readership, you had this audience.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Was it right from the very beginning or was there a particular moment along the line that made you think, ah, people are paying attention now it was.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: it was a real shock, to be honest, at the beginning, because, yeah, we sold out the hundred issues, like I can't remember exactly how long it took, but it felt like it was in a minute or something.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: It was probably like two days or something.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: But that was amazing, like I genuinely didn't expect to sell.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: I think we were selling them at half a test back then, which does seem like nothing now it's about 30 cents or something, but back then it was like three or four pounds.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: It's a decent amount of money and we sold a hundred of these things and we were like wait a second, hang on.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: This is kind of important and people were quite happy to pay it that fairly small amount and I don't know just that immediate take up and just the enthusiastic response.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: And we set up the Twitter for it as well, which got loads of followers straight away.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I don't know, I would say it helped by that kind of furious pace of the of that nft space early on.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I think we've kind of came in at the right moment.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I think, and you know, in terms of the, one of the sort of aspects of the magazine I'm most sort of happy with, most proud of, is the fact that it's cataloging in real time like an important development, I think in the sort of digital art scene in the very least.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Um, there is this kind of.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: It acts as this ongoing kind of record from almost the first days of the scene.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Obviously we're not.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: We're not there since the first nft was created, the crypto pranks and all that kind of Eve scene.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: We're not part of that.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: First NFT was created, the crypto banks, not that kind of ETH scene.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: We're not part of that, obviously.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: But we got there quite early and particularly right at the start of the Tezos aspect of it, which is important, I think, because that represents a very different sort of paradigm and aesthetic and content of community and our work than what was traditionally for us nfts.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think just from issue one I really was the was the real kind of eye-opener and that was what made me commit to kind of keeping on doing it for as long as I, as long as I could, basically as long as the scene kind of existed and there were some points where it was.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: They took some pretty big downturns.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Obviously everyone knows about those, um, but it didn't matter to us at all, like when it slowed down, when, I know, when crypto valuation bomb, things like that, it didn't really matter because the founding principle was it's all about the art, it's all about the artists, it's all about the stories behind that and there is an infinite supply forever of creative people, of visual artists and of poets.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So it was never a concern that we would run out of things to cover or have no reason to continue, because that is just an ever-present inhumanity throughout time, basically.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I like the principle of the tickle sort of cataloguing the evolution of the NFT art space, and perhaps it wasn't from day dot.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: However, arguably we're still very early on, given we're only three, four years in.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: So I don't think you've missed a huge chunk of history by starting when you did.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: But to touch on a bit of a sore spot, which was the bear market and where we saw a huge dip for quite a long time, which did impact artists, not necessarily in terms of creativity, but in terms of their ability to sustain creating for a living, and some people actually had to drop out of the space, what was it like from your perspective in terms of watching, I'm sure, the community that you've come to nurture, grow and love struggle with that a little bit?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always sad to see people who are relying on it for a living have that kind of undermined by nothing that they had any control over, which is a real shame.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: They're doing nothing different and in fact in many ways in fact I'd probably say for everyone involved they were sort of evolving and maturing their practice in really significant ways throughout that time.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it was kind of unfair, but then I guess life is unfair, so you just kind of got to deal with it.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: But I think in a sort of general sense I saw it as a really as overall, as a positive thing, because everyone's heard about all the really negative press around NFTs, particularly the time when Tezos was sort of becoming important, because that was created, I think, originally I don't want to speak for Rafa, who created it originally, but as a response to the kind of horrendous environmental damage that Ethereum and proof of work blockchains were doing.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of negative press.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: There were a lot of speculators coming on board.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: There were a lot of kind of nonsensical kind of you know, sort of hyper-capitalist kind of attempts at kind of manipulating and taking advantage of the blockchain rather than sort of seeing it for its kind of creative possibilities, which is what the tesla scene was all about.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: I don't think anyone really came to tesla thinking I'm going to make a million dollars.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: They were just like I'm going to send my art to some cool people who also really like art.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So there's kind of a difference.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: And so what that kind of bear market did was it got rid of those speculators, it got rid of those stupid projects like the you know, the board aid, yacht club and all that kind of nonsense, um, and just kind of stripped everything back essentially to the people who were actually committed to what was really important and interesting about the space in the first place, which was digitalized, being able to sell their work to whoever and make a living, hopefully.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: So what it did was just kind of it took away all that noise, it took away all that distraction, essentially, and just allowed people to really focus on the art.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And I think it just, yeah, it sort of washed away all the sort of ne'er-do-wells and left all the quality artists behind and, um, we saw, I think, during that period, not a sort of critical decline but a sort of really interesting transformation from this kind of mess and chaos of just like this is cool, uh, to a more kind of organized and sort of forward-thinking, intelligent way of trying to kind of transmit the message of what was happening in this really important space to the wider world.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And I think that you can see that with some of the important kind of events that were happening around that time.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I got a chance to speak at Art Basel a couple of times, which was really amazing, considering I just started a random fanzine from my bedroom a couple years ago and there were there were sort of events we covered, like at christie's, for example, where they were um selling as part of a charity event, some ethics hash works and things like that.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: So I don't think that that kind of well, it probably would have happened anyway.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: But I think that that there was certainly a transformation in kind of mentality, I think, from the, from the players and the space, from the platforms like objects and fx hash, and from um important artists and galleries and curators to try and really do something a bit more progressive and enticing to the traditional art world because, as we all know, digital art has has sort of always been sort of slightly shunned in terms of the, the art world at large, um, and that it's it's weird, it's a double edged sword because nfts really thrust digital art into the spotlight you know particularly things like generative art but then also there was behind the scenes, over sort of you know decades, this push and this gradual kind of increase in exposure for digital artists in various different ways, which was beginning to be respected, I think.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And then NFTs came along and then cheapened the whole thing in the eyes of some serious art world people.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: So it's yeah, it's kind of double-edged sword.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of popularity, but then there's also a loss of reputation somehow with all this speculative nonsense and the pfp stuff.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So we've gone past that negative stuff, but we've still got that kind of um, extra eyes on the scene now as well.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: So it's it's very early days, like you mentioned, but there are some really interesting kind of critical moves and changes in attitude.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: I think that have been happening over the recent years and I think very recently when we went to cover the digital art mile um in basel.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: That seemed to be a really important point, I think where where things were sort of slightly shifting in the space, which we will have some insights on in the next issue blog time.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I agree with you that it was very much this double-edged sword because, on the one hand, it did accelerate the acceptance of digital art, particularly within traditional art realms.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: As we mentioned, the huge focus around generative art, especially when Tezos was present in Art Basel, was kind of like this inflection point where people realized, but it pulled away all of the urgency so that people could basically focus on just being creative without feeling like they needed to publish their work as fast as possible, mint their works as fast as possible, and that, if they wanted to, artists wanted to sell their art against the pressures of how quickly this wave was building.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: So what are some of the shifts that you've seen, now that we've sort of recalibrated?
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I think for me one of the most important things was the explosion of the generative side of things.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: That sort of took me by surprise a little.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: How so I in in terms of.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's always had an important part in sort of history of digital art.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: But when picket nook first released there was no real functionality at all to display generative art in its sort of generative form.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: There were various artists, some important artists, publishing as sort of individual pieces the results of their generative practice and those guys kind of got some, in certain cases, some huge popularity, but there wasn't really a sort of native way to actually show it as it should be.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And then obviously that's when FXHash came along, because they sort of I mean Hicken and developed over time, adding different features and new things that could accommodate sort of aspects of generative art.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: But FXHash was the one that really kind of you know, I'm talkingzos, obviously, because there's art blocks on ethan, such but you know our focus was always on the tezos scene.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: So for me, um, that that explosion and now kind of I wouldn't say dominance, but it's certainly kind of what most people think of, I think when you mentioned digital art, was really really interesting.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think it forced perhaps the traditional art world to kind of recalibrate what it was.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And I think it may be confused a bunch of people because, like, like, what is it?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: What is actually happening?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: You, you, you mint it and then, and then there's this unique thing and how do we?
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: How do we kind of categorize?
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: How do we?
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: How do we display it?
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: How do we kind of categorize?
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: How do we display it?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: How do we talk about it?
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: So I think one of the nicer developments recently is sort of sites like Lorandum, for example, which is an amazing resource.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: They put together sort of a timeline about the history of generative art, right from the very beginning, so like decade by decade, and it's a fantastic resource and I think those things are really, really useful, um for anyone outside of the what can be quite confusing technicalities of of the scene in terms of generative art, to be able to kind of get an overall kind of picture and better understanding what's actually happening.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And I think that sort of complexity and intricacy is is quite attractive, I think, um to the to the outside world, because I think there was maybe uh, excuse me, there was a sort of, maybe there was a tendency to see digital art as just sort of shiny, sort of, you know, random, sort of technical sort of aesthetic that maybe wasn't sort of so appealing to people in the traditional art world.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think that the generative art thing was was huge for me.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: We featured quite a few, actually in early issues.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Someone I think Iskra Vilichkova was perhaps our first generative artist that we featured, but we also featured Manoloid, who was really important early on.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't like we weren't aware of it necessarily, but it really became a thing with FXHash and I think the community has a lot to thank FXHash for in that sense.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: It's been such an important platform and they were the ones pushing to organize the Tezal Sar Basel pavilions, for example.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: They were heavily involved in that early on and they've been involved in some really important events, including the Digital Art Mall recently.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think that overall, I think that's probably the main one for me.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what was so beautiful about FXHash was that it was built specifically to cater to the needs of any given generative artist, and I think that's largely down to Seifert and realizing the limitations of what he wanted to create and how he could display his work, and so there was very much this collaborative engine behind all of the features that they were implementing onto the platform to make sure that generative artists had everything at their disposal to make their work really shine.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I'm personally a collector of quite a few of the generative pieces that are available on there, so I'm a huge fan of what the platform has done for the space.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But, as you mentioned, our basel was this huge moment for teslos, because it was almost like cracking into this layer of industry legitimacy.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: How do you think that's had this trickle effect from essentially the peak of the market to where we stand today?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: yeah, well, it's, it's.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: It's interesting.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Obviously, these big fairs and and these big events, you only get sort of the most famous artists appearing and that you know, obviously for good reason the vast majority of the time.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: But the thing that kind of interested us about the scene originally was the fact that it was open.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: At the time, you had to, like submit a really tragic and embarrassing uh video sort of application to super rare and stuff like that if you wanted to get featured on them and, uh, the only other option was, like, you know, open sea, which is kind of a horrible piece of just horrendous digital art.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Um tezos and hickenonk was always open.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Uh object has always been open and fx hash as well, importantly, was also open, because I think all the generative sites were more curated at that point.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, and that's a really key thing in a magazine, we've always tried to feature the famous guys, the ones that are doing these interesting things at these big events, but but also everyone else too, because that was the whole point of why we joined and that's the part of the reason why the tickle is successful, because we came out of nowhere and we had an opportunity to to to say what we wanted to say.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, these, these big events are amazing and it's lovely to attend them and it's fantastic to meet all these amazing artists, some to attend them.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: And it's fantastic to meet all these amazing artists, some of whom you've been following the entire way through their digital or the nft career anyway, um, and see some people go on to like really huge things, like sasha styles, for example, who is an absolute idol of mine, um, doing incredibly well at the moment, which is a real source of pleasure, uh, for me and for all writers, I think, in that, in that scene.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, they're really important and I think that in terms of establishing that narrative, that sort of larger narrative about digital art and this sort of meshing a bit more of the traditional art world with the digital art world, but, yeah, our sort of 50% of our mission is still to kind of highlight those guys who are still trying to make it, who are still trying to get there, because that's kind of important and it's been a balancing act really, you know, because we obviously have to cover the big guys, because they're the ones who bring in the clicks and they bring in the, you know, the subscriptions and such like.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: We try not to forget about everyone else too you know, and that's.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I think it's becoming a little bit.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: At the start anyone could just join and if your art was good, then you would be kind of accepted, and I've seen loads of artists come through like that and become established.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: I think maybe and this is maybe a little bit controversial to say, but I think it's a bit more difficult now for that to happen on the web to kind of horribly restrictive social media algorithms, to kind of establish any kind of visibility, which is very tricky for a lot of people.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we're still trying, albeit to probably a little bit of a lesser extent than we were able to before, to highlight those guys who are on the way up, as well as not just the guys who have already made it.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I do think that there was a little bit of this irony in terms of the, the nft art movement, essentially sort of saying art can exist independently of all of the major art institutions that have been established and made it hard to like to basically build your name and then bring attention to the work that you feel you deserve.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: So that's why we had these grassroots movement that began with things like hick at nunc and then, when it has this art community sort of broke into art basel, then there was this layer of legitimacy of you know, we've made it and we have the opportunity to celebrate some of the most prominent voices or like the most talented artists in this space.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: So there's this, there's this wrestling match between how much do we need this curatorial effort to highlight certain artists without sort of quietening down others but at the same time keeping it so open and acceptable, but trying to prevent the open sea effect, which is basically saying here's a whole lot of digital art that completely varies in quality and there's no real assist as to whether where, you know, the talent really lies, like, how?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: How did you find the balance that worked for the tickle?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: I think it's an impossible thing to try and achieve.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: The best you can do is just attempt to do it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I think the, the what I've seen from other players in the space in this sense is really encouraging.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I think what I want to shout out Object for this at the moment, because they have a really nice balance, I think, between the openness and availability of the platform, which is very connected to the sort of founding principles of the Tezos art scene, to the sort of founding principles of the Tezos art scene, but also developing these really kind of multifaceted and subtle and quite intelligent curation elements to the site, the daily curations, object one, for example, which is more of a strictly curated thing, all of the what the object features in the tickle, for example, where they focus on a particular artist they want to uh, to push um for all sorts of different reasons, and also their, their sort of presence, and all the the major events as well, which is which is really interesting.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So they've they've got a really good balance, I feel, between recognizing the importance of, of, of really um successful and prominent artists, but also leveraging that to give some visibility to everyone else too.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: So I think that they've been the longest sponsor of the Tickle.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: They've been helping us out since the very early days and I think that that is kind of emblematic of the shared kind of ethos, I think, between a tickling object and, very soon after that, fx hash as well.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: I must also mention they have a very similar approach and I think that's really something I think the Tesla space is really good for, I think, is not just focusing on the top at the top, but also having this balanced sort of intelligent view of the whole scene.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, massive credit to the curators at both sides for doing that.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: And we try our best to kind of match that.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Obviously, we have a sort of more fixed schedule and less flexible than a sort of evolving website, but we try to.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: We try to always combine the yeah, the most famous with the, with the sort of the emerging as well, um, but yeah, it's something that you will basically always fail at essentially, but you can, you can try so it's something to always strive for rather than to perfect yeah so potentially quite a tough question, but given all of the evolution you've seen over the last three to four years, how would you describe the state of the tezos art scene as it exists today, where we have this, you know this institutional legitimacy and recognition recognition on all the major art platforms, as well as still this sort of grassroots cultural movement that's happening all the time?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Where do we stand now?
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: What does it look like to you?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: I've been saying this often over the last few years, but it's early days, that's the way I would say it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: We're still at the nascent stages of this, of the NFT thing and of the of the Tesla thing, even of like the generous about thing.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: It's everything's new, um, and it feels like you know we've been doing this for four years and that you know 93 issues in and the tickle it feels you feel like a grizzled of campaigns across the world, but you're not really.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: You're just sort of at the very, very early stages of this thing, and so I think that's the main kind of thing I would say about the Tesla start scene is that it's still evolving.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, just in the last year, there have been several kind of changes in the way that the platforms operate, the way in which the events are curated, the way in which artwork is displayed at events, for example, which we cover in an article that's going live on the Tezos blog this week, as well as Right Click Save.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So look out for that.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Just this kind of changing attitude to how, how we put this stuff out into the world, for for like a normal people to see, it's really important.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's, it's constant change.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating to see it, I wouldn't say, from the inside.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not necessarily an insider, but I've.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I've kind of been paying attention for for a long time and consistently so, so kind of been paying attention for for a long time and consistently so.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: So it's yeah, it's fascinating if every time you think that you're kind of um, established and this is the way that things are going to be, everything just flips on its head and changes again.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: So I just I just can't wait to see how it uh keeps changing and keeps adapting and and keeps kind of getting its uh feelers into the wider world.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: It's such a fascinating time to be alive.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: So what do you sort of hope to see for the Tezos ecosystem in the near future so by near future I'm projecting the next six months and what do you think it actually needs for it to get there?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: I think one of the sort of contentious things over the years has been how the Tesla's foundation has been supporting the scene.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I think that it's overblown, it's very much overblown, it's it's.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: They only have a very limited role in sort of helping helping artists or platforms or whatever, but they have.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: They have some role and I think some of the maybe I think they would admit to missteps have sort of been a little bit troublesome for the community.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: But they've shown in recent times that they've really got their act together and that's really really important because they have a critical role in kind of pushing it towards the mainstream.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: They supported or sponsored I'm not quite sure, um, which, which words are used but they they certainly had a big role to play in a recent digital art mile.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: So that's, that's a huge thing and that sort of transformation from what exactly they're doing to like okay, this, like this, is important, this is interesting, uh, is is a really big step and I deserve a lot of credit for that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: I think the next six months again, like I just said, it flips so often and so interestingly that I've sort of stopped predicting what might happen, because it's a fool's game.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: The best thing you can do is just sort of sit, see what happens and then hopefully speak to the important people involved.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: And one thing we've sort of pivoted towards over the last few months, I think, is to really speak to the people behind the scenes, the curators, the, you know, the gallerists, the organizers of these events, to to really dig a little bit deeper into, kind of, uh, the way that those guys see, see the future and see how things are evolving, because, uh, we, we didn't really focus on those guys for a long time, but actually it's, it's super important, uh, to to kind of hear their story and to and their motivations and their plans.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we've been speaking to people like Beats, for example, from the here and Now events which are a really important part of the Tezos scene, for years now.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: So that's actually in the next issue, another plug.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: But, yeah, we're speaking to the guy who founded or co-founder of la random, for example, the funny guys.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Um, we hopefully have an interview with george back as well, who is the co-curator of digital arm, while, um, and various other things like that.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: So, to give a, I think, a broader sense of what's actually happening rather than just the artist and the writer's point of view.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Um, so hopefully, if you read those interviews, you might get some better insights than that I can provide as to as to what might happen I think that teslos has never been boring when it comes to the diversity of its art community, so seeing how that's continuing to shape shift is is always fascinating.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Uh, before we go, I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to actually ask you about your your own creative endeavors, because I also know that you're an artist and a writer.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: So, first of all, how do you find the time?
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And, second of all, what is, what are sort of the, the things that inspire your own work, and where can people go to actually find it and enjoy it for themselves?
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: I generally don't find the time.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, I was.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: I was releasing stuff fairly regularly early on, um, when it was uh, yeah, when the magazine was 15 pages long, it didn't take much time.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Um, but as it got more and as obviously working as well, nine to five um is a little bit of a time pressure, so it's sort of trickled to.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: You know, it's slowed to a trickle over the last year or so.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: But there's one particular long series that I've got going which is a sort of poetic collaboration with elements of AI but put through a kind of very torturous process that takes kind of weeks to achieve, which end up as what I call slow gifts.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: That's the series called Slow Gods, which is available on Object.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm plugging.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: I never plug my own stuff, so this is weird, but yeah, it's on.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: I think I'm up to number 13 with that.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: It's a series of 50, so there's'm up to number 13 with that.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: It's a series of 50.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: So there's a long way to go with that.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: I'm in the midst of finishing number 14 as we speak, and it's an interesting one because I'm obviously using AI tools but those are constantly changing and the sort of nature and form of the project is changing as well and you'll see that develop over the 50.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: But yeah, other than that I've got some non-NFT writing to is changing as well and you'll see that develop over the 50.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: But yeah, other than that, I've got some non-NFT writing to pursue a couple of novels that are in progress and another series, which is a poetic series on dementia, which is coming very soon.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: So you do have a lot on your plate, so I understand why this is quite a time-consuming task if you've got a novel on the way, a poetry series, an art collection, as well as publishing the Tickle every month.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: So I don't think anyone's ever going to say you're taking any sort of breaks, as you alluded to earlier in our conversation.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: The last and also very important question I would love to ask is the Tickle's done a phenomenal job of supporting an incredibly diverse body of artists across disciplines and across the Tezos ecosystem?
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: So how can the community, or anyone for that matter, support the Tickle in return?
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: Just give us loads of money, that'd be great.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks, no, I mean, you know funding is important, but yeah, I don't know, just sort of just keep reading it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff there, I think and you know we don't have a lot of time to commit to marketing and social media marketing, things like that which is absolutely critical.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: I know that we should be doing a better job with that, but I just don't have the time, I really don't, and I can't afford to pay anyone to do it.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: So, boo-hoo, woe is me.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: I just don't have the time, I really don't, and I can't afford to pay anyone to do it.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: So, um, boo hoo, woe is me, et cetera.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: But, um, yeah, just spread the word, mention us, retweet us, buy the magazine, talk about the magazine, uh, and buy a subscription as well.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, there's a there dedicated Tickle tokens page on Object.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: Just search Tickle tokens on Object and that will give you all of the tokens that we've collected so far from an amazing array of artists.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Really, just as a gallery of incredible artwork.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: It's worth a look.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: But if you collect one of the available ones.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: You also get 12 issues of the tickle, so it's a bit of a bargain, I'd say I would say that.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: But there we go.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Uh, the late subscription token, I think, is sold out, but there are.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: There are others that are still available.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: So, um, yeah, just kind of have a look on there and subscribe.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Subscribing really, really helps us.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you guys, and you know, it's, it's just for me, just just as a final thought, it's such a pleasure to be able to speak to artists and writers and just hear their stories and to talk about art.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I think it's just, it's one of the most wonderful privileges that being the editor of the tickle affords, and I'm just hugely grateful for it, and it's the reason why I've continued making it during some, you know, times where I thought, oh, do I have the energy?
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: But those, those conversations are just, uh, are so fascinating, so interesting, uh, that it makes it all worth it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: So I just want to say thank you to everyone who's appeared.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: They are far too numerous to mention, so I won't give a shout out to any of them, but they know who they are and, yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure and hopefully it will continue to be a pleasure.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: So simple internet support mechanisms still exist Read it, share it, subscribe to it, contribute to it and, of course, just keep talking about all of these topics that fundamentally matter.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Johnny, this was a fantastic conversation.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time and I don't think it'll be too long before we sort of have an update conversation and we can talk maybe six dunce down the line and see how much it's fundamentally changed yet again.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: But but thank you for spending your morning with me.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it no worries at all, thanks so much.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, really lovely to chat to you and uh yeah, thanks for, uh, thanks for setting us up.