Beeple

Hello, I'm Josh Baer and welcome to the Bear Fax Podcast. Hardly anyone would call me Mr. N F T. So it might come as a surprise that after going to the grand opening of Beeple's Studio, I am drinking the Kool-Aid, partially a museum of his work over the last 25 years. From every days to paintings and partially an exhibition space for other artists. It just works. He may be a rare bird, the unicorn in this field, but I'm not the only art world elitist buying into it now.

Not literally, I own none. But go and see for yourself. Beeple Studios opens tonight. It's about, whoa. It's about 15 months since we talked at the Bass Museum. Yep. In Miami, when we talked last, we had just moved into this space a couple months before that and we'd just sold Human one like a month before that. And so since then it's definitely, things have changed a lot. Crypto went to Absolute Dog shit.

and is currently on the fucking, as we're speaking right now, U S D C. Teetering on the brink of collapse, so more good news. But I've seen in that time, to be honest, a massive shift in the like traditional art world in terms of like more acceptance of this stuff. On today's episode of the Bear Faxed podcast, We are catching up with one of our most popular interview guests in recent years, the artist Mike Winkleman, better known as Bele.

On Saturday, March 11th, Josh Baer sat down with Bele during the opening of his B 20 Museum, an immersive digital art museum in Charleston, South Carolina, to ask him how his vision for the future of digital art and NFTs has changed since we spoke in 2021. But first, we'll revisit our prior convers. When we sat down with people at the Bass Museum during Miami Art Week to talk about the beginnings of the N F T community and what he has learned since his groundbreaking 69 million sale.

Honestly, I think a lot of artists are very hesitant to talk about the like money aspect or market aspect of it, but to me it doesn't bother me. It's like interesting. But I think it's cool to be able to see it from both sides. Well, we come to the money aspect of it, but it's like there's this sense of community that you've built for 20 years around your work as a digital artist, and we tend to put things in these sort of silo.

And you were in that silo, what you call the art world with capital A, that's another silo and there's pop culture silo. What is your community? How do you relate to community? Yeah, I think the digital art community is something that I've definitely been a part of probably the last 10 years, just because prior to social media it was much more kind of disjointed.

But yeah, it's something that I think is really important and something that I think people don't maybe understand as much about my story is that is sort of what put me in the position to have this thing. The mix of the community that I had built up and the following that I built up over the last 20 years, and then this new technology that was like Fuse that lit the powder keg here.

Does that community wanna go along for the ride that you're taking them into these other communities or that they wanna stay? In their dorkiness, kind of dumbness, I think you used that word. No, no. Almost everybody from the digital art community came along for the N F T ride. Quite a lot of them. And that's what I saw is. When I first learned of NFTs, it was like, wait a second. All this shit that nobody was paying any money before, before, now they're paying money.

All of the digital artists are gonna come to this. Like they're all like coming. So I knew there was about to be like a huge influx of people coming to this from my old world. It made me think in the beginning, in March, first time, I'm hearing the word NFTs and you read about all this disruption. I'm thinking they wanna disrupt, but they're desperate to do what you did, which was sell directly Christie's, which is actually the least disruptive Yeah. Kind of thing. So which is it?

Is it disruption? I'm not saying so much for you. You've, you've made your choice and been clear or is it non disrupt? I don't think it's as disruptive as people think. I think you're going to see this just be another way that people make a living because it takes a certain type of artist. And I think there's certain artists who don't really wanna market themselves. They don't really give a shit about social media. They don't wanna fuck with any of that.

They wanna just paint stuff and like that's what they enjoy doing. They need a gallery. They need somebody to have that infrastructure around them because their job is to make the art. Not everybody has to have the Damien Hurst or the beep playbook. Honestly, to me, it doesn't bother me, and I see the marketing that I do in terms of social media as an extension of the art.

Looking at the teaser videos as their own little art pieces to me is really fun and just another extension of the like whole project. But yeah, a lot of people, they don't find that part of it to be artistic and so they just don't give a shit about it. So that's where I think these things are not gonna go away. A lot of the things that this technology provides.

It's again, just another canvas that I think is not so different than any other sort of new art form that wasn't art and then kind of became art. Well, where I think you're a little bit rare is the, your interest in being able to deal with people and technology. You talked about studying computer science. I actually. Have a master's in computer science. Are you serious? That's cool.

In the seventies and all my other classmates were like carrying their slide rules and they wouldn't talk to people. Yeah. And I'm in middle of Champaign Urbana, Illinois and New York City kid from the art world. Nice. That's school. It freaked me out. Top five school in this and I did poorly. It freaked me out because these people don't like want to deal with people.

Yeah, and then you fast forward, now you have all this wealth in Silicon Valley and most of those people are doing that stuff because they don't want to deal with human beings and they're artists a little bit. How about that? That might be a little . Well, you come out of that, you in that history and you're a little bit rare because you're quite charming and you like to like interact. With humans.

I really do like, I enjoy it, coming out to these things and, you know, meeting people and signing crap and like, even, because even that stuff is like fun. Like people started bringing up dollar bills and then it's like, oh, I'm gonna draw designs on this dollar bill. It's like, to me, again, I sort of just view it as like an extension of any of these other things that I'm doing. Finding like fun ways to sort of like, interact with people I really enjoy.

But yeah, it's, it's definitely again, going to. Computer science school for that. I definitely understand that. That's pretty rare in this, this field. And now you've leapfrogged into this position in the art world with the Capital A. In your short time there, what have you learned that surprised you? ? I feel like I'm pretty often surprised. I feel like that is, I give it some , no, no shortage of surprises on a daily basis.

The entire thing, like literally saying out loud that like, I sold a piece for that amount of money is like so bizarre to me still, and just feels very, very surreal because it just, to me really came out of nowhere and it was like, I did not, this wasn't like one day this will be available and people will look at this as like, I, I, I just did not see this coming when we sat down with people in November, 2020.

He had just sold the work Human one at Christie's for nearly 30 million, following his unprecedented 69 million sale of the digital compilation. Every days, the first 5,000 days, the prior spring. This month, human one will go on display at the newly opened m plus museum in Hong Kong. After the break, people discusses Human one and explains what it was like to rise to prominence in the art world with zero background in traditional art educat. Don't transact without the bear faxed.

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It's like, as you look at art, you know, 30 million for a sculpture call human, one sculpture or video sculpture, or certainly an artwork that's like, well, who sold sculpture for that? Like Brancusi Metis Man. People. I mean, the fuck, that's gonna be like a, you know, like the kind of thing you said thought about maybe when you're eight in your bedroom. Yeah, no, that's, what's it? Bikes? It's insane too.

And what I think is actually probably a blessing in disguise in some respects is that I didn't go to art school and I don't know a lot of these things, so I'm not maybe as daunted by some of this stuff as I should be because I'm too stupid to know how like insane this. I'm learning more. Definitely have learned a lot about art. There's a little bit of what you've been learning. Maybe this just seem in the process, like we're in Miami, the art fair.

I think you went to your first fair in New York and freeze or something. Yep. Six months ago. Now you're an art fair pro. It's like, yeah, no, I an art fair bro. Two. Two. I've got two. I'm sue. I would say super pro, but that's fine if you wanna be insulting. The uh, no. Honestly, I've learned so much in so many different areas because again, I knew very little of art. And embarrassingly little, because I literally have not taken an art class since high school. I didn't take art classes either.

So so I, I So you're learning about art, learning about kind of like the history of art. Are you reading books, going to museums? It's honestly mostly through like, like digital and like conversations with people. Like I've got, you know, sort of a number of people who are very knowledgeable in the space and have been very generous with their time and very patient. To explain my some things, laughable questions on this. And you've been collecting art. Your brothers here, I know we talked about.

That's true. He's a big collector. He, he major collector. You know. Have you been, have you been collecting art? I've collected a few NFTs, honestly, very few, but it's something that I'm excited to get into more. It's just I will have like some level of collection. It's not gonna be this like massive collection, to be quite honest. You I would guess because to be quite honest, like I never collected anything before this. Like it wasn't like growing up or I collected baseball cards or comics.

Like I just like that mindset and I think you're right, the most of the clutch I know as kids say, stamps, coins never, I never had anything like that. Then you're unlikely to do. It's just I don't have that mindset. I'm so focused on like making it it, making things that it's sort of like that idea and that deriving pleasure from building a collection. That's not how I'm like wired, but it's so cool to see people going through like the Rebel Museum.

I very much appreciate other people's like collections and the time and and effort and sort of like thought that went into like building them, especially when they're displayed like that. Have you leaned into the difference? Seeing a Rothko on a computer screen versus a Rothko in real life. Oh yeah, that's, and that's, you know, where we need to really be as a community of like understanding that those are fundamentally different to me. They're very, very different.

Although I don't know that future generations will share that. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But to me those are very, very different things because purely just mathemat. One is something that I can do anytime, and so it is not a scarce experience versus if I'm standing two feet from a hundred million dollar whatever, $50 million painting. Well, that's not something I can do anytime.

That is a very rare experience and so I approach it very differently and it has a very different emotional like, well, you can't impact, get the sublime off a computer screen with physical sort of things like that. There's actually an infinite amount of detail. The closer and closer, you're sort of like, look, versus there's a very finite amount of detail when it's on a computer screen. What is the resolution of the file? That's it. And as you go into object making of your own work.

Yeah. Having made one at least that we've seen. So that's the other thing is I think a lot of people who saw a human one are sort of under the impression that is the first thing. But I've actually released a bunch of physical artwork dating all the way back to a year ago, and they were much simpler. That's something that honestly, for the last year has been one of the like biggest focuses and things that I'm very excited about.

Just as he began developing his B 20 museum in 2021, people started to explore the new creative possibilities of bringing digital works to the physical world. But what about buying and collecting digital artworks versus their traditional counterparts? People shares his message to the traditional art world after the. Don't transact without the bare faxed. Consider bundling your newsletter subscription with access to our auction database.

The only platform that lets you know who bought what and who tried to but didn't get it. With over 12,000 data points. Going back to 1994. Head to the fairfax.com to learn more. What should our art world understand about you that they don't know? Here's a chance you're speaking to them. , the director of the match, you know, museum, curators, dealers, other artists, collectors.

This is like your chance in a sense, to speak to them in, in a more direct way without like only about the money and the press and all that.

Honestly, as people sort of look at the work that I've done over the last 20 years, I think they will come to see that this art and the art that other people in the digital art community are making is honestly no different than like, Any other medium and that it's just another thing, and I think they're also going to see that it's going to bring in a new class of collectors. Everybody wins.

Then when more people are interested in buying stuff, because again, you see Justin son buys a Picasso, buys a Giacometti. He'd never collected any art before, and so you're gonna see spillover like that too. It's interesting because we interviewed him, he reached out to us wanting to like have his voice heard and I thought, wow. Well that's. A new kind of thing and in a sense, you're leaning into this world.

I think what you'll also find with these collectors is I think you'll be very surprised at how they are good shepherds of this work. Ryan Zer, who bought Human Want, he is very excited about sort of, you know, working with museums to set up and really kind of give this the attention that he feels it. And so I think you're gonna find that collectors coming from the digital world have a reverence for this work and really want to see it. Um, but it's not a democracy.

It's a patronage and an elite, either by wealth or by access. It's not like we're all. Crowdfunding this thing. There's obviously people who are just in it to make a quick buck in the traditional world, just as as much in the like digital world. But I think you are gonna see, especially at the sort of, let's say higher end of the market, you're gonna see people who are very thoughtful about this stuff and do really want to be good stewards of the like.

Isn't that financial craziness kind of antithetical to that ascent, cuz 99% of the talk about NFTs is about the money. The same way the black abstraction that's dominating the market is about the money or these, you know, black figurative artists is really about the market. I'm not saying it's narrow 10 ft, but it's like all those things. Crypto Sneak or NFT art world isn't that, you know, a flash.

I feel like people like to sometimes pretend like they don't want to talk about the money, but then there's a lot of it. It's like, okay guys, let's be fucking honest, like. The only reason you're talking to me is cuz I sold this thing for a shitload of money. Like that's the only reason I'm on a lot of people's radar. But they want to act like, it's like I, we can't talk about the market. You mean the York dealers who are like the 500 art dealers are coming to you. It's like we're so pure.

I think we're about the culture aesthetic, but they want, and I think a lot of people like from all aspects of this. I don't know. To me that again, it doesn't really bother. I'm able to, I think very much compartmentalize the art and the money. The money is whatever the fucking money is, it's the market. I can't control the market and it is gonna be what it is, but like I know I'm not making the art for the market, so the market is just gonna be what it is.

Yeah. And so I know I'm making that art because that's what I want to say and I'm not gonna let that like be influenced by the money, especially now. And so, well, if only bad artists made money, that'd be a problem. And if no, great artists could make money, but you have all four quadrants working, great artists, making money, great artists, not bad artists, not making money, even though Jerry Saltz would like them all to be paid and bad artists. Some who do that.

All those things are simultaneous, but it's just, it's this focus on this thing that's a little bit overwhelming in our culture. That's the thing where, again, I feel lucky that I was, for 20 years, that was no part of what I was doing. It was literally, I did not have to worry that somebody was going to collect this. Do they want to buy this? That was not anything that I focused on at all because no, there was no collecting of this.

And so it was just like, I'm just gonna say whatever the fuck I wanna say and like that's it. And like hopefully people like it, but if they don't like it, whatever, it doesn't fucking matter. I'm still gonna be able to like put food on the table. You're a completely different overnight sensationalist talking to an Artis who's become quite successful about your age, early forties, something like that. Yeah. And they've been painting for 20 years, so they really.

An overnight success, but 20 years of work, you appear to be an overnight success, but in fact you've been quite successful on your own for all this time. Yeah. It's a different experience. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely is different and I think that's another part of the reason that very much this feels too good to be true is because, again, I was not a serving.

I was definitely probably one of the highest paid designers in the world, and again, because I had sort of amassed this following, I was doing stuff with Apple and Nike and SpaceX and Louis Vuitton doing good, well paying jobs. And so I felt like I had already gotten the sort of like benefit from doing all this hard work and then it's like, oh, no extra benefit, bonus mode. Like, yeah, after the. People discusses his predictions for the future of the N F T market.

Don't transact without the bare faxed. Consider bundling your subscription with our art advisory membership program offering on-demand access to our diverse team of international specialists for a low annual fee valued by both collectors. New to the. And experience players like galleries and even other advisors. Head to the Bear fax.com to learn more. So back to the art world, what, what would you like to know? You must ask some questions. Have a question. What I like to what? Like to say.

You have a question for me? Like that's true that you're entering into this. I guess my question for you would be, how do you think this is going to change the like art world from the like market side of things? Well, I think that, We make these global assumptions about the big art market, and first of all, each artist has their own market. Very true. And they don't move in the same direction. And, and Japanese calligraphy does not go up because.

Black abstraction went down, they, they move in different ways. So that's one point that I would stress to the other is it takes so few people to make the appearance of like, you know, 69 million could have been. Could have been two if three people had just said, yeah, that's as far as I go. And we wouldn't be having all that. That's like three, maybe there were 10. But you know, it's so few people. Very few make this media sensation, which is, and if one of them had covid that day Exactly.

And another one really didn't like that. So we draw these conclusions. So the trick is, like 30 years ago as a dealer or somebody in the art world, I knew all the collectors in the world either. Heard of them all. No one does anymore. And Justin is a good example. Suddenly he went from. Crypto to Warhol, Picasso, Giacometti for 70 million. He's a dream come true for the art business. It's like, here's a new soccer. You know, here's, you know, I say, here's a new soccer. Wow. Okay. Here to fear.

Be fair facts. You, you, you play poker. I say this all the time. Do you play poker? Not well, but very, very, very well. If you're in a poker game, you don't know who the mark. You're the mark. You're the mark, you're the mark. So the art world is leaking and these guys saying, okay, well I have a feeling this. Here we go. Come into the, here's the velvet rope. Here's some pretty girls. It's a nice food. We're on the boat in Venice with this one. Get on my chat. It's fun. The art world's fun.

Yeah, no, you know, it's a lot more fun than the computer. I have a feeling there's gonna be a lot more where that came from. To be quite honest, I feel like we are very, very early in activating the amount of collectors who never thought of themselves in that way. And they've made a couple bucks in the tech sphere and I think you are gonna see a huge continuation of that. 20 years ago. Yeah. No tech CEO collected arc, probably. Maybe Larry Ellison.

Okay. And those that did, people looked at them like they were stupid and. And now if you're like a CEO and you don't collect art, they look at you like you're crazy. Yeah. You know, it's like, and their wife are like, but I need a Chris wall on my wall. And the guy goes, who? And it's like their, their entry point is $12 million. That's changed.

I think you're gonna see it though, at even a much lower level too, because again, even if you're just somebody who works at Facebook or Google or one of those things, you're making pretty good money. Like it's one of these things where, what about fractional ownership of our, what do you think of that? I think it's something that's interesting. I think it very much is the devil is in the details and I think it can be done good and I think it can be done poorly.

But I think it's something that is a really interesting concept and I think it's something that you're gonna see more of. I think the people who are doing it in a way that is in service of the artwork and trying to steward that artwork and add context and add exposure to it, I think that is very good and I think those are gonna be success.

I think the things that are just short-term bullshit, cash grab smashing into a million pieces and hope the pieces are worth more than the Humpty Dumpty have all put together. What shit I think is, is what did you make of that attempt? Was it last week or two weeks ago? For the attempt to buy the, uh, the Constitution. That the constitution a little context for our listen.

In November, 2021, a decentralized collective called Constitution Dao attempted to buy an early copy of the US Constitution that came to auction at Sotheby's, but came up short of the winning bid. They raised 43 million and they, it was like three days or something. And when they didn't buy it, they couldn't really give people their money back. They hadn't thought through the details of like, oh, I thought they did. I don't, I haven't followed it that far.

The transaction costs of giving their money back. Eats up something like 70% of all the gas, the charges. Oh yeah, that's right. The gastic fees, the gas fees were killing all these people that they couldn't get their money back. And so there's 30 million or so that's disappearing into somebody's pocket. Oh, shoot. For doing that. And it was just that they didn't think through all the steps, like what happens if we don't?

I knew they had started giving some of it back, but I didn't think about the gas piece because what I didn't realize with that is until like afterwards, is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they raised that from like 20,000 people. It was like a huge number of people. There wasn't like six people. Yes. That's why this $75 charge each way. If you gave that six, if you gave $200, yeah. It costs you 75 and gas feeds going in and 75 bucks and gas feeds going out. Now you're left with 50.

And nothing happened. You didn't get anything. Now they're like, yeah. Wow. So it's a, it's a cluster F Yeah. . I, I do not doubt that. Could you see that happening to like a work of yours if you put it out there, you know, or something and encouraged your, you know, public and your community to like, let's all buy the next one. And they raised the money to do it. I could see that happening too. You, it could a hundred percent.

And that's where I think people are moving in this space very quickly. And to be quite honest, that's not really an isolated incident of. Some big thing getting fucked up like that because everybody's moving so fucking quickly that it's like a fucking gold rush. I gotta get in there and get my hand on t, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, chill guys. This is not fucking going anywhere in like thinking through shit like that.

That's how the space is going to mature and add more real value to, well, you have this responsibility in a sense of being the most public person. And the one associated with so much money of saying, slow down guys. They don't want to hear that. I can tell you that that's not a super popular opinion in the N F T space, telling people to slow down, and I get it. It's exciting. I'm excited by it too. We're running pretty quick too, and so I totally get that.

But I think especially when you're dealing with other people's money Well, and the other thing that you've done that I know is getting in enough attention is the philanthropic opportunity for you, you know, the art world. One thing it can be great at, particularly our readers and things that are I'm involved with my charity work is your work can be really philanthropic. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something. We did a drop in, I think it was May, and we raised $6 million for Open Earth.

That's something that next year we're gonna be sort of really, really focusing on because to be quite honest, that to me is actually way more fun and feels like not having to sort of like sell it for. I just am very much looking forward to that. Obviously there's no shortage of great causes out there, so there will be a lot more of that. Yeah, so whether you're driving a Mercedes or Ferrari, it's not that important.

I mean, no car in being poor sucks, but the chance to actually do good because yeah. Isn't, wouldn't you say your work is quite a bit about social and political things? There is a lot of pieces to sort of sometimes raise questions, but sometimes bring awareness to like, you know, things that have happened or things that I feel sort of like strongly about.

And so being able to now be in a position where I could not only say a thing but then have somebody else pay to like actually make a change in that thing. I feel super, super fortunate and, and that to me is really exciting. Earlier this month on Saturday, March 11th, Josh sat down with people at the opening of his new 50,000 square foot B 20 Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.

Join us after the break as people discusses his experimental approach to curation and the importance of always trying something. Don't transact without the bare faxed. Coming later this spring. A subscription to our newsletter will also include something new. Access the best, a weekly drop of a vetted hard to find new artwork from one of our gallery partners. Head to the bare fax.com to learn more. Walking to the studio last night, I thought, well, is it gonna look like an unfinished thing?

Will the architecture be good or bad? Will be a gift shop thing? It's like, wait a second. It's intimate, it's spectacular. Thank you, man. God, it's diverse. There's like a real thought. It's like, how did you manage all this in such a short period of time? It's like, it's really, and the only other person who can handle this sort of level of thing is Damien.

Um, yeah, I don't, the team we have is fucking great and I think, to be honest, we've, in terms of this space, the vision has not changed at all. Like, before we even signed the lease, it was like, okay, we're gonna put a gallery over here with roughly five rooms being like all of the different pieces of my, you know, different projects over the years of my career.

And then on this side, we're gonna have a bunch of projectors and we're gonna wrap all these columns with TVs and like, yeah, that's pretty much exactly right. Well, usually. That advanced work doesn't work and you get in there and it's different. But you're saying this time it actually matched?

Yeah, I mean it was just, we kept pom for it and it was like that one room and it was like, I was like, okay, I wanna have all this fucking shit from like very old stuff, but most of the work fucking blows. And so it's like, but I think it's important to like show this and I wanna show all these like that environment and show, you know, some of.

Physicality of these, you know, a CD player and a fucking, you know, these things that we've forgotten, but like, those were the tools that I used in the early part of my career. Oh. As somebody whose company's named after a fax machine, most people who work for you don't even know what a fax machine is. much less, you know, You know, all those sort of a CD or anything like that? Yeah, yeah.

From the outside it, it feels like you're always to use a poker term, all in, which I love when people go all in on the edge. But for you personally, does it feel like that? There's a couple things there. Do I feel like this is all in? No, not really because. , I've always been very, um, conservative and cautious with my money. So it wasn't like, okay, I'm putting every fucking dollar into this thing. Like, unfortunately you didn't put all your money into Bitcoin.

I did not put all my money into this . Well, and people were like, what do you mean you're taking US dollars out of some of your sales? You got criticized for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely so it's like, it's one of those things where I'm very. This is the long game. And when you, if you're going all in, you're not gonna play the long game because you're gonna fucking, you know, burn out, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm very much like, this to me is like an evolution.

And I think it's, it's, it's also something where I don't want to overstate how much of a. Like, this is very experimental. This is our studio. Like I don't have like this like master business plan of, okay, in the first six months I'm gonna, you know, sell these tickets and blah, blah, blah, da da. This is just like, we're gonna try some crazy shit here. I wanna bring cool people who give a fuck about real art here and we'll see where it goes and like, that's it.

And so it's not, It's something where, yeah, I'm artistically, uh, there's, you'll see some things tonight that I'm a little , a little, a little nervous about some of these things, but it's one of these things where, um, I'm very much looking at this long term and trying to like, so can you preview a little bit of like, I'm sure while you're showing all these things you've already made and some new things tonight, you're probably even more interested in what you're going to.

Than what you did make. So kind of what's next. Yeah. To me, I think there's, what's next is sort of just continuing to explore what we can do with this studio to make it feel like a sort of convergence of the digital and physical.

World and make it feel like it, um, is just very connected and, and a place where you can have new experiences in like a communal space because I think we're so all buried in our phones and in our own little worlds that having a place where people can come together and experience. all the same thing at one time and come away with different ideas and different thoughts about what they're seeing. And I'm purposely trying to show things that are very, like, you don't understand right away.

It's like, I don't know what the fuck that means, because if it's just like, You understand what it means right away, then it's like that's not interesting. There's not, there's no room to like, well, and the point is to not create this mausoleum homage to like the dead artist kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's frozen in time. And again, back to Damien, I love that his sort of museum studio, Newport Street Gallery, it's a place that he can hang stuff that's interesting to him.

Yeah, and that's the point. To stimulate you and your team to like, let's look at things and the, without really a commercial or even a formal moment kind of burden of that a hundred percent. So it's a playground, not just for your work, but for others to come. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I thought would be interesting to do with this, Is to open it up to the entire community.

So I basically p posted online the, the technical specs of the space and the project files for making artwork for the space and said, Hey, I need these six files. You send me back six files, it's one minute. If that's fucking dope, I will play that. And so we had 500 submissions of people who submitted stuff all over the world. And so I just looked through them and it was like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Done. And it like, I don't know who the people are. I don't know what their names are.

I don't know where they're from. It's literally just Okay. Is this artwork that I think is like good or interesting. Boom, we're gonna show it. And so that's very different from how the museums work. And again, I'm not trying to say one is better than the other, but I think there's room for this type of curation as well.

And so I think finding new ways to like, you know, curate shows because we also have those other 500 submissions still and we have more events coming up so we could, you know, show these things in different ways and. I think to me, finding new ways to curate a digital space because I think a lot of these spaces, they almost treat them very. They treat them like the museums.

Like I look at super blue and again, nothing against super blue, but like it hasn't changed in a year and it's like projectors and like, I think there's room to like have these things be more dynamic and changing much more often. To uh, sum up, I would just say one thing to our listeners, you have to come, you have to experience it. You have to see it. It's worth it. Thank you man. I appreciate that. I appreci.

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