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CURAT3D: Lady Cactoid - Merging Art and Technology, and Weaving the Tapestry of Tomorrow's Innovation
Join special guest Lady Cactoid , Co-Founder of Cactoid Labs as we unravel the symbiosis of art and technology. As blockchain redefines the artistic frontier, we muse on how cities without strong cultural tapestries might evolve, intertwining with the threads of tech to weave a future of unparalleled artistic ventures.
During the discourse, Lady Cactoid shares her experiences in blending traditional art with new technologies, revealing her work with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the societal implications of technology evolution. Through discussions, the conversations highlight how artists can create markets for themselves with the technological tools available at their disposal. We then delve into the traditional art world, and the significance of museums and machine learning in current society. Turning the spotlight to the future ambitions of Cactoid Labs, the dialogue explores AI, machine learning, and the influence of video game history in art.
As we draw this episode to a close, we discuss the historical significance of women in computational arts to the promise of AI in deciphering nature's enigmas, the dialogue we foster today plants seeds of innovation for tomorrow. Join us as we look forward to the unfolding tapestry of artistry and digital discovery that awaits in 2024.
Lady Cactoid:
X (Twitter): https://x.com/LadyCactoid
Cactoid Labs:
LACMA x Cactoid Labs: https://lacma.cactoidlabs.io/
X (Twitter): https://x.com/CactoidLabs
SHILLR:
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shillrxyz
GM. This is Boone and you're listening to the Schiller Curated Podcast. In this week's episode, we sat down with Lady Cactoid, co-founder of Cactoid Labs. She holds a PhD in art history and specializes in the intersection of art and technology. She has organized large-scale exhibitions at major institutions such as the LACMA MOCA and the Getty Foundation. In this episode, we just explore the intersection between traditional and digital art, the necessary relationship between technology and art, the opportunity blockchain provides to artists, and much more. As always, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon for financial advice. Boone and guests may own NFTs discussed. Now. It's time to grab some coffee and dive into this conversation with Lady Cactoid. All right, we are recording. Good morning, good afternoon. I'm Lady.
Speaker 2:Cactoid. I'm great. Thank you so much for having me here today.
Speaker 1:You're very welcome.
Speaker 2:How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good. I think the past few days I've severely overslept, but someone once told me that oversleeping wasn't vented by capitalism. I'm currently challenging that thought right now. Did I oversleep or did I just sleep? I'm well rested. Let's just put it that way.
Speaker 2:Okay, amazing. I don't think I've overslept since before I had kids, so I can't say I remember what that feels like.
Speaker 1:That's what I keep hearing. I keep hearing. Also, enjoy it while you can. The closest thing I have to a child is I have a 65-pound pop name Princess Leia. You know she needs to go out obviously in the mornings, but she's pretty low maintenance when it's all sudden done. I'm just enjoying that. I've heard dogs are good stepping stones to kids. But we're doing good so far. I hope you get some we're asleep soon.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. You're in Austin, was that where you are?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, currently in Austin, austin for the past 10 years.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Yeah, I mean, I love it here Well, yeah, yeah, I've only been there once, but I need to come back. I know it's developed a lot since I was there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how long ago? Well, first let's start there. How long ago were you here and what were you here for?
Speaker 2:So I was nine years old, I think, and my dad, who's an artist, was teaching painting at UT Austin, and so, yeah, like my mom and my brother and I all stayed in San Francisco because he was only teaching there for a year, and then we would just go and visit him and it was always super pretty and much, much more low-key than San Francisco. So I remember thinking like, oh, this is amazing, we have a backyard, but yes, but now it's like you guys have a whole tech and entertainment industry and that wasn't really there.
Speaker 1:It was not.
Speaker 1:And I'll tell you, one of the best things about Austin is that that vibe is real, similar to, kind of it reminds me of like when, you know, because my mom went to school at UT and so the way she kind of described the city was, you know, like what makes Austin so great is its denial.
Speaker 1:What makes it so great and what also shoots itself in the foot is their denial of how good the city is and people's desire to move there. You know, because in the beginning it was very, you know like, low-key, there wasn't, it was kind of like a little safe haven, but that I think they grow, like they, but they also kind of refused to grow Like they just kind of just refused to like expand on their own and do things. So you know, it's kind of one of those things where it's so great and I love this city. There's also a side, though, that like it's just a little bit of denial about how good the city is and people's will to live there, and I think a lot of like different infrastructures could have been set in place if they like, focused on growth, but they just didn't and so but it's also kind of what makes it still very special, even though it's grown so much. It still has that special kind of small town vibe, even though it's anything but that.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's, that's good. Yeah, yeah, tain that that's awesome, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, like you said, big tech culture, big, you know, art scene, I'll tell you, is not as impressive as you might think. I'm from Houston and I also know Dallas has a really big, flourishing art scene there. You know, I went, I grew up going to the museum of modern art and doing all those things as a kid, but Austin doesn't really have that. It's a little disappointing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, there's the Blanton right, Like I know. I know a number of artists who've exhibited there. I've never been there, but yes, it doesn't. It doesn't. It's small compared to what's happening in Dallas and Houston, for sure.
Speaker 1:Very true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I took. I ended up taking, and the reason only I knew is I took a little vacation after we released season one of Shiller Media, took a well-deserved break and I was just like let me go just explore and see the arts and culture that we have here, because I've I kind of live farther out of the city and I don't, you know, as a local, I've never explored the city that I live in a lot. So but yeah, the Branson's really good, like it's really good, and not to discount what they have, but for a city like Austin you kind of would just expect a little bit more. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, who knows, Maybe what we're talking about here, what we're going to talk about today, will be the birth place of something new. Whether you know, web 3, you know kind of art is may have a home in Austin, who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah, who knows? Well, that's really interesting. Yeah, I do. I do know that a lot of. There's a lot of young collectors in Texas and I've been reading just like. I think a lot of people will be located to Texas during the pandemic and a number of prominent galleries are thinking about opening up locations in Houston and Dallas. So it's interesting to think about and to see what transpires there over the next few years. I'm sure it will bleed into Austin in some way or another.
Speaker 1:One would hope. You know, we have a South by Southwest here. We have, you know, a few other crypto conferences here, like Consensus and Permissionless, so one just kind of you know, in South by Southwest. You know, as you probably know this as well, but it was not always as tech focused as it is now. It was very much rooted in new music, new movies, kind of indie artists kind of getting a name for themselves type of beat, and it's very much changed, yeah so interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but I think there's a bit of a delay. Sorry, go ahead, Go ahead. I would love to kind of understand. So you want something that was really interesting, like when we started working together and hosting some spaces and it got introduced to Cactoid Labs. You know, I started, like. You know, I was obviously looking at your Twitter profile, which is how basically every relationship that I have formed today is where it starts. You know, and saw that you've had quite. You've had quite the education in the arts and in art history, and so I loved to maybe like go back to kind of the early days of, like, what interested you in art or maybe what. Maybe a question that we could start off here is like what was maybe your first encounter with art and what that made you and how that had an impact on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my first encounter with art is kind of I don't even know, because my father is a painter and a lot of people in my family are either visual artists or poets or songwriters, and it's kind of been part of my life since from the very beginning I grew up with my dad's studio was in our house and so I was always in his studio while he was painting and you know, I was able to work in there doing whatever I was working on while he was. And we lived in San Francisco, california, when I was little and we would go to all of the museums in San Francisco, which San Francisco has a little bit of a sleepy art scene. It's not as developed as LA and certainly not New York, but I mean there's a lot of history there. Yeah, so I grew up like.
Speaker 2:There's this amazing museum in San Francisco which I kind of hold dear to my heart. It's called the Palace of the Legion of Honor and it's it doesn't have a lot of contemporary art, but it's up on this hill on the ocean and famously Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo was there. Anyway, I have a lot of fond memories of going and just sitting in front of paintings at the Legion of Honor and trying to replicate them and but yeah, so like art has always been part of my life. And then my father taught painting, also ran a university gallery which I would sometimes kind of help with and in. After I graduated from university I began working in galleries in New York and it was something that I didn't I actually didn't study art in university. I wanted to move away from, from the arts which I had kind of like come to consider and come to associate with, like just rocky financial times.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to be a working artist and so I was like I don't want to do that, like I want to do something something else, something more stable. But then everything always came back to the arts, because I don't, I just can't get away from it. It's like what I'm most passionate about. So I began working in galleries and curating small shows in New York, where I was living at the time, and then I did a master's, which is partly at Columbia University in New York, and then my boyfriend at the time and now my husband decided to move to LA and I did.
Speaker 2:I entered a PhD program in art history at USC where I completed my graduate degree, and we've basically been in LA ever since then. So it's been quite a while now and I have been working in kind of all all dimensions of contemporary art. But I've had a long running interest in art and technology. My husband is a computer software engineer with a background in art and literature and film, but because he's been so close to code and and computers, it's really like made me very keyed in on what's happening and developments that are happening in technology, and so I kind of you know in.
Speaker 2:Sometimes in the art world people tend to like focus on one thing and I'm reluctant to say that like my focus is art and technology, because in actuality I'm heavily invested in painting and sculpture and dance, but I really see technology bleeding into all of these mediums so, yeah, I have been in my time in LA curating at various museums as well as galleries, and then I used to teach a course on art and technology at Loyola Marymount, and it was a course that I actually co-taught with my brother who's who's a writer, and it was a really cool course that used critical theory and new technology to look at the relationship between humans, machines and art. And I, during the pandemic, became aware of of programmable blockchains. I had been aware, kind of peripherally, of artists using the blockchain for experimentations, but I didn't really I didn't understand smart contracts and had never heard of an NFT before the pandemic, and then it was during lockdown that I became super excited about this potential of finally kind of finding a larger platform for artists who were working in time-based media, working with digital tools, to share their work, to create markets for their work, to create, you know, communities, conversations around it via this decentralized internet. So that's kind of how I gravitated towards web3 and then I really kind of view my, my interest in web3 again as kind of bleeding into all of my interests with with art more broadly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how about you? What? How did you get into all of this?
Speaker 1:I thanks for. I mean thanks for asking, and I love when people ask, you know, ask questions back. It makes it makes it more conversational. And I just want to comment and say that such a there's a couple things I mentally bookmarked that I wanted. That I want to double click on maybe a little later in our chat here. But I'm happy and just love to hear kind of how you, like, basically went from first discovering art to how you found web3 and such a succinct way and I think that it's just I always love hearing people's stories and so I love that you touched on that. So kind of how I found this was I had outside of going to museums.
Speaker 1:As a kid I really kind of wrote off art. You know, for the most part I was born in the early 90s and it was just very similar to you where it's just like it's cool, it makes me feel good. But that was still kind of the. My parents were still very much of the mentality and they, you know and just you know that's how they grew up and it's how they were successful. Like they. You know art was not something to really lean into. You know it was just parents want nothing but the best for you. So naturally they coached me, you know, into something that could be more sustainable and so that what I, what I reason. I say that is because for a while I just almost subconsciously just disregarded art for the longest time and then I kind of found a kind of found my way into, you know, working in legal technology. I worked at a couple call centers, you know. I worked in our escalations, I worked for kind of a startup environment. So I really kind of enjoyed, you know.
Speaker 1:I really kind of enjoyed technology at its core level and I mean a core memory and I'll retrace a little bit and get you know, kind of get to the more intro, but I think it's important to share that. When you know, I watched the key. I used to watch all the Apple keynotes. Growing up, like I was just enamored with Steve Jobs, still one of my idols, like absolutely like he's just a brilliant human being and I remember when he gave that first iPhone presentation, I was like 15, you know, or something around that age, and I just remember getting full body chills and thinking like this device is gonna change the world, like and I just knew it and I didn't know how and I didn't really follow that, but that was one of my earliest kind of core memories around my love for technology was like, oh my god. Maybe most other people aren't as psychotic around this as I am. You know, I just love this.
Speaker 1:So fast forward to kind of the legal technology days. You know I. You know I was. It was an early 2021, I was on a Twitter space and not on Twitter space.
Speaker 1:It was like when Clubhouse was the most popular form of live social audio and it was a week after people made his like 69 million dollar sale and I was like okay, like why, first and foremost, what is this? How do you buy a picture on the internet? Like why can't you just right-click, save it? Why do they spend this much money on it? You know, and I just remember being so enamored and from the moment I hit that Clubhouse chat, you know, and heard some of these guys talking about smart contracts. You know self-sovereignty, you know royalties baked into code, trusting code more than humans.
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't know what this means, but this feels really cool and it was that same moment that I had when Steve Jobs first pulled the iPhone out, and that is like the reason I tell that part of the story was because I remember having the same thought of like oh my god, this technology is probably gonna change the world and this feels really cool and I can get in at the ground level, so that's what I'm gonna do. And I had no formal back, like I was podcasting in eSports, so I love video games. So I just remember thinking like I'm just gonna pivot. You know, I was still so early in my career that I was like I'm just gonna pivot, I'm just gonna interview anyone who will want to come on to talk about this, to help me learn more about this thing. That I can't quite. I can't quite put into words what the feeling is, but I know I feel it. If that makes sense, it's very nebulous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean yeah, I mean I, you know, we were probably on these same conversations on Clubhouse. It was. It was a really interesting moment and I felt, you know, one of the things I remember thinking at the time was that people were sharing knowledge so, so readily and openly. You know whether it was like okay, this is how you open a wallet, or here are some sites that you can trust to learn about, you know, writing, writing smart contracts and whatnot, and that is a different.
Speaker 2:That kind of open source ethos is part of the tech community, but it's it's definitely quite different than the art, the art world which, yeah, it just doesn't feel that way, even though, in actuality, like now, knowledge is there to be shared, but that that I don't know, sort of like really open, friendly vibe is is is quite different.
Speaker 2:And I remember thinking this is incredible, like people are just they, you know, and it felt like there was a kind of like tidal wave of people from all over the world who were excited to come together and just kind of experiments, and, even though these have happened throughout time, it was a first moment for me that I was like I'm finally here, like because, like my husband was, has always been super about tech and so he was, you know, as like a four-year-old taking apart computers and remembers these early chat rooms and but like I, wasn't part of that early internet culture and I kind of missed out on it.
Speaker 2:And so I'm just happy that I was able to kind of enter this community when I did, which is definitely not the beginning, but it feels like we're still in the process of becoming and everything is in flux, which is a really, I think, great situation for art, when things are not set in stone and nothing is really sort of like laid out for you, but instead people are just sort of going as they create and coming up with new problems and new solutions.
Speaker 1:Totally. I mean, you touched on it. There's a lot there that really resonated, I think and I love that you brought that up is the fact that there was such a there was this community that was sharing trusted knowledge and the whether it was websites, whether it was podcast content, whether it was, regardless of where it was there was so many people just freely sharing information and it just felt like I'm like what world is this? Because most people would make you pay for this. In the current world that we're in, it's all back behind a token gate or behind a paid subscription to a newsletter or the exclusive debt and people were just giving it out for free. I'm like, wait what? It was just so welcoming and I think we entered in at a very good time and it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I often reflect, like if someone was entering today, what advice would I give them?
Speaker 1:I'm like how to navigate it, because there was not as much information back then, but the information was, I feel, a lot more trustworthy and I don't feel that it's necessarily the same and it's part of, I think, one of the missions that I just take on as far as myself and trying to share good information.
Speaker 1:I try to be that steward that other people were to me, just to pass it along to the next person. But there's another tangent. I want to go on, and it relates to more of your experience, because you have one foot in both worlds you have you're deeply rooted in traditional art and you're deeply rooted in let's just call it just crypto art or the Web 3 world, and you mentioned there's these things that are always in flux and it's great for the creative process and I feel like those are all amazing things. The one thing I wanted to touch on and earlier that you mentioned is that artists could make markets for themselves, and I found that to be really interesting. I want to ask, maybe give a little context or some history before this technology, how did artists really make a market for themselves? What were really the tools that were available to them and how did they go about doing it, or at least the ones that you found were the most successful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's a great question and I think there's there's no like one answer to that, because I think, in actuality, creating markets is very difficult and also, you know, like there are different, there are different paths and different formulas, and I don't think there's any sort of formula that is something that can be just replicated, and a lot of it has to do with, you know, luck and where you are at the right time. But I do think that, in general, and I think this is, for the most part, you know, still largely intact right now, even with all of the kind of new paths that have been carved in Web. 3. I think artists have. Well, you know, instagram changed a lot for artists because, for Instagram, in general, people had to have had to work with a gallery or be very good at cultivating relationships with patrons, which some artists are incredible at doing and able to have, you know, to support themselves through their art, through sales of their art, without a gallery. That, of course, is not the norm, because you know it takes.
Speaker 2:I think what I am aware of even more acutely the more I work in the art world and the longer I work in the art world, is how much you need a village and a team working with you to really scale. You know your projects and your presence and so working with a gallery where there is somebody to help you navigate, getting press about your work and help you get your artwork in museum exhibitions and bring your work to fairs, those are things that really help amplify and bring people forward. But all the same, I think sometimes there is a like looking through that situation with rose-tinted glasses, because the artist will still have to do a lot of legwork on their own. Totally, you know, is when you look within a stable of a gallery, you can, you know you will see artists that have more active careers than others within the same gallery, and often it is because that those individuals have figured out a way to just, you know, keep getting their work shown. And I think it is when you look at the careers of people who have sustained a presence in the art world over decades. You see how much labor goes into that and how sort of hustle for better work for lack of a better word really continues through your whole career.
Speaker 2:And I think you know, maybe, that that wasn't I mean, it wasn't the case. You know that the art world has grown significantly and changed significantly since, like probably after World War II, things have become much more global and commercial. But with Web 3, what you know and I think it's it's there are moments when this is easier for artists to do and moments when it's actually really challenging to do. But what was interesting to me when I really began to follow this very closely, which was, I guess, around 20, 20, well, when was people, when did he do his? Every days at Christie's? That was in 2021?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, March, I think it was March or February of 2021, I believe it was early March.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think that that's undeniably a big catalyst for what artists are doing now. I think it really showed people how dynamic, you know, this technology could be in terms of creating art markets. That moment, of course, is very different than the moment that we're in now, but what you began to see as artists would create a whole kind of circle of, and often you know what was really interesting now that I look, think back to it is I was really struck in the beginning at how early markets were created by other artists, by artists helping each other, and I remember that being very much the case even with like big PFP projects, like board apes, which I know people you know often want to sort of like disassociate with like this larger conversation. But for me it was all a learning experience of trying to understand how different practices some being more commercial and some being more game, like we're using this technology, and I remember there being a whole circle of you know artists who would come in and support the work of a fellow artist and they would kind of create a kind of ground level and then larger collectors would hear about it and then you would get this kind of second tier market going, and very quickly.
Speaker 2:You would have a very like liquid market which in the art world would require a lot of very high level actors coming together to you know support artists from all over the world, and that would be something kind of out of reach for somebody you know on their computer without access to capital, and so I was very interested in how that was kind of going alongside royalties, which have since become such a sort of precarious aspect of this technology. But that was very exciting from early on, the idea that artists would be able to better benefit from the secondary growth of their markets. I don't know where we are with that right now and I think it is really unfortunate that large institutions like OpenSea, like Blur, have kind of eaten away at that, I think, foundational component to what this can mean over the long run. I think it is actually very short-sighted for the growth of markets, but I hope we see it come back.
Speaker 1:Totally. I mean, yeah, and it is really cool I swear we have. There are so many different thought processes that you have just talked about in so many different areas of this industry that excites you and that you have kind of questioned at times or that you have looked further into or thought about deeply, that I have also done the same as well, and something that I have been really intrigued by and this came up with you hearing. I have been intrigued since day one because I struggle with it myself. At times, I look at a new technology when it comes out and I am like, oh my God, this is just going to make my life so much better and I am going to be able to do more with also doing less, but I am going to be able to be lazy. Essentially, I almost look at it as a way to become more lazy, but what I often realize is that I spend way too much money and then I realize that the technology enables people to do the thing easier, but you still have to do the thing, and I think that is what often gets lost.
Speaker 1:With especially the topic we are talking about, you mentioned artists. Helping artists has been able to unlock something new. That would have required a lot of high level actors in the traditional art world, but it still requires the work to be done. But I think it is just really important to highlight the fact that it can be done doesn't mean it is just automatically done for you. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I really resonated with that, and it is something that I am very personally invested in myself because it comes from a lot of years of consistent struggling around me, thinking some new piece of shiny tech is just going to change my life without me having to do a thing.
Speaker 2:I mean I think that is a great point because I do sometimes over here conversations with amongst artists and with artists comparing what they are trying to do in Web 3 with what is happening in the traditional art world and in galleries, and that whole infrastructure that we were just speaking to of somebody helping you to write about your work and get your work into X. All of those aspects still have to happen in Web 3 in order to create artistic careers and projects that have legs to go forward for years into the future. And I think that is what you know.
Speaker 2:it is hard to replicate in this space but it is certainly doable and I think that the most successful artists will figure out a way to replicate that in their own voice, in their own terms, or to collaborate with the traditional art world in a way that is equitable and beneficial to them.
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah, I mean it is a great, but it also just goes to. It is almost kind of similar to life. I mean, it is like you know, in order to like kind of progress and go farther, you need to, like, you know, kind of give of yourself freely to someone who you know you can help and you would be valuable to help, you know, because you have the experience or because you have a certain skill set, and I feel like it is just networking one-on-one you know. It is just kind of the fundamental core of the human. It is part of the human experience. If you want to go far, you need to, like, you need to, you know, help other people and people will help you back. And there is nothing, you know, there is nothing magical about it. It is really simple, you know. It is just part of humans' desire. Like we just that is just part of how we are hardwired and I feel like that is really kind of what we are experiencing now.
Speaker 1:Like I feel like 2021 was really exciting, but it was also kind of an anomaly, you know, of you know a moment in time where we all just happened to be in this right place at the right time, and you know whether it was PFP collections or whether it was, you know, one-on-one art or one-on-one of X. You know a lot of things were just exploding for insane valuations and you know I don't a lot of artists like what I know is could just meant work and it would just sell and it was just a truly unique moment in time. But I promise this, going on the through line of where I want to go to next, of, like you know, when it comes to the, I oftentimes hear and I still haven't, like I really haven't found a mental model for myself and I oftentimes kind of struggle with it around what this space represents and also the traditional art world. You know, like I often think like we're separate but I oftentimes think that we're the exact same, you know, and so like, with where we're headed and what we're building towards, does this I'm just kind of shooting from the hip right now, like sharing some thoughts with you. Like it's like do we absorb? Does the traditional art market become a part of this? Do we become a part of it? Are we naturally kind of operating in a parallel universe next to each other? Will we sometimes hop over and take a dabble in the other one's pool. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I've often so I and it's been a question that you know I don't really know the answer to and with someone who is kind of is you know, you built cocktail labs, you partner with the LACMA and would love to maybe get into that collaboration soon as well, but kind of, how do you view the way in which we're headed? How do you kind of view it? I guess the relationship to the in relationship to the traditional art world, does it need to be a part of it? Does it not need to be a part of it? Do we? You know what I mean. These are just the questions that kind of keep me up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. Well, I think, you know, sometimes it feels like we are on sort of like parallel, disconnected sort of tracks. I don't feel that way as much because my my work is very cross disciplinary and I operate in lots of different worlds. But certainly it's very rare that I encounter I don't frequently encounter artists, collectors, curators in the traditional art world that are following what is happening in Web 3. But that's not to say that people are not following what's happening with art and technology.
Speaker 2:I think that you know. You know, I mean, sometimes things are, for instance, in museums and the way art history is taught in in colleges. Things are often sort of siloed off into into different mediums. You know, it's photography, it's painting, and I think that there have been various attempts to break down those barriers because it's it. As much as it's helpful to, like you know, understand the specificities of a certain medium, it's also very limiting and artificial and most, most creative. You know, thinking really comes from breaking down these barriers. So I don't know, I think that there have, there's always been a attention to new media and new technologies in art and that goes back, you know, to all sorts of tools from photography, which I think has a lot to kind of teach us in terms of the reception of photography in the, the greater sort of canon of art history.
Speaker 2:It was very slow to be regarded as art Because of the interest of this machine it was. You know, it took many decades for photography to enter, you know, the collections of institutions, for photographers to be able to copyright their work, and a lot of these conversations feel very similar to the conversations we're having around machine learning and a handfuls for art. But I think so, but in terms of like, the, the kind of grounds for contemporary art and what is happening in museums, I think this, this, this dialogue we have with technology, is very important to, to, to incorporate and to bring into to future programming, and there's very few institutions that don't have it on their minds. You know it. You know, before the pandemic, there were many institutions that were still struggling to get their collections digitized, to get more digital content, whether it's podcasts or, you know, video cast, so like, and yet that is the way that new audiences are being cultivated and and brought in. Museums, I think, are incredibly important institutions and and totally public contemporary society.
Speaker 2:I think there's, like you know, been this slow kind of eating away at a public space for creative thinking and and just places that people can go to kind of get a respite from, from the stresses of everyday life. I think museums play a very, very vital role in that. They certainly play a vital role in the education of children in in cities around the world. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, where we have been working, for instance, plays a very important role in Los Angeles in terms of bringing in thousands and thousands of children into the museum every year for school field trips, for programs, and so being able to connect with these kids through digital tools and through digital media is something that everybody knows is important, because anybody who has kids know that when you bring them to a museum and there's some touchscreen or something that they can interact with in that way, they will gravitate towards that first, for better or for worse.
Speaker 2:But you know, it is how, their language, and so to ignore what artists, dancers, poets are doing with these tools is to sort of ignore contemporary practices, which, you know, people are still sculpting in marble, but this is clearly the medium of the 21st century, and so you know, I think you see new media in in art history and in museums. You know, over time, over many decades, web 3 is just a kind of new, new tool. The blockchain is just a new tool to experiment with and to kind of root these practices, because I think you know, for so long, artists who were working with code or were working with, you know, digital tools like Cinema 4D that people use, and these were practices that had huge followings. You know huge communities online, much like you said, you know your background is in gaming and in some ways I think gaming is such a paradigm shift for for art and for how we experience culture.
Speaker 2:But like there was not an easy way for artists to say, say I made this, I'm going to, you know, move that I created this file, it would just be released on Instagram or whatever avenue and become, become what it would become, but it would be hard to sort of track that provenance to the original artists, and so I think like this is both a way to track the way to use the tools itself. You know, there are artists like DeafBeef, who we have worked with, who is really exploring, like the specificities of blockchain. What can you do with blockchain that you can't do elsewhere? And then there's the communities that come to life through these interactions, which in many ways are web two, communities that come together through a kind of like through web three creations. Yes, that was kind of all over the place.
Speaker 1:No, if you know you can chat with anyone that I've ever had on here is that, like I. One of my favorite parts is when people go on a really big tangent because there's, I feel, like some of the more scripted answers it. You don't really get to understand what people care about through them as much versus the little kind of like tangents that we get to go on of like or little rabbit holes. I guess we should say, considering it's so native to web three, we're all in the one giant rabbit hole here. But I love it. No, so don't, please, don't ever. You know, please don't feel like you're rambling too much. There's a lot to go off there and you know, deaf beef was like someone he's still someone that I just look at his work and I have no clue how it's made. I have no clue how he thinks about the world, like. I remember when we had him on a space and I was just like what do I even ask this guy? Like what do I ask this guy? Because he, you know, and he's a, he's an extreme example, but he's really pushing that boundary of like, what can you only do with this technology that you can't do with another one? And I and I think that you touched on something really we'll pivot there in just a second but I wanted to comment on was that you kind of gave me an unlock here around the acceptance of digital, of like. You know, digital art, digital identity in our current society. Because, you know, when I step outside into the world, that is not this world, I, I'm, I'm, I'm stopping, I'm not using of like in real life because to me, this is in real life. I don't know, you know, how else to live. So, but when I talk to some of my friends who aren't necessarily participating in this industry, you know there's still this like weird disconnect of like.
Speaker 1:Everyone agrees that we're going very digital as a society, but when you talk about, when you mentioned the idea of like, what happens if Facebook goes down, or if Instagram goes down, or if Twitter God forbid goes down, what happens to your identity and what happens to you know everything that you've built up over. Why do we spend? Why do people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars? Well, you know this is about a year ago, but why would you spend so much money for a blue checkmark? Why are people trying to get a blue checkmark? So bad is because digital, the digital life, is starting to matter a lot more and I think that we're going.
Speaker 1:We're going increasingly digital as a society and I feel like it's almost like this slow kind of burn or this slow acceptance of just the general consensus that, like, maybe digital objects, we should find a way to own them. You know, maybe our digital identity we should have more control over than we currently do, which you know, when I tell people that around PFP specifically, they're like oh, that makes sense, it's not just some stupid monkey. I'm like I mean, you're not wrong, but it's so much more. There's so much more to it than that. So I think you just gave an unlock there and it's really interesting to see how this all progresses. I will just personally say that that getting to see like watching Christie's and Sotheby's in the early days of when they started entering here, I wasn't as much of a fan of, but fast forward to today, you can really tell that they're making a conceded effort and they're really kind of finding and creating new ways that make sense to them as an organization. I think they don't really get as enough credit as they should, because no one here knows what the hell they're doing.
Speaker 1:This is one big experiment like we've been talking about. I just find it really interesting to see people evolve with it. As it evolves, going back to the through line of everything is kind of in fluid and emotion right now, which typically isn't like that. There's not really a whole lot of times in history where the world is kind of open to new ideas, whether it's with machine learning, whether it's with Jenner Bart, whether it's blockchain technology. There's a lot of new things happening and I think it's just disrupting a lot of the way people think.
Speaker 1:I'll close with this thought before we move on. Naturally, I guess it makes sense why people want to deny it or people are scared of it, or people don't really want to embrace it because it means a disruptive change in the way they live their life, the current models that you were either taught or put in place themselves, etc. Speaking of experiments, though, really kind of how we started to get to know each other a little bit more was through your collaboration with LACMA, where you commissioned, I don't want to say, the project, but for those who were unaware of it, we'd love to kind of know how that collaboration with LACMA came about and really what the purpose of that was and why it's important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so LACMA is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and it is a museum that is a world-renowned museum that has almost sort of baked into the DNA of the museum a foundation in art and technology. Shortly after the museum was founded, there was a now historic program that took place called the Art and Technology Program. It ran from 1967 to 1971, and that was just a couple of years after LACMA was founded. That program basically brought together leading artists of the day and leading technologists and technology institutions of the day, like IBM, like RCA Television, like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena which builds rockets. The artists were individuals, like Andy Warhol and James Terrell and Robert Irwin, klaus Oldenburg. One thing to note is that it was a large group of artists and they were all men and they were all white men. That speaks to the structures of the art world at large, which are always rooted in societal, economic infrastructures. That is something that has changed significantly over the years at the museum, because the Art and Technology Program was sort of rebooted about 10 years ago and is now the Art and Technology Lab. It has a little bit of a different focus, which is that the lab gives grants to artists to realize ambitious projects that really push the boundaries of what we're able to do with technology, projects that, in particular, are really trying to use technology in new, unintended ways and to say things that are important on a societal level.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes, when one talks about technology, there's a sort of techno-optimism, that kind of cloud the realities of technology, which is that a lot of the software is being created by large corporations and they have profit motivations first and foremost in mind. That's often the case, and artists, I think, have an ability to look at that technology whatever it may be and try to let us see what might be possible outside those profit-driven aims. And so for me, the role of art in technology is really crucial. I think that artists play a very, very important role, because technology is never going to go away. Technology is not something that is something that started with computers. Technology is something that started with the dawn of man and tools that we were making to build civilizations, and so how art can move us into, hopefully, a more humanitarian kind of mindset with technology, that's what I think is most exciting. But anyway, lacma, as I'm talking, has this very rich history of art and technology, and these histories have been animating different exhibitions at the museum over many decades.
Speaker 2:The Art and Technology Lab is a very specific institution within the museum that is able to bring projects forward, and when artists began really experimenting with blockchain in such a big way a few years ago, the museum took note and gathered a team of curators, including the head of the Art and Technology Lab, joel Ferre, and curators like Deandre Lawson and Celia Yang, and they got a smart wallet and thought okay, we have a background in art and technology here. We want to make sure that we are paying attention and bringing in new works to the collection that are part of this new technology, these new tools. And we were invited. So I have been working mostly as a curator with LACMA but with other museums in Los Angeles always, or often independently, and so we were invited, my husband and I, to help shape a program together with many different departments at LACMA that will explore and will explore what blockchain can do museologically, and I think we're just really at the beginning of trying to understand all these various facets, because they can mean exhibition focus, pas membership token, pas tickets. But thus far we have been working on a project called Remembrance of Things Future, which has invited contemporary artists using blockchain as one of their tools to respond to works in LACMA's permanent collection and make new digital additions in support of the museum's art and technology lab, and one of the goals of the program is to one experiment with the technology, just like a period, but to broaden the lens that we talk about blockchain native art through.
Speaker 2:I think that one thing that's been very acutely present for me as a kind of curator and observer, is that the work being done in this space is often viewed in a vacuum of kind of like this present and this specific technology, and then the kind of difficulties of market speculation and all of this sort of talk, and there hasn't been enough focus on the art itself, and the art is often using blockchain as a tool. That is, of course, in dialogue with narratives that have nothing to do with blockchain, whether that's storytelling and quilt making or it's the history of photography, which certainly predates blockchain, and so we wanted to basically give a prompt to artists to engage with the past and with this idea that the future is the past and like today is suddenly history tomorrow, and these tools that were once really revolutionary, like the camera, are now not new, whereas blockchain will soon be in that position. It feels very new now, but things are constantly morphing and we'll look back on this moment and we already are looking back on 2021 with a sense of sort of hysterical.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I want to kind of create these dialogues throughout time, because for me time is not linear and it's circular and the past is the future and vice versa, and so having a kind of rich set of stories to route these explorations in is really important.
Speaker 1:I think so too, and thank you for really, you know, thank you for kind of giving me some history on the LACMA as well. I didn't fully know Like I had done a very I wouldn't even call it research, but like I definitely scoped their website and definitely looked around, but to hear that from your perspective and why you were initially drawn to them, it really speaks volumes. And I'll tell you a lot of artists, that y'all that did a lot of the work or that did the why am I fumbling here? But they took a look at the piece and they made something based off the past, they made their own interpretation on it. That was really where I first discovered MLG and I was very new to generative art, especially this year.
Speaker 1:This year, like last year, was the year where I really kind of sunk my teeth into it because kind of again reflecting back on 2021, I kind of just sat there idly and watched generative art just kind of take off and have its little moment I wouldn't call it a little moment, but it was a pretty big moment that it had and I couldn't, I didn't fully grasp it and I didn't really want to get involved based off of just purely financial reasons, you know, because I'm like I didn't really fully get it, but I'm like why is this valued so high? Why are people so obsessed with this? Like? So I just kind of sat by idly and watched it. But 2023 was really the year where I made a conceited effort to try to understand the medium a lot more, because, obviously, I'm working in this industry full-time and I deeply love it and, to me, this industry is really what kind of allowed generative art to finally become a lot more respected.
Speaker 1:And I say all that to say that Emily, when Emily was a part of this, that was the first generative artist that I really looked back at a lot of her collections through the Rememberance of Things Future and I was like, oh my God, out of all the 2021 collections you know, like as much as I love a lot of them, this is the one you know. Her collections really speak to me because it allows it, allowed me to really approach it from a newcomer's perspective of like, wow, this is a quilt. Okay, cool Quilt is something that I'm very familiar with. It's something my grandmother used to make a lot of quilts and she makes custom quilts, and that was really like my way to like really appreciating and kind of falling in love with it. And then going back on her and I'm probably going to butcher the name, but the Memories of Keen, I think is how you say it from our blocks, early art blocks collection.
Speaker 1:So I just find it really cool that you guys have found a way to thoughtfully and tastefully enable a new dialogue, and I really liked your comment around art being really crucial for the growth of technology, because, and to kind of view what can be done through this without a lens of let's just call it capitalism? You know, in capitalism, you know it's arguably the reason I'm here today, it's arguably the reason why most of us are doing what we're doing, and so I'll never paint it in a bad light. But it does have its downfalls, you know. It does have its sides where it's like not so great. You know no systems perfect, and so I think that having that kind of creative side, balance it out harmoniously, is something that I didn't really think about until literally this moment, and I think it's really interesting and it kind of helps make it click a lot more for me, just on a personal level.
Speaker 1:And last thing I'll say here on this is you know this really the title of what you the I guess the title of the project of what you guys have remembered something's future.
Speaker 1:It kind of just really stuck with me literally just now, of, like you know, when I'm in fear personally, when I'm in fear, it's either about something that I've done in the past affecting something that's going to happen in the future, and it immediately takes me away from the immediate moment, which is really all we have. So your comment of like the past is the future and the future is the past really kind of just stuck with me. I'm like, wow, most of the time where I spent worrying is usually in one of those two realms. It's never in the present, because if we really dial into this moment right now, there's truly nothing to be scared about, and so I don't know, for whatever reason, that just really clicked and I can really appreciate even just down to the details of the title of what you guys did. I just wanted to, really I wanted to share that because it was, I don't know. It made me think about that in a new way.
Speaker 2:Well, cool, yeah, I mean, who was I going to say? Yeah, I think you know Emily to reiterate your fascination with Emily's work. Emily was responding to Solakma has a large fabric and textiles collection and she became very interested in exploring that collection and looking at quilt making as both a tradition that is very much about storytelling and passing down stories through generations, through families, through, you know, both figurative and abstract creations. But also quilt making has a computational logic that is often overlooked and a kind of mathematical logic that is overlooked. And zooming out past that, textiles in general are actually quite pivotal to the history of computers, and that's something that I didn't mention, which is that when we started this project, solakma had a really groundbreaking exhibition up called Coded Art Enters the Computer Age, and it was curated by Lackma's curator, leslie Jones, who recently retired from the museum. It looked at 1952 to 1982, which was basically the era of mainframe computers, when computers look up like an entire block in a city and were less powerful than your phone, and that moment the birth of modern computers was when artists, poets, dancers first began experimenting with these digital tools, and early mainframe computers got a lot of their early technology from punch card technology, which was created for the Jacquard loom in France, which was part of the industrialization of textile production, and early computers were.
Speaker 2:There were a number of very important early thinkers in terms of the development of computers who were women, who happened to be women, and the punch card technology was something that women were very involved in. It was rooted in textile production, and so Emily wanted to sort of bring that out through her work, kind of subliminally. It's not legible when you just look at the works themselves, but it's all there and was part of her intent with that project and with coded, the historical exhibition. It was also an opportunity to not just have artists like Emily, like Deaf Beef, looking at works from the past, but also to put them into dialogue with the early pioneers of computer art, people like Vera Molnar, who just passed away, who was based in France for her whole career I think she was 99. Yeah and Manfred Moore, who is alive and well in his mid-80s but one of the pioneers of computer art. So these individuals were. When they were working with computers there were no monitors, people could not see what they were coding, they couldn't print out what they.
Speaker 2:So it was a very different way to work and it was a very arduous way to work, where people had to get access to either new big corporations like IBM or universities that had computer labs and they had to learn early coding languages like FORTRAN to do anything, and so a lot of what we are doing today really rests on the paths carved by these early artists.
Speaker 1:That is. That's really fascinating and I'm glad that you took me back, or you took us back to kind of the early computer days, because it's really hard to conceptualize computers taking up that much space and to be working on them without a monitor. It's hard to even think about what that means and how they function. I just couldn't imagine doing that today. If you took it away, what would happen? I think people will look back on some of the super early days of what we're building here and think how the hell did they do that? How did they do it with these insane transaction fees? How did they do it with these incredibly so block times? How did they do it without whatever layer we end up transacting the most on?
Speaker 1:I find it personally fascinating because in my journey through generative art you know you mentioned that a lot of women were really key into the early development of this art form. I would say, if you can check, like whoever's listening can check my wallet, but like and this probably 90 to 95% of all the generative art I've collected is from women and I'm not really sure. I just naturally gravitated toward that, whether it's Jimenez Buena Fida or whether it's through Emily Edelman or whether it's, you know. You know I would love to collect a piece by Emily one day, but I haven't, you know, it's just not quite there yet, you know. But there's a lot of other artists and they've all been women.
Speaker 1:And the more I learn about generative art, the more I realize, like how kind of it's a word I'm looking for, how big of a role that women played in bringing this technology to life or bringing this art form to life. That I think often gets overlooked and it's not to like knock, you know, obviously I have the Dmitri Cherniak Print. It's not to like, it's not taking away, but it's just more of like. This feels like very much a technology that Women really mostly brought to life and really key, important ways. And not to discount, like I said, anything else, but that's just like my you know, observation, call it, after a year of collecting and something I've learned.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that's cool, I mean, and I'm it's, it's. Yeah, I think Women have played very key roles in, in in Generative art, in in the development of computers. Of course, you know, in terms of art markets and the art world, there's there's a there's a big gap In the market caps of men versus the market caps of women. You know most museums are still heavily weighted with, with the creations of of men, and you know women and artists of color are Are it's. It's a big it's. There's a lot of work to be done in terms of telling accurate stories of how art is shaped over the years. But I think that these new avenues and and kind of new Movements are Very helpful in bringing in, just you know, more opportunities and and because that there's, there's things are not as set it can be that's up to say that it will be or it just naturally will be but it can be a place where artists who have had difficulty getting traction can find Success. That wasn't possible outside of of this new opportunity. So I mean, that is my hope. I think there there are precedents for that.
Speaker 2:Historically, you know, photography as an example Was because it was a kind of new field. It was a place where photographers of color and women were able to make strides which wouldn't have been possible in the field of painting but because photography was new and, for instance, like Roy Dakar of an amazing African-American photographer who did a lot of both abstract photography and Documenting of jazz musicians I believe he was one of the early Photographers and African-American photographers to have a solo exhibition at MoMA in like the early 1950s, and I'm people I'm sure have written about this and so I. I don't. I Can't speak with a ton of authority on this history, but I recall that, like that was one of the early exhibitions at MoMA for for photographers and black photographers, and I would imagine it had something to do with the fact that Photography was a little bit less of a defined Medium at the time and there were fewer.
Speaker 2:There were fewer barriers and, and you know, I think we will see that and I hope we will see that With with new digital tools. I think certainly like for me, this whole web 3 Space has put me in touch with artists all over the world, and part of that has also just been the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I didn't ever use zoom and so the thought of doing Like a video studio visit with someone halfway around the world Didn't really dawn on me, even though it would have been possible, and now it's like pretty common that every week I'm talking to somebody and doing, you know, a studio visit with them and and I don't know if I will ever meet them in person. So I think Anyway, I think that's what's exciting is that, like there's, there's a less defined kind of like path and and hopefully we can keep it very Open and and an experimental totally.
Speaker 1:I love how we've kind of just had a natural through line and kind of Landed right where we almost started around.
Speaker 1:This technology being this technology representing kind of things going in motion or the in a distra, you know, like where things are were once kind of static, or still now they're a little bit more fluid, they're a little less defined, and I love how we've kind of landed on that nearly an hour and a half after we first started. So I feel like that's a natural, I think. I think we should probably start wrapping it up here, and so I'd love to, first and foremost, just thank you for your time like this has been a treat. I've gotten an incredible dose of knowledge that I did not have coming into this, and so I just want to thank you for. Thank you for not only doing this but just kind of going so in depth. It's really cool to hear you know your relationship to to just art in general, to this medium specifically, to Just to everything, and so I just want to take a moment to thank you for for, yeah, just sharing all that knowledge with me today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I mean I I really have had so much fun with with the whole Schiller team. You know we've worked on a number of conversations with artists and the museum together and I think what you guys are doing is just such such a important Asset for for both. You know, historicizing like what, what is happening through these conversations and the support you guys give to two artists through through these conversations and through your collecting is is Very important. So I'm so happy that that I you know that you suggested having this talk today and, yeah, this is great.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Yeah, well, first, yeah, thank you for Thank you for saying it's oftentimes, you know, I think there was a talk during our basil where Sam Spratt was interviewing us no fro, and he was. He was like, do you ever just kind of stop to kind of think about what you're doing here? You know, like really stop to kind of take it in? And I wasn't there for that talk and I think it's recorded, so I really need to go back and listen to it. But I really like every time someone says that it just kind of makes me stop a little bit.
Speaker 1:So, thank you for Thank you for those kind words, like it really means a lot and we, we love what we do and I just I say this constantly like I don't I, after working with this crew for a year, I really couldn't imagine doing anything else with anyone else and it's just been a lot of fun. So, you know, hopefully we get to do a little bit more collaborating in the future. It's been a blast to do that in the past and so, in speaking of that, just want to give you a moment if there's anything that you can share of what cactoid labs is up to, maybe, for you know, 2024. Like I said, if there's, if there's stuff you can't share, don't feel pressured, but we'd love to kind of know what's on the horizon for you guys.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, we are continuing with these collaborations of Artists and objects from the museum.
Speaker 2:So, and Alongside that, I'm thinking about various kind of rubrics to to investigate Alongside the museum, one being machine learning and an AI, which is something that of course is, is kind of ever present, and in the news, it's something that my husband is doing machine has been doing machine learning for almost 20 years, so it's it's something that is very sort of Native to the way he works.
Speaker 2:I'm particularly interested in how artists are using machine learning to to understand the organic world and the natural world, things like using neural networks to understand language patterns of animals, and so I'm I'm doing a lot of research into that and hoping to bring some of these things to light with with artists that you know, and Then I'm also, which goes very much into your background, I'm really interested in trying to look at video games and video game history as as a kind of paradigm shift for how we both communicate and create and Trying to kind of like historicize some of that bring. It's a gather with artists who are also looking at at these issues. So so that will all hopefully come to light in this coming year and, yeah, so I will all be taking shape. We're in the process of researching and working with artists and working with the museum and in Good time, I'll be able to share a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I love how you're able to to share exactly what your focus is without sharing the specifics, and it have it get me excited. So Thank you for for sharing that and I think it's gonna be an amazing 2024. Very keen on both of those topics, had a chat with Eli from proof Eli Shiman and we were talking about some of the dialogue around AI being critical in 2024 or that there's gonna be a lot more dialogue around. You know the process or you know how the work is made to document. You know just different dimensions of documenting, how you know AI art is made From the collector's perspective as well. So people kind of understand you know what they're buying. You know, like, why it's important, why it's interesting and different. So, yeah, definitely looking forward to that. Very, very excited about the technology and I, especially as a dog person, you know Understanding animal language. Oh my god, if I could talk to my dog, that would be so cool.
Speaker 2:I know, well I think, that that we're getting closer to to that. Well, I'm excited to, yeah, to keep talking, and so we'll have to. We'll have to connect again offline and and brainstorm some, some ideas, but this has been great. Thank you so much for having me, and I look forward to seeing you and the rest of the Schiller team In 2024 in person somewhere in the world, I hope.
Speaker 1:Exactly somewhere in the world. I mean, we're, we'll be at a few different conferences and yeah, I'm a big hugger, so you know, if you're not, let me know, just be prepared. So but yeah, this has been a lot of fun and yeah, we'll go ahead and do a little sign off. Just hang out for a little bit afterwards so we can let this finish uploading. But Okay. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day and again, thanks so much for coming on, lady Cactoid.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having awesome day.
Speaker 1:You too. Thank you for listening to the Schiller curated podcast. We hope you enjoyed the conversation. As we close that today's episode, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and leave a five star review to help ensure you never miss an episode and to help others discover the curated podcast as well. To stay updated on our upcoming episodes, as well as our weekly Twitter space schedule, be sure to follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Schiller XYZ. Once again, thank you for tuning in and remember, if you're looking for it Art is everywhere and it's up to us to appreciate and explore the emotions it brings to our lives. Until next time, this is Boona signing off.