About us
Stay in touch
Peter Bauman: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Le Random podcast, our first of 2025. I'm your host, Peter Bauman, the Editor-in-Chief at Le Random. Today I'm joined by our team only. We have thefunnyguys, who is the co-founder and CEO of Le Random, and then Conrad House, who is our Collection Lead. Today, basically what we're doing is wrapping up 2024. We're going to look at some highlights and some of our favorites. Then we're going to also look forward to 2025, some of the things that we expect to see and that we're excited to see. It's going to be maybe a long one. I don't know. Let's see. We're excited to chat about all this stuff. So let's get started. I guess we can begin with some of our themes of the year, or some of what our reflections of the year are. How about we kick it off to you, thefunnyguys? What were some of your themes of 2024?
thefunnyguys: Yeah, sure. That's a good question to get started with. I did think about this for a while. I think there's multiple themes we can emphasize, but one that really jumps out to me is just, in general, digital art platforms either pivoting or expanding into different areas. Some that definitely come to mind are fxhash, which just announced its artist token economy. For me, that feels really like a pivot, not just an expansion. It does really feel like fxhash is becoming a different type of platform than they were before. Really hard for me to predict what the changes will be, how artists will use these tokens. But this is definitely happening. The team has announced this and I'm really excited to see how artists experiment with this. Some other pivots that we've seen: Foundation. The Foundation team, I wouldn't say they've moved away from Foundation. Foundation still exists. They're still maintaining it. But they did release Rodeo, which is a very different type of business model than Foundation initially was. And then there's other platforms like Art Blocks. They're now focusing a lot more on physicals than they did before. Before, an Art Blocks release was typically digital only. There's a lot of physical elements involved. And there's also Highlight and Verse, and both of these have really emphasized that they want to move into the direction of a secondary art market. So for me, that really stood out. All of these major platforms in 2024 are exploring different directions. I think it's hard for us to know at this moment in time what the consequences are. I think that will play out in 2025. But I'm curious about what you guys think about these pivots and expansions, how you reflect upon them.
Conrad House: Yeah, I think the fxhash token economy, especially the artist token economy that they're exploring, is going to be a very interesting idea. I think it will take some time getting used to exactly how artists are going to, I think, take advantage of these token protocols and how they're going to be used to either, I guess, speculate on artist values without having direct tangible allocations of any works from the artist. Rather, you just own a token. So I think the implications of that can be maybe a bit tricky to navigate as the things begin. But obviously we haven't seen any come out yet. So it's just a blank unknown field that we're walking into. And then I think the Rodeo from Foundation is, I think, a step in the right direction. I think this idea of having a better onboarding process for maybe non-digitally native people that don't have the most amount of money to spend, but they still like digital art sometimes and they needed an easier access way of collecting. I think Rodeo does a good job of that. I think the design is pretty good. I think the biggest thing is them having the feature of you get to upload a certain amount of USD into your wallet, and then you can just click, collect, move, scroll, click, collect. And you don't have this process of having a new transaction window pop up each time and then having to click that transaction and approve it. I think it makes the process a bit more seamless, a bit easier to accept and learn from. I do understand, I guess, the backlash that Rodeo went through for the past, I don't know, five months since they initially came aboard, but it seems like they're doing pretty well. It seems like interest in the platform has only grown. I know they had that phrase that they created the spirit of Hic et Nunc but with better design. And I think they did capture the spirit of Hic et Nunc to some degree. I think also a lot of the spirit of Hic et Nunc came from the clunkiness and the roughness of the platform. You had to go through a lot of obstacles of loading issues. The platform was never open all the time. Your transactions weren't approved all the time. And I think that was the spirit of Hic et Nunc, where, yes, you had low priced art at the same time that you could collect from a lot of artists, but it wasn't as pretty and well put together as Rodeo might be. But I do think that pivot is, I think, going in the right direction. We went through this mania of 2021 and even higher prices of 2022. I think trying to look for ways that we can still appeal to a broader audience and allow them to come in without having to spend hundreds of dollars on transaction fees or whatever it may be, and just giving them a little bit of a taste of, hey, these are some of the artists that are creating, get a better feel for collecting and see what you like and see if you want to maybe take a deeper dive after Rodeo.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it's interesting. I think both of what you said, thefunnyguys, about platform pivots, and Conrad, what you're talking about with Rodeo, they both seem to me symptomatic of just market conditions and people needing to search for ways to survive and ways to continue until hopefully markets improve. That actually leads to at least what I thought was one of the major themes of this year, which was these dual themes of market struggles but also institutional and museum acceptance of digital art. The market was struggling, but there was this institutional acceptance at the same time. I thought that was really interesting. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, when he spoke to us about the 2020s, described the era as the normalization era. I feel like 2024 has definitely been a culmination of that. We had exhibitions throughout the year. Probably the most significant one was Electric Dreams at Tate. It's one of the top 10 most visited museums of the world, and now for six months there, for half the year, there's going to be this major historical exhibition on digital art's history. I think it's really important. Another really important one was Getty's PST. That was so many different exhibitions throughout California and Southern California, and I think really massive in scale and important in terms of its reach and impact. Then there was also Electric Op at Buffalo AKG. There was Pompidou's Molnár retrospective. The Whitney had the Cohen retrospective. LACMA had Digital Witness. Musée d'Orsay got into NFTs and digital art with what they're doing with Agoria and Tezos. MOMI had the Auriea exhibition that Regina put on. The V&A had their Digital Art book that came out. They also hosted FEMGEN, which we'll talk more about and which I spoke at. These major museums around the world are turning and looking at digital art maybe the most that they ever have. I think that's important to note for 2024. But interestingly, in contrast to that is the fact that not only is the more Web3-based space struggling. Again, I think we've seen that through all the different pivots that these galleries and these platforms have had to go through. But also the traditional art space is struggling. A lot of commercial galleries are closing. Art fairs have struggled this year with lower sales. Frieze is up for sale. Auction houses have struggled this year. Sotheby's had to be saved basically by Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund. These broader art market struggles have been related, or possibly unrelated, but coincided with the Web3 digital art space struggles that are then in contrast with institutional acceptance. To me, that's a really interesting and dynamic year for 2024.
thefunnyguys: I totally agree with that, Peter. I think it's quite interesting. The market itself, definitely a bear market. It was a really tough year for platforms, artists, possibly also for collectors. But when you look at the institutional side of it, I would definitely say it was maybe a bull market for digital arts. These are exhibitions we could only have dreamt of a few years ago. And for me, that's probably what makes me really excited heading into 2025. On one hand, we have the crypto space that is maturing. Blockchains are scaling. Ethereum L2s now process sometimes hundreds of transactions per second. And platforms are taking advantage of these increased technological innovations. Rodeo is a good example of that. Rodeo might actually bring hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of users into Web3. They might start appreciating digital ownership rights. They might start engaging with digital culture in a different way than they have ever done before in the Web3 world. But then at the same moment, there's also this institutional acclaim. There's all these exhibitions that people can look to. There's Taschen that produced a fantastic book earlier this year solely dedicated to NFTs. So if we can onboard these people to digital ownership, and then we can also show them, look, there is institutional recognition of digital art, I'm very hopeful we can onboard new collectors to the space who will maybe in the future become serious digital art collectors. So looking into 2025 and ahead, these factors can combine in a super interesting way to make the space grow.
Conrad House: Yeah, I think what thefunnyguys said, it's a big year of maturing, I think, especially in the digital collector market. It's a big year of maturing. I think this is also something that we saw towards the tail end of 2023, because I would say that 2024 is probably a slightly better market environment than 2023 was. I think we saw a few more things rebound, especially towards the end of this year. This could also just be in correlation with crypto prices doing better at the end of the year. But there is, I think, a lot of mature people collecting now. I think people don't have to be so spontaneous as they used to be when they were collecting, and they can actually spend these past few years to understand and research the artists that they're collecting and the works that they're collecting a bit more. A lot of these institutional shows allow people to take a deeper dive and have a better understanding for why things are where they are today. I think Auriea's show at MOMI that you've mentioned, Peter, was a great showcasing of just how amazing Auriea is. I think everyone that visited that show came back with huge praises for Auriea and the entire team at MOMI for how well put together that show was. I think it really ignited a lot more interest in her work even after that. She had the spotlight on her, which is amazing to see. I think a lot of these institutional shows, whether that's Electric Dreams or Electric Op, really can, I think, educate a lot of these newer collectors into realizing that what they're doing nowadays in the digital space can be really important in the future. I think as we mature, we start to see certain artists really excel. I think this is something that we've talked about many times in the previous years or even previous months, but the hardcore digital collecting group really finding niche artists that they really enjoy, and they gain a lot of support. I think we always talk about the EFAN index, or the European Fine Art Index, which is somewhat of a meme in the crypto art space. But it really is a strong indicator of some artists that are truly digital, that truly have a really hardcore following and supportive group that will stick with them, understand their work and really support their work through and through. Yeah, I think a big year of maturing is a good thing to highlight.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, definitely. I think that we feel the space has matured, but I think that perception from outside will still take time to manifest or to be observed.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, especially with Justin Sun's acquisition of The Comedian. I think the rest of the art world looks at that, sees that it's from a crypto buyer and then doesn't necessarily always take that seriously, or thinks that crypto buyers are not very serious or only in it for the fun. But I think this year did demonstrate that there has been maturity in the more Web3, or however you want to phrase it, collector scene. We did mention a couple of exhibitions already, but maybe we can move on to our next main topic, which is exhibitions of the year. Does anybody want to jump in with their favorite exhibition of the year? It could be anything. It could be an online one. It could be an in-person one. It could be anything, really. What is your exhibition of the year?
Conrad House: This is probably on the list of all of us here, but I just think that the, I guess I'll call it the electric exhibitions, both Electric Op and Electric Dreams from Buffalo AKG and the Tate, respectively, were really incredible exhibitions. They were really well put together, highlighting, I think, some of the most important artists that maybe don't always get the spotlight. Seeing those two shows come together really right around the same time was pretty awesome. Across both areas of the world, it really felt like the pinnacle to the end of the year to some degree. I think both shows were really highly anticipated. I think Tate mentioned how much work went into putting this together. Same with Buffalo AKG talking about how much work went into putting this together. So I think those two were the highlights of the year. There's so much else that also happened that you mentioned earlier, Peter, but those two stick out as the two big finales of the year to me.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, I totally agree. Peter and I also had the pleasure of going to the opening of Electric Dreams. The atmosphere at the opening was also very electric. It was a good exhibition. It was really, really awesome to see that the Tate, such a powerhouse in the traditional art world, put so much effort into contextualizing digital art. And how I look at these exhibitions, again, is that they do a lot of, let's say, the groundwork of establishing these narratives, these foundations that help us contextualize what is happening in the NFT space, what is happening with digital generative arts. I think these are super important for our space to mature. I also wanted to add another exhibition to the list. It's not from the traditional art world. It's a very digital native one, World Computer Sculpture Garden. I'm sure you guys are very familiar with it. For me, this exhibition is so interesting because it shows... I think it provides some type of blueprint for other artists to really use the blockchain as art material, as 113 likes to call it. It shows how you can go beyond using the standard token structures, that you don't have to only use NFTs. You can play around with the protocol itself. Somehow it's a real return to the roots. I think in the early days of crypto art, artists such as Rhea Myers, who was also part of this exhibition, were always playing with the core of the protocol structure. But then platforms came around. And in 2021, when there was a really big influx of digital artists into the NFT space, a lot of them were using these shared contracts from OpenSea or Foundation. I think over the last years we have actually seen artists migrate away from that and really take control over their own smart contracts, over how they want to present their work in the NFT space. World Computer Sculpture Garden is the culmination of that trend. And I think it will influence a lot of other digital artists to be very intentional with how they present their work on the blockchain, with what token standards they use, whether they even need to use a token standard or not. What do you guys think of that exhibition?
Conrad House: Yeah, I think I agree with all your points a lot there. I think with the exploration of more on-chain protocol or contract-based art, it only makes sense to have contract project-based exhibitions. And I think the idea that multiple people can come together and work on this exhibition together, since it's this open decentralized space, is a really interesting idea. We see people like Matto, who's having an ongoing project within it where this project can keep being added to and the exhibition can still be refreshing. I think the most interesting part is it's really not just one curator that's controlling all these artists in a way and controlling which works are being put in. All the artists are coming together to be the curators themselves with World Computer Sculpture Garden. I think the write-up by Malte is really an incredible write-up about the exhibition. If you haven't had the chance to read it, I highly recommend it. Overall, I think it really feels like a cornerstone piece to what is going to eventually be built on, I think what we always talk about with Ethereum-based art, and really taking advantage of this decentralized system and these contracts and what you can do with them and creating new experiences that maybe feel a bit abnormal, since we're not used to art being presented this way, but it feels really true to the nature of the space that we live in. So I'm hoping that we see more exhibitions like this, more contract-based exhibitions. Really, the term on-chain maybe gets used a bit over much, but I think it's a good time to explore it a bit more. I think outside of the mania year, and how we talked about how it was a low year for the economy, I think it gives a lot more people a lot more time to think about how they present their work. That extra time to be more thoughtful about what is being presented can really lead to, I think, better products and better experiences for the art.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I definitely agree with what you guys said about World Computer Sculpture Garden. I'm happy you guys brought it up and highlighted this project. It's an interesting use of protocol art. One of the first people that I noticed start talking about protocol art was Mat Dryhurst, and one of my favorite projects of this year was his and Holly's xhairymutantx at the Whitney Biennial. I just thought it was cool because it was generative AI, but it was a way for the public to see it in a way that was more custom and more creative. I hope it maybe showed people that generative AI is more complex than how it can be portrayed, I guess, typically in the traditional art world. That was one of my favorites. Another one was MUDAM, the museum in Luxembourg. They had their Radical Software exhibition this year, and I just thought it was really good. I thought the catalog was really well researched. These exhibitions that are focusing on something like surveys of history from a certain perspective, and this one has a feminist perspective, I think they can be powerful when they unearth scholarship, unearth artists and contribute to a greater and better understanding of history and women's contributions to that history. I thought it was really important for that. Also, I just learned a lot from it. Then, of course, I very much agree about the Electric Dreams and Electric Op shows. We had conversations with artists from both of those shows and then also had a conversation with Val, Tate's curator for Electric Dreams, as well in our editorial section. I think those are probably my answer, but I'm happy we got to talk about a few other projects as well. That maybe goes to the third topic, which is our favorite projects of the year. Conrad, do you want to start with your favorite projects?
“It shows how you can go beyond using the standard token structures, that you don't have to only use NFTs. You can play around with the protocol itself.” — thefunnyguys 16:00
Conrad House: I think this also ties in with our favorite exhibitions of the year to some degree, at least some of mine do. I think when we talk about online exhibitions, I really liked what Fellowship did this year. I really like what Fellowship has done over the past couple of years, but specifically this year with their exhibitions of Linda Dounia's Garden series and eko33's Light and Ink, which were really well put together. Linda Dounia's was really a highlight of her career by showing the process of her Garden series study, where it goes through the different generations of AI tools and software that she uses, and you can see the evolution of AI through these five separate generations within the work. So you see the very early GAN outputs all the way going to some of the newer text-to-image models. It was a really lovely series, and I think the way that it was put together and presented was really awesome. And I think Fellowship has done an amazing job at presenting work in the best ways. I think this really shows in how the responses to these exhibitions go. They also had, obviously, Infinite Images by Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, which was another amazing showcase, bringing into light some of the past important AI works and giving them more context in today's space. And then besides that, I think my favorite is probably +Graph from Feral File, which is obviously the sequel to -Graph, which is always an exhibition that especially thefunnyguys and I always spent a lot of time looking at. We've spent years trying to hunt a complete set from that exhibition. So when they announced +Graph, it was really, I think, the best present that we could have had, because it was something that we were already hunting for in -Graph. It was great seeing this exhibition get renewed with a lot of the same artists. I think the only artist that didn't come back for +Graph was Tyler Hobbs, but everyone else was still there. And it was really this amazing focus on plotter works. The intertwining of plotted physical pieces with software pieces was really amazing. I love how you can explore the algorithm within the software digital piece, but then you also have this direct single physical output. And seeing all the artists and the different ways that they make use of the plotters is really awesome. Still to this day, I think we collected three of the sets for Le Random, and they're still some of my favorite pieces that we collected all year from everything.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, I definitely echo your favorite picks, Conrad. I think all of these are definitely fantastic projects and I'm really happy that we got to collect quite a few of them. I do want to add some other projects to the list as well. One of them, I think, was actually released on the first of January 2024, or at least that's when we minted ours, but Genomes by Ciphrd and Alexander Mordvintsev. I think in general a major theme for 2024, as mentioned before, is definitely artificial intelligence art. I think AI art very often consumes a lot of power, a lot of resources, and it doesn't always lead to very interesting or innovative visuals. But when Genomes came out, I was really intrigued by the visuals themselves, but also that these were these small self-contained systems that produce lifelike creations but without using a lot of computational resources. These are very small, very minimal computer programs, but the complexity that comes out of them is surprising and can really keep a viewer engaged for a very long time. I think in general this is a project that deserves a lot more recognition. At the time of speaking, I believe you can still collect one for $100. Not financial advice. Definitely one of my favorite projects of the year. And then I also want to highlight two others. Well, maybe not projects, but maybe more artists. Travess Smalley this year released Crawl on Feral File, also Fell-Cloud on Verse. There was also Erik Swahn, who released Autoscope on Verse. At least for me, these two artists are seeing a similar progression. I think we all know their first projects: Farbteiler by Erik Swahn on fxhash, his 2D color fields. Travess Smalley with Pixel Rugs became notorious in the early Hic et Nunc days. And I really like where these artists are taking their creative direction. They're going from these 2D color-based works really into an interesting direction of interactive worlds. With Crawl, Travess Smalley really brought his passion for video games into that project. It's an interactive world that people can explore, where artworks can be dynamically interlinked. And same with Erik Swahn. He did start with these quite simple color fields, but Autoscope is an architectural project where you can really see his roots as an architect. And again, it's also interactive. People can explore this landscape. For that, these projects deserve a shout-out in 2024. I was really happy to see them come to life.
Peter Bauman: Those are all really good choices. I guess for me, my number one favorite project of the year was The Call by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, which is at Serpentine Gallery in London and which I was lucky enough to get to see. I think it's an interesting show. It's very much an AI show. It's very much AI artwork, but there are no screens. It's done in, I think, a way that is asking some of the more interesting questions about AI, which are, I think, questions about authorship and agency and autonomy in generative systems, which is something that I recently wrote about at Le Random. I was talking to Mat, partly for that piece and partly because I was just curious. I asked him what they thought of Holly+. Did they think of it as a collaborator or as a tool, or how did they think about it? The Call doesn't really have anything to do necessarily with Holly+, but I think it's indicative of some of the questions that they're asking. And so Mat described Holly+ as a digital twin, in a sense, a surrogate. I just think what they're doing and what artists like Sougwen Chung are doing, they're just asking really interesting questions. They're also typically conceptually rich, but they really nail the presentation as well. If you are in London or around London, I definitely recommend checking out The Call or going to The Call. It's free.
Conrad House: Yeah, I think that piece really stands out, especially the article that you wrote about it with Mat. I think it was "Mat Dryhurst on Becoming Infinite." Really, I think another topic that we talked about a bit this year is the religious undertones of some of the digital art that we see, the spiritual undertones. And that was really highlighted in this piece. I think there's a quote or a line by Mat Dryhurst in that article that you wrote, Peter, where he talks about how AI is just an aggregate of us. It's this bigger thing than us. They were really trying to showcase that through these religious sculptures in a way. And I think that show happened right around the discussions that we were having as a team on this topic of religious and spiritual undertones in digital art. This show just happened to appear right around that time. It was really awesome to have that article that you wrote about it and really get Mat's direct take on it and really get an awesome insight into why they were doing some things and why they structured things the way they were. I think that's a big highlight, especially in the non-digital space, in terms of projects or pieces from the year.
Peter Bauman: I really enjoyed that conversation with Mat and getting to talk to him about that project. Another thing I really love about the project is that it's interactive. There's different components, and one of the rooms is where you get to interact with the model. You get to sing in it and there's a choral response. And I think that's AI work that could only be done with AI, and could only be done really recently with AI. They've created this system that was bespoke, based on traveling all over the UK and sampling choral singers. It was just really complex, and it's something that will, again, maybe change people's minds about how complex and interesting just, quote, unquote, AI work can be. I don't know how you can look at that work and not be impressed. It makes you think about just what this will enable in the future and everything else that's coming. Then one more thing I wanted to add about my favorite projects. It was the Bright Moments finale mega mint project that had, what was it, 60 or 70 artists on one contract. It was silly and gimmicky, but in the end I thought it was really fun that they got all these artists together and they all made their own work. Since it was the Bright Moments finale, it was a bit of a retrospective and a reflective moment. To me, that algorithm summed up Bright Moments as the institution that it is and was over its traveling years. So I thought that was another one of my favorite projects.
Conrad House: I think that's a really good shout-out, Peter, that whole finale project. Specifically, I think highlighting the mpkoz selection from that collection was something that the entire team really gravitated towards. As soon as we saw the first outputs, or even the works in progress that Michael began to show, we were all in our separate chats like, wow, have you guys seen this? This is incredible. And Peter obviously talked to Michael about that project, and learning how Michael created that in such a short period of time was mind-blowing, that being really a highlight of the piece. It's funny that you bring up the Bright Moments finale, because talking about The Call with Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon, they also had, not as part of the finale series digital collection, but they had Dream Cathedral during Bright Moments Venice, which was the interactive project by Huemin and Ganbrood. They had a very well put together screen in this large Italian cathedral, and they had a microphone, and you could go in and speak a prompt into the microphone, and the screen would automatically adjust and change to whatever prompt you spoke into this microphone, with this very aesthetic theme around religious components and compositions. In that same cathedral, we also saw Ganbrood with his Jesus portrait. It was really this incredible space of this very historical religious cathedral, but also intertwined with today's digital creations. Just seeing the response from people within the Dream Cathedral piece, going to visit it every day and seeing groups of these older Italian men or Italian women that were really enamored by the piece and spending 15 to 20 minutes at a time just sitting in front of the microphone and talking into it and watching it change. I think that was a really neat introduction of how these systems can be used to create more interactive experiences, more immersive experiences that are maybe directly tied to you. The art changes with you, which I think is a really interesting idea.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, I also totally agree. It doesn't even feel like 2024 to me, Bright Moments Venice. It already feels a lifetime ago. I really hope in 2025 we see, maybe not call it a comeback, because Bright Moments still exists, is still out there, still very present in the digital art field. But I do hope to see more Bright Moments events in the new year, because it would be such a miss for the digital art space if that's not the case. When I hear you describe, Conrad, the mpkoz piece, it sounds like that might be one of your favorite acquisitions of the year, or definitely a piece that stands out that you remember very fondly. Are there any other pieces that you look back on and think, these are some of my favorites that we managed to acquire this year?
Conrad House: When it comes to favorite acquisitions, I think the big highlight is the commissions that we did this year. I think a big goal for the team this year was to have a better direct relationship with artists, acquire work that we really love from each artist, spend more time diving into an artist's past work, finding what we love the most, and then maybe go to them directly and be like, hey, how can we bring this into the collection? I think that was a really fulfilling experience. We had a lot of commissions that were incredible, with John Maeda, John Provencher. We had LoVid, Anna Maria, Rhea Myers, Vuk Ćosić, Seohyo. The list that we were able to accomplish this year was really incredible. But I think out of those commissions, one really stood out, and that's Deep ASCII by Vuk Ćosić. This was a piece that the team had talked about for a long time. It was initially presented at Phillips a few years back in an auction and sadly didn't sell. We were always really interested in the piece, and we kept in touch with Vuk and the people around the work in terms of acquisitions. But there was always this gripe of, this is just a video output of the initial software piece that was created. So it was only a minute-long output of the full-length, 59-minute film. And we really wanted to push towards bringing that piece back to its former glory of the full software piece. This was a really awesome experience that we got to do, eventually bringing the idea to Vuk Ćosić, saying, hey, you have all the previous historical archival Java versions of the software. Do we think that we can maybe try to port this to a modern-day JavaScript and have it run in a web element? And obviously, with the help of the amazing Andreas Gysin, we were able to get this done. That whole process took months, but it was a really, again, I think fulfilling process with each of the people that came together to help work on it. We had people that were helping with the contract minting process, with Ben Strauss from the Transient Labs team. We had Chris King from ClubNFT helping with the IPFS hosting of the piece, since this was really a large-scale piece, with the initial text input file being multiple gigabytes big. Eventually it all came together into one cohesive software piece where you can explore the entire 59-minute film with newer tools that help you traverse the process by fast-forwarding and rewinding. It was an aha moment to finally see it minted on-chain in its full version. It was really an exciting experience for us. It was always a piece that we knew was really important, and we really got it in, I think, the perfect form.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, 100 percent. I couldn't agree more that Deep ASCII, as someone who's not as directly involved with the collecting, was the piece that I could tell, I think, Conrad, you probably spent the most time on. It seemed to be a culmination of all your experience and also just consulting different artists and resurrecting a piece from the past. It really showcased everything that Le Random does. So amazing job on that. Another favorite of mine was Florada by John Maeda, I think another consensus favorite for the team. Just in terms of art history and generative art history, I think Florada is hugely significant. And then another just really interesting acquisition this year was a Boxbraid Study No. 1 by Minne Atairu. That work is just another example of generative AI that I think is complex and interesting. It's part evidence, part telling a story, part fatigue. So it's rich and complex, and I also think it's visually stunning. That was my under-the-radar favorite, but those other two, I think, are some of our big achievements of the year.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, I totally agree. For me also, Deep ASCII and Florada, I think both of them are top three acquisitions for the year. I would personally also add utility stream by Botto to that list. For me, that's also a top three acquisition. It was definitely the most expensive acquisition that we made in 2024. That's in line with the progression of Botto and how well Botto is doing and how it has really managed to capture the community's attention for many years now. We already had collected quite a few Mario Klingemann works. Heading into 2024, getting a Genesis piece from Botto was definitely a goal for us. With utility stream, for me personally, it's one of my favorite Botto Genesis pieces just visually. I think it's a really, really attractive piece, and I'm really happy that we have it in our collection. Some other pieces that I wanted to highlight: I want to double-click a bit on the commissions that Conrad mentioned. We did so many commissions this year. It was definitely the year of commissions for our team. Our space in general, I would say, is very much North America and Europe dominated, also male dominated to some extent. And one artist that brings a very refreshing view to generative art is Seohyo from South Korea. I think in South Korea she's quite well known. She often takes over billboards in the city of Seoul, where she showcases her generative work. She's involved in a lot of local community projects, like local exhibitions. But to the wider generative art space, I think she's mostly unknown, or maybe only known by a small subset of collectors. I think her work deserves a lot more attention. I think she brings a very unique style to the work with vibrant colors, very interesting, animated, moving works. My particular favorite of hers is her Redraw series, where she reinterprets masterpieces in her distinctive style, and she really brings them to life through these generative techniques. So I'm really happy that we got to acquire some pieces directly from the artist. And then one more commission I want to emphasize is our Schwittlick commission. Marcel Schwittlick is such an interesting artist. He's quite a young artist from Germany, but with such a deep respect and fascination with the history of generative art. We have had the opportunity to visit his studio, where he has all these old vintage plotters that he collects himself and often restores himself. And in the commission... well, no, actually, I think it was outside of the commission, but we acquired three pieces from the series Composition #86, It Is What It Is, where instead of attaching a pen to the plotter, Marcel attached a green laser pointer to the plotter, and he draws with this laser pointer on light-sensitive paper, which results in just fascinating generative artworks. So that was definitely also a highlight for me, collecting works directly from Marcel Schwittlick.
Conrad House: I do like the highlight of commissions here. I think what Peter mentioned with Florada, and what Jan mentioned with Seohyo's commission of the entire Redraw series and a few other sketches, were really incredible. One thing that thefunnyguys mentioned also is that the Seohyo appreciation in the broader space isn't all there, but it was really amazing to see after the commission at least a small bit of renewed interest in her work, and seeing a few other collectors that we really appreciate reaching out to Seohyo after our commission and asking for similar works. That was really cool to see. It's always nice to know that the commissions that we can bring forward can help bring more eyes to artists and things that we also enjoy. Really good commissions with Seohyo and Marcel.
Peter Bauman: The next main topic is a fun one. It's maybe the main event of the evening, but we're putting it in the middle. That would be our artist of the year. I have three, but one, again, that's maybe my answer, I guess. So I'll go first. I think my probably real answer is Holly and Mat. I just think that they've done a lot this year, from the Whitney Biennial and then The Call to some of their features. They're really good representatives of the space. Mat is one of my favorite thinkers. Then Holly is such an amazing artist and musician and creative. Combined, I'm really happy that they're the two people that seem to have broken through this year, because I think it couldn't have happened to people more deserving. Then probably my second one is Lawrence Lek. He's also somebody who has... He's probably dabbled in NFTs less than Holly and Mat, but he was on the Time AI 100 list this year. He was Frieze's 2024 artist of the year, or he won their artist award for 2024. Lawrence does these AI films. He doesn't really use AI as a tool, but AI is the black hole that all of his work swirls around. From a conceptual and complexity and richness level, I think his investigations of AI are some of the most interesting. His Guanyin show, I think, was really interesting. I had the fortune to speak to him earlier this year, and we had a piece that came out. Then probably my third is Samia Halaby. She had a great year. Obviously, she has had a very long career, but she broke out this year in a lot of ways. Her work was in Tate Modern's Electric Dreams. She was at the Venice Biennale. She was at MUDAM's Radical Software. She was at Frieze London. She was at Art Basel too. She was everywhere this year, and I think for good reason. I really love her work, her Amiga work, and I also got to chat with her for Le Random. Those are three of my artists of the year. What about you, Conrad? What do you think?
Conrad House: That's a really good list, and it's hard to follow up on that. But I think one name that does definitely stick out for this year is Rafaël Rozendaal, I think specifically with his MoMA screen that he has ongoing now, which is really interesting. And then also being part of the LACMA Digital Witness exhibition at the moment with another large screen installation is really incredible. Just touching back on the large MoMA installation, it's interesting because we saw Refik Anadol have that same screen for a long time before Rafaël Rozendaal. I think it's a really interesting contrast going from Refik's really, I think, complex, large data set AI visualization work to something that's very minimalist with Rozendaal. It's really a nice contrast. I think it showcases both sides of this digital creative space that we live in. It's really awesome to see Rafaël's entire selection of what he calls the new Rafaël work being shown, with multiple projects from that series, because that was an ongoing project that he was releasing just on his own time. He was just doing it himself. He wasn't getting any help with promotion of the series. He had this website. Every few weeks, he would upload a new project, really small editions, something between 14 to 30 on each of these. But they're really nice Rozendaal works, very minimalist, very geometric, all on-chain. This was something that was always, I think, overlooked by a lot of the people in the community. And after we saw the Rozendaal exhibition announcement, or the screen announcement, we saw a lot of renewed interest in this work. So I think he's somebody that is having, especially towards the end of this year, a big, big push in his career, getting into some of these really large spaces with these really large installations, which is really awesome to see.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I think that's really important to highlight, and really important for the space to celebrate more, that in the lobby of MoMA, I think a bigger deal than Refik, is that Rafaël's work there on their 25-foot screen is a generative algorithm and was curated and put there by Paola Antonelli. I think that's really important and really exciting that Rafaël's work was put in MoMA, and I'm happy that you brought that up, Conrad. Spoiler alert, but he'll be one of the first editorial pieces that comes out to start our year. But thefunnyguys, did you want to tell us about your artist of the year?
thefunnyguys: Yeah, sure. I think the easiest thing for me to do would be to emphasize the names that you guys just mentioned, because I definitely do agree with quite a few of them. Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst also immediately came to mind. The criticism that they've provided on AI technology and how deeply they engage with it is, I think, very unique and on a level of its own. But let me also throw in two more names that I think really deserve emphasis at the end of 2024. We already mentioned his name, but I'm really surprised by the amount of fantastic work that mpkoz, Michael Kozlowski, has managed to release in just one year. There was, I believe the name is Empath, his kinetic sculpture that he sold to Kanbas. That was part of a larger commission. That sculpture, again, was a moment where the entire space stopped for a second and just admired the work that Michael Kozlowski released. It was very unique, especially for a digital artist, that he released such a fascinating physical kinetic sculpture. Then he also did the fantastic Bright Moments finale project, which for him, as he described it to us, was just a few hours of coding on a plane. That was not really a biggie. He just released a fantastic project quite easily, apparently. Then he also did the Bocce release at Art Blocks, which, again, I think on that one there's a lot of different opinions, but I do find it really fascinating. And I do find it fantastic to see how he explores different mediums. These sculptures, I know they're bringing a lot of... How should I say this? They're making a lot of collectors around the world extremely happy. And then finally, maybe it's not the best pick for artist of the year necessarily, but what I also find an interesting or an important moment in 2024 is that qubibi, the artist that you currently use, Conrad, as a background on your screen, is releasing the final worms, the final mimizu pieces. I think in the future we will look back and really smile on the period of 2021 to 2024, where qubibi released hundreds of these worms from a really unique generative system. And I think for qubibi, who has been exploring the same system for decades now, 2024 definitely is a special year, and it must be really hard for him to put a point behind this series. That's something I also want to emphasize in 2024, that mimizu is stopping. qubibi also released this fantastic book, of which you can still get an edition if you head over to Highlight. Michael Kozlowski and qubibi, two artists I wanted to add to the list for a shout-out.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, really good choices again. I must, again, shamelessly plug that the most recent article on Le Random is a big profile of qubibi looking at the end of mimizu. Okay, so the next topic about 2024 is events. We wanted to highlight some of the events that we loved and also just some of the events that we participated in this year. Let me just run through the events that Le Random participated in. In February, we were at Bright Moments Paris, and that was also along with NFT Paris. Then in April, we went to Bright Moments Venice as a whole team. That was during the Biennale, so we got to see the Biennale together. After that, we went to Madrid together for an artist visit and some galleries there. In May was NFC Lisbon, where I got to speak. In June was Art Basel, where thefunnyguys and I got to speak at the Digital Art Mile there. Then July was the Generative Art Summit in Berlin, where again thefunnyguys and I got to speak, which was probably my highlight event of the year. Then in September, thefunnyguys and Zack went to Token2049, where they got to chat with some of the more business side of the space. Then October was a big month. We had FEMGEN, where I spoke at the V&A in London. Then I also went to YCAM in Yamaguchi in Japan and spoke there. Then in November, thefunnyguys spoke at Marfa at the Art Blocks Weekend. I did a little visit to Tyler Hobbs's studio. I don't know if anything really else will ever come out about that, but that was a really nice highlight of the year. That was some of the stuff that Le Random did. It doesn't even have to be one of our events, but what is one of these events that was a highlight for you guys?
thefunnyguys: Yeah, what do you think, Conrad?
Conrad House: I think we've already talked about it a bit, but I think Bright Moments Venice was really an incredible time, not just with how many people really came out that time, but, as you mentioned, the Biennale happening at the same time and it being really the finale of Bright Moments. They had gone through this 10-city cycle, ending on this very... hey, we started from Venice, LA, and we go to Venice, Italy now. It really was the perfect bow to put on the finishing present. It was really awesome. I think there were also just exhibitions outside of Bright Moments that were really incredible. Memo Akten had a really incredible installation for the Biennale, and really getting to see the intersection of both of these worlds all in this one area. Bright Moments always does a great job of putting together events. And again, they blew it away with Venice, and having things like the Bright Moments documentary that was screened at the time was really incredible to see. It was just really, I think, one of, I guess, the most fun environments that we've gotten to experience so far within this NFT space, our NFT community. That was Bright Moments Venice. I think that's definitely the highlight event of the year for me.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, Bright Moments Venice was definitely a very special moment in time for sure. Peter and I went to the Generative Art Summit in Berlin. I think that was also a super unique moment, because that was basically a two-day event. One day was mostly dedicated to the pioneers of the generative art movement, and the other day was more dedicated to the contemporary digital generative art field. In a few years, I'll probably look back on this event as a very unique one, because many of these pioneers are already quite old. They were creating generative art in the '60s or the '70s. Some of them have already passed away, very sadly, over the last years, a process that will sadly continue over the next years. So I think at the Generative Art Summit in Berlin, Susanne, the widow of Herbert Franke, really managed to capture a very special moment in time for these pioneers. Most of them were still alive, but the digital generative art space was also already a significant space. It already exists, which was also not the case... well, it already existed a few years ago as well, but with NFTs there was energy in that space as well. So that was very, very unique. I was really, really grateful that we were able to be a small part of that event. And the one at Art Basel, a collaboration with Georg Bak at the Digital Art Mile, where we organized the art conference ourselves. I also really look back on that with fond memories. I think the level of discussion and engagement of the crowd and all the fantastic guests that we had at that event was very special. For me, these two really stand out in 2024.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I would just like to echo, again, the Generative Art Summit in Berlin. I think that was probably also my favorite. It was a good mix of all of these pioneers, like thefunnyguys was saying, with contemporary voices and artists in the space as well. It was really unique. I don't know if anything like that can even ever happen again, but it was really special. Another one that wasn't really on that list, so not one of our events, but that Electric Dreams opening in London at the end of November, maybe recency bias, but I thought that was really special as well, because it was such a big exhibition, and to see basically all of the digital art space in London, or practically the UK or practically Europe, turn out for it was really special. The last category of 2024 is accomplishments. We don't have to spend too much time on it, but does anybody want to mention or say an accomplishment from this year? It doesn't have to be Le Random related. Who knows? It doesn't even have to be your accomplishment. But is anybody proud of something that either they or the space achieved this year?
Conrad House: I'm just going to touch on the commissions that we've already talked about. As we talked about, it was the year of the commissions. I'm really happy and pretty proud of what we accomplished within this year, with how many commissioned works we've gotten and just the quality of the commissioned works and how much love we have for each of the pieces that emerged into the collection this year. It's probably, I think, what I'm always going to look back on as the fondest and my favorite accomplishment that we were able to get done.
thefunnyguys: Yeah. On my end, I think this might sound quite abstract, but I'm quite proud of just the energy that we managed to preserve in 2024. Around us, I think we've seen a lot of collectors disengage, a lot of companies, sometimes also for things beyond their control, shutting down services. But I'm quite proud as a team that we've managed to, as you mentioned, execute so many commissions, be so active in the market, collecting really stellar work. At the same time, we also published a lot of incredible content on a weekly basis, just nonstop throughout the year, while also being present at all these events. I'm mostly proud of that. Even in the bear market, we keep the morale high. We keep going. We believe in it for the long term, and we really power through the bear markets, hopefully, assuming it has ended. It might continue for a bit longer.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. Definitely, I'm proud of you guys and all the collecting you've done from week to week this year. It's always been impressive to keep track of what you're doing and just the breadth of it all and how you managed to wrap your hat around it, which is very tricky. In terms of personal ones, the Timeline finishing was a big one for me. That happened at the end or beginning of September. That was nice to finish. On the editorial side, Jasia Reichardt, meeting her, and meeting her now several times, and her writing a piece for Le Random, I think was really special and something that I'll always think of fondly and always be proud of. Then I think FEMGEN and getting to speak at the V&A was also quite a nice moment. But 2024, wow. What can you say? We've talked about it for almost 80 minutes, but it deserves it. It was a complicated year. A lot happened, and we were in a lot of ways in the thick of it.
Conrad House: And maybe one other just really quick accomplishment, I guess on the editorial side, but I think the podcasts, I guess, is what you call them, that we were able to accomplish this year are really incredible. It comes hand in hand with the Timeline finishing. But being able to have those decade conversations with so many incredible rosters was really an awesome accomplishment. I think every time we had a new decade talk that was coming up and Peter would come to us with the list of people that were going to be a part of it, I was like, man, this list is better than the last one. There's no way we get a better roster than this on the next call. And then sure enough, we seemed to outdo ourselves each time. Or at least Peter would outdo himself with recruiting some of the most incredible panels that we were able to discuss each of these decades with. So that was a really awesome accomplishment. Just the dialog that we were able to foster with those podcasts, I think, is something that I will never forget.
“Even in the bear market, we keep the morale high. We keep going. We believe in it for the long term, and we really power through the bear markets, hopefully, assuming it has ended.” — thefunnyguys 59:41
Peter Bauman: Yeah, super grateful to everybody who took the time to talk to us, for those artists' discussions for the Timeline, and then for Electric Dreams and Electric Op, and then now for the curator series. It wouldn't be possible without having some really incredible people agree to offer their time and energy and expertise. And so we're very grateful for that.
Conrad House: People don't come to listen to us. They come to listen to those guests. And we're super grateful.
Peter Bauman: Good point. Thank you, Conrad. And let's look at 2025. If 2024 was wild, and I think we can all agree that it was, by the end of 2024 and the start of 2025, if there was any indication, it seemed to possibly be ramping up the intensity. Maybe we can just start with what we're looking forward to in 2025. I'll rattle off a couple of big ones, and then thefunnyguys and Conrad, maybe you can talk about individual events that you're looking forward to. Some of the big ones: in February, we have NFT Paris. March sees Hong Kong and Asia get some of the attention with Art Basel and the digital art fair there. May, we think tentatively, is maybe a Bright Moments event in Berlin. I don't know if that's confirmed. That's the rumor, right? Then there's ARCO, which is a big European fair, also in May. June is NFC in Lisbon, also Art Basel in Basel. There's SIGGRAPH in Vancouver. That's in August this year. Then the fall will have the normal Armory, Frieze, Paris Photo, those shows that are annual. Any other shows that you're looking forward to this year? It can be one of those recurring shows or any one-offs.
thefunnyguys: I'm definitely looking forward to the recurring ones. I think Art Basel in Switzerland last year was such a good experience for us. I think in general last year we really saw digital art being taken more seriously during Art Basel in Switzerland, because there was not only the Digital Art Mile, there were also all these conversations being held by the core Art Basel fair. I'm definitely looking forward to revisiting that one and hopefully, again, collaborating with Georg Bak on his Digital Art Mile events. For me, Marfa this year was also very special. It was the first time I went to Marfa. I heard really good things about Marfa before. I would definitely hope to go back in 2025, and hopefully we can collaborate again with Glitch Marfa. Last year, we collaborated with Botto at a Glitch Marfa event. Who knows what 2025 may hold for us. So that's event-wise when it comes to the recurring ones. For me, still looking into 2025, I still have a lot of question marks. It feels like it's hard to know exactly which ones I'm currently the most excited about. Do you guys have any ones that really stand out that you really can't wait for?
Conrad House: There's not one that I'm particularly waiting on just yet. I think, as you mentioned, thefunnyguys, until more of the event info comes forward, you don't really know what you're getting yourself into. But yes, I think all the recurring things always have excitement to them. I think Marfa is a really interesting one, especially when you talk about more digitally native events. Marfa is always a really special place. It's really hard to explain it to anybody who hasn't been there, because it's such this niche environment, but it seems to be growing every year. And as more and more people make this trek out to the desert, more and more stuff gets put together. I think we saw a lot of interesting developments this year with more outside events being put together. I think one exhibition that we didn't really mention, but ClownVamp's Junk Machine exhibition that happened at Marfa this year was really awesome to see. This well-put-together, self-curated exhibition within Marfa is really awesome. We obviously have Glitch Gallery that's already out there, but I think seeing more people come in from the outside to put together events, or host events that are outside of the Art Blocks events, is really cool to see. It's really becoming this mecca of generative art to some degree, or at least mecca of Art Blocks, that people really come out to. But maybe to move away from events that we're looking forward to. As a collection lead, there's always a work that I'm looking forward to. I think one that is really recently coming to the forefront is Cycles by the Material Protocol Arts team, which is led by Matto and others. That's a really interesting project. It's really exploring this idea of this on-chain sculpture, like a worldwide sculpture project. Visually, the project is really intriguing, and then technically the project is really intriguing, while exploring the ideas of space and time and using these lenses to capture certain moments within the system. Being able to lock these moments to your piece is something I'm really looking forward to. Matto has some really great videos that dive into the project a bit more on their Twitter page. But it's something that I'm really looking forward to, especially at the start of this year. I think maybe by the time this video is out, some of the first Cycles pieces will actually be on-chain. So that's something that I've really been anticipating, really since it's been announced. That's one project that I can't wait for, and in just a few more days we'll see those come to life.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, definitely really good choices. In addition to some of the other ones that I mentioned, ones that I'm looking forward to this year: one that is interesting is called Machine Love at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. I think it opens in February, or the middle of February. It opens up pretty soon. The full title is Machine Love: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art. It's this AI and generative AI and video game and virtual world exhibition at Mori Art Museum. I think that'll be a fun show. It's open, I think, February to June. If you're in Tokyo, I think that'll be a really interesting show to make. We can go on to the next topic. We've talked a lot about art, mercifully, but maybe we could talk a bit about markets and crypto as well and peek into our crystal balls on that area, or at least give some of our opinions there. How about thefunnyguys? What do you think about 2025 and crypto and its implications for art and the art scene?
thefunnyguys: Good question, Peter. I think 2024 was definitely a very politics-heavy year. I'm quite happy that the US election is behind us, because for months on end that was really taking over the timeline, and not always for the better. But I do think it's a fact that a more crypto-friendly government is going to take place in 2025. One thing that was really interesting, I think, in 2024 was hearing a lot of founders from the crypto world talk about the struggles that they had in the regulatory environment over the last years. I was listening to Nat Emodi from Highlight on the Waiting to Be Signed podcast. He was mentioning that Highlight had often been debanked without proper notice, without any reasons why they lost their bank accounts. And I do hope for crypto startups, especially the ones that are active in the digital art field, that hopefully these regulatory concerns are behind them moving forward. Because many of these people, as we know, have good intentions. They're really trying to help digital artists release and sell their work. If there's no positive regulatory environment for them to operate in, everything becomes so much more difficult. So that's definitely, I think, a positive moving forward. But what that exactly means for the digital art world, I think it's hard to know, because on the other hand, I also worry a bit that crypto is being claimed by one certain part of the political spectrum, and that may not always be positive. For artists that engage with blockchain, that engage with cryptocurrency, I hope it doesn't necessarily come with a political leaning. I hope people do see these choices as something apolitical. These are artists just using modern technologies to release their work, not necessarily subscribing to a certain political leaning. Because as we know from our chat with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, for many traditional artists this is definitely a reason for them to not engage with blockchain, to not engage with NFTs. So there's pros and cons, I think, to the shifting political environment, but hopefully the pros outweigh the cons moving into 2025.
Conrad House: Yeah, I really agree and resonate with, I think, everything you said there, thefunnyguys, specifically the political alignment of crypto and this preconceived notion that anybody in crypto maybe aligns themselves politically one way or the other, whereas I think if you look at the start of crypto, that idea would maybe even be flipped. I hope that's something that as we move into 2025 maybe we can discern ourselves from a bit more. I think that would be really beneficial for the space. And then what you talked about was just the regulation of crypto and it being such a gray area, because there's really no standardized approach to how things are supposed to be. I hope that regulatory issues get resolved and we have a better standing there. That would be really beneficial for the space.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I definitely agree that regulatory clarity is something that's needed in the space. I don't know if necessarily 2025 is the year that it happens, but you would hope that there is going to be movement in a positive direction there. It's something I've been thinking a lot about. There's this article that came out actually about this time last year, so it's not new, but it's called "The 3 Body Problem," and it's by Sam Hart and some other people. It's about how the unregulated space of crypto is the combination of code and markets and social norms, and how it is regulated leads to challenges and instability. You can see that leading through into the art market and the art scene as well. Regulation might help. I'll have a piece coming out pretty soon, I think either in January or February, about that three body problem and how it relates to art. But something that I think is really interesting for the start of 2025 is we seem to be at the space where museums are paying attention, but they still have certain things that they're skeptical of. I think this is an important opportunity to address some of those issues. We're here calling for more regulations in crypto, but I think there's a big chunk of the crypto space that would not want more or is in vehement disagreement, that anarchic or libertarian side of the space. I'm interested to see also, and I would presume that they would be more of the Trump-aligned side as well, how they would think about regulation and if they agree with us that regulations are needed for the space to move forward. But it's really complicated. That paper is still being written and still in process. But moving on to maybe crypto and how it might affect just crypto art in general. It's so hard to say. I would very much hesitate to say that this will be a bull year. But that does seem to be what the consensus is, which is maybe a little worrying, but people do expect that. And if that were to be the case, that would be presumably a positive thing for first crypto art and then hopefully more generative and AI art. I would imagine possibly AI art getting the bulk of that attention in generative, but it's so hard to say, like you said, Conrad. Then also, 2025 is supposed to be the year of quantum. Let's see if anything actually comes of that.
Conrad House: Being the year of quantum, it's a funny term. I always think people were really interested in generative art, and then, like that Toy Story meme of "I'm done playing with you," and Andy throws him on the floor, people are done with generative art and they want AI art now. What if quantum art comes and people are like, I'm done with AI art. I want quantum art, because it's this new cutting-edge term that really infatuates people for whatever reason coming in the future. But I think if it is the year of the bull market, it's always interesting to try to theorize where that might go, where that bull market money might trickle down. Usually, I think, most people agree that the NFT market somewhat lags behind crypto prices to some degree, whereas we'll see a big spike in Ethereum and Bitcoin, but it won't be until maybe a couple of months later that we start to see that natural effect, or that shockwave effect, hitting the NFT markets and digital art markets. But it's always tough to predict where that market is going to be situated. I think you're pretty spot on, Peter, with AI being the main highlight. I think that is what grabs the most people's attention. I think there still will be a few people that try to go back to maybe what happened before, and we'll see some renewed interest in older projects. But again, I think this harkens back to the more mature audience. People know what they really like. I think once they get maybe some more liquidity in their hands, they'll probably go back and hunt for artists that they really appreciate nowadays that they maybe weren't able to collect back then. It'll be a good indication of which artists really grew within the bear market, if a bull market comes, by seeing how much renewed interest is in their past work. I think that will be a cool indication, but you never know if it's going to be a bear or bull market. I guess the only insight I can provide is that 2024 was probably a year of a rebound a bit. But looking at the end of 2024, things look relatively okay. Again, it's hard to always think if we're going to get back to that end of 2021 mania, but always keep your fingers crossed for that.
Peter Bauman: One thing that's really interesting and that I wanted to bring up too, about just moving forward and where we might be on more of a historical time frame. I've been reading this book, so it's taking me, I guess, multiple days. I'm not reading it all at once, but I'm reading this book by Domenico Quaranta. It's called Beyond New Media Art. It came out in 2013, so 10 years ago. It doesn't mention AI at all. It doesn't mention artificial intelligence, essentially at all. A book about new media art and new media art's history just from 10 years ago, it barely, barely mentions it. I think he talks about Cohen. I think that the whole AI history, the whole integrating of AI and its developments into digital art history and just into art history, it hasn't been done at all. That research is still going on, figuring out what's important historically and what will be important in the future. We are still writing in the middle of it. It's like if we were at the end of the '60s or whatever with computer art and digital art. So it's this really interesting and chaotic time, and maybe 2025 will be a step towards taking a breath and seeing historically what's important and getting some of that more academic research done on some of this history, which genuinely hasn't been done yet. It's really interesting. People collecting now really are in the Wild West and are in a really interesting position to be able to shape those narratives, but also still discover. I think we'll move on to our last topic of the talk. It's just about goals of 2025, or goals for this year for us individually, or for the team, or for Le Random, or for the space. What are we looking forward to in terms of what we can contribute to the year? So what do you guys think?
thefunnyguys: For me, it's quite abstract, but I really hope in 2025 that with Le Random we can also explore new avenues. I think we found a really interesting territory with our collection, with all the content we are producing. But I hope to also explore. And at the moment, it's still abstract, because I hope, of course, we'll do it together as a team and we'll think about new things that we can try in 2025. But that's something I want to put a lot of emphasis on in 2025, that we also explore new things and engage with recent developments in technology or in the generative art market. That can be through collaborations, maybe with other entities in the ecosystem, and maybe things that we explore on our own. I hate to sound so abstract, but that's only because it hasn't really been conceptualized fully yet. But in 2025, hopefully by the end of the year, we will have done some new things that we maybe cannot imagine yet at the start of 2025. That's definitely a mindset I want to enter 2025 with, for us to explore and engage with new technologies.
Conrad House: Yeah, I think for 2025, we always talk about how 2024 was the year of commissions. I think 2025, I hope, is the year of activations. After spending a couple of years finally building out a pretty substantial collection within Le Random, we have a lot of material that we could put together to form some really great exhibitions or shows, or just activating pieces in really unique experiences would be really exciting for 2025. And then also on top of that, I think preservation, I hope, would take a bigger stance in 2025. I know this may be, I guess, cynical to say or something, but I hope that we see a few disaster cases where we see NFTs that are lost more in this year, just so that it maybe pushes people to think about it a bit more and, I think, get better artist practices and better approaches to how works are minted on-chain. So we have maybe a better long-term outlook on how things are meant to take place. Having people like Regina is really awesome, and her being at the forefront of, hey, I've been looking into digital preservation for a long time, here are some of the tips. I think as more and more people become aware of this and more people talk about it, it only becomes less of an issue, because I think it's something that a lot of people don't think about today. Or if they do think about it, it's really just the topic of, oh, IPFS or anything else. There's really not enough deep diving done into the topic of preservation and making sure that the works that are created and the culture that's created today are able to be experienced decades from now. We don't just want to be a flash in the timeline that gets killed by data or broken links or broken systems. We want to make sure that we can lay out the foundation so that we can continue building and continue to be able to look back at these experiences in all of their glory.
Peter Bauman: Preservation is a really good point and something I also had on my list. For me, for 2025, I've got a couple of projects that are more long term that we're hoping to see, if not be realized in 2025, then move along significantly. That includes the Timeline and making it into a physical book, and potentially another book idea that I have that I'm also working on and reaching out to people about. I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to, and it's one of the first pieces that I'm going to write about, and it's something I've written about before, but integration into the mainstream or traditional ecology and space, and moving away from the separateness of this space and the separateness of the NFT or Web3 world. Those ideas and topics are not only going to motivate me but also are things that I want to write about this year. This is also vague, but just AI. I want to continue leaning into it. It was a goal last year too. It's silly to say that that's going to be a goal for this year, but I just want to reiterate that it will continue to be something that I'm curious about, and I think we all are. Then just some community topics, like Conrad mentioned, preservation. I think that when we did that talk with Regina and Jon, Jon Ippolito and Regina Harsanyi, it struck a bit of a nerve with the community. It got people interested in preservation and it got people talking about it. It certainly feels like there's more there to explore and to discuss, but we haven't really gotten around to it for any number of reasons. But definitely in 2025, hopefully we can get back to that. I would like to chat with people like Michael and Dragan from Rhizome, but in general just continue to have that conversation and provide resources and just have it be something that people think about, because like Conrad said, it is something very important. Then something that's also important is onboarding. If we do think that 2025 will see new entrants into the space, then what is Le Random's role in onboarding and in helping some of these entrants learn about generative art and doing it in the most efficient but comprehensive way? Trying to think about how to get people that are interested in generative art, how to get them interested but also educated, and telling them something but maybe not too much. Those are things that I also want to think about this year: just facilitating, getting people excited and interested about generative art if we are going to see new people enter the space in 2025. Is there anything that you guys want to say to wrap up before we shut it down?
thefunnyguys: Just in general, I do think it's going to be a great year, guys. I'm really excited for it. I think 2024 was one with its challenges, but at the end we saw some sparks of energy returning into the space. Most of the players are still around. We're seeing continuous innovation. We're already looking ahead to some very exciting projects into the new year. I'm just really excited for 2025. I think it's going to be a great one for digital arts and for Le Random. Thank you guys a lot for this conversation. I really enjoyed it.
“We don't just want to be a flash in the timeline that gets killed by data or broken links or broken systems.” — Conrad House 1:22:11
Conrad House: I guess my final topic is just excitement for the future. You never know what's going to happen. I think a lot of the things that we talked about in this chat regarding 2024, I could have never predicted would have happened, whether that's event-wise or project-wise, or a certain work or a certain artist that I was really excited about. You never know what's going to happen. The future is always changing. So I'm just excited for the anticipation of what is to come, even if I don't know what that may be. It's exciting to be in this space that's ever changing.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, 2024 saw institutional interest rise while public interest maybe waned a bit. Let's see what that dynamic is and if they can be more aligned, or if that misalignment continues. That'll be something that I'm very interested in. But I can't wait for the year. Can't wait to start the year. Can't wait for everything that it holds. Thank you, gentlemen, very much for the chat, and looking forward to continuing it for the next 11 to 12 months.
thefunnyguys: Awesome. Thank you, guys.
Conrad House: And thanks, everyone, for listening in. Thank you, guys.
