Lost in the Metaverse

Transcript

hello can you guys hear me yeah welcome so she had quite a journey coming here her luggage got lost so we're happy she made it hello hi i'm so happy to be here and uh thank you for coming to my talk and uh nice to meet jeremy love well we've just heard about um your sotheby's auction congratulations you were in paris and then in london so you've been pretty busy um i think your whole career has been so amazing but i wanted to start with what

you were doing i mean you told me the story and i'm like amazed by it what you were doing um before you got into nfts and and where you lived because i think that it was before you relocated back to panama that's right i i think i've studied this story um a few times but um it's not it's more than a story i feel like it's a complete change of life last year i was i wasn't working my mom was taking care of the house she works in the hospital and my brother wasn't working and

he is on tech support he really really um he tries to sustain that job but his real dreams are others and like just seeing this and seeing that my mom was going every day to work despite the sacrifices and what was happening it was like really dangerous i remember waking about four am where she leaves and just having so much anxiety over the fact that she could you know it was the height of the pandemic and i had just come from toronto where i was trying to study um

i'm just recovering from the starting from zero again and going back to my country panama which is developing country it was one of the most strange and like hard experiences in my life but i decided to just hyper focus on what i was doing just like what i love is just being in the computer experimenting and trying new things i consider my art not only generative but also [Music] new media and conceptual in the sense that i try to i try to express my feelings and emotions through it more than just generating

geometry and patterns so this this patterns were what guide me through is finding that that safe space because you know like we meditate we try to find um you know ways to feel better with ourselves while dealing with so many emotions and i find that with generative art and what i do and were you always technical because you mentioned that when you went i think is when you went back to panama you started to take coursera courses yes

i was studying architectural technology first and i'm in love with architecture i think that's one of the things that inspired me the most and uh i couldn't continue the the career in toronto because it was too expensive that's one of the reasons why i decided to come back and yeah i was taking coursera courses and with university of london they have a special course for bachelor of computer science and i wrote a long letter of why i wanted to study computer science i wanted to come back to panama fully prepared to you know uh being able to

just not only ask for the government to um put projects out there for for people but being able to create it myself panama is a small country we're not prepared for things like climate change we're not prepared for things like you know uh our indigenous people losing their islands over uh erosion and i think computer science and generative art are a force that can truly change things around for for people in need so that's what i wrote and i they accepted me in university and yeah i continued to study and then i

just fell into this uh emotional i guess not a rollercoaster i would say just like riding waves between just being fully focused on creating outputs and sharing with people seeing their emotions seeing like what they feel through me because uh if you look at my art it's just it's not just a geometry pattern or a general generative output there's much more to it i think i think i put a lot of myself in it and yeah and i think a lot of us have seen the headlines of pleaser dao

so i think it was two million dollars worth of ethereum at the time purchasing one of your pieces so if you could talk about just in terms of what it's been like in terms of building an audience and then how different collectors and and even different dows have supported your journey so please start that changed my life i i keep telling uh the peeps because we have this group where we talk every day and we have meetings and i mean like i didn't plan any of this the third project is has always been very important for me because i've always been concerned with um cryptography and social security and

you know like just keeping my my privacy uh that's what i do with like all of my work at the same time i create like uh messages encrypted in my work and um i just leave it out there for for someone if they want to like go and like deeper into it but yeah the third project approached me uh by march and like they um they really liked my work they showed me one of my pieces and they told me uh it was a ux designer lead of the project who approached me she's amazing she's from argentina and uh

i just remember her emotions she just like said that she really liked magnetic flux which is a black and white piece that represents two planets that um go at the same force and at the same speed but they risked to get apart and i did that after i break up i had i wanted to still show love and say that even though we were planets that were going in a same trajectory with same force and we're falling apart we're still very strong and beautiful so i left that on shane and uh yeah um after that they proposed to make a project to fund the tour um organization and like what they do

really matters to me it's different than than any other project i've ever worked on and it's only been so many and it just happened i just um started promoting it and like sharing what it meant to be part of this project to collect it and they heard me pleaser dao and also the ceo of kraken and then they were battling in for the for the collect for the token which also represents the beginning of the tour project or the onion service that was implemented more than 10 years ago and

yes they completely changed everything for me i went from like a completely underground unknown uh artists that only share art to being recognized and now being able to showcase my work and different galleries yes that's what's been going on it's uh i cried the other day uh while i was in front of my work in sotheby's not because of the institution not because of like uh the you know it's it's just the feeling of being there for the first time i never had the opportunity to see my work projected in person and it was only me and the on the

doorman and uh he's he's an amazing person he was describing how he fell uh with the art and uh and it's all thanks to to please her though i'm really really really thankful for them they also helped me get to that point where i felt like i needed to show my home casco viejo which is one of the pieces is a city in panama that where i grew up and i wanted to show and put that on shane and like one of the largest institutions of the world yep that sounds incredible if anyone has questions too let me know i'm happy to take questions from the

audience as well i think in conversations that we've had you've talked about wanting to support the artist community in panama and i think just wanting to do a lot of social impact work in panama you mentioned climate change what are some of the things that um you you're planning to do okay so panama is an extremely small country there's only so many uh artists like really focusing on nfds right now we're trying to spread the word and i think soon enough we're gonna have things that was happening in salvador like

regulation to crypto and like not regulation but actual uh laws that uh will promote the use of ethereum and bitcoin and in panama and right now it's like it's it's being implemented and i think is uh highly uh likely that it's gonna happen really soon so that will help a lot of artists and like also bring the economy up in panama and that's one thing that i'm expecting to see um in terms of artists i there's different groups in discord and twitter and like if you search for like hashtags like panama nft you can find them and help them like it's not easy for us to be out there

like i say it's a really small country and like you know all the nft forces focused on north america and like i think like there's a lot of talent all over and yeah i'll appreciate if you guys uh look for it are there any artists in particular from panama that are doing nfts you really like from panama um yes there's a generative artist called jorge he is uh he's he's launched a project in our blocks and his art is really amazing he's been supporting me from day one and like we've met in panama and through the same things we love and

we just narrow away with it and yeah jorge um and um from panama there's many many artists like but i think there's a lot of performance art and photography which i really admire too because part of my work is a bit of performance and like i also implement photography video and to to my generative artworks and then when did you start engaging with the nft community in terms of just learning what this is and then how did you kind of like what was one of the first platforms that you used

the first platform that i used was foundation i minted my first piece there and my first piece was collected by dimitri cherniak is one of the biggest promoters of generative art and like if it wasn't for him and his project ringers it wouldn't it wouldn't be um the united farm wouldn't be seen the way it's seen right now like people started investing he started bringing collectors in the space connecting the art blocks project with you know a bigger stage and i think he also supports

you know minorities he supports he supported me so much if it wasn't for him i wouldn't have a computer two years ago to continue doing generative art it's like my computer broke and i was like for three months just completely started and he noticed because i mean i'm always putting out artwork and yeah he really helped me with that and then i think your story is just very inspiring and i think just listening to it what do you think we as individuals can do to support artists we as individuals um

well also i mean it's interesting because it's individuals but then also this ecosystem has enabled individuals collectively like through things like dows so i mean um i guess even in more innovative ways what do you think that the community can do more like whether it's through the dao or something using the technology or just as an individual crypto collector to better support and empower artists particularly in globally in different parts of the world yeah um i think that's something that i always go back to

is that you have to love what you're doing and you have to really really care about like if you're gonna help someone it's not just going to be for the cloud it's not just going to be like okay i want to be the hero and have this like hero complex that goes around what you do in social media and everything because you come you turn into a machine and i as a programmer i always try to like turn myself away from being a machine that just like creates great shares for no reason so if you're gonna meet someone that you really want to help and if you only focus on this person in your life and this person is successful i think that's enough you don't have to like just like create this like this whole show that is

not really true so that that's one thing i think what this thing's like um the dolls i'm in like i'm not part of many dolls and there's so many right now but you know like her story or uh please heard out they are really friends who are family and they're just so fun and like they have fun while they do what they do so yeah i think that's really important and that's something that's changing like the system itself because the system is it's just built on like protocols like and different protocols like how to how to behave in life how to do this how to do that but being free while you're helping others i think that'll

help you go on the longer uh in the longer run because you're not getting tired you're just like feeding yourself with energy and like transmitting to other people that needs it and then you've already accomplished so much that like many artists like twice or three times your age like haven't that are successful haven't accomplished it's amazing um what do you think like what are some things you'd like to do next okay so this year i was telling my friend that i accomplished like 20 years of career in one year i was looking at it

i was looking at a compilation that someone at investopedia made and it's i couldn't believe it and it's because i haven't stopped i haven't really i hadn't take a break until now and i finally decided to come to europe for the first time and i realized when i was by myself in the room like well i'm here i'm able to support myself to just like travel and meet the people that has been supporting me from afar i've met like so many friends from the internet like traveling from paris to london and now here and

it's just it's a great feeling to finally stop and see that well i participated in this project the tour project i i created a collection that is not too large it's like less than 40 nfds and it's still collected by you know third 30 plus individual collectors i just i i know i pay attention to the numbers too like i carry stats of everything i do in numbers and at the same time and people like they became my friends i know that i'll have their support and that i think that's something really important and like nft

like it's different it's not like a job like you just like lose contact once you get fired or whatever like you are creating a connection with with a friend that wants to stand a hand and see you grow and yeah that's most of my characters like like all my collectors are my friends basically it's like we just like it's a it's a team work i guess and i'm here to stay like i think that's one of the reasons why so many of these artists like get frustrated sometimes because they don't sell it's because like they sell and like this go away with it and they come back months after

and it's like you are not creating that trust and like just like ethereum is a system of trust where everyone's like helping it grow because they believe in it i think that's the way you have to behave with your collections and then what are your plans are you planning to go back to panama or are you planning to travel more um yeah i don't have a return t kit but um i want to spend my birthday here it's coming up soon and yeah i have to go back to panama my computer is there and my family so and but i would love to be in a place where

there's more opportunity like in panama we only have like gallery shows every year and like just like i've i've seen so many things happen just in this trip like i didn't plan to stay here i didn't plan to be in this stage and it happened because i decided to extend my stay and people noticed that i was here and uh i think it's like without planning sometimes really great things happen and can you tell us about your piece that's up for auction oh yes uh all right so [Music] yeah uh please or now um asked me a few months ago if like i wanted to

select one of the pieces that they own but obviously they don't want to sell them and i decided to create two new pieces one is called ellip elliptic curve which is uh in collaboration with pleaser with tor project because i want to create this continue stream of you know funding for them it's not like just a one-time thing and um so i use a number a random generator to create the piece out of like um the seeds that they created for a bot that they use on twitter and like the bot that they use to implement the

b3 uh integration and it's part of tour again it's part of tourist history from 2016 when they implemented this and they transitioned they upgraded their services to v3 and the elliptic curve um encryption which is better than rca um that's why i decided to use the the title and also i don't know if you're showing the piece but yeah it's uh it's it goes in a circle and it just reminds me of a curve and i created another piece called casco viejo in 2016 actually and it's one of my favorites

is it looks like this place actually like a lot of the city looks like panama panama has the oldest city in in the planet and like you know it was conquered by the spaniards years more than 300 years ago and yeah that's the place where i was born so i wanted to make sure people knew uh where i'm from and um it's a beautiful piece like if you really see it like you see at the center you can see a door and within the the painting and um it also made me made me really love their device because i could paint without using a brush and i'm using a digital brush basically and

if if you see through the works as uh um you can see columns you can see structure you can see architecture at the same time melted paint on on all of it and um yeah just when i saw it at soda visa i was just so in love with it and i i think that's like the secret to this piece and i i hope someone really special has it regardless of the final price i think at this time i'm not thinking about it i just like really want someone that will take care of it and um we met through this amazing nft artist

diana sinclair and she's spoken a lot about how much you've supported her career and how much the relationship means to her just as another artist if you could kind of talk a little bit about that in terms of um your mentorship towards other nft artists and then also those that have helped like inspire you and and mentor you um yeah i met diana in february or march um i saw her photography and uh it was it was amazing i could see through it was her form of art like fine

photography art and i saw in her bio that she had her flag and the flag of panama of barbados where i'm also from my family from my dad's size is from barbados and i was like wow okay first panamanian i'm barbadian but beijing has seen that's doing nfts so i decided to talk to her and ask her if she was like doing doing it and she said no because she didn't believe that photography was like taken seriously but it wasn't at that time but i i said like as you you don't have to expect for things to become trendy you have to like create create the movement yourself

so she she jumped in and like she started selling i'm really proud that we met and we collaborated many times she's she's an amazing artist and i think more artists like photographers of like different careers not only generative art should be taken seriously as well like photographies carry memories what is what best token to have the photography token but it's like there's so much out there so much noise that if it resonates with you try to collect it right and then did you have is there a particular artist where

you felt really supported you or really like inspired you or made you believe that you could kind of um you know put things out just in the way that you supported diana or was it like collectively or did you always kind of have that focus and inner belief that i'm just going to try this something that really inspired me and that i think i find inspiration every day just walk outside i see something and a structure that inspires me or like if i'm feeling you know the way i'm feeling reflects that but i

think something that inspires me the most is music i create sound uh with with the patterns i created and uh sometimes i even i learned to read sound in silent patterns for example i see something moving like dancing and it becomes i i can connect it with a music song i found like years ago like i don't even need to like look for or listen to the song i already listened to it through the movement of patterns so it's like playing drums so that's you can connect with the guitar person like just like following the rhythm and i think that's one of the cores of what

everything i do i do with rhythm like i used to dance sometimes i i perform in front of like kinetic cameras and yeah i just do a little bit of everything but i'm always dancing i think well on that note always dancing that's very positive thank you so much i think that's all the time that we