Eclectic Method

Episode 24: Show Notes.

When Jonny first started his career as a Video DJ, the limited technology forced artists to engineer radical feats of innovation. DJs had to build their own mixers from scratch, deftly pressing the correct keys at critical moments during a live performance in order to mix everything perfectly on the spot. We’ve come a long way since then and in 2022 the process is infinitely simpler, with plenty of software options available for Video DJs to create new content, and tons of online tutorials to learn from. Today on the show we get together with Jonny, from Eclectic Method, to discuss everything from his career to his favorite crypto wallet, to why being able to learn new and different things is revolutionary. He describes why his work has always resisted categorization and the unprecedented sense of community he found in the NFT space. We hear from Jonny about how NFTs have changed the way artists are valued and earn money, and what his hopes are for the future of the crypto and NFT space. For all this and much more, make sure you tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

●     Introducing today’s guest, Jonny from Eclectic Method.

●     Eclectic Method’s prestigious list of collaborators and clients from Childish Gambino, to Apple.

●     Hear about Jonny’s large collection of hardware wallets.

●     Why Jonny and NorCal are both big fans of the Trezor wallet.

●     The origin of the name Eclectic Method.

●     Hear Jonny’s first reaction to NFTs and how artists are compensated for their time.

●     How Jonny’s work has always resisted categorization.

●     Why NFTs gave Jonny a newfound sense of community.

●     Jonny’s journey as a musician and how he discovered video mixing.

●     The difficult copyrighting challenges that Jonny has encountered in his career.

●     Some of the work Jonny did before he was able to earn a living with his music.

●     Find out Jonny’s favorite food, what animal he most identifies with, and the advice that’s had the biggest impact on his life.

●     Why Jonny was determined to never sign a record deal.

●     Jonny’s advice to artists who are joining the NFT space.

●     Hear about NorCal’s first introduction to the NFT space and what he’s learned.

●     Jonny shares some of the projects he has coming up.


Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Eclectic Method

Eclectic Method on YouTube

SuperRare

NorCal and Shill on Twitter

Transcript

EPISODE 24

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:32] NORCAL: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of NorCal and Shill. Today’s guest is Jonny from Eclectic Method. You can find him on Twitter @eclecticmethod which is spelled Eclectic Method. His website is www.eclecticmethod.net. You can find him on YouTube at Eclectic Method, his Link Tree is Eclectic Method. He is described as a video remix pioneer, artist, he has performed alongside Diplo, Axel, Deadmou5, Porter Robinson, Pretty Light, Childish Gambino and Wu Tang Clan. Festivals he has performed at, Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, Outside Lands, Ultra, Love Box, Virgin, Oxygen, Winter Music Conference and Bestival.

His client list includes, Apple, BMW, Vice, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Red Bull, AT&T, Twitter, Sony, Mashable, ESPN, Puma, Pioneer, Oakley, Nokia, MTV, Mo Town, Lions Gate, Makers Mark, Smirnoff, Getty Images, Universal, Hewlett Packard, Activision, The BBC, Avian, Yahoo, Spike TV, True TV, Heineken, Google, Gawker, ESPN, Turner, Reeboks, Microsoft, U Stream, Vivo, Ultra Records and Vimeo.

You can find his work on Super Rare. Everyone, please welcome, Jonny.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:28.1] NORCAL: Today, we have Jonny from Eclectic Method. How are you doing today?

[0:02:31.8] JW: I’m great, thanks, how are you doing?

[0:02:33.7] NORCAL: I’m doing pretty good, just getting my day started, things are going well, it’s nice outside, you can’t complain. Got a cup of coffee in front of me.

[0:02:42.4] JW: Yeah, the same here. It’s the evening that’s been a lovely day, it’s kind of a warm winter.

[0:02:47.0] NORCAL: Nice. You know, our winter here is like cooler than normal.

[0:02:53.0] JW: Kind of what has been having like extreme cold, right?

[0:02:56.7] NORCAL: Yeah, we had record snows like in the Sierras around Tahoe, record snows, it’s over 16 feet, that week of Christmas I believe it was, it was awesome.

[0:03:08.6] JW: Do you go skiing?

[0:03:09.6] NORCAL: Before kids, we would go up a few times every year, we have not gone since we had kids. Definitely, since my daughter’s three, definitely needed a consider getting her out there on the slopes

[0:03:22.3] JW: Yeah, us too, we stopped but we’re going to do the same thing, try and convince him to get on a snowboard.

[0:03:29.9] NORCAL: Yeah, yeah. It’s good, it’s fun. Do you have a hardware wallet?

[0:03:37.0] JW: Yeah, maybe like about 20 something hardware wallets, I went overboard with them. When I started, I had no idea what a hardware wallet was and I was just using just MetaMask and you know, Coin Base and that kind of thing. You slowly hear horror stories, people who have been ripped off and how easy it is to hack a mask and get into a hard drive and mess that and getting one, two, three hardware wallets and then just figured like the more the better.

[0:04:04.7] NORCAL: Right. Not going to lie, I have quite a few but – I’ve used them for different things and sometimes though, it’s like, there’s a new – a brand-new wallet that comes out and like, I want to try that. It’s also like a fun testing for me I guess. Testing is loosely used because it’s more like seeing what the user innovation is like.

[0:04:28.9] JW: Yeah, which one do you use now? What’s your favorite one though?

[0:04:31.8] NORCAL: I like the Trezor actually, the best for me. 

[0:04:35.1] JW: Yeah, I like the Trezor because it’s quick but I have ledgers too.

[0:04:39.3] NORCAL: Yeah, I have ledgers, I have Trezor, I had some other ones that have come out over the time and haven’t been a huge fan of them but Trezor, the model T with that touch screen just really easy to use.

[0:04:53.0] JW: Yeah, I had friends ages ago, I make the own ones with USB dongles that seems a bit\ risky.

[0:04:59.2] NORCAL: Yeah. I like to just – you now, Trezor’s been around the longest and they just see to have it set and it works well.

[0:05:09.3] JW: Yeah, it’s amazing, have you memorized your seed phrases?

[0:05:15.0] NORCAL: Man, I am too nervous to actually even attempt to do that, it just makes me nervous.

[0:05:20.8] JW: Wow, yeah, it’s a lot of responsibility there all around like keeping seed phrases, keeping control of your own bank, that kind of stuff.

[0:05:28.0] NORCAL: Right, it is. I do have those metal seed phrase of storage devices.

[0:05:34.2] JW: Nice, unburnable.

[0:05:36.4] NORCAL: Yeah. Those are nice and then I have a multi-cig setup for my Bitcoin stuff which is nice because then you don’t technically have a seed phrase.

[0:05:46.7] JW: Yeah, though, don’t you kind of have to have the seed phrase of the three keys you use to log into it?

[0:05:52.1] NORCAL: Yes, initial setup and then, since I have all three of five setup, if you lose one, you can’t – with those other four, you can sign to add a new different wallet. As long as you don’t lose more than three, you’re okay.

[0:06:12.1] JW: Yeah, we do that for some of it. My principle is to have loads of locations for it so that if anything goes wrong to like two or three things.

[0:06:19.3] NORCAL: Right. You got to be backups and backups and make sure – yeah, it’s fun and interesting.

[0:06:27.5] JW: Last year was like a learning curve for security and computer technology and the blockchain, I’ve had friends who have been involved in bitcoin for years but the wallet and everything just always sounded too complicated to me, even getting the money into the system because of NFTs. Now I’m like, knee deep in it.

[0:06:45.9] NORCAL: Yeah. Where does the name Eclectic Method come from?

[0:06:52.1] JW: Ages ago, the DJing star or started out with a group of people and we were all video DJing, remixing, doing mashups and so the name is really about doing any kind of music, any kind of style, Eclectic Method just was the right way to describe it.

[0:07:11.7] NORCAL: Okay. Now, it is just you?

[0:07:15.4] JW: Yeah, actually, Eclectic Method started out as four people and then it was three people and then it was two people and then for a good 10 years, it was just me, and just this year, in the last year, my wife has been learning Cinema 4D and she’s already like a illustrator artist and anything we do that’s animated is the two of us together, most video, we mix these stuff is just me.

Yeah, some of the video remix and stuff, anything in Spanish is her, she’ll organize everything in Spanish language and then I’ll be the final remix.

[0:07:43.2] NORCAL: Okay, nice. I didn’t quite realize that.

[0:07:46.4] JW: Yeah, it’s like – it’s often on the Internet, you know? On Twitter, I’m constantly talking as me because I’m so used to it from years of doing it but it might stay up and here at home, it’s like we’re banging our kit back and forth between each other and then making our different software and music, yeah, it’s super fun.

[0:08:06.0] NORCAL: Nice, what were your first thoughts about NFTs?

[0:08:11.8] JW: Oh my God? Yeah, it’s amazing, I think everyone’s first thoughts when they hear about NFT is just, they can’t believe it and they can’t believe that that kind of money is being transacted for art and I think it’s especially confusing to RS because everyone’s trained from like years of working for ad agencies and doing corporate work, how much their time is worth, it’s very hard to imagine your time being worth so much or an art piece being worth so much but I followed people for ages to kind of be with the internet bodies and we met in real life a few times and then about 12 years, he was my first – 

Seeing what he did was like the first time I came properly aware of NFTs, then jumping into twitter and just seeing some of my other friends and people I’ve followed who are already into NFTs and yeah, my first thought was just like, to do some more stuff and then we drop one piece and it’s sold out immediately in like 70 minutes, just totally shocked and it’s just like, immediately, jumped in and started DMing and just making friends and then it’s like, you get quickly to COVID because the thing with what I’m doing is like video remixing is not really a big thing, there’s not a lot of people that do it, there’s not really a scene for it and I never fit in with DJs because it’s not really DJing, I never fit in with video editors, it’s not really video, you know what I mean? I’ve never had a community.

Very quickly, I mean, first two months got really deep into NFT community I’d say like friends and people and chatting and yeah, from that moment on, I am hooked.

[0:09:45.5] NORCAL: Yeah, it’s a good community, it’s a good people to talk to and chat with.

[0:09:49.6] JW: Yeah, I mean, if you're listening form the outside, it sounds like we’re a cult talking about it but you know, I come from quite a cynical place and like doing Trump remixes and working really hard for 20 years and making money and they’re not making money and making money. This community is like, it’s the best thing that I’ve ever been involved with, a lot of the people involved, collectors and artists are like pro LGBTQ, very progressive people out there, open to new technologies, they’re open to new ideas in general.

Super generous, amazing people that the most experiences I’ve had in a row of trustworthy people, you don’t even have to worry that they’re going to pay you or several times of us, people not to pay me and they’ve still sent me money and it’s just like yeah, I just had to have – I have like tons of creative friends now and they didn’t have creative friends before but everyone was trapped in doing commercial work for ad agencies and this kind of stuff.

Now, everyone’s freed up to work with each other and it’s just totally amazing and you have like all these artist with resources and time, wanting to make stuff.

[0:10:57.9] NORCAL: Yeah, it is revolutionary, it’s really cool. 

[0:11:01.8] JW: I feel like in that my age, like, I’m 41 years old and I’ve already been involved in so many cool things that I thought I couldn’t possibly expect to be involved in, something so revolutionary again, I’m kind of shocked with that too and just so grateful to be in this position.

[0:11:16.2] NORCAL: Yeah, right time, right place, glad you jumped in.

[0:11:20.0] JW: Yeah, thank you so much, you’re one of the first people to back it in a big meaningful way and especially the music stuff which wasn’t obvious and you know, didn’t have a lot of people doing it. I really appreciate that and that gave a lot of momentum to what we were doing.

[0:11:36.5] NORCAL: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s coming, it’s just – I like music a lot and it’s just, to see what people are doing with it, I find it fascinating. I like investing with those that are willing to experiment and put music out there because not many people are doing it.

[0:11:55.1] JW: You put, I collected a lot of the people I felt are not really drawn to, like Mego Garrison, people that have a sense of humor in their art, people that have music in their art, yeah. I like the stuff you collect.

[0:12:07.7] NORCAL: Thanks. What brought you to video mixing, how did you get into it?

[0:12:15.9] JW: It’s like – I started out – I was really into guitars when I was a kid, I was in rock bands and secondary school, high school and then I got into sampling, the hip-hop and listening to electronic music and then it’s because I was into that in like 1997, I saw a group called Cold Cut and Hex Static and they made a song out of chainsaws and people chopping down trees and it was video samples, it was the first time I’d seen video music.

At that point, I was like DJing, making music with samplers and synthesizers but from that moment on, I was like, I want to do that sample base video stuff but with the synthesizer stuff all combined and I’ve been doing that pretty much every day since.

[0:12:59.0] NORCAL: Wow, that was like 20 years ago?

[0:13:02.9] JW: Yeah, like 1997. 25 years ago?

[0:13:06.3] NORCAL: Oh man.

[0:13:07.4] JW: Yeah, back then it was like, we didn’t have the technology to do anything, you couldn’t DJ videos, it was like playing clips off a laptop and you had to hit the keys at the precise moment and mix everything perfectly.

We had to build our own DJ mixers because they didn’t have video DJ mixers, so we’d like rip a crossfade of other video mixer and strap it on to the side of the crossfade or on a DJ mixer and then it would cross fade the video and know that they’re together and it’s like, well that stuff exist now, you could buy it in the software that does it and it’s very easy.

[0:13:37.3] NORCAL: Oh man, I like the innovation.

[0:13:43.3] JW: Yeah, it was amazing and there’s so few people doing it and there is still kind of so few people doing it that was like it was the small group of people. When things got bigger and people moved off in all different directions, the people who were doing video remixing, they ended up in live events, production, producing TV shows, radio shows, all often, it’s really hard to make money from it, that’s the other thing is because it’s essentially like copyright infringement, the best way to make video remixing is to sample movies and TV shows.

[0:14:13.1] NORCAL: That would be a little bit hard, a little bit of dancing around there.

[0:14:18.3] JW: Yeah, I mean, it’s been a nightmare. Well, not nightmare, I love doing it but I’ve had so many situations where I’ve had a record deal with Motown. Motown couldn’t license their own clips and have like other record deals offered to me, I had like a TV show in the BBC with the BBC, it’s hard for them to license their own clips. Even these big companies want to get behind it, it’s still actually, there’s still hurdles to get over, I had a show on MTV Europe with other people with MTV Mash.

MTV’s allowed to play music videos in their entirety on MTV without editing them but if they cut them into little bits, they have to apply for permission from the publishing rights and the copyright and everything. Every remix we’re making, they would have to go and check the rights and so everyone – in order to have a TV show, we’d have to make 10 videos for every one video that went on air because of the turn around time. It’s just like yeah, they gave up after two seasons, we had to have a huge sponsor.

Motorola was sponsoring it and most of the money went to the legal team and it’s all that stuff. Most of it and I have been doing it all this years just because it’s really fun. You know, there’s no real sense of making money out of corporate infringement.

[0:15:30.8] NORCAL: Right. I’m curious, what – I mean, you started this when you were fairly young, did you have any other jobs prior to this?

[0:15:36.7] JW: Yeah, this didn’t make money straight away so I actually lived in Bosnia for a bit during music projects, teaching people how to use samplers and mixing disks and make music and DJ, like music projects in post war situation. Then I came out to England, started doing close method almost immediately, was also down at temping jobs, being secretary basically, I want to jump into that like working in fast food restaurants a bit.

Yeah, then started Eclectic Method doing lots of jobs that were kind of related to Eclectic Method like I worked at a TV studio editing documentaries and that kind of stuff and then in 2002, started to make enough money just DJing in night clubs and I hadn’t really done a proper job since then.

[0:16:21.6] NORCAL: Okay, so if you were an animal, what would you be and why?

[0:16:28.7] JW: Probably a shark because I think they live a long time and down in the sea, you’re protected from most things that can go wrong.

[0:16:39.1] NORCAL: All right, sneak attack on people. Do you have a favorite food?

[0:16:44.3] JW: I like all foods so much. I eat almost anything, if it was like something I could only eat the same thing again and again and again, it would be something simple like lasagna.

[0:16:53.8] NORCAL: Okay.

[0:16:55.3] JW: Yeah, I eat a wide variety of food.

[0:16:57.5] NORCAL: Overall in life, what’s been the best piece of advice that you’ve been given? 

[0:17:00.8] JW: You know, it’s like it’s really hard to let’s say, a really clear one sentence somebody would say. I think one of the biggest like – one of the biggest factors that somebody told me was that building your own computer and learning software, I didn’t badly as school but wasn’t very interested and I skipped it most of the time but I’ve always been interested in learning about the things I’ve been interested in, knowing that you can build your own computer. 

I mean, not like coding and that kind of stuff but like putting the motherboard together, putting the graphics card in, that made like building, recording studios that were more expensive than I could afford possible, so that is the first thing but yeah, the main thing would be being able to learn software because especially nowadays, we can just go and YouTube and learn almost anything, you can be something totally different 12 months from now and you can make anything you want to and you can learn any piece of software. 

20 years ago when I started trying to learn 3D software the first time, all you had was the manual or you could go and do a course in like a university or a college but now, you can get all that information online and you can just sit on the comfort of your home and do tutorial after tutorial after tutorial and just become good at something. I feel like that’s the most important thing, being able to learn new things is the most important thing. 

In terms of advice someone else has taught me, I guess when I was a teenager, I was really into music and I was working a bit with Brian Eno, and he said, she want a record deal because all of my friends were in rock bands and they’re getting into that kind of thing and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds amazing” and he was like, “You know, if you want to have a career in music, if you want to do it forever, don’t get a record deal.” 

Find any way you can to survive and work in music without ever selling what you are to somebody else. That was pretty solid advice, I think too in end times when people have offered me record deals where if I hadn’t been through that, I probably would have gone, “Yeah, give me that money straight away now” not realizing that long term, you can get that record deal, spend that money in five years’ time you can still be in debt and still be looking for work. 

[0:19:08.7] NORCAL: Yeah and it seems like you hear that occasionally. I mean you don’t hear it a lot because I think they keep it under wraps but occasionally you do. 

[0:19:19.3] JW: Yeah, doing and tell private stories of what people told me but I think a lot of people working in the music industry have come out of seemingly successful projects with a lot of debt just because of the way record labels organize contracts. You know like the lock contract I was off that they were going to take 50% of all my earnings for life and they wanted to spend as much money as they wanted to advertise in my music and marketing and music videos but I wasn’t allowed to authorize how they spent the money but I would owe that money back to them from my earnings like every expense came from my 50% and that’s quite a normal record deal really. 

[0:19:58.2] NORCAL: That’s just insane.

[0:20:01.5] JW: Yeah but people sign it because they offer you like ten or $20,000 upfront and when you’re like, you know, if you’re broke sometimes it’s like, “Wow!” yes, have that $20,000 not realizing that you’re probably better to borrow that 20,000 off the bank. 

[0:20:17.0] NORCAL: Yeah, I mean you’re getting taxed on that deal, that record deal worse than your government taxes. 

[0:20:25.6] JW: Yeah and you know, a lot of people would be surprised how many people will sign things without reading it properly. 

[0:20:30.3] NORCAL: Do you have any advice for artists joining the NFT space?

[0:20:34.6] JW: Yeah, anything is down to a certain amount of your earnings in art and time and how you do things but if it’s like one of piece of advice, I would say go on Twitter, follow the people that are in the NFT space that you like and just chat with them and don’t tweet your art at them, don’t show it at all just like crack jokes, comment on their thing, retweet, engage and slowly you’ll form friendships. 

That is the most important thing, those relationships and being in the space and then eventually, just being around. People will take notice and they’ll come to your art naturally but of course on your Twitter feed, you should always be like, “I made this, check this out. I’m really happy with this” but what I mean is don’t @ people with your stuff, you know? Don’t overly tag them, don’t make them feel like you’re bombarding them and stuff. 

That’s my best advice. For me it’s like Twitter is more important than Instagram, Facebook, YouTube combined. 

[0:21:33.2] NORCAL: Right and I do agree with that. I notice when people interact with comments I make or post I make and if it is funny, it is even more likely that I’ve got to interact with them and if they constantly do that, then you know, finally like, “All right, I’ll give this guy a follow” or this girl a follow and yeah, I think it’s a good way to do it. 

[0:21:55.9] JW: Especially if they’re funny to you. Not that like it’s easy for anyone to be funny but if you can be funny, be funny. That’s one piece of advice. 

[0:22:04.9] NORCAL: Yeah, get your GIF game up. If you could live or move anywhere, where would you live and why? 

[0:22:14.6] JW: I kind of have done that. I kind of like did it, the funny thing is when you can live wherever you want, you end up changing your mind every few years, that’s the other thing also. I think it’s like the perfect place is everywhere because when I was younger, I grew up in London and then because that was the normal to me I wanted to try somewhere else so I wanted to live in Europe and then wanted to live in New York, I went to New York and New York was fantastic for a period of time. 

It is like that was a perfect place for that time in life but I always wanted to live in Barcelona because it was such a nice city Iused to DJ here in the 2000s and I had so much fun. I’d come for a weekend and stay for two weeks and so I always wanted to live in Barcelona and that now we live here, I really do like it. It’s a great city, it is not too big, not too small, not to aggressive, great weather, you’re really close to the rest of Europe by plane and car so yeah, I love it here. 

It is going on a bit but yeah, so everywhere I think my next stop for us will be Portugal, so yeah. I think to answer that question is ideal if you live wherever you wanted, it would be like a bit of Spain, maybe down south in the winter to warm up, probably go to the States, a bit of England, the rest of Europe, I love Europe, all of Europe like just driving around Europe is so nice. I’d love to spend more time in Japan and I’d love to go to Korea, South Korea. I have never been to South Korea. 

Yeah but that is just like having a holiday now, so there there’s always partnership living everywhere. 

[0:23:44.9] NORCAL: Nice, so do you have any questions for me? 

[0:23:47.9] JW: Yeah, when did you get into NFTs first? 

[0:23:50.5] NORCAL: It’s only been maybe I guess it is about a year now. 

[0:23:55.7] JW: What was your first experience with NFTs? 

[0:23:59.3] NORCAL: Oh, well, I mean I remember hearing about them. I remember like Crypto Kitties back in ’17, in the ’17, ’18 whenever they came out and I just thought it was a game really, I mean it was a game and you know, people buying these JPEGs and breeding them, getting these other JPEGs and stuff and they are just – it just sounded dumb to me because partly, I guess partly because you know you’re just finished like the ICOs of all ‘16, ’17 that now have all gone mostly to zero then you’re like, “Why am I going to jump into something like this? It sounds dumb” and whatnot and so I ignored it. 

For I guess the past couple of years and then didn’t even look at it and then I saw some crypto guy starting to talk about it. Mainly, they were talking about NBA top shots, so I jumped in on that a little bit and then that through some discords brought me to like OpenSea and started just browsing around there and got into some art blocks and then some one-on-one stuff. 

[0:25:13.1] JW: What is your first one-on-one? 

[0:25:15.8] NORCAL: You know, I think I don’t even – I have to go dig it up but it was like that scream painting but it was a Pepe and then it was like a stock chart going to zero. 

[0:25:28.5] JW: Nice, did you – which site did you get them? 

[0:25:32.9] NORCAL: OpenSea. 

[0:25:33.6] JW: Nice, so did they had an auction or like straight price? 

[0:25:35.8] NORCAL: It was straight price, I think it was like. 

[0:25:38.4] JW: Nice and so you’re involved in crypto currency before that? 

[0:25:41.0] NORCAL: Yeah. 

[0:25:41.6] JW: For how long? When did you get into crypto? 

[0:25:44.0] NORCAL: I got in right before Mt.Gox went belly up. 

[0:25:52.0] JW: Did you keep Bitcoin all that time and just watch it go down and come back up? 

[0:25:55.8] NORCAL: Yeah, so Bitcoin, I think it topped out around $1,200 then and I was buying and I was like, “This is the future” and then it started tanking after Mt. Gox, it went all the way down to like 200 and I was like, “Well, I still think it’s the future. I am going to still buy.” My wife was like, “Why are you buying this stupid stuff? Stop wasting our money.” We just started a business, so we didn’t have a lot of extra cash. 

[0:26:29.3] JW: Nice, that’s a hard convincing.

[0:26:31.6] NORCAL: Yeah and so I would still buy like maybe a couple of times a month and then I’d run out to the mailbox, get the bank statements and quickly put them in the folder in the filing cabinet like, “No, you can’t see this.” Oh man, good times. 

[0:26:49.5] JW: Were you involved in Ethereum before you involved in NFTs? 

[0:26:52.0] NORCAL: Yeah, I did get in Ethereum in like, I want to say like ’15, you know ’15 or ’16, maybe it was ’16. 

[0:27:00.2] JW: Was NFTs your first experience of the smart contract? 

[0:27:04.1] NORCAL: Yes, actually using a smart contract. I know Nick Szabo talked about smart contracts a bit and I know people in the Bitcoin space would talk about smart contracts  and whatnot but I never actually use a smart contract until buying an NFT. 

[0:27:22.0] JW: Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean I had friends who’d been mining Bitcoin forever but like you say, it’s always just seemed too confusing to me. NFTs will brought me in and now I suddenly learned everything about it or everything I can learn about it and I just think it makes smart contracts, you know, there is a lot of things people talk about technically until you have a used case, until you have something fun everyone can do it but now, you know, I have loads of friends who like can’t afford to be paying Ethereum gas fees but then their own [tesos 0:27:49.7] buying like $20 NFTs, right? 

Really enjoying that and then from that, you know you start to extrapolate with the smart contracts are going and reading about insurance companies moving to it being able to do all sorts of databases when it becomes faster, cheaper. Like I say, it’s about less of that thing of being in a coat on totally, I think it’s the future on that and it is really I’ll worry about my mental health because I’m like I can’t see any other way. 

[0:28:19.6] NORCAL: Yeah, same. I’m like I am all in on crypto at this point. 

[0:28:24.7] JW: When Ethereum crashed in May I was worried and I was reading and watching it, everything I could but I didn’t sell anything because I thought I just felt like it was the wrong thing to do and then these last few times it’s crashed are really, you know, we don’t even talk about it. We don’t even worry about it and just like of the insane belief that it is just going to be okay and also the exponential change that technology is going through is just a fact come to your processes and speeding up and you know the next ten years are going to be comparable to the last 60 in terms of technological difference. 

It is just the idea that like smart contracts and everything is just going to take a pause now for like a three year bear market. It seems crazy to me but I guess people who went through like 2017 will probably be like, “Yeah, that one looks crazy until it isn’t.” 

[0:29:15.0] NORCAL: Right, I feel with more people coming in, I mean there could be a pullback but it may not be as bad as like the 80% pullback that we’ve had a few times or a couple times I guess big ones. 

[0:29:30.9] JW: Yeah and I will say like how does if Eth goes 2.0 this year, how does that account from the slide in with like a four year cycle where it’s a halving cycle unit, does it even matter anymore. 

[0:29:42.8] NORCAL: Right, yeah, good question. 

[0:29:46.1] JW: Well, I guess we’re going to find out soon. 

[0:29:48.3] NORCAL: Yeah, true. Yeah and I just don’t see anything else with this kind of asymmetric return. 

[0:29:56.5] JW: Yeah and I mean not even the money of it like where you expect Ethereum to go up in price but the Metaverse aspect of it and just the building of this. There is a ton of us now who have made a decent chunk of money and we’re not going to go back to ad agncey work and so basically, everyone is just building now. 

[0:30:16.4] NORCAL: Right. 

[0:30:16.9] JW: Whether it’s selling or not everyone is building. 

[0:30:20.1] NORCAL: Yeah, I mean it’s certainly interesting I mean because now, we have a lot of really good artists not wanting to go back to commercial work or if those people will start raising their payment, their pay scales to get to try to entice these artist back or not. 

[0:30:37.1] JW: Yeah, we replace everything there with a different versions of an interest group place Spotify with a decentralized one, replace Netflix with a decentralized one. It sounds crazy but like you know, give us 12 months and enough budget, a lot of things can change. 

[0:30:54.2] NORCAL: For sure. Do you have any shout outs or do you have any projects that you’ve been working on coming out in a month or so? 

[0:31:01.6] JW: Yeah, sort of like loads at a time. I am doing within a bunch of collabs and I’d never say it unless they have said it, working with a few things with Griff.

[0:31:11.0] NORCAL: Oh sweet. 

[0:31:12.1] JW: Very stylistic stuff characters, he’s been working on, stories and then music, audio-visual like interactions with that. We have been finished a piece, it’s like a reference to all your base arw belong to us, the Sega meme that is coming out any day now. Yeah, always working on a bunch of audio-visual pieces like at [inaudible 0:31:33.5] We work on like three or four things at a simultaneous time like push everything forward a little bit. 

Yeah, we got a few more collabs but I am not going to mention their names yet, they haven’t mentioned it online and yeah, just like video remixing all the time like in amongst selling NFTs, I try to do – basically do every collector of a one of one, the primary with collector. We do a video remix for on any subject that they want, so after we do an NFT always I have a week or two of making their remix and so just finished like three of those in a row that’s what I did over Christmas basically. 

One I am going to put out right now, which is for [Buzz Ellias 0:32:13.6] yeah, that is a remix of a classic actor. Yeah and then try to do remixes of other artists, you know? All the time, try and keep going like I am working on one of Claire very slowly at the moment. It should be finished at some point, always trying to make remixes of other crypto [inaudible 0:32:30.9] so that when I am video djing, I can play NFT sets that are like properly full of crypto culture, so remixes of the memes and the artists. 

[0:32:40.8] NORCAL: I like that. 

[0:32:41.4] JW: Yes, so that’s like constantly doing that kind of stuff. 

[0:32:44.0] NORCAL: Nice, well and also I didn’t say this earlier, Jonny also made the intro music for this podcast and the video mix, just FYI. 

[0:32:56.0] JW: Oh yeah, yeah, thank you for that. That was one of those meant to be your present then you very kindly paid for it when I wasn’t expecting it, so I also did the other mix, so I think do you want to put out that I made for you. 

[0:33:09.5] NORCAL: Yeah, it made the movie The Mask with Jim Carey, he did a mix of that. It was pretty sweet. 

[0:33:15.3] JW: Yeah, I love that film. 

[0:33:17.4] NORCAL: We’ll have to put it out soon. 

[0:33:19.7] JW: Cool and maybe with this interview. 

[0:33:21.7] NORCAL: Yeah, for sure with this interview. Cool, well Jonny, thank you so much for your time. 

[0:33:27.1] JW: Hey, thank you so much for having me. It’s been great to talk with you. 

[0:33:29.8] NORCAL: It was a great time, thank you. You have a good evening. 

[0:33:33.0] JW: Yeah, have a lovely day. 

[0:33:34.2] NORCAL: Thanks. 

[END]