NorCal and Shill
A podcast where NFT artists tell stories, hosted by NorCal Guy. https://twitter.com/GuyNorcal
https://twitter.com/norcalandshill
NorCal and Shill
Ben Roy - Collector
What if the world of digital art could be as compelling and valuable as your cherished Pokémon card collection? Join us as we sit down with Ben Roy, a passionate digital art collector whose journey began with trading cards and has now led him to the exciting landscape of NFTs and crypto art. Ben shares his unique insights on how projects like Decentraland have fueled his enthusiasm, and he breaks down the complexities of valuing digital art. Discover the critical role of editions versus one-of-one pieces, and why the artist's community is essential for both the creator and the collector.
In this episode, we also explore the dynamic nature of memes and their unparalleled power to connect people in the digital space. Ben takes us through the fascinating world of non-visual NFTs, such as music and written content, pondering why they haven't gained as much traction and what challenges lie ahead. We dive deep into the strategic considerations of art collecting, from the allure of an artist’s genesis piece to the rising phenomenon of AI-generated art. Ben’s thoughtful reflections offer a glimpse into the future of how technology and innovation are reshaping art.
But it doesn't stop there. We delve into Ben's passion for writing and his commitment to making his monthly newsletter a delightful read, even for those who aren’t avid readers. His dedication to crafting engaging blog posts showcases the intersection of crypto, tech, and culture in an accessible way. Through his lens, we explore media and liquid culture conversations, providing valuable insights and sparking meaningful discussions. This episode is brimming with hot takes and insightful reflections, making it a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the rapidly evolving digital art landscape.
https://x.com/benroy__
https://benroy.beehiiv.com/
Podcast Liquid Culture
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/liquid-culture/id1749347135
Who is this? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Norcal guy.
Ben Roy:NorCal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy.
NorCal Guy:NorCal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal and chill podcast. So it's chill time, norcal and chill podcast. What the sh-, what the sh NorCal and chillill Podcast. What the sh-, what the sh-? Norcal and Shill Podcast. So it's shill time, norcal and Shill Podcast. What the sh-, what the?
Ben Roy:sh-.
NorCal Guy:Welcome back to another episode of NorCal and Shill. Today, we dive deep into the world of NFTs, crypto art andcape of Digital Ownership with our guest, ben Roy. In this episode, ben unpacks the intricacies of valuing art in the crypto space, emphasizing the relevance of art supply editions and the artist's community. He shares his fascination with the idea of networked collections and the overlooked potential for community building within digital art. Ben opens up about his initial interest in NFTs, sparked by projects like Decentraland, and reflects on his journey from collecting Pokemon cards to becoming immersed in the world of crypto art. He highlights the positive nature of Web3 and its promise for hardworking individuals. Throughout the conversation, ben and I explore the complexities of pricing art and cryptocurrency, the importance of artist provenance and the challenges of attracting new collectors to the space. Ben also shares his thoughts on AI art, non-visual NFTs like music and writing, and the future of digital art collecting. Join us as we delve into the fascinating intersection of technology, culture and art and discover why Ben believes that, in this evolving digital landscape, the real value lies in the innovation and creativity of the artist. Stay tuned for an episode brimming with insights, hot takes and a look into the future of digital art.
NorCal Guy:Everybody. Please welcome Ben Roy. Hey, ben, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today, dude? I'm doing so well. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I thank you for coming on. Thank you for being a guest. I feel very appreciative and honored because you have good takes that you post on X Twitter and I, you know I appreciate them because they're not they're kind of contrarian, they're kind of opposite of the, the current thinking, and I think there are, they're actually good takes that, um, you have good thoughts on the subjects that you talk about thanks so much.
Ben Roy:You know it's funny like you tweet into the abyss and never really assume anyone's reading it for the most part, so it's always fun to be like ah, I actually read your stuff. Um, yeah, so thank you?
NorCal Guy:yeah, of course, so I guess just jumping in. So what were your first thoughts when you heard about these NFTs, crypto arts?
Ben Roy:Yeah, good question. So for me, I kind of came into crypto around. Then, super random moment in time, I missed that whole previous bubble but came in and I was like pretty taken by nfts, right away actually, and so I bought decentraland this is like summer of 2019 or something right. It's like man, maybe this is gonna be like ready player, one like I should probably own some land in this like magical virtual world. That seems like a smart decision, right, and so I came at it from that and I didn't really think too much else of it. I was just like, okay, I guess you can own stuff now, like game items and whatever. I didn't, unfortunately, buy punks at the time. I missed some of the early serious money makers, but at least in general it kind of clicked for me. I think it took a little bit of the euphoria for me to really realize it. Oh, you know there's a lot of other things you can do here, but yeah, out of the gate it was more of like a metaverse nerd type of thing.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, no, I get that, because I felt that way too, but I was like maybe the I was leaning more towards the Super World app, which still hasn't gone anywhere, either leaning more towards the super world app, which still hasn't gone anywhere either oh, so did you collect art or anything else before nfts?
Ben Roy:yeah, so I collected pokemon cards pretty heavily, okay, um, before nfts I wasn't a physical art collector. I mean so much of it's just that it's quite expensive and so, um, for my, where my like budget was at through I guess, like 20 says 2017, 18, 19 I went back and it's funny in reflection, because you're like, cool, I'm going to buy some pokemon cards. I'm going to like put them up for sale on ebay. The slippage of doing that is insane. If you compare that to like buying an nft. Right, you're like, wow, I have to wait two weeks for this thing to get mailed to me. I'm paying this huge fee. It's just this ridiculous experience. But, um, that was less the raw, like you know how do I make money, that was a part of it but more just like that was a big part of my childhood and stuff. So trying to figure out how do I collect some of these things and have that for sentimental value. Um, so, yeah, definitely a collector streak in general before NFT land.
NorCal Guy:Right, right. So what are the best things about Web3 today?
Ben Roy:That's a good question. I think I would say it's modestly more meritocratic than most other industries you could spend your time in, whether that's like traditional art, traditional finance, like traditional tech, even any of the industries that would intersect with kind of what three. You yeah, you just have to fight for fight harder, for longer to kind of go up those hierarchies where, while crypto stuff is not perfect and there's definitely kind of insiders and cabals and whatnot, I think yeah, like it's, I think of it like we're playing in the European basketball league versus the NBA, like there's some players right Like you can still hoop, but it's not that professional yet, and so you just have way higher upside if you work hard. Does that make sense?
NorCal Guy:Yes, yeah, yeah, I get that, I get that. So where do you? I think you'll have some interesting insight on this one when do you see digital art and NFTs in five years?
Ben Roy:And then do you have any concerns as it expands? Yeah, this is a hard one. Okay, I'll give you what I hope to see, I think, in five years. I hope that it's normalized for people to collect digital art for $20 worth of that a week and that there's some natural ways to display that as part of you know, your social presence or in your house or whatever, right, I want to think that the, the, what we spend our time doing is a little bit more, you know, normalized, yeah, um, I do think the thing that concerns me probably is, uh, we just are dealing with a bit of an overhang from the hype of 2021, so there's a lot of expectations, right, where artists are like, cool, I'm going to make this insane amount of money, or collectors are going to flip stuff for, you know, infinite amount of money, and I think it may be a little bit of a slower grind than that.
Ben Roy:So it's kind of like you're battling uphill against pretty intense expectations for the financial, financialized side of of digital art, right, um, I'm very like bullish, like I really think it's a special um category, like the way that you can build relationships with artists and your community of collectors. Things like this there's. It's a lot of cool things to pull on, but yeah, hopefully it's normalized, but also kind of caution on the whole. You know, hype, euphoria, hangover, yeah, fair, that's fair.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, I mean yeah, there's no, I mean there's only so many people and you know, I feel like some of it's slowed down and a lot of it's hard to do because so many people have become friends. There's not like that competition anymore. So you need, like this new layer of people or this new cohort that comes in and is like willing to, you know, overbid your friend and stuff for the right piece, definitely, because I mean nowadays you're like oh yeah, oh man, I don't want to overbid this guy, I like him I've even done that with you before.
Ben Roy:I was like, oh you know, norcal bid on a photo, like I guess I'm not even gonna play, makes sense, uh. So yeah, no, I I think I think this was mckenzie at ensemble. He was saying most of the platforms are kind of duking it out over the same 35 collectors. Right, and as much as it's a bit of a joke like it, it does speak to where we're at in some way, where you you just want to see that number go up 100x as soon as you possibly can right right just like get more people interested in this stuff for sure is there anything you'd like to see more of in the crypto art space I think I still think there is like unexplored area around community building with collections and additions.
Ben Roy:I think I'm sure we'll get into some of the different pieces to this puzzle, but part of what makes digital art special, or like this little particular part of crypto special, is you just have this networked collection idea of OK, I can create an art blocks set of you know 500 outputs, or it's a photography collection or whatever, and I think previously it's not like the people who own Monet is just hang out with each other. You know they probably just have their Monet on the wall in their hedge fund or whatever and they do their thing. Um the. The thing that really captured me earlier in 2021 was was, yeah, that like networked ability to offer people maybe a lower value, um way to collect someone's work, but also like build community around them in a very coherent way.
Ben Roy:Um and so yeah, there's definitely a lot of good examples of people who already do this well, but I think exploring that more would be something I'd like to see more of yeah, I can see that.
NorCal Guy:Um, yeah, I don't feel like it's it's been really done yet, or I mean, punks are kind of doing, in a way, are the closest thing to that, I think, but it hasn't really been really done. I don't know if it's done well, but like I don't know.
Ben Roy:There's just unexplored potential. Put it that way right like I think there's a lot of things people can do um, so hopefully we see more experiments along those lines for sure.
NorCal Guy:So does one eth equal one eth man I.
Ben Roy:I feel like we both know lots of people on either side of this debate, and so it's an interesting question to wrestle with. I lean towards not. I think it's not really a unit of account for artists and how they live their lives, for people how they live their lives or how they're really conceptualizing Like, do I have enough money to buy this? What I'll say on the positive side, or on the like what you know, what, what might make equal one ETH is there are some assets that are like uniquely Ethereum related or like cultural, culturally relevant, and there's a lot of Ethereum native wealth that might maybe keep some of those assets afloat as it goes up, but it's just like. Personally, I think it's hard to hold in your head the tension of like I'm very bullish on Ethereum, I think it's going to be, you know, whatever $20,000 one day, and then think that all the art that you buy has like an embedded 10x inside it.
Ben Roy:You know what I mean. Like it. Just, it feels like I like that we use Ethereum. It's interesting to me that this stuff is denominated in ETH, but I don't think it's really, when push comes to shove, priced that way. Yeah, and yeah, I don't know. I think it's also difficult sometimes for artists that maybe feel like they need to do that, because you know you sell something for two ETH one time and it's that's like, say, it's eight grand near the top, and then you can't really go back and sell because you feel like you need to. You know, sell your next piece at a higher value and all of a sudden he is now in the tank, whatever, and it's like, okay, how do you judge and juggle these dynamics?
NorCal Guy:it can be tricky, for sure, for sure for sure um yeah, I feel like well, you uh super rare is starting to do. Did they announce that they're doing usdC pricing or something like that, or payments in? I?
Ben Roy:think they had Rare pricing first and then USDC pricing as well, and I think, yeah, I mean, I hope we still use Ether to purchase things Like I think that's a big part of the kind of moneyness of this whole scene. But in your head, are you sitting there thinking there, thinking like, oh, punks are 26 ETH, or are you thinking like other 50 grand or 75 grand most people, if you're to like actually answer honestly, you're still thinking in USD terms and so, yeah, I don't know, I kind of wish in some magical sci-fi world that we were pricing things in this different way, but I just don't think for the majority of cases, that's how it really works.
NorCal Guy:Yeah yeah, so does supply matter?
Ben Roy:I think I think it depends. You know, I was thinking about um andy warhol recently, uh, and he's just like an insane amount of supply, yeah, and and he's an exception, obviously, like he represents a moment in time in art that is unusual. Most people are not going to have that much demand and stuff. It really is that equation, right, of trying to balance supply and demand. But yeah, I think my answer to this just boils down to it depends. I think, overwhelmingly, supply does matter.
Ben Roy:But I do think there are going to be moments or specific artists or different scenarios where you could justify having a really big supply as a way to, yeah, like kind of what we talked about before, maybe build community at first, in the early stage of your career, or explore some other different concept or theme that actually then does have merit down the line, and so, yeah, it sort of depends on who you're talking to a little bit and at what stage of their career they're. Like an artist might be in um, do I look personally at supply when I buy things for sure, right, like it's a data point, um, but I'm not, I'm not so obsessed with that. I'm kind of more interested in who the who the artist is themselves. Um, because I think that's probably more relevant than the supply part of the equation. You know Picasso also put out just like an insane amount of work. There's a lot of people that you know it was more their relevance culturally that pushed them forward than whether they had a lot of supplier or not. You know Right.
NorCal Guy:So do you have any thoughts on additions versus one of ones, how they should work together?
Ben Roy:I mean, you keep on coming back to this community aspect, which maybe that's where it should play out, but uh, yeah, curious your thoughts yeah, um, I think I like editions personally, like definitely on that community piece, because it lets you, you know, access an artist or own their work in a more affordable way. Um, I think it it's just like more a tool in the toolkit than a binary right to say you know, if you're an artist, like one of ones are going to be your, your crown jewel, right, you probably don't want too many of those, you want it to matter, you want to be able to tell stories of who you are with them. But that's kind of like a pull up, pulling on that thread of does supply matter, right, scarcity matters in those instances. But I think, like tastefully using additions alongside that is a cool tool in the toolkit. Like I think there are going to be strong cases for that sort of thing.
Ben Roy:Now, that might be like an addition of 25. That might be something smaller, right, it doesn't have to be these in our heads. I think we think of open additions where it's like 10,000 minutes or like infinite number of minutes. That is different and I do think you kind of lose the magic of ownership sometimes when you do have that kind of infinite mint. That said, there might be people who are earlier in their career, who like focus more on the content side, like I'm a blogger or something, like I want to go viral with comics. I want to do that in a way to grow my reach. Um, that's not necessarily focused on one of ones. Um. So, yeah, different tools, uh, for different people, for sure for sure.
NorCal Guy:So I'm curious do you have a best piece of advice you've been given, or do you have like a mantra that you kind of live by? That kind of runs through your head.
Ben Roy:Yeah, I think my favorite, one of my favorite quotes is all models are wrong.
Ben Roy:Some are useful.
Ben Roy:It's by this guy named George Box who was a British statistician, and it's just an interesting thing because I think it kind of returns agency back to all of us to do our own original thinking about stuff, to be like you know what some expert or some other person might have interesting thoughts and important contributions to a conversation, but nothing is ever totally correct, like there are ways of looking at the world through models that are helpful, um, but yeah, there's always some sort of different approach or different way of understanding things.
Ben Roy:And I think, yeah, I think about it a lot, especially now in kind of an internet era, where most people just don't really do much original thinking. You know, it's kind of borrowed opinions and there's a lot of you know and I'm guilty of it myself too it's not I think it's common across most of us where you're just like I'm consuming so much information that it's hard to actually do the, the creator part or like the actual step aside and do some thinking, um, so yeah, I don't know if it's a mantra, but as a quote, I think you know all models are wrong, some are useful. Uh, it can be helpful. No, I like that.
NorCal Guy:I appreciate that. Um yeah, especially in this day and age, because people don't think a lot. So if you could live or move anywhere, where would you live and why?
Ben Roy:you know this is a hard one for me because I feel like I have so many answers. I don't have a very clear like this is the city that I want to live in, but I think I would be super keen to do a season in New York and I would be interested in doing a season in Tokyo. And I think I guess, maybe for context, I'm based in Vancouver in Canada. I think when you look at North America, new York is hard to beat for a lot of different cultural reasons. There's just like a convergence of people and money and different activity there that is intense when you visit, like the pace is crazy and so I'm not sure I could like live there, live there properly, but to do a season there would be fun.
Ben Roy:And then, yeah, tokyo like I guess it's become a bit of a cliche to go to Japanapan, um, but my, my dad actually lived there when I was growing up and my grandpa also, um, spent a bunch of time there after world war ii and so it's just like there's some familial connection to that. Yeah, and thinking through, like just a different understanding of culture and art and the same things that I would care about in new york, uh, but from more of an asian perspective. Yeah, um, having never been, it's kind of high on the list.
NorCal Guy:Nice, I like that. So if you were an animal, what would you be and why?
Ben Roy:I love this. I would be a killer whale. This is a shout out to the Northwest. I think it's just crazy when you see huge animals in real life like the majesty of them is insane to me and you know, growing up in vancouver you were right by the ocean. A big part of kind of like who I am in my childhood is all this ocean stuff and I think, yeah, just gun to my head if I had to make make one choice, we're going with killer whale, all right solid, it's solid.
NorCal Guy:Do you have a favorite movie quote or song lyric?
Ben Roy:yeah, this, this is harder, I think. Um, there's a quote. You know there's like a thousand answers, right? I'm a big movie guy and I'm a big music guy, so it's hard to to hone in on one. But one that I have had stuck in my head is actually from the martian uh, with mad damon, like a movie, where he gets stuck on mars, uh, and he just has a moment where he says I'm not gonna die here and that's kind of the inflection point of the movie, where he tries to make it back from mars to earth and goes through all this other stuff, and I think it just says a lot about willpower and about determination and about, like your agency to choose in life. And for some reason I forget why I think I watched it a second time, you know, a year ago, and ever since then I've just had that in the back of my head, thinking yeah.
Ben Roy:OK, I can. I can make those choices that matter. Yeah, that would be my answer. I like that.
NorCal Guy:This one's a good one. So what is the best thing and the silliest thing you've spent money on?
Ben Roy:Wow, best thing, maybe a cop-out answer. I don't have like a big ticket item, but I did a lot of travel the last two years. Yeah, a lot of the sort of crypto conference circuit, a bunch of just relationships, right. Like hanging out with people in real life is hard to hard to beat, and so I think you spend some, some money up front and wander all over the place to go hang out with a bunch of these different people, and so that's definitely a good thing. I think it was worthwhile. A silly example, man, I think I'm like keeping my local smoothie shop in business, um, but by like, I have a smoothie every day, like five times a week, at the smoothie shop and it's not that expensive. Um, it's probably a little bit, you know. It's like 10 bucks or something for a smoothie. So, whatever that is in and that's Canadian.
Ben Roy:So we'll we'll, we'll go with a nice like 750 for the americans in the audience and you're like, could I make a smoothie for less than that? Yes, and I typically have through my life, but I've just gotten into this routine, especially through the summer, of like getting up and going out to the smoothie shop and it's just funny like every single person on the staff knows who I am now it. It's just like you're like the regular guy hey, Ben, nice to see you. And so, yeah, not like a huge ticket item, but just a funny like it's weird to be a regular somewhere, especially in a post-COVID era where I think still a lot of retail stuff is pretty cooked right. So yeah, that's a funny one.
NorCal Guy:That's solid. I I mean you're supporting local business you know it's good exactly if you could. This was gonna be hard. If you could commission a piece and have two artists collaborate on it, which two artists would it be?
Ben Roy:yeah, this is hard. I think there's a lot of different combos that I would love really resonated with, of like just being a tech person thinking about the future or these sorts of things and I think Claire also has quite a future orientation to her work but it's a little bit more bubbly, there's a little more hope, there's a little bit more of like magic and color, yeah, and so I think I just think it could be cool to pair their brains together to be like well, what does the future look like? You know where, where?
NorCal Guy:do you?
Ben Roy:meet in the middle with your styles, um, because I think there's definitely some similarities, but also some meaningful distinctions, uh. So yeah, if I could, you know, magically choose a collab to happen, those would be my. That'd be my pick. I like it.
NorCal Guy:I like it is there an interesting fact about you that people might not be aware of?
Ben Roy:yeah, um, I think so random fact about me that I think you would not find otherwise shared first on this podcast alone um, is I actually am a national champion in ultimate frisbee in canada. Oh, all right, so I played a lot of frisbee growing up and it's so funny because it's kind of this sport that makes fun of itself. It's like, obviously at some level, a very competitive sport and, yeah, you know you get a lot of people who come over from soccer, from football, to to play, and yet there's kind of this running joke of like is it really a sport? Like you're throwing this weird little plastic disc around the field? Um, so, yeah, from like a you know off crypto life, like previous to this whole scene, um, that was a big part of how I spent a lot of my time, um, throwing a plastic disc around a field I like it.
NorCal Guy:You have a good advantage with it.
Ben Roy:Yeah, no, I mean, it's a fun, it's just fun, right. And I think there's also something very West Coast about it. People, I think, resonate with it a little bit more out this way versus elsewhere. Maybe it's just the hippie sort of sensibility, I don't know. But yeah, that's kind of a random. Yeah, out of my back pocket In fact, yeah, do that's kind of a random yeah out of my back pocket fact.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, do you have a favorite way to connect with people in the space?
Ben Roy:I think my answer is going to be memes. Oh, yeah, okay, and why I say that is like it's. It's kind of the lowest barrier to entry form of communication, like whether you're just memeing on the timeline or in DMs with people throwing different things around. It's so accessible. There's always some way of people being like. Either I don't have to respond, I can respond with an emoji. I can like laugh, I can riff on a different other meme that's related.
Ben Roy:Yeah, you come to this person or to this new group with no extra assumptions other than like humor and you know, maybe another quote I could have pulled on earlier that I really like is laughter is the closest distance between two people. Um, by this danish, uh, I believe danish comedian, um, and it's just fun, right? I think there's some way of connecting over memes that feels like you're getting closer to someone in an authentic way, where you don't have to go through the list of like who are you, what's your job? Like, where are you from? The the kind of basic social questions, and you skip right to the heart of hey, like, we share something in common. We find these things funny together, right? Um, so, yeah, if if I had to give one answer, that would be.
NorCal Guy:It means all right, I like that. That's a solid one. So do you have any questions for me?
Ben Roy:I do, actually I I'm curious how you think about nfts other than art, um so basically there's two buckets.
Ben Roy:One is, yeah, the whole music nft conversation and whether you think that's viable or interesting or or not, but also like there's a lot of things that you could collect on the internet, right like you could write an essay. Paragraph is a mirror. I've been doing this for a while and those things never really picked up and I think largely it's because there's no speculative loop around them. Um, but I'm curious how you, yeah, what your experience has been with non art quote unquote, like not digital art, uh, nfts and if you're used to also find those things cool unquote.
NorCal Guy:Like not digital art, uh, nfts, and if you're, you also find those things cool. Yeah, no, I've I. I am actually surprised that music hasn't done better, because I feel like people can really connect with music just as much as with art. But I guess I don't know if there's mainly because maybe it's because, you know, music isn't like a one-of-one or a an addition type of thing and so it's like more of a given out there. I'd like, and maybe it's just the it needs to be reframed. I don't know. It's more given out there and people are like hey, go support me if you enjoy the music, type thing.
NorCal Guy:I feel that's how it's approached, instead of like, hey, I made this audio art piece, do you want to buy an edition of it? The tricky part is like the streaming type of service. Like I want to go stream this, like how do I do that? Like I guess most of them have it on Spotify somewhere. You just got to find it and stream it. But I am surprised that the art, the, the music, hasn't done more and but I do find it fascinating. Um, I mean, we've seen kind of some people try and do like the poetry thing and I think that is interesting, um, I guess, I don't know, maybe just because it's words on a page and people it's not like, because this is such a visual space. Um, and maybe that's the issue with music too is because it is such a visual space. That's why it has done better.
NorCal Guy:I don't know Cause we're all. I mean, we're on our phone. Most of us are on their phones or computers and if you're on your phone you're not probably not always going to have your earbuds in, so you're not always going to like have the music turned up loud. You're just going to like have most stuff on mute and like, hopefully have subtitles so you can read along. So I don't know that and like, hopefully have subtitles so you can read along. So I don't know. That's an interesting point.
NorCal Guy:Um, as far as those aspects, I mean, I think it'd be interesting. Um, and I I feel like this is kind of where the I'm not a huge fan of the freeman meta, but it could be interesting for like a newsletter type thing and potentially in I don't know how it would work exactly, but you're posting this newsletter, people can mint it for free for like a week or whenever you know, until the next one comes out, who knows? And then potentially you could have like rewards for or do, do something, not necessarily a reward, but do something special for those. I collected X amount of them, a certain percentage of them. That could be interesting and that could be another way aspect of community building. I just don't know the best way to approach that. I'm just not a fan of the free mints for the artwork. I feel like that's just giving away stuff that potentially has value in the future. It's interesting, but I mean, usually most people don't value free stuff. Well said, but yeah, anything else? Did I answer that enough? Yeah?
Ben Roy:I think that covers it. It's just interesting to riff a little bit and realize in some way we're kind of mirroring the same collector behavior that exists in normal art. Quote-unquote like there's not a lot of people out there bidding on old books.
Ben Roy:You know, maybe jk rowling's like original harry potter edition or something you know, what I mean, like it's so much more consequential or culturally relevant to be like I want, want a Basquiat or I want like a Warhol, like it's just that visual feedback loop of, yes, this is where we've stuck some value, and obviously music has a lot of value too, but it's a bit of a different. It's less ownership oriented, right, and it always has been that way, right, I think you're not really even in iTunes days when you have a 99 cent song.
Ben Roy:You're not thinking so much about owning the actual music itself, you just know you're owning the right to listen to it. Yeah, and so you're one degree off that sense of okay, I own this piece of art. Yeah, anyway, I don't know. I want to believe there's going to be use cases for this stuff, like I don't know. I just I want to believe there's going to be use cases for this stuff, like NFTs for other assets and items, right, but I don't know how to think about it yet as to what, how much value those things are going to have. You know, like you said with the newsletter, maybe that works, right, yeah, the strategy for engagement and community building and whatnot.
NorCal Guy:But do those things hold serious value one day? You know, probably not super likely, right? Yeah, I don't know, it's hard. I mean potentially like the only music that has done that, potentially in that, and that's because the group kind of is the wu-tang, that wu-tang album, you know, there's like so much lore and like mystery around that initially, and then now it's like this thing, you know, and like mystery around that initially, and then now it's like this thing, you know, and like, oh, who's going to do this with it or whatever. And but still, even then they're like hoping to, you know, maybe potentially release it somehow and then make some money off of it or whatever. Whoever actually ends up owning the actual album, which I haven't really followed along with, I just see snippets here and there. But yeah, I, I, uh, I don't know followed along with, I just see snippets here and there.
NorCal Guy:Likewise, yeah, but yeah, I don't know man, Maybe it just has to be reframed. They just haven't done it properly yet. I don't know. It hasn't taken off that's for sure, for sure, for sure. Any other questions?
Ben Roy:I think I mean, I can keep asking you questions all day.
NorCal Guy:How long do?
Ben Roy:you want to go for.
Ben Roy:We'll go we'll go, I'm ready. I'm curious how you think about when to collect someone's work. You know you became pretty well known for collecting a genesis of an artist's work and it's interesting. No, like super, super interesting kind of way to say okay, like hey, I'm drawn to this person want to own their first thing. Other people might say I want to wait until they're proven out a little bit more and then buy one of their works there. Other people might really want to wait until it's like hey, this is X copy, investment grade type of.
NorCal Guy:Thing.
Ben Roy:Yeah. So I don't know. I would love to hear you just riff on that Like is is this just? Hey, I really like artists and want to buy their first thing, is it? You know, tell me more about how you collect along those lines.
NorCal Guy:Yeah, well, I feel like I have a pretty good eye for good art, so I have confidence in what I buy. So for me, I'm like it's not a big deal for me to like wait until someone is you know, quote, unquote successful. Um, I'm down and just buy that first piece if I think the artist is solid. You know, I definitely want to, depending on you know, price wise, and that's also partly why I don't like to invest like in a in a piece more than like three ETH these days, just because you know if it is, you know, an early work.
NorCal Guy:I want to make sure and that's why I like check out their socials and in their website or whatever and hopefully they have some history there before you do put some money out for that piece of art. But I think you can get a lot more bang for your buck by finding a good artist early than buying an X copy once he's successful. So, yeah, I guess that my approach is just like and I used to have more time to do this I used to like actually scroll comments and notifications from different artists that I have turned on to see what they're liking, what they're talking about, and then like, oh, shoot this person, you know, just minted, or they have a genesis and I think it's their work is good, then I'm just gonna go buy it because it seems like a win-win for myself. If I like it and I think it meets all the the check marks or checks all the boxes, I should say yeah love that very cool any other questions?
Ben Roy:maybe a final one on ai art. I'm curious, um, I mean, this is like comes and goes as a hot topic right for the last two years. It's been like, ah, this stuff's not art to okay, like it's part of the process for lots of artists to like. Ah, like, like AI art's its own category, all of this stuff, um, maybe just very simply like, do you do you see it as a different category or do you see it as a process and tool in someone's artistic flow? Like, is someone an artist? Um, or is this like, hey, I want to collect AI art specifically. Um, how does it? Where does it fit in your kind of lay of the landscape?
NorCal Guy:Uh, I, I mean, it's definitely. Some artists definitely use it as tools to like help, like process through an idea, which I think that's really cool. Uh, I feel like it's its own category, though I wouldn't classify this post photography or whatever, because it seems like a lot of it. Is this photo realistic stuff or these crazy dreamlike videos that are like semi-realistic looking. Um, I don't, because I mean I feel like it's just, I don't know, I would always, I just would classify all of it as ai art and then, however you want to, whatever you want to do within that category, is fine, but I would just classify most of it as ai art. I don't know how, because I mean all paintings are classified usually as like paintings and they see like oil or watercolor, but they're all still paintings.
NorCal Guy:Because I would just classify everything as ai art. Like all photograph photography is, even if it's composite photography, it's still photography. So I would just classify all ai art as ai art, not like oh, this is ai photography. Like I think that's dumb. Like no, you're, it's not technically a photograph, it's a wannabe photograph. I'd call it ai art. This is how I would approach it, totally.
Ben Roy:No, it's a fun, it's a good way to, I think, to think about it. It's an interesting thing too where, like it kind of spawned out of crypto in a way. Of course, people have been doing AI art for longer than crypto has been around, in the same way that generative artists have been, you know, doing generative art for longer than crypto has been around, in the same way that generative artists have been doing generative art for longer than crypto has been around. But it's kind of an interesting outflow of like cool.
Ben Roy:We get this crypto art scene. You can mint stuff on blockchains. There's some sort of providence ownership angle, and then AI people just kind of came through and also started to be part of that, ready to build a scene and to have their own little spheres alongside normal, normal art, generative art, you know one of one stuff, all the things, and so in a way, it kind of pulled us into the AI conversation, I think earlier than maybe the wider culture stuff did. Like I was looking at AI art before ChatGPT came out, and that's not because I'm somehow particularly innovative. I think it's just kind of fun because we got um confronted by the stuff in a cool way right earlier, if that makes sense no, that makes sense.
NorCal Guy:I like that um and I agree. Um, we definitely had. It definitely was put out in front of us a lot earlier, especially like we had to question things earlier like wait a second, is that something's not right on that thing? Like, is that ai? Like that was part of you know? We've had that discussion. Like you know, just tell me your process, like don't don't try and hide that it's ai. Just tell me that you used ai in part of it or something I don't know. It looks weird to me.
Ben Roy:Something's off, I don't know why does he have seven fingers?
NorCal Guy:right right yeah, so yeah, it's been fun. Do you have any hot takes?
Ben Roy:um, I think it probably depends on the category. Off the cuff, what do I have to say here? Um, maybe my hottest take is that I don't think chains matter very much when it comes to art. Okay, which is, you know, like counter the whole provenance conversation, like this is like me pulling for you know, trying to come up with a hot take on the fly here.
Ben Roy:I think we overweight provenance in terms of the value of art. Like it's interesting and I'm very sympathetic to this idea that there's a history of people who meant things on chain and that early, super rare pieces or other other work shows that you were here early and kind of you're a pioneer and an innovator. Value flows to people like that. Um, but I just think we under emphasize, like, the actual value of the artists themselves by over focusing on the provenance of the timing of these works, where it's like I'm much, much more interested in who the person is and whether they're innovative yeah, really really going to bat to keep pushing art forward than the fact that they happen to mint something in 2018 or 2019. Um, and I also don't necessarily think it matters as much that something is on either bitcoin or solana or Tezos or something, so long as the artists themselves has that like really singular, like forward orientation to.
Ben Roy:I want to be cutting edge and innovative and creative and kind of like not cult of personality, but yeah, just like there's a force of nature with these artists. And so maybe to wrap this into something neater, I would take the equation of value that we kind of say, okay, a piece of art has value because of a, b and c, and slightly underweight the way that we talk about provenance, to add more weight to the value of the artists themselves, um, and I think that means that you're able to pull across time or chains or whatever, and with a little bit more, um, yeah, like diversity, if that makes sense yeah, no, I I have um thought about this and my thoughts well, I think it would be interesting.
NorCal Guy:So I like the whole provenance, like hey, I created, I minted this and I think more artists should mint closer to like that creation date. I think there's something valuable in that, but I think it would be interesting. So I don't know any answer to this. I'm just throwing things out there that it would be interesting for an artist to have some way to have it minted but then a collector to be able to like pay for it with whatever currency they want and then potentially have it wrapped in whatever contract and put on and then sent to the whatever wallet that that collector wants, like whether that's on bitcoin, like you know, if that's the hardest chain and people want to hold it on that chain, like, all right, this guy minted or minted it on eth. I want it wrapped and I want to buy it with usdc because I don't want to spend my bitcoin and have it sent to my Bitcoin wallet or something like that. I don't know, it'd be interesting, something like that. I don't know how it would work. I'm not a coder, I'm just a talker.
Ben Roy:And, to be fair, I'm exaggerating a bit. To make the point right, I think Providence matters for sure. It's not a zero by any means. I just think there's a lot of conversations that you see that I think over optimized for that as the only like input to value and it misses that most of to me or like a driving force of that value is not just like the random time it happened to be minted on chain, it's also who the artist is and what they're doing and what they have to say about the world and like where they're going and, um, it's a data point, but it's not the data point.
NorCal Guy:Right, right, all right, I like it, I like it. So do you have any projects you are working on?
Ben Roy:Anything you'd like to talk about? Yeah, okay, we can shill the podcast. How about that? So my friend, natalie and I started a podcast earlier this year called Liquid Culture. The thinking there is basically like there's a moment in time that we find ourselves in where you can now own stuff on the internet, basically through the blockchain, right, and obviously you cover the art side of the space pretty closely and you're a fan of that same sentiment, right, being able to own stuff on the internet is cool, and I think it's basically making the observation that that's going to change a lot about how we create and consume culture, but not just from an art perspective, also from fashion and gaming and social and consumer perspectives.
Ben Roy:And wanting to create a podcast that just kind of follows that evolution to say, okay, here's this moment, here's how culture is changing. What would it look like to talk to founders and creatives and just people who are observers of that shift? Yeah, and that's kind of this idea of liquid culture, liquid being the tradable, you know financialized nature of these things, um, and you know the culture part being the culture part, and yeah, it's been fun. I would say we're early days, you know you have a lot more reps than we do. Um, it's an interesting experience just to try and figure out how to interview well and, you know, have conversations with people and make them meaningful. You know that people hopefully want to listen to Right, um, so it's been a ride, but I think, yeah, if I had to pick one thing that I'm working on right now, uh, I I've loved just having some time to hang out with, with artists and founders and stuff and pick their brains, basically along those lines.
NorCal Guy:Nice and you have a. Do you have a newsletter as well?
Ben Roy:Right, I do I write a monthly kind of blog post on something related to pretty similar categories. Usually it's like this intersection of of kind of crypto and culture, tech and culture. Um, and yeah, I've just I've always been a writer. Uh, it's probably the most consistent through line across my life, feeling like there's still a lane for that To be like cool if I can write 600-800 words on a topic and really hopefully care about the quality and put enough time and effort into that that even people who don't read might actually stop and read that for five minutes. That's kind of the goal with these things. It's just to create an entertainment experience out of writing as a craft and hopefully, yeah, have some fun with a small readership of people to follow along with those. But yeah, those are the media stuff. Essentially is, I think, the two main parts. Some of these liquid culture conversations and some of my writing are what I have the most fun doing month to month at the moment Awesome.
NorCal Guy:Well, Ben, I just want to thank you and I appreciate you taking some time out of your day and coming on the show and sharing your thoughts. I had a great time, Thank you man Such a pleasure.
Ben Roy:Thank you so much for having me. Who is this guy? Who is this?
NorCal Guy:guy. Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal guy. Norcal and chill podcast Show. It's chill time NorCal and chill podcast. What the show? It's showtime? Norcal and chill podcast.
Ben Roy:What the show? It's showtime.