NorCal and Shill

Schmrypto - Artist and Collector - Throwback Episode

• NorCal Guy • Season 1 • Episode 161

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Discover the intriguing world of crypto art with our guest Schmrypto, who once dismissed NFTs as a potential front for money laundering but now champions their democratizing potential. From running a payphone business in high school to selling his family hospital enterprise, Schmrypto’s journey into crypto art is as unique as it is inspiring. Tune in to hear how Web3 dismantles traditional art-world barriers, creating a more inclusive arena for creators and collectors.

Explore the symbiosis of art and entrepreneurship through Schmrypto’s bold ventures, like his investment in shipping containers filled with overlooked works by artist Bob Mallory. His story highlights the power of collaboration and the energy that comes from networking on platforms like Twitter or events such as the Marfa conference. Schmrypto also reminds us of the value of constant creation over scarcity, urging artists to focus on connection and momentum rather than being weighed down by constraints.

We unravel the dynamics of supply and demand in the digital art space, guided by Schmrypto’s insights on minting strategies that enhance visibility and engagement. Challenging the "protect your floor price" mindset, he advocates for open editions and frequent releases, drawing from examples of artists who have thrived using these tactics. As we anticipate the exciting future of crypto art, Schmrypto’s perspective on technological integration offers a glimpse into a world where art and tech blend seamlessly, paving the way for limitless possibilities.

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NorCal Guy:

Who is this? Who is this guy? Norcal guy.

Schmrypto:

NorCal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy.

NorCal Guy:

Norcal and chill podcast. Norcal and chill podcast what the sh what the sh? Norcal and chill podcast. Norcal and Shill. Today we're thrilled to be joined by the incredibly versatile artist, collector and crypto enthusiast, shripto. From running a payphone business in high school, shripto's journey is anything but ordinary. In this episode, we explore his unique approach to creating and minting art, the significance of preserving forgotten 20th century American artists, and his visionary use of blockchain and AI technologies. Shripto shares his hot take on generating demand through high supply, the importance of diverse and fringe crypto projects and the impact of AI on the NFT space. We also delve into his mantra for life personal interactions and his incredible find of a shipping container full of art. Plus, he opens up about the potential for NFTs to revolutionize the art market, enhance provenance and offer a non-gate-kept space for artists. Join us as we unpack Shripto's fascinating insights and future projects, providing a compelling look into the evolving world of crypto art. Everybody, please welcome Shripto on this episode of NorCal and Shill. Hey, shripto, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Schmrypto:

Great you.

NorCal Guy:

Good, good, it's a nice warm day and you know I'm trying to avoid the heat. Yeah.

Schmrypto:

Yeah, it's finally heating up here today, going to a place north of Amarillo. Every so I spent some time in Amarillo.

NorCal Guy:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a. Yeah, I mean it's cool. It's a cool area. A lot of big farming community and cattle ranches. Yeah, it's a cool area. Good memories, though, with family and cousins up there, so no complaints.

Schmrypto:

So what were your first thoughts when you heard about this crypto art stuff? Don't these money launderers know that we can see them? I mean, really, it's all public. Don't they know that we can see them swapping these things around for $20,000? And specifically, I remember early 21,. I sat with my father-in-law and looked at the punk's marketplace and it's like come on, come on, like nobody's paying that much for these things, what's what's really going on here? Um, which you know, I'm kind of embarrassed about because I, I was, I wasn't I wouldn't say I was early to crypto, but I dabbled a little bit early on and I got. I got crypto and I was an artist, uh. But then in 2016, I had to take over my family business, which was a hospital, so I was just buried dealing with all of that when punks dropped and this all started. So I was way behind the curve until 21. And then played catch up fast.

NorCal Guy:

You know that's really interesting. You said cause I was in crypto and that made sense to me from like early on. But the art part I was just like why it took me a while to like click and I don't know why it took so long for me. I was just like why would I want a JPEG on the internet for? You know, because I remember hearing about CryptoKitties. I don't remember hearing about CryptoPunks. Just was like that's stupid game. I'm not. Why would anyone pay?

NorCal Guy:

money for that and uh, yeah, I don't know why, it took long, a long time, but it finally clicked and I was like, oh, okay, I'm done.

Schmrypto:

Yeah, that's kind of what happened for me, and I guess it would have been um, yeah, that's kind of what happened for me, and I guess it would have been May of 21. It kind of clicked and I went after it pretty aggressively. I sold the business, I sold the hospital in 21. And my original plan was to go into like industrial scale weed production and we had a lease all lined up and somebody came in and put a crazy bid on the building that we wanted. They had a business they were running, they had two 747s, they would fill them up with cattle in Texas, fly them to China, fill them with consumer electronics and fly them back. And so they put a bid on the building that we needed because it was right next to the airport. It was just impossible to match their bid.

Schmrypto:

Of course, that was right before the tariffs happened, so they were probably just wiped out by the tariffs, yeah, uh. But that completely derailed our plans to build a facility in that building, and so I had downtime and I thought you know, I wonder what's going on with crypto. I haven't looked at that in a minute while I wait to figure this out. And then it was just a slippery slope and ended up all in on NFT, right, right.

NorCal Guy:

So did you collect art or baseball cards or anything else before you got into this space?

Schmrypto:

Everything Greek and Roman antiquities, fossils, gemstones, amber books, manuscripts, art. Um, I have the bugle they played at Teddy Roosevelt's funeral. I have, uh, all of Neil Armstrong's knickknacks from his, like, world tour after the lunar mission. I've got some weird. Yeah, I've. I've just I inherited the hoarding gene from my, my dad and grandma, uh, and just have been at it since I was a kid.

NorCal Guy:

Dang, that's awesome. Some good things. It sounds like.

Schmrypto:

Well, it was funny. When I got into this, my family was just like oh, finally you're collecting something that doesn't take up any space. Like finally.

NorCal Guy:

For a minute yeah. Oh, that's hilarious, but it's true. It's true that does help. What are some of the best things about web 3 today?

Schmrypto:

uh, you know, to my mind it's a few different things. I think that seeing a sort of non-credentialed discussion about fine art, you know, not just a bunch of MFAs talking about fine art, but people, real people, you know, I'm not an MFA myself included, I was a business major, but I was a working artist for many years as well.

Schmrypto:

Seeing that is just amazing, like that's just not a thing that's ever really existed in this way, at this scale before, and having a space where artists can come in without gatekeeping Because, yeah, the liquidity is gatekept, certainly, but access is not gatekept, and that's tremendous, you know, being able to, as an artist, have a non-gatekept market that isn't a flea market, because really that was kind of it. If you wanted to be an artist and sell your work without having to ask anyone permission, you were at the arts and crafts show and there's no liquidity at the arts and crafts show, and that's transformative. Also, I think what NFTs? Nfts is a companion technology for AI to make AI art more than just churn, you know, to make it something that can actually exist as a discrete object that somebody might be able to collect and support. That, I think, is really important. Yeah, interesting, yeah, interesting yeah.

NorCal Guy:

So where do you see this crypto art space in five years and do you have concerns as it expands?

Schmrypto:

You know I'm endlessly bullish about crypto art in general. I think that you know a lot of what makes art investable, like what makes it usable as a financial instrument. We just do better. You know, we talk about provenance and condition and ease of storage and transportability, everything, everything that makes a useful financial instrument. Yeah, now, that doesn't mean that people aren't still going to want to splurge millions of dollars on Da Vinci's and Picasso's and things like that. But I think on a long enough timeframe, I think there's more.

Schmrypto:

I think that the NFT market kind of takes over a lot of that aspect. Like that may be adjusted for inflation. We've seen the all-time high sales for canvas and paper. They'll continue to garner huge sales, but that maybe we've kind of seen the apogee of that and now we're going to see more of that shift over to the digital end. At one time I kind of thought, oh, you know, the NFT market is going to replace the traditional fine art market, but they don't. They do different things at the end of the day. But I think that a lot of what you know drives liquidity to the traditional art market right now is we just we do it so much better.

NorCal Guy:

Right, right. So do you have any concerns as the space expands and grows?

Schmrypto:

I don't want to see us get into a similar situation that we had in 21, where more than half of the liquidity and attention was focused on a single project or a single company. I think that was really, really dangerous and it set us back, I think, a long way to have that played out like it did. Way to have that played out like it did, and so I hope, going forward, we'll see a more kind of diverse landscape as far as a lot of projects and a lot of companies, instead of there being one kind of monolithic project. We're kind of seeing that right now with punks. There's so much upset on the timeline right now with the way Yuga's handling punks, and that's a good example of like it's kind of just wish that larva labs had kept it.

Schmrypto:

Yeah, yeah, that's true. So, yeah, I think that's I think that's the biggest risk is consolidation around a few big players when that doesn't really need to happen. Here. There's not the same economies of scale benefit here to having big, huge conglomerates running these things for sure, right, right, especially with ai. You know ai is going to so greatly expand what a small team is able to do. So I hope, I hope we don't see that happen again. I think that's probably the biggest threat. Yeah, but we'll see right.

NorCal Guy:

So what would you like to see more of in the NFT art crypto, art space?

Schmrypto:

Just more experimentation. You know, more stuff that relies on the chain to be itself. You know, checks are kind of my classic example of this, Like checks couldn't exist without blockchain, and I love projects like that. I love things that could really only exist here Because it's cool. I mean, somebody has a big body of traditional work. They scan it in and make it tokens and cool. That's great, that's a valid use case. But I love seeing a lot more experimentation and kind of fringe use cases. And, too, I'm I don't know, I'm very encouraged by the sort of anti-copyright movement that we're seeing right now in NFTs, because I do think that copyright is a very broken system and we're not going to get reform unless people care about it. Nobody cares, nobody's ever cared about copyright reform.

Schmrypto:

But suddenly a lot of people have really strong opinions about it.

NorCal Guy:

Right, right, right Does one ETH equal one ETH?

Schmrypto:

Yeah, but no, yeah, that's such a. I always hate that because like yeah, obviously sure, but is it? One ETH today equals one ETH in a week?

NorCal Guy:

No, but is it one-eighth today equals one-eighth in a week?

Schmrypto:

no, does one-eighth worth of nfts equal one-eighth liquid?

NorCal Guy:

no, you know it's right, right, right, all right. What is the best advice you've been given, or like a mantra that you kind of live by that goes through your head?

Schmrypto:

Okay, this is not Webster related, but I think the most important mantra or mindset that you can kind of have is to imagine that every single person that you interact with, who you care about you don't have to do this for the people at Taco Bell who you interact with for two seconds, but anybody that you really care about when you're interacting with them, try to get in the mindset that they are dead, that that person is dead and you're interacting with their ghost and you get today to tell them what you want to tell them. Do what you want to do with them, ask them what you want to ask them, because people just drop dead out of nowhere and so if you kind of go through life in the mindset, these people are already dead and this is my last chance to ask what I want to ask. Do what I want to do, say what I want to say. You will never have regrets when people die. You'll go. Oh good, I got to say what I wanted to say. Yeah, that's awesome.

Schmrypto:

It's a weird. Yeah, it's a weird. It's kind of it sounds like a dark like mindset, but it's weirdly powerful to like sit there and like next time you interact with a parent or a child, go. You know how would I feel if this person had been dead for years and now I was getting to see them again for one last time and act like that, and it's completely transformative.

NorCal Guy:

Yeah, I mean it keeps things more honest, for sure.

Schmrypto:

Mm-hmm Yep.

NorCal Guy:

Switching it up a little bit. If you could live or move anywhere, where would you live and why?

Schmrypto:

I actually. I'm right where I want to be. I have a pretty good spread of land here. I'm on about 40 acres and it's my climate and my people and I like it yeah.

NorCal Guy:

Trevor Tyson.

Schmrypto:

PhD. Nice, that's awesome.

NorCal Guy:

Do you have a favorite movie? Quote? That's a tough one Um yeah, I love a lot of movies, I'll go.

Schmrypto:

I'll go with one low-hanging fruit. I think the Dude Abides is just an easy best choice. My favorite film or my favorite work of art period, full stop, regardless of medium, is a film called Koyaanisqatsi. It was made by a former monk named Godfrey Reggio. Monk called named godfrey reggio and, uh, the only uh word you hear during the entirety of the movie is a benedictine monk chanting the word koya naskatsi over and over again. So if you want a weird answer, that's my favorite line in a movie. Uh, it means it's hopi for the world out of balance. Uh, great film, phenomenal, phenomenal film. If you haven't seen it, it's funny when people see it. It's a little bit like when you watch Seven Samurai and it feels a little bit cliched because the cliches are from Seven Samurai. That's how Koyaanisqatsi is with, like late 20th century American visual media. When you watch Koyaanisqatsi, you'll go oh, I've been watching this movie my whole life but I didn't realize it. It's constantly referenced. Uh, weird example all the grand theft auto trailers are based on koena scottsy. Oh, weirdly.

NorCal Guy:

All right. All right, they do like each time they do one.

Schmrypto:

They'll do not all of the trailers, but every time they do grand theft auto, they'll do a little koena scottsy trailer um it's okay, amazing film I'm gonna look that up after this.

NorCal Guy:

Yeah, so this is another good one. What is the best thing and the silliest thing you've spent money on?

Schmrypto:

I think it might be the same thing. Uh, it's the shipping containers full of art that I bought in late 21. It's an insane thing to do, because it was. It was just two two shipping containers full of work by an artist that 99.5% of people have never heard of.

Schmrypto:

Now I will say Bob Mallory. That's the artist in question. Most people have never heard of him but the people who have heard of him are like, oh my God, it's Bob Mallory. He's very much an artist. Artist Like, the people who are aware of him are very much, almost obsessed a lot of the time. I find that's actually true of Godfrey Reggio, the film director, as well. People who know him are obsessed, but most people don't know him, and so you know it was a huge investment of money and time and energy and reputation to haul those shipping containers back to Texas and spend thousands of hours now processing them and dealing with them. But it's the best thing I've ever done. Yeah, Easily.

NorCal Guy:

So this is going to be a fun one. If you could commission a piece and have two artists collab on it, which two artists would it be?

Schmrypto:

Yeah, it's funny. I commissioned portraits of Bob Mallory as like a just a practice. I periodic about one a month.

NorCal Guy:

Usually I'm working on it.

Schmrypto:

I'm working with them. A good one in that right now. Recently or previously, ever fresh I don't know if you're familiar with the animator ever fresh he did a little tight loop. I'll send it to you. It's amazing. He's a fantastic artist. He made a little tight loop. I'll send it to you. It's amazing, he's a fantastic artist. Uh, he made a little loop using bob's art and the sound of bob playing the piano. Uh, to score it. And then recently, befe, uh, the motion artist or the performance artist, took that song and composed a like choreographed dance routine to it, and so that's a collaborative portrait of Bob's work. Oh, wow, so recently did that. If I could pick any to take it, godfrey Reggio and his collaborator, philip Glass, the composer. If I could hire two artists to work together to make more work, okay, yeah, and I. Actually I did work with Godfrey. Godfrey and I put out an NFT collection together in 22. So I got to work with him a little bit, but it was just just purely his work, right? That's awesome.

NorCal Guy:

Wow. So what is one interesting fact about you that people might not be aware of?

Schmrypto:

you that people might not be aware of. That's a tough one. Okay, so my first business in high school I ran pay phones in psychiatric hospitals. That was my first business. That was kind of like what jumped that was my little jumping off into all my later businesses was when I sold that.

Schmrypto:

It's because it was the only place you weren't allowed to have cell phones in the early 2000s. You know prisons and psychiatric hospitals, and the prisons that's a big contract, but the psychiatric hospitals those are little, privately owned. You know, it's usually an easy contract to get and so, yeah, I ran pay phones in psychiatric hospitals in high school. That was my business.

NorCal Guy:

Dang, that is interesting. Never would have thought about it.

Schmrypto:

Definitely a niche market for sure, wow, I had a second cousin who had a payphone company a traditional payphone company and he just was destroyed by cell phones and so he was selling all of his payphones and I was like, ooh, I have an idea. And so I bought his payphones and stuck them in the psychiatric hospitals and it worked really well. I, I basically, when I went to college, I sold that business and used the money to buy a little rental house that I lived in with a bunch of other college kids. It was a blast and yeah. So I mean, I, I basically I paid for everything for court with quarters for four years I just had an endless supply of quarters.

NorCal Guy:

That's fair. That's fair. It's been awesome. What is your favorite way to connect with new people in the space?

Schmrypto:

I'm a Twitter maxi, frankly, like I just I'm on the timeline all day, I'm in DMs all day. I try to stay off of discord. I try to. I you know I I'm intrigued by Farcaster, but I also I don't, I just don't know that there's a lot to be gained from splitting your message up over a lot of different channels. You know, and so I just really now I will say Twitter's great for the day to day. You really can't beat just going to a conference and meeting people in person. It's totally different. And if you're going to go to one conference, marfa, marfa is fantastic. That's so good. We're doing a show. I have a little show in Marfa this year for Bob, so if you're out there, come find us.

NorCal Guy:

All right yeah.

Schmrypto:

I'm actually having'm having a uh piece ship down. Bob invented 3d printing. Basically, he did the first 3d prints in 1967 and I have one of them. It's eight feet tall and made of wood. Uh, it's insane. We and we. It was always really hard for me to explain to people how it was made, and so we recreated it and filmed the process so that we could show people how it was made. And so I'm having the recreation we did is being shipped down and we'll show that at Marfa. Oh dang, wow, yeah, that should be fun. But yeah, conferences and Twitter, that's you can't go wrong.

NorCal Guy:

Do you have a hot take?

Schmrypto:

you can't go wrong. Yeah, do you have a hot take? Um, I guess two that I kind of harp on always are just meant, everything meant and meant, and meant and meant, and then just ignore supply, don't worry about scarcity, it'll sort itself out. Uh, right, and my thesis is basically like well, twofold. Uh, if you look at the great artists through history, there are very few who had a small body of work. You know, like Frida Kahlo had a small body of work. Everybody else has thousands of paintings. Picasso, 140,000 unique works, and it's not uncommon. There's a lot of artists that have similar numbers.

Schmrypto:

And so I think that you know you can't really be afraid of supply. If you want to matter, you have to have work out there. Luck needs surface area, people need works to discover and fall in love with, and if you've got one piece out in the world at a time, it's a little bit like having a furniture store where you're like here's our chair, I hope you like it, it's our only one. Like that's our chair, I hope you like it, it's our only one. Like that's a weird business model. Um, and so I feel like, as an artist, you want to have a lot of work in the world.

Schmrypto:

And if you're going to have a lot of work in the world and call yourself a web three artist, why aren't you minting it Right?

Schmrypto:

And if and if you're going to mint it, it's most meaningful if you meant it around the time it's created, because that's the timestamp, and so make as much art as you can and mint 100% of it. And if it doesn't sell immediately, that's okay, that's art. That's the way it's always been, this kind of weird obsession with only having one thing on the market. And kind of corollary to that, I think that price equals demand squared divided by supply. So if you double demand, you've quadrupled the price. If you have supply, you've only doubled the price. That the effect of demand is always quadratic while the effect of supply is linear and a lot of the times having more supply out there generates demand, and that there's some sort of a flywheel that I've seen at work a few times now, where, if you can get enough material out into the world work a few times now where, if you can get enough material out into the world, your supply will generate demand and the demand will have more impact on price than the supply did, which is very counterintuitive, you know.

NorCal Guy:

But right, like I agree. Well, I agree with this. And I feel like this protect your floor, price thing mentality kills your momentum, like insanely kills it. So you get that flywheel spinning but then you're like, oh, I got to protect my floor and then you just kill that momentum and people are like it's like I don't know, what are you guys doing? Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

Schmrypto:

And I almost, you know, I feel, I feel a little bad when I see these artists who don't really have a lot of track record, who kind of you know they've been, they've been working for a while but they've been in the market for a year or two. And then you know one of these really big we'll call them cabal collectors comes along and pays a hundred ether for one of their pieces and it's cool, what a, what an amazing moment for them. But what do you do now? Like, if you go and sell something for an ether, that guy is going to be mad because he paid 100 ether for it. But maybe that's what your market is. Maybe he is the only person on earth that thought that your work was worth more than an ether. And now you're stuck because you can't sell anything.

NorCal Guy:

And yeah, you're not selling at a higher price, but I would rather sell work at a lower price than not sell it at a higher price right, right, yeah, I mean like, uh, cactus came along and I don't know if you remember him, but he came along and screwed with a lot of people's heads, yeah, uh, so I, I along this line of supply. I am a huge fan of editions because maybe you can't produce, you know, a ton of supply, but editions help you. You know, expand that, that fan base, how, what are your thoughts on like one of ones versus editions, or how do you? How would you like? Do them side by side?

Schmrypto:

uh, I I've made. Uh, I'm gonna have to remember the number here. I think I did 104 open editions last year oh, okay personally.

Schmrypto:

So I'm, I'm an open edition maxi.

Schmrypto:

I think we did 30, it was like 35 000 minutes cumulatively, um, and there's no way on earth I could have gotten remotely that amount of exposure or holders or, and you know, I had a little bit of disruption. I have, I have VCs, and my VCs are not wild about that work that I was doing, and so I'm trying to work something out with them right now. Basically, I'm trying to un-VC myself let's put it that way, which is harder than it sounds. But you know, I personally, left to my own devices, I'd be putting out an open edition every day, and I think that's actually part of healthy open edition practice is to do it frequently. Because if you only do one open edition a year and you let demand build and build and build and build and build, it'll over mint every time, whereas if you just constantly put out open editions, then people aren't feeling like, oh you know, I gotta get this one, I gotta speculate on this one, this is my only chance, and and the the minting is more in line with the demand, then right.

NorCal Guy:

So then you have like a bunch of like, say, 50 edition sizes instead of 2,000 or whatever open edition size. Yeah, I get that.

Schmrypto:

So I think the common knowledge around open editions is just exactly backwards. People are like oh, you did one open edition, you've got to wait a year to do it. No, that's the worst thing you can do. Get your next open edition out fast. Before you know, demand builds up too much ah, it's very interesting.

NorCal Guy:

I mean, I think that's one reason why, like someone like x copy did well and going into 21 is because he had so many pieces of work available and P people could actually buy it and there was, and then that created this demand. People went searching for all these different pieces, random pieces. Wherever he ended up minting and collabing, and I think that's probably the reason why he did well is just because there was enough work for people to actually buy out there, cause otherwise you're just like yeah.

Schmrypto:

Yeah, people can't fall in love with work that doesn't exist. You know, they got to see it. Three, three falls in the forest. You know, nobody's there to hear it, um, and that's why, you know, I I remain incredibly bullish on both, uh, des lucrece and jack butcher, just because they have tremendous amounts of supply. They understand the market, uh, and so when the next bull comes along and people are looking for stuff they can actually collect, look no further, right, right, right.

Schmrypto:

I also find if you look at high-supply artists versus low-supply artists, specifically with large editions, the buy-bid spread for high-supply artists is minuscule compared to the buy-bid spread for low-supply artists. And my theory is that this next bull run is going to be largely driven by collateralization. And if I'm doing loans, I'm going to offer much more favorable terms on a check than a Fidenza, which sounds funny. But you look at the buy bid spread the buy bid spread on Fidenzas is consistently 50%, whereas the buy bid spread on checks is usually like 90%, and so when collateralizability becomes a big deal again, those high supply collections are going to fly, because they're what people are going to want to write loans on.

NorCal Guy:

Huh, interesting, I like that the theory.

Schmrypto:

Anyway, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, loans on huh interesting.

NorCal Guy:

I like that, the theory. Anyway, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you have any projects or anything else you'd like to discuss that you're working on that, you always, always, yeah, um.

Schmrypto:

So we, we've got a few things that are kind of in stasis at the moment. You know, people ask me sometimes like oh, is shriptomon still going on, my little AI project? Yeah, it's absolutely still going on. I just have to DVC myself. Once I'm un-VC'd, we're off to the races. But what is still active is the Mallory stuff. You know we've got four shows this year with Bob Mallory's work. We're doing Art Basel in June, then we're going to be in LA in September, we're going to be in Berlin in October and then we're going to be at Marfa in November. And so if you're in any of those places and you want to come see some of the really earliest digital arts, come check it out, because it's spectacular stuff.

Schmrypto:

It's a really strange situation with Bob because A the story just sounds like total bullshit. I found a bunch of generative art in a shipping container. Yeah, okay, whatever, yeah, right, but like no, really, and that's why we've gone to such great lengths to document it. It's because it sounds so ridiculous. But then what I've kind of slowly realized in dealing with this stuff and again, this sounds like hype, beast, bullshit.

Schmrypto:

Pop Mallory is like the best American artist no one's ever heard of. He's spectacular, huge body of work, amazing theory, way ahead of his time. All the work is super aesthetic. He knew everybody. He's hanging out with Jasper Johns Wayne Tebow named his daughter after Bob, like he was. He's kind of the Forrest Gump of 20th century North American art, like he's just always in the room.

Schmrypto:

And then he got poisoned by his materials in the mid 60s and so he couldn't work in the material that made him famous and he couldn't exist in the soupy air of 1960s New York anymore. So he had to flee to Massachusetts and take a teaching job. So his career went from 100 to zero overnight Because, like, otherwise I should never have ended up with this stuff. It should be in a museum and big private collections and it took a very weird set of circumstances to put that work in those containers. And so we had this really weird situation where, like this guy kind of sells himself.

Schmrypto:

You just show people the work and tell people the story of his life and he's kind of the forgotten figure of mid-20th century American abstract expressionism. But he's there. You go, look at the documentation. His name shows up everywhere in the 50s and 60s, right, and so it's a really strange task. It's kind of a unique opportunity and we have to be mindful of how absurd it sounds to say, yeah, I found the forgotten 20th century American artist stuffed in a shipping container. We have to kind of prove it. Proof of work, you know, right, right right and so that's all these shows and all this documentation.

Schmrypto:

We're doing a book where we've got 28 hours of interview footage filmed with Bob's family and friends and peers, and we're shooting interviews next week with a few pretty big names who knew Bob I'm really excited about. So it's, it's a project of projects, it's a million different moving parts all at once, but it's I I expect it'll pretty much occupy my time for at least the next 10 to 15 years, I think realistically. I mean, I could mint a piece a day, every single day, and it would still take me 15 years if I did daily mints. Yeah, it's absurd, it's an incredible.

Schmrypto:

And we have the code, and so there's elements of this of like, you know, getting the original work on chain. There's elements of like reviving the code and getting it into a format where we can use it again. We're in very early discussions with a really major academic institute who's interested in creating an AI version of Bob. We call it Chat Bob. That would be given a posthumous fellowship at the university and so he would be sort of a faculty advisor that students could consult with about mid 20th century abstract expressionism and early digital art. So it's just a lot of irons in the fire, wow.

NorCal Guy:

Dang, there's a lot of irons. Man. You, that's, that's. I don't even know what to say. Man, that's incredible, it sounds crazy. Wow, was there any other things you'd like to discuss? Man, it sounds crazy. I appreciate it.

Schmrypto:

Wow, was there any other things you'd like to discuss? Man, it's just quite a scene, man. I love it. I went to school, I got a business degree at a technology school, but I spent all my time in the art building, painting and I was like what am I preparing for? What is this for? Here we go Right. I never. I was like what am I preparing for? What is this? Here we go right. Like I never knew this is what I was preparing for.

Schmrypto:

But yeah, I, this is just an incredible space and it's easy to kind of forget that we spend all our time here. How bizarre and unprecedented and just borderline magic all this is is so easy to forget, uh, but yeah, just amazing and it's only gonna get better. You know, I it's one of the things I can't. I don't know where we're going to be in a year, but I feel like I know where we are in 10 years. You know, like right, right, right, this stuff can't be the. The wider art world can't ignore this stuff forever, and they aren't ignoring it now, but you know they're really going to have to come to terms with it in the next few years. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see dang well, man.

NorCal Guy:

I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show today and blew my mind and like it was just amazing to just have the chat, like I've never really talked with you before and, uh, have you on the pod and talk with you about this is great. Like I, I am looking forward to seeing you in marfa in november and yeah, absolutely good times are ahead, thank you yeah, absolutely.

Schmrypto:

Thanks so much for having me on. I always always enjoy talking shop. It was a lot of fun. Who is this?

NorCal Guy:

Who is this guy, who is this guy, who is this guy, who is this guy, who is this guy?

Schmrypto:

NorCal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy, norcal guy NorCal and chill Podcast guys.