M○C△ WEEKLY Round-UP 7/13
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In This Week’s Round-Up:
One Artist’s (Self) Pity, Another Man’s (and many others’) Ire
The Absurdity and Terror of AI-Integrated Hardware
Paraphrasing a “Colborn Bell Take on the Market”
Okay, Let’s Get On With It
The Crypto Art Side
UPDATE: In the wake of everything I’m going to talk about henceforth, Claire Silver’s Daydreamer release sold-out. All 40 pieces. Becoming the center of crypto art’s narrative does has economic benefits indeed. The crux of this column, which I began writing the day after Silver’s project dropped, remains consistent, but the added context is vital.
The prospect of even writing this column is a bit dismaying, given that it concerns the brave vulnerability and self-reflective emotions of a most favorite artist, the uber-talented Claire Silver, in the wake of her latest project’s release. Maybe she would call it a failed release. Disappointing initial release, for sure. That would be Daydreamer, a 1/1/40 —accompanied with a print— that auctioned to (and this is the issue) what some might call middling success on Thursday. 40 unique pieces, still images pulled from a greater video work, auctioned each for at least 1 ETH, though only 20 seem to have sold in the initial round of bids, prompting Ms. Silver to post the following Tweets:
Ms. Silver’s feelings obviously revolve around what she felt was lackluster interest in her most recent artwork, which is —to be fair— absolutely gorgeous. Clearly, she expected a quick sell-out, at least some kind of bidding war over these works, probably a lot more public discussion, and there’s little reason to think that she was misguided in that expectation. Her Genesis Collection of 500 pieces carries a floor price of 1.5 ETH, Paracosm of 110 pieces .74 ETH, and her 1/1s have routinely sold in the six figures. She is one of crypto art’s most beloved and oft-invoked artists, repped by Art of the Millenium, a Cozomo de’Medici favorite, firmly entrenched in the upper echelon of crypto art influence/notoriety/financial-success by any conceivable metric.
And so, given Silver’s historic and consistent success, the above comments —about her own misaimed expectations, the perhaps dimming brightness of her star, etc.— were taken by many as both self-pitying and completely out of touch with crypto art reality. These were quite numerous, but I’m going to use the following exchange, between Silver and the ironist/flamelord 787FKA, as a catch-all:
I’m a bit surprised at how complex my feelings are regarding what’s going on here. I usually try to stay out of such specific interpersonal drama, but in this case, I think it’s really clarifying about where we are in crypto art right now, the position of the artist themselves, the oft-forgotten fact that humans do exist on the other side of these avatars, etc. It’s a big topic, and it will probably dominate the newsletter today. So let’s start here:
I find it almost impossible not to sympathize with 787FKA’s criticism of Silver’s comments. Our Museum of Crypto Art, for whatever reason, generally feels these days like it’s become most aligned with the large class of crypto artists who find themselves shut-out of the narrative limelight. As such, the artists new and old, big and small, who listen to our podcasts, who read these newsletters, who attend are town halls, are usually of the sort who find sales hard to come by, think the influencer-ification of crypto art is nauseating, and laments how stagnant/disappointing/depressing the overall ecosystem has become. So that’s the water I swim in, and that informs what I’m about to say:
My own first reaction to Silver’s comments was more or less “Are you fucking kidding me?”
20ETH in sales in 24 hours, a seismic outpouring of kind words and admiration for the work itself, and it doesn’t take an immense amount of contextual understanding to recognize that if your name isn’t XCOPY (or if you aren’t a semi-autonomous AI artist that routinely creates uninspired, uninteresting bullshit aesthetics that the tech-savvy like to circlejerk around) sales are difficult to come by. Still with the wallow? A public wallow! Even a momentary public wallow befits nobody! Artists with consistent collector-bases like Diewiththemostlikes have responded to this market by pivoting to PFP projects with relatively-low entry prices (.069ETH in this case). Matt Kane’s most recent work, ANON #11 still has yet to sell. Silver took a massive risk in offering work at such a high initial valuation, I admit that, and it’s even not like her release fell entirely flat. 20ETH in sales in a day is nothing to shake a stick at. Of all the things 787FKA said in their exchange, I agree most of all with the latter: “It’s also possible to feel things and not tweet about them…”
I’ve interviewed Claire Silver, I’ve written about her work, I’ve followed her for years. She is a deeply empathetic, emotionally reflective, and honest individual. I don’t think Claire was looking for pity or compassion as much as she was simply looking to share her feelings. But crypto art, for years now, has not been a compassionate place. The market has no compassion for its less-marketable entrants. The great glut of us therefore have little compassion for the 60-or-so artists who can attain sales at major auction houses, are often posted-about and curated and exhibited, and have become poster-children for this movement.
Most of crypto art is rooting for Silver’s downfall (and her ilks’), fair or not, because we all —artists, collectors, writers, devs— despise how crypto art has become a calcified and oft-masturbatory echo chamber. “This is how we build.” Spare me. One of the things artists lose when they attain that special status is the ability to freely complain or express negative emotions, especially regarding their sales. My timeline is full of artists legitimately celebrating whenever some Tezos work of theirs is collected for pennies. Because that means affirmation, validation, appreciation, things which are not just in short supply, but almost entirely absent otherwise. 20+ collectors putting up nearly $3,000 each for a randomized work, if that isn’t affirming, validating, and appreciative, I don’t know what is.
So, yes, let Claire Silver be warning to all other successful artists: your pain is not real to the rest of us, because it pales in comparison.
The public comments feel cloying, self-important, and removed from reality.
And yet, I don’t really believe that, do I?
Claire Silver’s emotions aren’t just legitimate, they’re so informative about what crypto artistry demands of its champions. Because Claire Silver does not live in the world of namelessness anymore. Claire Silver is Claire Silver. She is a host unto herself, has clawed her way to an upper echelon of her industry, has attained, and attained so much, and so exists entirely in a context of attainment. Go to hell if you judge her for success, it’s what we all strive for, we would all gladly accept it, I’ll launder no criticism towards her excellence.
At the same time, Silver will not, and should not, judge herself on the contexts of others, places in which she does not live. As an analogy, if I made $1.2-million next year writing fiction, I’d be, like, the happiest motherfucker on the planet. But if an NBA player is signed for a minimum salary of ~$1.2-million next season, they’d reasonably consider themselves a failure for being so unvalued. That is no fault of the player’s, nor is it a fault of mine. We exist in two different spheres, each with their own set of expectations and benchmarks, informed by different nuances.
Honestly…it is kind of weird that Claire’s work didn’t sell out, right?. If I told you that Claire Silver was selling 40 unique works for 1 ETH a piece, and we Polymarket-ed whether it’d sell-out or not, the major public inclination would be positive. Anytime we fall short of expectations we set for ourselves, no matter how lofty, we’ll become somewhat despondent. It’s not Silver’s fault for being disappointed in the reaction to her work, nor should we charge her as a criminal or believe her to be un-empathetic. She has earned the right to high expectations. A kid falls into depression because they struck-out in a Little League game. A tire salesman fails to meet their Q2 quota and sees their career flash before their eyes. Claire Silver, a true darling of crypto art, fails to sell-out a brilliant collection, and so naturally she questions her ability, her effectiveness, her connection with a collector-base and public that so readily, so wildly, so consistently admired her in the past. Nothing is guaranteed, especially not an artistic career, especially not success in perpetuity. How would you react, if the pedestal underneath you began to wobble?
As I write this, world Number 1 and Number 2 tennis players, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, vie for the Wimbledon Championship. They recently met in the French Open Championship as well, where Alcaraz came out victorious. Would you resent Sinner if he were disappointed in himself for failing to win this time, too? Would you tell him “Oh, YoU sHoUlD jUsT bE gRaTeFuL bEcAuSe So MaNy OtHeR pLaYeRs WoUlD gIvE aNyThInG tO bE iN yOuR pOsItIoN?”
Of course not. Different worlds. Different rules.
Claire Silver has reached a level of artistry in which high prices and feverish collector support are customary. As the artist herself, she is inclined to believe this is due mostly to her ability, and also the strong relationships she’s built with collectors. She works tirelessly on a new project, one which, when first shown to the public, is immediately hailed as a masterwork. She thinks she’s hit on something. It falters. It isn’t the smash she expected it to be. Of course, she feels negative about it. She isn’t thinking about the plight of every single artist in the world, because not a single human being in the world does that, considers the hardships of the world around them at all times. She’s thinking, Where did I go wrong? What have I done wrong? None of us have achieved Buddha-hood; we react instead of responding. Show me the man who glides across the world in perpetual gratitude, and I’ll show you a fairytale. It is possible for Claire Silver to be simultaneously tone-deaf and also in pain. It is okay for Claire Silver to have emotions that do not consider every angst of the less successful. There has been no wrongdoing.
What there has been, however, is once again an exposé on our inability to grasp nuance. It’s not even that we don’t grasp nuance, it’s that we gleefully deny nuance’s ability to exist. That Claire would react as she did is like…so obvious. Who wouldn’t? That less-successful people hate to hear the more-successful complain is a reality of every success, in every realm, through every epoch. Crypto artists may be more predisposed to this situation than others, due perhaps to our reliance on avatars to represent us. Silver, especially, has steadily valued her anonymity. And that distances us from conceiving of her as a person, with all the entailed fullness. But she deserves of it, and we deserve to offer it to her.
We are so quick to pounce. Too quick to pounce. It does not befit us. As artists, as technologists, as amateur philosophers. Certainly as people who pride ourselves on not sleepwalking through the world. I don’t know what first fueled FKA787’s sardonic and oftentimes fiery attitude (comments, jests, etc.) towards crypto art’s nobility, but boy, does that guy carry a loaded gun at all times. Sometimes it’s necessary, but sometimes it comes across as assaultive. Who does FKA787 think they’re defending?
Sometimes, sure, our reactions are entirely deserved: say, Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile writes some dipshit, tone-deaf take on digital art. Such a man needs to be destroyed, and pronto. But so often, it’s undeserved: the spewed hatred Petra received when it was discovered that her art was AI-generated, for example. There’s such pent-up emotion in crypto art, and it is desperate for any way to escape. Often enough, it’s as vitriol, but when are we afforded any other kind of release? We can only be depressed —at market instability, at failed released, at platform closures, our friends escaping crypto art for less psychotic pastures— so often. And for most of us, there is little reason for celebration.
Sure, sometimes, we can rise above it all, express Buddha-mind and either:
A) accept the vapidity and absurdity of our whole enterprise;
B) bypass reactive emotions entirely in favor of gratitude for what we’ve learned, who we’ve connected with, and all the art we get to witness.
But neither of those are realistic standards to hold ourselves or anyone else to. All Claire Silver has done is be honest with us about her entirely rational feelings. All we have done is view her comments within our own contexts, in which she sits high-up in an ivory tower and complains that her steak is overcooked while we, far below, barely keep our heads above the churning floodwaters. She’s not wrong. We’re not wrong either. She’s right, and we’re right. Silver is tone-deaf. We’re bloodthirsty. Silver is self-involved. We’re dense. Silver is admirably honest. We’re fighting for egalitarianism and empathy.
But we’re artists, god damn it, aren’t we? We’re supposed to be wiser, more emotionally-agile, more reflective than the average bear. Isn’t that our thing? Aren’t we somehow more connected to the source, more creatively liberated, all that nonsense? If we really are all these things, why are we only so rarely kind? If we’re all these things, why won’t we be empathetic ourselves? If we’re so high-minded, why can’t we hold two conflicting truths in our head at once?
Why can’t we see ourselves except in the reflection from Claire Silver’s golden tears?
As I mentioned in the update to this post, Silver’s Daydreamer release did sell-out after all. The discourse has continued, like here between Bryan Brinkman and 787FKA, where 787 accuses Silver of “[leveraging] vulnerability and victimhood…perfectly in this instance.” The conspiratorial will see conspiracy in everything.
I’ll say, as my final thought, that Silver self-pitying her slow release is far less infuriating to me than the copious posts by the crypto art “in-crowd” where they flaunt their wealth and exclusivity and access and friendships and experiences, which the wealthy collector class loves to flood my timeline with. That, to me, feels so much more egregious, cruel, and deaf than Claire’s words. Do we inoculate these people from criticism because we’re exhausted? Because we don’t want to admit we’ve been rage-baited? There’s an inequality here.
Every artist in this movement, every artist everywhere, is trying to attain the same thing: wealth, fame, and safety because of it. Big or small, everyone is insecure, everyone dances on the same needle-tip. The professional athelete’s career can come crashing down because of a single freak injury. The artist’s career can dissipate for no obvious reason at all: saying the wrong thing, acting the wrong way, and every stumble could become a downwards spiral. Yes, there is plenty grace we hope to receive from above, but there is plenty grace we fail to radiate outwards as well. We all share the same space, breathe the same air, but we do not live in the same world.
And such anger, towards ourselves or towards others, leaves everyone sullied.
Also: Just wanted to highlight two very exciting, very interesting forthcoming works I came across this week. The first is Dutchtide’s Midnight Breeze, and the second is Justin Aversano’s Moments of the Unknown. Both worthy of your time.
The Tech Side
The refrigerator is one thing. The car is another.
Perhaps some of you already saw the rant in late May from a woman who could not, for the life of her, understand why her $2500 Samsung Bespoke Refrigerator needed AI connectivity, especially given its host of other design flaws (though she bought the thing, so at least a part of her fell for the pitch). I saw something about this weeks ago, but kind of laughed it off: “Haha! This is classic enterprise, isn’t it? Taking the latest buzzy technological advancement and somehow shoehorning it into everything we sell.”
The “risks” of an AI-assisted fridge are fairly trivial, I’d say. The woman in the video discusses how the AI, theoretically intended to identify all the food in your fridge at a given time, is rarely correct —and oftentimes almost absurdly asinine— in what it mistakes for food. Probably things spoil. Probably its host of features are fairly non-useful.
But then I see this week that Elon Musk and Tesla announced the inclusion of Grok, the LLM Musk created through his xAI company, into every Tesla vehicle via update. At the moment, the Grok integration can’t actually issue commands to the car, existing more or less as a phone app that you can access through the laptop computer screens in every Tesla’s dashboard. But one can see pretty quickly how the unintended consequences of AI fallibility might be fairly catastrophic once they’re strapped to a 2-ton automobile.
I was going to write something lengthier about AI-integrated appliances, but then the Claire Silver segment grew to ~2500 words, so I’ll keep it brief. What does AI-integration into our hardware actually get us? What does it do for us? What problems does it address? What unintended problems does it cause?
Also, Grok’s latest version has been on a Nazi warpath through Twitter of late. How deeply embedded is that in its programming? A year from now, when Grok can grab control of the wheel, is it going to charge through the walls of the nearest synagogue? Is it bad enough that I feel inclined to even ask that question?
I’m reminded of a tweet I saw (which I regrettably am unable to source) which included a picture of someone’s Tesla dashboard screen, I believe in their Cybertruck. It said something along the lines of “Update Download Failed. Car Unable to Function. Please Bring Car to a Licensed Tesla Retailer for Service.” I remember seeing that and thinking, If my fucking car asked to be connected to the internet for some reason, only to use that connectivity to brick itself, I’d light the thing on fire.
I’ll leave you with that.
The Finance Side
Crypto markets are pretty wild right now, and I’m certainly not the manner of economist who’ll be able to untangle them for you, so I’m going to go ahead and give you the highly-paraphrased and completely unauthorized thoughts on the market from MOCA’s very own Colborn Bell, as expressed to us in very high-level private internal team communications (not really).
Here are the highlights:
Markets are reminiscent of 2017 and 2021.
We are probably past the point where individual sentiment plays too huge a factor in the rise and fall of crypto prices. Crypto has been successfully institutionalized by market-makers (banks, governments, funds), whose playbook now, as it has been in the past, is to de-leverage the living shit out of as many small actors as possible, thereby filling their own coffers full of cheap assets, before pumping prices crazily higher. Blow the top off the market when it’s at its most hopeless.
There is no truly “free” market, everything more-or-less programmed from here on-out, for better and for worse.
Predicction: ETH price will shoot-up quickly in fits and starts, there will be a market-wide pullback of sorts in August, and then from September through to the end of the year, all-time highs across the board, capping in late-November.
Now it’s on the books. Let’s see what happens next.
DeCC0 of the Week
Art in the Wild
Dev Corner
Here’s what the devs have been working on this past week:
Working on the Hyperfy/MOCA ROOMs mvp. Presented strategy to Hyperfy founder, Ashxn, who gave meaningful guidance.
Finished the on-page markdown viewer for sources explored in the MOCA Library
Started working with the new ElizaOS v1.2 with the goal to set the foundation for DeCC0 Agents, as Eliza now supports most of the existing plugins
Tinkering with Comput3 related gen-AI efforts around Art DeCC0s
Quote of the Week
“Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.”
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