UNIT-ON-CHAIN: Tyler Hobbs on Inspirations and Working Process

Unit-on-Chain is a podcast series from Unit London offering a ground for critical discussions for artists and thought leaders from the Web3 ecosystem.

Season 1 of our podcast coincides with In Our Code, a highly-anticipated exhibition of generative and digital art in partnership with AOI, on display from 13 September – 16 October exclusively at Unit London.

For Inspirations and Working Process, the third episode of the series, join Abigail Miller, Associate Director of Web3 at Unit London, in conversation with Tyler Hobbs (artist) about his background in both traditional art training and computer science, his inspirations for the brand new work One One Overflow, and his writing on generative art.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE on Spotify and Apple.

How Does Your Background in Art and Computer Science Inform Your Work?

Tyler Hobbs: I’d say the advent of NFTs and on-chain generative artwork has helped me even more than before to connect with the rest of the artist community and to be really in tune with the types of work that they’re creating. So I’d say I have a broad range of influences and the greater exposure to that has just helped me to improve and refine my work.

But I’ve always been on that balance of the technology, and the art has dominated for me. The technology is more of a means to an end. That’s how I think about it in terms of creating the work itself. So I’m not really concerned about whether I’m using a particularly fancy algorithm or any fancy mathematics.

I’m really just focused on making sure that the art has the visual impact that I want. And for me it communicates visually. And that’s really always been the focus of my art. So that’s been a constant for me. But definitely on the other hand, working in this space, thinking a lot about the computers, about programming, a big part of my motivation for creating this type of work is driven by my special relationship to computers as a programmer.

What Is Your Creative Process Like?

Tyler Hobbs: I have really found for myself as an artist that I am much more successful when I go into the work with only the starting point in mind. So I have an initial idea of what I’d like to experiment with, what I’d like to try out. But each work is really like a type of journey of discovery. So I’ve got my starting point and I try to start out with a really open mind about what this work might be.

I’m just taking one step at a time as I develop the work, so maybe I had the idea to draw this pattern using straight lines and I might decide, well, I need to experiment with, what if instead of drawing with straight lines, what if we use some curve lines or what if we draw it with ten times as many lines or a thousand times as many lines, how does that change the work?

And I might discover, say, when I switched to drawing a thousand times as many lines, that it enters a completely different aesthetic space from where I was at, but it might be a much more interesting and successful one. And that’s very common for that to happen. It’s interesting how dynamic the work is in the generative medium, just small changes to the code can really drastically alter how it behaves. So it’s not uncommon for when I finish a work to look back at the trail and it’s zigzagging all over the place across some really different ideas.

As I’m exploring what a work can be. I’m really trying to allow the work to drive the exploration itself in a way. I try to observe what the work feels like it needs to be complete. And once I find the heart and the core of the work, then it’s much easier because it’s this process of polishing and refining, which is a lot more like predictable and controllable than the exploratory phase of creating. Then I polish until there’s nothing left to polish, until I’m out of ideas for what to polish or I’m out of skills for what to polish. So that’s how a work ends.

How Do You Choose a Unique Work from 1000 Outputs?

Tyler Hobbs: I have an elaborate ritual for (picking a unique original work). So I mentioned earlier how the algorithm gets to its final state, right? I just polish it until there’s nothing left that I know how to polish any better. And then at that point, the algorithm is generating good outputs at a reasonable cadence and appears to have the potential to generate some really amazing outputs. 

So then I move into a curatorial phase and I will generate – it’s not uncommon for me to generate 1000 images from that algorithm and get to work on selecting either the best one or the best handful that are gonna comprise the final selection.

And it’s really difficult to pick your favourite out of 1000. So I have a multi-step duration process. It’s simple. I just make a folder that is titled “Good”. And I go through the 1000 and if it’s at least good, I copy it into the good folder. And that’ll usually get me to 10% and I try to do that really quickly and instinctually. I’m not sitting there contemplating whether this one has the right harmony and rhythm, it’s just a gut check of, “Is this one at least good”. And then once I’m down to that 10%, I try to flip through that folder a few times to reset my baseline for quality.

The first draft you’re getting terrible ones, great ones, a lot of mediocre ones. But when you get to the good folder, there’s less variation and noise. And so you start to get a better feeling for what does make a good output from this algorithm. And from there I make another folder called “Great.” 

“Great” is just the next step from good. I’m continuing that process. Usually I’m able to get it down to five (works). And that’s where I start looking at things a little more carefully. So I might do something like only look at the thumbnails of the image. This is a great way to verify that the work has an impact at a smaller scale. Painters would do the same kind of trick – they would look at the painting from the far side of the room and see if the composition still held up and was clear. So if I want the work to have that type of impact, then I might do something like a thumbnail check or that’s where I might start thinking a little more intellectually about the work – does this one have the right balance or rhythm, or are there any flaws in it that are deal breakers and it’s a little slower to refine to the final set. Often, especially in the past, I was picking a handful. With One One Overflow, I just needed a single one and this one was a real standout output.

Tell Us About Your Art Writing?

Tyler Hobbs: I tend to really not like a lot of high brow art writing, because I think it relies a little too heavily on jargon and insider phrasing. And I’ve read a lot about Art History. I’ve read a lot of art writing and yet I’ll still encounter these art writings that are just an absolute slog for me to get to. And I find myself wondering, what the hell did this person actually mean here? I can’t actually find myself extracting meaning from this writing.

It’s beautiful and flowery and all that, and used some amazing words, but in terms of actually extracting meaning from it, a lot of art writing is not successful. And so for me, it was a big goal of mine to make sure that the writing was approachable for anybody. But at the same time, I did not want to shy away from higher level topics.

I’ll explain the trajectory of why I’ve been writing because it’s changed. I’ll admit, at the beginning, writing was part of a way of getting people onto my website. So I was hoping to support myself as a full-time artist. And of course, selling my work through my website, you want people to visit your website in that case.

And so writing was one of the ways that I tried to interest people in visiting my website, but I found that it really helped me understand my own work and take my own work to the next level. It made me challenge myself about the concepts that I was working with and to think a little bit more deeply about it.

Also, I wanted to help other generative artists and improve their work. I was hoping to be beneficial for the scene at large. And then more recently, I think my goal is a little more around communicating the concepts and the value of generative art to a more general audience. There’s other generative artists out there that do a much better job of explaining technical details.

(Scroll to bottom for full transcript)

Tyler Hobbs (b.1987) is a visual artist from Austin, Texas. His work focuses on computational aesthetics, how they are shaped by the biases of modern computer hardware and software, and how they relate to and interact with the natural world around us. By taking a generative approach to art making, his work also explores the possibilities of creation at scale and the powers of emergence. Hobbs’ most notable project, Fidenza, is a series of 999 algorithmically generated works comprising one of the most sought-after fine art NFT collections of all time.

Abigail Miller: How are you today?

Tyler Hobbs: What’s up Abigail. I’m doing great today. Getting started, you know, not a morning person, but you caught me in the morning, so we’re gonna make do.

I’ve got the coffee ready and…

A: Yeah. Great time zone differences from Austin, Texas to London. 

T: Yeah. As long as we’re talking about artwork, I can make it happen. This will be good. 

A: Well, getting started, can you walk us through your background? So you both have a Computer Science background as well as also studied traditional oil painting, figurative drawing. How did those all come together? 

T: Correct. Yeah. So growing up, I was always really into drawing and painting and I was fortunate enough that my parents made sure that I got into after school painting lessons with a local instructor.

And then I had private painting instructor for a while and I was really passionate about art work and wanted to study art in college. But my dad was a little more practical and pragmatic and let’s just say strongly encouraged me to go the Computer Science route instead, which I had been taking programming classes at high school and then had really enjoyed it.

So it was a pretty natural option for me to study Computer Science. So I did that at the University of Texas here in Austin and got a degree in Computer Science, but kept working on artwork in the background and actually started just getting more serious about it as I began working as a programmer for the day job and yeah, just kept taking my art studies really seriously. They’re self-driven studies, but eventually I found the need to incorporate programming into my artwork because programming was really influential for me. And I really enjoyed studying Computer Science and honestly working as a programmer, I really enjoyed as well.

So I’ve began looking for ways to merge the two. And that’s how I stumbled into generative artwork.. 

A: It’s funny how the world really comes full circle. You know, you have this background and today, look where you’re at – one of the leading figures in creative coding, if not most recognisable name on the fine art side.

With that, how do you still see both sides interplay with your work today? How does the traditional side today impact maybe as it deferred when you first were getting started?

T: How does the traditional side impact it? 

A: Yeah. Like how being more on the art side, creating more and more projects – are you looking at what you’re creating in a different lens? 

T: Yes and no. So, yes. In the sense that as an artist, I feel like I’m always evolving and I feel like as more time goes on, I just have broader knowledge of what other artists are doing, a better knowledge of Art History. I’m also informed by what other artists in this space are doing.

I’d say the advent of NFTs and on-chain generative artwork has helped me even more than before to connect with the rest of the artist community and to be really in tune with the types of work that they’re creating. So I’d say I have a broad range of influences and the greater exposure to that has just helped me to improve and refine my work.

But I’ve always been on that balance of the technology, and the art has dominated for me. The technology is more of a means to an end. That’s how I think about it in terms of creating the work itself. So I’m not really concerned about whether I’m using a particularly fancy algorithm or any fancy mathematics.

I’m really just focused on making sure that the art has the visual impact that I want. And for me it communicates visually. And that’s really always been the focus of my art. So that’s been a constant for me. But definitely on the other hand, working in this space, thinking a lot about the computers, about programming, a big part of my motivation for creating this type of work is driven by my special relationship to computers as a programmer.

I feel like I have a solid grasp on how they work and why they work the way that they do. And I think for people that maybe don’t have a programming background, it’s not so obvious how particular and rigid computers tend to be. And like in the intro, you mentioned, I’m interested in how these peculiarities of how hardware and software tend to work, how that shapes everything that we do on computers, including the types of artwork that we make with computers. So I’m interested in exploring that, I’m interested in maybe changing that dynamic. It’s a curious mix of both still for me. 

A: No definitely. And I think that’s the beauty of the show In Our Code, that will be here at Unit London from September 13th to October 15th, is every artist has a different relationship with the machine.

And you mentioned it’s a means to an end. And I would love to go into that a little bit more. Do you already, when creating an artwork have an idea of what it’s gonna look like and have a sketching phase and the artwork specifically will get into the moment. One One Overflow, it kind of differs from your other works aesthetically. And how did you get to that point? What’s the process there? 

T: Yeah. So the first question, do I have a finished work in mind when I’m getting started? The answer is most definitely. No. I have really found for myself as an artist that I am much more successful when I go into the work with only the starting point in mind. So I have an initial idea of what I’d like to experiment with, what I’d like to try out. But each work is really like a type of journey of discovery. So I’ve got my starting point and I try to start out with a really open mind about what this work might be.

I’m just taking one step at a time as I develop the work, so maybe I had the idea to draw this pattern using straight lines and I might decide, well, I need to experiment with, what if instead of drawing with straight lines, what if we use some curve lines or what if we draw it with ten times as many lines or a thousand times as many lines, how does that change the work?

And I might discover, say, when I switched to drawing a thousand times as many lines, that it enters a completely different aesthetic space from where I was at, but it might be a much more interesting and successful one. And that’s very common for that to happen. It’s interesting how dynamic the work is in the generative medium, just small changes to the code can really drastically alter how it behaves. So it’s not uncommon for when I finish a work to look back at the trail and it’s zigzagging all over the place across some really different ideas.

As I’m exploring what a work can be. I’m really trying to allow the work to drive the exploration itself in a way. I try to observe what the work feels like it needs to be complete. And once I find the heart and the core of the work, then it’s much easier because it’s this process of polishing and refining, which is a lot more like predictable and controllable than the exploratory phase of creating. Then I polish until there’s nothing left to polish until I’m out of ideas for what to polish or I’m out of skills for what to polish. So that’s how a work ends. 

To answer your question about One One Overflow. This was a similar process. This one really evolved out of a thread that I’ve been following for a few years. So I think I first started experimenting with some of these ideas in 2018 or so. 

Another beautiful aspect of generative artwork is that you can have a project, you know, maybe you play with it. Maybe it’s partially successful. Maybe it’s not very successful, but the code that you used for that just sits there on your computer and it’s dormant. In the sense that maybe down the road, you’ll have another idea that could be combined with it and really bring it to life and make it successful. 

So that was definitely the case for One One Overflow. I won’t really get into the algorithmic details, but I kind of dabbled with it here and there, with multiple months in between. There’s some variations on that idea that were really calm and minimal. And obviously as the final work shows, some of them were also much more sort of maximalist and dense.

And there were multiple branches off of that trunk of the core of that idea where I’ve had other works that share a lot of core algorithms with that, but end up in a different aesthetic space, which is also something that happens a lot in my work. 

You don’t wanna reinvent the wheel every single time you create a work. As an artist, it’s more productive to follow these threads off of something that you’ve already looked at before, and try to figure out if there’s a way that you can change it or improve it, or just take it in a new direction. So I’m constantly doing that. 

A: I think one of the best things about looking at your oeuvre of work is you really do see that trajectory visually as well as in the storytelling. And you almost have movements within your work of different themes. This whole show is about input, output relationships. And I know with this work One One Overflow, you had a lot of influences. Could you go into that a little bit? 

T: Definitely. I love to look at artwork and so I’m constantly looking for artists that inspire me. And honestly, the artists that tend to resonate with me the most are painters. There are digital artists that I really like, and there are sculptors and video artists and all that, but I would say most commonly paint and painters are what tend to catch my eye.

And of course I go to museums and things like that, but I’m in Austin, Texas. Texas is large. Austin is kind of in the middle of it. There are some other big cities that have great museums, but they’re hours away. Austin kind of has a piddly museum. 

A: It has a good art scene. You’re very involved in the art scene as well. Aren’t you?

T: Yeah. It’s good in the sense of it’s a cool community, but it isn’t really well established museum scene or gallery scene.

A: Yeah, I definitely get it. I’m from Nebraska. So it’s like it exist and it’s there, but it’s not like in New York or London.

T: Right. But honestly, Houston, Dallas, even San Antonio just crush Austin. A lot of my art enjoyment, I look at museums whenever I travel, but a lot of my enjoyment comes from looking at artwork in books. That’s the next best option to seeing the real thing. I’ve amassed a huge collection of art books and I look at them all the time and I’d say it’s rare for there to be a really direct inspiration, for me to look at a work and think, now I know what to do for my own work. 

Because you wanna avoid that direct of a connection, right? It kind of stifles your idea and you’re at risk of really just copying what that other artist did. But to me it’s really amazing whenever I’m playing around with these works, I just start noticing all these associations with other works that I’ve really enjoyed. And so for example, with One One Overflow, I started really emphasising these horizontal linear movements.

And it just really reminded me of Gerhard Richter’s swipe paintings where he covers the canvas with paint and then uses a giant squeegee to pull the paint across the canvas. And so it just has that real linear movement. I might be working on the colours and think, ah, that looks like something that Alfredo Arreguin would’ve used, this purple, pink, green combination. Or, this messiness reminds me of Joan Mitchell style carefree painting.

I really value having this kind of rich knowledge of Art History and artists that I really enjoy because I think there are parts and pieces that will impact every work that I make. I said I don’t want to copy a whole work, but I think it’s absolutely a valid strategy to pull one piece and be like, okay, I’m gonna take inspiration from John Mitchell’s gestures for the way that I think about the mark-making in this piece or something like that.

So let’s say inspiration played a massive role in guiding this work, but an indirect one and one that’s almost easier to see sometimes after the fact too. 

A: For sure. And I think it’s so exciting to have those influences because a viewer that might know more about art and Art History can have that lens who might not have the technical background to understand how this artwork might be actually generated. Going into that, do you think a viewer needs to have a basic understanding of generative art and how it’s made, or there are things as an artist that you wish the audience knew?

T: Yeah. Wonderful question. Personally, it’s a goal of mine that the viewer should be able to enjoy the work without knowing anything about how it’s made. This is not to say that I dislike conceptual artwork or work that relies a lot on its story. But going back to the museum, my favourite way to go to the museum is to look at the work without ever reading the card. Maybe I’ll end up reading 5 or 10% of them, but I really just love the visual aspect of visual artwork.

And I want the work to communicate clearly and not use the mode of creation as a crutch for making it interesting. So that’s the first step of that. But beyond that, of course, if they understand generative artwork or algorithmic artwork and what it means to create work through programming, I think that’s a really wonderful piece of information for them to have, and it will only enrich their enjoyment of the work.

In particular, I think it’s interesting or important for viewers of my work in particular to understand how the role of randomness plays in the programme. So if I run the programme that generated One One Overflow again, it’s not gonna give you the same thing. In fact, you’re gonna get something very different every time that you run it.

And this is probably the biggest departure from traditional art forms that the viewers are more likely to be familiar with. Right? So as the artist, I’m not crafting this one particular image, I’m crafting an entire space of potential images. And there’s just a very different mindset that goes into that.

So although this is like a one of one work, I’d say I often like to show multiple outputs from the same algorithm side by side, because that immediately gives the viewer a nice visual explanation of, here’s how the algorithm works. Here’s just from a few examples, you can see what types of rules it’s operating with and what type of variability it allows.

So I’d like to show, not tell. And I think that being able to show the multiple iterations can be a really effective way to teach the viewer about generative artwork without them having to read the little card too much of the show. 

A: Yeah. And I think that’s one thing about generative art that I love is it’s a shift in consciousness with the artists in the space they occupy. I think it’s a very different, clear movement within contemporary art, the next step. And how do you decide, is there a moment in your long-form, when you generate that work, you think “This is it.” How do you know, for you, since this is a one of one, rather than the 999 of Fidenza?

T: Yeah. There’s more pressure on picking that one. And I have sort of an elaborate ritual for that. So I mentioned earlier how the algorithm gets to its final state, right? I just polish it until there’s nothing left that I know how to polish any better. And then at that point, the algorithm is generating good outputs at a reasonable cadence and appears to have the potential to generate some really amazing outputs. 

So then I move into a curatorial phase and I will generate – it’s not uncommon for me to generate 1000 images from that algorithm and get to work on selecting either the best one or the best handful that are gonna comprise the final selection.

And it’s really difficult to pick your favourite out of 1000. So I have a multi-step duration process. It’s simple. I just make a folder that is titled “Good”. And I go through the 1000 and if it’s at least good, I copy it into the good folder. And that’ll usually get me to 10% and I try to do that really quickly and instinctually. I’m not sitting there contemplating whether this one has the right harmony and rhythm, it’s just a gut check of, “Is this one at least good”. And then once I’m down to that 10%, I try to flip through that folder a few times to reset my baseline for quality.

The first draft you’re getting terrible ones, great ones, a lot of mediocre ones. But when you get to the good folder, there’s less variation and noise. And so you start to get a better feeling for what does make a good output from this algorithm. And from there I make another folder called “Great” 

“Great is just the next step from good. I’m continuing that process. Usually I’m able to get it down to 5. And that’s where I start looking at things a little more carefully. So I might do something like only look at the thumbnails of the image. This is a great way to verify that the work has an impact at a smaller scale. Painters would do the same kind of trick – they would look at the painting from the far side of the room and see if the composition still held up and was clear. So if I want the work to have that type of impact, then I might do something like a thumbnail check or that’s where I might start thinking a little more intellectually about the work – 

Does this one have the right balance or rhythm, or are there any flaws in it that are deal breakers and it’s a little slower to refine to the final set. Often, especially in the past, I was picking a handful. With One One Overflow, I just needed a single one and this one was a real standout output.

A: It’s gorgeous.

T: Yeah. Thank you. I really love it. The other outputs from the algorithm are very similar in form and structure and even the potential colour palette. But there’s just something about that one that everything just lined up right on it. And, this caught my eye pretty early on.

So that one was a relatively easy one for me to pick because it was just a lot better than the other outputs from that algorithm. So yeah, that made my life easy for once. So that was good.

A: And I definitely think in One One Overflow you can really see those influences you mentioned before. You’re also a very talented writer.

T: Oh, thank you. 

A: In your writing, we here at the office have been reading and been sending it to our whole team, even on the traditional art side, to get education about generative art in a deeper format. What made you start writing and for the audience, please go on Tyler’s website. He has some amazing essays and they’re so easy to read and so intellectual and get very straight to the point, but very deep at the same time.

So yeah. What made you start writing? 

T: First of all, thank you for saying that and for describing it that way. It’s so nice to hear. Definitely a goal of mine is to make the writing approachable for anybody. I tend to really not like a lot of high brow art writing, because I think it relies a little too heavily on jargon and insider phrasing. And I’ve read a lot about Art History. I’ve read a lot of art writing and yet I’ll still encounter these art writings that are just an absolute slog for me to get to. And I find myself wondering, what the hell did this person actually mean here? I can’t actually find myself extracting meaning from this writing.

It’s beautiful and flowery and all that, and used some amazing words, but in terms of actually extracting meaning from it, a lot of art writing is not successful. And so for me, it was a big goal of mine to make sure that the writing was approachable for anybody. But at the same time, I did not want to shy away from higher level topics.

I’ll explain the trajectory of why I’ve been writing because it’s changed. I’ll admit, at the beginning, writing was part of a way of getting people onto my website. So I was hoping to support myself as a full-time artist. And of course, selling my work through my website, you want people to visit your website in that case.

And so writing was one of the ways that I tried to interest people in visiting my website, but I found that it really helped me understand my own work and take my own work to the next level. It made me challenge myself about the concepts that I was working with and to think a little bit more deeply about it.

Also, I wanted to help other generative artists and improve their work. I was hoping to be beneficial for the scene at large. And then more recently, I think my goal is a little more around communicating the concepts and the value of generative art to a more general audience. There’s other generative artists out there that do a much better job of explaining technical details.

So I don’t think I need to do “how-to” type of writing anymore. So it frees me up to think about the bigger picture and maybe some of where we’re headed or after years of doing this, what really strikes me as being valuable and interesting about the art form. That’s a big motivator for me of why I do the writing. It’s not easy, but I enjoy doing it and feel like I’m at least decent at it. So I’m glad you enjoy it. 

A: Yeah. It reads very natural as well. And going off of what you just said, where we’re going, where do you think the generative art space is moving and digital art as a whole, I guess that last part’s a big lofty question.

T: I think NFTs are just gonna be an absolute game changer for digital art. I’ve said this before, but this is really the first time in history that a digital artist can earn a living with their work without doing commissioned work. The collection rate for digital art before was just abysmal and just didn’t feel right.

We joke about the “right click saving” and things like that. But if you ever collected digital art, say early 2000s, they would literally email you a JPEG and maybe have some texts like “Congratulations. This is your official collection of this piece of artwork.” And sure, you’re supporting the artist, but it feels so much better with NFTs, iit feels legit. 

So NFTs are like this first time that digital artists will be able to just focus on making their own work and support themselves that way. And I think that’s gonna absolutely shift the dynamic of our perceived importance of physical media versus digital media. 

I think digital media is really gonna dominate in the coming decades and rightfully so, because first of all, physical work has had the limelight forever. And the second of all our lives are becoming so much more digital. I think it’s super important that the artwork reflects that and that we really intensely focus on artwork that is dealing with this new aspect of our lives and our culture. Because artwork is what helps shape the forefront of culture in a changing environment.

And art is one of our best tools for establishing a healthy relationship with that environment and that culture. So I think NFTs are really wonderful development and I think it’ll be positive for digital artwork. 

Now for generative artwork in particular. There’s a lot that can happen. But one of the things that I see happening is generative art being viewed and treated a little bit more as a methodology rather than a genre. So it’s really a mindset and an approach to making artwork rather than a specific set of tools or a specific style. 

And there were traditional physical artists in the past that made generative artwork, who never used a computer at all, or at least not at that time. I’m just thinking John Cage, who’s a legendary composer, admittedly, very much on the conceptual side. He started playing with using randomness in the composition of his musical score. So he would roll dice and use other instruments to be a source of randomness.

That’s absolutely a systematic generative mindset for creating work. And I think all artists across almost all mediums can take a similar approach as the artist. You’re just like distancing yourself some from the final output, you’re thinking more systematically and less about specifics.

You are forced to make your aesthetic rules a little bit more concrete in the sense of turning them into rules. But I think this is something that will probably play a role in many other media. And so I see it branching out a little bit more and being more of a broad influence.

But there’ll probably be a core of algorithmic artists like myself and the others that work in this space that will continue to do our own thing too. So, yeah. That’ll be fun to see. 

A: That’s great. We’re coming up to the end here and we do a fun thing with each guest and we ask the same questions to each guest to get their answers. And it leads to the first question is what does In Our Code mean to you. Just that phrase.

T: In Our Code. I mean, we can take it one word at a time or a couple words at a time. What does it mean to be in code? Whose code is it? Who is our, maybe it’s the artist in this case then maybe that’s my bias. But I would say it’s thinking about, maybe bringing the audience into the artists’ work a little more and their relationship to the code and how the code shapes the artwork. That’s my best interpretation. That’s a tough one. 

A: It is, but thank you. And our second question is what inspires you in the space? 

T: Gosh, I would say I’m gonna interpret the space as being my personal favourite bubble of generative artists, working with the blockchain. And really for me, it’s seeing the incredible work that other artists are doing, the rate at which other artists in this space are evolving and being blown away by some of the work that I see. And I feel like the frequency of incredible work is just increasing at an ever faster pace. And yeah, it just really inspires me to keep pushing myself and keep growing and keep making work. It’s amazing to be a part of that. 

A: Great and thank you. What is one artist you’d love to own an NFT by?

T: One artistI’d love to own an NFT by… Let’s see, I have a good collection of NFTs already. So a lot of my favourite artists I have already checked the box.That’s a good disclaimer.

A: How about we say dead or alive? Just in general, it doesn’t have to be in the space.

T: Yeah. I feel like Sol Lewitt probably would’ve made some cool NFTs. Andy Warhol probably would’ve been an interesting one as well. He got into computers and computer art early on. I feel like he would’ve happily jumped head first into NFTs. Ooh. How about Marcel Duchamp? Boy, what would he have done that would’ve been really curious. Between those, that’s a hard list to pick from. So that’s my best roster. 

A: Yeah, but good choices. Great choices. Okay. Our final question is what technological advancements do you think this space needs? 

T: The one I would hope to see the most. I think a lot of us are patiently waiting for this is better VR, better display qualities out of VR.

So that’s one. My other dream item is e-ink full colour displays that you can hang on your wall to show artwork. So anybody that’s not familiar with e-ink, just think of a Kindle, it has the same feeling of looking at a work on paper and I’ve started working on these colour e-ink displays. And this is really gonna be the most beautiful natural way to show a lot of artwork. I think my own work, for example, would look fantastic on a display like that. We just need to wait one or two decades and it’ll be here a super high resolution refreshing full colour e-ink display. That would be an incredible game changer for being able to display your artwork on that. That’d be fantastic. So I’d love to see that too. 

A: Yeah well, we would too. So thank you again, Tyler, the audience listeners, you can see One One Overflow on unitlondon.com or here in person at Unit London from September 13th to October 15th. So thank you again for joining us today, 

T: Thank you so much for having me. It was a wonderful time talking to you, Abigail.