Today, Max and Colborn look into the vociferous response to former minting platform, Foundation, realigning itself as a social-media-based business (and one that looks a whole lot like the site our own Colborn helped to build), and try to tease out its meaning. Is a slow rug inevitable? Are all remaining platforms doomed to grasp at any nearby straw? What does a business need to survive in crypto art, and more importantly, how do the rest of us build-up the kind of crypto art we want to see? Can we reestablish a middle class through force-of-will alone? 

Today, Max and Colborn begin by breaking down a few of the elements that led to the previous week's worldwide economic bludgeoning, and why bad economics might be useful for crypto art's revolution. Then, the two discuss the motivations for crypto artists in a financialization-less ecosystem, the rise of free mints, the value of ubiquity, and what's left in crypto art when all the attention, the funds, the perception of "value" has gone away. 

Max and Colborn welcome the curator and critic, Eleonora Brizi, back to the podcast for the 3rd time (!!!) to dive deep on crypto art's many problems with criticism. The three will tackle the lack of criticism in crypto art, and what has in many ways replaced it. They'll go into the difficulty of creating criticism while honoring crypto art's values, the trouble of artists being trapped in their own styles, whether criticism can ever be properly incentivized, and much more.

Today's episode is all about bots: automated programs, AI agents, procedural scam artists, if it's performing an action without direct human intervention, we're breaking it down and talking about why it's important. Whether bots are used to juice follower numbers, mislead investors, or create artificial cultural ephemera, there's no denying their outsized impact on every crypto-adjacent. Max and Colborn dive deep on different kinds of bots, how they affect crypto culture, and whether crypto art can ever escape their influence, especially since the internet at-large cannot. 

Today, Max and Colborn welcome a crypto art legend, and one one of the founders of Async.Art, Conlan Rios, to talk innovation in crypto art: Can innovation occur sustainably from the business end? How can a business survive sustainably in crypto art? Drawing from three years running AsyncArt, a leading creative crypto art plaform, Conlan dissects the legacy of his own project, what lessons are applicable to all of crypto art, and the nasty era of un-innovation we (perhaps unavoidably) find ourselves in.

On today's episode, Max and Colborn dive headfirst into the noxious swamp that is crypto art's business environment. They trace crypto art businesses from early years until today, discuss the difficulty of running a sustainable business in crypto art despite rising crypto prices, wonder whether our values are incompatible with survival, debate criticism, and field a whole host of questions and comments from a rollicking chatroom. 

This week, Max and Colborn welcome the remarkable cloud artist and crypto art historian, Martin Lukas Ostachowski (MLO) to the podcast to plumb through the past for the values that crypto art holds dear, if there are any. Join us as we go back to the cypherpunks, through the creation of Bitcoin, back and forth through many years of crypto art to see what crypto art values, when those values were traded away, how data scientists and AI models might provide new hope for unearthing crypto art's actual history. 




Read "Crypto Art - A Decentralized View" by Massimo Franceschet, Giovanni Colavizza, Tai Smith, Blake Finucane, Martin Lukas Ostachowski, Sergio Scalet, Jonathan Perkins, James Morgan, and Sebastian Hernandez here:

arxiv.org/pdf/1906.03263

In a crypto art world always on the edge of flaming-up into fury, Max, Colborn, and special guest ROBNESS spill a bunch of gasoline everywhere and light a match. The three will vent their deepest grievances about collectors, generative art, AI, art contests, and much more. Listen now...if you can handle the heat. 

On this week's episode, Colborn and Max (Cohen) welcome the OG crypto artist Max Jackson to MOCA LIVE for a discussion of, not art necessarily, but all those who love it. Audiences is the day's topic, and the three discuss the best (and worst) ways of finding an audience, what having a crypto art audience even means, the death of Twitter's reliability, the birth of new models of audience-seeking, and whether any such model can survive long-term. 

On today's podcast, Max and Colborn welcome the legendary collector, writer, thinker, and crypto art forefather, Artnome, for a conversation about all things collecting and crypto art history. Beginning with the question "What do we do with art we no long like?" and opening up into a discussion of good vs. bad art in general, the trio eventually come to question and retool Artnome's foundational "What is Cryptoart," article from 2018. We somehow avoid talking for too long about the Boston Celtics. 

Max and Colborn are joined by the OG crypto art collage artist George Boya for a podcast about collaborations, free artistic spirits, and creative processes. Inspired by George's recent series of collaborative pieces, Partners in Crime, the three go in depth on the importance of collaborations in crypto art culture, why the collabs suddenly ended (Artblocks, we're looking at you), what the process of creating collaborative artwork is like, how AI and derivatives factor into the collaborative ecosystem, and much more!

George Boya: twitter.com/BoyaGeorge

Partners in Crime: foundation.app/gallery/cultishnya

Through Time and Space (artwork mentioned during the Pod): superrare.com/artwork-v2/through-time-and-space-15473

Max and Colborn are back (with sound effects!) to assign archaic denotations of value to the biggest recent news stories (and end up spiraling into head-scratching discussions). This week, it's Yuga's questionably-illegal reverting of Moonbirds' commercial rights away from CC0, Latasha using Zora incentive fees to help recoup the losses from a wallet hack, the best way to honor traditional artists who have recently passed, crypto artist identity crises, and an existential economic moment. 

In what feels like a particularly painful moment for everyone, Max and Colborn are joined by the multitalented artist, Awful Eye, to discuss...pain. Awful Eye's own story is one of pain and triumph and bravery, and their conversation today discusses Awful Eye's life, then and now, how he approaches identity in a space that sometimes reduces its members to a few details, how we can embrace and express our own pain in artistry, and what we need to do if we're to confront the world's pain with honesty and sensitivity. 




twitter.com/Awful_Eye

Faultlines: nfts.awfuleye.com/1/collections/0x7ed99eb61ffa896616a7514f8c9e2fdc68a645a1

Today's podcast takes advantage of a quiet time in crypto art to decode, dissect, and predict the future for five fundamental segments of the crypto world. Max and Colborn try to get a sense for the current state of Crypto Art, AI, the Metaverse, Cryptocurrency, and Crypto Culture. Five segments, five underlying questions, a veritable smorgasbord of far-flung answers. This is a good one. 

A perfect accompaniment for the post-NFTNYC trip home, this week's episode of MOCA LIVE is an intellectualized look at everyone's favorite internet-addled, gambling mechanism: memecoins. Colborn and Max talk with Anubis3100 and Sirsu, founders of the 747Crash coin, about how memecoins, despite their degenerate reputation, can actually be a powerful force for artist opportunity, can incentivize artistry and other community action, and are the natural evolution of an internet yearning to be commoditized. 

twitter.com/anubis_3100

twitter.com/sirsuhayb

airport.gay/

On today's MOCAYah or MOCNah, Colborn and Max first look towards the attention moving towards the Base blockchain, as a result of a million-minted XCOPY edition there. Then, they dissect a cultural appropriation conflict between artists Claire Silver and CyberYuyu, and debate the role of highly-intelligent, academic discourse in both crypto art today and any AI-flattened future. Finally, the two talk about the upcoming NFTNYC conference, what they're looking forward to, and what's different about this year's event. 

twitter.com/XCOPYART

twitter.com/neonglitch86

twitter.com/ClaireSilver12

twitter.com/cyber_yuyu

Max and Colborn sit down with the great AI artist, an original StableDiffusion contributor, and founder of DeForum.art, Huemin, to get into the weeds about how various AI models actually work, how AI art as we know it came to be, how we can get more AI into more hands with more expertise, and the all-important Open-Source Development community: Keeping them incentivized, keeping them energized, and what are the risks if we don't. 

Visit: deforum.art/  and www.huemin.art/ to learn more (you so should)

Today's episode is all about the Metaverse, and who better to speak about it with than the hosts of the longest-running web3 Metaverse meetup (and crypto art OGs), Rizzle and Niftytime. From their early history with TheWIPMeetup, to building a Metaverse audience, to a long debriefing on where the Metaverse is today, Rizzle and Niftytime evoke five years spent building this still-unfinished, still-revolutionary way of being online. 

Today's MOCYah or MOCNah tackles all the degeneracy in crypto and crypto art of late. That means Crypto Nick and choosing rich! It means Darkfarms1's logic-defying $BOME token! It means Kevin Rose being hopefully, mercifully gone from our lives for good! And it means a whole lot more discussion of Solana vs. Eth, cycles of degeneracy, and much more more! 

On her record-breaking 3rd MOCA LIVE appearance, performance art extraordinaire OONA joins Max and Colborn to talk live performances, live events, how they go so right and so wrong, maximizing participation/discourse/creativity we meet face-to-face IRL, and so much more. Prepare for laughs, nihilism, and maybe even a few good ideas. 

Max and Colborn take a long look at crypto art curation with the curator and writer of TASCHEN's On NFTs, Robert Alice. With Mr. Alice's art historical, curatorial, and cultural expertise on full display, the three discuss the nitty-gritty creation of a giant crypto art book, decentralizing curation, whether or not crypto art is dead, and stories from ON NFTs inception. 

Max and Colborn are back, and this time, they're playing for keeps. Listen and marvel as your two hosts affix the label of MOCYah or MOCNah to all the latest current events, from SHLOMS' latest performance art, the vibes at NFTParis, the curatorial decisions made by TASCHEN and Morrow Collective, and the return of a fan favorite argument "ETH or USD." 

Today, Max is joined by the multifaceted artist, foundational crypto art writer, and censorship whistleblower, Natrix, to take on the dirtiest topic in "web3": How censorship —by platforms, by Twitter, and by the culture itself— infects everything that happens here. It's a conversation that ranges from Natrix's own experiences being censored, why censorship comes for sex workers first, and the only way we can collectively push back against censoring, centralized forces. 

Natrix's Work Mentioned:

"It's Not Web3 Without Sex Worker Sovreignty": itsnotweb3.eth.limo/

Sisteen Chapel of Smut: opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5/42525

Cryptosexuality 2.0: jpeg.cryptonatrix.xyz/

Fembots: deca.art/collection/fembot-by-natrix-ai

OnlyMemes: deca.art/collection/onlymemes

"Black and white and red all over": twitter.com/onlynatrix/status/1757916082898370860

This week's MOCA LIVE is a revelation about all things AI. Max and his guest, the artist and Makingit24/7 $member Aleqth, explore a unique perspective on the philosophy, subtleties, and possibilities of AI artistry. From marketplaces for custom-designed datasets and the unstoppable proliferation of symbols, to the evolution of artists into worldbuilders, and the coming politicization between AI technocrats and technology naysayers, this is a madcap, jam-packed episode. It's an early 2024 highlight. 

Max and Colborn finally return and to a newly-formatted weekly podcast: MOCYah or MOCNah! Taking on stories, topics, sales, and tidbits from around crypto art, and separating them into one of two overly simplistic bins: Good or bad, and why. Getting the Yah/Nah treatment today: Apple's newly-released VisionPro, auction house sales of poetry and NFT rocks, a big sale for early Botto AI work, and the Yuga/Proof acquisition. 

Max welcomes the artists/researchers/educators Gene Kogan and Vanessa Rosa to the podcast for another AI-centric episode. This time the conversation gets in the weeds about using AI to create connections between mediums, the layperson's changing understanding of AI, the necessity of AI education, where we can find the artist's heart in an AI artwork, chatbots, practical advice for creatives, and much more. 




Find Gene Kogan at: genekogan.com/

His projects:

Eden: eden.art/

Abraham: abraham.ai/

medium.com/@genekogan/artist-in-the-cloud-8384824a75c7

Why Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk: vimeo.com/139123754

Find Vanessa Rosa at: va2rosa.com/

Her project 

Little Martians: www.littlemartians.world/

Max and Colborn are joined for the second time by artist, curator, and TimeAI100 laureate Linda Dounia for a deep-dive, all-encompassing AI power-talk. Linda leads us into a conversation about homogeneous AI monoculture, how it affects us, why we're sick of it, and how to destroy it outright, before we go off on a series of tangents: Where does culture come from? Why export a dying western aesthetic? What does it mean to grow up in an AI-entangled world? And finally, Linda talks about her Speculative Archiving project, a bonkers new vision for how AI can be used.

Max and Colborn are joined by the two brilliant Argentine artists, Julian Brangold and Frenetik Void, for a chaotic discussion of all things AI, starring their strange, provocative, oddly-endearing AI-assisted collaborative project, PsiPsiKoko (which you have to see to believe). The conversation ranges from using AI as a tool vs. treating it as a collaborator, to the homogeneity of most AI artwork today, the way AI is changing how quickly artists can imagine new worlds, and more.




See PsiPsiKoko for yourself here: www.instagram.com/psipsikoko/?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

It's been a big few weeks for generative art, and to talk about the what's, why's, how's, and should's of it all, Colborn and Max are talking with Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine, who together make-up the experiential art duo Operator. We discuss Operator's recent work (Human Unreadable), how algorithmic artistry can continue expanding across mediums, and why exactly generative looms as large as it does in the crypto art canon. Come for Operator's genius, stay for...well... you're probably staying for Operator's genius too.

Max is joined by MOCA's director/curator, Shivani Mitra, and the artist/curator/designer, Linda Dounia, to talk about how bias in AI is everywhere, how it touches everything, and how degrading it will be to so many arena —artistic, political, cultural—if left unanalyzed and unchallenged. Let this podcast be an analysis and challenge both. 

Inspired by the announcement of Apple's new VisionPro AR/VR headset, Colborn and Max discuss crypto art's future in a world where we more-or-less have computers taped to our heads 24/7. The potential goods of that world, sure, but also the many, many, *many* potential bads. We might be listening back to this one in a few years saying "We told you so." 

Max is joined by MLow, one of the most irrepressibly positive figures in recent crypto art, to talk about the art of interviewing, stories good and bad from the dozens of interviews MLow has done with crypto artists big and small, why critical thought is so vital, and the responsibility on the shoulders of every interviewer/writer/critic doing this kind of work.

On this week's Current Events, Max and Colborn talk 6529's new automated allowlist program —EMMA— and whether 6529 is a person or a conglomerate, the explanations and implications of the possible Bitcoin Spot ETF (coming soon???), Opensea's Downfall, and Matt Kane's Contractual Obligations AI project.

My favorite Colborn and Max episode by far. Digging into Marc Andreesen's (founder of a16z) "The Techno-Optmist Manifesto" leads us to talk about the successes and failures of this very 21st-century philosophy, the dangers of unmitigated technological advance, the very possibility of endless decentralization, the overwhelming importance of love in our lives (and its many forms), and why AI might force us all back into each others' arms.

This week, Max and Colborn speak for awhile about the just-announced closure of Async.Art, the stalwart and innovative platform, and what Async has meant to both of them throughout their crypto art journeys. Then it's onto the Norman Rockwell Museum announcing the NFT-ization of old Rockwell photographs, the potential implications of XCOPY's newest artwork, and why there are so many art contests in the Twitter-sphere of late.

What a joy it is to be joined by a true pioneer of crypto art, the writer and thinker and founder of DADA.art, Ms. Judy Mam, to discuss her new NFT book "Serves You Right," whether blockchain writing has a future (and how!), crypto art often feeling like middle school, sexuality in crypto art, the brilliance of Moxarra Gonzalez, and much more. An all-timer.

Welcome to the first Current Events miniseries! Over the next four weeks, we tackle four of the most important influences on crypto culture, crypto art culture, and all the values we hold dear. Up first, Eric Hughes' 1993 "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto," a document that directly influenced the Bitcoin mission, that tackles privacy in the online age, and feels prescient today some 30 years after its writing.

Journey far back to 2018, and listen as Colborn and Max discuss what is perhaps crypto art's most important single text (and that which gave it its name): Artnome's 2018 article "What is CryptoArt?" In this podcast, Colborn and Max break down the 10 characteristics common to all crypto art, which Artnome theorized at the time, breaking down how they've changed, how they've stayed the same, and how important they'll be going forward.

Link: www.artnome.com/news/2018/1/14/what-is-cryptoart

I can sit here and list superlatives for the photographer-turned-Olympic-multimedialist Aaron Huey all day, so I'll say only this: This was a cant-miss opportunity to dive into the mind of a 30-time National Geographic photographer/Nonprofit founder/new technology explorer and discuss so many thing in such great detail. We talk Metaverse, AI, the blockchain, death of legacy media, and more from two perspectives: that of the old photography world, and that of someone with an internal mandate to innovate.

For this one, Colborn and Max go way back to 1909, because it was there that F.T. Marinetti announced an intention to embrace speed, technological advancement, violence, militarism, growth, and acceleration at all costs. Yes, The Futurist Manifesto —patron document of Futurism— is somewhat freaky, but throughout he course of our conversation, it's clear what Marinetti's vision aligns itself with crypto art's present moment in some pretty eerie ways.

Also we keep misremembering Marinetti's name, so that'll be fun to listen to. Shame on us!

A wild and wacky podcast as Max and Colborn attempt to breakdown a wacky and wild document: Hugo Ball's 1918 "Dada Manifesto," which may or may not have elevated modernism to new heights in Europe. This is a text about nonsense, the absurd quite literally, giving things names and taking them away, the invention of an entirely new language. As crypto art everyday fights further to solidify its own existence, the "Dada Manifesto" feels more important than ever to analyze, dissect, and understand. Why don't we do so together?

Gossamer Rozen is our guest this week, and as such, this is a conversation about two things Gossamer has embraced throughout their career: culture and dualism. Culture: Gossamer's artistry almost universally speaks in the language of specific cultures, ones Gossamer can trace their own roots back to, or ones they admire. Dualism: Gossamer moves back and forth between digital and physical artistry with a rarely afforded fluidity. We talk at length about all these things, their pros and cons and intricacies, their places in crypto art at-large, and more. Enjoy. 

Max and Colborn are here for the return of the cryptocurrency market, and here also for the supposed return of many uncommitted crypto art folks who may or may not have gone MIA during the bear market. Many people don't like that, they think of these people are opportunists. Others celebrate them as mental-health-prioritizing geniuses. We break down both sides, trace this conversation to its core, and litigate whether our feelings change depending on who exactly we're talking about. Also is this all Pak's fault? Enjoy.

This week, Max and Colborn talk about the seeming blood-feud between artist Refik Anadol and critic Jerry Saltz, how multi-layered performances by Matt Kane and Operator are stretching the crypto art paradigm ever-higher, why crypto art continues to take itself so seriously and how that's hurting us, and more!

Joining Max on the show this week is Subjective.art curator and creative director, Clay Devlin. The two talk about Clay's now-extensive experience curating IRL exhibits that bring together physical, digital, and crypto artists and audiences, the roots of crypto art's crisis of individualism, how connected crypto art really is to mainstream artistry, curation stories, advice to would-be curators, and more. 

Colborn and Max discuss the recent incursion by Sotheby's Auction House into crypto art, and what its seeming success says about the space as a whole. Why are so many artists attracted to Sotheby's auctions? What niche is Sotheby's filling? What is mainstream acceptance doing to us!?!? All of that and more on this week's episode. 

Colborn and Max are joined by artist/curator/superhuman/MOCA-programming-director Julian Brangold to discuss MOCA's latest exhibition, crypto art in Argentina, the effects of decentralization on crypto art's aesthetics, and the role collectors play in encouraging local, personal artistry. A good conversation by smart cookies. 

In episode 2, Colborn and Max discuss the effects of social media (i.e. Twitter), influencer culture, and content expectation on crypto art. Content vs. Art? Influencers vs. Collectors? How to navigate such strangeness? We posit some ideas.