@CSA2D7: T. Whid on net art, blockchain ownership, and decentralization

T. Whid (@twhid) sits down on the McCarren Park Bench to chat about Net Art, S.N.A.D., Etoy corporation, Blockchain Art, Rhizome, Wikipedia, Centralization, and Decentralized states! CSA2D7 Heya twhid! welcome to the bench twhid Hi! Honored to be here. CSA2D7 Haha, the honor is all mine. I was reading about your naming conventions today and I didn't realize that you preferred to be called twhid in these sorts of interactions. Apologies for posting your full name all over X twhid That's totally fine. I have my full name on my socials and whatnot. CSA2D7 Right, everyone knows your full name lol, I just meant as a matter of politeness or what not Was that a decision you and M River made together? twhid I appreciate it, thanks. Which decision? To use our real names? CSA2D7 The naming convention - T. Whid and M. River in publications and online discourse vs. your first name in person I mean, they are both your real names I suppose. "Real" I dunno haha Like maybe formal vs. informal or online vs. offline (in person), just speculating twhid We decided to use "M.River & T.Whid Art Associates" when we started collaborating. And early on we tried to obscure our true identities, but eventually it didn't make sense. The names are characters that we played online and it depends on the venue if we want to play the characters or not. But we haven't done that in a long time. Plus some people just always call me T.Whid or twhid or some call me Tim 🙂 all good! CSA2D7 Do you still think about playing the character or is that distinction gone? I was talking to Miles Peyton who is a younger generation than me and the way he described his online/offline interactions as ONE BIG THING was interesting to me twhid I think the distinction is pretty much gone at this point unless we do a performance. CSA2D7 Is your performance kind of like the dialogue in the Rhizome S.N.A.D. Interview with Michael Connor? twhid Yeah, exactly. And we did them live too, at times. CSA2D7 Why did you choose to play a persona? twhid It basically comes down to "on the internet no one knows you're a dog" CSA2D7 That's fair. I note your original point of obscuring your true identity, but by the time of that Rhizome interview you were well known twhid When we first started, we launched our website: MT Enterprises WorldWide. It was this fictional art corporation, which was big at the time (think Etoy) [Editor’s note: Twhid inserts a link to Etoy’s wikipedia page and to MT Enterprises Worldwide] CSA2D7 Did you have a fictitious organizational structure (like etoys issuing stock certificates to shareholders) or was it more just an imaginary backdrop? twhid It was an imaginary backdrop. But we had different projects early on with different fictional departments would launch (MT Print was one) eg this [Editor’s note: Twhid inserts a link to MT Print] CSA2D7 OK - so let's fulfill one of our promises to each other that we made in the general chat of the discord and have a first contestant. I wasn't aware of etoys when it was happening, but I did see Simon Denny's piece at his multi-user dungeon and have read up on it. [Editor's note: CSA is referencing the exhibition that Simon Denny curated, which included a share certificate from Etoy corporation]. Etoy - good art or bad art, and maybe, why? twhid Etoy = good art ! CSA2D7 Yeah, I agree (even though I wasn't aware of it during its live duration) twhid we interviewed them one time btw [Editor’s note: Twhid inserts a link to his interview with Etoys on Nettime] CSA2D7 "We refuse the intellectualization of our discourse, it has to stay strong and clean." is very provocative for something that basically survives only on context IMO You have to kind of understand performance art, corporations, and generally conceptual principles to appreciate it, don't you think? twhid I see your point, but I think the idea was that since it was all online someone who didn't understand the art context could run across it and what sort of experience would that be for a person? I think a lot of early net art had this sort of Fluxus approach to art. Create something that works across different contexts because that was (is?) the nature of online media CSA2D7 Good point. Online is another way of saying many many many p/o/vs Is blockchain art like that? Or is it maybe too centralized? Is Web2 becoming too centralized? Just throwing in questions that are related twhid I'm drawing a blank, but I think it's possible and probable that it's happened. I mean any sort of art or meme coin could be considered that, right? Someone might speculate on it with no understanding of the underlying context.. but it's different. Web2 is 100% too centralized. Web3 is in danger. CSA2D7 Yes, definitely in that respect of buying before understanding What is the danger of centralization in your eyes? and for art? twhid danger of centralization: It restricts media and formats and forces de-facto standards (top down) For art, there are all sorts of ways to put a thumb on the scale if all discovery is going through some central search engine or portal eg. like OpenSea And for owning networked digital art, you don't want that in some proprietary DB and/or centralized API. Blockchain is better for that. CSA2D7 Can I give you what I think is sort of a counter-argument (that benefits you and your art) that's pro-centralization? twhid yes please CSA2D7 Maybe you don't see it as such, but... when I wanted to go back and think about Net Art, I went to Rhizome. And on Rhizome I looked at their Net Art Anthology. Chapter five has a lovely little focus on S.N.A.D. and I got to read up on it and "why it is important". Isn't Rhizome, centralization? twhid I think there's a difference between an authority or resource and being forced into particular behavior because some entity has a monopoly position. Rhizome is a resource and has been in the digital art space for almost 30 years. Wikipedia isn't an example of centralization, for example. CSA2D7 But Rhizome and Wikipedia are very different? Rhizome is controlled by a small group of individuals, with a board of directors. They kind of have a monopoly on how we see Net Art. Everything on their website is the product of centralized thought Wikipedia is crowd-sourced information, and there are many folks that can influence what is written And to be clear - I view rhizome as a positive force for digital art generally twhid Yeah, I see that point. They are a centralized org. And they specialize in a certain area (net art, digital art). And I generally do think that it would be better for the world if art discovery, curation, contextualization was more decentralized. But, I guess I was trying to make the distinction between orgs that abuse a central position (like a business monopoly) and others that simply have authority and people go to them voluntarily. I'm trying to think of a joke re: having a monopoly on net art but I'm coming up short haha. CSA2D7 I suppose there are good kings/queens But that's not what we want to see in the blockchain right? twhid Well, blockchain can't have that sort of cultural authority. I think it's only networks of people that can do that. Blockchain can underpin it of course. CSA2D7 I dunno which way it flows? As in does cultural authority direct what happens on the blockchain or vice versa? There's some sort of relationship there right? Because we definitely have kingmakers in this space twhid But yeah, I would prefer many orgs in the digital art world all with different narratives. But people like stars. CSA2D7 S.N.A.D. is a star! Look at this emoji Twhid! :twhid: How do you feel about NFTs as art, as blockchain art? twhid just fyi [Editor’s note: Twhid inserts a link to the S.N.A.D. contract on etherscan] I'm very happy to have my own emoji !! I love NFTs and blockchain art. I've always been a sort of networked art maxi. SNAD is the manifesto of that POV. Like in a sort of old school modernist sort of way re: using the medium. I was never very impressed with net art which simply delivered other media, but just used the internet for distribution. I liked net art that used the network. networked objects are generally collections of hyperlinks, which is why I'm in opposition to the idea that a JPEG NFT isn't a networked object and can somehow be removed from the network without losing something (which it quite literally does). CSA2D7 Exactly. This is exactly what I think. It becomes a different thing (you can use whatever word you like, some people like walter benjamin's aura) when its part of the network, even if can technically be removed from it twhid we've always been in violent agreement on this 😂 CSA2D7 I mean, I need you to be closer to me when I get in these fights, because it helps when I'm not the only one yelling from the top of my lungs 😂 twhid just throw up the twhid emoji and i'll be there CSA2D7 OK, if we had to be critical about the network and the blockchain, where do you think it would start (I was inspired by Mitchell Chan's convo yesterday) twhid I mean, I don't give two shits for bitcoin, for example. The libertarian ethos around a lot of blockchain I don't agree with. The speculation is very bad for art. There are so many things! I do agree that we need a decentralized way to own digital assets. And some of those assets will be fungible. And if that happens, there will be fraud, money laundering, and all sorts of financial crimes. But, we, as a society, just need to deal with the crime-ing. Truly owning a digital asset is more important. And the speculation around art was very, very bad. However It did make explicit how the traditional art market generally works. The traditional market just does it much slower and more opaquely. So that was a silver lining. CSA2D7 Agreed on speculation, art, and the art market. I kind of want to dig a little deeper though into this statement "Truly owning a digital asset is more important" twhid (I'm going to need to bounce in about 5 mins btw) CSA2D7 For one thing - a lot of your early art wasn't really "ownable" in the NFT sense, and also, some of your work was really exploring this interesting idea behind participation that I think the best NFTs do as well - and as Ive learned when you have more folks as part of the art, you kind of "own" less of the art And then the other thing - formats go obsolete, some art is meant to be dynamic and changing (so what are we owning in that sense) So - I think I agree with you, from a practical perspective, its really easy to buy and sell an NFT, a digital object. Easier than its ever been. But the idea of forever ownership or true ownership is maybe a little difficult because there are preservation and other requirements? And maybe its just not meant to be permanent in the way a painting is static twhid As an artist I don't think you should overly worry about [permanence]. There will always be ways to execute the common formats we have right now (from image decoders to programming runtimes) So, collectors should be educated. Beuys used fat in his art. If the art world can figure out how to preserve that, then your JS + HTML will be just fine. But seriously, it's not for artists to worry about. The butterfly shouldn't worry about the vitrine where they may be pinned one day. OK, that's it for me! Again, I'm very honored to be invited. CSA2D7 You ask great questions! I'm always interested to hear your take on things. And above all else, you are a legit art lover. Thanks for this space and gathering all the amazing folks you have here. CSA2D7 Thanks so much! It was an honor and pleasure to have you in here. I will throw it all in a google doc and send it over to you twhid awesome thanks !