@CSA2D7: shl0ms on anonymity, breaking things, and capital for artists

@SHL0MS joins me in a conversation on McCarren Park Bench to chat about anonymity, prisons, breaking things, capital and capital creation for artists, and entropy art! Cameos from @iamwhitelights @quantize_d @plutoniumfitzg @figure31 @shibboleth88 @delta_alpha_ohm and @stephensantoro_ (1/2) CSA2D7 Heya shl0ms shl0ms Hi! CSA2D7 Wonderful to see you! thanks for posting our photo on X Usually I don't prepare questions for these things. I read up a lot think about it and then let the conversation go where it goes. But I made up a first question for you because I thought it might be fun: can you describe the objects that are around you? I will describe mine for you as well if you like? shl0ms you go first! CSA2D7 How specific would you like? shl0ms hyperspecific because it will give me time to take stock of my surroundings CSA2D7 Oki! I have: two acer computer screens maybe like 22 inches each, I just used a measuring tape that I have on hand; this is too specific. I have books, many books, Casey Reas processing book, Rhea Myers Blockchain Provocations, Hito Steyerl's new book, a Sailing book published by DK, Jerusalem cookbook, Tintin comics, a Felix Valloton exhibition book.. I actually have a ton of coffee books a bunch stacked up to sit under my screens I won't tell you what they all are its too many. I have my keys, a glasses cleaner, pens, a bluetooth speaker, a glass of water, airpods, an extra battery pack, a kindle, a ping pong paddle, one of those rabbit AI things, stevie P's business card inside the case. This is just stuff on my table. An old apple watch and a LG remote control. OK enough, now you go iamwhitelights need a chris dixon book in the mix 😛 CSA2D7 Oh that's there, it's inside my table. I finished it though so its just sitting there iamwhitelights should've known hahah CSA2D7 I like how the three of us are anonymous figures this is nice shl0ms ok let me start with the books too. these are all overflow from the main place i keep books, but i'd say the ones i keep close to my work area tend to be more directly pertinent to whatever i'm working on or thinking about currently within eyesight: the magic image, the journal of irreproducible results, deconstructivist architecture, mapping guide to graphic navigation systems, a few siggraph issues, atlas of atlases, a original copy of from webspace to cyberspace by kevin hughes (one of my more prized books), design and the elastic mind, a stack of whole earth catalogs, math letters by wb schaefman which is really fun, two quasimatt books that both give me panic attacks when i try to read them to my left are a bunch of guitars and guitar related things, a crappy digital piano, some geometric origami experiments, a stack of Tristan Perich “CDs”, various art things that people have sent or gifted me that i need to display or find a place for (concept country zine, first light stars by morrie kolman, an incidental container tote by jason isolini, etc) i am at a desk with a nice wide monitor and my shitty laptop and a bunch of assorted crap, audio equipment, way too many yubikeys, a caesar cipher trinket, a tungsten cube, big water bottle with supplement powders, a little buddha statue, * ****, some funky pens, a lot of x-actos, a few hard drives. to my right is a a little corner with a bunch of projects - modified tube amp, pedalboard, an antique phone with a guitar pedal built in that i am trying to repair, a time since launch by cwandt, a bunch of weird old watches that i am trying to fix with varying degrees of success, a lego lamborghini countach i want to destroy, and an old phrenology bust i just found iamwhitelights TIL shl0ms is a music nerd welcome to the club shl0ms behind me are some weights strewn about that i need to put away, risographs from Sunroom on the wall, my collection of old mechanical calculators, a pile of boxes of god knows what that i will probably have forever and never look inside because i don't want to know by my feet to the left is a small garbage overflowing with protein and energy drinks, i will be discarding of these after we finish this because it's getting gross CSA2D7 What is your favorite energy drink? shl0ms well my favorite is white monster, but it doesn't have enough caffeine for my morning revival. So that's more of a mid day boost CSA2D7 I just remembered I was supposed to get coffee and forgot to. My instant coffee ran out yesterday and I was supposed to pick up more from my walk. Sigh shl0ms right now i am drinking ghost sour pink lemonade. it tastes too good for a sugar free drink which makes me suspicious CSA2D7 Its probably artificial sweetener? Im not familiar with this white monster, but I will try it shl0ms yeah but so is celsius and alani nu and those both taste gross. oh man i feel like you'd need coffee for this rn CSA2D7 No, definitely not, this conversation is getting me jolted iamwhitelights white monster is the most degenerate monster for sure and i love it CSA2D7 I hate artificial sweetener, I prefer sugar but just put like a little sugar in like 11 grams, not 30 or 60 iamwhitelights aesthetically the white can hits CSA2D7 There's this leftover thing from my last conversation with Rhea Myers that I want to start on with you shl0ms, but it could be perceived as kind of a rude question shl0ms lmao go for it CSA2D7 Ah wonderful. OK, so Rhea posted a little art [Editor’s note: CSA2D7 posts an image that Rhea created for the last McCarren Park Bench chat, a modification of Ad Reinhardt’s “What do you represent?” cartoon about abstract painting. In Rhea’s version, the viewer is asking “Who pays for this work?” and the painting responds, “Who pays for your work?”] shl0ms i have a boot boyz shirt with this ad reinhardt comic haha iamwhitelights lol i missed this. reminds me of what pollack always says. "i'm done with figurative. i dont want to paint something that makes me feel some way, i want to paint the feeling itself" CSA2D7 So my question to you is, where did you come from shl0ms? Blowing up a lamborghini huracan and having a team is not cheap! shl0ms two separate questions i suppose. re the lambo i think a lot of people just assumed i was some whale or trust funder or something but that's definitely not the case. i took on a ton of risk getting that project done. it was incredibly hard to put together and the stress reverberated through my life for like two years as far as where i came from, shl0ms the identity/character/entity is just a part of my brain that has always existed. i didn't realize it was an artist until i started distilling it into the language of NFTs; prior to that i thought i just had some anti authority trouble making streak and that there was something wrong with me because i wanted to break everything i've hinted at it before but several years before the public genesis of shl0ms i did something very high profile that i consider my first true shl0ms project. the statute of limitations is up but i think it might dox me so i haven't revealed it yet having the artist<>art relationship helps a lot with intentionality and thoughtfulness, not that i see those as strong suits of mine now particularly. but back then it was pure compulsion shibboleth now is the time shl0ms did that answer the question idk i'm already overstimulated feel free to redirect me CSA2D7 Yes for sure. I have two followups: break things? how important on the scale of identity-keeping is it that you stay anonymous? shl0ms could be. i experience the anon version of l'appel du vide which is the primal urge to dox myself it's extremely important but it's also a prison CSA2D7 A prison is extreme? What about a home with parents and you can sneak in and out of the house? shl0ms it's intensely constraining in so many aspects of my life. it affects everything really shibboleth the essay you wrote about the anon I was quite a good read CSA2D7 What part did you identify with shibboleth, as an anon yourself? shibboleth I personally identified with the I as another, it's something I feel as well but in different ways iamwhitelights ooo plz link i've never read! (if that's kosher CSA2D7 dont let me ruin the vibes) shl0ms thank you! i want to do a follow up that touches on how it actually impacts my life, but i can't without revealing more about my life, which is basically the point of the essay [Editor’s note: Shl0ms inserts a link to their essay on substack “uno, nessuno e centomila ”] shl0ms i wrote this kind of stream of consciousness it's a little self indulgent but wtvr CSA2D7 Compartamentalization. Self-indulgent to who? Hehe shl0ms hehe CSA2D7 "that “me” is a simulacra, constructed by the subset of my activity that they happen to see, shaped by their own unique experiences and projections." iamwhitelights isn't it interesting. we all as viewers want to see/hear/read the most personal self thing you can create, and yet as artists we find ourselves feeling selfish/self-indulgent when we do so. shl0ms being anonymous is important to me and in some sense all of the interesting things i have to say artistically are dependent on it. i also naturally hate having a public internet presence. i think fame or being known to the internet is my nightmare. so i love being a nobody in the real world, but that has its own challenges. the world isn't really set up to allow for anonymity and it makes it incredibly difficult to deal with institutions, or to get things done in the real world. any level of red tape is a nightmare. another side of it is that it forces you to keep people at an arms length, even when you want to let them in. there are a lot of people i would like to be friends with that i can't, or i have to at least set some boundaries which i don't love doing. there's the constant cognitive overhead of opsec, of remembering which name people know you by or what info you have or haven't disclosed and it just gets entropically more complex each passing day. i assume it will be impossible to remain pseudonymous with any level of public exposure within the decade like, i already know how a powerful enough AI would dox me. of course i have some preventative plans, but over a long enough time scale it's a losing game if you want to stick with one identity and have any impact if institutions were set up to enable more privacy that would be a whole different thing, but unfortunately we're headed in the opposite direction. if i am going to eventually get doxed i would prefer it to be by a superintelligence than doing a face reveal tweet though, that would be incredibly anticlimactic iamwhitelights interesting, never considered how being anon affects ability to collab with larger institutions. you'd think in this day and age there'd be tools for that sort of thing as there's so many anon founders in blockchain/art/internet etc. shl0ms i mean both on a professional level and a personal one iamwhitelights Totally shibboleth so in that essay, and I suppose here, there's the idea "i am writing this, not SHL0MS" -- does SHL0MS have a different voice? shl0ms you would be surprised how many things are a standard deviation more complicated to get done if you simply refuse to tell people your name, even organizations that ostensibly are philosophically aligned. the alternative is daos, which are a whole other nightmare iamwhitelights riiiiight like if you need a W2 to do this work, you're just screwed. shl0ms i think shl0ms is just a segment of the pie chart of the actual human. but it also includes other people who are involved in shl0ms, or people who feel like a part of it. it's concentric circles of shl0msness CSA2D7 You are you, but Shl0ms is often described as a group? i.e., "I am shl0ms" shl0ms like csa said, compartmentalization. if i was walking around looking and acting like shl0ms then that would defeat the whole anon thing right. i am currently talking as the ringleader and instigator. but "i" could die rn and shl0ms would still continue. i'm not sure anyone would notice shibboleth is it like Larry David playing Larry David but the version of Larry David that he wishes he could be in the real? shl0ms it's definitely somewhere on the David-Fielder spectrum CSA2D7 Fielder is very much about breaking things I like returning to this idea of you breaking everything and tying it with $CARS obviously. Do you want to talk more about breaking things? shl0ms yes. i love breaking things. broken things are much more interesting to me Jiggy🏀 Curious in the context of breaking things on x which you do well (hi shl0ms and everyone) modern glitch art Plutonium F. The optical illusion series has been so fun to follow iamwhitelights Whoa CSA2D7 Why? shl0ms a lot of reasons the way that things break reveals a lot more to me than the way that they function the way that things resist breaking presents a challenge and an opportunity to make a statement about the thing itself and the nature of its breakage resistance i think entropy is more beautiful than order. it reveals the raw intent of the universe instead of a single human CSA2D7 This is bringing me back to Hito Steyerl's second chapter in Medium Hot. So you don't want to find order in the broken thing, or fix it, you like it for what it is! shl0ms car and fntn were in some ways an exploration of inserting more physical entropy sources into generative art, and also an aesthetic exploration. i think that's one way i failed with car, or at least i was naive in talking to media about it CSA2D7 Why? shibboleth interesting context --- I'm curious, do you see shl0ms as part of any lineage? lineage of artists or of thinkers/makers shl0ms because the choice of the lambo was obviously meant to be a criticism, but it got sensationalized and overshadowed the quieter more thoughtful aspects of the work. i suppose it was inevitable, and probably intentional at the time because i wanted the project to be notorious and explosive. but it was just as much about the warping of the forms and the patina and the aesthetic exploration and that got lost. and to me that has much more lasting value. when i look at the car pieces i get lost in that, not in the critique i suppose it's still an implicit critique, but rooted in the actual fragments and not the explosion Rhea (pronounded ree-aah) car was so perfect and it says something about critical literacy of people didn't get that kinetically fractionalizing the symbol of crypto ambition/value/status was a critical move. CSA2D7 Is it possible to divorce the two things? fragment from explosion? We return to compartamentalization Art and its specter shl0ms definitely not. CAR // 0001 is the detonator, just like FNTN // 0001 was the hammer (shoutout 1ofthemanymatts) the explosion is the entropy source that generates the forms. but it isn't the entire project, and i think the public narrative outside of shl0ms enthusiasts/experts is a much more juvenile reading of it. again i think this was an intentional strategy at the time, sensationalizing my own art using the same mechanisms i use for disinformation etc. but that makes it harder to maintain the legacy of the work, so i reap what i sow and complain about it because i like complaining CSA2D7 Crypto could be about breaking things Rhea (pronounded ree-aah) move fast and etc. iamwhitelights holdin on to my piece for life so jealous murat pak got the steering wheel, i want it! Plutonium F. I know about CAR since it was minted and finally took the time to understand it last year quantized car is a favorite of mine shl0ms yeah, this touches also on the perpetual shl0ms problem - choosing to be misunderstood, reveling in it, and then being sad that no one understands me like the bike guy meme or the wojak who's a prison of his own brain meme iamwhitelights it might just be a perfect system for the social media age CSA2D7 Its interesting that you think its possible to understand ones’ self shl0ms do you understand yourself? CSA2D7 Yes, I think so, but I'm not sure I share your view of entropy and breaking things as the moving force of the universe There are certainly parts that I do not understand though! shl0ms i think i am very self-aware on a first-order level, as in how i actually behave and think, but the second-order and beyond are a complete mystery. i've been slowly unpacking over the past 6 months though so making some progress CSA2D7 I think I know my self very well, as well as probably well as a person can know themselves... but there is a lot of mystery in the world shl0ms i can elaborate on the view if you have any questions on it. as far as the more personal motivations to break things i wish i could share more backstory because i think it reveals a lot. it's all in the autobiography (shoutout #2 for 1ofthemanymatts ) CSA2D7 Yes, would love to hear the backstory shl0ms the mystery is beautiful. i love the frustration of not knowing, and the yearning to know i hate not knowing, but knowing everything would be torture i think. just like knowing the truth behind shl0ms would be anticlimactic, as much as one might yearn to know iamwhitelights it unfolds shl0ms let me think of how to phrase it abstractly in order to get where i am now, i had to break many things. i don't know if that taught me to love breaking things, or just was a selection effect for the type of person who intuitively breaks things, or if there's any difference CSA2D7 Is it possible to describe a personal detail about the first time you felt satisfaction breaking a thing? Or were cognizant of that satisfaction iamwhitelights was it the toilets? Lol shl0ms the first memory i have of feeling satisfaction in breaking something was a deeply entrenched rule. i don't want to go into detail, but i was 3. there are stories from prior to that but i don't remember them. much of my childhood was defined by rules and my desire to break them fntn was not the first time i smashed porcelain. Hehe iamwhitelights as a skater, i deeply resonate with that. f*** the rules. shl0ms once i discovered the ways that i could break things on the internet, it felt like the world opened up to me CSA2D7 So maybe I am misreading you work - I see the breaking things and enjoyment of it, but I also see an enjoyment of you pushing things to their limit and capturing that (and stopping) before they break? shl0ms it was a way to express myself. i didn't want to use the text boxes to write some series of characters that pointed to something, but to break the text box in a way that expressed myself. and so on shl0ms what would be an example of that to you? CSA2D7 A few, but maybe Security with Verse? What you created was not actually a security, but something security-like. Perhaps its just a view - but maybe breaking it would entail creating an actual security and seeing how it would be addressed by regulators? Or maybe you saw the performance as a sort of breaking? shl0ms ah i see that perspective. i honestly would love to break financial laws more directly. i hope to get to a point where i am capitalized and protected enough to engage in more direct confrontations. so yes, when it comes to laws and the legal world i thrive in the grey area like with CAR we covered the logos for legal reasons. on the day of the explosion, t-2h before the detonation i got probably the 2nd most stressful call of my life from an ip lawyer CSA2D7 all lawyers just want to scare you, even when they are representing you. Allegedly. shl0ms i would love to face VW in a lawsuit and enshrine CAR forever. i actually think it would be incredibly fun but it would also probably financially ruin and dox me so i'd rather live to fight another day even if i have to compromise CSA2D7 We live in the world, yes. This idea of being well capitalized to push boundaries as an artist is an interesting one shl0ms i think about it every day CSA2D7 You kind of have two shields - capital and anonymity CSA2D7 Is there anything specific about that, or just how to accrue more generally for your practice? shl0ms two angles really. the more personal one is along the lines of something i tweeted about a month ago: “i love making art, but i hate selling it some of the work i most enjoy making is the kind i don’t sell the problem is it’s also incredibly meaningful to me when the work finds a forever home with someone who cherishes it not to mention i like when the world takes my work seriously, and perceived artistic value is unfortunately inextricably linked to monetary value i’m coming to realize it’s really not the transaction itself that i despise, it’s the act of selling; the need to shamelessly promote in service of a sale and everything leading up to that and this unease has blinded me to the reality that hoarding it can be equally selfish” iamwhitelights why i took a hiatus from music. i couldn't get my mental health in check around that issue shl0ms but this is just the first layer, the next is needing capitalization to do the things i want to do and the third is wanting to figure out how to more directly and sustainably capitalize other artists [Link to shl0ms tweet] “if you are an artist who i’ve expressed admiration for previously just know that my life goal is to figure out how to get you a million dollars to build something fucking crazy” CSA2D7 Do you think shl0ms is a useful vehicle for these three goals? shl0ms i want it to be. i think the solution is some sort of parallel cypherpunk for-profit model that disintermediates the institutions that currently fund resource-intensive works of art and being anonymous helps in some ways, as does having a reputation for pulling off resource intensive and seemingly impossible things iamwhitelights ^^^ definitely my impression of "shl0ms" shl0ms i hate having to make money with my art, and i hate needing to make money to make more art. it's the least evil system though, and i think the only way to get money to the people on the bleeding edge is to bypass the nonprofit industrial complex altogether and figure out a profitable way to get someone like 113d or rhea a million dollars to build something fucking crazy iamwhitelights :Clap: CSA2D7 Don't you think 113d or Rhea using a studio would be strange though? (Rhea has worked with Dapper as a developer previously) shl0ms i see it more as a financing mechanism but sure. just examples of artists i want to funnel absurd sums of money to and see what comes out there are no shortage of brilliant people untouchable to the calcified philanthropic gatekeepers of large-scale public art that i want to unburden from capital constraints CSA2D7 What about the argument that the struggle, or the friction, is what helps generate meaningful art? shl0ms from experience, there is no shortage of friction even when someone hands you a lot of money to do something crazy. if anything it's much harder CSA2D7 mo money mo problems shl0ms most things that are fucking crazy to do are not only crazy because they require a lot of money. that's just a precondition but then you have to figure out how to do the thing no one has ever done before because it requires a lot of money CSA2D7 One could view Chamath's SPACs as a form of entropy art shl0ms don't give me any ideas haha CSA2D7 It would be interesting to see what you would do with a lot of money. Shl0ms next career progression: arms dealer, or large controlling shareholder of a SPAC 😂 Entropy dealer shl0ms i'm more immediately compelled to direct it towards other artists first but i have some ideas. i yearn for a world that contains the kind of art i can't even imagine, and i already know all of the people who would make it. i think people generally recognize that there's been some kind of civilizational stagnation in this area, but then they think the solution is to 3d print marble statues or touchdesigner led panels instead of finding someone who can create something they couldn't have even imagined Rhea (pronounded ree-aah) It is possible to not have access to all of oneself. Understanding (like an explosion) is a trapdoor function. But you are both a persona and an egregore? shl0ms there's something inherently egregoric about shl0ms. the i am shl0ms thing just kind of randomly happened on its own one day early in the shl0ms arc CSA2D7 That's a word that Simon Hudson used to describe Botto as well, good use shl0ms anonymity strips out all of the things that make us different so people see themselves in it, if they share the specific qualities that you allow the lens to not filter for me that's a couple of themes and stylistic choices and they resonate with a certain type of person, and there are no known qualities about "me" to make me an "other". so it's just them to the extent that it resonates... (cont.)