Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Tez Talks Radio. I am your host, Marisa True, and today I am joined by the funny guys otherwise known as Jan, who is an avid NFT collector and the co-founder of Larandom, an art institution focused on showcasing and celebrating the history of generative art. So welcome to the show. First of all, how are you?

Speaker 2: 0:19

Hey, marisa, nice, to see you again. I'm all good, how are you?

Speaker 1: 0:26

I'm grand. Thank you so much for for joining. I know it's always a tricky thing scheduling across time zones and you're also a very busy guy because there's a lot to dig into when it comes to larrandum and how it's grown over the past couple years. But to kick off the conversation, we'll start off where we always do, which is to focus on you. Can you tell me about your journey, not only into the NFT world, but how you sort of came into Tezos and then became a collector?

Speaker 2: 0:47

Yeah, sure, where should I start? I actually discovered NFTs when I was still at university, 20. And it was first, like, not through the art collecting route. It was first through this basketball collecting game called NBA Top Shots and that took my interest for a few weeks. But then, in January 2021, I quickly discovered Artblocks. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was minting ringers by Dimitri Chernyak. I sent some ETH to this address on the blockchain. I received unique art pieces in my wallet and for me, that was really like a light bulb moment, because I was exploring the nft space like I was looking for um applications that made sense, um, and for me, this was like the first time that art on the blockchain like truly made sense, like I saw the synergies between the type of art and the blockchain technology.

Speaker 2: 1:42

And I would say that ever since then, I've been mostly focused on generative arts and collecting generative arts and, of course, that quite quickly brought me to the, the tezos blockchain. I think I started collecting there, if I remember well, in september 2021, and that's simply because some of my favorite generative artists were releasing work there. I believe the first pieces I collected were artworks by the Japanese generative artist QBB, and then I also quickly went on to collect some pieces by Manolo, the Argentinian generative artist, who is one of my all-time favorite artists. So yeah, if they met on Tezos, of course I had to follow suit and I started collecting there, and since then I haven't really left the Tezos ecosystem. I'm still very actively collecting there, both for my personal collection but also for Lorraine.

Speaker 1: 2:32

So it's interesting because a lot of people who came to Tezos sort of started exploring the art world and then uncovering all of this talent, while you very much found the artists and then followed the artists to where they were minting their works but you also got into the generative art space, I would say ahead of kind of its boom, which came later that year, or actually even the following year, in 2022, 2023. So what was it that kind of? Was it the chromie squiggle that kicked off your first interest in generative art and what was your understanding of it when you first encountered it?

Speaker 2: 3:09

That's a good question. I kind of missed the Chromie Squiggle mint. I think that happened in I'm correct it was in December 2020. And I didn't really know about art blocks back then, so for me it really was Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, which I believe was maybe the 31st of January 2021. Well, anyway, like around that time period, and yeah, to me that demonstrated the power of generative arts on the blockchain.

Speaker 2: 3:36

I heard about Tezos, I believe in March 2021, when Hiket Nog was just getting started, but back then I was really focused on collecting on Ethereum. I didn't have like that much time to look into like everything on tezos, so it took me like a few months to like realize that it was like something, something super special that was happening there. Um, and at first I must admit that I also had some concerns like about the blockchain. Like I felt safer, like just collecting on ethereum, which was like the default and like the most secure blockchain, the most well-known one. It also had like very good application support, like good wallets, like all these things. But after a few months, like I realized that what was happening on tesla's was quite, quite unique and it was already culturally very significant and I believe that that will like transcend the blockchain, like I think now there's also. It's like all these millions of important artworks is, yeah, like the cultural relevance is like set in stone at this point.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So I have no, no issue like collecting on tesla's now so talk to me about how you began to amass your generative art collection, particularly, you know, tezos, nfts. What was sort of the process you went in with beyond kind of generally finding the artists you like and then finding pieces you liked Was there? Was there, you know, this appetite to look for something that could appreciate in value Was it artistic value? Was it financial potential? How or something that could appreciate in value? Was it artistic value? Was it financial potential? How did you go about acquiring these NFTs?

Speaker 2: 5:10

What was sort of the mental model you went in with? I would say it was, at first, it was very much about experimentation and just like discovering interesting niches, discovering interesting artists, as I just mentioned. Like the very first pieces I collected, like it was very much because the artist was already there. I already loved the artist's work and I had to come to Tezos to collect the pieces that I enjoyed most. But then I stayed around for, yeah, I think, a variety of reasons. I think most importantly because it just was like a super unique space with like a lot of super important artists creating really interesting work. They were also like releasing work that was, I would say, more experimental. That was like more like pushing the boundaries compared to Ethereum. I think that's also because it was like Tesla was always like very like grounds up, like community driven. The financial barriers were also a lot lower. Tesla's was always very grounds up, community driven. The financial barriers were also a lot lower. The gas fees never spiked to a crazy amount. There were never unrealistic expectations when it came to making certain sales for artists. So, yeah, that was for me, the main driver just the very interesting cultural and artistic scene driver, like just the very interesting cultural and artistic scene.

Speaker 2: 6:27

Financially, to be honest, I wasn't really focused on like, like on tesla's. I was never like really focused on financial returns. I would say I'm still not really interested in that. On tesla's, I got quite lucky on ethereum, especially with artbooks like. I got lucky to to mint ringers, to mint fidenza, like for like 100 or something like that and that appreciated quite well. And then I sold some of these pieces and I reinvested all of that capital, I would say probably mostly on Tezos. I'm confident that maybe in five or 10 years from now some of the artworks on Tezos will also have a good amount of value. But that was never the short-term focus of my collecting.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So then, when it comes to the way you appreciate generative art, of course you know we can look at the aesthetics and, to the more sophisticated eye, you can also look at the quality of the code. But what is it that makes a generative art piece successful or profound in your point of view?

Speaker 2: 7:23

Generative art piece? Do you mean like just like one output, like one image, or a system as a whole?

Speaker 1: 7:31

I would actually argue both, because of course there's the sophistication of the system as a whole and the ability to generate multiple outputs, but there's also, you know, every once in a while you find that single output that really speaks to you and that's, you know, the piece that you collect. So what is?

Speaker 2: 7:50

it. That goes into the way that you appraise the quality of generative art. A good generative art piece maybe there's something to that has to have like a nice balance between chaos and order. I feel like also that's that is both true, in my opinion, when you look at like an individual artwork, but also when you look at a system. If it's too chaotic, then it doesn't really bring it to peace, just a lot going on. You don't really understand what's going on, there's nothing that ties it together. But if it's too orderly then it gets quite, maybe a bit boring, especially in a system that maybe, like all the outputs look very similar. But I think a lot of the successful projects, a lot of the good projects, like they really found like this special balance between order and chaos. And this may be a very vague answer, I hope it does.

Speaker 1: 8:36

No, no, no, I like it. I like that. It's about the ratio between order and chaos. So if we were to bring this conversation closer to Lorandum, which launched, I want to say, a couple years back, can you talk me through what was the vision that led to that creation and why did you feel it was so important to have this platform, you know, to speak and to represent generative art?

Speaker 2: 8:58

yeah sure. Um, I think it's important to maybe like back at the time period when Verandah was launched to understand why it exists. So I was working at that moment at Metaversal. I was there one of their analysts, helping them acquire NFTs also helping them invest in companies in the NFT space. But for me, when I looked at the NFT space back then, I think most collections whether these were like individuals or corporate collections, most of them were really all over the place. They would collect gaming assets, they would collect BFPs, they would collect all sorts of digital art. They would put it all in a collection and that collection would be an NFT collection or an NFT a collection and that collection would be an NFT collection or an NFT art collection.

Speaker 2: 9:49

And to me that never really made sense. The collection didn't really it wasn't a cohesive whole, it didn't really tell a story. For me, generative art was always within the NFT space. The movement that really stood out, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation, like that was for me the real, the movement that had like a real synergy between the arts and the technology. So with Lorendum, like we really like set out on a mission to focus on generative arts, to give it the context that it deserves, and we do it through like a few different initiatives.

Speaker 2: 10:24

Of course, we have our collection, and the collection is really focused on building out a historical archive of generative art. It's not solely focused on what's happening, like right now, in the NFT space, but we also try to acquire works by pioneers from the Well. We have, like this framework of like three generations. So we have, like the first generation of pioneers who created work, let's say, between the 50s and the 90s. We want to collect their work because we think they're super important in telling the story of the generative art movement.

Speaker 2: 10:56

So we've collected work by artists such as Frieder Naka, vera Molnar, herbert Franke we acquired one of his LFTs on Tezos, actually Then there's a second generation of generative arts, like people from the 1990s to, let's say, 2015. And then there's a third generation, from 2015 till now. So we have this framework and we try to collect artworks that represent each of these generations so that, hopefully, when people look at our collection, it helps them understand the entire lineage of the generative art movement and we can help them, we can help convince them that this is not a flash in the pan, that this is actually a movement that already has demonstrated its longevity, that already has shown to be relevant for seven decades now and hopefully this context that we can bring to the generative art space, hopefully that also helps it grow and helps it become like more significant over time I think that was all very, very well said.

Speaker 1: 11:51

I think what really struck me when I first went onto the platform was understanding how much material there was to celebrate not only the current and contemporary artists, but the sheer amount of history that actually underpins generative art as a movement, because I think when something's sort of co-opted by Web3, we forget that there's a lot more history that happened before blockchain technology.

Speaker 1: 12:13

So, it's always wonderful to celebrate and recognize that these aren't Web3 trends. These are things that have found a place in Web3 and found utility in Web3. In order to preserve these qualities of works when it comes to educating people about the history, is the aim to essentially encourage people to simply appreciate it more? Is it to encourage people to begin collecting artworks?

Speaker 2: 12:41

Or what sort of the end goal would you say for Lorandum, the end goal of the contextualization, would you say, for Lorandum, the end goal of the contextualization efforts, like the editorial efforts, or more, just the platform in general?

Speaker 1: 12:51

Or when we talk about the contextualization efforts, are we talking about this continued education, so that people can keep up to date with the movement as it evolves?

Speaker 2: 13:01

Yes, yes, okay, let me maybe, well, maybe, before I answer this question, I do want to stress that um, like, maybe one of the most important things I did in 2022, that was bring um like this, like small team together, it's like the four of us like working on it. Um, so there is um well, me myself, like, I started the venture together with a friend of mine, zach, who leads the operations and the financial efforts. And then there's Conrad House and Peter Bama, two people that I hired, actually from the Tezos community. One of them is known as Mark Anthony, the other one is Nemo Cake, conrad House, nemo Cake I work really closely with him on the collection. He's our collection lead, so together we build out the entire Lorando collection and when it comes to contextualization efforts, that's very much spearheaded by Peter Bauman.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Monk Anthony he leads both the editorial that we have at Lorando but also the timeline of generative art history and for us, from the start, that was a really important pillar of the organization. We, from the start, wanted to do more than just passively collecting the digital art, because I think that's what most organizations do or most collectors do. We wanted to actively tell the story of Charity, of Art, of the history, also of what is going on at the moment, also trying to look maybe a little bit ahead of what's happening in the future or what future technologies artists are excited about. And we hope that all of this together can maybe serve as some type of framework or a tool set for the community to make sense of the generative art movement and hopefully also to bring more people into the mix and give them also this framework to actually understand why all of this is relevant, why it has value, why it also relates to the current moment in time that we're living through, why it's interesting to think about. And, yeah, I think the collection and the editorial efforts are actually really there's a nice synergy between them.

Speaker 2: 15:15

In demonstrating this, we can show the beauty of generative arts. We can show, like all the artworks from like across all the decades that we've collected, but at the same time, we also have all these written pieces Peter has created, like this framework of demystifying generative art, where he goes through different aspects of generative art, such as the systems or the aesthetics, and he helps people with this framework to understand and analyze each single aspect of generative art. He also has created this timeline, timeline which at the moment, I believe, comprises more than a thousand moments across 10 different chapters, which, again like, serves as like material to show, like, look, this is not just a trend, like, this is actually something that's very, I would say, like, innate in human beings to create systems that can create art so largely what we're looking at is there's the educational pillar, but there's also very much an editorial pillar, and then there's the artwork itself.

Speaker 1: 16:14

So when it comes to, you know, not only representing generative art through the decades, what also goes into considerations when collecting generative pieces, what's sort of the I guess curatorial criteria to how you expand the collection over time?

Speaker 2: 16:29

Yeah, it's a good question. So, as I mentioned earlier, like we have this generational framework, like these different generations. That's something we don't use a lot. Like when thinking about generative art, we try to maybe look at an artwork, when we look at an artist, like we're trying to like situate them in time and then we try to understand like is that, is this a piece or an artist who has like, really like helped move the movement forward? Like who has made like, let's say, like significant contributions to the generative art space.

Speaker 2: 16:59

And when we talk about that, like these can be like very wide-ranging discussions. Like we I think sometimes people think that we use like a scorecard or we give maybe like points like every different dimension. Like that's not actually how it works. Like we always start with like a discussion about like the artist's career, like about their backgrounds, like to like really understand like their practice, like what they're trying to say, and then we look at the artworks themselves. If we think the artist is, let's say, like a relevant figure, and then we try to like find out like which artworks are the most significant, like the most iconic and, depending on the artist, like there's a whole, like it can be like of various different reasons. I think some artists are like very significant because they maybe like pioneered like new systems of creating generative arts that it might be interesting to look at that type of work that they also release. I think other artists are very visually driven, don't really want to have like a concept around their practice.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Then there's like a more like subjective analysis of like what pieces do we think are like the the most significant one, significant ones like which ones resonate most with us? Sometimes the artists are a lot more focused on the concepts. Um, then we of course like analyze these. So, yeah, it's a tough question to to answer. It's quite for us, it's quite, um, I would say, like a messy process. Like we take a lot of um different um factors into account and we always, like with the entire team, have like very long discussions about the artists, the artworks, and by the end of of those discussions like we typically have a good feeling of like whether we want to acquire their work or not and for what price, like these different, these different variables as well I mean, I think it being messy is probably a good thing, just because it ensures a diversity of pieces within the collection and you know, that's always a good thing.

Speaker 2: 18:52

Maybe one thing to also highlight is with the collection. Also, from the start we wanted it to be a super diverse collection. I think the easiest thing to do when you start a corporate digital art collection is to just buy, like the, the blue chip names. To just buy pieces by, let's say, tyler helps rafiq and adult maybe, buy some promise squiggles and leave it there like nobody's going to blame you, like you just bought the, let's say, the blue chip collections. It's a very safe thing to do.

Speaker 2: 19:25

But for us, we were always focused on the entire generative art movement and it is a very diverse movement in itself. It is being practiced across the globe. It is being practiced by artists from so many different generations. There's also a lot of different sub-niches within generative arts. It's not all just, let's say, these long-form collections. There's so much more going on.

Speaker 2: 19:50

There's artists who are focused on, let's say, on artificial life. There's a lot of interesting ST arts. There's a lot of artists who focus a lot on, let's say, interactive drawings, interactive artworks. There's artists who focus on plotter drawings. There's all these different, like sub niches that we all want to highlight. So for us, that really resulted in a collection that is like spread across the globe, like we have collected work from more than 170 artists, uh from like every single continent, uh, across the world, which we think is like a really nice way to like celebrate that it's a like an movement that happens on the internet, like wherever people have access to computers, like they create generative art, and we also have collected, now, more than 1200 artworks. So, yeah, it's very different than, I would say, like most corporate collections that focus on the blue chip names.

Speaker 1: 20:45

So so talk to me about the discovery process, because, as you've just mentioned, you've amassed a massive collection, but it's an incredibly diverse collection, and steering away from the classic blue chip pieces and going for perhaps the underrepresented or the lesser recognized but still high quality pieces they're harder to find, that you know. You have to do a fair bit of digging to uncover those hidden gems. So what does that process actually look like?

Speaker 2: 21:12

yeah, I think that's again like this discovery process is. Again, what is like very like curiosity driven. I think for us it's really about like obsessing over generative art and like spending like an enormous amount of time like just being active like in the in the generative art space and following like all the, all the threads that people leave for you. I think it's like super easy to maybe like start with like one artist that really inspires you. Let's say, for example, like the, the example of manolo, like right away, like he, he captivated my interest. If you then look for interviews that he has done, he mentions his main inspirations. You can look into those artists. They might also mention who they are most interested in, most inspired by In the blockchain space. It's also super easy to see what other artists collect or to see what other collectors are collecting. That's also something we we actively do look into the collections of like other people in the space that we admire. So, yeah, like for us I would say, that's like one really important part of the discovery process, just like following all these threats that people do leave behind. It just takes curiosity and time investments to to them. And then I think, one thing that we also really want to do a lot is to be active.

Speaker 2: 22:34

In the present moment, there's a lot of innovations happening. For example, with Apex Hedge, the entire Lorentum team was there the first week it launched. We started experimenting with it and we started collecting work on fx hash. Since then and I believe that's like often the case in the digital art space on the blockchain there's almost every few months there's like a new project or there's like a new interesting collection and you just like always have to give it a try, just look at it, experiment with it and maybe it sticks. Sometimes it doesn't, and that's fine too. But yeah, like being active and always like embracing just new innovations. I think it's also like a super important part of the discovery process so it's effectively finding various rabbit holes and just digging into them yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2: 23:26

I think that's also like a really nice thing about the Random's team is that we all do it in different ways. Like Conrad, for example, I think he's like quite like visually driven. Like he spends a lot of time on websites such as Arena to look at like the visual inspirations of other artists. He often tweets about them, like shares them.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Peter Peter Bauman, of course like obsesses over the history of gerundic art. So very often like he comes, he comes to us with like a discovery of like a certain artist that we may have never heard about but that he's like very adamant about that. They made like super significant contributions quite recently. Like he was like really studying the the early, like again, art scene. I think think he was mostly excited about the figure of Alec Redford, but in that process he also discovered some other artists, such as Ryan Murdoch, for example. He then brings that back to Conrad and me and we start digging if we can collect their work. So I would say that all the activities that we do at LeRandom, they all help each other. They reinforce each other in a very nice way.

Speaker 1: 24:31

So, given you guys have a hawk eye on the way this space is evolving very much in real time, what are some of the innovations that you've actually seen within the generative art space over, let's say, the last three to five years, or since you began? Space over, let's say the last three to five years, or since you know you began? How has the, the genre, sort of refined itself or become more sophisticated or become more diversified?

Speaker 2: 24:56

yeah, that's a good question. I think one trend that we have seen like play out over the last years is that artists are getting like closer and closer to the raw material, like working with blockchain technology. I think most artists when they started out, they released NFTs and I think they were not hyper aware of what they actually were selling or what exactly the art object was. So I think a lot of them like they placed like images on centralized servers or they just placed them on IPFS. But over the years, I think a lot of them have gotten a lot closer to the blockchain itself. And now, over the last months, like we're seeing a lot of artists that release like work that is like not only fully on chain but that also plays with like other aspects of blockchain technology.

Speaker 2: 25:52

Like, for example, kim asendorf he released like pixel decks. He issued like his own token called like the pixel token, and every pixel token symbolizes one pixel in the visual artwork, and that's for me, like that's a concept that was quite unimaginable like three years ago, like there wasn't really artists like playing around, like in such depth, like with blockchain technology. I think that's actually being repeated across the ecosystem, like, for example sorry, just for example, leander herzog, who released like infinite garden, which again, it's like a very like blockchain native way of creating generative art where you can merge different gardens, you can gift flowers to other collectors. I heard that well, maybe I shouldn't say this, but that Marcelo sorry Artrigas he's also working on a new system that is fully on-chain on the Tezos blockchain, where he wrote a smart contract himself to create a very innovative work of generative art. So, yeah, that's for me, probably one of the main trends over the last years Art is just getting a lot closer to the raw material of the blockchain.

Speaker 1: 27:01

So effectively. What we've seen is generative art at its primitive level all the way back. What was it did you say seven decades ago to generative art being minted on chain? And then now generative art very much being fused with that chain to some degree or other and there's a technical convergence there that is probably never considered the realm where art would go before, but it's very interesting to see how those systems are converging and what the output actually looks like. And whether you know, to the naked eye or to the uneducated or to the generative art novice, we'd be able to appreciate just how technically sophisticated that is.

Speaker 2: 27:41

Yeah, exactly, I think, alternative artists also in the past, I think they were always looking for or they were often looking for a native way to sell their art. I think some of them. Well, they went through different phases. There were phases where they were trying to completely, or some people were trying to hide the fact that there was a computer involved because they were too maybe not ashamed of it, but they would think it's like self-sabotages, because the art world was so against like computers.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Computers and art like that doesn't go together. It's like a contradiction in terms. Then, at some point, like some artists, like they actually on the back sides of the artwork, they would maybe like print out the algorithm. So they were already looking for ways to like bring the algorithm and the visual artwork together. Sometimes they would like sell. They would sell the algorithm like on, let's say, like a hard drive or on a computer, and the collector would acquire this entire computer, this installation, as a generative art piece. But yeah, now with blockchain technology, they can actually do it like in the, I would say, the most like beautiful way possible. They can place the artwork, the algorithm, on chain. All the visual artworks can be derived from that. Yeah, I believe that's like the for generative art. It's like the, the best way to be presented, and it was probably completely unimaginable, like just 10 years ago, that that would eventually exist, like such a great way of presenting generative art.

Speaker 1: 29:16

I think it's also interesting going to your comment about you know the I guess we could call it the stigma against digital art in many ways that if you were to use a computer to produce something that was aesthetically pleasing, it would somehow demean the quality of the work. But I think what we've seen over the last few years is this growing appreciation of digital art. I think it's maybe been a little bit muddied by generative AI and just what people are able to create and where artist attribution lies within that process. But have you seen any conflict, any synergy between how ai and generative art are developing alongside one another?

Speaker 2: 29:53

that's such a good question. Well, I think, first of all, with generative art, like one thing that's interesting is that 2021 we were really fighting against like generative arts being like a synonym of pfb projects. There are like a lot of pfb projects, like port apes, that would sometimes even frame themselves as generative art, which I mean they have some aspects of generative art, but it was quite annoying, for I would say like a full-time generative artist.

Speaker 2: 30:22

And now we have a similar issue with generative ai, like. If you use the word generative, like people always think of generative ai you don't think of like, let's say, procedural generative arts, where the artist like writes the algorithm themselves, like in a yeah, like a procedural programming language. So, yeah, but that aside, I do think one of the most interesting things that happened like over the last few years is the rise of generative ai, and for us at lorandon, ai arts has always been like part of generative art. I think like generative art is really about artists that create system, that maybe cede some control like to these systems to create um, to create art widths, and ai art can be used like in exactly the same way as procedural charity parts in that regards, but with charity ai, well it's, it's both how do I say it's like there's both a negative, a negative and positive side to it. Like it's really easy for people to create visual objects, but the most, the most interesting artworks with AI. They don't typically use generative AI just like in this blanket way.

Speaker 2: 31:35

They typically experiment with the technology on a very deep level and a lot of the AI artworks that we acquire they're actually from artists who have been interested in AI for a very long time sometimes more than a decade and we typically like we mostly acquire like artworks that I would say like precede the generative AI moments of I don't know, like two or three years ago. But we also acquire some works that are being created with like modern tools. They create like interesting work with it. I think there's, like some artists that use generative AI, that they try to critically examine how the systems work, how, let's say, certain cultures are represented in these systems. We think that's super interesting. In general, we acquire work of AI artists who have a very intimate conversation with the technology. They typically collect their own training sets, train their own neural networks, and then it's actually quite close to procedural generative art. It's like an end-to-end system that the artist has created.

Speaker 1: 32:37

So it kind of comes down to the complexity of the interaction, whether they actually produce the ML system themselves or control the output. Control the input to a degree rather than simply prompt output meant yeah, exactly, I would say so so a lot of our conversations revolved around the evolution of generative art over the last three years, and obviously lorandum has grown in that time. So what does the next evolution of lorandum look like? What can, can you share?

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, so I think Larendum as a business, over the last years we have really focused on building out the brand, building out the collection, building out the entire editorial side of the company. But now, looking ahead, we do want to find, I would say maybe, a more like sustainable business model. We do want to like actively generate some, some revenue, and there's a whole variety of ways, uh, that we, that we can do so. Um, like it's. It's a bit difficult to talk about right now because we're still trying to figure out, like exactly what the next step is going to be. But I think, in general, like people will see the random as a maybe like a more active contributor to the generative art space and not so much as a passive collector. Well, not that we're fully passive, we try to be active as collectors as well and as publishers of editorial material. But, yeah, I think, looking ahead, we'll make some more active contributions and hopefully become a self-sustaining business in the process.

Speaker 1: 34:11

So a lot of it's to do with just continuing to champion the space and pushing it forward, as well as pioneering some of the tools and, I guess, in a way, integrations that are going to help that particular section of the art world thrive.

Speaker 2: 34:25

Yeah, exactly, I think it has become very clear to us over the last years that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in the digital art space to continue to grow and to reach wider audiences. So, yeah, I hope we can make some contributions there. I hope in the future we can look back and say that we actively push the space forward in that regard.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Along that vein, though. How have you seen the relationship between traditional art institutions and platforms like Lorandum shift over time? Because, obviously, you know, during peak NFT art boom, institutions became more curious than ever. Has that institutional interest died down at all, or what are you seeing from your position?

Speaker 2: 35:07

Yeah, I would say, for us, the institutional interest has has only grown over time. Um, I would say that in 2020, during like the yeah, the nft boom, as you just said, I think a lot of the institutions were quite skeptical, um, like expectations were overly inflated for them. Um, it was like too yeah, like too boomy for them to like really engage with it. Like it felt like just like like a bubble, which to some degree, it also was. So maybe they did well to to not engage like too too actively um, in those days. But ever since then like in 2023, 24, now also in 2025 like we've really seen institutional interest increase.

Speaker 2: 35:51

For example, for us, there's now an artwork in our collection that is being shown at the date as part of the Electric Dreams exhibition, and for us, that was totally unimaginable when we started in 2022. We had maybe hoped that that would happen, I don't know, in 2030 or something, but for that to already happen in 2024 was a very big surprise for us. And yeah, we've also been in touch with a lot of other institutions, for example, the V&A. They are very actively embracing digital arts. They're doing a lot of programming around digital arts and, yeah, there's examples like that, like all over the globe also in asia, in the middle east, north america, like all over the globe there's a lot of institutions that are now, I would say, like doing quite ambitious programming around digital arts, and I think they really needed the market to calm down, because only then it was safe for them to to engage with it.

Speaker 1: 36:49

So I hope that over the last years, like we've laid, like the institutional, let's say, groundwork for the space to continue to grow and to see like more institutional programming, I think that's amazing, and I think that the fact that the institutional players have sort of continued to tick away in the background without needing to make their progress within the digital art sector sort of up front center and loud and sort of feeding into that initial bubble is arguably the much more sustainable approach to making sure that digital art sort of gets the recognition that it deserves, generative art in particular. One final question I have for you and this and this is a bit of a cheeky one which is, whenever you watch the La Random collection expand, do you ever have these FOMO moments where you kind of wish you had added it to your own collection? Or how do you make the decision, when you find an art piece that you love, whether it's more suited to La Random or more suited in your own personal archive?

Speaker 2: 37:46

That's indeed a cheeky one one. Well, I think the rule is is obvious like the random always gets like first priority. Um, again, like, it's important to know that like I'm not the only one like building this collection, like conrod's, like he has like also like over the years, like become like more and more like the leader of like the collection side of things. So whenever we see an artwork or we see a collection, like Kurt and I always discuss what is the optimal thing for Lorandum to do, what are the optimal artworks for Lorandum to acquire, and that's always what we do first and only after that the question of should I collect something for my personal collection? It comes into the mix, and I also have to say that, because I don't sell a lot of digital artworks, like my personal financial means compared to the random is also just a fraction, so for most artworks the attention doesn't even exist.

Speaker 1: 38:41

I think that's a very, very fair way to approach it. Well, Jan, thank you so much for your time today. It's been illuminating to learn a lot more about how La Random has grown over the years, but also just how generative art is evolving. So thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2: 38:55

Thank you. Thank you, Marisa. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.