MOCA LIVE

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" 

Sisteen Chapel of Smut

Cryptosexuality 2.0

Fembots

OnlyMemes

"Black and white and red all over"

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: https://genekogan.com/

His projects:

Eden: https://eden.art/

Abraham: https://abraham.ai/

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

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

Find Vanessa Rosa at: https://va2rosa.com/

Her project 

Little Martians: https://www.littlemartians.world/

On an episode covered in flies beside a highway off-ramp sex shop, Max and Colborn talk to provocateur and ground-beef purveyor, Diewiththemostlikes, about remixing eons of art in his own image, the power of parody, the social media abyss, the importance of keeping comedy in crypto art, and how looking deeply into the void is actually a kind of superpower. 

Goodbye Current Events (for the moment), hello Current Events and Company! Colborn and Max are joined by a whole cavalcade of guests to discuss all things RarePepe, from the OG project's inception and influences, its expansion into every tiny little facet of crypto culture, its incredible memetic longevity, and the true value of the original RarePepes, the Nakamoto card that started it all.

Today's guests are:

Eleanora Brizi  (@eleonorabrizi)

Samuel Holt (@CryptoPunkart)

Louis (@MemeConscious)

Aaron McCann (@WburgPizza)

On today's podcast, Colborn and Max are joined by the curator, Eleanor Brizi, and the OG crypto artist, Moxarra Gonzalez, to talk about crypto art's humble beginnings, it's most important early figures, Moxarra's position as crypto art's resident journalist, the tired and the trite and most exciting parts of crypto art's present, and much more. 

After the SEC announced this week that Bitcoin Spot ETFs can be traded on the U.S. stock exchange, Max and Colborn do a deep dive into what these ETFs are, why it took so long for their approval, and what this means for crypto and crypto art in both the short-term and long-term. Then the two revisit some of the best and worst Bitcoin ETF tweets in the new segment, MOCYa or MOCNah?  

On today's podcast, Filecoin Senior Fellow Danny O'Brien joins Max and Colborn to explore the good, the bad, the dangerous, and the experimental aspects of preserving absolutely, positively everything on the internet. Danny takes us through the cultural wonders of preserving an art movement, the fight Filecoin is fight, the good and bad of having every online post live forever, his days as an early internet freedom fighter, and much more on this truly eclectic episode. 

On the first Current Events of 2024, Max and Colborn hit all the stories they missed over the holidays, including crypto art's reaction to the Steamboat Willie copyright ending, the continued fervor around Ordinals, the U.S. Government's new law requiring KYC for all large crypto transactions, and Avalanche courting the PFP ecosystem. They end with the first MOCYah/MOCNah good and bad tweets of the week