MOCA LIVE

On this week's episode, Colborn and Max are joined by the Druid —one of the space's oldest and most venerated, not to mention unique, collectors— to talk collecting in crypto art's early days, what's changed between then and now, the Druid's famously controversial collecting ethos (the Druid Method), and the many meaningful memories made along the way. 

Not really, or, at least, not me personally, but collectively in crypto art we so certainly are. We go gaga for anonymous influencers, hidden behind Punks and Apes and other PFPs. We spend outrageously to procure artworks by artists who have created, told, and expanded the stories of digital characters to whom they become inextricably linked. From where does that appeal come? 3D artist Nicole Ruggiero joins Max and Colborn to talk digital identities in all their forms, and all the reasons why we love them so. 

Crypto art skews heavily towards visual artists, but what about all the other art forms —music, literature, performance, etc.— which could benefit from blockchain? Nobody would know better than today's guest, Jeremy Stern, founder of musicNFT platform Catalog, and who comes with me on a journey across the music industry, into blockchain nitty-gritty, from the Louvre to Spotify and back. Join us. 

Despite all its idiosyncrasies, the Museum of Crypto Art is still a museum. But what is a museum in the digital age, when divorced from geography, locale, or country? Our artifacts live online, and so do we. Max and Julian Brangold talk about the failures of physical museums to adapt to digital culture, how MOCA is channelling that culture, and the greatest possibilities and questions for a fully-online museum. 

Max and his childhood bestie, Jake Feigenbaum (the two discovered NFTs together in early 2021), attempt to untangle the messy world of inter-blockchain culture. Ethereum hates Solana, Solana mocks Ethereum, culture schisms across chains, and meanwhile, the development of a truly comprehensive cross-chain ecosystem hangs in the balance. If you don't know much about it, you'll learn a lot about Solana in this one. Enjoy.

Our guest this week is Andrés Zighelboim, the renowned surrealist painter, and our conversation defies any attempt to capture it in a single sentence. Listen for a discussion on macro and micro cultures, on mysticism and magic, on tales from the early days of crypto art, and much much more. 

This week, Max and Shivani talk with Japanese photographer, musician, and crypto artist Emi Kusano about her wild 80's-centric aesthetic, her radical approach to AI artistry, her fashion sense, and what it's like to be a crypto artist in Japan. We have a lot of fun in this podcast, and hopefully you have a lot of fun listening to it. 

That's it, folks, it's a wrap: PFPs are dead in the water, and today, Max and Colborn talk about why. Why PFP projects are flawed at their core, how they have no choice but to alienate their holders, and other musings from the autopsy of the world's most notorious NFT asset class. Some shots get fired in this one. Did YOUR favorite project catch a bullet? Listen and find out!

It's our 20th episode! Max and Colborn are together in the same place, talking shop about the spiritual and mental challenges of living through one insane crypto cycle after another. But, I swear, this is a celebratory podcast. Please enjoy. 

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.