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In-depth discussions and explorations into the whole new world of web3 and the metaverse with leading thinkers and industry experts. Presented by the NYU Metaverse Collaborative.
The Whole Metaverse - Episode #10: Pushing the Boundaries of Digital Art & Protecting Artist's Rights | with Misha Libman & Matthew Dunnerstick
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Pierre: Welcome to the Home Metaverse podcast, the NYU podcast about, metaverse Web three and Crypto Dr., Elizabeth Haas, and myself or your co-host. Today we're having two guests. We're having Mischa Libman. The chief product officer at ARNSL and Matthew Dunnerstick, the Chief Marketing Officer also at ARSNL.
So ARSNL is an digital art studio that is part of the artist right society, the organization. In the United States that is, promoting and protecting the artist rights and copyrights and reproduction rights. they're doing truly, extraordinary, work. In particular, they have contributed to the launch of a collection of NFTs by.
Iconic artist, Frank Stella, and that was a fabulous interview. And Dr. Hasen, I just encourage you to watch this interview. Thank you.
Pierre: so we welcome on the the Home Metaverse podcast, the NYU podcast. the co-host or Dr. Elizabeth Haas, professor at, nyu, myself. So we have today Misha Libman chief Product Officer of, ARSNL, and Matthew Dunnerstick, the Chief marketing Officer of. ARSNL as well. It's the exclusive, digital platform from the Artist Rights Society.
can I ask you either Matthew of Misha or maybe both of you for just couple of minutes to introduce, the ARSNL Project? So what are you doing at ars?
Misha: Sure. Maybe I could just give you a little bit of a background how it all got started. so, artist Rights Society is. 35 year old company that was started by Catarina Federer's father, Ted Federer about 35 years ago. And they represent intellectual property of over 120,000 artists in United States.
and. Ever since, I guess it's connection to this whole n ft blockchain side has to do with the fact that once there was that, people sale and the Pandora's box was opened, they started getting a lot of inquiries in terms of. You know, artists and the states and foundations trying to understand the technology a little bit better, trying to understand if there is some possibilities in terms of producing and creating works using this technology.
And at that time, I was still with snark.art and, they just contacted us to inquire about what is possible. And earlier last year I formally started, collaborating with, ARSNL, which was this digital platform out of our right society in terms of. Starting to at least start the conversation with these artists and the states and foundations as far as explaining the technology and, introducing it.
and then we got an inquiry from Frank Stella Studio, and this was our opening project, in September of last year, which was, I mean, it's hard to put it into words, first of all, because of. I never thought I would be ever working with Frank Stella on the digital art project and also it falling on our laps as being the first project.
It was an opportunity that is not something I could have said no to. it's hard to imagine me saying no to such a chance. And so we released that project. last year, and it was extremely well received and, was just amazing to work with Frank and we could talk more about that project as far as how, an artist who has been essentially over the past five decades, reinventing himself and, experimenting with different mediums and, different ways of presenting work.
you know, the fact that he. Arsenal is the platform, but also how open he was in terms of experimenting with the Ultimate Art Project. it was quite spectacular. I don't know. Matt, do you want to add anything?
Matthew: No, it's a chance of a lifetime. I was just at his studio yesterday. We did a studio visit with Siebren Verseetg. Our new artists we're working with as well as Thank You X together. We came up and just visited and it was nice to see him again. yeah the artwork's amazing. I view it as amazing like, N F T because this, it can't exist outside of N F T. There's these digital files that he made. It's like a bundle of 3D assets and objects and you can 3D print them. I mean, you can 3D print them in real life for personal use. Frank gives you the rights to remix them so you can take his designs and make 'em into your own, which is really unusual for an artist of his, legacy.
so like when you buy a Frank Stella Geometry's, NFT from us, like they're on the secondary market now, from open Sea, you can get all these rights with it. we just, we love that. Yeah. our current project now, is with this artist Siebren Versteeg you can go to our website, arsnl.art. we just launched it this week.
all the tokens, all the artworks are on the secondary market right now.
Liz: I had a couple questions because in some ways he, I almost think he was as big as Pel in this whole movement in the sense that it was an established artist that stepped in and really, you know, when people heard that everyone changed their views, and I don't know if you felt that, I mean, you were at the center of that wave. And I just was wondering, when we say that, oh, we got 64 million on yet, but it was still junk. Frank, Stella is in it. Oh, okay. Now I care. I don't know if you know, you had that sense too.
Misha: I mean, probably post people. You started seeing some established artists at least. Starting the conversations and certainly estates and foundations, but also a lot of the contemporary artists began experimentation. there weren't many, and maybe to some extent the downturn in this whole crypto market is a very positive thing because, A lot of kind of comments we were hearing in 2021 from artists who were more established traditional art space, was that they just saw a lot of very low quality work out there.
And, there was certainly a lot of money being important to, the space, but They felt like they didn't want to jump on the bandwagon, especially with everything, with all the calamity and everything that was happening. with Frank specifically because Frank was such a huge proponent of resale royalties for a very long time, and, it was perhaps one of.
The bigger reasons why, he wanted to try this project because at that time when we were releasing it, resale royalties was the defacto rule in the space, and it was, very inspirational that this whole community of artists and technologists really took that as a default rule. artists should be remunerated when their art artist result like, it was actually interesting time because as soon as we released the project, first marketplaces began to appear that were treating resale royalties. Like you would a tip in a coffee shop where you could say, no, I don't want to pay this percentage, but I'm willing to throw a couple of bucks.
and so for that specifically because we were releasing that project and we knew how much it was important to Frank that this. done properly in terms of resale royalties. We created these smart contract mechanisms at that time to protect, Frank Stella's work. But even when we were interviewing him after the fact in all of this 50 year career, this project was the very first time Frank Stella received a resale royalty.
So for all these millions of dollars that are sold on auctions, it has never occurred to him. And so this was the first project that was released where he was actually getting royalties. And when asked about it, he said, and I need to find exactly how he phrased it. But his point was, look, if by me doing.
this it actually pushes the needle and more artists could begin to benefit from, know, getting resale royalties. that was his goal. That was the idea. so it's not even him receiving it, but, and it goes to your question, Liz, because he threw his name, in this ring and with that specific objective, he wanted other artists, more traditional artists in the space to potentially look at it and treat it seriously.
But also the whole aspect of resale royalties now becoming. A trend in the space, something that a lot of American artists could not take advantage of. All of a sudden that opened those doors.
Liz: The second thing, again, this is just, I'm an outsider, I mean, to me, Frank Stella was two, fundamental chefs. One was that it was a serious thing for artists, but the second one was that it gave Frank Stella a connection to the young generation. And he always talks about art being a, you know, this profound connection between the artist and the audience.
And so it gave him a new audience to connect with. And I don't know if he talked about that at all with you.
Misha: I think that actually was a there's a nice little video. It's maybe Matt can find the link to It is, it became actually extremely interesting at one moment we came one Saturday morning to his house in west Village, and. Because Frank gave, the rights to the collectors to remix his works.
we announced, immediately after the release, we said we are going to visit Frank If anybody has any remixes that they want to share with Frank. we will present it to him. on Saturday morning in something like 24 hours, we had something like 70 or 80 remixes produced that we showed to him.
And, know, in, in Frank's basement there is this kind of digital display. It's enormous. It's something. Seven or eight feet tall and 20 feet wide. And on that giant display we started presenting a lot of these remixes and it was just an hour, kind of, almost conversation where he was looking at these remixes, trying to he treated it almost like a conversation.
Like he put something out into the world and it started coming back and it was actually quite interesting. And sometimes he would look at something and say, you know, in a million years I would never make something like this, but, and then there would be a long pause and then he would say, but I can't stop staring at it.
And then it was interesting to also hear him talk about how he looks at a lot of these geometries as something that needs to be produced, physically in the analog space. And so some of these remixes, he understands that they cannot be created in a physical space. But it's interesting that how people are exploring it.
digitally
Matthew: he definitely like also joked, he said, Idea is great. If I take that idea and use it as my own, well, I have to pay them resale royalties. Like he, he was having a lot of fun with it.
Liz: It might be really interesting to look at what Nike did and for him to parallel that. I don't know if you're familiar with how they, you know, basically put all their IP out for anybody to use, including the swish, and you can create digital shoes and they take a fraction of it, but if they wanna create the physical shoes they give you, they buy the rights to it from you.
And it's like a whole platform. I can imagine him engaging in those conversations too.
Misha: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a lot of things that, right now we're getting, because ARSNL , I mean, we're right now sitting in offices of Artist Rights Society, and certainly there's a lot of, requests from. various, athletic, wear and other types of wear, producers that are trying to enter the digital space.
And so they're creating a lot of these digitals, right? So it's, where a sneaker can exist both as a digital and physical sneaker. And, artists are taking, a very unique role in these types of collaborations because all of a sudden, these brands are looking for artists to, I don't know, to market their, whatever it is that they're trying to sell, guess, it's a, it's an interesting, new dynamic that kind of exploded, I think.
Initially with this Bored Apes Yacht Club I guess from 2021 when they released that they gave the rights with every, to every token holder to be able to, remix it. And then I think brands and, artists started using that as a way to promote their work or to potentially collaborate and create something new.
Pierre: I have a question and it's also a concern about the enforcement. Of royalty because we have been listening to debates recently, following what Opera C did and saying that, well, they might not enforce, it was not their job to enforce royalties. And so artists have some concern about the actual enforcement.
Of royalties. Cause we saw the emergence of new, marketplace where you can skip the royalties. So how do you make sure at ARSNL and knowing that you use Open Sea to be a hundred percent sure that artists do indeed receive their royalties on the secondary?
Matthew: we thought about this right when the project launched, because when we were launching, the Stella Sale, that's when pseudo swap. That marketplace said that, okay, we're gonna make royalties optional. You don't have to pay them. And so we worked with Frank and, in our smart contract itself, we created this idea of a block list.
So a marketplace like pseudo swap. That, didn't enforce them. You could block that marketplace. So this kind of worked, at first it mostly went under the radar, like we brought it up, it got a little attention. but then like other marketplaces, like X two, Y two, and I think look, looks rare, they started making it optional as well.
So we were like on top of it. And then, End of October of last year, open Sea announced they would start to pivot to that direction. So we like rallied the troops, you know, an anyone involved in the scene, like Jason Bailey and, Matt Cain and Sparrow and, Tyler Hobbs and, dandelion as well as, Peter Stella, Frank's son, like we all came on a Twitter live together and discussed this, eventually open sea, like kind of wavered.
And now they're basically copying this blur model where it's optional unless you do this like, block list style. I think we were the first to use it. Others use it sounds, maybe it's just in the. But that's like one option at least,
Misha: I mean the way to give artists, the agency, Control this and just so that you know, for those that don't understand how it works so the tokens, they're created by the artists, and so the artists can create their own smart contract the smart contract ultimately is a set of functions that some are public and some are private, that, describe what you can and cannot do with the artwork.
For all of the, logic related to trading and running auctions or any kind of sales. Those smart contracts are typically created by the marketplaces, and so the way it usually works is that the token has this right. written into it that gives the marketplace the ability to manage the token on behalf of the collector or the artist.
And this is where there is that kind of moment where if you don't create what Matt described as this block list or create some mechanisms that allow you to control what happens to the token, and you leave it completely in the hands of the collectors, You basically seed all control over the artwork.
it's kind of very similar to the physical, space where if you sold the artwork and it's somewhere, in the world, you don't really have any control over how it's sold and whether any royalty will be collected on your behalf. this block list or any kind of mechanic that can be added initially when the artwork is released is really the only kind of, level of control that an artist could give themselves and have more agency over, potentially denying marketplaces for, you know, from trading it.
They don't respect the rules that are written into the contract in the spring Stellar. There's also the collectors agreement that's also attached. That's one of the files that's attached to the geometry NFTs that. Actually describes that it's it's a collector's responsibility to ensure that you know, a royalty is remitted to Frank.
But on top of it, we do have the ability to block list, marketplaces. And actually recently when open sea again pivoted, we had to work with them, to ensure that our contract survives this latest pivot and the royalties would be enforced. And the only. Our contract got this legacy treatment is because we actually had, we kind of met their requirements.
In other words, that there is this op, what they call operator filter that's included in the smart contract for Frank Stella. And that's what gives, Frank the ability to potentially block any marketplaces, that don't respect these.
Liz: is the composition of your firm primarily legal?
Misha: I would say Especially with Artists Rights society and Artists Rights society, the way it works is it's, you know, there is no when or foundations in the states join Artists Rights Society, there is no real kind of exclusivity there. But they do offer a lot of this kind of like pro bono legal advice and, help the artists release their works in the right way.
ARSNL which is spano of I. Clearly has a lot of this kind of, legacy. Is inside our dna. So every project we certainly treat, seriously from the legal perspective, and there's a general council for artist right Society that helps us craft the collectors agreements that, come with the NFT.
But also a lot of thought goes into how potentially the future of, licensing and, artist rights, essentially, Transition into this digital space and arsenal, we view ourselves as two, like we split into directions. One Direction is a studio in where, you Matt and I, we, work quite a bit with where we are mostly are focusing on production and helping.
Produce works, but there is certainly another dimension to ARSNL where we work with, artists and brands on various types of licensing
Liz: so it's a combination of production and license coming together.
my other question was, Matthew you were talking about what you're working on now and I pulled you back to Frank Stella. I don't wanna lose what you're doing now and what's happening.
Matthew: Oh no we're really, like, we put a ton of work into it. It's really gorgeous. this artist Siebren Versteeg, he's with Bit Forms Gallery. He's been making digital art since the late nineties. he's just been a pioneer in for decades now, in the digital art space. this is his like main genesis n f t that we're doing with him.
And it's collectors and you can go right now to like open sea and grab one. You get an empty canvas and what you can do is go to our. And watch in real time artwork being generated. And the artwork's like they look gorgeous. They're these kind of surreal compositions over what's trending.
So if the weather's really bad or if, something happens with a celebrity or a bomb drops or, you know, different, it doesn't matter, like how important or unimportant, you know, whatever is trending becomes in our shared consciousness. And then collectors can grab that moment.
In time and cement it to the blockchain. So we have you can watch a real time feed. It's on it's streaming live 24 7. You can watch the artworks being generated and each one kind of exists for about two hours. There's one every 10, 15 minutes coming in, and you have two hours to grab that and if it, if you don't grab it, the moment's gone.
And then we are, we're running it for a year. And at the end of a year, that's our collection. And it's shaped by people like you. if you're a collector in this time and era, you know, grab one and you'll be part of this collection, you know,
Misha: I would just only. I mean, I've wanted to work with Siebren ever since we launched Snark. Like I remember when we launched the first project with Eve Sussman, 89 seconds at Alcazar in 2018. Siebren came over and he started showing us his work. And it was just incredible how almost this like web three ready, it was ideal for the space because at that time our.
Thought process of creating digital works, was about pushing the boundaries in terms of what digital, art in this web three space could be like. we always thought that the experience really needs to begin not before the sale, but after. it's almost like a artwork becomes a key towards the experience and. And so we were looking a lot of, through a lot of his work, earlier this year. And we stumbled on this one project that where he essentially, would check on Google every 10 or 15 minutes, on different subject areas. What is trending like? Did anybody get slapped at the Oscars? Was there an earthquake somewhere in the world?
It was kind this great algorithm. When we started looking at it. It started, it was looking at different geographic regions, different news categories, and then once it identified a certain trend, It will go out to Getty Images and start looking for images to potentially collage into these painterly abstractions that are generated.
And then after the 15 minute cycle is over, it goes out and looks for more. And we think that over the course of the year will generate about 35,000. Of these collages, but they only last, as the name of the project, says for a limited time and for these two hours, if the moment is not curated by the collectors of these empty canvases, it's gone just like every other moment.
And when we think back to 2022, there's maybe some memories that we have of 2022. It might be. I don't know, like Famous Slap or it might be the World Cup or it might be you know, the war in Ukraine and these moments. Right now, I have a hard time actually thinking through every significant event that happened.
But this project essentially allows these collectors to cement the moment that they either have emotional connection to, or it might be that they're attracted to the way. The algorithm ultimately collages and paints over the art. I'm super pleased that Siebren agreed to work with us on this and super excited because again, I don't think anything like this was created yet.
And so I'm really glad that we managed pull this project together, to create this type of mechanic and hopefully others will look at it and maybe create something else that's similar or different, but can start thinking of these NFTs as something, more than just digital scarcity and provenance and more as an.
Pierre: I have a provocative question for two person working for a digital art gallery. at the beginning of 2021. Everybody was excited by, NFT Art because the idea was to connect. Collectors directly with artists without any middlemen, without any gallery. That was the core concept, a decentralized art work.
And now we see We see the emergence of NFT galleries who are very well curated, like the work you do, like the work Arthur doing. So we see that there is a reconstitution. Of the old order of the brick and mortar art world with art galleries and curators, and we realized that we actually need these people and need this organization to avoid the kind of chaotic situation of 2021 when we saw so many stuff outside and for a collector it was like impossible to figure out what to. And so how do you reconcile this dream of decentralization when we see a recentralization right now?
Misha: I will probably pass this question to Matt, but I will preface his response with the following. So, when in 2021, We did this project together while I was still at snark called Shitcoin with Artist Castio. And one of the questions that was posed by the project is whether or not it's truly possible.
To be anonymous, as an artist in this space and not have any kind of, presentation by a gallery or another intermediary that can try to ultimately market your work. Can an artist truly be completely anonymous? Put their work out there and there's gonna be this anonymous body of collectors that will be able to look at the work and either collect it or not, depending on, you know, what they see.
but the project was actually quite brilliant. It was released in the summer of 2021. And Matt can you please? Describe the project and it was it sort of answers your question Pierre, whether or not it's truly possible, because I could tell you it was hell. Like, it was like we were dealing with, an artist that, you know, Caius is a very serious performance artist, very well known, but releasing, work by cast sales anonymously. Extremely tough, you know, to do it well. I think it's very difficult and I think that's where the bottleneck happens. it is just very difficult.
It's possible. Basically the it's where like, In my imagination. Sure. This model does exist that the works can be presented and acquired anonymously, and you don't need these middle, third parties. But, practically I don't think we are quite there yet. Or potentially maybe there hasn't been yet created a decentralized mechanism for something like this to happen.
Perhaps in the future we could. Almost like, not galleries necessarily, but this function of like some kind of a curator or almost like it's a centralized promoter of the work that could facilitate that exchange between the artist and the collector. But I don't know, unless the artist has incredible social following and ability to ultimately market their work, whether that world that you're describing.
Can exist right now, but Matt, maybe you could talk about Cashs.
Matthew: Well, hold on. I would just, I would add that like, we're not a gallery, we're a production studio. So our arm is to amplify the artist's capability. and we were just, like I said, hanging out with Thank you X yesterday, and he was talking about this as well, like in the band ride, the two hour band ride.
And, you know, he has the ability to just produce directly to his audience. He has, Tens of thousands of followers in social media. And so, and if he already has the ability to make it, he can just produce directly. But like in this case, with Siebren and the infrastructure required was quite significant.
So you definitely need to lean on a production studio to help you. we're not in a gallery, but yeah, I mean, galleries do help. Exposure. Do you need it? No. If you have your own followers, you can mark it directly that way if you're more beginning, it's gonna be harder. Like, cuz who are you selling to your friends?
Probably right. if you're totally anonymous, like white male artists tried to do under the non de plume white male artist, that was the Castle's project last two years ago with Shitcoin. I mean, that was tough because. We were doing a performance art, you know, but that said, that whole project we had Phillips Auction house, attached to it.
So everyone knew Phillips Auctioneers were attached to white male artists. So even then it was tough, cuz we didn't say the name. but I. I don't know. I think everyone just will have a different blend. You're never gonna get away from aggregators. Right? Like a gallery in the web three almost becomes like an aggregator or even like on a marketplace like OpenSea, like you wanna be on their front page.
How do you get on their front page? Well, they select you. How do they select you? Well, you either pay 'em more or they just really love it. Like, it is hard to escape. Just kind of natural human tendencies to get up in front. But definitely, yeah, you can market your own like manifold contracts on web three.
You can publish NFTs yourself. you can produce them yourself.
Pierre: What do you think about manifold? I mean, do you recommend. Used to use Manifold in the first place.
Misha: there's many platforms out there right now that facilitate the creation of tokens, but that's more like a technical aspect. It's like going to a store and buying a canvas for your work so you could produce the work. You ultimately still manifold is not necessarily going to promote or sell your final work.
The manifold contracts we certainly like looked at them and they're doing great and I love their whole interface and how easy it is to ultimately. Create and publish your tokens. But once they're created it, that's where I think the issue arises is ultimately how do you sell this work? And that's the difficulty.
I don't think it's difficult at the moment, which is a huge difference from like 2018 when we're starting snar. You ultimately couldn't create a token unless you had help from developers or studios like ours. now you can. You still need to be careful in terms of how, and what you're creating because like these issues like resale royalties.
Oftentimes they're not included in a standard contract. And if you want to do something more customized or you want to create some additional experience, like what we're describing with zebra's work, where the token can, dynamically change, these types of projects still require some customization.
But if you have a work that's doesn't need, those types of mechanisms, sure. You. I think their contracts are good and I would certainly not disagree with anyone using them.
Liz: imagine it's three years from now and you really transform the ecosystem. there's an article in The Times or whatever people are reading at that moment about what you did.
What would it say if everything went as you're imagining the world to go,
Misha: That's that's very tough question, Liz. We didn't tell you they were gonna be easy.
Matthew: We helped make great art and contribute to the positive ex experience of life, that would be the main goal. that we weren't, lame, that we didn't just take a Picasso and reprint it and call it an NFT that we actually made really interesting projects would be
Misha: Just to add to what Matt is saying there's a little bit of this kind of, dystopia, that I feel like the world is trending towards with the kind of just the amount of digital consumption that is happening around the world. We're all walking with mini computers in our pockets, and we have, almost like a schizophrenia relat.
Where Where we have our real lives and then we have our digital lives. And you have Facebook that's inventing our future metaverse and there's this kind of talk, how we are all going to be ultimately living in this beautiful digital reality. And I certainly hope that, the artists and artworks that we help produce. Can help shape that in a way that is more artistic, more interesting, where the experiences that are ultimately created is not just, aimed at, spiking our dopamine levels because people are liking something that we are posting. That there is, A little bit more thoughtfulness and poetry involved in our kind of digital lives, but maybe also I love projects that bridge digital and analog worlds projects that actually take people away from the screens and take us back to.
You know, the real world because I don't think there is anything better than, the real physical world. We need to really meet with each other and I hope, one day all four of us can sit in a room together and physically have this discussion. Mean, perhaps I do personally. I'm really into more interactive, types of art and things that are more, engaging where artists ultimately create almost these gamified, types of, projects that bridge.
You know, thousands of people, millions of people through the artwork truly elevating the digital experience in an artistic way, and that the artists will push the direction of where this technology is going and how art is created. And to put a lot more examples out there through the work that we are producing so that there's other artists in other studios that will take that and make it better, make it more interesting.
That's kind of. where I want some of our legacy to lie.
Matthew: That's what Stella said, actually, you know, maybe they can make it better when he granted over the re remix rights. that was a nice moment with him when he said that.
Pierre: Thank you so much. We could stay hours and hours with you, but we're already way past the time. So Matthew and Misha, on behalf of, NYU, Dr. Haas and myself, I want to thank you very much for all these wonderful insight. you gave us about what ARSNL and the Artists Rights Society is doing, in crypto.
Thank you very much for all these, information and have a wonderful day.
Matthew:
I appreciate this opportunity. Thank you.