Come take a (sometimes boisterous, other times blasphemous) tour around the crypto art world with the Museum of Crypto Art’s founder, Colborn Bell, and lead writer, Max Cohen.
Andres del Vecchio and Anubis3100, besides being unbelievable craftsmen and artists, are brilliant critics, crypto art sages. These two join Max to discuss Andres' "DYBBUK MASQUES," a series of 1/1/x works that might very well portend a change in crypto art's very market dynamics. Or it could just be a marker of Andres' unique talents. "Artist-led PFPs" redefined, connecting with collectors, the appeal of digital avatars, and much more await you in today's episode.
On this week's episode, Max and Rene are joined by the co-founders of Cyberbrokers, Drifters, and the greater Paradise Lost universe, Josie and Ben, to discuss how their projects have uplifted, personalized, and deepened the Metaverse experience. From the origin of Cyberbrokers, to the boldness of bringing assets on-chain, to community-building during the Metaverse's death knell, all on the doorstep of Drifters, the Cyberbrokers team's next big flourish.
In the dark, away from attention, the metaverse grows, thrives even, with the introduction and assistance of AI. AI agents peopling metaverse worlds. AI-generated avatars. But one of the most interesting possibilities of an AI-integrated metaverse is AI architecture, not just for the speed with which virtual 3D structures can be created but the newfound intricacy. It's an entirely new avenue for artistry, both in 3D worlds, and also full-stop, a new frontier. Today, Colborn and Max talk with MOCA's resident Metaverse architect, Untitled,XYZ about UnMuseums, a collection of AI-generated architectures and his final flourish for MOCA ROOMs. The nitty-gritty of process, conception, outcome, and consequence, expect all of that and more on today's episode of MOCA LIVE.
MOCA is evolving, and we want you along for the ride. 2025 is a year of great change for your favorite crypto art museum, and in this episode, Max and MOCA's co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Reneil1337, dive deep on all the exciting changes. A 10,000-piece PFP turned Agentic AI deployment interface? Supporting ai16z and Hyperfy in all kinds of creative ways? A new vision for $MOCA token? We reveal all that and more. Come find out what's got us all so jazzed up.
The U.S. Presidential election ends, and all sorts of new questions arise. Ours? Just how influential is PolyMarket, the crypto-based app that brought election betting to the general public? Max and Colborn talk PolyMarket's origins, its seed investments, its political inclinations, and most importantly, its effect (if any) on the elections it revolves around. What does PolyMarket's rise tell us about the electorate? Can betting on election be ethical? This, social media's forcible politicization, the future for crypto in a second Trump term, and much more.
Today, Max and Colborn look into the vociferous response to former minting platform, Foundation, realigning itself as a social-media-based business (and one that looks a whole lot like the site our own Colborn helped to build), and try to tease out its meaning. Is a slow rug inevitable? Are all remaining platforms doomed to grasp at any nearby straw? What does a business need to survive in crypto art, and more importantly, how do the rest of us build-up the kind of crypto art we want to see? Can we reestablish a middle class through force-of-will alone?
Today, a conversation all about conceptual art with the conceptual artist, essayist, and AI dilettante/explorer, Kevin Esherick. Having tackled dense conceptual topics in AI, generative aesthetics, things relating to life and the self and the spirit alike, Kevin is the perfect person to discuss making conceptual art communicable online, the way inspiration affixes itself to a certain medium, ambition, effort, AI, and his latest project, I'm With You, releasing soon. Find Kevin here: https://x.com/kev_esh And learn more about I'm With You here: https://x.com/kev_esh/status/1838950210669580396 https://verse.works/series/im-with-you-by-kevin-esherick
Today, Max and Colborn begin by breaking down a few of the elements that led to the previous week's worldwide economic bludgeoning, and why bad economics might be useful for crypto art's revolution. Then, the two discuss the motivations for crypto artists in a financialization-less ecosystem, the rise of free mints, the value of ubiquity, and what's left in crypto art when all the attention, the funds, the perception of "value" has gone away.
Today's podcast takes a long, frank look at the foundation, the uproar, and the ultimate downfall of the “Metaverse,” as we knew it. Metaverse architect maestro, Untitled,XYZ, joins Max and Colborn to talk about the Metaverse's early moments, its final moments, the fall of the Metaverse studio, Polygonal Mind, videogames, AI, and what Metaverse might rise from all these ashes.
Max and Colborn welcome the curator and critic, Eleonora Brizi, back to the podcast for the 3rd time (!!!) to dive deep on crypto art's many problems with criticism. The three will tackle the lack of criticism in crypto art, and what has in many ways replaced it. They'll go into the difficulty of creating criticism while honoring crypto art's values, the trouble of artists being trapped in their own styles, whether criticism can ever be properly incentivized, and much more.
Today's episode is all about bots: automated programs, AI agents, procedural scam artists, if it's performing an action without direct human intervention, we're breaking it down and talking about why it's important. Whether bots are used to juice follower numbers, mislead investors, or create artificial cultural ephemera, there's no denying their outsized impact on every crypto-adjacent. Max and Colborn dive deep on different kinds of bots, how they affect crypto culture, and whether crypto art can ever escape their influence, especially since the internet at-large cannot.
Today, Max and Colborn welcome a crypto art legend, and one one of the founders of Async.Art, Conlan Rios, to talk innovation in crypto art: Can innovation occur sustainably from the business end? How can a business survive sustainably in crypto art? Drawing from three years running AsyncArt, a leading creative crypto art plaform, Conlan dissects the legacy of his own project, what lessons are applicable to all of crypto art, and the nasty era of un-innovation we (perhaps unavoidably) find ourselves in.
On today's episode, Max and Colborn dive headfirst into the noxious swamp that is crypto art's business environment. They trace crypto art businesses from early years until today, discuss the difficulty of running a sustainable business in crypto art despite rising crypto prices, wonder whether our values are incompatible with survival, debate criticism, and field a whole host of questions and comments from a rollicking chatroom.
This week, Max and Colborn welcome the remarkable cloud artist and crypto art historian, Martin Lukas Ostachowski (MLO) to the podcast to plumb through the past for the values that crypto art holds dear, if there are any. Join us as we go back to the cypherpunks, through the creation of Bitcoin, back and forth through many years of crypto art to see what crypto art values, when those values were traded away, how data scientists and AI models might provide new hope for unearthing crypto art's actual history. Read "Crypto Art - A Decentralized View" by Massimo Franceschet, Giovanni Colavizza, Tai Smith, Blake Finucane, Martin Lukas Ostachowski, Sergio Scalet, Jonathan Perkins, James Morgan, and Sebastian Hernandez here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.03263
In a crypto art world always on the edge of flaming-up into fury, Max, Colborn, and special guest ROBNESS spill a bunch of gasoline everywhere and light a match. The three will vent their deepest grievances about collectors, generative art, AI, art contests, and much more. Listen now...if you can handle the heat.
On this week's episode, Colborn and Max (Cohen) welcome the OG crypto artist Max Jackson to MOCA LIVE for a discussion of, not art necessarily, but all those who love it. Audiences is the day's topic, and the three discuss the best (and worst) ways of finding an audience, what having a crypto art audience even means, the death of Twitter's reliability, the birth of new models of audience-seeking, and whether any such model can survive long-term.
On today's podcast, Max and Colborn welcome the legendary collector, writer, thinker, and crypto art forefather, Artnome, for a conversation about all things collecting and crypto art history. Beginning with the question "What do we do with art we no long like?" and opening up into a discussion of good vs. bad art in general, the trio eventually come to question and retool Artnome's foundational "What is Cryptoart," article from 2018. We somehow avoid talking for too long about the Boston Celtics. "What is Cryptoart": https://www.artnome.com/news/2018/1/14/what-is-cryptoart RightClickSave: https://www.rightclicksave.com/ ClubNFT: https://www.clubnft.com/
Max and Colborn are joined by the OG crypto art collage artist George Boya for a podcast about collaborations, free artistic spirits, and creative processes. Inspired by George's recent series of collaborative pieces, Partners in Crime, the three go in depth on the importance of collaborations in crypto art culture, why the collabs suddenly ended (Artblocks, we're looking at you), what the process of creating collaborative artwork is like, how AI and derivatives factor into the collaborative ecosystem, and much more! George Boya: https://twitter.com/BoyaGeorge Partners in Crime: https://foundation.app/gallery/cultishnya Through Time and Space (artwork mentioned during the Pod): https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/through-time-and-space-15473
Max and Colborn are back (with sound effects!) to assign archaic denotations of value to the biggest recent news stories (and end up spiraling into head-scratching discussions). This week, it's Yuga's questionably-illegal reverting of Moonbirds' commercial rights away from CC0, Latasha using Zora incentive fees to help recoup the losses from a wallet hack, the best way to honor traditional artists who have recently passed, crypto artist identity crises, and an existential economic moment.
In what feels like a particularly painful moment for everyone, Max and Colborn are joined by the multitalented artist, Awful Eye, to discuss...pain. Awful Eye's own story is one of pain and triumph and bravery, and their conversation today discusses Awful Eye's life, then and now, how he approaches identity in a space that sometimes reduces its members to a few details, how we can embrace and express our own pain in artistry, and what we need to do if we're to confront the world's pain with honesty and sensitivity.
Today's podcast takes advantage of a quiet time in crypto art to decode, dissect, and predict the future for five fundamental segments of the crypto world. Max and Colborn try to get a sense for the current state of Crypto Art, AI, the Metaverse, Cryptocurrency, and Crypto Culture. Five segments, five underlying questions, a veritable smorgasbord of far-flung answers. This is a good one. Article referenced: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/04/ai-magic-taking-over/677968/
A perfect accompaniment for the post-NFTNYC trip home, this week's episode of MOCA LIVE is an intellectualized look at everyone's favorite internet-addled, gambling mechanism: memecoins. Colborn and Max talk with Anubis3100 and Sirsu, founders of the 747Crash coin, about how memecoins, despite their degenerate reputation, can actually be a powerful force for artist opportunity, can incentivize artistry and other community action, and are the natural evolution of an internet yearning to be commoditized. https://twitter.com/anubis_3100 https://twitter.com/sirsuhayb https://airport.gay/
On today's MOCAYah or MOCNah, Colborn and Max first look towards the attention moving towards the Base blockchain, as a result of a million-minted XCOPY edition there. Then, they dissect a cultural appropriation conflict between artists Claire Silver and CyberYuyu, and debate the role of highly-intelligent, academic discourse in both crypto art today and any AI-flattened future. Finally, the two talk about the upcoming NFTNYC conference, what they're looking forward to, and what's different about this year's event. https://twitter.com/XCOPYART https://twitter.com/neonglitch86 https://twitter.com/ClaireSilver12 https://twitter.com/cyber_yuyu
Max and Colborn sit down with the great AI artist, an original StableDiffusion contributor, and founder of DeForum.art, Huemin, to get into the weeds about how various AI models actually work, how AI art as we know it came to be, how we can get more AI into more hands with more expertise, and the all-important Open-Source Development community: Keeping them incentivized, keeping them energized, and what are the risks if we don't. Visit: https://deforum.art/ and https://www.huemin.art/ to learn more (you so should)
Today's episode is all about the Metaverse, and who better to speak about it with than the hosts of the longest-running web3 Metaverse meetup (and crypto art OGs), Rizzle and Niftytime. From their early history with TheWIPMeetup, to building a Metaverse audience, to a long debriefing on where the Metaverse is today, Rizzle and Niftytime evoke five years spent building this still-unfinished, still-revolutionary way of being online. Click to find: Rizzle Niftytime TheWIPMeetup
Today's MOCYah or MOCNah tackles all the degeneracy in crypto and crypto art of late. That means Crypto Nick and choosing rich! It means Darkfarms1's logic-defying $BOME token! It means Kevin Rose being hopefully, mercifully gone from our lives for good! And it means a whole lot more discussion of Solana vs. Eth, cycles of degeneracy, and much more more!
On her record-breaking 3rd MOCA LIVE appearance, performance art extraordinaire OONA joins Max and Colborn to talk live performances, live events, how they go so right and so wrong, maximizing participation/discourse/creativity we meet face-to-face IRL, and so much more. Prepare for laughs, nihilism, and maybe even a few good ideas.
Max and Colborn take a long look at crypto art curation with the curator and writer of TASCHEN's On NFTs, Robert Alice. With Mr. Alice's art historical, curatorial, and cultural expertise on full display, the three discuss the nitty-gritty creation of a giant crypto art book, decentralizing curation, whether or not crypto art is dead, and stories from ON NFTs inception.
Max and Colborn are back, and this time, they're playing for keeps. Listen and marvel as your two hosts affix the label of MOCYah or MOCNah to all the latest current events, from SHLOMS' latest performance art, the vibes at NFTParis, the curatorial decisions made by TASCHEN and Morrow Collective, and the return of a fan favorite argument "ETH or USD."
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
On 2024's inaugural podcast, Max and Colborn are back with their professional, personal, and crypto-art-wide New Years resolutions! Join us for a wide-ranging and joyful ol' discussion about returning to the art, radical abundance, determining our own values, and much more!
It's the First Annual MOCA LIVE Awards Show! We give out awards for all sorts of things —good, bad, ugly, completely FUBAR— that happened in 2023. It's a trip down memory lane, for better and for worse, with your uproarious hosts, Max and Colborn. Join us for laughs, tears, a frankly unsettling amount of curse words, and our thoughts on a pretty nutso year in crypto art.
On Current Events this week, Max and Colborn talk about an AI scandal and whether artists should have a responsibility to disclose AI use, how artist/influencer cabals work, a week full of various crypto hacks (are we back?), and why so many artists seem to be moving towards the Solana ecosystem.
Max and Colborn are joined for the second time by artist, curator, and TimeAI100 laureate Linda Dounia for a deep-dive, all-encompassing AI power-talk. Linda leads us into a conversation about homogeneous AI monoculture, how it affects us, why we're sick of it, and how to destroy it outright, before we go off on a series of tangents: Where does culture come from? Why export a dying western aesthetic? What does it mean to grow up in an AI-entangled world? And finally, Linda talks about her Speculative Archiving project, a bonkers new vision for how AI can be used.
This week, Max and Colborn talk about the TezPole phenomenon from a few angles: The beautiful community response, the pathetic Tezos foundation, the best and worst of crypto art, all wrapped up in one chicken-wire-wrapped cylinder. After that, they discuss why EtherRocks are selling once again, the merging of RugRadio with Decrypt Media, and what people really crave from their art: human connection.
Max and Colborn are joined by the two brilliant Argentine artists, Julian Brangold and Frenetik Void, for a chaotic discussion of all things AI, starring their strange, provocative, oddly-endearing AI-assisted collaborative project, PsiPsiKoko (which you have to see to believe). The conversation ranges from using AI as a tool vs. treating it as a collaborator, to the homogeneity of most AI artwork today, the way AI is changing how quickly artists can imagine new worlds, and more. See PsiPsiKoko for yourself here: https://www.instagram.com/psipsikoko/?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
Max and Colborn start off discussing what Bitcoin breaking $40,000 (at long last) means for crypto and crypto art, if anything at all. They go on to discuss Observer's male-dominated list of blockchain art power brokers, ROBNESS taking his JPEG talents to Ebay, why crypto art won't make the traditional art world play by it's own rules, and aliens.
Joining Max on the show this week is Subjective.art curator and creative director, Clay Devlin. The two talk about Clay's now-extensive experience curating IRL exhibits that bring together physical, digital, and crypto artists and audiences, the roots of crypto art's crisis of individualism, how connected crypto art really is to mainstream artistry, curation stories, advice to would-be curators, and more.
This week, Max and Colborn talk about the seeming blood-feud between artist Refik Anadol and critic Jerry Saltz, how multi-layered performances by Matt Kane and Operator are stretching the crypto art paradigm ever-higher, why crypto art continues to take itself so seriously and how that's hurting us, and more!
A wild and wacky podcast as Max and Colborn attempt to breakdown a wacky and wild document: Hugo Ball's 1918 "Dada Manifesto," which may or may not have elevated modernism to new heights in Europe. This is a text about nonsense, the absurd quite literally, giving things names and taking them away, the invention of an entirely new language. As crypto art everyday fights further to solidify its own existence, the "Dada Manifesto" feels more important than ever to analyze, dissect, and understand. Why don't we do so together?
Max and Colborn are here for the return of the cryptocurrency market, and here also for the supposed return of many uncommitted crypto art folks who may or may not have gone MIA during the bear market. Many people don't like that, they think of these people are opportunists. Others celebrate them as mental-health-prioritizing geniuses. We break down both sides, trace this conversation to its core, and litigate whether our feelings change depending on who exactly we're talking about. Also is this all Pak's fault? Enjoy.
For this one, Colborn and Max go way back to 1909, because it was there that F.T. Marinetti announced an intention to embrace speed, technological advancement, violence, militarism, growth, and acceleration at all costs. Yes, The Futurist Manifesto —patron document of Futurism— is somewhat freaky, but throughout he course of our conversation, it's clear what Marinetti's vision aligns itself with crypto art's present moment in some pretty eerie ways. Also we keep misremembering Marinetti's name, so that'll be fun to listen to. Shame on us!
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
