MOCA LIVE

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,...

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 c...

Gossamer Rozen is our guest this week, and as such, this is a conversation about two things Gossamer has embraced throughout their career: culture and dualism. Culture: Gossamer's artistry almost universally speaks in the language of specific cultures, ones Gossamer can trace their own roots back to, or ones they admire. Dualism: Gossamer moves back and forth between digital and physical artistry...

Journey far back to 2018, and listen as Colborn and Max discuss what is perhaps crypto art's most important single text (and that which gave it its name): Artnome's 2018 article "What is CryptoArt?" In this podcast, Colborn and Max break down the 10 characteristics common to all crypto art, which Artnome theorized at the time, breaking down how they've changed, how they've stayed the same, and how...

I can sit here and list superlatives for the photographer-turned-Olympic-multimedialist Aaron Huey all day, so I'll say only this: This was a cant-miss opportunity to dive into the mind of a 30-time National Geographic photographer/Nonprofit founder/new technology explorer and discuss so many thing in such great detail. We talk Metaverse, AI, the blockchain, death of legacy media, and more from tw...

Welcome to the first Current Events miniseries! Over the next four weeks, we tackle four of the most important influences on crypto culture, crypto art culture, and all the values we hold dear. Up first, Eric Hughes' 1993 "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto," a document that directly influenced the Bitcoin mission, that tackles privacy in the online age, and feels prescient today some 30 years after its wri...

What a joy it is to be joined by a true pioneer of crypto art, the writer and thinker and founder of DADA.art, Ms. Judy Mam, to discuss her new NFT book "Serves You Right," whether blockchain writing has a future (and how!), crypto art often feeling like middle school, sexuality in crypto art, the brilliance of Moxarra Gonzalez, and much more. An all-timer. 

This week, Max and Colborn speak for awhile about the just-announced closure of Async. Art, the stalwart and innovative platform, and what Async has meant to both of them throughout their crypto art journeys. Then it's onto the Norman Rockwell Museum announcing the NFT-ization of old Rockwell photographs, the potential implications of XCOPY's newest artwork, and why there are so many art contests...

My favorite Colborn and Max episode by far. Digging into Marc Andreesen's (founder of a16z) "The Techno-Optmist Manifesto" leads us to talk about the successes and failures of this very 21st-century philosophy, the dangers of unmitigated technological advance, the very possibility of endless decentralization, the overwhelming importance of love in our lives (and its many forms), and why AI might f...

On this week's Current Events, Max and Colborn talk 6529's new automated allowlist program —EMMA— and whether 6529 is a person or a conglomerate, the explanations and implications of the possible Bitcoin Spot ETF (coming soon???), Opensea's Downfall, and Matt Kane's Contractual Obligations AI project. 

Max is joined by MLow, one of the most irrepressibly positive figures in recent crypto art, to talk about the art of interviewing, stories good and bad from the dozens of interviews MLow has done with crypto artists big and small, why critical thought is so vital, and the responsibility on the shoulders of every interviewer/writer/critic doing this kind of work. 

The one and only Matt Kane joins Current Events to talk about ALL his own contributions to crypto art current events this week. That means diving deep on his performance art project "Contractual Obligations" and the way he's challenging our expectations of what a "Matt Kane artwork" even is. Plus, interest mounts for early AI art, MOMA Postcards are confusing, and why Matt has such a powerful conn...

Max is joined by poet, artist, and founder of Sovrn.art, Ezra Shibboleth, for a conversation on the cutting-edge of everything. Tokens, and their many forms. Artistic expectations, and how Matt Kane has spent this past week subverting them (with fiery results). Building a successful platform in a bear market, and what that requires of its founders. The very apocalypse itself, and how humans might...

On today's Current Events, we talk about Pudgy Penguins pivoting into plushie sales, the value crypto art, the mechanisms by which culture is programmed from the top-down, the problem with Beeple throwing Cryptopunks party, and how Fewocious could drop a 20,000 piece PFP project in the dark heart of a bear market. And, of course, the Boston Celtics.

An abstract conversation about abstract art, how fitting when your guest is the profound OG talent WGMeets. WG is an abstract artist with a whole range of visual styles, and our conversation with WG covers the whole range of abstract topics: Making abstract art, marketing abstract art, the abstract artist's unique fingerprint, finding and staying true to an abstract vision. Rule of thumb: If you h...

Welcome to the first episode of Current Events with Max and Colborn, where your hosts dive into everything that happened in the world of crypto art, NFTs, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, AI, etc. each week. Up first: Rolling Stone's hit-piece on NFTs, a weeklong celebration of NFTs and blockchain in South Korea, and MoMA's newest crypto art collaboration including a list of participants we can't hel...

Our first-ever guest, the anonymous performance artist OONA, returns to the podcast to talk about the incredible eruption of blockchain performance art over the course of 2023. OONA's unique insights from years spent creating blockchain-based performance art encompass perspective, provocativeness, creative sales mechanics, and much much more. Visit @museumofcrypto or @madebyoona on Twitter to lear...

Max is joined by the last and loudest person to flame his writing, the artist Hidden Forces, for a discussion about everything Max has gotten wrong (and other things he's gotten right) in his recent essays about collectorship. Their conversation starts with 20th century art history, hops onto the burden-laden shoulders of crypto art collectors, and ends with a redefining reassessment of crypto art...

This episode is all about MOCA: Who we are, what we're about, and what this unique institution means to Max, to Colborn who founded it, to the entire crypto art ecosystem. It is very personal, and so is our call for your support, which you'll hear all over this episode. Please visit us on Twitter to learn how you can help us survive and thrive into the future.

An all-time MOCA LIVE conversation between Max, Colborn, and Polyannie, the one-of-a-kind crypto art OG, erotic art extraordinaire, porn performer, and mega insightful human. To talk about sex work in crypto art, you have to talk with a sex worker in crypto art. Polyannie brings insight, fire, and in-depth knowhow to a conversation about sex, porn, and sex work that's too often lacking in the spac...

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 Rugg...

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-...

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 Sola...