🌀 Le Random and thefunnyguys believe in the power of generative art. They’ll make you believe too. (Issue #62)

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Generative art has gone from the fringes of the art world to become one of the most exciting branches of digital art, and of on-chain art specifically. If you’ve had even a passing interest in it, or in blockchain-based art generally, you’ve doubtless heard names like Tyler Hobbs, Dmitri Cherniak, Snowfro, William Mapan, Lisa Orth, and Zancan… but you may’ve heard another: thefunnyguys.

One of the best-known contemporary collectors of generative art — particularly on Tezos-based platform fx(hash) — thefunnyguys has built an enviable gen art collection… and an even more enviable network of artists, curators, and collectors. Now he’s turning his skills to a new enterprise, a “first-of-its-kind digital generative art institution” called Le Random.

We spoke to thefunnyguys ahead of Le Random’s public launch (you can follow Le Random on Twitter) about how he went from collecting NBA Top Shot moments to building one of the most comprehensive generative art collections on earth, what it means to collect for the long run, and why he believes the generative art movement is just getting started.

Craig Wilson: Who is thefunnyguys, and why is he pluralized?

thefunnyguys: So, thefunnyguys is a collective of three brothers — me, and my two brothers who are twins and both doctors. We started thefunnyguys internet profile together. Because, initially, all the money we put into NFTs was from a shared savings account our parents had set up for the three of us.

I was the one who discovered NFTs, and I was the one picking the projects. But my brothers have always owned a part of the collection. At first, I was briefly interested in NBA Top Shot, then in January 2021 I got into Ethereum-based projects like CryptoPunks, and shortly thereafter I minted Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, which was my first introduction to generative art.

I did some other things, but ever since minting Ringers on Art Blocks, generative art has been my main passion. Because it really felt like a category that needed the blockchain to proliferate. It wasn’t hype-focused. It had a backstory that went back 60 years. And it felt like a movement in the art world that was waiting for a technology such as blockchain to arrive.

It’s always felt to me like the place to be in the NFT world. After Art Blocks, I was collecting some 1/1s over the summer on SuperRare and Foundation. And then I also started collecting on Tezos. I discovered fx(hash), the first week that it emerged. Ever since I've been mainly building my personal collection on Tezos. But, to be honest, I'm chain agnostic between Ethereum and Tezos. I go wherever the artists are releasing new, interesting art.

CW: How did you convince your doctor brothers to let you spend your combined savings on NFTs?

tfg: I think there's a combination of things. I have some prior crypto experience. I was in the crypto world in 2017 during the hype cycle. So, I was well aware of what a blockchain was and the concept of digital property rights. It always intrigued me — a layer of digital ownership to the internet has always felt like something huge.

Then I spent six months studying in Australia and wasn’t focused on blockchain very much. But when I discovered NFTs, everything clicked immediately. They made digital ownership very concrete. You're not just owning “fake internet money.” You're actually owning a piece of culture.

I think my brothers saw from the start that I was very passionate about this — that I really saw the long-term potential, and this wasn’t just about a quick flip. From the start, I really thought NFTs would be relevant for decades.

It also helped that we were, I think, among the first 1,000 collectors on NBA Top Shot. At first, we’d put in maybe a few thousand dollars, but it ballooned very quickly. At the start of 2021, this initial investment was already worth six or seven figures. That made it easier to put in more of our savings because the value of our NFT collection was already way higher than our entire savings account. We realized we were really on to something really valuable, and we just kept collecting and investing in the NFT space.

What is it about generative art specifically, that sort of speaks to you so loudly? What about it did you fall in love with?

There are a few ways to tackle this question. One thing that I think makes generative art very special is the fact that it really gives people the opportunity to own unique items at scale. I think we all like to own unique things. In normal art — or in normal digital arts — often it’s an artist creating a thing. Instead of a system that creates a thing, which is how some people describe generative art — the generative artist is creating the thing that creates the thing.

Right, and there’s an element of participation from the collector at the moment of creation. When you click the mint button, you trigger the algorithm, which spits out something unique, and in that sense, the collector is playing a role in a way they traditionally don’t get to.

Yeah, that's true. The fact that you participate in the independent process makes it feel like it's your own. Also Le Random means randomness. The name is inspired by Vera Molnár, because she always points to randomness as the key force in generative art. It's the force that helps us expand on our human intuition.

It’s hard for humans to create 1,000 unique artworks, but we are able to create a system that creates 1,000 unique outputs. And this system can also surprise the artist themself and actually expand human creativity in the process, which is, in my opinion, very exciting.

I keep going back to the history of generative art. For a long time it was called “computer art,” and it was seen as a contradiction in terms by the art world. You had “art,” which was something done by humans. And you had “computers,” which were these logic-bound things that could only do what you asked them to, and which certainly couldn’t create art that demonstrated intuition or creativity.

So for decades, artists using computers to expand their human creativity weren’t accepted by the traditional art world. Now, with blockchain technology, I think it's way easier for them to get acceptance. Finally, they can convince the world that what they do is very valuable.

I also believe there’s another approach to this question. We live in a society where technology and algorithms steer our life and implicitly dictate what we do. They make us into these products. They try to grab our attention. And there's a very negative connotation to that. But generative art shows that algorithms can be used to create more beauty in the world. They can be used to expand our creativity instead of limiting us and trying to control us.

What is the elevator pitch for Le Random?

Le Random is a first-of-its-kind, on-chain generative art institution. We are trying to build a definitive collection of generative art on the blockchain — so, digital pieces — but we're also contextualizing the pieces and elevating the artworks that we collect. So it's not simply about buying them and selling them when they go up in value. We really want to build a definitive collection of generative art that people in 10, 20, or 30 years look back on and say, “In this era, in this time, this was the definitive and the most well-curated digital generative art collection that had been built.”

I think it’s also important that we are going to provide great content about generative art, and about our collection. Why do we collect these artists? Why do we collect these specific pieces from these artists? That's something we have to explain to our audience. Because it’s one thing to say we think these are the most iconic pieces and the most iconic artists, but we also have to convince the world that this is true.

So we're building content around the collection, but also around the generative art movement at large. Because I think it’s quite hard for people in the NFT space to learn about the history of generative art. I think some of them believe that Autoglyphs was the start of the generative art movement. But that's not true. They’re the start of the on-chain generative art movement, sure, but the true generative art movement has been with us for many decades. So we want to place what's happening at this moment in the on-chain generative art space in a broader art historical context.

We use the word “institution” because we are not an investment fund. We are a company with permanent capital, that is really building a structure that will ideally last decades instead of a few years. With investment funds, there's always a time horizon in which they have to sell their assets and return capital to the investors. But for us as a company with permanent capital, we don't have this pressure. I think that's an important differentiator between Le Random and other entities.

Say someone’s curious about generative art, they've just discovered fx(hash) and Ciphrd and Art Blocks and Snowfro and Chromie Squiggles, and they come across Le Random. How are they going to interface with Le Random?

We’re building a digital gallery for our collection, which people will be able to browse on our website, and which will be tailor-made for the collection. This is also where people can learn about the collection. We’ll interview the artists about the pieces we collect, and we’ll explain why those pieces are relevant. There will also be a lot more educational resources on the site.

The full website will probably launch early May. That's what we are aiming for. One of the big projects our writer and researcher Peter Bauman has been working on is a history of generative art. It's a timeline he’s currently putting together. The research alone is almost 150 pages long at this point.

We think it’s a really unique research document because it really pulls in knowledge from many different sources and historical art books in one place. This is where people can discover the history of the movement, which goes back even way before the 1960s. There are even some artifacts from pre-historic times that can be considered generative art.

We’ll also do real-life activations, we’ll sponsor events, and we’ll showcase our collection at some of the most relevant events in the world.

You’ve mentioned Peter, but who else is involved with Le Random?

I co-founded Le Random with a longtime friend named Zack Taylor. He’s in charge of the operational and financial side of things so I can focus more on the art itself. Peter is our full-time researcher and writer, and he’s taking care of the editorial side and contextualizing the collection. And then there’s Conrad House — he’s known as nemocake on Twitter — and he's our analyst. He's helping us identify the most iconic generative artists and also helps with analyzing their bodies of work basically.

We also have three advisors: Jason Bailey, Anne Spalter, and Georg Bak. Jason Bailey you probably know as Artnome. Anne Spalter has what’s probably the number one, physical, private generative art collection in the world and she's also a leading AI artist. Georg is a Swiss art advisor and an expert on generative art. He’s curated some of the most iconic generative art exhibitions.

You've got these incredible relationships with the biggest artists in the space. To what do you attribute the strength of that network?

I think what’s super intriguing about the blockchain space is that it really is about what you do and not about what you say. Every artist can check what a collector has been doing in the last months or years. It's very easy to see if someone is genuinely excited about the art movement, or is looking for quick financial profits.

In the last two to three years I think it’s become clear that I'm really passionate about this movement and that I collect pieces with a very long time horizon and I’m not looking for a quick flip. I want to keep them for decades. I believe artists feel that I genuinely care about their work, and I think that's the main basis for these relationships.

What are some of the Le Random pieces you’re proudest of?

We have a section in our collection that really tells the history of the emergence of on-chain generative art. From this perspective, the most important projects are Autoglyphs, The Lost Robbies by Robbie Barrat, Chromie Squiggles by Snowfro, and RGBs by Ciphrd.

Autoglyphs were the first time a generative art algorithm was uploaded to the blockchain. The Lost Robbies were the first artificial intelligence art collection on the blockchain, and there's a very unique story attached to the collection [Ed’s note: You can read about The Lost Robbies in our BrainDrops Deep Dive].

How does Le Random make money? And what does it mean to have a permanent capital structure?

We are not looking to directly commercialize the collection. We believe in the future potential of generative art and we think that the pieces that we are acquiring will see very considerable asset appreciation. In terms of how we eventually return liquidity to investors, well, that's something we are still exploring, but there are many options.

There's the regulatory environment to contend with, and we’re not sure what the best strategy will be in, say, five years from now. But for now, we've raised enough capital to be up and running for the next few years, and we hope to become the definitive generative art collection in the coming years.

How big is the Le Random collection?

It’s somewhere between 30 and 40 pieces. We are very particular about every single piece that we collect.

Do you collect multiple pieces from some artists where doing so shows their range or where different pieces have unique historical relevance?

Definitely. It really depends on the project. For example, we’ve collected multiple pieces by William Mapan. We believe his collection Dragons on fx(hash) is one of the better generative art collections minted in the last one or two years. It’s one of our favorite projects. We picked a triptych because we believe that the diversity of this collection is what makes it unique. With a triptych, we can tell this story and we can show the world why we are such big fans of his work.

It’s the same story with other artists. Some artists are so multidisciplinary or they have such a variety of styles that we feel, if we are going to embrace this artist, we have to collect more than one, because collecting just one doesn't really do it justice, and doesn’t allow us to show the artistic breadth of styles that this artist is capable of.

Tell me about the Zancan piece, Garden, Monoliths #156.

We’ve collected two Zancan pieces so far. One is the most-exceptional Garden, Monoliths, and not only rarity-wise. I mean, rarity-wise, it's number one, but we don't really care that much about statistical rarity. It's definitely more about visual rarity or aesthetic rarity. I really believe this piece is not only statistically number one, but also visually — the white flowers on a pink background make for something very unique.

Then we’ve complemented that piece with one of Zancan’s earlier 1/1s from The Lushtemples series. It’s the only time he uses purple flowers, and the composition of the piece is just amazing. We believe that we have collected the two best Zancan pieces on the blockchain.

Wasn’t your Garden, Monoliths acquisition also a record-setting price for a Zancan?

Yeah, it was. But we are still very comfortable with the price we paid. Because we think Zancan is one of the best generative artists of this generation, yet his best pieces go for way less than many less impressive generative art pieces on Ethereum. A clear opportunity in our opinion.

What is your — and Le Random’s — relationship with Metaversal?

Metaversal was super important while setting up Le Random. I was still working at Metaversal full-time when I had the idea for Le Random. I was a full-time Investment analyst, deciphering the entirety of the NFT space. One week it was digital fashion, the other it was gaming. For me, it was quite tough, though, because I only cared deeply about generative art. And I also believed generative art was the most special place in the NFT ecosystem.

I reached out to [Metaversal cofounder] Yossi [Hasson] and I told him, “Look, I want to focus on this full-time. How can we make this work?” Yossi and Dan gave me the confidence to pursue this idea. They invested a significant amount of money and introduced me to their investor network. So yeah, Metaversal has been very important and will continue to be very important in the future when it comes to activating the collection.

Metaversal is also part of the acquisition committee, and specifically [Metaversal analyst] Matt Miller — he’s Balon on Twitter — who’s also a generative art expert. So having his feedback and his guidance while we're building this collection is also extremely valuable to us.

What’s next for Le Random?

We’re working on commissioned projects by — in our view — three of the most relevant and most significant generative artists: Casey Reas, Zach Lieberman, and a pioneering AI artist we’re still confirming. These three artists are going to bring a commission bundle to Le Random, which is something super special.

To have the confidence of these three pioneers, and the fact that they want to bring some of their most special work to our collection even before we publicly announced is a huge stamp of approval. It’s something we're all super excited about.

Find out more about Le Random on its website.

Metaversal Badges unlock exclusive giveaways, unique access, and extraordinary experiences for adventurous Metaversalists. The more Badges you collect, the greater the possibilities. You’ve got nothing to lose by claiming one, but so much to gain.