I’ve added a new series of resident interviews to the website, offering a deep dive into the experiences of this year’s participants. Sasquatch reflected on the personal clarity and creative reset he found during his two-week stay, diving into Web3 concepts and rethinking daily consumption. Curtis shared how the profound silence of the desert shaped his music-making process and sparked new ideas about sound and emergency contexts. Holly discussed the challenges of off-grid living, the joy of peaceful isolation, and her vision for how the program can grow sustainably. Finally, Kyle and Mandy recounted their month-long adventure, tackling hands-on projects and embracing the solitude and creative opportunities of the high desert. Each interview is packed with insights and stories that highlight the transformative potential of this space—don’t miss them!

We’re capping off this year with an end-of-year retrospective community call on Friday, December 6th, at 12 PM MST. This is a chance to reflect on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned, and to discuss the vision for 2025. Whether you’ve been involved with TEARS or are simply curious about the program, I’d love to have you join the conversation. Mark your calendar—I’m looking forward to connecting with all of you!

TEARS Retrospective Community Gathering · Zoom · Luma

TEARS Program End-of-Year Town Hall 2024 Event Description: Join us for the TEARS program's inaugural end-of-year retrospective, an open gathering to reflect...

https://lu.ma

Looking ahead, I’m also taking fundraising more seriously to ensure TEARS can continue evolving. I’ve submitted the program to the Artizen platform, a funding space for creative projects, and I’m excited to see how it resonates with their community. If you’re curious about supporting TEARS, you can check out our submission here. Every bit of support helps us expand the residency’s possibilities and create a sustainable, impactful future for the program.

Finally, I’m already dreaming and scheming for next year! We’re planning to kick off in March with projects for builders, followed by creative residencies in April. If you’ve been thinking about participating—or want to help with some hands-on site projects—please reach out. There’s plenty of opportunity to get involved, whether you’re a dreamer, a builder, or someone ready to dive into the dirt. Let’s make 2025 an even bigger success. Thanks for your continued support, and I hope to see you on the community call!

First off, I've started to revisit my work on the project I refer to as An Opera Of/For Known & Unknowable Universes. This interdisciplinary monstrosity had consumed my entire existence at one point, becoming the source and destination of all the music, visual art, critical writings, and later even the existential decisions steering my frail meat puppet through all of life's multifarious reality gauntlets. I accumulated a substantial body of work between 2013 (start date unclear) and 2019 (end date equally unclear), including experiments in musical notations and performance choreographies, convoluted set and stage designs, endless scripts of schizo-frantic characterizations of multi-polar selves endlessly selving through an emergent auto-fiction libretto, and a handful of impactful performances in Iceland, Austria, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

Well, on the occasion of revising my personal website (tee hee hee) and applying for a fellowship opportunity at a local center for the arts, I have remembered much of the purpose and enthusiasm this project has generated for me over the years and have decided to attempt a reboot. To kick things off, I have remastered and reissued many of the core experiential notation diagrams from the first phase of the opera as on-chain artifacts, along with 5 videos that document and elaborate a performance of the work in Reykjavik, Iceland circa 2015. Here's a few of my favorites, but you can view them all on the Zora page.

Secondly, I'd like to briefly mention a research initiative that recently concluded focused on creators (artists like me) and collectors (possibly you as the recipient of this newsletter) forming reciprocal entanglements as a model (decidedly wrong yet possibly useful) of speculative cultural-economic configurations. Inspired by the editorial work I have been enjoying from Other Internet, Zora Zine, Metalabel, Friends With Benefits, and other web3-centric organizations, as well as the burgeoning design space of web3 publishing and on-chain IP, this research on Creator-Collector-Reciprocity Networks hopes to introduce a less technical reader to some of the intriguing subtleties and alluring frictions involved in these mechanics.

I am sincerely curious to hear your feedback on this work. If you are new to web3, I wonder if any of this emphasis on forming DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) to collectively craft cultural content resonates with you, and if you give any fucks about this direction. If you are a web3 veteran, let me just say that I'm well aware that there are numerous other examples of decentralized lore crafting, post-ownership white papers, distributed sensing network ecologies, and the like, that I could have - probably should have - referenced, so this report might strike you as variously biased or naive. Yet, putting aside our protocol imperialisms and mimetically induced fever dreams, I'm very keen to engage in conversation about the core motivation in these articles: artists and patrons might form a reciprocal embrace as an autopoietic and highly resilient economic entity, allowing them to incubate a distinct cultural dialogue relatively free of the oppressive and hallucinatory ideological framework of all-invasive capitalist desire. Wut? Yeah, let's workshop it.

The research takes the form of 3 articles.

Part One introduces some ideas about breaking apart artistic creations into atomic units and the technical motivation to put these units on-chain.

Part Two unapologetically thrashes around in the warm liminal pools and minor brain damages resulting in the social configurations that coalesce from various economic orientations. I hear this one is difficult to follow, but for those that can get through it I think there may be some tantalizing nourishment for our collective designs.

Part Three asks-after WTF is reciprocity anyways, performing some self-deprecation through ritualized critique that admits the foolishness of the quest while also pondering whether the fool might be more noble than the financially motivated engineer in this regard. The series ends with an exposé into the work of our peers at DAOhaus who have rage hacked a functional prototype of a DAO-ified content publication platform.

Finally, I'd like to quickly introduce a project that has been incubating in my existential cocoon for ~4 years, a labor of precocity, precarity, and self-sacrifice, an opportunity for us to gather and align and possibly live-work together. I'm excited to announce the soft launch of the Three Ears Attenuation Residency Site. Located on 9 acres of high altitude piñon and juniper forest in Northern New Mexico, in and around a unique earthship that I have called home since 2019, this program represents the intersection of my IRL+URL interests in exploring off-grid sustainable living and on-chain regenerative thinking.

The basic idea is this:

The program is starting now, by invite only, with friends and highly aligned colleagues spending some time on the site to help me imagine potentials and manifest possiblities. The main purpose is to lay a cultural foundation and necessary coordination infrastructure to allow early residents to form reciprocal tethers to the land, local community, and their histories. I will be carefully building and strategizing the program in collaboration with these dear peers throughout the year. Starting in early 2025, I hope to have a clear economic program, auto-documentation archive, guidelines for progressive decentralization of ownership stewardship established, and to open the program to a wider community of high-trust would-be collaborators from my community.

For now, there is a simple landing page along with an early application form and operating manual. The first residents will be invited to iterate and elaborate these ideas while I maintain attentive stewardship of the site, its human and non-human inhabitants, and the call and response with the surrounding ecosystem. If you are interested in learning more about these plans, jump into the Telegram group and fill out an application. Remember, this is all being designed in production so feedback towards improvement is very welcome.

I should probably tell you about some of the cool web3 shit I'm building, and the new music that I've started composing, and some of this years travel plans to interesting destinations to collaborate and coordinate on big ideas, and some of the new research initiatives I'm incubating... and many more things... but I suppose that will have to wait until the next newsletter.

As always, thank you for reading, thank you for your careful attention and feedback, thank you for your time and consideration. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to hear more about any of these projects I've mentioned, or anything else for that matter.

Sincere regards, XOXO

TW

In the first article, we started questioning whether the term “minting” appropriately captures the necessary considerations of layer five, as it may be prematurely prioritizing certain aspects. It is clear that there are multiple factors at play. What is certain is that layer five represents a transitional phase where Creator DAO members disseminate some type of artifact, marking the start of a Collector DAO community. This community is envisioned to both receive and steward these artifacts. We acknowledged the need to explore layers six and seven to provide more context. Furthermore, we began to delve into the uncertainties surrounding our overarching prompt of reciprocity networks, whose definition remains speculative and open-ended for now.  

Layer five involves a series of concerns about how the artifact created by the Creator DAO is formalized into an on-chain object. We start with the assumption that it's an NFT, though we are uncertain about the specific standard to use due to numerous questions about the required utility for token-gated content or the distribution of governance shares, among other aspects. Additionally, we face questions regarding the parameters of the mint, such as the edition size—whether it’s a one-of-one, an edition of three, or an open mint that might be exclusive to Collector DAO members—or perhaps a time-boxed mint, or some claim and burn mechanic. Essentially, everything is on the table, but our starting point suggests it could be three NFTs, which is a unique and irregular approach that could establish a new reciprocal relationship between collectors, creators, and the general public yet to engage.

The decisions made in layer five will shape the social and cultural relationships that are central to layer six. Layer six focuses on the formation of the Collector DAO, determining when and where this occurs, as well as defining the parameters of governance and what their stewardship over the artifact will look like. Following that, layer seven encompasses a range of considerations on how the general public interacts with the artifact, facilitating their integration into the Collector DAO and closing the distribution loop of the artifact. This includes addressing economic considerations, such as the flow of value or capital through the system.

Layer six presents a particular concern considering the bootstrapping of a community versus the iterative aspects of a developed group. For bootstrapping, the minting process determines how the Creator DAO initiates the formation of the Collector DAO. This community might deploy a mechanism like Yeeter to facilitate DAO formation around this singular purpose. After both entities are formed, ongoing iteration involves the Creator DAO minting the NFT in conjunction with the Collector DAO, based on their feedback. Since the collectors are likely to have a greater awareness of the broader market, they can provide insights on whether the NFT should be a one-of-one or part of an open series, among other options. This is where the decision becomes complex because we want the bootstrapping NFT to resemble the iterative NFT, even though they serve different purposes. The initial flow is based on the idea of minting three NFTs corresponding to three unique entities, as initially outlined in our proposal.

The second flow we are considering involves using Story Protocol, Seed Protocol, or something similar to manage the licensing of intellectual property (IP) as the artifact that is stewarded. This would be distinct from an NFT of the content itself, which is composed of DUCEs (atomic units of on-chain IP that compose the content of the artifact, discussed in the previous article). There's some cognitive dissonance here as we question whether a DUCE is a representation of that IP or merely a container of data. We need to determine if the IP is attached to the DUCE through metadata, or if these are separate objects. This means the DUCE exists in one place, and the IP mint, with whatever data it carries, exists in another, creating a reference between these two on-chain objects.

The third flow focuses on how the distribution of the artifact transitions from the Creator community to the Collector community. We begin with the concept of fractionalized ownership, examining how the Collector DAO can collectively own a single artifact and how that correlates to the shares of its members. There is a challenge with correlating the voting and non-voting share representation of Moloch DAOs with the fractionalized ownership of a single or editioned artifact. For example, if a member decides to leave the community, how will the DAO provide exit liquidity without sacrificing the holdings of the other members? Will that rage quitting individual take a piece of the artifact or the IP with them, or be able to receive an equivalent value of tokens from a liquidity pool sustained by the collective?

Flow four focuses on a unique strategy of fractionalized stewardship called Partial Common Ownership (PCO) and flow five adds considerations of the Harberger tax on top of this schema. We need to address questions of price discovery, who sets the price, the psychology behind pricing, and maybe refresh our understanding of how Harberger mechanics operate in what might be considered a marketplace or a different field of exchange.

Layer six involves the formation of the Collector DAO, encompassing the operations of both DAOs, such as decision-making processes and the mechanisms through which people can join or leave the communities. The Collector DAO has two primary responsibilities. The first is how it supports the Creator DAO, dedicated in patronage to the amplification of economic and cultural exchanges between the two. There are various methods for returning feedback on content, helping form the north star of the combined communities while iterating upon the operations that support those efforts. The second responsibility is handling dissemination to the general public. This is less of a marketing effort and more akin to the nurturing of the narrative or in emanating from the artifact, thereby expanding the number of people either joining the Collector DAO or becoming general collectors in the public sphere. 

Our first flow starts with the Creator DAO and its contributors minting an artifact in three editions. The first NFT goes directly into the Creator DAO's treasury. However, its price hasn't been validated by any external entity, so it's essentially considered valueless within the DAO. The second NFT is sent to the Collector DAO's treasury, and the questions about how this transaction occurs define the design space we are exploring. This could involve a predetermined set price, where they simply pay and receive the NFT, or through a more formalized on-chain smart contract escrow intermediary, where the NFT transfer from the creator's side and the funds from the collector's side is mediated by a neutral party.

A key aspect here is that the Collector DAO sets the price. They are motivated to set the price in relation to their evaluation of the object's quality and content alongside its speculative potential—separating these aspects feels nearly impossible. By setting the price, the Collector DAO aims to keep it low enough to facilitate onboarding the general public, yet high enough to acknowledge the value of the reciprocal exchange with the Creator DAO.

At this point, we might remind ourselves of the meditations on attributions and royalties inherited from the first four layers of the stack. Let's consider an example, of a hypothetical 70/30 split. 

When the first NFT goes into the Creator DAO, no money changes hands; the DAO simply receives the NFT, and the contributors aren't paid. When the Collector DAO acquires the second artifact, let's say they set the price at 1 ETH: 30% (0.3 ETH) goes directly to the contributors who worked on the artifact, while 70% (0.7 ETH) goes back into the Collector DAO's treasury. So, in essence, the Collector DAO has paid 0.3 ETH for that artifact.

The third step involves distributing the third NFT to a public buyer. Imagine a scenario where there is a shared multisig safe, perhaps with the Creator DAO and the Collector DAO as 50/50 signers or some proportionate arrangement, to create accountability. This third NFT artifact is then deposited into the safe, and the Collector DAO takes responsibility for stewarding the artifact on behalf of both entities. We initially imagine this involves setting up an auction, perhaps a Nouns-style auction, although it doesn’t necessarily need to be limited to this specific mechanic. It could involve various auction types or even a fixed price or a reverse Dutch auction. The Collector DAO oversees this sale, ensuring that the artifact deposited in the safe is the one up for auction.

When the auction closes, and the sale is formalized, 30% of the proceeds go back to the original contributors. Assuming the auction price is the same as what the Collector DAO paid, 1 ETH, we would see 0.3 ETH returning to the Creators and 0.7 ETH going into the Collector DAO's treasury. Additionally, the buyer receives the third artifact and pays 1 ETH. They receive shares in the Collector DAO, giving them a ragequit-eligible position in the DAO's treasury, which now includes the 1.4 ETH, 0.7 of which came from their wallet. 

The intent here is to establish some constraints on the supply of the artifact and the influx of new members and capital. We can imagine this as a kind of culturally regulated bonding curve. This is designed to allow collectors and creators to determine the community's growth pace and scale through their reciprocal interaction. It forces the creators to demonstrate the cultural value they can offer and compels the collectors to show their dedication towards stewarding those artifacts, thereby aligning with that cultural value. The goal is to prioritize cultural value over economic concerns, yet also allowing for real financial upside for all members.

The idealism of this scheme is that everyone will benefit: the creators, the collectors, and the general public coming in. This approach is akin to a faith-based practice rooted in the belief that the cultural value will continually be recognized as valuable, continuously improve, and be validated by being purchased at increasingly higher prices, attracting an endless stream of new people willing to invest in it. This suggests a slow but steady and infinite growth, which, despite perhaps occurring through a few cycles, seems overly optimistic and not sustainable. We are making assumptions about inflating the value and expecting the market to view it similarly. The assumptions upon which this is built may not withstand the market test, except in the form of inflationary speculative meme-driven bubbles, as are currently proliferating throughout the web3 ecosystem. Augmented bonding curves and similar automated experiments are deserving of investigation for this design space, but beyond the scope of our current discussion.

The Creator DAO is motivated to maintain a certain cadence of releases, though volume is perhaps more crucial for maintaining a continuous flow. Following the Nouns model, every third NFT could go to the Creator DAO, and maybe every other one could be directed into the Collector DAO's treasury, followed by an auction. This approach mimics Nouns-style mechanics but instead of featuring randomly generated SVG layers, it would involve the Creator DAO output from layers one through four. Each item would be unique, which is crucial because having three of each item makes it difficult to determine the value of one compared to another. In this setup, we're dealing with one-of-ones, but we are structuring it so that the Creator DAO has ownership in both the collection and some shared treasury.

The key difference here is not having multiples of one artifact, but ensuring each artifact is unique. In the bootstrapping phase, the first artifact still goes to the Creator DAO, the second to the Collector DAO, and the third is auctioned publicly to facilitate onboarding. Then, in a manner similar to a Nouns DAO style, periodically, one artifact returns to the Collector DAO as a store of value, providing financial and governance rewards. 

In the bootstrapping phase, the Collector DAO uses Yeeter to raise a primary store of capital to pay for the first artifact. In the interation phase, there's no need for another Yeeter since there is already a store of capital established. To use the first example, they pay 1 ETH and 0.7 ETH comes back in. Then, with the sale of the third artifact, an additional 0.7 ETH comes in from the general public. From the Collector DAO's perspective, they're spending 0.3 ETH and turning it into 1.4 ETH. The treasury grows by onboarding new members. 

The Yeeter-funded Collector DAO acts as the mechanism for price discovery for the first NFT sale. There are two sides for the collectors to consider: the price needs to be set at a level that will actually sell to the public and be low enough to facilitate continuous sales across iterations. They're looking for the maximum price that will perpetually sell. Since the collectors are setting the price and also stand to benefit from it, they need to balance making it accessible enough for onboarding new members while ensuring it remains high enough to serve as a valuable asset in their treasury. This creates a complex dynamic, where collectors balance optimistic cultural alignment with a degenerate "number go up" mentality, resulting in a unique and somewhat paradoxical market-setting entity. This blend of rational and irrational decision-making underscores the absurdity and experimentalism of the situation. 

Nouns price discovery is more coherent and has numerous functional use cases. It starts with a floor price that initiates bidding wars through an auction. When some Nouns are returned to the Nouns DAO, they are either financially incentivized or burned if not sold. This system incorporates inherent price discovery. Given this foundation, let's transition towards examining some additional layers.

Typically, when a DAO pools capital to purchase an NFT, it's clear that the DAO's treasury address holds ownership of that NFT. What is less clear is how individual members can retain or remove their portion of the fractionalized ownership. 

To state the obvious, the NFT could be collectively sold by the DAO, and the tokens received from the sale could then be distributed to the members, who might choose to rage quit with their share of the profits. Since the DAO treasury acts as a collective store of value, and the DAO is motivated to continue collecting without necessarily converting the NFT into liquid ERC-20 tokens or similar, we encounter friction in maintaining individual members’ rights to exit. 

This is a problem that plagues the broader ecosystem of NFT creator and collector DAOs. Generally, the way to exit involves selling one's shares, which represent their percentage of partial ownership. If shares are transferable, members can sell them back to the community or through liquidity pools on the open market, facilitating fungibility and transferability among DAO members. 

To avoid the social and economic complexity of liquidity pools, one could simply find a buyer and execute an over-the-counter (OTC) deal. Either way, exiting involves selling one's share either back to the DAO, to another member within the DAO, or potentially to an outside party, which would then bring them into the DAO. Moloch v3 allows for the toggling on and off of transferability for both voting and non-voting shares, a crucial feature for unlocking the social dynamics we are considering.

The next concept we should discuss is on-chain intellectual property (IP) that is standardized into a mintable license. Story Protocol attempts to address the problem of representing the necessary data corresponding to different types of media, which often adhere to unique and sometimes conflicting standards. For instance, licensing music has historically followed a different standard than licensing texts, and scientific journal texts differ from literary texts in terms of copyright, Library of Congress numbers, ISBN numbers, and music catalog numbers, among other aspects. So, let's generally consider all these elements under the umbrella of IP minted on-chain.

Because there is a single or a collection of intellectual properties that we want to track together, encapsulating it in a single object—namely, the license—bundles it neatly. However, for distribution purposes, we might want to do something like create three NFTs that would be collectible derivatives. Alternatively, it could be an open edition where the license allows someone to mint and sell in a format similar to an open edition.

This could result in a variety of products or derivatives based on the original IP. In this model, the Collector effectively becomes more like a producer or a publisher, purchasing the rights to manage the next phase of the project. In buying the IP license, the collector takes over the distribution aspect from the creator.

The artifact is also minted and exists autonomously. For simplicity in this discussion, let's assume that the artifact is a one-of-one. So, in this scenario, the artifact is minted, and there is just one of them. The stewardship over this artifact is held by the collectors in the form of a license. This license represents the transactional exchange between the creators and the collectors; the collectors pay, and the resulting value flows to the creators. What the collectors receive in return is the license, which grants them rights to possess, exhibit, and possibly other utilities.

Story Protocol is attempting to establish a marketplace for licensed elements, somewhat akin to JSTOR, where users pay a fee to access a repository of academic articles, or like Unsplash and other image archives, where users pay to use licensed photography for private or business purposes, depending on the purchased license.

The license itself is an NFT, serving both as the license and as a reference to all the material being licensed, including the final composition of what the creator intends as the distributable item. It encompasses the entire collection of content. We propose that it is the responsibility of the Collector DAO to decide how to manage these assets. 

Creators might even consider creating sub-licenses, where one primary license has the right to grant limited licenses for certain uses. However, when it comes to a DAO holding a license, it likely needs to be a single entity because the logistics of a license that is chartered or held by multiple parties and how to execute on it remain unclear.

Let’s consider the stewardship of this license. Here, we have two ideas that we might consider in tandem to understand their similarities, overlaps, and distinctions. The first concept is Partial Common Ownership (PCO), specifically referring to how this PCO license could be applied in a web3-centric approach to artwork stewardship.

The idea is that there's a creator community that produces some artwork, and then the license is transferred to the collector community. The collectors purchase the license, which significantly includes a time limit. They pay a recurring fee to maintain it. We are questioning how that fee is set, whether it is determined by the creators, the collectors, or both in negotiation, and whether the recurring fee remains consistent or varies. For example, the upfront price could be higher, and the recurring fee lower.

Collectors have the option to renew the ownership of the license, and if they choose not to, it becomes available for others to purchase on a relatively open market. Using DAO shares for token gating utility, we might consider if specific permissions are required to purchase the license, whether during the bootstrapping phase of a new collector community or while onboarding new collectors into the DAO from the general public.

The main characteristic of a Harberger tax is that the asset is always up for sale. There is a renewal period that is flexible, guaranteeing that the buyer has the ability to use the item for a set period. After this period, a window opens where a new price can be set. The price is only changeable at specific intervals.

To apply this idea towards our thought experiment, once the collector receives the artifact, they then set the price. There's a psychology at play where they aim to set it high enough to deter it from being immediately taken from another entity, likely another collector or collector DAO. Essentially, their motivation is to set the price high when they don't want it sold because they can't make it not for sale. Conversely, if they want to unload it quickly, they set the price so low that it becomes irresistible, which has repercussions.

Harberger taxes are often used in relation to territorial divisions, be they digital or physical lands. What intrigues us is how this might affect the local cultural landscape. Instead of considering a territorial grid of land partitions, each represented as an NFT on a grid influencing each other's prices, we are now considering a grid populated by cultural artifacts in dynamic relation so that the price of one impacts the evaluation of the next. 

The price discovery mechanism operates on the principle that all items are always for sale, allowing anyone to see the price. Changes in ownership demonstrate that the price set is generally seen as the equilibrium price; someone believed it was worth enough to buy it from the previous owner. There is reciprocal incentive to avoid dumping the artifact, instead setting a price that reflects its inherent value store. If it is no longer desired, rather than setting a super low price immediately, one would gradually decrease the price until someone else decides to buy it. 

We imagine the Collector DAO receives the money from the sale. There's also a tax component—the titular Harberger tax—which involves a percentage of the value going to another party, in this case the Creator DAO. 

The primary use case for Harberger taxes is typically for productive assets—assets that can be used to produce something else, which is why licensing fits well into this model. By holding the license, a community can generate derivative works that they can sell, and the valuation of the license is essentially based on their ability to utilize it effectively. The community that purchases a Harberger taxed NFT license does so because they have a plan to utilize it effectively, believing they can mobilize significant cultural and economic value from it. They set the price slightly below what they expect to earn from it, but higher than what others might perceive its worth to be. 

This schema raises some ambiguous questions about whether this artifact offers something functionally productive. This might be in a familiar web3 form such as token gating access to a community, additional content, economic interactions, governance, or other privileges. With a physical artwork, the utility suggests a collector holding the license maintains exclusive right to display it. The collector thus acts somewhat like a curator, aiming to exhibit the work while intending to form a market around its reception. 

The Harberger tax could synergize with the mechanism we explored in part one, where individual members of the Creator DAO are compensated based on their contributions to the creation of the artifact. The royalties would exist in the licensing that the Collector DAO manages externally, while the Harberger tax compensates the Creator DAO directly as a percentage of the value of the object. They benefit from the initial sale and also from the ongoing tax collected from the NFT. 

In this scenario, the Harberger tax is directed to the Creator DAO treasury. Additional participation in the creation of the artifact might amount to receiving additional shares, thereby receiving a higher share of the incoming flows based on shared attribution. Alternatively, the tax collected could be distributed per NFT. This aligns somewhat with Story Protocol's approach, where the Harberger tax would flow in reverse down the lineage. Holding a "royalty NFT" could entitle the holder to a share of the Harberger tax, creating a continuous inflow in that direction.

Most licenses currently are perpetual; you buy it once and you have the license indefinitely, or sometimes there are terms that modify this. However, a depreciating license would mean that when one buys it, they initially own 100% of the license, but that ownership gradually diminishes over time. Incorporating a depreciating PCO license, the Creator DAO would start to receive back an increasing share of the ownership. Collectors are incentivized to actively promote and utilize the license, but they don't receive perpetual revenue from it—it completely degrades over time, so eventually the creators reclaim full ownership of the IP. 

We still have questions about how to motivate creators to produce a quality artifact, what motivates collectors to acquire either the artifact itself or the license, and how these motivations set the foundation for onboarding new people into this flow of value. We need to consider what motivates the general public to engage in this relational exchange. We continue to wonder how these designs might illustrate relatively anti-fragile reciprocal relations between our creator and collector personas. How might these communities become resilient enough to incorporate dissensus and disagreement as a generative function for whatever their underlying purpose may be? 

In our third and final article in this unruly series, we will explore how and why a community forms around an emergent purpose that isn't fully articulated. How might this design facilitate the gradual realization of that purpose, increasingly formalizing it, and how might that result in the formation of new generative articulations of purpose? Is this a flywheel where every cycle creates a new iteration of the entire scheme, or where the entities remain relatively stable as they flow iteratively through the reciprocal architecture? Next time we will try to pick up this thread and move towards some possible conclusions.

This research has been made possible by the vital support of DAOhaus.

In our previous article, we proposed that the collector provides feedback and possesses mechanisms to inform creation, yet they are not directly involved in the creative process. Conversely, the creator receives this feedback and can use it to influence their work, although they are not obliged to engage in the direct perpetuation of the feedback received. This setup allows for a separation of responsibilities, where both parties are accountable for the quality of the cultural product, yet their roles remain distinct. This arrangement mirrors an Adam Smith-like system of specialization, where each party focuses on their specific function within the broader framework of cultural production.

Alienated consumption, particularly when it's driven by individual merit or identity creation, perpetuates an extractive agenda. Our focus on reciprocity highlights the essence of exchange—cultural, economic, and intellectual—that should ideally be based on mutual benefit rather than one entity gaining at the expense of another. While the modern epoch was founded upon disequilibrium, the concept of reciprocity seeks to move us towards balance, fostering an environment where all participants mutually benefit from their exchanges. 

Reciprocity may imply the need to extend beyond traditional - purely material and financial - market dynamics. By orienting the interests of collectors and creators into a relatively closed autopoietic system these individuals might hope to operate outside – or towards the periphery – of the traditional market framework. The closed system dynamics are not governed by market forces; instead, the reciprocally formed amalgam interacts with the market.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting that the market is fundamentally extractive. Rather, the market creates a disequilibrium by emphasizing economic exchange at the expense of cultural exchange motivated by any other agenda. The potential for decentralized entities to form and engage in reciprocal, decentralized cultural production could prompt creators to take on a more proactive role in shaping new markets with novel idiosyncratic intentions. Likewise, collectors could be tasked with greater responsibilities to actively participate in feedback loops that inform cultural priorities and directions beyond the unapologetically degenerate. This would be a subtle but significant departure from a model where fetishistic consumer purchases signal a demand for more of the same, leading to destructive and unsustainable practices. From this high-level abstract reverie, we might begin to explore the idea of shared responsibility and accountability in the culture that is produced. 

In this third and final session, we will explore how reciprocity informs and applies context to our discussions about DUCEs (Decentralized Universal Comment Emissions), DINs (Decentralized Intelligence Networks), and CCR (Creator Collective Reciprocity) relations. Although we have attempted to consider mechanism design and social relations as separate entities, these concepts are interrelated and inherently influence one another. As we approach the end of our dialogue, we hope to identify some low-hanging fruit of this problem space that might allow us to unlock deeper conceptual or mechanistic understanding. 

We have been focusing on two key personas: the creators and the collectors. 

Creators have historically carried forward the myth of genius, particularly pronounced over the last 100 years of modern history but extending much further back. This notion involves an individual who, through almost divine providence, can alchemically manifest something from nothing. 

Our conception of Collectors begins from the premise of individuals who form their identities based on the acquisition and adornment of these rarified cultural artifacts. Collector identity, in this context, resembles an empty scaffolding—structured yet devoid of content. Modern creators form their identity through stylistic dispositions towards their craft, while collectors express their uniqueness through their purchases, symbolizing allegiance to specific cultural production and their ideologies.

These low fidelity persona sketches are decidedly imperfect and should be taken with a mountain of salt. For the sake of our exploration, we hypothesize the deconstruction and decentralization of the myth of genius for both personas. This experiment questions how individual creators can collectively manifest an artifact that embodies emergent inspiration and collective praxis rather than single-pointed insights.

For collectors, this transition implies moving from individual consumption and ownership to collective understanding and shared stewardship. A decentralized organization of collectors could pool resources, recognizing that their participation in cultural exchange transcends mere taste-making or consumption, embodying a broader cultural production responsibility based on mutual benefit.

Web3 tools and conversations around decentralized identity and finance provide us the opportunity to contemplate a procession towards decentralized culture, for better and for worse. This signals a shift from a traditional model of cultural production, where a genius creator sells to a market, to a many-to-many cultural exchange. Here, communities of creators take on the responsibility to create cultural objects that allow for the emergence of a collective voice, aiming to provide a visionary orientation for our actions and future, acting like a lens and helping us see into the future more clearly than an individual could. The community of decentralized collectors, organized and coordinated, would recognize their role in patronizing a narrative that is critical of nepotism and self-interest, moving beyond mere material production towards novel social formations.

Throughout these proceedings, there have been hints about distinguishing between the collector and the general public. Although both groups might be variously motivated to engage in collecting, they do not share the same responsibilities. Clarifying the specific actions and responsibilities of the collector is essential. What mechanisms are needed to transition from the one-to-one model of a genius artist and a single patron to a collective of creators interacting with a collective of collectors? 

There is a compelling argument that creators are, in their own right, specialized collectors and that collectors view their curatorial actions as creative. The act of consuming, hoarding, or exchanging cultural artifacts as currency—whether for personal representation or other forms of utility—brings us to the heart of reciprocity. [1]

Web3 emphasizes ownership as a remedy, creating protocols that return content control to its creators and participants in its exchange. This purportedly shifts power back to the individuals involved. However, what we’re inviting you to consider with us is whether this supposed shift is perpetuating another dimension of traditional market principles, a coordination failure in cultural narrative. By reflecting on the decentralization of cultural producers like creators and collectors, we might pivot from a focus on ownership to one of stewardship. This could foster an emergent value from reciprocal relations, with participants feeling a responsibility to maintain what is created. These flickering identities–of creators and collectors–are increasingly defined through market signifiers, rendering both artists and patrons into brands that have allowed market pressures and economic factors to disproportionately influence the cultural landscape, diminishing the sense of responsibility for the artifacts produced and their intended purposes.

The physical manifestation of art is not a public good due to its inherent exclusivity.[2] However, the conceptual aspect of art—the ideas and experiences it represents—tends to be more accessible and harder to restrict. Art, like data, naturally seeks to propagate itself, allowing many people to see and experience it without diminishing the experience for others, making it non-rivalrous. However, this does not address qualitative merits of the content held within culturally distributed containers. Just because something is a public good in the economic sense doesn't inherently make it beneficial or necessary to fund through communal stewardship.

Ownership and stewardship are not mutually exclusive. Stewardship alone, without ownership, may lead to the principal-agent problem, where the motivation for being a good steward isn't clear. Ownership provides the necessary "skin in the game," motivating owners to be good stewards since they directly benefit from their care and management. Thus, ownership can be a powerful incentive for responsible stewardship.

When we shift towards a many-to-many model, we encounter the free rider problem, which allows us to question who the actual steward is. In collective coordination, stewardship can become diluted because the incentive to manage resources responsibly is less direct—everyone might assume someone else will handle it. This is where the purported genius of an individual can be beneficial—they can be a committed steward of their art and the context that is prepared around it. Addressing these issues is where web3 technologies could potentially make a difference by solving problems related to collective management.

Through these conversations we have imagined reciprocity as the creation and formalization of an internal feedback loop before the market gets involved. It's crucial to determine how the membership of the Collector DAO can be limited to ensure that they are trusted as good stewards and ownership plays a critical role here, as it may provide the reason for collectors to steward works they align with. The fates of the creator and the collector should be intertwined through relatively closed – autopoietic – entanglements, with the market becoming the testing ground for their theories on what the public will value.

We might consider a Collector DAO that supports a Creator DAO in producing work that might not hold substantial monetary value but is nonetheless important. This raises the question of balancing monetizable versus non-monetizable, or profitable versus non-profitable activities. This balance could allow the entangled communities as a whole to benefit from items that aren’t necessarily consumable in the traditional sense. By insisting that everything be a marketable product, we risk reducing art to mere commodities, securities, or utilities.

Let’s quickly recap. Our journey began with layer one, focusing on the formation of ideas and the first four layers of the stack dedicated to evolving atomic concepts into organismic composites. This was aimed at clarifying, mechanizing, and facilitating a collective publishing flow for a would-be Creator DAO. Layers five through seven allowed us to explore the murky, effervescent pools of various social and economic forms this could take. The implication was that many other potential forms exist, along with iterations and tinkering with the forms we were exploring. The connection between the creator and the collector should include mechanisms for ongoing feedback, while the Creator-Collector-Reciprocity formation maintains its own coherence in forming feedback loops with the greater public and wider markets.

Our colleagues have been hands-on with building an iteration of DUCEs and DINs. Their approach differs somewhat from ours; they're emphasizing creating in public, pushing a public-first methodology. Each individual creator develops their own DUCEs within a holding zone designated for them. These DUCEs can then gradually move through the DIN, serving as a network of exchange. The value of the DUCEs is determined by the community that forms around each topic, more a representation of memes emerging from a public than a specialized community of collectors. People can collect DUCEs to signal appreciation, but unlike the CCR model, there isn't a formal reciprocity involving the creation of a collector DAO. It's less about the artifacts themselves and more about community-based decisions on what should be included in their publishing output. 

The DIN system is built with the DAOhaus SDK and Moloch v3 DAO contracts. It facilitates the creation of new DAOs for each topic, which can range from specific areas of interest to collections of related themes. Users have the ability to tag topics, enhancing discoverability. When a user submits content to a topic DAO and it is accepted, they are granted creator status for that topic and receive shares. There is also a feedback mechanism in place, allowing collectors to support specific entries by tipping, a process regulated by the DAO. The financial distribution from tips is structured so that 80% of the proceeds go to the DAO and 20% to the creator. 

Collectors receive loot shares in the DAO for their activities, effectively giving them a stake in the assets they contribute towards. This model introduces an interesting dynamic in the creator-collector relationship, where collectors indirectly invest in themselves by contributing to the DAO. The funds generated through this mechanism can then be utilized for other activities as decided by the DAO.

The DIN creator flow begins by creating content prompted by a specific topic. This is facilitated through a local draft stored in the browser's storage, allowing multiple drafts to be saved locally. Upon submission, the content undergoes an on-chain transaction, becoming a post within the topic DAO.

Creators can then submit their content for curation. This involves signal sessions, which are run at specific intervals, allowing members to submit their content for review. During these sessions, content can be upvoted or downvoted, essentially applying weighted sentiment to various types of content. Comments on posts create additional DUCEs. These comments are treated similarly to articles in that they appear in the feed but lack the tags necessary for submission for curation. When a user creates content, they earn shares in the DAO. 

The curation flow revolves around the signaling session facilitated by the DAO. Using the DAOhaus Signal app, a TCR (Token-Curated Registry) is created. During this process, parameters such as what is being signaled and the end date are set, initiating the session. At the conclusion of the signaling session, the most supported content is awarded a curated tag. The curation primarily serves to highlight content that the topic community values most, although this mechanism does not explicitly emphasize collective collaboration. The participants in the signal session are our DAO shareholders. This raises the question: are the curators also the creators, or does the DAO include both creators and collectors? Essentially, there are individuals participating in the signal session who have created the content and others who have not created it but are engaged in curating it. 

The DAO treasury receives the proceeds from collectors, which can be allocated through a standard DAO proposal to fund various activities as determined by the DAO. Collectors can rage quit if they lose interest in the topic, enabling them to withdraw their contributions. The DIN team envisions a singular DAO for each topic. In this model, every DIN is correlated to one DAO, representing the community interests of both creators and collectors who also serve as curators. Subsequently, another DAO could be formed around a different community with different publication interests centered on another topic, forming an ecosystem of DINs.

Collectors can explore and sort through all the content of various DINs, tipping and collecting to signal support. Collectors not only earn NFTs from collecting but also from commenting on content. Individual collectors purchase NFT artifacts directly, with the goal to attract as many collectors as possible without a cap on the number of editions. The price of the NFT is determined at the DAO level, suggesting a collective decision-making process regarding pricing. The NFT price can be adjusted through a proposal process within the DAO to update the shaman (a contract that the DAO approves and grants administrative permissions). This introduces a unique aspect to the DAO's operation, where the price of the NFT is established even before the content of that NFT has been finalized. This strategy sets a standard price for all items related to a specific topic, aiming to maintain uniformity across content collections.

The pricing mechanism does not function as a traditional one-on-one transaction where each piece's unique attributes might command individual pricing. Instead, DIN seems to operate under the assumption that the quality of content will attract more collectors, thereby rewarding higher quality work within the predetermined price framework. This system supports the notion of pledge-based patronage, with collection funneling funds entering a treasury that both creators and collectors are responsible for managing. This dynamic is markedly different from having two separate DAOs where creators and collectors each manage their own treasury, as we explored with the CCR model.

As we anticipated, there seems to be social and technical friction caused by requiring all activities to be recorded on-chain, which, although partially mitigated by local storage solutions, still present UX challenges.

Another point of difference is the level of content granularity. We have been considering the DUCE to be an atomic unit of content, like a single idea, whereas with this DIN framework, the DUCE is presented more as a final product deemed worthy of collecting. DIN suggests a lower granularity in content, akin to a Reddit post, which lacks a hierarchical structure typically associated with more polished, collectible artifacts.

Additionally, there is a structural difference in the DAO setup. With DIN, there is only one DAO for each topic, as opposed to a system with two interacting DAOs, as we explored with CCR. This single DAO format simplifies the governance process but changes the nature of reciprocity and interaction within the system.

Lastly, the approach to involve the general public differs significantly. With DIN, the general public is almost automatically brought in as collectors by default. This lowers the barrier to entry into the collector community, unlike our previous designs where distinct thresholds or actions might be required to join.

In general, the DIN system appears more geared towards information-based content, primarily written, rather than visual or artistic types. This focus is likely influenced by the interface, which predominantly features a text area for submitting proposals. Consequently, the platform does not extensively support other types of content. This setup suggests a dynamic where collectors are consumers of information, and creators are the producers. The system effectively facilitates a process where a collector can request specific information, prompting creators to gather and deliver the required content. This model could be particularly efficient for smaller-scale research initiatives or tasks that require specific knowledge gathering, such as copyright-related queries. The platform's focus on narrowly defined tasks may not attract a broad base of collectors, especially if the topics are too specialized or narrowly focused. This could limit the platform's appeal to those with general interest in a topic, as the specificity might not resonate with a larger audience.

Overall, the DIN system encourages a type of interaction where creators scour for information and bring it back to the community, like gathering nuts for the tree. This model emphasizes informational content and research, utilizing the collection mechanism to fund these specific endeavors. In its current state, DIN seems to encourage more of a competitive dynamic among creators rather than fostering collective production. This setup results in the final product often reflecting the voice of an individual rather than a collaborative effort, aligning with somewhat familiar market-making mechanisms. 

Our primary concern lies in the incentive structure for collectives within DINs being largely based on altruism or patronage, where collecting is motivated by the belief that future contributions from the creators might be useful. However, the payoff is not particularly compelling since the content is openly accessible and non-scarce, making any collected item just one of many without unique value. The only tangible benefit from collecting seems to be the acquisition of loot shares, which allow some influence over future contributions, but the NFTs themselves lack functionality or aesthetic value that would make them desirable as display pieces. They serve merely as artifacts of participation in the process, raising doubts about whether people will actively collect items when the primary incentive is weak, which could impact creators' motivation to produce content, or worse, be compelled to generate content that is primarily intent on collector financial interests.

The curation process merits further exploration. While we discussed curation in CCR as an early phase in the creative process, in this context, it appears at a later phase, and understanding how this impacts the dynamics within the DAO could be insightful.

Our dialogue about creator-collector reciprocity started from the premise that current cultural production models, and the markets surrounding them, are often vampiric upon creative hosts. This model has, for better or worse, applied various pressures on cultural production, often forming these market pressures into the content itself. Our conversation sought to explore alternatives that emerge from decentralizing the persona of the creator, the community of collectors, and experimenting with putting intellectual property on the blockchain, either as DUCES or transitioning from ownership to stewardship, or through other means. This reimagining of cultural production places the responsibility back on the creators, challenging them to leverage their newfound freedoms and autonomy to innovate responsibly and creatively.

We admit that we harbor a degree of pessimism towards the term reciprocity, as it might imply a need for something other than what is inherently present in the market dynamics between creators and collectors. Instead, what might be more appropriate is focusing on the interdependency between these personas, focusing on their mutual reliance on feedback and support in rendering valuable cultural output. 

The challenge lies in determining the optimal conditions—such as the right percentage split in rewards or the appropriate levels of stewardship or ownership—that keep both creators motivated to produce and collectors engaged in supporting them, ensuring that neither party feels compelled to disengage. This discussion has underscored the importance of carefully structured economic and governance models that support sustained engagement from both parties, ensuring that creators are motivated to continue producing valuable content and collectors are incentivized to support and engage with this content. By refining these models, we can better understand how to foster a healthy, vibrant ecosystem that benefits all participants and encourages a flourishing creative economy.

Footnotes:

[1] We’re tip toeing around some pithy philosophical concepts here, trying not to fall down certain rabbit holes. For instance, that the general public should be associated with the creators as much as the collectors. In fact, we should question the relevance of formalizing any lasting distinction between these speculative roles. This shift has been evident since Warhol declared that anyone could be an artist and claim their 15 minutes of fame, regardless of historical knowledge or specialized skill. The ensuing decades have seen the democratization of cultural production, further blurred by the rise of internet-based auto-fiction “content creation,” a dramatic divergence from traditional artistic craft. These days, creators are largely identified as idiosyncratic consumer-curators. This reflects broader cultural shifts, including the debated concept of the "death of the author," which posits that no creation is entirely new but rather a reiteration of past works. But for the sake of our present interests, let’s move on from these tricks and traps.

[2] A particularly troubling notion we’ve encountered is the perception that all art is inherently good, and that artists, by extension (and through an awkward mutation of phrase), constitute a public good. This implies a responsibility to support them without sufficient consideration of the content or impact of their work, leading to a lack of coherence and accountability in cultural production. This issue is mirrored in web3 culture's fascination with meme coins, which reflect both the positive—rapid community formation and ideologically fueled incentivization—and the negative—aspects of delusional speculation and blatant deception. We propose that it's the pervasive nihilism that is most disturbing.

This research has been made possible by the vital support of DAOhaus.

This is the first of a multipart series providing a high-level overview of the CCR (Creator Collector Reciprocity) concept. Layers one through four are focused on how creators can collaborate on crafting on-chain artifacts as a collective, specifically as a particular flavor of web3 community known as a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). These layers are supported by tools designed to facilitate collective collaboration, poised to empower the DAO to disseminate content as a unified entity. More than simply a shared treasury or governance layer wrapping otherwise disparate individuals, we imagine a DAO of creators maturing to sense, learn, and publish as one voice. 

However, there are numerous uncertainties that arise, particularly when the creative output is brought on-chain. We have many unanswered questions regarding the specific data that needs to be captured within the artifact produced by the creators, the services we will incorporate or need to build, how these decisions will interface on-chain intellectual property rights, the formation parameters of the Collector DAO, and the minutiae regarding sales, editions, and other minting considerations. Our goal is to explore this design space, to generate more questions than answers, and pose these observations to our peers who are currently hacking on some new primitives that might attend to these needs. 

Layer One: DUCE

Layer one is concerned with DUCEs (Decentralized Universal Comment Emissions), which we believe represents information at its most basic or atomic level. A DUCE is the smallest unit of information submitted to a repository. We are particularly concerned with a repository stewarded by a DAO of relatively like-minded creators. This hypothetical DAO consists of creators who have come together with the explicit intention of coordinating around a specific set of interests. 

The decision regarding who these individuals are and the themes they organize around typically occurs off-chain or maybe even offline. We're assuming this process has already been completed, whether through a platform like Yeeter or by summoning a DAO of any type. In this scenario, the DAO acts as the proprietor and steward of the shared repository. Here we might bookmark ideas of access, as there might be various levels of permissions regarding who can submit a DUCE.

We have questions about what a DUCE actually is. Simply put, a DUCE is any kind of data, from text comments to a URL serving as a reference or a code snippet. It could point towards any form of media, such as a picture or a video. We've explored the potential problems with a DUCE consisting of a URL that points to content residing elsewhere. Ideally, the content itself, whether it be text, image, or PDF of a book, should be uploaded directly to the DAO repository or reside on-chain, rather than just being a link out.

A DUCE should be composed of immutable content and not subject to change outside the control of the repository. Therefore, the comment doesn't necessarily need to be to something within the repository itself; it can lead to a permanent resource hosted elsewhere. This approach aligns with technologies like Arweave or IPFS, which employ a robust pinning system to ensure permanence.

Creators are constantly amassing their own source material. At this juncture, it's pertinent to introduce the notion of a personal DUCE repository and a shared DUCE repository. Upon joining a Collector DAO, one essentially contributes a portion of their personal repository to the collective repository relevant to a specific topic. However, they do not relinquish control over their entire personal collection that they’ve meticulously curated. A DAO may also choose to start from scratch.

Concerns regarding the permissioned nature of the repository arise, especially concerning sensitive subject matter, emphasizing the significance of privacy at every layer of consideration. It's crucial for a community of creators to decide whether the intellectual property or cultural assets within the repository should be accessible to all or restricted solely to the specific creators or members of the Creator DAO. Once published, they may choose to make the derived works available to a broader audience, not limited to the original creators. Clear on-chain roles will be key at this stage.

An additional point at layer one concerns the implications if a member of the Creator DAO decides to leave abruptly ("rage quits" the DAO). This raises questions about their representation in the repository, whether they take their contribution of intellectual property with them, or if leaving equates to abandoning their stake in the collaboration. At one point, we also delved into the potential issues surrounding the redundancy of intellectual property across different Creator DAO communities if they share members, which could be either a minor inconvenience or a significant problem.[1] These concerns highlight some of the complex challenges that need to be addressed.

As we delve into the complexities of licensing, the situation becomes more challenging. When multiple Creator DAOs hold the IP rights to content, determining which DAO should benefit from the licensing proves to be a tricky problem. This complexity arises when attempting to navigate the shared ownership of IP, but that represents a different set of challenges beyond the scope of this discussion.

We now face the looming question of what constitutes a DUCE. Moving beyond the broad definition that a DUCE can be any kind of data, it becomes clear that the content of a DUCE is accompanied by specific metadata aimed at attributing the Creator member to their submission. Clear attribution ensures that if a member submits a DUCE, their identity is attached to it. Similarly, if two members collaborate on a DUCE, we would expect both of their identities would be associated. However, this raises a question: should multiple entities co-submit DUCEs, or does this complicate the system? Of course, it’s technically feasible for one DUCE to be associated with two addresses. We might initially consider the scenario where members work on separate DUCEs and then merge them, serving as a collective reference to each individual's efforts, potentially adding weight to the contribution. The principle that one DUCE should correspond to one contributor or vice versa introduces a streamlined approach. 

Additionally, DUCEs possess metadata elements for tagging and categorization, facilitating natural language searches and linking between ideas anticipating the interactions of layer two. There might be value in categorical tags indicating the type of media or additional metadata for sorting. The primary goal is to prepare for features anticipated in layer two, including curation, organizational searching, and discovery. This suggests that users may not fully anticipate how DUCEs link together, allowing for organic discovery, novelty, and emergence.

A significant unresolved issue is whether DUCEs need to be on-chain. Despite extensive discussion from numerous vantages, this remains an open question, indicating the need for further deliberation to reach a concrete conclusion. There are significant trade-offs to consider regarding the “proof of DUCE” ownership. Without an on-chain presence, there's no timestamp to prove ownership, which is crucial for avoiding disputes over credit for someone else's work. To maintain credibility and ownership clarity, being on-chain is preferable. However, this introduces user experience (UX) complications. Our strategy might entail keeping everything off-chain until publication, at which point all relevant data is locked on-chain, ensuring permanence through its on-chain status. We are drawing inspiration from Nostr, which manages a complex web of content through metadata and employs a kind ID system to allow for different data types and references among content chunks. 

Regarding the aspect of discoverability, the question arises whether it is inherent to the DUCE or an external addition. The tagging associated with any DUCE facilitates its curation, scaffolding, and integration into the composition of succeeding layers. However, the distinction between tagging being an integral part of the DUCE or an external overlay remains unclear from a technical standpoint. 

If tagging is internal to the DUCE, everyone must interpret the DUCE identically. Conversely, if tagging is external, it allows for multiple interpretations based on the perspective or lens through which the DUCE is viewed. For example, a DUCE concerning Friedrich Hayek could be tagged with political philosophy or economics, depending on the context of the discussion. This flexibility enables the DUCE to be categorized differently in various contexts without altering its inherent content. The decision between allowing post-publication tagging, which effectively modifies the DUCE, or adding tags as references, thereby introducing an additional layer without changing the DUCE itself, circles back to the theme of immutability and the dynamics of data management.

Our initial impulse is to support a pluriversal approach, allowing creators the freedom to determine how they view and curate content, fostering a diverse range of perspectives rather than conforming to a standardized method. However, playing devil's advocate, we also find the idea of a DAO of creators debating towards a unified method intriguing. This scenario might necessitate DAO governance to make such decisions. The question arises: should we dictate this choice, or can we offer options for users to decide for themselves? This dilemma extends to the mechanics of tagging. We’re primarily considering the placement of the tag: is it part of the object (object-oriented) or does it exist as an external node in a graph database setup? For example, an economist's definition of Friedrich Hayek could be an independent entity, contributing to a broader graph of interconnected information. The core question is whether the tag is intrinsic to the object or an external descriptor.

Layer Two: Curation

Layer two builds on the premise that multiple creators, who are members of the Creator DAO, are submitting DUCEs into the shared repository. These DUCEs feature various forms of tagging or sorting data points. The goal at this stage is for creators to begin grouping the atomic bits into collections or curations, bundling them together like molecules. 

An individual creator seeks to view DUCEs in an easily comprehensible format. We are curious about presenting these in the form of a spatialized graph, although a more traditional nested information architecture (files within folders, and so on) could also serve this purpose. This phase involves considering different display possibilities. The underlying motivation for creators is to identify thematic relationships. This could stem from an initial intention they bring to the repository, searching for specific connections, or they may approach the task without a predefined goal, hoping to discover something emergent. 

The process involves selecting DUCEs and grouping them into a batch. The purpose behind curating a batch of DUCEs is to present it to peers, aiming to garner attention for the identified series of connections. This act proposes the significance of these connections, suggesting a move towards a more explicit or concrete next step. Thus, layer two is fundamentally about exploring these curation dynamics.

We encounter a similar challenge here as in layer one as we question the types of DUCEs to include. To some degree, curation revolves around clustering DUCEs in a somewhat Darwinian search for the most coherent or fit cluster to advance. But unlike the idea of Darwinian fitness[2] we envision a scenario of multiple parallel thematic organism developments. Members of the Creator DAO can identify various themes and form numerous curations that might conflict with each other, including overlapping DUCEs. Importantly, the DUCEs are not mutually exclusive, and one members’ curations do not negate another. While the notion that “the best curation wins” or is deemed most viable is intriguing, our inclination is that if a curation is relatively good - by whatever subjective position held by the creators -  it should be advanced to the next step. Some curations naturally rise to prominence while others may not make it to the scaffolding phase due to lack of compelling attributes. For instance, certain clusters might not survive because they fail to engage or resonate, despite someone finding them interesting. 

For example, as a member of the Creator DAO, I'm interested in writing about effective accelerationism and wish to link to a DUCE on Friedrich Hayek, tagged as a political philosopher, using specific quotes to bolster the notion that effective accelerationism is a concept worthy of our attention is such and such a way. Concurrently, harboring some skepticism about effective accelerationism, I'm drawn to exploring the counterpoint of decelerationism at the same time, proposing another Friedrich Hayek DUCE to balance the discussion. This results in the Friedrich Hayek DUCE being included in both curations, alongside distinct non-overlapping DUCEs that support these divergent viewpoints. 

After creating these curations independently, without any prior dialogue, I present them as curations to my peers, complete with bibliographies or lists of the specific DUCEs referenced therein. I engage other members of the Creator DAO, pitching my ideas and seeking feedback. For instance, some may decide to support the effective accelerationism path but opt out of the decelerationism route. This peer validation indicates a distribution of attention across concepts and rouses member interest in preparation to act.

The curation of DUCEs resembles a brainstorming phase. Essentially, we gather various items related to a topic and toss them into a metaphorical bucket. This stage involves loosely grabbing items and possibly making some preliminary connections, but the approach is quite freeform. Once we feel we've brainstormed sufficiently, we take a step back to assess the connections among the gathered items. 

Imagine both of us working on a project and deciding to create, say, three clusters each. For instance, I might form one cluster around Austrian economics, pulling in insights from Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and others. Perhaps I also develop a cluster on accelerationism and another on Italian Futurism. You, on the other hand, might create three distinct clusters of your own. As we progress, we discover overlaps between our clusters. For example, your accelerationism cluster might intersect with my Austrian economics and Italian Futurism cluster, prompting questions like, "What did the Austrians have to say about acceleration?" or “Are there fascist aesthetic histories underpinning accelerationist economic theories?” Consequently, these overlapping clusters gain traction and move forward to the scaffolding phase, while a separate cluster you've developed—perhaps on decelerationism—also advances as a unique contribution.

In this scenario, the curations that have not been selected for advancement at this stage are temporarily set aside.[3] They remain potential sources of inspiration or material for future work but are not immediately pursued further. This process might lead to the creation of new curation clusters based on feedback or revisiting previously overlooked clusters in follow-up articles. Essentially, this method outlines how coordination and negotiation between contributors determine which projects or themes are developed further. 

We have explored tools like Obsidian and LogSeq in their offerings of a spatialized graph view and features that enable users to select items and group them into batches. Varying zoom levels within the knowledge graph allows for a macro view of clusters and the ability to zoom in for a closer look at specific clusters. Such functionality would be crucial on the UI side to manage the visibility of different levels within the stack, considering these curated groups as DUCEs themselves. This approach aims to reduce clutter by distinguishing between the atomic DUCEs and the more complex 'molecule' DUCEs.

An important aspect yet to be discussed is the notion that the act of curation itself will also result in the creation of a DUCE. Additionally, we'd like to consider whether our curation approach should lean more towards negotiated curations or survival-based curations. It seems beneficial to explore joint curation, where we might individually curate before identifying overlaps and proceeding with a collaborative curation. This process would involve negotiating which aspects to include or exclude, essentially conducting another round of curation with a shared focus. This raises the question of whether all curations should inherently be of this collaborative nature, facilitating ongoing negotiation among contributors. The features needed might vary depending on whether the curation is being conducted solo or collaboratively by two or more people. Ideally, the starting point would include simple and user-friendly selection and curation features that accommodate both individual and group efforts seamlessly.

We might highlight another important aspect: the curator does not necessarily have to be the original DUCE creator. This distinction allows for a division of responsibilities, where one might act as a researcher, contributing DUCEs to the collective pool, while another, more akin to an editor, takes on the role of curating these inputs. Such a setup offers flexibility in roles, underscoring the fluidity within the process whereby individuals may adopt different roles at different times, facilitating a dynamic and collaborative environment.

Layer Three: Scaffolding

Layer three acts as a critical intermediary phase bridging the gap between the curation activities of layer two and the composition phase of layer four, which we refer to as scaffolding. In scaffolding, there appear to be two primary tasks: editing the curations and prioritizing or ordering them. Editing involves scrutinizing the curated content to identify gaps, such as the need for additional references to bridge concepts like Friedrich Hayek and political philosophy. This process not only highlights missing elements but also involves trimming superfluous DUCEs to narrow the focus, especially if certain topics initially considered relevant are later deemed out of scope. Prioritization, or ordering, requires tools and a user interface that facilitates the sequence of discussion topics and overall structure, including the beginning, ending, and length of the work, introducing formal constraints on the collaboration.

Initially, we have explored using DAOhaus' Signal app as a tool for this layer, drawn to its seamless integration with Moloch DAOs via the DAOhaus interface. The user flow involves members submitting curations to a TCR (token curated registry), with all participants, assuming equal shares within the Creator DAO, voting with equal weight on the content's ordering. This process doesn't necessitate unanimous agreement on the outcomes; rather, its purpose is to surface emergent priorities through collective decision-making.

The scaffolding phase serves to document our organizational activities, making what is typically an invisible process more visible. More importantly, it allows for the tracking of included DUCEs, assessing their relevance and noting omissions along with the rationale, thus enriching the metadata associated with each atomic, molecular, and organismic DUCE.

We still harbor some skepticism regarding this step. It introduces an experimental approach to document outlining, and we’re uncertain about its effectiveness in contributing to the composition phase in layer four. This uncertainty raises a couple of questions: first, whether this mechanism effectively achieves its intended purpose; and second, the degree of freedom it leaves the creators responsible for composition. We see the value in incorporating some form of voting, given that the Creator DAO aims to present a unified voice. The ability to endorse or disregard certain elements through voting seems beneficial. 

Our hesitance extends to another feature set that seems somewhat tangential. Our concern is that overly expansive curations in layer two might overwhelm the process, making it challenging to discern a clear path forward and inhibiting action. Thus, we envision layer three as a rigorous and discerning phase that addresses this friction, crucial for shaping DUCEs into a coherent structure that others can easily understand and engage with creatively.

Regarding the integration of AI, which we hesitantly mention, our proposition is not for AI to generate content from the DUCEs. Instead, we suggest AI could assist by organizing the information from the DUCEs and the outcomes of the layer three signal proposal, forming the foundation for layer four. This preliminary step would result in a pre-ordered document, streamlining the transition into the writing phase. The primary goal of layer three is to transform a multitude of ideas, akin to an array of sticky notes on a whiteboard, into a structured first draft. This process aims to expedite and enhance the efficiency of transitioning from concept to composition, reducing the need for administrative skills and allowing creators to focus on the nuances of writing as swiftly as possible. If certain tasks prove challenging or time-consuming, AI can be utilized to facilitate these aspects, acting more as a tool at the discretion of the contributors rather than a built-in component of the process. This approach maintains the focus on human-led decision-making while providing support where necessary.

This phase could be seen as an iterative process beginning with high-level clustering. This is followed by a negotiation phase where clusters may merge or interact, leading to a subsequent trimming phase. There might even be a need to circle back to layer one for additional DUCE submissions if more content is required in certain areas. Essentially, the creative process remains within layer two until a member deems it ready for a TCR vote, transitioning it from a loose curation to a linear architecture. The scaffolded curations thus serve to prioritize the most critical points and valuable information, potentially sidelining less impactful ideas that, while part of the ideation, don't significantly influence the final output.

We'd like to emphasize the possibility of encountering failure at any layer, leading to a return to layer one, where members start anew by submitting DUCEs. Specifically, layer three represents a critical inflection point. If an idea possesses sufficient strength and consensus, it will advance to become an artifact. If not—due to lack of agreement, insufficient content, or other reasons—the outcome of that signal becomes another DUCE representing the result of this dead-end in the decision tree. This DUCE is then reintegrated into the repository, serving as a valuable reference for future efforts or as a lesson on what approaches may not be successful. Essentially, even in failure, there's valuable information to be gleaned, turning the experience into a constructive artifact.

A similar evaluative phase is necessary between the composition of layer four and minting concerns of layer five. This phase acts as a crucial quality and velocity filter to prevent the simultaneous release of multiple compositions, which could inadvertently compete for attention within the same temporal window. There should be a mechanism—possibly policy-driven or decided by a vote—to determine the sequence of publication. This process ensures that compositions are not only queued for release but also curated to maintain both quality and strategic timing.

Layer Four: Composition

Layer four builds on the foundational work of the previous layers, where atomic units of DUCEs are combined through curation, then edited and structured, resulting in an outlined text piece. While this process could theoretically apply to any form of collaborative media, it seems most pragmatic to concentrate on producing a text article for our initial endeavor. The starting point for layer four involves the somewhat ordered DUCEs and the associated Creator DAO members whose aim is to write, compose, and execute the article.

An important clarification here is that contribution to the earlier phases does not guarantee direct involvement composing the final artifact during layer four, although those previous contributions will still be accounted for in the DUCE metadata. Conversely, a creator member who hasn't participated in the first three layers might join in layer four, possibly as a writer, editor, consultant, or in another capacity. This raises questions about tracking contributions to ensure they are acknowledged in the metadata of the final artifact. 

For instance, if a member contributes as a writer, filling gaps between DUCEs, that contribution would become a DUCE tied to their wallet at this layer. Similarly, if someone’s role is limited to editing for grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure, their contributions, too, should be recognized, albeit with potentially lesser weight. If the original DUCE submitter is no longer involved, consulting with a specialist and incorporating their input should be formalized into a unique DUCE and added to the article's metadata. The culmination of this process is a polished written artifact, ready for publication, possibly enriched with illustrations or images, each contributing member’s role duly noted in the metadata. 

It’s conceivable that all the DUCEs contributing to the artifact might serve to populate an index. Drawing inspiration from tools that generate bibliographies from footnotes could prove useful, perhaps offering a more digestible format than a lengthy text block at an article’s end, such as a linked index for interested readers. It is imperative that each DUCE adequately documents its references, ensuring that the data each contributes to the artifact is accurately tracked. This ensures the final product reflects a structured hierarchy of all contributing DUCEs. Part of the curation phase involves refining the content to ensure that a high-quality bibliography can be generated.

The matter of document versioning and sidebar commenting also prompts reflection. Whether these elements should be integrated into the document remains a point of discussion. One consideration that arises is whether the composition phase involves the creation of multiple DUCEs, encompassing both the writing and any additional elements like imagery. We hypothesize an increased production of DUCEs during this phase, culminating in a singular, final organismic DUCE (the final artifact) that acts as a comprehensive reference for all contributions. This prompts further reflection on the distribution of credit and potential royalties for contributions to the artifact, introducing complex economic considerations we will explore in Part Two of this work. Moreover, the criteria for recognition as a contributor come into play; for instance, does a single comment qualify someone as a contributor, or is a more substantial interaction required?

Despite the apparent simplicity of writing the article in layer four, the technicalities of how this phase will operate pose significant challenges. Layer four may resemble an on-chain WYSIWYG editor, yet the specifics of its implementation are beyond the scope of this discussion. It raises important considerations about the immutability of DUCEs. Specifically, this prompts the question of when to version a DUCE—to distinguish between an initial draft and subsequent modifications, which would be added as new DUCEs that supersede the original. Alternatively, are DUCEs immutable until they reach the on-chain minting stage, at which point they become permanently fixed? 

The composition phase aims to consolidate all essential data crucial for drafting the final artifact for minting. It's imperative to capture the entirety of the effort that contributes to the composition process, as it determines the distribution of royalties among creators, solidifying the royalty split based on the documented contributions. This approach ensures that all participants are fairly recognized and compensated for their involvement in creating the final product. We will later see how this fits into a larger reciprocal economic exchange with collectors and the wider public.

Layer Five and Beyond

Layer five focuses on a rather specific yet crucial set of considerations around the minting of the on-chain artifact that significantly influence the subsequent phases. Layer five initiates with a completed draft, crafted by members of the Creator DAO, and revolves around the process of minting this artifact as an NFT. Discussing layer five inherently evokes the contexts of layers six and seven, though they remain distinct stages, as we will see. 

A pivotal inquiry at this juncture is the selection of the NFT standard and the underlying rationale, essentially boiling down to the specific utilities required by the NFT. This consideration tethers to later questions about transferring DAO member shares, token-gated access to content, and similar functionalities. Essentially, layer five prompts deliberation on necessary parameters, the edition in which the NFT is minted—be it a unique edition, limited number, unlimited, time-boxed mint, etc.—and how these choices reflect on the establishment of a Collector DAO, which is the focus of layer six. These decisions aim to foster a reciprocal relationship between creators and collectors, touching on aspects of scarcity, stewardship of the artifact or its intellectual property license, and necessitating some form of contractual agreement between the Creator and Collector DAOs. Such an agreement might be formalized through a smart contract, possibly incorporating an escrow mechanism, to ensure transparency and prevent potential disputes.

Layer five also presupposes a degree of exclusivity in the creator-collector relationship, with the minting process potentially being restricted to whitelisted members of the Collector DAO. Our attention begins to shift towards layer six, particularly concerning the destination of the minted artifacts. The provisional strategy entails distributing the first artifact to the Creator DAO's treasury, the second to the Collector DAO's treasury, and reserving discussions for the destination of the third artifact for layer seven. In essence, layer five embodies the fundamental considerations of what is minted and how, laying the groundwork for subsequent deliberations and actions.

The primary question centers on whether the focus of collection is the artifact itself or if the NFT serves as a representation of the collectors' intellectual property, or perhaps both. From one perspective, this stage could introduce the concept of a template NFT, acting as the progenitor, with subsequent decisions regarding the minting of collectible NFTs derived from it. This template could remain under the perpetual ownership of the Creator DAO, functioning as a license or certificate symbolizing the artifact. Then, negotiations could determine the specific form of the actual mint, whether it adheres to the proposed three-NFT model or adopts an alternative minting approach—be it an open edition or another format. This step is distinct from the process of tracking royalties, which would be attributed back to the original certificate for monitoring purposes. 

A critical concern involves identifying the standard used for tracking all related activities. Minting in three editions potentially complicates the integrity of the intellectual property by fractionalizing it, a concept challenging to fully grasp. This situation raises numerous questions, primarily focused on two aspects: tracking licensing and royalties, and maintaining flexibility to adapt the minting scheme for market fit, acknowledging that our initial approach will certainly require iterative adjustments. Additionally, the context greatly influences the minting strategy. For instance, a journalism-focused Creator DAO may prefer open editions to facilitate broad access and collection by readers, contrasting with a Collector DAO oriented towards limited edition art, where exclusivity and rarity of a unique artwork become paramount.

We prefer the possibility of enabling creators and collectors, bound in community dialogue, to determine their preferred approach according to their local needs. Opting for a singular NFT leans towards the traditional model emphasizing rarity, scarcity, and the distinct value and cultural prestige associated with possessing that unique item. Conversely, an unlimited edition model offers a more accessible approach, focusing on broad public access and distribution rather than the exclusive stewardship of a rare artifact. A limited but finite edition introduces complex, somewhat uncharted questions regarding intellectual property, value, and price discovery, which we expect to delve deeper into with the governance and economic schema discussions in the second installment of this research, forthcoming.

For layer five, providing various options from the outset is prudent, given our acknowledgment that achieving a “correct” method is unlikely. Permitting multiple methods is driven by the anticipation of reciprocal exchange, wherein collectors should perceive a return on value to encourage ongoing creation. If this exchange fails to incentivize continued creative output, it falls short of its goal. Collectors' motivations can be somewhat nebulous, often driven by a mix of cultural and financial values, typically blending both. Hence, the formation of collector communities may vary based on these divergent incentives.

At one juncture, we considered the feasibility of establishing multiple collector communities for a single Creator DAO or conversely, numerous creator communities for various Collector DAOs. This notion seems to extend beyond a straightforward reciprocal relationship, veering towards a form of pluralistic competition. Reciprocity does not necessarily imply a binary, closed system. Instead, the possibility exists for multiple Creator DAOs to engage in reciprocal relationships with multiple Collector DAOs, and vice versa, opening the door to a more interconnected and dynamic ecosystem of exchange. Layer five is crucial for establishing these reciprocal relationships. 

At this point we will pause and resume this conversation in the next article detailing layers five, six, and seven of the CCR stack. We recognize the complexity anticipated in layer six, encompassing diverse social, cultural, and economic dynamics that warrant thorough exploration. The concerns of minting and the dynamics of how the Creator DAO’s artifact will be distributed to the newly formed Collector DAO will determine the constraints of layer seven, concerned with the thresholds of engagement with the broader public. Our still highly speculative layer eight may serve a broader context for economic theories and the overarching ideologies motivating the activities of our purpose-driven decentralized autonomous communities, presenting yet another dimension of complexity. Thus, let's pause here for now.

Footnotes:

[1] This might be an argument for pushing DUCEs on-chain earlier than later, the community might gain ownership of the IP with the minting of this DUCE, it would be time stamped to avoid disputes over ownership.

[2] We don't necessarily associate Darwinian fitness with a “winner-takes-all” position, but in a more statistical manner. The colloquial understanding of Darwinian fitness as synonymous with "survival of the fittest," ie natural selection, implying only those individuals best adapted will survive, is what we are responding to here, although the details are certainly beyond the scope of our conversation in this article. There's a rabbit hole to explore regarding Darwin's original conception of "fitness," conceived as an organism's capacity to integrate into their contextual environment, to fit in and to be well fitted, and the appropriation of this term to be applied towards a sociological bias towards economic competition by Herbert Spencer, among others.

[3] This leads us to ruminate about the lifecycle - or morality - of DUCEs. Perhaps they are “permanent,” thus live forever, and consequently cannot be removed from the repository, or perhaps they age in a way to become less prominent in the repo. We might consider how DUCEs in various stages of development - for example, curation DUCEs versus atomic DUCEs - might mature or decay in distinct ways according to member attention.

This research has been made possible by the vital support of DAOhaus.

I’m thrilled to announce the release of my latest album of music, Landscapes for New Mexico. It is the my most coherent musical output in 6 years of wobbling through weird side projects, so it feels like a significant achievement and worthy to share with you. Feel free to pull it up and listen (for free) while I tell you a few behind-the-scenes details about it.

Eh... What is it?

The idea was to compose an album of landscapes, music as landscape, sounds that reciprocate with landscapes, sonic portraits of places, of this place in particular. I could delve into convoluted complexities here, but for sake of conversation, I wanted to think about the sound image blurring between portraiture and landscape (typical tropes of painting) and craft the mannerism of the music making to slip and slide between literal interpretation and illustrative representation of the living and formal inhabitants within these frames. I hope that makes some kind of sense to you. For myself, this has been a delicate practice of sense-making in relation to a disembodied presence, somehow outside the window and inside my ears, emptying and filling, austere, bucolic, pastoral, reverberant. I think of it as a kind of self-portraiture without a person in the frame, all background and shadow.

While assembling the collages for the track art, I ended up making too many. So I minted those separately. Yeah... all this stuff is minted as NFTs. The music is on Ethereum mainnet, the visual art is on Optimism using a tool called Zora... I've been experimenting with this tech recently and think it's pretty fucking cool, at least potentially. Maybe we can delve deeper into this point. But first, let's talk more about landscapes, please.

This Isn’t the First Album for Landscapes

Circa 2013, while stumbling around Scandinavia, I composed an album of (what I felt to be) quite epic proportions. This album is titled Ö, which is the Swedish word for island and also a humorously anthropomorphic glyph that looks like a person with their eyes outside of their head, or a mouth agape in sublime terror. I felt compelled to use electric strings and distorted percussion to paint an aural image of my experiences in that place, but that’s a different story that I'm already actively forgetting.

Significantly, one song was partially written that did not make it on to that album. It has been haunting me, an audio hallucination, a ghastly meme, morbid riff specter, disembodied phantom. When I rooted in the Southwest, I was able to bury these remains and re-member them into a new form infused with the dusty wind currents of this land. This morsel has matured into the Wind Song on the new album, and inspired a world to emerge in its wake.

https://spotify.com

Ö

Listen to Ö on Spotify. Travis Wyche · Album · 2016 · 8 songs.

What, Exactly, Am I Listening to?

After 4 years of pacing and ruminating, I concretized this whole thing in just under 3 months. The recording, mixing, and mastering took place in the earthship, watched over by towhees, juncos, and a curious porcupine. (This is the first push towards an ambition for more accelerated music production.) All the songs were composed on acoustic guitar, living room drums, unaffected bass, sleigh bells, tambourine, and a really fucking nice triangle that I purchased specifically for the solo on the sixth track, Pastoral Portraiture. The flute, clarinet, cello, organ, choir, french horn, and other supporting instruments were recorded with a Mellotron. I picked up a harmonium in Berkeley, CA, during my summertime travels and completely fell in love with this instrument, filling an important negative space on Wind Song and High Altitude Walking Song. My original intention was to saturate the tracks with field recordings of this area, but I ultimately decided to omit this step and let the music retain some of it’s vulnerability. I made all the collages that accompany the album from found vintage texts about New Mexico.

So… Where Can I Buy it?

As I mentioned above, I am experimenting with emerging web3 tech to publish these works. For music, I'm using a platform called Catalog. The album has been minted as a 1/1 NFT on Ethereum mainnet. IMHO, Catalog has a pretty cool way of thinking about music distribution and valuation that caters to both bin digging collectors and low key supporters. The idea is this:

• A collector can purchase a track through an auction and receive the 1/1 NFT. They know that this is a truly singular artifact, since the artist is committed to not pressing any additional NFTs. The collector can choose to resell the NFT on a marketplace, at which point the artist receives 10% royalties of any future sales. Pretty familiar territory for those of us that have been peddling digital prints and albums for years...

• Casual supporters can “Cosign” a track. This unique feature is a layer 2 transaction (on Base chain, which is super cheap). For the cost of about $2, the cosigner adds their name to the track to validate and support a work they believe in. They also are able to download the lossless wav file and receive access to special communication channels in the Catalog community. This is kinda equivalent to "liking" a track, but the signal is more concrete and provides some additional layer of access. To participate in this process you will need to setup a crypto wallet, onramp some funds from fiat to ETH, and get them on Base chain. You can do this pretty easily using Coinbase, although if you are an artist that is curious about using these tools for your own work I would love to share some self-custodial ways of going about this. Feel free to reach out.

• The community is also actively attracting curators to compose playlists for Catalog.Radio. Curators have scheduled time slots to share/perform their unique taste, inspiring cultural dialogue between artist <> collector <> curator <> passive listener. On this front, I think there is a lot of potential and I'm hoping these experiments in discovery, sharing, and community building gain more traction in the future.

I know this letter will land in the inbox of many people that might not be familiar with web3, crypto, the woes of the web2/extractive music industry, and related topics. If you are familiar - or maybe even a power user - I would love to hear your take on this release strategy so that I can continue to iterate and improve to your liking on future releases.

Final Thoughts

Another aspect of this release is this letter you are reading, my dedication to publishing transmedia content more regularly, and trying to share my experiments in a more conversational manner.

I published a separate overview of the album here, that includes all the art and metadata of the tracks.

In the coming weeks I will be experimenting with releasing work-in-progress sounds using another platform called Zora. You can listen to these samples for free and choose to collect them (only costs gas fees, about $.70 per mint). Here's my first experiment, the beginning of a musical dialogue that might lead to a new Perpeteia album.

Collect NFT

I recently started a Hypersubs account. This is kinda like web3 Patreon, but less cringy. I'm really impressed with their design and UX. Subscribing on Hypersubs is probably the single most impactful way to show support, as it will directly contribute to releasing new music, new art, more updates, and eventually funnel into the artist residency program I'm setting up out here in the desert. (A future post will share more details about the residency.) I feel really deeply utterly embarrassed about this kind of shameful self-promotion - still coming to grips with how to live as an anti-capitalist in this surreal world marketplace - but I believe in the vision of this platform and others like it sprouting up in web3.

https://hypersub.withfabric.xyz

Subscribe to TW on Hypersub

I'm making music, visual art, and new writing that spans theory, poetry, and critical interrogation of web3 concepts. As a gift for your patronage, I wi...

I will be posting updates on Warpcast, a new social media platform that purports to be sufficiently decentralized and highly accommodating to new cultural commentary. You can use this link to signup up for a Warpcast/Farcaster account, if you feel so inclined. I started a channel specifically to share new work across all my different output streams. Find it here.

Thank you for reading, thank you for listening, thank you for cosigning, thank you for subscribing, thank you for your attention and resilience, thank you for your feedback.

Best wishes,

TW

Track 1: Canyon Towhee Song

In early summer, wiping the hibernation from the eyes, waking up to an ecstatic pulse of sunbeams passing through atmospheric scrim, of scintillating insects and Brownian motion pollen fog dusting across stratified layers of perception, of the mist rising from gurgling tributaries, the swaying of Apache plumes, the buzzing of cicadas, weaving together in a matrix-song tapestry, the sun rings a bell upon the loom, the piñon whistles the weft into tune.

Track 2: Juniper and Horehound Song

The laziness of late summer heat rippling on near and distant horizons, acerbic gin berries, scratchy bittersweet tongues lashing the ankles, calm bodies baking on the blood black rocks lining the Rio Grande, fingers exploring the lichen crevices between burnt stones, contemplative closeness and rust flavored openness, laying horizontal toes held upwards, soft gaze upon the azure umbrella sky, the slurping flow of chocolate-emerald pools.

Track 3: Ascending and Descending Sagebrush Ocean

Crisp silver dew approach of autumn, subtle shifts in new purples and eye burst pinks on minty sage dropping their fragment death blooms, dawn portraits of stillness, sepia tone avian visitors, a neuroelastic time-space inviting bitter tea and sweet thinking, undulating foundations, aching melancholy of distant mountain peaks, early snow evaporating on warm caliche.

Track 4: Dolomite Staircase (Stones Splitting in Disregard for Human Paths)

Ascending unforgiving granite, cartilage grindstones, ruby ribbon veins, descending breath, mental cartography across diagonal slopes, horizontal tensions straining geological visions, green and orange illustrations of ancient decay, erosion of ambition, unapologetic giving-over of/to solitude, the choir of the mind that sings at peak vistas, seeing farther than the eye can travel.

Track 5: Wind Song

Oh noble-violent invisible greatness, unforgiving air pressures against calcium and adobe, tentacular pneumatic fingers wafting through undiscovered weaknesses, your smell of wet elsewhere, ungraspable overwhelm, inhuman roar raging across pure distance, show us your gold black flashes, ominous overhead moisture silos, twirling hyperobject shredding away the dignity between disembodied contemplators, you are a cold that cannot be befriended, primordial bass, hellish trebles, paleontological screams, hail felled mutely in the moondust.

Track 6: Pastoral Portraiture

A counterpoint to chaos though no less distributed, uncanny comforts of profound stillness, Mountain Bluebirds welcoming from lost gate posts, vast voids ever-filling powdered warmth, hommage to the pauses between Ennio Morricone’s breakfast reveries, mingling of bone chime dangles and hummingbird choreography, grotesque timelessness, sensing all paths as labyrinths, sitting still while the hills run, that moment of epiphany upon the mound, near the illustrated walls, longing for light filled caves.

Track 7: High Altitude Walking Song

Holding breath, short of air, abundant contemplations most keen in the morning, mourning the loss of daybreak, transversing recumbent planes, plain physicality stirring low burs, hummus hums, woolen gravity, sore knee determinism, dreams caught in the throat, existential metronome haunting always behind, meat body slapping foamy loam below, earth magnitude bellows, scurrying unknowns beneath tarantula dens, petrified terrestrial heat-air organs, a collective hallucination of place-based tone, the familiar comforts of continuous repetitive movements that render it all - the all - bearable.

Track 8: Early Spring Snow Melt Song

The thin scrim threshold between endings and beginnings, residual once-heavy snows hiding in the underbrush, purple-gold spectrum, crunch snap ice deposits receding from sight, the sound of sunlight on drying pewter wood beams, transitional impermanent provisional warmth, constant fires and smoke hair, drips puttering somewhere unseen unseeing, remembering how to start again.

For more information about Catalog and how to collect or cosign the album to show your support, check out their FAQ.

Thank you for reading! Thank you for listening! Thank you for supporting!

Best wishes,

TW

Grab your copy of Ambiguities for Discontinuities at Metalabel on June 13, 2023.

We'd love to hear from you all about the experience of making this album. Tell us about the instruments you used and the conversation you had internally. How did you discuss what you were making and how you were going to make it?

One of the things that kept coming up was trying to maintain a mixture of electronic and electroacoustic elements with simple acoustic instruments. We were excited by the confluence of these two worlds, the analog and the digital world. During each session, we created a solid acoustical space that allowed a hybrid world to emerge, responding to and coming out of the vacuum of underlying circuitry to bring those two spaces together. The compositions, the improvisational structures, formed the net in the middle.

We knew that we wanted to incorporate synthesizers and drum machines and pair them with acoustic instruments we had on hand, like folk instruments and classical guitar. We all have experience with these different ways of working, but besides that, we knew we wanted to combine them to form a synergy. The phrase speculative folk kept coming up, in reference to Ursula K Le Guin’s and Todd Barton’s soundtrack to Always Coming Home. There's something about the confluence of the acoustic and the digital that helped initiate our sense of forming a world, a fictional world, but also one grounded in a strong feeling of otherworldliness.

How about the lyrics? If we want to call them lyrics… the poetry, the prose, the voice that appears clearly amidst the landscape of the music. Is there anything you want to reveal about the writing of the text?

The writing felt aleatoric. We were thinking about how Merce Cunningham and John Cage would interact, a freedom and play amidst a thing firmly composed and choreographed. The two elements were married at some moment. There was a process of navigating, learning how to navigate and orient, a process of listening for the synergy. We all sort of sat together, and laid down pieces from the audio while I recited the text on the tracks, and we witnessed moments of synergy there, and we followed it. We discussed the narrative structure that formed the impetus for the project, thinking of it as a book that motivated the listener to take a journey. We talked about making a fictional narrative about travel, a feeling of going somewhere. Rather than the project being about one place or another, we wanted to craft an artifact from a place that no one had visited, or could hardly even imagine existing.

This project was posed as a response to the Pluriverse project and some of the core ideologies of the web3 space at the moment. I'm curious how that has influenced your decisions along the way. How might we think of this album serving as a vehicle for conveying your impressions and associations of pluriversal designs and ecologies within crypto economic communities?

We continue to grapple with these things, but I think the pluriverse correlates with the rejection of dualistic thinking, like entering into a fugal - and a fungal - modality where multiple rhythms are happening at once all simultaneously. We discussed a kaleidoscopic approach to using rhythms. One of the ideas was about having the tracks contain different rhythmic strands all playing simultaneously, to transduce a clear reversal for the listener. Not to make something explicitly evident, like in a engineered theory or currency algorithm, but to put one in a receptive listening state, open to less deterministic possibilities. That's a clear reversal, an inversion, away from clear economic thinking, but also correlated and responsive to it.

In the source material you sent us while preparing for this project, there was always something about hope, the diverse types of hope in being involved in the cultivation of what the players would look like or what digital money can do or bring about. We were thinking about the computer as an instrument, orchestrating where money is going, interfacing with analog currencies and the material world of value in sometimes silly and sometimes forceful ways, always trying to produce some kind of sense for the operator. This relates to the music, related to the back and forth between worlds, crunching and morphing this weird calculus that could be rationally communicated but somehow also defies explanation and wants to be felt and impulsively spent.

Immersing in an aural experience can often invite a whole host of acoustic realities, which by their nature are beckoning different kinds of imagination architectures. We talk about reverberant spaces - hall, basement, cathedral - and the imagined spaces that they allow to be opened up and inhabited in the consciousness of the listener. While listening, you can conjure all sorts of landscapes indigenously, inside your own associations. In some ways this is perhaps more commensurate with the idea of the pluriverse than a visual illustration, because the visual would concretely represent the space and then you would not be allowed to taste that chimera-like mirage emerging inside of yourself. There's more dimensionality to an aural experience, in that regard.

We discussed the feeling of a journey through the eyes of Anon (the character from the Pluriverse comics), based on who we imagined her to be and what she might be thinking. We talked about what kinds of experiences she would be having, how it would feel in her body, what she would be touching. The interface becomes this sort of hinge upon which we enter a hybrid space. We sink deeper and deeper into one end, it becomes less and less hybrid, and we lose track of what happens after that. The experience trails off.

One track on the album is concerned with the sounds of the interface. Another cues into the background movements of a world-scale computer that is maintaining our value operations. We talked about that certain feeling of holding a key to unlock something of great value, but also the responsibility of keeping it safe and the fact that it can be lost, and the fear that accompanies that vulnerability. That track, in particular, uses field recordings taken within a temple in Japan where people come to throw their coins into a large rectangular chamber with a vaulted grid on top, so you can't reach in and grab the coins back after you throw them in. Many devotional places, like shrines, have this arrangement, a strange interplay between a utilitarian or somewhat municipal structure, while casting an intent to the spirit realm. It’s literally an investment in the metaphysical with this circular piece of metal going into a black box, a psychosomatic social experience about distilling a little piece of ore representing a certain amount of time in life, earned through material labor, and now sacrificed to the invisible spirits so they might support us in turn. It's a lot different than sending funds to the crazed televangelists we see on TV in the states. The difference is in the acoustic and tactile quality, the quality of tossing the coin and hearing the performative rhythms and reverberations within the shrine architecture, and feeling the accumulation of spiritual wealth beneath the mirror-portal-pond, even though it remains invisible.

Can we discuss value in the abstract for a sec? There will be a desire to quantify the value of this project by those that have extended funding, and also those that are considering collecting the record, and those trying to make sense of this mysterious enigma-artifact coming from beyond the wall, dropped into the center of our little crypto garden here. They will want to know what to do with it, how to understand this wonder. And so, dear musicians, what are your thoughts on the value that this project has offered you? What would you hope to extend to these would-be listeners?

Where the rubber meets the road is in asking how does one live? Value is about meaning-making and generating significance and should illustrate, or be a vehicle for, how one lives. When we were commissioned for this project, we were like, Okay, we know what our life will look like now. It's going to be organized around this central kernel of an idea for a while. This alignment of values and interests, or meanings, became what occupied us during the process and gave our lives significance to define an outcome. Around the impetus to respond, we organized community practices and rituals and folk focus. The meditation organized our lives, what time we would wake up and how we would spend the day, a few weeks of intense focus upon this thing that we would impart upon others. We all felt sensitive to the responsibility there, to rise to the occasion of the influence this thing could have, and the need to ensure that the craft matched the values and didn’t spin off into a corrupt shade of the original source of inspiration. And that was valuable, for us.

Value could also be considered as the created space in which the boundaries of organization started palpitating. It proposes an organization as just one orientation toward the world among many other orientations that may appear chaotic or disorganized, or accidental. These other shapes present paradigms for thought that are outside of the realm of thinking in terms of systems. I think the creation of the music itself was like that. It was an improvisational composition and wasn't determined or even written down. How we organized each of the recording sessions embodied and transduced a way of interfacing with chaos. The listener gets to glean from that experience, as a polyrhythmic interest in these sometimes overwhelming acoustical spaces. It presents us with new ways of valuing the chaotic, and as a reorientation towards chaos.

Through discussing what these coordination failures are, we didn’t perceive a monstrous chasm between chaos and order. That seems more like a perspectival issue, like a mass of objects jumbled on the floor casting shadows and at a particular angle images are revealed. Now it’s two people kissing, but from another angle it's just a jumble of objects again, back to indiscernible raw data. There's something going on with this fleeting gestalt emerging from an experience, how we must continuously reorient our perspective to see the image peeking through the cracks of complex arrangements.

When collaborating, you’re literally immersed in someone else's chaos. You're tasked with trying to arrange their perspective in a way that makes sense to you, and maybe to allow for a third more unpredictable way of sensing. I was thinking about how nonlinear our process was in making this music. I start something and I end something, and someone else tosses in a few scraps from their world, torn up in pieces, and the grinding forms grit and rubble. All that friction changes the speed of things, and then suddenly I can see it. We could see - when we were making the album - the moments that were really interesting, worth paying attention to. All of it was interesting, but there were moments where we were totally swimming in it, where it created enough friction to hold onto.

I’ve been going to school for music composition. In the program we have many discussions about indeterminacy, randomness, chance, and compare them to deterministic compositions... And honestly I’m coming to think there’s not much difference between composition and indeterminate chance operations. Everybody is improvising in some way all the time; it just gets documented differently. Bach was considered the master of the fugue, a complex contrapuntal form of music, but he was also a master improviser. He incorporated a weird dichotomy between composition and improvisation that few recognize, but that’s a tension that’s proliferating everywhere if one can develop the aptitude for recognizing it.

We generated all this chaos and composition, and then we brought it to Paul Korte at Santo to master and add his vantage point to the mix. It really locked-in a lot of things. We had gotten so deep inside the shape-shifting center that we were no longer capable of seeing it from an objective standpoint. We built a house around ourselves that inhibited us in a way. It was incredible to observe how Paul listened, how he navigated the space we crafted, and hear that new fidelity he discovered and also witness the extraneous things that emerged as he was combing through the rough. It was really illuminating to hear it in the studio. We placed things just so, but the interactions at the bleeding edges and the radiating aspects they had through relation were unpredictable.

There’s a difference between a constraint, or a system of rules, and a sorting mechanism. The conundrum is perhaps less about degrees of freedom and more about a signal-to-noise ratio. Regarding value, it becomes a difficult problem when there’s so much content and it all feels so valuable. The problem is how to make sense of it, how to apply a system of regarding that value, how to make decisions about what signals deserved to be plucked from the writhing sea of possibility.

Value emerges from specificity. It’s difficult to orient by generalizations. I am constantly wondering what kinds of values we are orienting around as a society... Take pop music, for example: to orient behind having the broadest impact, to attract the broadest type of audience. The engineering could be incredible, but the specificity value is almost non-existent. This concept album project is definitely extended towards a specific orientation of people, at the risk of excluding some, but for the benefit of generating much more delicious value for those that take the time to unpack the complexities of the problem and the logic we used to sort through the chaos.

Making music, to us, is all about the approach and presence. Approach is the tool, how we think about the possible movements and interactions, and the nuances of the people we are creating alongside. Presence has to do with how we adjust ourselves in an environment, beyond the instruments and the concepts that steer behavior. Just as there’s a center, a sweet spot, between composition and improvisation, there’s also a saccharine core to crypto. Freedom is always dependent on the constraints of the situation and how we respond to the variables, to each other, and to ourselves. If you make a mistake, just do it again. Learn to love the mistakes and lean into them. Then they become part of the pattern we’re all weaving together, little tensions that make the whole thing more interesting. You play it once and it's a mistake. You play it twice and it starts to become jazz. I would rather listen to a few interesting failures than an infinite procession of perfectly, inhuman tuned systems.

‘Ambiguities for Discontinuities’ is the first music release produced by Pluriverse.wtf. It is made possible by the incredible support of Metacartel.org and Supermodular.xyz. Mint your copy (and collect the vinyl record) at Metalabel.xyz starting June 13th, 2023.

Moloch is a vacuous receptacle, a strobing signifier for the failures of community-centric and public goods-oriented frameworks that, if surmounted, would enable us to transcend our inherently adversarial nature and demonstrate our collective capacity to make sense of the cascading consequences stemming from our self-interested actions, harmonizing them with the common good. The aim of the Pluriverse is to effectively disseminate several ideas shared by both RaidGuild and Gitcoin, et al, including the general imperative to prioritize regenerative strategies over degenerative, extractive, and intrinsically unsustainable economic delusions. We speculate that in order to achieve this feat, we would need to harness a reciprocal exchange with the hearts and minds of the Ethereum community. While pursuing this goal, we also seek to elevate the psychological complexity of our storytelling, generating new prospects for immersion in the ways our artifacts are fashioned, infusing with deep mythopoetic significance and meaning.

The original impetus was to elaborate “solarpunk” lore. Solarpunk, a purportedly Reddit-spawned phenomena that has since been circulated through the web3 community with greater and lesser sincerity, is widely regarded as an aesthetic movement that espouses a vision that is often juxtaposed with the darker, psychologically shadowed lunarpunk. These movements, in turn, have evolved out of a cypherpunk milieu that continues to spawn myriad pseudo-punk stylizations in the fractaline sprawl Twitter-pated echo chambers and brownian noise-filled Discord servers. Finding this binary deeply dissatisfying, the pluriverse crew frames solarpunk as a part of a deep, primordial, and portentous historical trajectory, though not necessarily in the manner typically explicated. We trace the creative antecedents of punk in the origins of Surrealism, Dada, Situationism, and Fluxus, those high-water islands of an otherwise self-obsessed century of Eurocentric art production. We are at once inspired and daunted by the ideological momentum of 20th-century propagandistic techniques, anti-pop cultural collage, subversion tactics, manifestos, and absurdist games of these movements. Our goal is now to confound the solar/lunar "punk" dichotomy, fashioning art and technology into a patchwork quilt that invites all androids to dream of novel electric ungulates.

By adopting an agile approach to lorecraft, we can transcend the limiting confines of our initial ideas, testing and refining them as they take flight. Agile imagination design techniques embody the cyclical, iterative nature of experimentation, rapid prototyping, and frequent feedback loops. This approach invites flexibility, risk-taking, and continuous learning. A rapid prototyping process allows for a more playful and experimental approach to creation, freeing the creative mind from the paralyzing pressure of getting everything perfect the first time around. The ultimate aim of agile imagination design is to foster a highly adaptive, inventive mindset capable of envisioning and realizing novel worlds.

The pluriverse is a fluxing, alchemical process of transmutation, where the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are constantly shifting and taking new forms. We remain ever-mindful of the emergent collective ethnography of web3 concretions that surround us, yet we are driven by the distinctly hallucinatory set of vision and values that exhorts us to free our minds and souls from the shackles of orthodoxy and embrace the unbounded possibilities of the unknown and unknowable. Rather than relying on an overtly didactic approach to disseminating knowledge, we have sought to harness the power of vivid imagery and impressionistic storytelling to evoke visceral reactions in our readers.

We realized that the production of graphic novels alone could not satisfy our lofty ambitions. As such, we endeavored to expand our storytelling repertoire to encompass a variety of transmedia forms imbued with philosophical depth. We proposed a novel scheme to incentivize a group of musicians to engender a concept album, recognizing that music is the lingua franca of the universe pluriverse. Here we are asking what it means to bypass the rational mind and penetrate directly into the amygdala and the cerebellum with sonic soliloquy, extending telekinetic conduit for transducing the essence of the manifold technical concepts into a poetic expression. We brought together a coterie of extraordinary artists - Curtis Tamm, Cameron Stevens, and Maneesh Raj Madahar - who, although not previously acquainted with the pluriversal philosophies or underlying web3 concepts, have successfully crafted a distinctive sonic experience that will surely titillate our collective imagination and invite novel interpretations of the emergent multi-act hyperobject of the decentralized internet for all and sundry.

The other facet of this multi-dimensional project is centered around the use of visual art. Our aim was to begin from the tangible, the corporeal, and work our way back to the digital. Artist Billy Sprague was invited to help us increase the fidelity of the pluriverse, to create a vivid, palpable vision that optimizes for ocular titillation. At the outset we pondered: what correlations exist between uncanny melodies and visceral collages within the realm of web3? As the project set out to provide a sanctuary for visionaries, Sprague responded by generating time, space, stillness, and seclusion in his work, to spawn a reflective mirror to reverberate our gaze back at us. His images regard the material world as an interface, a threshold bridging the liminal realms of thought and action. Our chief impetus is to trigger our audience to ask profound questions, to scrutinize what we have offered, to attempt to impart significance to the ineffable, and to inquire how we might infuse this curiosity into our pragmatic technological designs.

In an uncertain yet highly specific sense, one might say that we set out to perform a spectacular failure. In the realm of art, failure is to be embraced and celebrated. The greater the failure, the richer the bounty of wisdom gleaned. Failure is not an endpoint, but a call to reorient ourselves towards new potentials and possibilities. As we engage in this dance with the unknown, we recognize that the act of experimentation and collaboration across disciplines is an act of success in and of itself. The fruits of this project may not be solely measured by sales or distribution figures, for our triumph is already writ large across the cosmos in the execution of the unexpected and unquantifiable.

In the forthcoming article, we shall converse with the artists themselves, allowing for a more intimate and personal exposition of their journey in this project. Stay tuned, stay tuning!

In the fields of narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, represents a prevalent pattern in narratives that encompass a protagonist embarking on an adventure, triumphing in a critical juncture, and returning home altered or transformed. Joseph Campbell employed the monomyth to scrutinize and juxtapose religious beliefs. In his renowned work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he delineates the narrative structure thusly:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

In contemporary analyses, the hero's journey has been scrutinized as a prime example of the sympathetic plot, a universal narrative scaffold wherein a goal-oriented protagonist faces hurdles, conquers them, and ultimately reaps the benefits. In the departure phase of the narrative, the protagonist dwells in the familiar, mundane world and receives a beckoning to set forth on a remarkable journey. As the initiation segment unfolds, the hero ventures across the boundary into an enigmatic or special world, where they grapple with formidable tasks or trials, either solitarily or bolstered by the assistance of steadfast companions. In due course, the hero reaches the innermost cave or the pivotal crisis of their odyssey, where they must withstand the ordeal by vanquishing the foe, undergoing apotheosis and rendering an epiphany, a keen insight into their own desires.

In the return phase, the hero is charged with reintegrating into the ordinary world, bearing the burden of their reward. They might be pursued by the protectors of the other dimension or demonstrate reluctance to return, necessitating an intervention from external forces. Once again, the hero navigates the liminal space between the realms, eventually rejoining the ordinary sphere, now ready to be harnessed for the greater good. Through this transformative journey, the hero emerges enlightened, wielding newfound wisdom or spiritual influence over both worlds.

In our endeavors for Gitcoin's comic book series, we sought to intertwine the hero's journey with the concept of eternal recurrence, a cyclical process of world destruction and rebirth. The eternal return embodies a philosophical idea suggesting that time infinitely repeats itself in an endless loop, with identical events ceaselessly unfolding in precisely the same fashion, forevermore. In the annals of ancient Greece, the notion of eternal return was primarily associated with Stoicism, the intellectual school of thought founded by Zeno of Citium. Stoic philosophers posited that the cosmos is subject to regular annihilation and renewal, each subsequent universe serving as an exact replica of the one before. This doctrine was vehemently challenged by Christian writers, such as Augustine, who viewed it as an outright denial of free will and the possibility of salvation. As a result, the widespread dissemination of Christianity heralded the demise of classical theories centered on eternal return.

In the late 1800s, Friedrich Nietzsche breathed new life into this concept. First broaching the idea as a thought experiment in The Gay Science, he delved further into the subject in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the protagonist learns to conquer his horror at the thought of eternal return: “the highest formula of a Yes-saying to life that can ever be attained.” It remains uncertain whether Nietzsche believed in the literal truth of eternal return or, if not, what he aimed to demonstrate through it, yet his vision is palpable.

The greatest weight – What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

– Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Everything goes, everything returns, the wheel of existence rolls for ever. Everything dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of existence runs on forever. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; the same house of existence builds itself forever. Everything departs, everything meets again; the ring of existence is true to itself for ever. Existence begins in every instant, the ball There rolls around every Here. The middle is everywhere. The path of eternity is crooked.

– Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In The Nightmare of Moloch a pervasive, all-knowing narrator weaves its voice through the expressions of each character, probing the very bedrock of truth and reality while prophesying future events. The narrative delves into the intricacies of agency, fate, and decision-making, as well as the processes of envisioning and dismantling futures, positing critical embodiment as the linchpin for achieving emancipation, autonomy, and anonymity: freedom from the ever-returning turns of the eternal. Anon, our gentle protagonist, is haunted by past trauma and comes to understand the necessity of cultivating eye-hand-heart coordination to break free from this somnambulist horror. A miasmic Moloch permeates every facet of the tale, with the distinction between utopia and dystopia hinges on the balance between suffering and flourishing. In the denouement, Anon awakens to the possibility that she may be the author of her own story, as the unconscious embodiment of her own Molochian nightmare. The closing scene ties the end back to the beginning, using the cover design as a Möbius strip endless knot to loop the nightmare ad infinitum, ad absurdum. It’s a metaphor for crypto and for life in general: until one learns to break the cycle they are a prisoner, at least to themselves. “No one here gets out alive.”

And now, allow us to walk you through the second comic we made for Gitcoin that attempted to fold this meditation on Molochian delusions and prisoner’s dilemmas into an artful narrative.

A spectral and intimidating Moloch forms the backdrop of the scene, setting an ominous tone. This opening page is fraught with tension, characters fueled by vague notions of hope and optimism that have dared to traverse the enigmatic portal, blinded by promises of fortune and glory, unaware of the sacrifices they might be making. Their faces etch out the complexity of the paradox they find themselves in. Amid this conflict, there's a burgeoning comprehension of the grander game at play, a crucial realization that their chosen paths, pitted against each other, will lead them nowhere, highlighting the futility of their opposition and sparking a surrender to the wider, unifying strategies proposed by cosmological game theory.

Just as the characters resolve to surrender to their fate, the narrative pivots, leading to an involution of aperture. The view starts pulling inward, a reverse zoom that distills the larger scene of the tavern into the microcosm of the human body. Shadows flicker against the walls, casting silhouettes shaped like ominous phantasms to imprint onto the characters' retinas, seeping deeper into their very beings. Moloch's image infiltrates the lymph system, permeates the sympathetic nervous system, manifests in the internal and external pressures felt by the characters. This deep dive into their physiological responses mirrors their psychological state, their eye-hand-heart coordination reflecting a unity of thought, feeling, and action. An extreme oscillation of scale highlights the vastness and minuteness of existence simultaneously, unfurling the universe as an ever-filling void. The page culminates in an abstract symbolic representation of the Ethereum network's global reach - a vast interconnected web that binds everyone and everything together.

A series of individual vignettes come together to form a complex, chaotic tableau. The overarching image is Moloch, personified as an interior voice that in times of conflict stirs our willingness to forsake all. Artificiality is introduced, an ambiguous artifice that could either hold us back or propel us forward. The character’s experiences are echoing the accumulated traumas of history. A futuristic urbanity serves as a coordination mechanism yet its role remains nebulous. At the page's center, a portal blossoms, fusing a series of stark, darker concepts into a grim collage: the malignant growth of cancer, the disarray of misunderstanding, the deep wound of trauma, the reckless squandering of resources, and a brutal, gore-filled representation of war.

The barrier between the visual and verbal diminishes, shattering conventional time and space. Each fragment contributes to a grand crescendo. Rising above the entropic swirl, this digital construct superimposes itself, casting a dominant, unifying structure upon the maelstrom beneath. This stark contrast against the surrounding tumult of the fractured timelines and spatial disruptions forms a symbolic fulcrum around which the rest of the page orbits.

We gaze through a window to a forgotten epoch, the mysterious origins of the ancient deity, Moloch. Now we are bathing in an ethereal haze, weaving an atmosphere heavy with mythological smoke, fog, and vapor. Moloch is a less than tangible entity, more a delusion we impose upon each other, a shared hallucination that has manifested across the ages. Moloch is a shadow, an ominous silhouette looming over the trajectory of our civilization, a symbol of our misguided fears and ambitions. In the hearts and minds of people, Moloch becomes an icon, a target of misguided sacrificial offerings. It's a shadowy sacrifice – a bartering of our future, a wager placed in the bloody hands of warfare. We reach a stark realization, an indictment of humanity's cyclical penchant for conquest and dominance over one another, thus elevating Moloch to threshold of myth and immortal imagination.

Now we glimpse the unfurling of industrial progress, machinery harking back to an era when technology was in its infancy, laying the groundwork for an intricate entanglement between humanity and its creations. We glimpse a complex, at times unhealthy, reliance on technology, underscoring the paradox that, while we fervently believe it will emancipate us from our limitations, it also entraps us in a form of servitude. Yet there is hope: the use of technology is no mere crutch, but a transformative tool to foster better coordination, pushing us beyond our self-centric concerns and the propensity to ravage nature. Technology is an ever-widening portal to new avenues of introspection and self-understanding. We are left contemplating an irrefutable fact: our future is irrevocably entwined with technology, raising a series of provocative questions. Is technology inhibiting our progress? Or is our own inability to fully harness its potential holding us back?

These two pages juxtapose a dark pessimism on the left against radiant optimism on the right. On the left side, a somber view of our world where ceaseless work and the chase of escapism define our existence. Leisure is depicted as an unaffordable luxury in an overarching simulation, a trap masquerading as reality. The virtual dimensions hold our imagination captive, turning into a tool wielded against its users to perpetuate a cycle of imprisonment. Virtuality manipulates desires, fuels a relentless ambition to conquer all territories, fosters oppression, and encourages wasteful consumption of resources. The damning indictment concludes with the assertion that virtual reality exacerbates the problems of the real world, rather than offering a respite.

Contrasting this grim reality, the right side of the image emerges bathed in light, showcasing the hopeful possibilities offered by the simulations and simulacra, a new reality where our collective imagination shapes captures the very essence of successful collaboration. The narrative presents the metaverse as a bridge between different ways of living, hinting at regenerative economies where competition yields to mutual support. As people come together, the contours of the future grow clearer, technology serving as a tool to liberate minds and bodies. It underscores our interdependence and our shared ability to manifest reality - to cast collective spells, weaving a magic stronger than individualistic pursuits. In this narrative, together, we can shape a better future, and the virtual serves as a portal to a new, promising world.

Another dichotomy is presented. On the left, a window opens to an apparent utopia, a narrative tracing the rise and fall of civilization. It begins with people setting down roots, expanding gradually into villages, towns, and burgeoning cities. The urban sprawl is portrayed as a coordination mechanism, an intricate dance of constructive human activity. Yet, beneath this veneer of progress, the turbulent undercurrents of civilization are unveiled, including the ceaseless tides of conflict and war, underscoring the relentless competition for space that extends even to the celestial realms, always leaving a trail of winners and losers. This page paints a grim picture where our baser instincts and desires often prevail, casting a shadow over our collective journey.

Contrasting this bleak panorama, the right side of the spread presents a transformative shift. The window into the utopian city morphs into a reflective mirror. This historical vantage point allows us a critical self-evaluation, encouraging introspection into our shared past. The implication is that by understanding our history, we can chart a different course, towards a different kind of portal, one that opens onto a hopeful future of change and growth that can help us break free from our historical patterns and epigenetic trauma.

Now the dichotomy of light and dark blurs into a whirlwind of interconnected elements dominated by a sinister influence that seeps into every thought and action. The portal, initially a symbol of emancipation, is appropriated as a tool for Moloch, an icon of delusion, and the characters, once independent agents, are recast as unwitting pawns serving the agenda of coordination failure. War morphs into a sinister game orchestrated by Moloch, thriving on the discord seeded within communication breakdowns. Moloch flourishes in our deepest fears, loathing, and doubts, growing into a menacing specter birthed from the dark recesses of human imagination, pointing to an overwhelming revelation: Everything is Moloch. The past and future are under his sway; all instances of human suffering and thriving alike serve Moloch's grand design. All machines, automation, every whisper and shout are all facets of our own beastly competitive nature. The page climaxes with a startlingly intimate revelation: a close-up of the protagonist's face, etched with the dawning realization and a haunting confession - “I am Moloch!"

Anon stirs awake, finding herself in the familiar chaos of her bedroom. She's ensnared in the undeniable grip of the present moment, anchored back in reality from the disorienting escapades of her slumber. The comic book in her hand - the same book you are reading now - still resonating with the echoes of the dream she'd been immersed in. The realism of the vision lingers, etching a throbbing headache at her temples. Yet, along with the discomfort, there’s a profound clarity; she can still recall all the choices, the multitude of possibilities that had unfurled before her, leaving her grappling with a newfound sense of responsibility, the imperative to choose. An undeniable transformation has occurred; her life, she realizes, will never be the same again. Yet, in the face of this immense realization, she acknowledges her need for companionship and support - she knows she can’t navigate this journey alone. As the page closes, we are left suspended in anticipation - what will Anon choose next?

On the wraparound cover, we see Anon falling back asleep as her dreams, hopes, fantasies, and aspirations bubble out from her mind, floating across the page in a myriad of vignettes. A futuristic cityscape known as the Quadratic lands unfurls in one bubble, while another captures a daunting image of the formidable ETH Bot crumbling under the wrath of Moloch. An uprising of cyberpunk revolutionaries stir, although it is unclear if their protests are constructive or destructive amidst the turmoil of the scene.

On the other side, now the front cover of the comic, Moloch returns to invade her dreams once more, transforming her serene slumber back into the eternally recurring nightmare. He feasts on the infinite regress of her hopes, replacing them with grim, decrepit shades, transforming into a nightmarish scene that wraps the comic cover and reboots the narrative. Will we read it differently the second time around? Might we ever learn to escape this cycle of eternally recurring trauma? What will we choose to believe?

Moreover, lorecrafters should demonstrate a harmonious coordination of visual acuity, manual dexterity, and emotional intelligence — a tripartite "eye-hand-heart" equilibrium. They might consider upholding a standard of integrity and humility, using these values to actively deconstruct any hubristic incentive structures and to realign their actions with a poetic sensibility.

As engaged Ethereans, we must remain vigilant against universal declarations, critically interrogating their breadth of application and the extent of their inclusivity. Moloch extends beyond its historical identity as a Canaanite deity, symbolizing the principles of dispersion and entropy. It embodies a non-entity that emerges from our collective human propensity to engage in depersonalizing, grand abstractions. To counteract the influence of Moloch, our efforts must commence at the grassroots level, averting the tendency to cast others as adversaries within a cosmically scaled economic competition. We might work towards dismantling the conventional dichotomy of good versus evil, and refrain from perpetuating nationalistic, homogenizing, and centralizing identity declarations that have historically ignited conflicts. Instead of fixating on competition, we could aspire to reconceptualize our collective circumstances, channeling resources towards the establishment of sustainable practices and fostering radical cooperation among diverse selves, communities, and worlds.

In the context of Ethereum, if a protagonist needs to be identified, this entity should function to generate, nurture, disseminate, and reinforce value for individuals, prioritizing creative production (poiesis) over political maneuvering.

In our pluriversal narratives, we seek to navigate the "expanded field" of Moloch as a mythological entity, capable of assuming a multitude of monstrous guises. At times, it might epitomize an undead, soulless proletariat, manifesting as a zombie, or conversely, it might take the form of an exploitative aristocracy or technocracy, traditionally symbolized as a vampire preying on the less privileged. Moloch might morph into a formless, slime mold-like entity, an endless, consuming flow emblematic of the unceasing expansion and consumption inherent in capitalism and industrialism. In Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch, the “granite cock” obelisk of the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas is depicted as a phallocentric monolith of power, urbanity, and harsh civilization. Moreover, Moloch could manifest as a potent or suffocating atmosphere, personifying the psychological distress of solitude, the neurosis stemming from monotonous labor, and the alienation induced by both capitalism and physical isolation.

This bovine-headed demonic figure draws inspiration from the mythos surrounding the Canaanite and Carthaginian deities, notorious for the ritualistic sacrifice of infants to secure favorable outcomes in warfare and commerce. Historically, Moloch has been depicted as a cosmic furnace, kiln, or fiery gateway to a malevolent dimension, which propels progress by inciting discord. While not synonymous with capitalism, it represents a symbol of coordination failure amongst human societies, a persistent force that beguiles and lures us with deceptive appearances. Moloch is characterized by its protean nature, nebulous and dispersed, arising from the human psyche and manifesting as a psychological disturbance. It serves as an ancient, formidable deity that operates through the distortion of reality, convincing its subjects that egoistic desires are the primary driving force. In order to mitigate Moloch's influence, it is essential that we educate one another about the tragedy of the commons, multipolar traps, and existential risks. This endeavor requires the deconstruction and re-envisioning of our desires and perspectives, potentially achieved through the adoption of indigenous epistemologies or a matristic orientation as opposed to paternal or patriarchal paradigms.

The RaidGuild Mercenaries are character constructs that draw inspiration from the medieval fantasy realms depicted in popular culture phenomena such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Skyrim. However, these mercenaries subvert traditional archetypes by eschewing the single-minded pursuit of loot and wealth accumulation. Instead, they are devoted to principles of cooperation, collaboration, and coordination in pursuit of a shared objective. The diverse roles within RaidGuild are conceptualized as a caste system of characters, each possessing distinct attributes and vulnerabilities. This arrangement serves to illustrate the necessary interdependencies required to combat a shared adversary. The guiding ethos of these mercenaries is encapsulated in the mantra: "Better to journey far together than to travel swiftly alone." The motivations for joining the guild transcend mere material acquisition or economic ambition, instead, they are centered around a more virtuous mission. The true heroes are those who endure and remain steadfast when the boom period of the abundant market gives way to the harsh realities of (crypto) winter. It is in these moments that the guild is compelled to clearly delineate the malevolent force they stand against: a high-definition incarnation of Moloch.

The green pill meme is an intricate conceptual construct, amalgamating elements drawn from cultural artifacts such as The Matrix films, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Gitcoin's Quadratic Lands. This construct signifies a deliberative choice of reality, coupled with an affirmation of optimistic thinking in opposition to nihilistic tendencies. The green pill functions as a metaphor for the voyage towards self-realization and commitment to the common good, serving as a symbol for a broader technocratic endeavor aimed at societal enhancement.

In the context of The Matrix, the decision to ingest the red pill is equated with the acceptance to uncover the full extent of the rabbit hole, which is connotative of the "real world"— a stark, gloomy reality where humans awaken from their enslavement and willingly surrender their physical comforts to endure suffering in the quest for loftier ideals of freedom and autonomy. The act of "red-pilling" signifies an escape from the dream of virtual space, in contrast to the blue pill's choice of remaining ensnared within the simulation, thereby opting for ignorance, illusion, dissociation, and a form of unreal or non-reality. Conversely, the green pill is imbued with the potent promise of speculative hope and the potentiality of a world superior to any historically manifested reality. This hope is not unfounded, but rather a calculated optimism, designed to dispel catastrophic thinking and to illuminate a path forward. It symbolizes the germ of hopeful thinking, the solarpunk insistence on speculative hope as the veritable or sole reality: a vision of an improved world that we consciously elect to embody and manifest, to surmount our own inherent human nature.

The green pill meme is complex, with associations extending to an array of works and concepts. Its utility is vested in its potential to serve as an emblem of commitment to the sustenance of public goods, whether it be through annual income, project budget, or individual transactions. The green pill can be interpreted as a reward, a pledge, or a testament of dedication to a cause greater than the self.

Within the context of the cryptocurrency community, the act of 'pilling' someone is akin to guiding them through the complex labyrinth of concepts and mechanics inherent to the field. Drawing parallels with Alice in Wonderland, Alice descends into a fantastical dreamworld, a creation of her own imagination. This world, brimming with wonder and fantasy, can be viewed as a form of delusion, juxtaposed against the 'real world' characterized by mundane adult responsibilities. Such a metaphor may possess socio-political implications, proposing Wonderland as a sanctuary offering an escape from the oppressive realities of the external world. However, it is more likely that this analogy alludes to a rite of passage marking Alice's transition from childhood to adulthood. This narrative poses pertinent questions about reintegration into one's community post the acquisition of newfound self-awareness, and the strategies to counteract pervasive selfishness within society. Here we might reference Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Lewis Carroll, from his book The Logic of Sense. Dorothea Olkowski offers her interpretation:

The underground world of Alice in Wonderland has been strongly associated with animality and embodiment. Thus the need for Alice’s eventual climb to the surface and her discovery that everything linguistic happens at that border. Yet, strangely, in spite of the claim that Alice disavows false depth and returns to the surface, it seems that it is precisely in the depths that she finally wakes from her sleepy, stupified surface state and investigates the deep structures, the rules of logic. In this investigation, Alice questions many formal structures, such as causality, identity, reference and the rules of replacement. She discovers that Wonderland does not generate consequential conduct; in fact, it generates no conduct whatsoever! In other words, when it comes to consequences, Wonderland may not be all that wonderful. Yet, we do not live in Wonderland and therefore, our actions have consequences. The question this poses is, why organize language so as to escape causal relations and why choose the little girl as emblematic of this organization?

And another from Christine Slobogin:

As each “nonsense” happens to her, Alice takes them in stride in a very calm and relatively logical manner. As each new thing occurs, the more sense the next nonsense makes in the context of this new underground world. For example, Carroll explains that “so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.” As the diverse nonsense events build upon each other, it seems less odd and somehow makes more sense that the next completely different nonsense event occurs. In fact, it seems almost expected of Wonderland. In this way, Deleuze’s point about Carroll giving an entire account of his universe through nonsenses makes perfect sense. Wonderland is characterized by these events and therefore the reader finds themselves making sense of the place without the use of sense at all.

Our intention was to weave the green pill meme into the fabric of the graphic novel by incorporating an artifact that serves to catalyze characters into recognizing their capacity for personal transformation. This “artifact” (never clearly rendered or named) promotes principles of mutual support and cooperation and underscores the pivotal role of hope in shaping their actions. The characters are already endowed with the necessary resources, yet the artifact acts as a trigger, engendering an epiphany that bridges their prevailing egocentric tendencies with a more communal, future-oriented mindset. In this capacity, the green pill functions as a conduit between the virtual and physical realms. Despite its tangible presence, its ultimate purpose is to unlock the latent potential of the mind, akin to a pharmakon - a substance possessing the dual capacities to poison and heal. However, the green pill distinguishes itself from its counterparts in The Matrix and Alice in Wonderland, as it is imbued with a more nuanced, multifaceted, pluriversal symbolism.

The functionality of the green pill hinges on an element of magic, reminiscent of Aleister Crowley's definition of imposing one's will onto others from afar. The debate surrounding whether this constitutes manipulation or merely illusion is contingent upon the one’s capacity to dissect and navigate their own delusions. Both The Matrix and Alice in Wonderland scenarios pose inquiries regarding whether the experiences are shared hallucinations or individual delusions and whether escape is a decision of personal autonomy or collective consensus. Within the context of our comic, the green pill symbolizes a radical choice, a potent decision to accept hope, instigate personal transformation, and contribute to an uplifting narrative. It catalyzes an individual ontological shift with the potential to ripple across and influence the collective consciousness over time.

And now, allow us to walk you through the first comic we made for Gitcoin that attempted to fold this meditation on Moloch and the green pill into an artful narrative.

The opening scene is nestled within the smoky confines of a timeless tavern. A medley of diverse characters, each steered by the invisible compass of their singular ambitions, emerge from the shadows. The tavern itself is a breathing tapestry of raw emotion and whispered secrets, alive with the amber glow of flickering candlelight and the woody scent of worn-out barrels. This motley crew, tethered by a shared destiny they are only beginning to grasp, prepare to embark on an epic quest. Their camaraderie is palpable, their energy infectious, yet their journey is full of anticipation and uncertainty.

Venturing through eclectic landscapes, the characters' interplay becomes a theater of growing unease. Subtle tensions simmer beneath their exchanges, their once seamless camaraderie now laced with a disquieting undercurrent of suspicion and mistrust. These tiny fissures in their unity quickly grow into chasms, giving rise to heated bickering and vehement disputes that resonate in the air like discordant symphonies. A chilling transformation takes hold of the world around them as their turmoil escalates. A malevolent shadow begins to creep over the once vibrant landscapes, or perhaps it's the once vivid colors starting to leach away, replaced by haunting grayscale that mirrors their growing animosity. Moloch insidiously infiltrates their ranks. His invisible touch twists their words and manipulates their actions, their once noble speech now laced with hostility, their camaraderie crumbling into competition. Subtly, their values begin to warp and shift under his influence, driving them into a spiral of rivalry and antagonism, each character becoming a puppet dancing on the strings of this dark puppeteer.

In a pivotal turn of the story, the Leshy emerges as a formidable presence, materializing from the verdant shadows of the wilderness, embodying the spirit of the ancient forest itself. Unmoved by the brewing storm of emotions amongst the group, the Leshy's voice resonates through the rustling leaves and the creaking boughs, a whispering echo of nature's wisdom. Its message is clear and undeniable: they have lost their way, consumed by misguided pursuits and clouded intentions. To triumph, they must unite against an ominous, impending doom that hovers ominously just beyond their perception.

However, blinded by their own avarice, the mercenaries succumb to their baser instincts, engaging in a fierce clash not just with each other but with the darker aspects of their own selves. Each character flaunts their unique combat prowess, a dance of power and strategy under the canopy of the foreboding forest.

Yet the tragic, futile conflict casts a pallor over their features, altering their once vibrant postures into those of hunched and weary warriors. The vibrant hues of the scene steadily seep away, replaced by stark monochromes that mirror the growing despair in their hearts.

In the thick of their most despairing hour, a sudden burst of cosmic energy cleaves the air before them, tearing a rift in the fabric of reality itself. This ethereal portal pulses with a vibrant luminescence, an intriguing contrast to the shadow-drenched world from which they emerge, promising a glimpse into a realm beyond their comprehension. Peering through this swirling gateway of light and energy, they are greeted by a vision of their true destiny. There, spread out like a cosmic tapestry, lies the Quadratic Lands.

This world is a testament to the heights of advanced technology, where futuristic structures rise like glittering spires amidst a landscape of digital wonder, their surfaces shimmering with an array of iridescent lights. This world is a utopia of harmony, a stark contrast to their current strife-torn existence. Citizens move with a serene purpose, their faces etched with contentment, living amidst a seamless fusion of nature and technology. The sight leaves them awestruck, instilling a newfound resolve to fulfill their true purpose.

Yet, within this seemingly idyllic panorama, they spot an insidious darkness at play. A stark understanding descends upon them: they have been meandering through their journey like somnambulists trapped in a fever dream, mere pawns in a cosmic game. But now, the scales fall from their eyes, and they awaken to a reality that extends beyond the deceitful mirage that had ensnared them. Faced with this transformative revelation, the group stands divided at the precipice of choice. Some, driven by newfound clarity, step forward to embrace the beckoning portal, their silhouettes swallowed by the pulsating light. Others, still wary and suspecting further trickery, choose to remain behind, their suspicious gazes locked onto the enigmatic gateway. The once unified band splinters in two, a fracture line that runs deep, echoing the divide in their hearts.

Having peered into the cruel heart of the phantasmagoric Moloch, the characters find themselves irrevocably altered, forever stripped of their blissful ignorance. Resolute, they return to the familiar, now uncanny, confines of the tavern, a newfound fire burning in their eyes. Their voices rise in warnings of the looming peril, their words echoing off the tavern's wooden beams, a chilling prophecy of the impending threat. Yet, their gift of sight, their revelation, is met with nothing but incredulous stares and dismissive scoffs. They stand amidst the tavern's bustling crowd, voices of truth lost in a sea of unbelief. Undeterred, they understand their path lies elsewhere now.

Their true mission, they discern, is to trace the malignant tendrils of the Moloch beast back to its insidious roots. The implications are profound, shattering their perception of reality. Could their entire world be just a virtual construct, an elaborate illusion woven by unseen puppet masters? They stand on the precipice of a new world, one they must explore and challenge. There is no turning back, only the path forward, into the heart of the unknown…

In our next article we will present the second graphic novel we wrote for Gitcoin titled The Nightmare of Moloch! Thanks for reading.

A world consisting of many worlds, each with its own ontological and epistemic grounding.

What is pluriverse.wtf?

A transmedia lorecrafting experiment in collective imagineering.

In this contemporary epoch, design assumes a more crucial mantle than ever before. The Pluriverse, at its essence, engenders a focus upon politico-ontological design, a design philosophy that is both omnipresent and ubiquitous, permeating the very fabric of existence. To achieve success in design, social context must be given due consideration. Ecologically-oriented disciplines understand the paramountcy of design's pivotal role in shaping our world. Indeed, design is too momentous to be left exclusively to designers; it is instead about the formation of cultural values and practices, about creating and shaping culture in particular ways of living. In his magnum opus, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Arturo Escobar expounds upon design as a concept that transcends the mere creation of tangible goods or material productions. Rather, design in this context denotes “a panoply of divergent forms of life, often presenting contrasting notions of sociability and the world.”

In the pluriverse, a kaleidoscopic realm of infinite possibility, a plethora of optimistic aspirations can be sown, plentiful opportunities can be meticulously cultivated, and a profusion of lives imbued with meaning can be attained by the multifaceted and empathetic individuals that we are. Transmedia, the practice of conveying narrative content across diverse media formats, predicates the vital significance of the storytelling process, in equal measure to the substance of the narrative itself. Lore, the stories woven within the fabric of communal identity, serves as an invigorating force for internal coherence and synergy. All of this is nothing less than a wondrous, constantly evolving experiment, methodologically designed to take risks and boldly venture into uncharted unknown and unknowable, like dark ecological chocolate. Pluriversal tales are co authored as a collaborative endeavor, their very existence emblematic of creative concepts brought to fruition in practical form.

Pluriverse.wtf is a web3 project with no builders. We represent a collective of visionaries, elaborating the technology of agile imagination design. Our endeavors are not predicated upon the development of code or the creation of decentralized infrastructure; rather, we strive to engender the core concepts and ideological underpinnings that propel the web3 imaginary. The ethereal conception of the Pluriverse was first seeded by the expansive explorations of the ConsenSys-shepherded Cellarius Universe Guide. The entheogenic musings of the Verses collective served as a powerful catalyst, sparking a creative chain reaction within the Gitcoin community, and further stoking the flames of our imagination. Ours is a project resolutely rooted in ideology and reliant upon the innovative technological breakthroughs wrought by others. Our aim is not to construct an AI-powered infinite novelty generator, nor to usher forth a multiplayer post-creator economy per say, nor to elaborate a headless orchestration of a collector-contributor community, although we are incredibly impressed and endlessly inspired by these projects and others. Indeed, the pluriverse shares much in common with all of these initiatives and eagerly anticipates collaborating with them.

Pluriverse.wtf is a fertile incubator of the imagination, operating within the regenerative crypto economic movement. We are explicitly attuned to the metacrisis, beckoning to all and sundry, a clarion call for greater human ingenuity and invention, a more expansive envisioning of a speculative future. While our initial inspiration was derived from the solarpunk utopia of the quadratic lands, we have come to recognize the profound difficulties inherent within such conceptual paradigms. Nonetheless, the lunar duality inherent in the Janus-faced god of infinite money games and value propositions, remains a potent and electrifying response to the existential anxiety that looms large in this moment of impending transition.

In the times ahead, we shall expound upon the manifold ideas that have germinated since the genesis of our project at MCON2. These ideas shall be presented with unreserved candor, embodying the ethos of the open-source bizarre bazaar, permeable membranes facilitating infinite sharing, a single cell within the collective slime mold navigating the infinite regress of cerebral prime number mazes. We pledge to proffer everything within our capacity, divulging the essence of our dreams, successes, and failures. Our creative tapestries shall be laid bare for critical examination, inviting all to contemplate these artifacts and, perhaps, to collaborate with us in producing more of them. We shall announce upcoming drops and leverage the pluriverse platform as a fulcrum for fostering a collectorship. We are propelled to take bold risks, to wear our hearts on our sleeves, and to conceive deeply of strategies to maintain maximum artistic autonomy throughout this process, come what may. We recognize that the Ethereum community is where our kin reside.

The forthcoming article shall explicate the events that have hitherto transpired, and provide insight into the underlying causes and factors that engendered them. Our emphasis shall be upon the how of things, delving into the intricacies of process method, architecture, and economics.

Stay tuned, anon. Stay warm, anon.

I am an artist and researcher currently pursuing a PhD at USC in media arts and practices. I have worked primarily with sound for the last several years. I am currently in northern Idaho, in the panhandle, sitting in my mother's greenhouse.

Maybe you could explain a little bit about your creative practice, your deep immersion in space and place, and your ongoing investigations of extra human sentience. Would we say that’s a fair way of putting it?

Extra human, other than human, beyond human... That linguistic context doesn't quite feel appropriate. It's weird to think about things being beyond other things.

How would you phrase it then? How do you sense, how do you make sense of your senses, and how we can make sense of your sensing as a reader?

The practice that I'm involved with now began when I was very young, when I was an aspiring magician. I used to do magic shows for people that would come to the house. Then I started working with film and it felt really seamless, like a very efficient way of doing magic. I would have people sit down and watch a film and achieve the same effect I was creating through these earlier magic performances. Another transition occurred when I moved into a sound oriented practice. Both of these transitions were really driven by a degree of efficiency. For the last several years, I've developed a practice of one-on-one performances for people that are rooted in experimental music and field recordings.

You're also quite well traveled. From what I can gather you’ve been exploring a kind of sensory potential in various places, in the plants and animals and people… and even the stones that inhabit those places. I’ve invited you into this conversation on the occasion of this Plant Based exhibition to help me pull some threads of what might be required to foster sensitivity, or to sense or to interact with, or maybe to commune with or to relate to, sentience that is not human. Pulling this thread with Ricardo (the curator) has led towards thinking about shamanic practices, the idea of ingesting a botanical material, both symbolically and literally. I'm trying to think through these things, to make sense of them and honor the magic in this perspective while allowing them to sit alongside the scientific, the botanical, and the technological. This exhibition is going to take place in downtown Los Angeles. I’m anticipating being immersed in the density of that industrial and urban place and wondering how it will inflect upon this content. What is this exhibition really about?

I feel called to question the idea that plants connect us with something non-human. I feel a little antagonistic to this growing emphasis on displacing the human from itself while saying that we are also experiencing it. That’s a circular discourse. I wonder if the non-human in this instance might actually be a stand-in for something much more specific. It evokes some of the ideas that are discussed in the writings of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. He's an anthropologist who hung out in the Amazon and proposed that the human is the thing that everything experiences, that the thing that we call the human is actually a manifestation of something that is foundational to life. The emphasis on the non-human positions the human as a type of excess. I wonder if we could form a cosmology delicate enough or flexible enough to really take on the challenge of integrating a place like Los Angeles into a wider concept of nature. I think sound in particular has a quality that can help with some of the paradoxes that emerge when trying to integrate the human into a wider spectrum of plant and animal relations.

I read his text Cannibal Metaphysics. Cannibalism is described as the ultimate taboo across all cultures, a signifier for the ultimate transgression, the ultimate inhuman or even metaphysical transgression. One key idea the book puts forth is how reality is shaped through correlation. The separation of human from non-human speaks more to a style of correlating things, as systems of signs with inherent properties that mean something more than what they are.

What differentiates a species is the signs it is reading and the signs it cares enough about to ascribe meaning to. Perhaps that’s the primary thing that separates one creature from the next, not some Darwinian evolutionary framework as an arbitrary scaffold of biology. Vivieros de Castro describes how humans come first in a lot of Amazonian cosmologies, the total inverse of the Darwinian perspective.

Where one thinks is just as important as what one is thinking about. Different geographies invoke different styles of correlating signs and meaning. It makes sense that if you are immersed in a landscape like LA that you end up developing a categorical style of thought. You end up thinking in terms of quadrilateral networks where ideas are separated by their categorical significance, right? You end up becoming deeply concerned about the environment or deeply dissociated from it, because all your percepts are experiencing an impoverished wasteland lacking in dream, chaotic geometry, and profound change. You’re not seeing the stars.

We might consider the rites and rituals, set and setting, of Shamanic magic that demonstrates how our thinking, our embodied sense of self, and our way of defining our relations is so contextual, so rooted in the place where we're doing the thinking.

I think there's a mass delusion that the most important things are happening in cities, like it has been decided. There's so much viable information that's going on outside of the urban landscape. It's interesting to think about the role of language in relation to urban landscapes. I’m thinking about the invocation contained in the word spelling, as in spelling out a word like the conjuring of an incantation. Cities are ruled by language. When I was in Los Angeles recently I could feel this kind of palpitating, percolating pressure of being owned by language. There's something deeply unsettling there. A lot of my work deals with how we encounter what isn't human. And yet, when I go to LA and try to share work at my department and talk about my interests, I drive past thousands of homeless people dying on the street in order to have a conversation about fostering a love of the non-human. It feels completely inhuman. I find that I actually have to develop an entirely different discourse in order to achieve the effect that I want with my research. I can't just talk about it in the way that I would normally. It requires a pivot to become much more meta and self reflexive, like I have to make language contort on itself. That place conjures its own conversation.

I am very cognizant of the fact that over the last couple of years of being thoroughly immersed in a rural place I've learned all kinds of new words. I've learned the names of the birds and trees. I know their botanical names, but I’m also trying to describe something beyond semiotics. I can recognize the differences from one year to the next based on when the pinion cones open and release their pollen or in the shape and timing of the monsoons on the horizon. If I’m out walking in the afternoon, I can infer the encroachment of a storm and know how much time I have to return to my house before the rain is upon me. I can hear the difference between cicadas and rattlesnakes, and also rattlesnakes from bull snakes impersonating them. How much of this information might be treated as a linguistic mesh emerging from the environment, or simply my own human delusion being cast upon it?

One of the takeaways I pull from Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think and Vivieros de Castro's work is how much of the human is inherent to the foundation of all of those structures. How else would we be able to interpret such signs if we weren't already embedded in those dynamics? This is part of the conundrum of being able to look at a city like Los Angeles and consider it as part of nature.

I just returned from Rodeo, New Mexico. I was working with a biologist there who's one of the leading experts on rattlesnakes and director of the Chiricahua Museum. We listened to the sound of several different rattlesnake species and it was such an incredible, mind blowing experience. I’ve been thinking about the conundrum of the rattle and the mystery of how it evolved to be the way that it is and what it's even doing. The leading hypothesis is that the rattle evolved from earlier species of snake that used their tail for caudal luring, the phenomena of using their tail to lure in their prey. The missing piece of the puzzle is when it became used for repulsion or as a warning.

There's this dichotomy between luring and repelling or deterring. There's one species in particular that was just distinct from the rest, Crotalus atrox, that evolved in wide open deserts, in the Sonoran Desert. When placed on the recording table all of the other species would immediately try to hide into a crevice, but when Crotalus atrox is put onto the table it turns into a monolithic sculpture and just rattles. From an evolutionary development perspective this behavior is supposed to be a deterrent, but my experience was the exact opposite. The sound was like a narcotic or a hypnotic lure that seemed very welcoming and almost sleepy, drawing one toward a sense of rest. There were times when I was looking at this incredibly dangerous, venomous creature and I realized I was associating it to something more like a plant, more like a rock, or something in between the two.

I was recently reading about a moth that has developed eyes on its wings that are uncannily similar to large birds of prey in the area, like the pronounced eyes of owls, which are very effective in deterring fish that might want to eat the moth. I became lost in thinking about the complexity of the emergent signals informing each other in this triangulation. The fish sees the moth and interprets it as an owl, sees the owl in the body of the moth, but is the moth aware that it is being seen by the fish or that it is impersonating the owl? Is this mimicry a trait of the moth or an epiphenomenal sign emerging from the gestalt of the environment? It reminds me of the wasp and the orchid in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, two elegant species that evolved elaborate forms in mimicry in response to the signs of the other like nodes within a complex network, a sophisticated and elegant and mysteriously emergent kind of network. It seems gross to consider this an instance of moth semiotics so much as an emergent ecology of signs that implicates the medium of the moth. In contemplating how to engage with a plant based cybernetics of signs or botanical intelligence, I wonder if we are also implicated within such a distributed flow of signs. The meta seems to melt away into pure informational flow at that point, a gestalt of information we are all swimming in.

Rupert Sheldrake’s work is very interesting on this point. He articulated a morphic resonance or morphogenic field, almost a continuation of the theory of ether, but supported by empirical forms. The theory describes a kind of lattice, like an energetic scaffolding, a formal substrate which shapes and forms how physical and material properties coagulate, similar to the theory of gestalt in the arts and psychology. We might also make a correlation to Jakob Johann von Uexküll’s theory of Umwelt serving as a foundational base layer or prima materia from which all forms are thought to emerge (even the thought of emergent thoughts, tee hee). At some scale or aperture, everything emerges from this gestalt of patterns, like a pattern language, if we want to put it into Christopher Alexander's terms.

Sheldrake also talks about a kind of memory made accessible through ritual. As you sing a song you are resonating with this morphogenic field of everyone who has ever sung that song and this is what imbues ritual with meaning and significance. Ayahuasca ritual music serves a similar function as a kind of Yates-esque memory theater, a portal for interfacing with memories and experiences that lay dormant just under the surface. We live in a perpetual state of intentional forgetting, as if for survival. I’m thinking again about the paradox of Los Angeles and how much one must forget to endure the maddening delusion of that place.

Maybe you can tell me a little about the experience of where you are now, out in the Idaho wilderness?

Yeah. I have a reading spot nearby, at the mouth of a valley a quarter of a mile from where I'm living. The wildflowers and wild grasses have completely exploded over the last couple months. There's been so much rain. It's been remarkable to witness with all the plants totally popping off. It’s also been a double edged sword because all of the plants that were growing in the orchard and garden have suffered, with their roots becoming completely saturated. There's beautiful wild poppies and St. John's Wort all over the valley in amazing hues of bright orange and yellow and purple. We've been growing an amazing harvest of strawberries and asparagus and salad greens and corn, cabbage, brussel sprouts, tomatoes, and potatoes. The peaches and nectarines are doing very well. There's something about tending to the garden and thinking about it, visiting it every day, checking on it… It feels like a connection with God. There’s something missing when we only buy our food, something that feels very important. To see oneself in the process of tending to plants that will feed you is a profound experience. It feels profoundly spiritual. It makes me realize how impoverished my life has been without having a space like this.

Plant Based will be on view August 6-28, 2022 at Tiger Strikes Asteroid: 1206 Maple Avenue, 5th floor, #523, Los Angeles CA 90015

If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider purchasing an NFT of the writing or accompanying artwork.

First I want to create a high level flyby of all the entangled concepts and references that has brought us together for the context of this exhibition called Plant Based. When you first approached me and I was asking about the scope of the exhibition you mentioned everything from Braiding Sweetgrass and aboriginal ways of communing with plants to shamanic practices, the esoteric work of Terrence McKenna, and the internalization or integration of a plant sentience into the human mind. This might also be considered an externalization or projection of a human sentience onto other beings, or things, and evokes the age-old conversation about animism and panpsychism. To be clear, by sentience I mean to refer to self-awareness, reflexivity, a self consciousness that leads to the formation of a collective conscience.

This triggers a flood of secondary references around psychedelia and ethnopharmacology. I would like to ratchet down the scope a bit so we're not spinning out into free associative absurdity, but I also think it's important to let this get as weird as we want. When we first spoke you mentioned UFOs and we discussed the archetype of aliens through modern works like Jung's Flying Saucers : A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. This strange realm of considerations relates to a whole milieu of tertiary ideas; of otherness and othering and the subaltern and the dehumanization of entities that are not like us. Maybe it's too great of a leap, but I would like to attempt to clear a path from psychology and neurocognition on one side to philosophical and cultural research on the other. We will see if we have the energy to get that deep.

My own interest returns to the foundation of this conversation. We seem to be assuming that there is a mind, a human mental or cerebral position that transcends our individualism, that can be influenced (or infected? or inoculated?) with a plant sentience. This is significant and interesting, as this is not simply an entanglement of socially constructed identities or genetically inherited traits - not only the cognition of another mammal, or even another animal - but signaling an integration of something (or some agency) fundamentally different in its cellular structure, chemical composition, physical architecture, and its (dare I say) energetic resonance. Botany is distinct for many structural and ontological reasons and, for myself, this greatly complicates the idea of plant-based knowledge, plant-based empathy, plant-based cognition or reflexivity, and many other things. On this note, we might move away from and outside of the human, maybe even beyond "mind." I want to chart that shift, to try to track it and follow it. Does moving out of our mind imply moving into an imagination that cannot be singularly claimed as absolutely human? Are we talking about moving out of the self and into an immersive collectivism? An integral botanical sentience?

There's absolutely a political orientation here that we might delve into a bit. And many sticky questions about the root or substrate upon all of our other assumptions are stacked. I remember you questioning the legitimacy of the empirical, epistemological, philosophical lineage that heralds the solidity of some concrete objective truth and scaffolds the infrastructure of science. We might put scientific inquiry in relation to shamanic visionary seeking as we ask-after this "wholly other" (as Terence McKenna would say) consciousness of plants. Is it a consciousness of plants, originating with them? Or a consciousness within plants, collected or projected from some other source? Is it even possible to disentangle ourselves from the human obsession with our own origins to contemplate a uniquely plant-based consciousness that is not modeled on ourselves?

I think this is where we might think together about shamanism and virtual realities as interfaces with other forms or flavors of sentience. This might sound out of place here, but I would like to think with you about the potential of the interface, as a metaphorical threshold where “alien” intelligences might contact each other. There's lots to say here about technological portals and ethnobotanical receptor sites, as well as the aesthetic gestalt evoked by both psychedelic and VR experiences, for better and for worse. We might also expand this to other aesthetic forms. We both have a background in painting, so let's bring in painting as an interface, perhaps through the notion of painting serving as a mirror, window, or portal at various points in history.

On a completely other note, I think there are some strong connections to be made to the current situation within crypto. There's a lot to explore here and it might sound intimidating. One point is that I have witnessed a lot of experimentation in instigating a shift away from self-interestedness towards collective coordination and cooperation. This signals a shift from centralized to decentralized agency. I think there's something there related to the hyper reflexivity of human sense-making and the expanded potential of plant-based gnosis.

Within the crypto community, some voices are evoking biomimicry as the ultimate threshold of high abstraction. For example, mycelial networks are reconciled with cybernetic ecological theories amounting to such perplexing comparisons like calling mycelial networks the "internet of nature." Natural ecosystems can be captured by technological consciousness so easily. Trees in a forest are anthropomorphized as individual citizens, cooperating and competing for survival like human society. The mycelial "network" provides the communicative tether for those individual trees to pass "data" between each other, trading and leveraging positions through a naturalized economy. I personally find this idea horrifying and it will take some patience to unpack it together, if we can get there.

There's something fundamental here about the lineage of the mind-body problem in philosophy, biomimicry in engineering, and biophilia in art and design. I want to explore these thresholds or interfaces from both sides. I think the conversation around shamanism could easily slide into a taboo direction and I want to ensure we don't get lost in New Age-ist combinatorics, blending all the ideas together into the same convoluted dough. I think we must resist that temptation in order to ground ourselves within some kind of rigorous examination, but of course, that immediately sets up another problem. We need to continuously remind each other what ground we are standing upon. As we re-member, we are actively dismantling our biases and reassembling them into new configurations. I would propose that this is really the core of what we are up to right now: trying to carefully and attentively change our own minds. Maybe that requires that we can't do it alone and would benefit from the counsel of plant and mycelial allies, or maybe we can generate the same effect of moving outside of ourselves by passing alien ideas between ourselves.

Just to finish that last thought... I think shamanic gnosis might be put into relation to a technological inquiry, even an engineering mindset. I think there's a ripe opportunity to explore the influence of cybernetics on ecology and our understanding of natural systems. What kind of mind are we actively constructing here? Are we attempting to actively deconstruct our own anthropocentrism, and if so, is that going against our own nature? Is that an unnatural inquiry? How can we approach sentience, consciousness, knowledge, or knowing, or some kind of mindfulness beyond the human? How might we identify an entity with agency without imposing that anthropocentric bias? Who is really the alien here? And what does any of this have to do with an art exhibition?

Okay, I know that is a lot to unpack, but I just wanted to throw it all out there to get our primordial juices flowing. What do you think?

I'm going to just throw a few ideas back at you and hopefully not derail everything. What is your relationship to philosophy right now? What is your ambition for philosophy and your understanding of its uses and its abilities?

I could provide some context. Before COVID, I was pursuing a PhD in philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory. My interest was in exploring the philosophical utility of how we make sense of our own senses through critical sensing and sense making. That might sound like a poem, but what I mean is thinking about how we see and how that becomes meaningful while actively and critically looking and thinking-about-looking-and-thinking differently. I drafted a dissertation about how we make mental models based upon our visual experience. In the tradition of phenomenology, I set out to increase the fidelity of the related concepts as much as possible and became obsessed with fidelity as a concept in itself.

Okay. I'm gonna admit that I've never engaged with subjects to the level of depth and excellence that you have. I studied philosophy for undergrad and it ultimately became a dead end. I realized that I wanted to be making art and was drawn towards the creative and away from the empirical. Art felt like more of an appropriate use of my mental energy. But, you know, your story is curious. You had a lot of philosophical energy in grad school and it seems like you sort of went the other direction.

I go back and forth. I very generally think that any knowledge system needs to be understood in relation to others. Nothing exists in isolation. I'm only skeptical of science when it attempts to hypothesize in a vacuum. When we observe something removed from the system in which it originated we are not seeing the whole picture. Art in itself is not sufficient to explain the full depth and complexity of this life experience, nor is philosophy, but the two together exponentially increase that fidelity. When we start branching out beyond the Germanic lineage of philosophy and Western modern art into the diverse ideas and styles of the world, it gets even higher fidelity. There's also a threshold to that fidelity. With too much complexity, people can't seem to hold on to the concept anymore. I’m very interested in that threshold of complexity and I’m always asking questions to investigate if that threshold is something innate in the human organism or if it's a choice, because people just get uncomfortable. We can only go so far with an image before we need to start putting words on it. We can only go so far with language before we need an image to supplement it. Certainly there’s something to be said for scientific reductionism on this point… but that's the interface, the threshold that I love exploring.

I had this thought about people wanting to explore virtual realities. Content like Ready Player One seems so plastic, so low fidelity in relation to reality. We access this world from so many different perspectives. It is infinitely complex, gorgeous, fascinating, and mystifying. Why do we want to reduce it?

The virtual is a technological construct, a simulation, a simulacra,  a reality imposed on top of this one supported by a silicon infrastructure and burning material energy from this reality. We mostly access virtuality as a mental state and visual experience, but soon we may be able to explore these alter-realities in increasingly embodied ways. When the screen optics match the resolution of our general experience and the corporeal sensing becomes convincing enough to facilitate total immersion, will it distinguish one reality from another? Is fidelity a matter of conviction? Do you need to be convinced that the world created in the program is just as real as the world we created in the meatspace? Isn’t the virtual construct merely a continuation of the same civilization operating system we have been collectively hacking on for thousands of years?

Nature is not infinitely complex, it just appears that way because of our human fidelity thresholds. How might we distinguish this technologically mediated virtuality from shamanic visions? These rites and rituals facilitate the entering into a certain state of mind, an “altered consciousness” as they say, which may or may not be supplemented or augmented by ingesting psychoactive substances and accompanied by cultural artifacts and paraphernalia, including objects and decorations unique to the physical environments that construct and support the optimized experience. Language and music direct the senses before and during the experience and help us to make sense of what happened afterwards. The shamanic experience itself is characterized by its uncanniness, both more and less realness from our typical conscious orientation. It “appears” both hyper real and less than real and somehow “wholly other” at the same time. The imagery is not generated by a computer and you know you're not wearing a headset, yet one can remain aware that they ingested a mushroom and intentionally positioned themselves in a set and setting that would deeply influence their orientation, so what’s the difference here really? Why is it so “natural” for us to lend agency to the mushroom, to the vine, to the pus that comes out of a Sonoran frog's back? Why are we able to allow those substances to maintain a kind of agency, to cognize a being there, to declare it an ally or a trickster or a teacher or a god? Why are we so unwilling to allow the technologically mediated virtual worlds the same mysterious agency?

This reminds me of that phenomenon where people see forms in television static, or hear voices emerge out of white noise. Is that called apophenia, or pareidolia? I love these questions, yet you’re undercutting the legitimate magic of shamanism. If plant-based shamanism can’t be reduced to a chemical formula, or as a mere stimulation to a part of the brain. Draining all of the magic out of the experience and just focusing on the plant signals a pretty radical shift in the power dynamics, away from the mystical towards the purely human, and elevates us to almost godlike status. My inclination is to move in the other direction, to relinquish the grip on that power. If we perceive the world in a purely materialist sense and distill down shamanic rites into just the compounds that we ingest, this is akin to empirical sabotage.

I love the stoned ape theory. It's a fun one to contemplate, but it certainly required a much wider bouquet of plant interactions to shape and develop the mind. That doesn't take away any of the weirdness, the beauty and the fascination of the story. Plants are literally terraforming the planet, creating the bedrock for life, and whether or not a specific agency emerges from that botanical manifestation, that substrate is where our own consciousness emerges.

Hold on… let's unpack this just a little bit. Plants aren’t terraforming the planet, they are the planet. This reminds me of that Ursula K Le Guin short story Vaster than Empires and More Slow about an alien planet covered with plants that demonstrates its own hyper concentrated, planet-scale, almost telepathic botanical empathy.

I’m currently re-reading David Graeber’s last book, The Dawn of Everything. As an anthropologist and incredibly lucid and astute thinker, he has been systematically deconstructing common sense understandings and myths that we collectively hold to be true and upon which we erect the systems of our civilization, but when we investigate their origins we discover that they have been completely fabricated. To take the stoned ape theory as an example, Graeber simply states that there is no evidence to support the procession of this story, but there is an abundance of evidence that demonstrates that it most likely did not play out that way. As you mentioned, there is an allure to it that is wonderful to bask in, very tempting and inspiring for an artistic sensibility. There is also a dangerous threshold, where we might adopt this origin story for our whole civilization, or for all of human consciousness, build an understanding on a false premise and come to inhabit a false reality. Graeber goes on to outline how bureaucracy and the common sense assumption that civilization requires hierarchically imposed rules when it reaches a certain scale might be merely invented, but perhaps that’s beyond the scope of our conversation.

Is accepting the stoned ape theory a matter of conviction? How might we allow the empirical to interface with the allure of living myths? And at what point do we allow our skepticism to have a seat at the table? How do we maintain a balance between philosophical inquiry based on logical method and a shamanic inquiry based on somatic experience, intuition, oral history, divination, animism and panpsychism? How do we integrate the information from these experiences? What constitutes the plant-based intelligence you are trying to explore in the Plant Based exhibition?

The intention of the exhibition is to assemble works of art that take plants as their subject matter. The artists each approach plants with a very unique perspective. It’s not about appropriating plants as props for rendering a still life, but rather centering on the plant as a highly valued, intelligent, sensitive, or transformative being. It’s like the difference between painting a hired figure model and making a portrait of the president or something. The intention of the artist is very different. There are different formal considerations, a shift in respect and reverence to the subject, maybe even trying to form a relationship and a representation of something that most people overlook. I’d like to open people’s minds to the possibility that plants are not merely inanimate, unconscious, utilitarian matter for our own consumption and pleasure, but potentially gods in their own universe that we pass by everyday, that are infinitely humble and supportive, or maybe wonderfully indifferent to us. How might we imagine the transcendental dimension of plants? Do plants dream of mycelial sheep? When we ingest them, do they lend us their ideas? Do plants inhabit their own “virtual” reality, completely indifferent to us? Have humans become the agents of a botanical scheme to terraform the earth and colonize the human organism? Can plants even be distinguished from the earth? Are plants a botanical hyper-fidelity interface between dimensions of sentience?

Plant Based will be on view August 6-28, 2022 at Tiger Strikes Asteroid: 1206 Maple Avenue, 5th floor, #523, Los Angeles CA 90015

If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider purchasing an NFT of the writing or accompanying artwork.

DD#1

People expressing their opinions online with their money? Is that what it is? How do you trust someone that you’ve never known IRL when you don’t know if they’re using their real name, or if anything that they tell you is trustworthy, or if they are even human? I imagine that hard and soft used in this way comes from the cultures of science and technology, right? Thinking about religion, what comes to mind is Moses descending from Mount Sinai carrying stone tablets, the Word of God written as codified commandments… Was that Moses? God’s voice is the creation and destruction of the universe, so how did Moses even hear the creator in the first place? Could there be a more humble or self-deprecating way of proceeding — in a Wittgensteinian sense — where the code remains law while we exercise humility before the fallacious or tragic reliance upon that code, to recognize the imperfection and act in accordance to an understanding of the imperfection of the code?

DD#2

Did you have a look at the book? Might it be endearing to say, I hate myself because I am a man or I self deprecate my position literally and symbolically? What kind of new world might that bring about? What do you think about that as a provisional method? Is that right? It started with a translation problem, didn’t it? What was that about? What is the Danish word for tangle? Play of kin or battle to the death? Am I getting that wrong? What is this that we’re doing and what is it for me? We design into the constraints of a particular project, because without boundaries — with an infinite potential of possibilities — how does one even know where to begin? How do we know how to make decisions?

DD#3

Was it common knowledge at this time that video cameras were banned? Was the government trying to suppress the production of documentation of what was happening there? How could he dress so conservatively? Would the government even issue us visas to come into the country? Was there an explicit purpose for shutting off electricity? Was it to control communications and to take down channels of communication? To exert brute force control over the people to remind them that they are being dominated? The government discontinued the use of one currency and replaced it with another to render everything in circulation obsolete? What kinds of strategies are being implemented to circumnavigate centralized control? What has been attempted and failed, or what is currently underway with this international collaboration effort? How is social credibility built? How is it formed? How is it imagined? How is it distributed? How does this network of people that have had everything taken away from them successfully mobilize against the panoptic surveillance government leveraging brute military strength, in control of all the means of production and all of the resources? Do any such things exist in our economy these days? With the situation in Myanmar, how can the government be allowed to exist — by the global community — if the people are being denied the most basic access to food, clean water, and electricity? How might what’s happening in Myanmar inform our use of cryptocurrency in relation to this new economy that’s starting to emerge? Also, where’s the reciprocity? How does a virtual economy purporting to exist outside or parallel to the current economic infrastructure reciprocate with the local needs of the community we have been discussing? How can the meta economy of crypto help people in need obtain the physical materials they require for survival, especially considering their limited access to open and free media outlets? Any volunteers?

DD#4

Is it worth it in consideration to all the other things that we might be pouring energy into? How might we put into conversation the principle of symbiosis and sympoeisis with a resolution of the world that is not merely resolved through industrial geoengineering? How we might think of this projection in terms of the technological point made earlier? How might we build our relationship towards a possible resolution of the technological that will — in Benjamin Bratton’s terminology — bring the black stack to come? Bring the unexpected artificiality that we still have not been able to wonder? How do these components intermingle to allow us to gain clarity upon governance? Upon what is to be governed and what needs to be governed and the purpose of governance and who might be governing who? How is the resolution — as the visibility and the legibility — and the constitution — as the organization and codification of that organization — wielded as power? How can I relate and reveal the legibility of that mineral world? Or with the vegetal world? Why is that insulting? What image might put into question the affirmation of selfhood and provide an image of emancipation that will not be received as — perhaps the most important value of modern society — a defense of the individual? How can we think in other images or in other potentialities to open emancipation beyond the imperative of the individual?

DD#5

Why call it research? Where does that come from? Is that yours? Why research, as opposed to another word that might carry a different set of cultural connotations or imply another level of rigor or causality or casualness? Why call it research and not a conversation? Why research as opposed to a story? Why research? Is that about importing an idea of seriousness? Research typically implies a method, so are there presumptions about method? Why research is also another way of asking what is the method? Might we steer this back to what we’re doing in this project and what our intentions are? Did you have some questions about genre, style, and how we render the objective of this research to convey a certain methodology for a purpose or to make it legible? If what is seen cannot be understood in the self-same moment, then what is understanding if not a re-presentation of an experience that could not be comprehended in continuity with its being experienced? Have you read this text, Eichmann in Jerusalem? Who is clamoring for no passports? How do we think about the ideal of no passports historically? How does that relate to the possibility to utter such statements made possible by the great privilege of having a passport from a certain nation? Let’s not attempt to kill the idealism — because the idealism is fucking rad (!) — but might we rescue that idealism from toothlessness?

DD#6

Do you know the band Sunn O)))? Second, let me ask in the same breath, how do we compose this way? The question for me is: after we coordinate successfully, what purpose are we accomplishing? Alongside that, when does the ethical or the ecological or the sustainable futurity come into the equation? Is it forgivable or admissible to become obsessed with coordination itself, because that facilitates these other ideas to come later? Or must we refrain from becoming preoccupied with the means of production and focus upon the purpose of our productions? I really like to think of it as: what obstacles can I introduce to trick myself into forgetting about efficiency for a while, to just nurture these ethical, cultural, social, and artistic aspects of what we’re doing? Whether it’s a cultural stutter or a neurological stutter I’m not so sure, and what’s the difference anyways? If we’re thinking of ourselves in an expanded ecological network, as a networked self tethered to each other, are we stuttering on this notion because we don’t have the words? Is it a clumsiness like a jagged, percussive stuttering? To bring it back to the musical score, how do we notate the opportunity for the stutter so that we can embrace the clumsiness of the composition and somehow stir up a joyfulness in the collaboration? If it’s a matter of shifting our composure and focusing upon coordination in another way, how do we broach the subject with those that are moving so quickly, so boldly? How do we approach that conversation? How do we invite the other to slow down and to unlearn this preoccupation with efficiency and speed? What does it reproduce? What is it producing?

DD#7

Who is the audience? Who is it that we want to influence? Who is the general reader? That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about: what is the rightness that you’re referring to? How do you communicate advanced technical, complex ideas without using your jargon? How much of this conversation will be comprehensible to anyone — expert or layman — in terms of recognizing or comprehending the motivation for the project in the first place? What are you trying to achieve and for whom? Is there anybody looking at the role of Ethereum ecosystems in the bigger picture of community economic ecosystems? The immediate question is: how do you avoid that? If you get enough eyes on the subject, somebody is going to eventually say, Oh, did you think about this aspect of it? When does simulation come in? How does our ability to compose the fidelity of our simulations through our technical jargon and our visual models determine our ability to interact with and navigate these simulations? Might we understand the efficacy of a simulation as a reductionist model that allows us to achieve a minimum distance from reality, to understand our circumstances in a different way? When does a material become a resource? When does that resource become so valuable that we call it treasure? How do we negotiate the tragedy of the commons by exercising such a sophisticated, intentional, resilient, and non-fragile strategy of management that our materials get to where they need to go, but we do not deplete the regenerative potentials of that resource? How do we design governance modalities and treasury management schemes in ways that preserve both? Is this possible? Are they mutually exclusive? Can we increase individual autonomy within decentralized organizations in order to increase the sovereignty of the organization? How do we think of decentralized organizations interfacing with centralized organizations? For example, how does crypto interface with legacy government schemes through tax regulation, the SEC, the IRS, etc.? There are a few people in the cryptocurrency world that are starting to power their mining operations with solar, aren’t they? To take advantage of the geothermal cooling? How do you get rid of the heat?

DD#8

That’s kind of how power works, right? This brings me back to thinking about the Myanmar situation in relation to these cryptocurrency ideas we have been discussing; what does it mean to play this game and who doesn’t have the status to play the game and why don’t they have the status to play the game? When you get left out of the game, what sort of statelessness is imposed upon you because you are not able to join in to this weird meta economy of virtual governance? What is this desire to order and abstract the world around us in order to make sense of the chaos and be able to count things and apply value to them in little categories, little parcels, as opposed to keeping them open and fluid? Nicolas Bourriaud, right? The guy that makes curry in art galleries and then he calls it radical politics or emancipatory coordination? The LungA School in Iceland; it sounds like a dream, right? If you’re in the position to experiment, to have these radical meta conversations, how do the learnings get deployed in ways that benefit people on a more practical level? Does me saying this drag down the high-level abstract thinking? The negotiation occurring at the interstice raises eyebrows and breeds suspicion from all parties, for how could the negotiation result in a sustainable art project? How do you design a project, whether it’s art or business or otherwise, that is somehow able to generate value without causing more harm? To distribute that value in a way that truly benefits all with no losers or victims and is able to be transparent in it’s motivation so that there’s no deception, no need to turn a blind eye to local peoples — often women and people of color — that are not included within the scope of the project? Can you live a life that is an art work? Do you document it? If you do, is it authentic living or does it become something else because you’re still performing? How do we trust those stakeholders to keep the greater good in mind? Is this reducible to race or does anyone know how to effectively keep the needs of the greater good in mind? Who is it that might be advocating for a society with no passports? Who views legal legibility as an encumbrance more than as a protection or as a right or as a certification of identity? If there’s a tension between the utopian ideas being produced by people already benefiting from current systems not necessarily having in mind people who are not benefiting from these systems, is the utopia really applicable to everyone? Does the borderless, passport-less, autonomous and anonymous sovereignty extend to all people in these manifestos and idea spaces? How much of this community’s advocacy for a truly decentralized, autonomous, and open structure is repeating exclusionary structures? How can we come to recognize and test if the motivations are sincere? If so, might they be failing in the execution? Is this perhaps a larger ontological or epistemic problem, that we’re trying to devise a solution for something by referencing a record of cultural and political failures throughout history? Can we figure out a way to leverage this knowledge and tech to serve as a tool that would benefit the revolutionary community in Myanmar? Might we learn to subvert these tools for our own purposes, to distribute currency from those that are willing to give to those that need it at street level? Where are you? In a park right now? Might we leverage this ideology to inject new perspectives into the legacy system, like an ideological COVID that is injected into the delusional, cancerous, obese, bloated corpse of the legacy government economy? Did you ever get to read it? What would an indigenous community think of cryptocurrency? Is there any interest or curiosity in exploring that through this DeathGuild research? To take a completely different system of thinking and see how it is assimilated or digested? Can the ancient stories be given a new voice and the lessons finally internalized?

DD#9

What do you think about that as a setup? Where should we start? You mean the fundraising was a failure? Does that mean that you did not own the house? Why is it so easy? After we had the idea of a school-like situation that we would like to invite people into, we started asking how do we do it? The children of the town would eat lunch and then the fish factory workers came in to eat after, right? What more do you need really in addition to that? Maybe you can tell me a little bit more about that in your own words?

DD#10

Is that a relevant or interesting comparison to make? That being said, how do we resolve what we have resolved through art, without art? How do we resolve what we have resolved through the symbolic, without the symbolic? What is the material conversation that the Nasa traditional doctors experience through their relations with plants that we have constructed as art? How could they work in a different way? In what way could we perform the potential of what is opened through these conceptions that will not become the exotic landscape of cannibal necessities? Sorry, could you clarify that? There was a falsity that you were keenly aware of, as though the indigenous works were being appropriated and fetishized and this constituted a failure? There was a missed opportunity? How do we resolve the problem of labor not procuring emancipation through labor? How do we think-ourselves through our relations towards each other and towards the Earth beyond mere systems of production, beyond the terms of productive labor? How might we re-think those economic systems and configurations untethered from virtuality? The latent potential of Western art is to create distance from the phenomenal world so that we might engage with this potential and pivot our perspective, but how do we perform this without the delusional infrastructure of what art has become? How do we internalize the lessons of art and integrate them into our everyday life, so that art itself might dissolve? Reason enough to let it go?

DD#11

Is that right, or how do you see it? You mean there is a possibility that someone could be weaving an elaborate scheme for malicious purposes to steal this money? Could we potentially be charged with war crimes? Could it actually go that far? Do we care? You are serving as a custodian to an account and then you send that money to the professor and he passes it along to Kyaw Kyaw? What’s the final step? The music compilation generates money through sales, people pay you through PayPal, you transfer that to Kyaw Kyaw’s Swiss girlfriend, and how does the girlfriend extract it? She pulls out Swiss francs and they trade it at a local currency exchange in Myanmar? It comes out as cash and then people at street level pay for the materials that they might need for the resistance efforts there? You know when you can feel emotion in a text message when a situation is really intense? Yes, we were discussing how the government is flexing control over all of the resources, such as electricity, but what about data? These people don’t have bank accounts, but they have cell phones? They’re able to reliably connect to networks that are not being shut down? What about GPS tracking, for example, or the data trail that the transaction history is creating between your PayPal account and the Swiss girlfriend’s PayPal account, or the professor’s accounts? Do you hear of instances of the government persecuting people based on transaction history or communications being shut down? How would someone on street level in Myanmar turn crypto into food, medical supplies, or local services? Where’s the Silk Road of COVID vaccinations and oxygen tanks?

DD#12

How are you? Has your head been full of wonderful delicious dreams of universal basic income algorithms and geothermal heat dissipation solutions for decentralized world finance computers, or have you been occupied with even more exciting things like building libraries of self-reliance literature and contemplating the waste that is grotesquely flowing out of all of our human systems? What do you mean stuff that’s different from that? To the extent that it’s conceptual abstract knowledge rather than phenomenological or experiential knowledge that we acquire from interacting with the world? Certainly it also goes both ways? If we could somehow collect that diversity of perspectives and unify them by our human coordination, what potential might that unlock for how we could teach each other to see the world differently? Where does the artist fit in? Where does the visionary fit in? What kind of person is the rancher telling the anecdote? Where is the core of the rancher’s message? Could we learn to embrace a perspective where a multiplicity of languages co-exist simultaneously? To allow that each might be appropriate for interacting with a specific level or dimension of reality, but that there is no singular universally true reality to be defined by one singular universally true perspective? Might we at least entertain a multiverse or a pluriversality rather than defending a universality, the necessity to incorporate many perspectives rather than resolving the single perspective? How might we embrace that as a way of knowing, as a way of sharing our anecdotes on knowledge and gnosis? What is real? What is the most real? How is that real put into dynamic tension? Is it the conception of the world, the projection that we cast and that we enter into mentally? Or is it the physicality? Is it the corporeal instantiation, the embodied experience? Is it okay to interrupt here for a moment? If that happens, then what, and how does that affect me? Why did that happen? Why do you think Michael Reynolds would choose to do that? Such a powerful dream with so many people organizing behind it and then it comes down to the decision of one man? What motivates the centralized force to squash the potential of the decentralized community? Can you identify specific motivations for wanting to do that? Was the Star Community antagonistic to something that he was building? How do you build community? How do we evaluate or measure the health of a community? How do we identify and design the potential of a community to become sustainable and remain viable through the long-now? If you were able to go back and do it again, do you believe that you would be able to design a decentralized solution that would somehow be able to combat this centralizing force and regain collective autonomy? How could it be designed differently? Would the community be able to sustain itself without Michael Reynolds? Can you identify some of the key roles that you’ve encountered and identify the role you have taken on? The free rider problem, right? What is an intentional community in a nutshell?

DD#13

Do you have any sense of how people are responding so far? Is this like therapy for Travis? Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on reported results? No? Do you mean the audience that will be reading the articles or the other DeathGuild contributors? The question of research relates to power, right? Who’s in a position to evaluate? Is there an evaluator? How does that look? Are the procedures of evaluation always abided by faithfully or is there inconsistency in how they’re applied? Even if there isn’t an official review of what you put together, what does the informal evaluation of it look like? Who’s clapping for what? How does power play into that? How do we render a metric of the relationship between those two things: steward of the community and editor for an audience? Can you tell me about your unease? When does an articulation crossover from shared agonism to rivalrous antagonism? What does agonism look like? How might we inhabit a space of shared agony? Might we somehow cooperate in recognizing the need for a deontological orientation? Might we support each other to exercise agency in shifting the circumstances that are imposed upon us? Who is asked to sacrifice in what kinds of contexts? What counts as sacrifice and who isn’t sacrificing?

DD#14

How do we maintain the goal of this research while relinquishing the need for such a pragmatic goal in the first place, to remain open? How do we design for openings? How do we make space that proliferates inclusivity? How do I speak with a plant? How do I speak with a cloud? How can we code when the systems are not giving? How do we speak to the mountain? He said, the houses are dead? That they are cold houses? How do we know that we are participating in our community in a way that serves our neighbors or that even serves ourselves? What is this entangled network of power relations operating at the infrastructural level? Perhaps my question here is: how do we begin to design our information differently, from the middle out? How might we design our human industries to actively distribute that power, rather than condensing and centralizing it? Where is the road that we are paving with these good intentions really leading? Is it the blind leading the blind? This is the crux of the issue of visibility: can we re-cognize where we are going? Can we identify the architecture that we are constructing while remaining inhabitants of cold houses? How do we escape these patterns? What is a decolonized governance modality? Back to my initial prompt: how do we evaluate the health of our community? How do we build in resonance to local patterns? What to do with the African sculptures in these collections that have become treasures of the queen, but represent a paradigm of stolen artifacts? Similarly, how should we consider the international debt system when all these monetary transactions are built upon colonial standards? How might we come to think through a sympoietic process, in resonance with Donna Haraway? How might we inverse the dynamics embedded in all these technological conglomerates that are transversing our quotidianity? How do we end that cycle without ending the model of life, without imposing violence upon natural systems? How do we end the world without destroying the world, allowing the world-image to regenerate into another form? How to pronounce ourselves through the possibility of patterns towards a possible emergence of an outside that has always been inhabiting us? How might we design the potentiality of addressing ourselves as something other than ourselves? How do we construct and trace links from that space?

DD#15

How and why did you choose to build in Colorado? How can I understand the world problems that you’ve dedicated yourself to as an aeronautical engineer and as a sustainable systems engineer? We continue to fuck up this planet and it’s habitants, so why would we go off to colonize another and think that it would be any different? What else did you want to address? Could we somehow pivot on our own sense of being, to cease to feel that sacredness of ownership over one’s own meat, to render that sensibility more diffuse — not just to the heart, and not just the gut, and not just to the microbiome that we carry around in our salinated meat sack, and not just to the room that we’re in or the field of view that we are manifesting — to incorporate that integral and holistic connectedness to a world rendered whole? There are territories to dissolve, arbitrary distinctions to dismantle, blockages of flows to uncork, people living in terror that will need to be nurtured back to sanity, problems of sustainability to design for, but if our current coordination efforts could amount to a global shift in self-awareness, might we dare to hope for realignment in these other areas? How does Earth create conditions conducive to more life? Will you share your six heuristic principles? What whole?

DD#16

What’s the one thing that comes to your mind first when thinking about this project? What’s the goal? Any rule will take you somewhere, but will you end up where you want? What are the ways that these communities talk about these things? What’s the stuff between the ears that is driving them to do something? What does it mean to transcend the metaphoricity of open-source data inspired by mycelial networks or arboreal root systems in this highly reductivist anthropocentric sense? Do we seriously entertain the possibility that our synthetic human systems could ever approach a level of complexity to become auto-generative, sustainably regenerative, anti-fragile, which is to say natural systems? Is it a feat of incredible human hubris to insinuate that we may still become Gods, creators and destroyers of worlds, forking natural systems from our own ribs? In this DeathGuild project, what is meant by this particular kind of efficiency? Where is the cantankerous root? Can we illustrate such a dilemma through an imposition of individual responsibility? How might we take action steps to instigate a perspectival shift? Where do you enter into a system? Where is the most interesting entry point for our engagement for this project that we have become involved with? Where can we enter? Where can we make an impact? If we are going to be a little bit sneaky about it, where would the most interesting results be produced? If we could gain access to the system, what kind of virus would we plant? What kind of language or code would we change? Assuming that we have power to actually instigate change, where would we enter? Where do we believe that we might address our concerns with these particular technologies and explore alternative ways of designing them? If we had the power, what would we change? Would we hack their manifestos, or what would we do? Are there leverage points in our perception of this system where we could make an input that would make a difference in terms of how the builders are thinking about the world and the reality tunnel they are constructing? You’re proposing that we might identify entry points into the system: is it the manifesto or is there another part of the construct that would allow for a potential opening? At the same time, how might we configure openings in our internal composition as they relate to the external compositions? Perhaps the task is twofold: to identify our entry point into the system, while also preparing ourselves to be agile enough, to be supple enough, to fit into that very slim opening and not be crushed by the weight? Is it chaos or is it entropy? How do we prep you so you can go in and cast the right spells? What do you need to bring on this journey?

DD#17

How can the questions we have generated be put to use? Where would the most interesting results be generated? Does it require interacting with the system in certain ways? If so, how would we identify those ways? What kind of virus would we plant, or what kind of intervention might we perform? What kind of language might we craft to interface with the latent ideologies? How might we shift or modify the direction of the conversation? If we could summon the power to change things, how would we go about it? Where would we go about it? Where is the entry point for us to begin a perspectival shift, or an ontological pivot? How can we use the means at our disposal to contemplate an alternative design language? What part would we change? How do we design ourselves? How do we prepare our orientation to approach a system, in order to be able to identify those entry points? Will we choose to think in terms of a conclusion, to think conclusively or comprehensively about these issues? Do we need another session? We should encourage each other to be open to keeping these questions open-ended, so how far can we open them? How are her texts influential on the Web3-DAO community? Can it still be considered a commons if it’s constantly changing, if it can’t be kept in common? How is it accessible, if that can be used as an analogy? Can I just walk in there? What’s a commons? How might we consider a network as an internet of beings more than an internet of things? How could these decentralized networks start to craft a space for this potential? How might a decentralized and interactive modality of relation allow us to open up this question? Might this technology lead to a recovery of the land? I’m interested in that basic question: how could this network of crypto miners be operating towards a recovery of the land? What does this virtual currency have to do with ecological notions of the sustainable management of a physical commons and all of these other ideas? When does a resource become a treasure? When does a commons become a treasury, a bank, a war chest? How do we manage value in relation to our values? How do we become aware of the flow of resources in our existential systems? Should we call identity a resource? In my opinion, the most important question should be what are we coordinating for? If it’s coordination for pure coordination’s sake, or optimization for optimization’s sake, pure efficiency without explicit human ethics, isn’t this the most disastrous, the most terrific and horrific and grotesque kind of failure? Isn’t this a perpetuation of the same colonial trauma? Isn’t this the perspective that renders the whole world as a resource to be mined for our immediate benefit by sacrificing the potentials of future prosperity and sustainability? Or any future at all for that matter? If you’re not clear about what you’re trying to create, about the change that you’re trying to implement, who knows what you’re going to end up with? Is this the best question that we can serve? Is this the last question? Will we simply resolve that this is not our domain? Might we go further to instill a sense of responsibility that there certainly must be a purpose — purpose must not be thrown under the bus for sake of efficiency — and that purpose defines an ethics, an integrity that we must co-develop as a community? How can your way to your destination be a nurturing process in itself for everything that you encounter and the communities that you engage with and the lands that are part of the journey of getting somewhere? Western art attempts to critique itself while critiquing it’s own embeddedness in the world, right? Isn’t this reason enough to let it go? How could we act upon letting it go? How can a group of engineers, thinkers, and developers of these technologies come to the indigenous University that I’m working with so we can craft a space to think about these problems together? We’re not seeking for answers here, but I’m wondering: is there a better way to articulate this? I thought you were a scientist? I thought we lived in a deterministic universe? Is that a delusion of the master? If you’re engaging with this community and you’re coming from a point of view that there’s an imagination failure in terms of how things are designed and the potential purposes that can exist within those designs, then what kinds of space can you nurture that can hold an expansion of the imagination when you engage with these communities? If we consider the school a space with some particular qualities or properties, how can you carve out spaces in these communities in an interesting, semi-sustained way? Is this the end?

Let’s call them schools (?)

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!

Last time we realized that we needed to identify possible access points for how to enter into the content of the Web3-DAO community that we’ve been ruminating on for the last few months. How can the questions we have generated be put to use? Where would the most interesting results be generated? Does it require interacting with the system in certain ways? If so, how would we identify those ways? What kind of virus would we plant, or what kind of intervention might we perform? What kind of language might we craft to interface with the latent ideologies? How might we shift or modify the direction of the conversation? If we could summon the power to change things, how would we go about it? Where would we go about it? Where is the entry point for us to begin a perspectival shift, or an ontological pivot? How can we use the means at our disposal to contemplate an alternative design language? What part would we change?

I also want to echo Julian’s trifecta of buzzwords, the procession of emancipation, reaction, and desire. How do we design ourselves? How do we prepare our orientation to approach a system, in order to be able to identify those entry points? I think that we all agreed that we must understand the system that we are approaching in order to render it clearly. Part of this task involves formulating appropriate incentives to foster the crafting of alternative desires.

I know that’s a lot. This might be the last conversation that we have, if we choose. Will we choose to think in terms of a conclusion, to think conclusively or comprehensively about these issues? Do we need another session? This is very much a question for me and I leave it to the group to decide. I don’t think that we should be too concerned with coming to conclusions or providing pragmatic solutions. We should encourage each other to be open to keeping these questions open-ended, so how far can we open them?

We also discussed speaking into Elinor Ostrom’s principles. How are her texts influential on the Web3-DAO community? There’s something a little bit confusing about that since the resource of this community is the speculative medium of crypto, which fluctuates so much. Can it still be considered a commons if it’s constantly changing, if it can’t be kept in common?

One answer concerns Ethereum, constituting one particular blockchain and the specific community that has formed around it. These folks are especially keen to articulate that cryptocurrency as a digital public good will serve as a bridge or platform for alleviating the coordination pains of physical public good, to bridge the digital commons into the meatspace commons. They would have us believe that this is the beginning of a world revolution in how we orient ourselves to our economic systems and by extension to each other. This is evoked through the terms of game theory. Life is an economic game of multipolar traps, manipulated by rivalrous players competing in self-perpetuating scenarios that manifest in an infinite regress of delusion and collusion, a race to the bottom. There are strong correlations to the tragedy of the commons of which Elinor Ostrom has so eloquently provided clear pragmatic solutions to rectifying.

A second consideration is from her eight principles, eight rules from which we might distill an easily digestible and universally applicable code of conduct for how to avoid fucking ourselves over, to avoid the tragedy of any commons, digital or environmental or otherwise. We might identify a correlation between that desire to codify human values, to distill and reduce behavior into core principles, and the aspirations of Web3-DAO builders to design trustless systems for how their communities operate, to block the inevitable nefarious actors with transparent, opt-in laws that defer back to the code as the ultimate sovereignty of our social organization.

I still don’t understand how crypto is a commons. It’s not a shared space of land. How is it accessible, if that can be used as an analogy? Can I just walk in there?

What’s a commons? It’s stuff that a group of people want to manage for mutual benefit over time. Commons include a lot of stuff that’s fairly abstract. The English language — or any language — is a commons, for example, and we’re fairly okay with it evolving over time.

Our economic systems are actually a commons that ordinary people have not been much involved in managing and maybe they should be. There are things that national currencies can’t do, vulnerabilities that they embody that a community can’t really do anything about. It’s operating several levels above the individual. If you want certain things to happen in your community, complementary currency can enable an exchange of goods and services to happen when the larger system becomes dysfunctional due to artificial scarcity or other problems.

There is also a physical layer to the Web3 stack that is directly accessible and might be considered a commons. The decentralization of the blockchain has dispersed the ownership of the infrastructure. I have a crypto mining rig in my home that is functioning as a node of an international network. I own this infrastructure and get rewarded for operating a node to support these operations. In this sense, the means of production are owned by the same community utilizing the system, if not necessarily the same individuals.

There’s a fascinating exchange happening here between the notion of a commons and merchandise. The articulation of this referential quality of value that has to do with the excess of an objectified relation with reality. I think that it’s reversed through the possibility of thinking of our infrastructure as commons. This illustrates the power of myth and creates a strong connection with the indigenous communities I have been working with. How might we consider a network as an internet of beings more than an internet of things? This is the impetus to design in a different way. How could these decentralized networks start to craft a space for this potential? For example, there is an ongoing discussion among artists concerning how we will decolonize the museum. How might a decentralized and interactive modality of relation allow us to open up this question? Might this technology lead to a recovery of the land? I’m interested in that basic question: how could this network of crypto miners be operating towards a recovery of the land? The potential of this decentralized configuration of relations might lead us beyond the intangible notion of the historical representation of money towards a direct realization of how a reconfiguration of our relations will impact the operations of our world.

What does this virtual currency have to do with ecological notions of the sustainable management of a physical commons and all of these other ideas? The foundations of this project have been focused on exploring governance modalities, how we envision and make models of governance that function as simulations with real world applicability, metaphors that have powerful effects on how we operate in our daily lives. We have also explored treasury management schemas, which for this aging anarchist artist that hates money is one of the most difficult things to think about. When does a resource become a treasure? When does a commons become a treasury, a bank, a war chest? How do we manage value in relation to our values? How do we become aware of the flow of resources in our existential systems?

For many in the world, privacy might be considered one of the most valuable resources. Should we call identity a resource? I’m not sure, but for the sake of our conversation I have proposed that privacy be considered a fulcrum point upon which issues of anonymity and autonomy are balanced. One’s sovereignty is dependent upon their choice or privilege to obscure their agency.

As non-technical thinkers in this domain, how might we envision a reterritorialization of the landscape of our bodies and minds? This is fundamentally a question of coordination. As Kevin Owocki likes to say, almost like a mantra resonating through the ecosystem, it’s all coordination and it always has been. The core issue to consider — in the DeathGuild project and with Elinor Ostrom’s principles and how all these abstract ideas relate back to the decentralized internet — is the nature of coordination failure. This is what Moloch represents for the community: the God of coordination failure. If we don’t learn how to coordinate better, if we don’t succeed in our coordination efforts, it will be a failure by our own hands, through our own devices.

In my opinion, the most important question should be what are we coordinating for? If it’s coordination for pure coordination’s sake, or optimization for optimization’s sake, pure efficiency without explicit human ethics, isn’t this the most disastrous, the most terrific and horrific and grotesque kind of failure? Isn’t this a perpetuation of the same colonial trauma? Isn’t this the perspective that renders the whole world as a resource to be mined for our immediate benefit by sacrificing the potentials of future prosperity and sustainability? Or any future at all for that matter?

If you’re not clear about what you’re trying to create, about the change that you’re trying to implement, who knows what you’re going to end up with? If we don’t continue to strive for an understanding of how everything’s interrelated we will end up with monocultures and monopolies.

I find this highly relevant. The question of what we are organizing for is a really important question, but I don’t think it’s for us to answer. I’m not involved with these communities. They must decide what they will do. Each DAO has their own priorities for what they want to achieve by engaging with this medium of coordination, but the problem is not just that we don’t know what we’re coordinating for. It’s also the principles for what it means to have successful coordination that seems problematic. When coordination is spoken in this context it seems to pertain to a particular kind of coordination — efficiency and all these words and concepts we have named through these dialogues — that might be very different from the kind of coordination in natural ecosystems and other non-human systems guided by other principles.

The critique that has been developed in these conversations has a lot to do with identifying the principles underlying the idea of what good coordination is, rather than trying to come up with a driving purpose. The question of purpose is not for us. We can critique different kinds of purposes, for sure, but it’s not something that we can provide interesting answers towards.

Maybe we can’t (or shouldn’t) provide answers, but we might continue to contemplate if we are asking the right questions. Is this the best question that we can serve? Is this the last question? Will we simply resolve that this is not our domain? Might we go further to instill a sense of responsibility that there certainly must be a purpose — purpose must not be thrown under the bus for sake of efficiency — and that purpose defines an ethics, an integrity that we must co-develop as a community? Our community must be formed around a purpose, not for the sake of developing highly efficient community building tools in and of themselves.

Yes, surely. The four of us can come up with great purposes I imagine, but if our tools and our thinking for how we would move towards that purpose were guided by a particular discourse, that would have influence on the ethics. For me, the ethical consideration is conveyed in the language and the discourse around coordination. Pursuing purpose in itself is also problematic.

How I’m hearing you is that the journey is an essential part of the process, maybe more important than the destination.

I don’t know about more important, but at least it’s not less important. If you imagine your purpose to be someplace that you’re going to end up, then you will be disappointed. Purpose is a way to set a course and then you start walking there. If you don’t pay attention to everything on your walk, then first of all you’re not going to get there anyway and second of all you’re going to ruin a lot of shit on your way and in the way that you’re walking. If you don’t question what you’re walking on, then… It’s like here in Iceland, full of tourists that just want to get to that volcano, but they’re stepping on all the ancient moss all the time, swarming from all directions, because they just want to get there in a straight line. Of course, it’s important to know where you want to go, but it’s also just as important to really be sensitive about how to get there and what you’re nurturing on the way there. How can your way to your destination be a nurturing process in itself for everything that you encounter and the communities that you engage with and the lands that are part of the journey of getting somewhere?

Earlier today I was editing the second conversation that I had with Julian. I will offer a few lines from the conclusion, which I think are relevant here:

I default back to the necessity of positioning oneself to receive the agnostic sacrament, in order to unlearn the ways that we have known while acknowledging the paradox of attempting to identify and solve for the problem of this worlding vision, while remaining firmly embedded within this decaying vision of the world. Without doing so, we will only perpetuate more of the same reality distortion tunnel, leading to an inevitable appropriation of the identity of the other and the violence of othering more generally. Perhaps we could be generous towards something like the western artistic tradition and say not so much that it has failed to shift our consciousness, to change our minds, but that it has, in fact, succeeded in its own monstrous efficiency, by appropriating itself back into the very system that it attempted to critique, which is to say the world.

Western art attempts to critique itself while critiquing its own embeddedness in the world, right? Isn’t this reason enough to let it go? How could we act upon letting it go? We began today with the prompt to attempt to identify together — not just the how or the what of purpose, but — where we might insert ourselves into the conversation about the importance of DAOs?

For me, tracking the processes through all these relations of relations is very important, but there’s something inevitable to address: the base. Efficiency in organizations departs from a resolution of technology that is already validating an objectified principle towards the articulation, relation, construction, and design of forms. When we’re contemplating models of governance, treasury management, and privacy, it’s inevitable to recognize that there’s already an embedded paradigm of a dialectical system responding to an embedded production of reality. It’s a relation that is inherently biased. My take on how to start a conversation with these systems — or the designers and builders of these systems — begins with questioning the base, to think towards a possible reterritorialization of the foundations.

The exciting potentiality of these systems towards emancipation will not be limited to the redistribution of currencies. The exciting part is in asking how this could lead us to imagining a possible resolution of the articulation of artificiality and whatever might come after that question. It’s currently impossible for me to think of the Web3-DAO frameworks as emancipation, since the currencies are merely operating as decentralized models of the same colonial governance systems. There’s a very potent conversation happening here and I’m not trying to discredit it at all. This conversation is very important and world governments also recognize this importance, as evidenced by numerous prohibitions of cryptocurrency around the world for a variety of reasons. There’s something happening here that is key to articulating an orientation to the contemporary problems that we’re dealing with.

How can a group of engineers, thinkers, and developers of these technologies come to the indigenous University that I’m working with so we can craft a space to think about these problems together? For that to happen we would need to question the objectified notion of technology that enables the economic and governance systems to operate. To question the foundations and continue to explore the potentiality of where these questions could take us will require opening up into spaces that are outside of their own entropy.

In response to that, I have a final prompt that we might all try to respond to. We might certainly identify endemic coordination problems that threaten a tragedy of the commons, but at the foundation of coordination is an imagination problem. From my vantage, it’s all an imagination problem and it always has been.

Julian, I hear you referencing what has been described by Timothy Morton as agrilogistics or by James C. Scott as the high-modernist view, the helicopter scope, God-King colonial imperative. It’s Cartesian perspectivalism, the Copernican turn, the tendency of the rational mind to project a quantifiable grid upon the entire world, to render it as units and articulate a standard metric, emphasizing the importance of quantity over quality simply because quantity can be objectively measured and archived. One foundation that we might question is the importance and value placed upon what can be measured, what can be rendered legible, what can be seen, and therefore what can be visualized through our mental models. When we default to that mode, we essentially suspend the need for imagination, refrain from intuitively probing into the unknown, into the murky morass of pure potentiality.

My fear is that if we don’t learn how to unfuck our imagination — or learn how to dream differently — before we fail by our own coordination catastrophe we will simply, predictably, and tragically perpetuate more of the same. We will continue to terrorize and territorialize according to this need to render legibility, to put forth a machinic vision that reduces all human agents — and really all agents, all agency — into units, metrics, a compartmentalized numerical framework, a purely mathematical vision. The supremacy and the terror of the master’s gaze, of the quantifying eye of the surveyor: this is a vision that owns territories, rather than recognizing an ecological debt to the land. This way of seeing the world — this way or worlding — uproots relations rather than embeds being in a humble entanglement.

Jon, we’ve talked a lot about ecological principles and sustainability. Jonatan, we’ve talked about designing for openings and compositions that take into account the potentials of taking risks. Julian, we’ve been speaking about the importance of ontological pivots or what we’ve been calling epistemic breaks, a break with what we thought that we knew, even a violent break that might allow for an inflow of a radically different way of worlding, a new vision of the world. We’re not seeking for answers here, but I’m wondering: is there a better way to articulate this? This is my limit, the threshold that I brush up against.

I’ve mentioned Donella Meadows’ ideas about places she has identified for intervening in a system to make positive change. The key takeaway from her work is that the only place you can make significant and permanent change is when you get to that embedded paradigm you’re talking about. Any organization has an internal coherence based on their projected paradigm or worldview. Change needs to happen on the level of belief, in how we think about whatever it is we’re creating. That’s really hard, because everybody believes in what they know while the truth is that very little of what we know is objectively true.

That’s a beautiful riddle. I want to ask you to simply answer this question. How do we change our own minds?

You have to decide you want to, for starters. You can decide to believe whatever you want. We have free will here.

So they say. I thought you were a scientist? I thought we lived in a deterministic universe? Is that a delusion of the master?

I’m also a student of consciousness. You can change any belief you have simply by withdrawing your agreement to believe in it. You have to do the work though! You may have to come back to it a few times to say, yes, I really did mean that I’m not going to believe that anymore. We have lots of beliefs that are not beneficial to our being.

If you’re engaging with this community and you’re coming from a point of view that there’s an imagination failure in terms of how things are designed and the potential purposes that can exist within those designs, then what kinds of space can you nurture that can hold an expansion of the imagination when you engage with these communities? Developing these conversations, publishing them, participating in conferences, and critiquing all sorts of things might not be enough. I think there needs to be spaces created — let’s call them schools — for cultivating our imagination. If we consider the school a space with some particular qualities or properties, how can you carve out spaces in these communities in an interesting, semi-sustained way?

Let’s call them schools

I think that your fear is right. I feel the same about this danger. Towards the need for imagination; I think the non-metaphorical dimension of technology could be found in relating imagination to the brain — our meatspace — and the resonance of technologies entering into our imaginary system. It reminds me of something the philosopher Nick Land has written, that we will need to surpass the notions opened up by Deleuze’s rhizome to try to think of a new emancipation that will liberate us from the rhizome itself. Timothy Morton says that Marxism needs to start a conversation with animism if we are going to survive. For me, the importance is to continue exploring how to think in systems that can become something other than themselves, other than what they are. This is the resolution of imagination. The possibility of a non-metaphorical dimension of technology has to do with addressing the world through an embedded resolution. The potentiality of imagination is in directing ourselves out of the mirror. This system will need to look beyond its own construction. Posing this question to the builders might open the possibility of a reterritorialization of our foundations. This is the question we should begin with.

I love that we’re ending on an invitation to begin again. Thank you for that.

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!

Let’s begin with an introduction of what we perceive to be the goals of our talk today. We recognize, each in our own way, the need to design better questions to continue to uncover the most pertinent and prescient problems. I’m not sure where this will lead us, but as always, I am supremely confident that we will end up somewhere interesting.

What’s the one thing that comes to your mind first when thinking about this project? DeathGuild is a piece of something much bigger. I’ve been frustrated in thinking about what this is for. What are we trying to do? What’s the goal? I know from my work in system sciences and engineering that you better be clear about what you want. Any rule will take you somewhere, but will you end up where you want?

Being clear about what you want to create is critically important. Initial conditions of any system determines — eventually — what will happen. If you’re not thinking clearly about that intent, you may end up someplace you don’t want to be. Daniel Schmachtenberger’s A World that Doesn’t Suck is worth taking the time to revisit. Unless we do something different, we’re going to end up with a dystopian future of totalitarian or corporate feudalism or some nasty authoritarian states.

The questions that came to me when Travis posed this project has a lot to do with trying to understand the assumptions in the communities. I haven’t been part of tech communities, but from my own studies on death I’ve been doing a lot of research on immortality throughout history, how different people have pursued this notion of immortality in different ways. There’s a difference with this technology-based pursuit of immortality. There’s a similar movement in Russia that comes out of grassroots community religious movements, doing it for a whole other reason. It’s much more of a religious undertaking. In the tech community, these assumptions about the inherent goodness of technology, of medicine, and the inherent badness of death and the inherent flaws to human design — death as a design flaw — and these ways of speaking about human beings and life… this is what I’m trying to understand. What are the ways that these communities talk about these things? If I don’t understand that, then I don’t think I can understand the DeathGuild project. I’m really trying to understand this community.

What’s the stuff between the ears that is driving them to do something?

I would recommend that we consider working with the resources and with the ideas that we have at hand. This project has so far intentionally excluded insider perspectives to avoid having any individual advocate for or evangelize the potential importance of the community. We are all outsiders to that community and we began from a place of not knowing what those intentions are, but that shouldn’t inhibit us from speculating wildly as to what they should be, or what ours might be if we were to become more involved in that community, or perhaps what any intention might be for any community — if we wanted to get really universal about it — or what values you are coordinating around, the successes and failures of your local context that might impart influence on this unknown readership.

The problematics that are embedded in the constellation that Travis is pursuing in the conversation with the Web3-DAO communities are very resonant with the questions that I am currently trying to integrate in the relationship between the questions that are arising while working with the indigenous communities in Colombia and how those perspectives are inherently and inevitably making me think in a different way to resolve our notion of Western artificiality.

The project of cryptocurrency community building might allow us to rethink the imperative relations to capitalist technologies. If there’s a single word that I’m interested in related to cryptocurrency, it must be emancipation. Again, connecting it back with the deconstruction implicit in the questions that arise through my conversation with the indigenous communities, it’s the paradox and the contrast that I’m interested in navigating.

On that notion of artificiality in relation to emancipation, I would offer a Schmachtenberger soundbite that we might contemplate together. It has been resonating with me, because of how counterintuitive it seems. Schmachtenberger highlights a deception that human beings are susceptible to perpetuating, that the more complex our systems become the more they resemble natural systems. However, human systems are fundamentally synthetic to the extent that human systems optimize for efficiency, meaning redundancies are actively removed. Human systems are inherently fragile, unlike natural systems that are inherently anti-fragile. I can anticipate Jon having some tension with the idea that natural systems are not efficient, but Schmachtenberger means it in a very specific way, that natural systems are full of redundancies that cultivate self-healing, regenerative, proliferating systems. The emancipatory design vision promises that we might somehow move beyond our own inherent artificiality by designing ever-more-efficient artificial systems.

What does it mean to transcend the metaphoricity of open-source data inspired by mycelial networks or arboreal root systems in this highly reductivist anthropocentric sense? Do we seriously entertain the possibility that our synthetic human systems could ever approach a level of complexity to become auto-generative, sustainably regenerative, anti-fragile, which is to say natural systems? Is it a feat of incredible human hubris to insinuate that we may still become Gods, creators and destroyers of worlds, birthing natural systems from our own ribs?

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

This connects with something we discussed one week ago concerning the metaphoric constellation of nature — the mycelium, the rhizome — that permits a break and the possibility of stepping outside of purely metaphorical lands. A key point to break is centered on evolutionism, to work towards a space where we could begin to emancipate ourselves from that perspective that we come from nature.

We might consider the difference between Darwin in the Galapagos and his theory of evolutionism and how the indigenous epistemologies are very close to those territories already navigating their own unique theory of relation. We might consider that the anthropocentric image of nature emerged from an artificially linear procession stemming from the perceived necessity to objectify nature. Our artificial subject and object relations are embedded in our conception of nature and the human, forming a division that the epistemology of shamanism can put into question.

For the shaman to enter into relation with the plants requires an inherently non-metaphorical approach. During a conversation with one of the shamans of the indigenous communities, we arrived to a ceremonial place and he began making a comparison of how the wood that we were seeking was some sort of mirror of what we understood as a book. When you speak to the wood, when you speak to the fire, when you speak to the plants, there is a way to enter in resonance that doesn’t inherently involve the signification process as we know it. The epistemology of shamanism existed before the acknowledgement of the evolutionary theory coming from Darwin.

This should be contextualized locally, not as a universal transcendence or emancipation. Perhaps it’s not the earth that’s being destroyed, but a world, an anthropocentric worldview, related to the perspectival or ontological shifts that you are highlighting. We’ve spoken about Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and the importance of a reciprocity that might be extended beyond our own humanity or our own human-ness, to be able to foster a reciprocal community building with the living world around us. There’s an existential risk that we must contemplate in relation to the urgency in attempting this ontological shift.

I’m curious about what systems you’re talking about when you say that human systems are inherently synthetic because they are designed for efficiency. There’s tons of human systems and relations that are not designed for efficiency. Efficiency is also often not efficient. Efficiency is a very particular term understood in this context. The efficiency of these other epistemologies means something else. Many of the systems that we consider efficient might be perceived as completely inefficient from another epistemic standpoint. In this DeathGuild project, what is meant by this particular kind of efficiency?

There are leverage points in a system that must be understood if you want to change it. This is the purpose of modeling and analyzing system dynamics, to identify what those leverage points and dismantle our intuitions of where we believe they should be. Growth is one of those fallacious intuitions. We think growth will solve all the problems, but it’s actually creating most of the problems.

Growth is often used as a metric for success and efficiency, yet it is also the factor that hampers the sustainability of a system.

Donella Meadows has contributed significant work on locating places to intervene in a system. If you change the paradigm of a system, everything else in that system has to adapt to that change. Much of our world is terminally reductionist, so we must consider alternative approaches to influencing our human processes.

At some point in history we might have considered ourselves to be securely part of the natural system. With a subtle shift, perhaps while transitioning from hunter-gatherer society to developing more sophisticated tools to reap higher yields from the land initiating the agrilogistic compartmentalization of territory into units that we continue to this day, we broke that essential tether and began to exercise domination, control and power over the world. At that point, a shift in the archaic mind, integration of tool-being as an extension of our corporeal ability, and shifted orientation to the landscape signalled an introduction of efficient yields that surpass the sustainability of our natural relations. We can trace this human delusion through the development of the conceptual apparatus of Descartes, Copernicus, Newton, and the cerebral technology of the modern world. We are now developing tools to modulate purely abstract systems of disembodied coordination. This hallucinatory vision of synthetic efficiency is terminally reductivist and thoroughly human.

The efficiency that I think you’re referencing now alludes to exerting some kind of control over the context in which the system exists, a monopoly through the exclusion of competition to create monocultures. Part of it seems to be about avoiding misunderstandings, miscommunication, miscoordination, and generally avoiding the human element altogether, avoiding having to trust each other, avoiding the human error, avoiding the human tendency, and designing the human out of the equation. These seem to be points particular to the context that you’re working in.

Monocultures and monopolies are absolutely counter to laws of life on this planet, an absolute violation of ecological law.

Yes, which is why it seems confusing that this has become central to notions of efficiency.

My fear is that we will not be able to reconcile the need to remember a direct and immediate orientation to the landscape and the other beings that populate this world with this notion of efficiency. My fear is that we will not recognize soon enough the dangers of considering indigenous ways of knowing as inefficient in relation to processes optimizing for their own goals. This is the tipping point of existential risk in terms of a global catastrophe that will remain nameless — because it has so many names — and where we might recognize the potential to become-jaguar and avoid the contorting anthropocentrism that deforms the world.

Examining our own extractivism is a path for reconsidering how to design differently. I recently read an interview with a French philosopher who was asked about technology. She didn’t elaborate much more than to say just think where all these minerals come from to construct your technological infrastructure. That can be an apparently simple question, a primordial notion to address in terms of relation to land. The most compelling task of the conversation with indigenous mentalities is that there’s a way to relate to land that doesn’t have to do with efficiency, that doesn’t have to do with a system of production. There is another way of relating and sharing with the world that doesn’t involve the imperative of production. That’s the most intriguing aspect of thinking of emancipation in this sense.

There’s something that Travis said in the beginning of our conversation about an absence in these systems that made me think about — something that I’m constantly driven to reconsider — the reconfiguration of our presence as an absence, in order to re-meet the other. Cryptocurrency might be considered as an interesting absence inside of a production system that might offer us an opportunity to re-cognize our presence system, re-configure the possibilities of what is to come.

One of the unique aspects of our familiar culture is the idea that it’s okay to own land. Given that reality, how do we work with that or what do we do about that, if anything Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize in Economics, positively asserts that it’s possible for people to successfully manage a commons. I’m thinking duh, yeah, they’ve always been able to do that if other factors — internal and external — don’t interfere. I consider economics to be kind of a faulty science. There’s an old adage: playing with half a deck is a symptom of insanity. Economists will tell you that natural capital, the environment, nature, and social capital is available in infinite supply for those with capital, the infrastructure, and the cash to use and exploit to generate more wealth. The dumping of an infinite amount of waste and toxic material back into the world is justifiable in relation to short-term economic wealth generation.

There are internal and external factors at play here. Where is the cantankerous root? Can we illustrate such a dilemma through an imposition of individual responsibility? Julian, how might we take action steps to instigate a perspectival shift? Jon, you have mentioned previously that it’s the individual’s responsibility to become a competent contributor to our shared systems. So if coordination is a choice, how do we choose? Jonathan, you have proposed that perhaps the shift in perspective we require should be framed as selflessness, but as the other side of selfishness, that we must escape our hubris and excess of pride in order to see clearly and act deliberately. The existential risk of failing in this task will result in reproducing the very system that we are actively trying to deconstruct, perpetuating the debilitated imagination that we should be dedicated to unraveling.

The North Atlantic right whale found dead off Long Island, N.Y., earlier this month has been identified as Snake Eyes, a 40-year-old male, last seen entangled in fishing gear in Canadian waters.

Where do you enter into a system? There are all these different knobs you can turn, soft spots to poke… where is the most interesting entry point for our engagement for this project that we have become involved with? We might speculate on this together, to acknowledge this position from the system’s perspective and try to consider possible access points. Where can we enter? Where can we make an impact? If we are going to be a little bit sneaky about it, where would the most interesting results be produced? If we could gain access to the system, what kind of virus would we plant? What kind of language or code would we change? Assuming that we have power to actually instigate change, where would we enter? Where do we believe that we might address our concerns with these particular technologies and explore alternative ways of designing them? If we had the power, what would we change? Would we hack their manifestos, or what would we do?

Are there leverage points in our perception of this system where we could make an input that would make a difference in terms of how the builders are thinking about the world and the reality tunnel they are constructing?

I imagine two sides of this call to action. Jonathan, you’re proposing that we might identify entry points into the system: is it the manifesto or is there another part of the construct that would allow for a potential opening? At the same time, how might we configure openings in our internal composition as they relate to the external compositions? For example, Julian recently illustrated a procession from desire to reaction to emancipation. Perhaps the task is twofold: to identify our entry point into the system, while also preparing ourselves to be agile enough, to be supple enough, to fit into that very slim opening and not be crushed by the weight?

The big challenge when contemplating intervening in any system is accurately modeling the system.

We might begin with a simple system to understand that there are broad principles at play so that we don’t have to guess about our engagement and then expand that understanding towards more complex systems, building up a complex image from simple parts like components in a truck engine. Some knowledge is reserved for the local level — the parts — and another quality of awareness maintains the whole — the engine. The level of complexity determines whether we can actively probe, experiment, and see what happens, or whether we might have to throw ourselves into the middle and act with seemingly chaotic variables to see what happens. We might continue to remind each other that we are dealing with a system that is very complex, but also has an element of chaos to it; we must develop strategies for guessing, that there is no way of knowing with certainty.

Is it chaos or is it entropy? We are always embedded within larger systems even if we lack the awareness to communicate with them. For our next conversation I propose that we focus on Elinor Ostrom’s eight rules for managing a commons as a prompt to consider individual responsibility in relation to that very pragmatic goal of managing common resources together.

The official marker dedicated to the late Elinor Ostrom at Indiana University

I really like this question of how we can speculate inside the system, how to put our feet in. Paraphrasing from our conversation from last week, the master’s tools cannot change the master house. How might we reconsider these doubts — not simply as a reaction to capital, but — towards an alternative system that would allow us to desire differently. I have a few ideas. How could we change the incentives for artists? Instead of offering economical prizes, carrots on a stick, we might offer unique entry points of engaging with the world; offer access to unique resonations with the ways we desire.

I have an image of us prepping you, Travis, to go back into the Web3-DAO community with better tools. I like that. You’re the man in the field and we’re the team behind the lines helping you strategize. How do we prep you so you can go in and cast the right spells?

I love that.

What do you need to bring on this journey?

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!

Shamans and mystics and people that are spiritually developed have known for a very long time that we’re connected to the whole. We’re not separate; never have been, never will be, it’s impossible. There’s a field of energy behind everything manifested in matter. This is one of the really difficult ideas that physicists discovered about reality. Quantum mechanics extends some of the most rigorously tested, researched, and validated ideas that have come along through the history of civilization. That field is just crammed with knowledge about everything you could possibly imagine. Shamans and spiritually developed persons can go into their heart to interface with that information and come to know things. There are still lots of scientists that don’t want to face the uncertainty about the nature of reality.

I was on a drive earlier, driving through the canyons of New Mexico, crafting a cerebral space with my partner inside the vehicle while observing the landscape passing by and feeling a resonance with that landscape. The landscape was facilitating the conversation that we were having and contributing to the way that we were feeling. Not to say that the landscape was responsible for it, but it certainly was the backdrop contextualizing how we were making ourselves. Then I started thinking about concentrations of tech communities. Everyone knows Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area; there is a congregation in Denver, Colorado, and many other places around the world. The Web3-DAO community that I am becoming a part of is trying to attend to problems that they consider to be as old as civilization itself, yet how has that civilization imposed itself upon their ambitions? The solutions that they are currently developing are sometimes described as completely novel, or as a manner of developing solutions that is distinct and unique.

In that context, I began thinking of you: a 75 year old systems engineer, life-long student of self-reliance strategies, and a man with some true grit. I mean that as a compliment; to have some dirt under your fingernails, hands-on building experience with sustainable architecture. Our conversations concerning the development of sustainable architectural practices completes a full circle of knowing and unknowing at the core of this DeathGuild project: understanding how to live in a sustainable manner on the terra firma of planet Earth facilitates the awareness that is needed to sustain life in the most inhospitable places beyond the veil. This is precisely the state of mind required to approach the problems we are attempting to solve with our digital tools. That’s the meaning of the word apocalypse, right? It means to peer behind the veil, so venturing into outer space might be considered the ultimate apocalyptic scenario.

But I digress. I’m wondering how Colorado has influenced you and continues to influence this new generation.

There seems to be a cycle taking place, an alignment of imagination to attend to a core problem of humanity that is as old as the sands of time, a problem of coordination, a problem of scale, of being able to understand the ramifications of these huge systems that we are embedded within while still being able to maintain focus on the immediate tasks at hand. All of these components are related and that’s what we might talk about today. DeathGuild is trying to understand governance modalities, how resources flow through our human systems, and how we might logically manage these flows while discerning the importance of identity and securing the right to privacy as a delicate balance of agency, as a fulcrum between autonomy and anonymity, that comes to define the thresholds of sovereignty within our human systems.

This is where I begin my meditation about context, about the house that you’re building for yourself. How and why did you choose to build in Colorado? How can I understand the world problems that you’ve dedicated yourself to as an aeronautical engineer and as a sustainable systems engineer? At 75 years of ripe young age, I wonder if you might venture some words of advice to this younger generation of engineers and developers, to expound upon some mistakes that you have made, to articulate some things you would have done differently, or maybe to elaborate some tidbits of information that were slow to reveal themselves, that required 40 or 50 years of dedicated practice to really get a handle on.

I’m not sure how Colorado has influenced me, but it’s interesting that you’re talking about reinventing the wheel. It seems to be a normal human thing to do. In some cases, there’s a negative feeling rooted in not really wanting to know what other people have accomplished in order to justify isolating, withdrawing, doing their own thing, and then feeling proud when they discover something. I frequently had to interact with academics at various universities across the country and quite a few really didn’t want to know much about what their colleagues were up to. In some cases, I ended up knowing more about what was going on in their field. I tried to tactfully encourage them to work together.

Since the scientific revolution, we have Descartes saying the only way to understand systems is to break them into parts and study the parts and it certainly brought us tremendous gains and advantages, but these revolutionary thinkers were overly concerned with articulating conclusions, many of which are absolutely wrong. You can’t fully understand a system by studying its parts. That’s impossible. By only studying the parts, we fail to understand the system’s purpose, which leads to the idea that nothing has any purpose and the only purpose that exists is what we assigned to it, which is absolute nonsense. It is the parts interacting in a good way that allow the purpose of the system to emerge from the activity. If we can learn to live life on earth without destroying ourselves or our surroundings, then there might emerge a purpose for us to live and work in space. Until we achieve sustainable practices here, we won’t have the knowledge or the embodied belief systems that will allow us to survive in those other situations.

I think that human beings have no purpose in space. I am personally opposed to space colonization as a grotesque expenditure of resources that would be better invested back into our own sustainable infrastructure, here and now. The delusion of space exploration is an extension of a violent colonial project, more of the same land grabbing with clear winners and losers. I wouldn’t hold you or any individual accountable for this delusion, as it’s more of a manifestation of a global human psychosis to colonize and to conquer. We continue to fuck up this planet and it’s habitants, so why would we go off to colonize another and think that it would be any different? Get it sustainable here and then let’s talk.

I understand that. Until we get life sustainable on Earth, until all the human stuff — all the physical stuff and all the abstract stuff and all the organizational stuff — until we get those things aligned with life thriving on the planet, we don’t have any business in space.

An idea has been passed around in a few recent conversations I’ve had this week. Concerning the status of DAOs, some have noted that we’re getting pretty good at the decentralization part, but we are still failing at the autonomous and organizational parts. We haven’t come close to figuring out the whole package yet.

Since the advent of civilization we have had to deal with specialized labor and the evolution of elites that thought they were superior to everybody else, rapaciously using both planet and people for their own personal gain without much consideration for the negative impacts of that behavior. Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest, along with other scientific theories of the day, have been used to justify this behavior. It doesn’t require a great leap of the imagination to understand the progression to eugenics, the structural racism of the Nazi Party, and all of that horrific business. Elements of that delusion remain covert in this country even now, because we have invited Nazis here to work in various industries.

We previously discussed the incredible documentaries of Adam Curtis, especially The Century of the Self that documents the migration of Nazi propaganda techniques, as developed by Joseph Goebbels for the Third Reich. These ideas were translated into a sophisticated sabotage of the American populous imagination via commodity fetishism, subliminal techniques of Madison Avenue marketing departments, and the ongoing psychological warfare on public perception.

For me, this calls up profound problems pertaining to the use of social credibility metrics as a tool for determining the health of an organization, illustrating a striving for cultural optimization akin to social engineering on par with Hitler’s vision, embedding ideological seeds within a population of people that are then able to mobilize the ideas through local industry with global consequences. This is a big leap that I’m making and I don’t mean to gloss over the last 80 years of socio-political progress, but there is an element to our ongoing societal calculations and sub-optimization fantasies that seems obviously correlated to a militaristic projection of territorial ownership. This is the ideological fuel that propels our rockets into space.

What else did you want to address?

Let’s expand on the mind-body problem.

Softer sciences mimic methodology from other scientific branches, like physics, but these methods have led to dramatic misunderstandings. The part of the body that processes and stores and knows information can’t be reduced to the brain alone. It’s all the organs working in tandem as a system: it’s the heart, the gut, various constellations of neurons that have a great deal to do with how we think. Every single cell participates in knowing stuff. It’s far more complex than a rational mind emanating from an organic brain, like a computer and its operator. This weak metaphor has become a powerful meme for disseminating a false conception of the self and our world.

The mind-body problem is a false problem, a purely synthetic abstraction that dissociates us from the world and is the beginning of all the horrors that follow. The Cartesian projection upon the world, in striving for ultimate legibility, creates false distinctions between things. If we could attend to the base principles of mind as a synthetic concept — a quintessential human delusion — to move towards a position that considers persons and perspectives as holistically and integrally tethered, we might begin to unravel the territorial alienation of discrete selves. The territorial threshold of the body is also an arbitrary construct. To purport that I am somehow confined to this meat, to deny my sense(s) of self from manifesting in shared space, or inversely that the physical outside somehow stops at the threshold of my epidermis, that I am not actively diffusing-with and into it, is to deny a profound potentiality of collective being and becoming.

We live materially and pneumatically with the pressures, forces, and circulations of particles that create the potential for statements of being through context. We are salinated water balloons of pneumatic, lymphatic, and cerebral pressures suspended in an elegant composure by calcified, mineralized scaffolding skeletons at the service of microbial gut flora. Who is it that really wants to get outside and explore strange new worlds? Moloch is a mythical god of human coordination failure personified as a bullheaded cosmic crematorium, but perhaps a more fitting image might be a super organism, a space obsessed microbial mind virus, pure disembodied colonial psychosis.

Where does the we and the they begin and end? This is all part of the same mind-body split accounting for all interpersonal discrepancies. Maybe this is the most essential rabbit hole we should be spelunking in. Maybe seeing all the world as a series of nested economic games, as a human coordination problem, is in itself a false problem. This meditation begs the asking of a question so large I can scarcely think it and will certainly struggle to articulate it. Could we somehow pivot on our own sense of being, to cease to feel that sacredness of ownership over one’s own meat, to render that sensibility more diffuse — not just to the heart, and not just the gut, and not just to the microbiome that we carry around in our salinated meat sack, and not just to the room that we’re in or the field of view that we are manifesting — to incorporate that integral and holistic connectedness to a world rendered whole?

If every individual could learn to integrate that vision and shift their perspective, would that amount to a global coordination success in shifting our vision of the world and our place within it? Would all of the previous failures unravel? Coordination is a choice, but certainly there’s more to it than that. There are territories to dissolve, arbitrary distinctions to dismantle, blockages of flows to uncork, people living in terror that will need to be nurtured back to sanity, problems of sustainability to design for, but if our current coordination efforts could amount to a global shift in self-awareness, might we dare to hope for realignment in these other areas?

During the 10 year period when I was working intensely on sustainability, I probably went to 200 conferences. I tried to talk to everybody. I encountered countless organizations putting forth missions that resembled each other; they were all compatible. There are people all over the planet, distributed organizations dedicated to developing new ways of doing things that will enable the survivors with some good information about how to put it all back together again.

I hear you describing a strength based in resilience and agility, rather than fortification or protecting proprietary knowledge.

Many individuals I encountered were totally open about what they were trying to do, what their activities were, how they were approaching problems. Everyone wants to bend your ear about how they’re trying to help make the world a better place, and they’re often succeeding. Where I ended up, after looking at this for a long time, is that all of those systems need to be brought into compliance with the ecological rules for physical life on the planet. It’s a matter of survival. After looking at everything I could find about sustainability for a couple of decades, I came up with a list of 21 underlying principles, but even this is too many for most minds to contend with. It really comes down to six heuristic rules.

I finally started to figure out that on Earth there is a prime directive, a way of understanding Earth operations that are reliable and predictable. Earth creates conditions conducive to more life. If any system is not doing that, sooner or later, it will fail. With Earth systems, the time periods are much longer and so there is a tendency, because of our short lives, to dismiss these systemic principles and disregard the future. How does Earth create conditions conducive to more life? The answer to that question is a set of ecological principles, like flight rules for spaceship earth. They’ve been developed over billions of years by non-human agents. I think the foundation of all religious and scientific thought comes from an intuited awareness of these ecological laws.

Will you share your six heuristic principles?

One of the key rules is that it’s not about you anymore. This is tough for a test pilot, because up until that point it’s always been about them, competing to get that next slot, stuff like that. When they become an astronaut, the mission and the system that you’re in becomes the most important thing, far more important than the individual. That’s the hardest lesson for an astronaut to learn. The absolute goal is total competence, to do the job that you’re supposed to be doing with no exceptions. A plus one is a person goes out of their way to do things that help the system, to identify problems before they manifest. You can’t ever claim it. If you say you’re a plus one, because you act like one and demand to be treated like one, you’re probably really a minus one, and you’re likely to get people killed.

What is worse than a dead astronaut? 7.9 billion dead astronauts

Jon Schulz’s Ecological Laws:

1. Networks and systems within systems (everything is interrelated)

2. Flows, cascades, and cycles with extreme efficiency and no harm

3. Local, current, solar based energy (light, heat, electricity, wind, geosource, hydropower, etc.)

4. Cooperation and Partnership

5. Diversity

6. Dynamic balance

The ecological laws are an integral set or system of requirements that cannot be considered separately. They are really just one law. You don’t get to pick and choose. Implementation of these laws is always context specific, meaning that the characteristics of a place (physical, biological, and cultural) drive how the laws can be satisfied. These laws apply to all human activity.

1. Networks/Systems within Systems

At all scales of nature, we find living systems nested within other living systems — networks within networks. Their boundaries are not boundaries of separation but of identity. All living systems communicate with one another (information flows) and share resources (energy and matter) across their boundaries. Living systems are fractal. We are not separate from anybody or anything. There is a deep underlying unity. Everything and everyone is deeply interrelated.

2. Flows/Cascades/Cycles

All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy from their environment to stay alive and all living systems continually produce waste. In this, they are dissipative structures. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, as one species’ waste is another species’ food. Thus, matter and energy cycle continually through the web of life (including geophysical cycles) over time. Energy, matter, and information flow in cascades through ecosystems generating extreme efficiency. Creating no harm is integral to these processes. Toxins create harm, reducing efficiency. Nature is the absolute master of efficient matter and energy use. These considerations eliminate nuclear energy as presently conceived as a viable option for the future.

3. Local/Current/Solar Based Energy

Solar energy, transformed into chemical energy by the photosynthesis of green plants, drives ecological cycles. Other forms of solar energy, such as solar thermal, solar electricity, hydropower, ground source, wind power, human and animal power, and even metabolic heat are used by life and ecosystems and are available to man. A key aspect of this law is working within currently available energy flows (short term energy storage is certainly OK). Also, these energy sources are decentralized and local or regional in nature. While there are exceptions, ecosystems do not tap into reservoirs of ancient solar energy such as coal, gas, or oil.

4. Cooperation/Partnership

The exchanges of energy and matter in an ecosystem are sustained by pervasive cooperation. Life did not take over the planet and thrive by competition and combat but by cooperation, partnership, and networking. Darwin said that the evolution of human societies would be based on caring and cooperation.

5. Diversity

Ecosystems achieve dynamic stability and resilience through diversity and complexity, through their webs of relationships and the feedback loops created by that diversity. The greater their diversity, and, hence, the richness of their relationships, the more adaptable, flexible and resilient they become. The more diverse ecosystems are, the more innovative and creative they are. This is as true of human societies as natural ecosystems. Monocultures and monopolies, while in some sense efficient, violate ecological law and reduce or eliminate resilience and adaptability.

6. Dynamic Balance

Ecosystems are flexible, ever fluctuating networks. Their balance and stability is a consequence of the diversity of multiple feedback loops that keep the system (its flows of matter, energy, and information) in a state of dynamic balance (relative stability). No single part of the system is ever maximized or optimized; all variables fluctuate around their optimal values for the benefit of the whole. What whole? Answer: ultimately all life on the planet.

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!

Maybe there’s some way we could relate this back to Arturo Escobar and Viveiros de Castro. Wielding these concepts can provide us with access to conceptual instrumentation that is very well calibrated, because it includes thousands of years of astute thinkers that have dedicated themselves to reason and logic, but on the other hand, this is the same instrument that is wielded by the Eurocentric colonial epistemology that wreaks havoc upon the equilibrium of other sensitive dispositions, steamrolling difference of perspective. I want to craft this project and these conversations into a design for potential openings, to challenge my own perspective and my own biases and to provoke you, as well, to the extent that it’s deemed productive and beneficial for your own projects, but never to the extent of becoming destructive or imposing an ontological violence.

While considering the would-be audience for this work — they are engineers and they are academics and they are laymen — I continue to wonder how we should strategize our mode of conversation. How do we maintain the goal of this research while relinquishing the need for such a pragmatic goal in the first place, to remain open? How do we design for openings? How do we make space that proliferates inclusivity? We must do it together; that much seems certain. I can’t do it alone and I’m able to recognize that. I know incorporating some dissensus seems very essential. If we have a conversation where we agree on everything, this may confirm an inherent bias that we should be actively deconstructing. It’s important to strategize distances, disagreement, tension, and friction as productive forces. I think that you are an excellent person to coordinate such a conversation with, because we both have a shared background in the arts, and although we come from very different places we have somehow found ourselves expressing enthusiasm for sharing some common ground.

There’s a lot to knit from that thread. I had a similar experience during my project at the Autonomous Intercultural Indigenous University. It’s very difficult to recognize that the preconfiguration of my thinking was being put into question. There’s something about loosening control of rational processes that enables the possibility of those processes of dissent. There are three things that come to mind. This week I read a recent interview with Jacques Ranciere, a post shared by Stephen Shapiro. I quote Ranciere, he says:

We found ourselves not based in capital, but inside it. All we can do is dig holes, try to create and enlarge spaces of non-consent. The challenge is to manage to maintain dissensus, maintain a distance. What can this distance produce in the future? We don’t know, but even these figures of distance are a way of living differently in the world we challenge.

This is what Jaques Ranciere said a few months ago in the context of the pandemic and this resonates with my own writing. Equivocity is a very important notion in the theoretical matrix of How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn. Equivocity is the possibility of signaling towards matter to generate language from radical difference. How do I speak with a plant? How do I speak with a cloud? Working with the traditional doctors of the NASA communities to explore the dialectical frame with traditional medicine has allowed me to observe that there’s an interesting approach towards the de-anthropomorphization of language. How can we code when the systems are not giving? How do we speak to the mountain? Equivocity is a powerful matrix to entangle a position towards language.

Viveiros de Castro’s work put in relation with Gille Delleuze can be considered a disjunctive synthesis, a chain of relations articulating themselves from dissensus, creating from radical difference and trying to structure the possibility to come — or what’s about to come — into a matrix of equivocities. This relates to how we resolve nation states, how we resolve identity, or how you resolve the Artificial when the system to elaborate those concepts puts into question the objective paradigm of subjective difference. I’m currently reading After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration by Holly Jean Buck and she provides a really interesting entanglement to this topic: thinking with the best intentions towards what these systems could bring to the world, while also knowing the cybernetic structure that we’re communicating through is structured upon colonial configurations that reveal a very violent matrix.

Holly Jean Buck addresses interesting notions like decolonizing the atmosphere. She is very critical of the romantic mode of thought that considers ecology without design. Design is considered as a colonial imperative, the very supposition that she’s trying to distance herself from. Her perspective is problematic, but it’s edifying to think with her. She is trying to think about ways we might reverse the industrial complex as we know it today to transition to a decolonized atmosphere. The carbon debt that we have with the planet is not a problem that can easily be solved through ceasing our use of fossil fuels. It’s not enough, as we will still need to remove the mess created by the industrially developed world. She tries to think of scenarios of infrastructure and politics to create an industry of carbon removal through a decolonial frame. It’s a challenging landscape.

“If the climate was a bank we would have already saved it”

My initial response comes from a conversation with a friend in Colombia, Edward Gil Jimenez, a traditional doctor of the Yanakuna community. Something really challenging happened when he came to visit us in our apartment in Popayán, Colombia. When he arrived he said, You are living in a part of the city in which the houses are dead. They’re cold houses. The cold house is a house that is not alive.

He said, the houses are dead? That they are cold houses?

He said that the houses were not alive. He explained that he teaches methods of constructing houses for the Yanakuna communities at the Indigenous University. To build a house is to connect with a form of life through them. The house is a self for the Yanakuna’s and that comes from a relation with the minerals and the materials used on the house. Each person of the community makes their own house and the house is built with the collective help of the community. You dig a hole to process the mud and that contact with the materials is not made from the imperative of objectification, but built from the awareness of a living entity. Eduard described it as the Mother Earth extending filaments, extending relations to you, and you are building something in resonance to those patterns. The construction takes form by taking into consideration the astral landscape surrounding the area. It’s very important to have windows to let in the sun and the moonlight, like a calendar. A material construction that doesn’t have these relations requires harmonization to re-connect this matrix of relations. Bringing it back to geoengineering, the awareness and the articulation of the resolution of our relations could take us towards a cybernetic infrastructure that will encompass the relations extended from the planet we inhabit. Rather than the imperative of value extraction and colonial objectification, we could design an integral mode of geoengineering (although that word is already charged with a structural bias), a network of satellites as a relations of selves.

I might need to think this through again, just to make sure I’m understanding it all. I’m left with a question about understanding the health and integrity of the community that we’re participating in, a desperate question of this moment that is relevant to everyone living everywhere. Our local conditions are being affected by global forces. This paradigm — this matrix of relations, as you say — is so large and so complex that we require satellites of (supposed) objectivity in order to glimpse our current state of affairs. How do we know that we are participating in our community in a way that serves our neighbors or that even serves ourselves?* *To the extent that we design ourselves first ontologically to become a positive force in our communal relations, this is a question of sustainability.

You have described an ecological framework of our cybernetic relations that amounts to a cerebral architecture that is collectively constructed. Resolution, as you have used it here, is perplexing to me. Is resolution used in the sense of relief, to feel better about the cerebral architecture that we are constructing, or is it resolution of a problem, relief resolved by providing pragmatic solutions, to focus on solving this problem so that we might move on to the next of an infinite procession of problems to be solved? This is an inheritance of the rational-industrial mind serving infinite technological novelty and planned obsolescence.

You mentioned Deleuze and I’m reminded of his essay, What Is a Dispositif? What is this entangled network of power relations operating at the infrastructural level? It exists at the soft infrastructure of human bureaucracies and governments and the physical geoengineered infrastructure, the stack of information as it is pulled from the ground and erected as a monument of human ingenuity, and this has always taken place as a top-down hierarchical imposition on the world. Perhaps my question here is: how do we begin to design our information differently, from the middle out? How might we design our human industries to actively distribute that power, rather than condensing and centralizing it?

In relation to the book on geoengineering, you used the phrase best intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so they say. Where is the road that we are paving with these good intentions really leading? Is it the blind leading the blind? This is the crux of the issue of visibility: can we re-cognize where we are going? Can we identify the architecture that we are constructing while remaining inhabitants of cold houses? For me, it’s a question of aesthetic formalism, the need to practice a gestalt design language, to recognize patterns as language and cognition, even to re-cognize cognition itself. Right? We need to disentangle the colonial view, the Eurocentric vision projected upon the landscape and each other. How do we escape these patterns? What is a decolonized governance modality? It might be an anti-industrialism or an infrastructure that is actively dismantling itself, but this is a negative definition, an inverse dialectic, maybe even a destructive and violent approach in it’s own way. Perhaps a truly decolonized design is constructive, more matriarchal than patriarchal, not rationally dismantling itself, but somehow redirecting that energy to benefit all, to generate more value for everyone, not at the expense of the subaltern or the landscape.

Back to my initial prompt: how do we evaluate the health of our community? There’s a paradox here, the paradox of industry. We desire to be industrious, we want to be productive, but our industries are full of excess and there is no away and someone always suffers from the disposal of the waste. The industry produces violence, waste, and dead houses. How do we build in resonance to local patterns? It requires a cognition of the pattern language; it requires the eye of a sculptor to be able to see the form in the marble and the humility in skill to allow it to reveal itself. The way you describe the construction of houses in Columbia is like an efflorescence, an emergent form, an outcropping that grows out of the specific place. Not an imposition on the land, but an extension of that sense of place, of and from the land quite literally. Harmony — I’m surprised to hear myself admit — might be the perfect way to evaluate the health of a community to the extent that it implies not just balance, but equal distributions of an integral architecture.

This reminds me of Christopher Alexander’s wonderful theories and practices. Alexander is an amazing architect and a very sensitive poetic figure. He taught at UC Berkeley for many years and developed what he calls A Pattern Language, a way of interacting with a landscape to identify the ineffable resonance of unique spaces. He would interact with the landscape firsthand to build up an understanding of what the local site needs. A building shouldn’t be built from blueprints drafted by a distant engineer. You need to go and walk the grounds to feel where the trees are, witness where the birds hang out, hear how the wind moves across the land. The living home will be built in relation to the flows that naturally exist in the place. A traditional house is an alien artifice imposed upon the landscape, disrupting its flows. It doesn’t take into account preexisting conditions; it imposes its own conditions, and so it’s not a harmonious structure.

There’s something that has been appearing in the global conversation about decolonization through the conflicts of the peace process in the internal war in Colombia: the concept of repair. When you’re dealing with the problem of an always-already violent imperative, repair is a very important notion to address the possibility of restitution of these damages. We might consider the Louvre Museum, the British Museum, and how these institutions entangle a structure traced to a colonial root. What to do with the African sculptures in these collections that have become treasures of the queen, but represent a paradigm of stolen artifacts? Similarly, how should we consider the international debt system when all these monetary transactions are built upon colonial standards? For example, there is a town in Bolivia called Potosi, an enormous place with some of the richest silver mines on the continent. Yet, colonization made Potosi one of the poorest areas in Latin America and reveals how these minerals build up the framework of a vampirific monetary system.

Repair and restitution provide a place to consider the responsibility in these extraction industries. The task is immense. Here I would connect Catherine Malabou and Gayatri Spivak in their work considering how the subaltern has been hidden, how this cognitive reality has been present as a secondary actor, hidden through our systems of abstraction, creating a conglomerate of artificiality intertwined with the object. How might we come to think through a sympoietic process, in resonance with Donna Haraway? How to entangle these conversations as conversions towards the base of a political fight? It’s very difficult if it’s just traced through meta-reflections. It’s so encoded in the material articulations that we must resolve the base of those constructions first. How might we inverse the dynamics embedded in all these technological conglomerates that are transversing our quotidianity? From a western perspective, we need to recognize the limits of referring to an outside that will bring a new code.

We might trace this conversation to their architectural relations. This is the exciting part about taking indigenous thought seriously — more than mere metaphor — to our contemporary landscape. It’s about the end of a world that encompasses the artificial we know. It’s not about creating a new complex industrial infrastructure to resolve our environmental catastrophes, to reverse the flow of co2 from our industrial processes; the rainforest was already accomplishing this before we destroyed it.

This brings me to the text that I’m writing called Becoming Jaguar as the Automated Cloud. There’s an anecdote of El Taita Querubin, a traditional healer in the Amazonian forest and part of the Cofanes community. He has worked with Ayahuasca since he was eight years old, studying the technique every week, three times a week, for eight years, to learn to become a jaguar. The shamans in Putumayo keep this as a secret technique, because this comes through the space of dreaming and has repercussions in one’s life. One story describes the community of Los Cofanes in Putumayo that was menaced because a multinational company was interested in mining in the area. There are political structures connected to right wing parties in Colombia that put pressure on communities to leave their territories with illegal armies of paramilitaries, displacing communities from their villages to protect the interests of progress and governmental business. When this menace arrived to El Taita Querubin he decided to have a few Ayahuasca sessions to read the situation and report to the community if they should leave their homes. When he returned he told the community to leave, but he would remain to fight. When the armies arrived, they were attacked by jaguars emerging from the jungle and were forced to leave.

For a rational mind this story of the forest can seem so esoteric, mythical, mystic, metaphorical, and also naive, but it’s important to let those voices emerge, to try to think in those equivocities, to witness the patterns emerging from the forest and through dreams as ways of gathering, forms of making houses, and possibilities to reunite ourselves. This cognitive process towards an emerging artificiality will be the terraformation of synthetic infrastructures, a transhumanist convergence with biological structures. We might pursue the potentiality of myth towards the navigation and position of a critical stand against the artificial we know. In the rural zones of el Cauca, this comes with your life. Our friends there live in a constant struggle with the configurations of power. Climate change in Latin America is accompanied by armies. We must design from a strong ground. I’m not saying that we should close our computers, that we should stop calling ourselves artists, or we should stop going to museums, but the awareness of the hidden worlds present in the subaltern brains are the patterns that we need to signal to reach resolution, to design towards becoming-jaguar rather than making an exhibition about it.

Your notion of the end of a world is so powerful. Your usage is wonderfully peculiar, because it’s not an apocalypse amounting to the end of the planet or the end of ecology, but it’s the end of a worldview, a modality or vision of the world that is deliberately ended with intention as a failed project, a failed stage of collective human imagination that is no longer being in service to a world that we might deliberately and carefully collaborate in manifesting. This has everything to do with autopoiesis, another powerful concept that I’ve been ruminating on for many years. Autopoiesis is used in cybernetic theory to refer to self-creation or self-making within closed systems that can seemingly be be cut off from nature while replicating nature simultaneously, a high ideal of perfected praxis and poiesis in a nutshell, so to speak, in the sense of Derrida referring to conceptual nutshells as so tempting to crack open. Conceived as a cybernetic autopoietic network, we begin to think of nature as an industrial process in itself, constituting a machinic worldview perpetuating the drive for imposing machinic legibility upon the entire landscape. This manifests in our architecture, the information infrastructure of our world, and how it informs our cerebral architecture, inflecting how we envision ourselves in our dynamic relations with each other and to the world, with the world.

Autopoiesis may have been a pivotal concept at one point, but now must be closed. A siloed conception of the world must be actively dismantled. Designing for openings, in this sense, would be to puncture holes, like how a single pin can puncture a water balloon and make a wonderful mess. To design for openings means to allow the outside to come in: outside languages, outside perspectives, outside peoples, outside articulations of outsideness. Sympoiesis moves from siloed cells of automated mechanical reproducibility towards diffused, open, porous, substrates of dynamically exchanging potentials. The problem with autopoiesis is that it replicates itself ad infinitum. How do we end that cycle without ending the model of life, without imposing violence upon natural systems? How do we end the world without destroying the world, allowing the world-image to regenerate into another form?

As you have been pointing out, these other forms don’t need to be invented as they exist already. They have always existed, in a sense, we just haven’t been able to cognize them. As designers, we must be careful with our re-cognitions, to not merely appropriate divergent perspectives into our own dehumanizing autopoietic systems. Maybe it is not possible for the European philosopher, or American artist, or first-world engineer or UX designer to articulate the subaltern dream. We might instead focus upon designing a space to foster the potentiality to come — the artificiality to come, as you say — to open up the museum, to puncture holes in the homogenizing histories of archived artifacts, and to craft porous architecture that allows life to flow through. Restitution certainly must be an orchestrated effort to allow for the voices of the outside to come in and to be heard.

How to pronounce ourselves through the possibility of patterns towards a possible emergence of an outside that has always been inhabiting us? How might we design the potentiality of addressing ourselves as something other than ourselves? How do we construct and trace links from that space?

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!

Do you have any sense of how people are responding so far?

The DeathGuild crew is loving these conversations. I hope that you would say the same, but it seems like everybody I’m talking to is having a real good time. I’m definitely having a good time. I curated this project because I think these people are all super interesting, you included.

Is this like therapy for Travis?

No, it’s not like I need some kind of therapeutic release, but I need to talk with people that are better qualified than I am to help me think through these ideas. I’m surrounded by experts and it became clear that this was going to be really valuable for the whole community that I’m examining. The first step was to see if, in fact, they would recognize the value in my ideas by putting up some money to support me. That happened with this MolochDAO grant and now we’re going to test the discrepancy between what they were expecting I was going to do and what they end up getting, whether they’re going to embrace this experiment in uncertainty or whether there’s going to be some kind of backlash or pushback. You said you were gonna be producing research reports, but you just had a bunch of unruly conversations with a bunch of people that don’t know anything about Web3, so we’re pissed. I could see it going both ways.

One of the questions here is how people will relate to the idea of what research is, which has been on my mind. I’ve been seeing these memes on Instagram recently where people are really critiquing the loose colloquial use of the word research; just the sentence I did my research and then it was footnoted in a comical way to reveal that the research was watching a video on YouTube. One user wrote:

“Please stop saying you researched it. You didn’t research anything and it’s highly probable that you don’t even know how to do so. Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on reported results? No?”

It goes on, but the thing that I find interesting is that there is a very academic argument against the use of research, purporting that if you didn’t do it the academic way then it’s not valid research, which I think we could argue with, but even within academic spaces what it means to do research is highly contested. It will be interesting to see how willing DeathGuild people are to think about something as research based on their preconceived notions of what research is supposed to look like or sound like.

Do you mean the audience that will be reading the articles or the other DeathGuild contributors? I’m thinking of this as potentially a long term project, but that will be up to the community to validate whether that’s possible or not. I have been very explicit and transparent in the proposal that this would be wild and abstract. I didn’t know exactly how this would pan out. Every conversation has been radically idiosyncratic and unique. The main goal here is to expand these conversations into communities that might not be naturally predisposed to thinking this way or to considering these topics. It’s really important for us to continue to remind each other that what’s at stake here is both an experimental method and a deep elaboration on topics that might be easy to take for granted. We’re experimenting with the form as well as the content. We have discussed research as an idea and why we might use that term and if that distracts from the thing that we’re actually doing, but today I really wanted to hear your thoughts on power.

Ok, let’s talk about power. The question of research relates to power, right?

Yes. Er, you tell me.

Or you tell me?

No, I would really prefer in this case if you told me.

The power to evaluate a product and deem it either valid research or not, positions valid research as an operation of power. We might mean that in a sinister way, where somebody in a position of power invalidates something that in other contexts is deemed valid research, because that research challenges some piece of their political agenda, or if it’s a more benign version, like an editorial board of an academic journal that received a submission and decided that submission doesn’t constitute valid research because it doesn’t conform to the conventions of what research looks like for that curatorial body. The connector for me between research and power is the question of evaluation. Who’s in a position to evaluate? Is there an evaluator? How does that look? Are the procedures of evaluation always abided by faithfully or is there inconsistency in how they’re applied? When it comes to this research that you’re assembling for DeathGuild, it will be really interesting to see how it’s evaluated, in a hard or soft way. Even if there isn’t an official review of what you put together, what does the informal evaluation of it look like? Who’s clapping for what?

For my own part, I care to think of myself as an evaluator serving as a steward rather than a God-King judiciary force who validates or invalidates according to an inherent bias, although any evaluation implies a bias. Even an attempt to render a system neutral by removing the human element implies a programmer that imparts their bias into the recognition of data points, to calibrate whether something is valid or not, like facial recognition software developed by predominantly white males having a difficult time recognizing people of color or any face that doesn’t fit within a hypernormative anatomical geometry. As steward, the procedure that I’ve attempted to adopt here is to render these conversations faithfully — a loaded word — to only edit the minimum amount to render the text legible to an audience of readers, because there’s discrepancies between oral and written communication. I don’t write into the texts or elaborate on the ideas beyond the spatial and temporal coordination of this conversation.

I’m contradicting myself from earlier conversations that we’ve had, I recognize that, because it wasn’t so clear that this was important before, but the more I move through the project the more I understand that restraining myself from intervening in the content might support the transparency and the integrity of these conversations in service to the unruliness and diaphanous nature of the concepts and the experimental procedure. I’m trying to edit as little as possible, just enough to make it readable, much to the chagrin of some of the contributors and also of the readers. There has been feedback that these conversations are difficult to read, because they’re transcriptions from spoken language.

The conceptual wrangling is a matter of fostering the conversation to go as far as we can, seemingly so deep into the weeds that we lose ourselves, while also attempting to practice an agility of oscillating back out to the macro scale to remember that the propulsion in this project is built around the triangulation of three key concepts that deserve to be scrutinized: governance modalities, resources becoming treasuries, and privacy as the fulcrum between autonomy and anonymity. If our discussion is not in service to that agenda, then we might evaluate ourselves as failing, because we did not achieve what we set out to do. How does power play into that?

I think that there’s a difficulty that the steward faces in managing the problem of how perspicuous it will immediately be whether a piece of content is relevant or not. There are cases in which irrelevance will be more obvious and indisputable, but if we’re talking about an experimental procedure where there might be a slow or more gradual development into something that feels like a valuable insight, then that poses a problem for certain speeds of evaluation. How can we be sure that you as the evaluator are right to deem something relevant or not relevant? Is that a question of power? The measurement is a certain kind of power, but it also places the evaluator in a position of vulnerability, because those judgments will be taken to task if the experiment is ultimately deemed a failure.

The vulnerability is that there has to be an individual that is held accountable. In this particular case, it is me. I have suggested and encouraged that you remain anonymous in order to alleviate any potential accountability that might come back to negatively reflect upon any other involvement that you might have in the world. I am not dedicated to being a centralized force of evaluation, to determine what will and will not be accepted, but to take up the responsibility of ensuring impactful content. I think there is a way that we might think about this in terms of a curation or coordination, as an active crafting of context. There is a need to focus deeply upon minutiae without confusing the map for the territory. Ideally, we might all take collective accountability for this.

Except for me, because I’m anonymous.

There’s something else at play here in these conversations. I’m not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and deceive them, presenting this as a private conversation and then suddenly, without them knowing, pushing it into public. There is a need to craft a safe space for a sincere and vulnerable conversation to take place, free of censorship. I have no interest in serving as a censor, but there is an editorial responsibility and accountability. How do we render a metric of the relationship between those two things: steward of the community and editor for an audience?

You’re in a difficult position from a social perspective. You’re working within a project that isn’t benefiting from certain conventions formed around how a person is interpolated by a certain institution or publishing body. You’re inventing conventions. If certain contributors, like myself, are experiencing unease, it relates to the fact that we’re not tapping into a set of conventions that determine how editing and censorship function here.

Can you tell me about your unease?

I’m hung up on this question of transparency and censorship. Transparency is something of a construct. I don’t feel like I have an essential self that can be communicated, conveyed, represented in an uncensored or censored manner. I am always navigating questions of context when I’m making decisions about how to appear. Within that framework, there are instances where I’m muting my desires or my instincts more or less, depending on what the particular situation is. I don’t know what it would mean to have a transparent conversation. There’s always an audience, a way that I would make a particular point to my mom, that differs from how I would make that point to my advisor or other people in my life. I don’t think that one of those modes is more authentic than another. There’s always strategy.

When it comes to my unease with censorship, I don’t think anything terrible will happen as a consequence of publishing these conversations with my name attached to them, but there is a desire to be able to curate my persona to a greater extent than this project allows. A difficulty with the translation of dialogue or conversation into text is that there is a relatively radical freedom in conversations, because I feel like I can have conversations with people where I test out completely ridiculous perspectives and they’re not on the record. I mean, they’re on the record insofar as my interlocutors remember pieces or aspects of the conversation, but they’re not on the record in a way that a piece of writing is, so I’m allowed to evolve or change the perspective that was shared in that moment. In a text it’s more permanent, because a text is crafted for a precisely understood context that gives it a container that feels less risky.

I think that your concerns are important to address. I also find them perplexing. No one else that I’m speaking to in this project has raised such concerns or admitted their inhibition to speaking to me in the context that is being woven here. No one has raised any consideration of a strategy in the crafting of their persona, in considering the possibility of an inauthentic presentation of themselves. I am glad that you are raising this issue and I feel like it is absolutely significant content that we should address. I am wondering if your provocation to consider control and censorship, of context and permanence, of the textual documents and of the strategies of how one orients their persona in relation to an unknown audience on this quivering ground that you locate yourself on, if we might point our attention towards the crux of privacy. I’ve been thinking of privacy as composed of anonymity, one’s ability to wield the control and influence of their constructed persona with intention, and the autonomy of revealing or allowing oneself to be revealed through the performance of a role within a public sphere, that I would purport that we always already are.

I have a background in reporting. I started my newsroom experience on a college newspaper, where there were many ridiculous experiences where an editor chose a headline that didn’t at all fit the piece of writing that I had submitted. There’s an unease in putting together a piece of writing and then feeling like somebody has more power than you in the hierarchical body can have the ultimate say in how that piece is received. There are also cases where editors would make errors like publishing a draft instead of the final piece. There was a particular case where I’d interviewed a politics professor who asked to stay off the record and the editor submitted the draft instead of the final version, causing a great deal of embarrassment and anger. This person felt really betrayed by me. The carelessness of the editor put me in a position of having to be accountable for something that was not my job. As a result of those experiences, I decided to become an editor and then it just wasn’t a problem anymore. If I wanted to write a piece for the paper, I would also be editing it so I could make sure that whatever was being put out wasn’t an embarrassment to me or a betrayal of the sources who had trusted me to tell their stories somehow.

In the academic context, there is a really important distinction between having an idea, an intuition or an instinct, and then subjecting that idea to a process of scrutiny and verification, accessing and connecting with the conversations about a particular idea that have already happened. You talked about certain aspects of this work becoming more clear to you as you went along. For me, it wasn’t clear from the onset how much these texts needed to ventriloquise the kind of rigor that is expected in academic contexts. A person in my subjective position — a woman, a person of color trying to do philosophy — doesn’t have the same wiggle room to say ignorant shit about somebody like Wittgenstein that somebody else might. Maybe the point is that philosophical discourse is so tyrannical that nobody has the right to say bogus shit about Wittgenstein, but I feel quite self conscious about how I appear to be speaking to a philosophical tradition that continues to be hostile to people like me. I don’t have the leeway to speak extemporaneously about things that interest me when it comes to those kinds of topics. All of us are shot through with issues of power. As a person who is trying to cultivate a professional position as a public intellectual and scholar, there are obvious pragmatic questions that I’m faced with.

There’s another piece that I’m recognizing as I move through these thoughts, which is that I really hate tech culture. Some of how this research is proceeding gets to the heart of what I find quite repugnant about tech culture. One of those things is the idea that research is cheap or can be made cheaply and quickly. That’s already happening in academia through adjunctification. There are ways I don’t want to associate myself with a certain kind of tech culture and I’m learning the extent of that through the conversations.

What you hate about tech culture is that it’s built upon a presumption that research can be sourced cheaply and that is a quality that you are locating within the DeathGuild project?

Not quite. What I’m saying is that there is a pre-existing repulsion with tech culture and the utopian schemes that it concocts. When we proceed with assembling research that isn’t fully cooked, undertaken in a spirit of so-called agility or speed, that makes me feel like I’m participating in an unsavory aspect of tech culture. It makes me uncomfortable to think that I might be associating myself with a practice that I’m rabidly opposed to.

This is where I want to throw the ball back in your court and ask you about the value that you are assigning to transparency; where that’s coming from, how you articulate it. I need to hear a robust description of what makes transparency valuable. It seems like the virtue of transparency is part of the justification for a low processing approach. There’s a resemblance for me with the prerogatives of classic captains of industry who want to streamline certain procedures and strip them of the artisanal human touch. I feel like I’m trying to remain an artisan. Pardon the grandiosity or pompousness of that statement. I’m finding myself in a context where an automated set of procedures has been designed. I can imagine you’re thinking that the conversation itself is such an open field and that’s where the artistry happens with the text as a bit of an afterthought. I’m really preoccupied with the text.

This requires delicate handling. Let’s address the justification or the motivation for striving for transparency.

If we want to be fully transparent, why don’t we publish audio of these conversations? Why make any editorial decision? Why make any cuts?

I’m struggling to find an entry point to crafting an answer, because your comments make me feel like you hate everything about what we’re doing, concerning the foundation that the project’s propositions are built upon, that it antagonizes every aspect of your being and your course of action is to antagonize it in turn. I’m struggling with being in a position where I have imposed that upon you, that you’ve been positioned in a way that is the inverse of my intention. Perhaps I should encourage you to continue examining in this way, because it seems like any response that I might offer would be contextualized in defense of a culture that I also don’t want to be associated with, or at least not without some high-fidelity clarification of what you’re leveraging against. It’s not how I am consciously associating with this project.

I have a question about labeling these sentiments and preoccupations as antagonistic in relation to Chantal Mouffe’s notion of mutual agonism. When does an articulation crossover from shared agonism to rivalrous antagonism? I don’t feel resentful towards you or the scope of the project, though I do think that we’re in different positions. I can be completely on the outside. I don’t have the same investment in these communities. You were recently speaking about the enthusiasm and admiration that you have and I’m on the outside of that. It gives me a certain power, because I can just feel like I don’t give a fuck about this and dip out if I want to. That seems to be a source of alienation for us. The issues that I’m raising are not intended to tell you to stop doing what you’re doing, or to shit on it and say it’s all stupid. I have genuine curiosities. In questioning the virtue of transparency, it’s productive to think about where that comes from, how people are articulating, if there is a stable meaning within these communities or if it’s used in different ways. What does agonism look like? How might we inhabit a space of shared agony?

It begins with an invitation and an understanding that any democratic modality is at the service of some and at a great disservice to others. We operate within a folklore of consensus building that is disadvantageous to some. I am trying to coordinate conversations from the outside to emphasize the importance of a model of reciprocal exchange by inviting in critical voices that are currently poorly represented in the community. I’m risking my own credibility to advocate for the importance of dissensus, the importance of disagreeing in a constructive way.

Antagonism inhibits clear vision of the larger ontological structures that we are all implicated within. Agonism begins with an understanding that we are all embedded within the same structure and you can’t locate yourself outside of it. We are all subject to the architectures that we build collectively. Shared agony begins with humility, by recognizing that we must share the weight of collective accountability, to continue extending an invitation to the other to co-create spaces for dissipating antagonisms, to show up in service of the other, and to carefully render the script collectively. We must agonize-with rather than antagonize-against.

I would like to address your not giving a fuck about the ramifications of the project by associating it with a quick, cheap methodology. I don’t find that to be a generous perspective that acknowledges the vulnerability involved in constructing a platform for new voices to be heard. A prerequisite for transparency might be a cooperative and collaborative culture, to coordinate a reciprocal design that serves all the contributors, rooted in radical conviviality. This project is rooted in friendship and friendship is based on trust and faith. From that foundation we might nurture an explorative curiosity, to play together through a pluriversal performativity that facilitates radical sovereignty while we put on and take off various masks; a fluidity of identity might become possible.

The discomfort that I experience in your description is the rootedness of your own identity construct, which seems to have instilled an inhibition to participate in a genuine manner, because you’re perceiving this context as malicious artifice strategically leveraged against your being, conveying an agenda that you don’t condone. I don’t mean to put words in your mouth.

Perhaps centralizing individuation is precisely the root cause of the alienation that has been imposed upon this conversation in the beginning. Might we somehow cooperate in recognizing the need for a deontological orientation? Not simply disembodied or empirically objective and not a reductive tyranny of rulelessness or some similarly absurd, violent, feigned neutrality of universal language, but a local design that creates openings within the at-hand structure that we are playing in. Might we support each other to exercise agency in shifting the circumstances that are imposed upon us?

I want to extend to you an invitation of convivial exchange, reciprocity, potlatch, not built upon debt, but personal sacrifice. I can’t say that I totally understand your hesitation to extend into the middle, what is precisely at stake that you fear might be lost. It’s not to say that your concerns are not real or significant. You might help me clarify and amplify your perspective, to act in service to whatever audience you might imagine will be reading this, to exercise an existential agility to remain limber to the perceived assault on your sensibilities. It’s the willow that survives the storm, while the rigid oak falls with a strong wind.

I don’t know what it is that you hate about the tech community, but the invitation has been extended for you to think with me, not as my subject but as my peer, as the expert in your own field, to define your own role. This struggle goes well beyond the tech industry, but concerns the industrial drive more generally as a globalized accelerationist hystericism, an absolutely dehumanizing force that we must all agonize together to actively dismantle. It’s a matter of survival, quite literally. That’s where the death of DeathGuild comes in; there’s existential risk. I hope to serve as a conductor for a morbid choir.

I feel like any of those points could open out into lengthy and deliberate conversations. There’s an issue of developing a shared understanding of what these values actually mean, the generation of value being one of the values that is incredibly vague. I think it’s incredibly important to think about the values of potlatch, sacrifice, risk, suppleness, etc., beyond this specific context through a historically and politically informed attention to structures. Who is asked to sacrifice in what kinds of contexts? What counts as sacrifice and who isn’t sacrificing?

To remain at an abstract register is an operation of power. My interest in philosophy is preoccupied with the careful crafting of distinctions. I have an incredible bias against tech culture, but I don’t believe myself to be outside of its grips. I’m completely enmeshed and interpolated by the tools and the values and the discourses of tech culture. That’s a core element of the negative bias that I have. It seems important to me in a way that I don’t yet understand that we continue talking to one another in a genuine, earnest, vulnerable way.

Thinking about David Graeber and his Fragments on an Anarchist Anthropology, he says early in that text that one doesn’t find any anarchists in the academy, perhaps because of an insistence on a consonance between the methods and the values. One of the things that interests me in the conversations that we’re having is something in the spirit of Graeber, where I’m curious about how the procedure is an important part of the radical aspirations here. My point is to bring a great deal of attention to the representational procedures, because they inevitably, necessarily, are inflecting the thing that’s made.

This series is made possible by a generous grant awarded by MolochDAO. Thank you Moloch!