we keep playing in the mud.
getting into the motivation of creation.
in this post i answer the burning questions you didn’t know you had…
🥧 what motivates creation?
🖼️ what is a /frame and why is m/b minting on 🔵 base?
🏰 where is farcaster and how do i get there?
art is intrinsic.
intrinsic and motivation are often paired together. what’s the definition though, especially in today’s always on, trend and hype driven culture? is it possible to be motivated by something wholly within yourself?
my mind immediately goes to art of course. would i create if not for the possibility of sharing the outcome with someone? my idealism kicks in, responding with a quick yes. i stop and reflect on this a beat longer. what’s my first memory of creating?
it wasn’t art, it was mud.
mud pies to be more clear. after a hard, abrupt desert rain you’d find me in my grandma’s tomato garden. scooping handful after handful of fragrant, warm mud, molding it into a sloppy ball, then patting it down on the plank of wood “sun oven” i had pulled from my grandpa’s scrap pile.
these were summer rains, born of thunderstorms that would spring out of seemingly nowhere; dropping buckets of water on the hard packed dirt, only to pool and puddle in inconvenient pockets around the yard and garden.
while my mud pies would dry out, er…bake, in the desert heat, i’d wander around looking for things to adorn them with. once ready for consumption i’d use the retired spatula my mom had given me to pry them from their oven and plate them on a frisbee to share with my family.
i’d get some smiles and remarks on a bit of pine needle work i may have pulled off particularly well, but for the most part my audience wasn’t too adoring. and, let’s be honest, i was more excited to move onto the part where i’d chuck the pies at the ground and watch them explode, back into the dirt from whence they came.
this, to me, is as intrinsic as it gets. creating for the curiosity, for the process discovery, for the part where you get to ruin it and start over.
the key ingredient in a mud pie is play.
the meaning in it may just have been to answer the question(s) — can i do this? can i actually achieve this thing? at no point was it about other people. in fact, those around me were mostly just happy i was happy.
this is how i want to continue to approach art. and to be fully candid, i don’t always. the extrinsic-ness of it all absolutely steals my attention and clouds my judgement, most always leading me to overthink or pursue something i’m not wholly interested in or even excited about. something that doesn’t spark the curiosity for curiosities sake.
to those things i say, nope. it it’s not a mud pie, i don’t want any part of it.
muddy pixel pies.
lately my mud pies have been steaming piles of code. twisted learnings of gloopy instructions, attempting to elicit a pulse from a mere idea. this is how it feels at least.
in reality i’m totally aware that i’m carving something out of nothing. i’m breaking things a little at a time in order to learn and unearth something new.
the results are mixed, though, progressing. i’ve realized that this incremental focus on the things that light me up is why i’m attempting to write algorithms that generate art in the first place. it’s messy and it’s fun.
on the last day of january i released my first token on base. i’ve been eyeing a mint to this ethereum native chain for a few months now and, with the release of frames on farcaster, it was the right time. i took a recent mud pie and threw it into the world.
the artwork i offered as a free mint — we keep breaking things. — ended up being collected by 688 unique wallets. 👀 just bananas. the ability for people to click mint inline with their social feed, and have the piece automagically dropped into their farcaster connected ethereum wallet, was well, powerful. it felt like the future.
now that i have my m/base contract with a decent sized collector base i’m initiating a deflationary concept for an art series. the pieces are out of band works-in-progress from an algorithm i’m calling wkbt, the same that gave us m/base token no. 01, we keep breaking things.
this week, on the week to the day anniversary of the original frame mint, i initiated a burn-to-redeem for a new limited edition artwork. holders of the jan 31st mint could burn their token to redeem an edition of the new token. 5 people chose to and now wkbt 001 lives as an edition of 5.
next week, on weds feb 14th there will be another burn-to-redeem. collectors of either previous token can choose to burn their current for the next. the edition size will be set to 5, first come first served. and so it will go every week for at least a year.
you can see both tokens on opensea, read the overview there or subscribe for drop updates via manifold or deca. (i don’t plan to use this newsletter to announce every drop.)
so what’s farcaster?
it’s a protocol enabling decentralized social networking on top of blockchain tech, specifically ethereum. it’s a growing alternative to corporate social media. here it is in their own words…
You can post messages, follow users and organize into communities called channels. The protocol is open-source and anyone can join or build on top of it today.
their documentation is a great place to dig in and get a better sense of what it’s all about. if you want to get started with an account of your own, use this link to sign up with warpcast (a farcaster client) and we’ll both get 50 warps. need help? let me know, i’m just an email / dm away. also, this write up by
does a great job communicating the what and especially, why now.
that was a lot. is your head spinning? mine too. 😂
despite the overwhelm of info, i’ve only got an abundance of energy and desire to keep playing in the digital mud, making art and growing my digital garden. onward with the things that light us all up.
when you hit the 🖤 it helps others discover my writing + art, thank you!
see you next time!
⚫️✨
my latest mud pie making jam…