Art Basel is an international art fair staged annually in Basel/Switzerland, Miami Beach/Florida and Hong Kong. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city’s local institutions to help grow and develop art programs. While Art Basel provides a platform for galleries to show and sell their work to buyers, it has gained a large international audience of art spectators and students as well.
At this year’s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, which took place from December 2 through 4, visitors could dip their toes into the mysterious world of cryptoart and create NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) of their own. The German artist Mario Klingemann, aka Quasimondo, generated AI (Artificial Intelligence) portraits of fairgoers who can then use the open-source blockchain Tezos to mint NFTs of their digital artworks.
The interactive experience is among the many highlights of the futuristic exhibition, «Humans + Machines: NFTs and the Ever-Evolving World of Art,» held in the Miami Beach convention center during this year’s Art Basel fair and spotlighting the Tezos blockchain. Featuring generative and internet artists who are pushing the boundaries of digital art, the immersive show is accompanied by a fascinating series of talks featuring leading NFT artists and experts from the community, such as Linkin Park frontman, Mike Shinoda, who was interviewed by Marissa True about his path into NFTs.
Here’s the video recording and below you’ll find the transcript in case you prefer to read the interview.
Credits
- Main picture courtesy of Kristina Servant
- Wikipedia Art Basel
- Mint your own NFT at Art Basel Miami Beach
Transcript
Marissa True: All right. Hi, Hi everyone. Welcome to the second session of the day. My name is Marissa True. I come from a company known as TZ APAC, which is based out in Singapore, and we’re one of the adoption entities that’s supporting the Tezos blockchain out in Asia. So for today’s session, collision NFTs go mainstream. We’re joined by none other than Mike Shinoda of Fort Minor and Linkin Park, and he is going to be sharing a little bit about his NFT journey and the current projects that he’s working on. So first of all, hi again, Mike, how are you?
Mike Shinoda: Hi, good. Thanks very much for having me.
Marissa True: Um, so first things first, as is customary with most of these conversations, could you please share a little bit about your personal journey into NFTs? What was it about it that caught your eye? And how did you fall down this rabbit hole?
Mike Shinoda: Yeah, sure. I think the first thing to know is that I grew up wanting to be a painter and I actually have my bachelor’s degree in illustration. That’s what I went to school for and music was always a hobby. And then the music took off and the art became like kind of took a backseat. But I did still use it. I was, I was, you know, I would do art for some of our album covers. I guess most notably, that the soldier on the cover of our first album, Hybrid Theory, was something that I did. My bandmate Joe and I kind of creative directed most of our stuff. So this year? Actually, one thing in between, I’d say that I, we invest, invested in a number of different startups over the years, and because of that, I kept getting pitched many years ago. I kept getting pitched like digital collectibles, and I was, you know, I never really got that interested in it. I just thought it was so far away. It wasn’t something that, like our general fanbase would be interested in. And then fast forward towards like the beginning of this year, I started to see them and I thought, Oh, like, this is now’s the time. Like, people are ready for this. Some really interesting NFTs are happening, and I began experimenting on on Ethereum with I minted some things on Zora Nifty Gateway, Async Music and yeah, and then I kind of just ended up on I fell into Tezos, mostly because that’s where my my fans were and I learned about the the green aspects of the of the blockchain and which which actually results in like a lower barrier to entry. And I thought that was really appropriate for where I was personally at with the way I wanted to present my music and art right now.
Marissa True: So what was it about NFT technology that actually sold itself to you as a new and creative medium, like why did you see it and think this is the next big thing?
Mike Shinoda: I mean, I think what I am excited about it. Overlaps with most people in the space from a creator standpoint, the idea of making making a an exclusive a rare. Own a ball digital asset is is an environment like like a like an area to explore. It’s very it’s it opens up a lot of possibilities for musicians from and and artists, painters and and, you know, people and video and and still collectible art and also gaming, obviously. I think there’s so much area for exploration that that’s what makes it exciting to me, we’ve always I’ve always been interested in kind of I’m not afraid to like, try new things and and fail. I’m not afraid to, like play around with new technology. We’ve done it for 20 years with Linkin Park. And then one last thing I’d say about that is that one of the anecdotes I tell people about are about Linkin Park and the the the transition from web two to a more decentralized web threeit’s following: At one point in our in our band’s history, we started bringing people, our fans to a brand new platform called Facebook. And we brought millions of fans to Facebook, and it was the primary place where we connected with fans and told them about what was going on with us. We did a tour, we went home, we wrote a new album, we got ready to release it and we told our management.
Mike Shinoda: Let’s talk about the marketing plan for Facebook. And they said, Well, we have some bad news for you. Facebook has turned on a a new program basically like a new a new philosophy that they’re going to start charging people to connect with the people that follow it, follow them. And we were like, Well, that’s crazy. Like why? I understand why they would do that. But like, we brought all those people to their platform. Like, how much are they going to charge for? Like us to post something to all our fans and our management team said, Well, you’re the biggest band on Facebook. So it’s going to cost the the price tag will be something akin to a Super Bowl ad for every single post to to reach all your fans. And we said, Well, what if we don’t pay that? And they said it’s going to be about 10 to 20 percent of your fans people right now. They forget that that the other paradigm actually used to exist. And I think that one of the arguments for the next version of the web or a more decentralized. Way of communication and congregating is that we we can take back some of the power, we can take back some of the privacy and we can take back the communities that we we value so much.
Marissa True: So essentially created are so passionate about this space because it allows greater ownership over their own work, as well as over the communities that they build, rather than granting that ownership to the platforms that they exist on.
Mike Shinoda: Yeah, thank you for saying that much more eloquently than I could.
Marissa True: But then at the same time, and I think a lot of people in this room and those tuning in are aware that surrounding the NFT space, there is so much fanaticism, there is so much hype and we are seeing highly inflated prices surrounding different pieces of work. And that’s very difficult for people to wrap their heads around when they don’t fundamentally understand what the value proposition is to them, necessarily as a collector. So what I’d like to ask is how do you convince others of this underlying value of a digital asset, something that you can’t physically hold or hang up on your wall in the same traditional way?
Mike Shinoda: Yeah. To me, it’s pretty straightforward. We’re used to the idea that when we buy a piece of software that we own it like you buy Microsoft Word, you own Microsoft Word, you buy Adobe Suite, you own Adobe. It’s it’s those things are not unusual in our in our adult brains to figure out they they the. The difference here is that those things are basically what we would call Open Edition like. They’re there, there’s infinite, an infinite amount of them. It’s when you introduce the idea of rarity that the dynamic changes. So if I were to tell you there’s only, you know, you know, how it feels to go to the store and say, Oh, there’s only, you know, 50 PlayStations here, and they’re sold out. People then are like hunting and paying more to go get a PlayStation, right? So when I ask my my when, if you ask a kid, you ask a 10 year old, a 12 year old, how much money are you spending on skins in Fortnite? They’ll give you a remarkably high number, probably. And then in their minds, if you start to really dig into that in their minds, it’s like, I own those skins. They’re mine. And if I if if you could take them out of the game and just have them and own them anywhere you wanted to. That’s a very enticing proposition. I think the idea of the NFT, which which is maybe not quite here yet, but it’s it’s definitely on the horizon. The idea of the blockchain and the NFT and similar technologies is that we can own a piece of digital content and take it with us wherever we go from, from, you know, people say metaverse, but you can take it from platform to platform, network to network. Hopefully someday. And I think the idea of like there’s also an idea of like playing with the the importance of those items and the rarities of them and also the format. I mean, who’s to say that an NFT can’t be a film? An NFT couldn’t be a game. They’re certainly going to be those things. And in some cases they already are.
Marissa True: So then to go back to a point that you raised earlier in the conversation where you were saying you were exploring NFTs on different blockchains, what is it about Tezos that truly did attract you? You did mention the energy efficiency of it and then the lower barrier of entry. But was that all or were there other aspects to this particular blockchain that kind of kept you in it?
Mike Shinoda: I mean, the first I think the first thing that happened was there’s an artist in my my community online, on on Twitch and on Discord, who goes by Moomoo the stand. A lot of people in the Tezos community already know her very well. She’s become a very like, important advocate for the platform, for the for the community. And she’s in art. She’s a fan of of of mining shows up in the discord and stuff. And she was not. She had never minted an NFT. And I was and I said to her, If you mint one, I’ll buy your first one. Like, I just think your art is really great and you should be you should be minting NFTs. And she did, and I did. And then after a short period of time, that actually happened on on Ethereum, as I recall, and then after a short period of time, she came back and she said, You need to check out Tezos. It’s amazing. And she kind of introduced me to it. And what I liked, what really matched up for me is is the the the idea that it’s a much more green and eco-friendly blockchain. And I also like the fact that because that it’s that in itself, that’s that I like, but also there are other things that result from that. So like the idea that I could the very first NFT I put up on Tezos, I put it up for free and the. That I could put up, you know, a hundred or even a thousand or more copies of an NFT easily just by signing up for an account or signing up for a wallet and connecting it to in this case, then I could put those out there, offer them for free and and get other people in the door was important.
Mike Shinoda: The very first experience some of the fans had was me telling them, OK, I’m minting this thing for free. Go get a wallet. You don’t even really need to put. You could literally put a dollar in it, a U.S. dollar in it and then show up. And then you download the and you and you mint the NFT. And the next thing they knew, the free thing they had minted was worth a few thousand. And they had that feeling that all of us who have participated in this space already know so well where you go. Oh my gosh, I got a thing, and it’s worth something that’s cool. And then the very next thought is, Well, if I want the money, then I have to sell the thing. But I kind of don’t want to sell the thing. So now all of a sudden, they’re they’re grappling with, Oh my gosh, the this JPEG is worth like a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars or something to me. And that’s the switch that flipped not only for me, but for many other people that we actually do have as adults. We have a harder time wrapping our head around that. I think kids have an easy time wrapping their head around that. But as like, you know, at a certain age and up, you have a harder time wrapping your head around the idea that those those things really do have a value and an emotional connection. And I think those examples like that, like kind of definitely prove it.
Marissa True: I mean, I think the emotional connection is something that people underestimate until they directly participate. Like, I still, everyone remembers the first NFT they ever mint. And yes, the opportunity to sell it is there. But suddenly you do create this strange level of attachment to something that you never thought you never felt, thought you could feel you could have for something that existed strictly on a digital realm. And someone actually said something to me that I thought, put it perfectly is that we all have an emotional attachment to the like, to the photographs that we take and then we keep on our phone like, there’s a reason we don’t delete every photo we take because those become our our photo albums as they are because we don’t go to the Photoshop and develop them anymore. So they clearly have a sense of meaning. And it isn’t as foreign of a concept as people necessarily realize it’s not that big of a leap. But then the other thing that I think is magical about is something that you also touched on is that it creates this organic sense of community in a very digital space that’s almost unprecedented. You don’t think you’re going to bond with people from all across the world just because you’re united by a certain NFT series or a collection. So with that, I’d like to go into some of the other NFT work that you’ve done, and then we’ll eventually we’re going to lean into what you’re currently going to announce. I believe it launches in about 15 minutes. So let’s start with what work have you put out so far and how did how did you find inspiration for those pieces?
Mike Shinoda: Yeah, I think most of my work on when I started most of my my projects on Ethereum were experiments. I did one with a great 3D animator named Esteban Dicono on Nifty Gateway that kind of got me. It taught me a little bit about the process and the auctions and how people act almost like the game theory or in gamification of of a launch. I did a project on async that taught me about layers, how to present a layered, in this case, musical music and art layered piece in the form of an NFT. So then when I came to Tezos, I started. I mentioned before the first one that I put out was free. And then I met. I played around with different release structures a little bit. There was one where I gave the fans something for free. I went to a discord to a very, very closed community that I knew wouldn’t tell other people. And I told them, OK, I’m going to give you this thing for free, but I want you to. I want you to list it after I give it to you. You can either keep it unlisted with no price, but if you do list it for a price, I want you to list the price at this very high number. And then I watched as. Like, basically 90 percent of them followed that rule, maybe even ninety five and then the five percent that didn’t. I knew that they heard me say, don’t do that and they they didn’t do it. So then I very shortly later I mintired another NFT, and I only gave it to the people that followed the rules. So I played with all of these different ways of communicating through the art and the and the and the drop process. And and when I landed on the the the project that drops today, it’s like kind of a the result of all of those different things that I had experimented with that I have experimented with so far.
Marissa True: So I think that also shows you through that experimentation. You will be able to distinguish between the collectors who are essentially collecting because they see value and cherish the work that you’re putting out versus those that are maybe seeing it more of as an investment / profiting opportunity.
Mike Shinoda: Would you say? I mean, by the way, to be totally clear, I am not against like flipping NFTs. I don’t see anything wrong with that. People do it in fine art as well. There’s I mean, it’s it is part of our culture, at least at this point. It’s, you know, I love streetwear and it’s been a part of streetwear for many, many years. It’s like an you can’t separate it from streetwear releases. So at least in this case, you know, in the case of a pair of Jordans or a pair of whatever you, the creator of the thing won’t benefit when it gets sold on secondary, but at least here they do. So I feel like that’s a that’s a plus, and you can set your own rates. I’ve seen them all. I mean, I own a Maarat Park piece that the it’s called FOMO and the resale price is like, I think he takes 50 percent. And yeah, and there’s other ones where they take like two. So it’s it’s not, you know, I think that people are in here for a different reason. I do believe that the community aspect that you alluded to is one of the things that is remarkable. Actually, I think it’s remarkable about the Tezos space when people. One thing that I will say is that when people ask me why I decided to do the drop on Tezos today, it’s one of the major factors is that the the ecosystem is it has a different culture and it is a little more scrappy. It’s like a little more punk rock, if you can say that about people who are super like avid coders and developers. But it is. It’s a different energy on Tezos and I connect with. I connect with that a lot.
Marissa True: I like the notion of developers on Tezos being regarded as punk rock coders. I think that’s a niche that our community would actually love. So with just a few minutes to spare, I would like you to share a little bit more about your latest project, Ziggurat. So what is it? What inspired it and what exactly is happening in ten minutes?
Mike Shinoda: Yeah. I mean, you know, if you’re watching this and you don’t have a, you know, you can’t buy one right now, then I guess good luck on secondary, but the the project comes out in 10 minutes. It is a what what I believe, what my team believes to be the first NFT generative mixtape. The format is very unusual. I ended up on. I ended up making a six minute and forty five second hip hop mixtape all versus no hooks with. Generative music. And it’s not A.I., it’s generated from layers that I created. So that is to say it’s five thousand pieces. Every single single one of them has vocals on it and then all of the music is different, is unique to each individual NFT. In the five thousand. All of the album artwork of each of those is different between all the five thousand, and there’s a rarity structure, so some of them are more rare than others. And then lastly, there are five pieces where the artwork was made completely by hand, not from layers. And those are ultra rare. Those are hidden amongst the five thousand. He meant today you’re going to get a hit like basically what I call an unopened baseball card pack with with your feet in and then hopefully later today, we’re going to reveal all of them at once and do kind of like a worldwide reveal where you get to see and hear your ziggurat, your mixtape.
Marissa True: So what exactly inspired it when you’re saying you generated all of these layers of sound? Where were you pulling creative inspiration from?
Mike Shinoda: I mean, I grew up listening to to rap music, and in the in the 90s, there was like today a mix tape is not the same as what a mix tape used to mean. Like back then, a mix tape was literally a cassette where you’d hear rappers. It wasn’t about like debuting brand new songs and it wasn’t about like singles and anything like that. It was rappers flexing their their lyrics one after the other, verse after verse over different beats. And so that was kind of like as I as I started to play around with this idea of like throwing different beats together. I was pulling from brand new stuff. I was pulling from stuff that I had written many years ago, but never found a home for that. I was like, Man, this this rap verse is really good, but I never used it on anything because it just didn’t fit the energy of what it was that I thought I would put it over and I made a new beat for it and all of these layers, and it fit perfectly. And so it was just experiments like those, if you can imagine it, like painting. It was almost like how you would start with a pencil sketch and then refine, and it would get a little clearer and refine and would get a little clearer and start to add some paint.
Mike Shinoda: And then, you know, render and refine and refine. And so that took that took a few months. And yeah, even in the end of the project, like this week as we were, you know, the last part of the project is where the all of those kind of like handmade layers of music and art need to get generated into the NFTs by software. I was working with Dylan Reed and a Tazos superhero named Code Crafting. And so we were we were working on like the making sure the audio really sounded like after, you know, there’s so much randomization that was going on. I wanted to make sure that every single NFT sounded exactly the way I wanted it to. That the art was matched up really well. And that and that the presentation on the website is kind of like. It provides you with like an enjoyable experience of browsing them and finding, again, like finding the one you connect with. So that’s that’s actually that last thing I said is going to be able to happen later once they all reveal.
Marissa True: So once they will reveal and once all of them have been minted officially, what sort of the road map you see with this project, what sort of outcomes do you want to see come out of it? Or do you have any plans that you have ideas around? Or is it just kind of an open ended? We’re going to see where this goes.
Mike Shinoda: I actually put on the website on Ziggurats.XYZ, I wrote, I put no road map. Most NFT projects these days. Have gotten into this like trend of promising a very like, ambitious roadmap or complicated roadmap, and they make all these promises, and for all of us that are in the space for a while like you, you know how quickly it changes. Like like bye bye, you know, next Thursday, it’s going to be completely like all of this stuff is going to happen and things are going to be completely different. We’re all going to learn a whole bunch of things. So I just think it’s kind of for me, especially, it’s not about like putting a destination on the horizon and saying, that’s the direction we’re going. It’s more about the the journey of it and planting flags along the way. Because I just I get inspired. Like in the process of doing things. And so the element I think the element of surprise is more fun and more, probably for me, it’s more. Like, maybe it’s more productive,
Marissa True: So I guess the age old saying of it’s the journey, not the destination still prevails in this context, even if it’s a completely new and innovative technology. So we only have, I think, three minutes to spare. And with that, could you please share where exactly people can find out more about zigurrats? Like what’s the website? Where can they go to for more information and how can they continue to keep track of this project as it unfolds?
Mike Shinoda: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s going to it’s going to mint in two minutes on, Ziggurats.XYZ. So that’s Z-I-G-G-U-R-A-T-S dot XYZ. Of course it’s on Tezos. You’ll need to have Tezos in your wallet. Connect that it’s going to be 15 Tezos per mint limit to three per wallet. And then once those, what I’d like to see is if they sell out today or soon, then we’ll will reveal them all. Once that happens, and I guess to keep up with that, the best places to to watch are my Twitter, which is Mike Shinoda and M-I-K-E S-H-I-N-O-D.A. On Twitter. And then if you want to get really have a lot of fun, then you can head over to my discord or my Twitch channel. I’m going to be actually streaming live on Twitch in a couple of minutes as the the public mint happens.
Marissa True: Well, there you have it, everyone. I hope you’re all logging onto that website right now. I know the moment the sessions ends, I’m going to sprint over to my laptop and do the same. But Mike, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you yet again. So thank you so much for your time and for sharing not only your story, but where you see this train moving in the near future. I think we actually have one more minute, so if anyone has one last minute question or a quick question. Everyone’s shy today. So, anyway, thank you so much, Mike. Hopefully, we’ll speak again soon and we’ll all be watching this project unfold alongside you.
Mike Shinoda: Thanks so much.
Marissa True: All right, thanks.
