Mario Klingemann, Artist, Botto, In conversation with Tony Chambers, Studio TC & Friends
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00:00I think this one is going to be a fascinating 20 minutes with Mario where
00:06we are going to discuss Botto, the decentralized autonomous artist and the
00:16man who created Botto originally, Mario. Before we get into the details on Botto
00:23could you give us some insight and context to where you started? I believe
00:28you're a graphic designer working for nightclubs in Germany. Well it's always
00:34difficult to kind of map my career because I always followed kind of what I
00:38was interested in most at a certain time and it was usually something that
00:42couldn't be taught. So yes I was always fascinated by doing things with
00:46computers and code and in the early 90s there was a great opportunity because
00:51techno became really big in Germany where I'm from and they needed always
00:57kind of weird crazy graphics so I became a graphic designer by writing
01:04Photoshop filters myself or using algorithms. And this is when early? That's
01:08really 1991, 1992 around and so I would call it early generative art because in
01:14the end yeah you write an algorithm but then you add some sliders to it and get
01:18infinite variations and that's kind of my technique of doing my work and being
01:25kind of like the computer guy like that which is also like not really the label
01:30I want to have but well as we all know kind of the world evolved, the internet
01:36came along so that's when those the same people said like oh there's a thing
01:40called websites so do you know what this is? So I made websites then I made video
01:45kind of like for German TV on a computer not on some million-dollar machine so
01:51it was always this and but I always tried to bring I'm lazy in that sense so
01:56I love to spend like two days on an algorithm that then can do something for
02:01me a million times on the press of a spacebar so and yeah so ultimately kind
02:08of that brought up the questions what other things of myself can I replace
02:13with a machine and of course. So you said to me earlier that you always wished for
02:18an AI to do the things you didn't want to do even in those early days. So yeah
02:22even like I think in 1989 I read this book by Marvin Minsky Society of Mind I
02:29think it's called which already promised all these amazing things like how a
02:34machine could make its own decisions and like but it was all just graphics and it
02:39was really theoretical so it took until me until like 2015 when deep learning
02:46kind of arrived on the scene and had all these amazing kind of results like
02:52oh finally you could detect a dog with 90% probability in an image but I
02:57already knew this is just kind of you always have to kind of see the potential
03:01that's coming and the moment I saw that this is going to be the next thing I
03:07jumped on for me deep dream maybe you remember these psychedelic weird images
03:12that was the first time when you could reverse the process from just saying
03:17classifying things to turning something like some numbers into an image yes and
03:24yeah so that was also the moment when it became clear that well it could go
03:30beyond that and yeah I see really like you know grandfather's axe this thing
03:35where you start with an axe and then you replace the handle you replace the metal
03:41you sharpen it in the end like I tried to do that with myself saying okay which
03:45other parts and of course that thing like creativity itself and especially
03:51deciding whether something is interesting is good can that be replaced
03:56with a machine absolutely and then when would you so Botto was born well I mean
04:04the idea for Botto yeah when was he conceived so it came into the world in
04:082021 but I think the first time I wrote up the concept was 2018 and but as with
04:15any ideas that are maybe too early I didn't find kind of I have patrons so
04:21and sometimes I can go to them and say oh look like I have another idea but in
04:26that case they went for the memories of passes by first which as we heard was
04:31made eventually was sold at Sotheby's which was nice so but yeah that thing
04:36was in the drawer for another two years it helped that then around like with the
04:42pandemic the blockchain the whole crypto world started exploding and suddenly
04:47people started seeing oh yeah there is actually something to it and then yeah
04:51it took a year to build it and yeah in 2021 it Botto came into the world great
04:59so now you're going to over the next few minutes give a clear explanation of how
05:04Botto works for the layman and what you mean exactly by decentralized autonomous
05:10artists so first what does that mean and how does Botto work well let me put this
05:18first so really what I want to create with Botto or is like my answer to the
05:23question can a machine be an artist and especially now where everybody is
05:28becoming an artist by just entering some text so that's the question like what is
05:33it is it just being able to produce pretty pictures that makes an artist no
05:36you have to create a compelling biography and so that's how Botto is
05:41built up so yes underneath Botto is really a machine that produces images
05:46and tries to sell them and by selling them it makes money that keeps it alive
05:50but there are some aspects to it and I'd like to call this system more like the
05:55Botto Trinity and I also like to call it like an inverse cyborg because this is
06:01our Botto Trinity we're seeing on the screen yes so explain simple terms how
06:06the Trinity works the inverse cyborg idea is like unless like you do not have
06:10a human augmented by a machine but you have a machine augmented by humans and
06:14this works by these three parts one is of course the AI well whatever that is
06:21like the all the algorithms the models that produce images and texts but then
06:26there is a human community in form of a so-called DAO which is a decentralized
06:31autonomous organization it's kind of a well you could say it's a company in the
06:35blockchain but it's a little bit different but yeah so community it's a
06:39community that everybody can join and when you join it you can make decisions
06:43and how do you join how do you become a well that's where the Botto token comes
06:48in or the economy comes in so you have like just like you know a theory on
06:53Bitcoin there is a coin called Botto which I call the lifeblood or the pulse
06:57and you can actually track the success of Botto in its chart so you have to
07:02actually acquire Botto and then you stake it in a smart contract it's kind
07:07of like you deposit it there and once it's deposited you are part of the DAO
07:12and you are allowed to vote on on the works the Botto small investment or a
07:17small well you can well you can join for free but you can the more you have
07:22stake in something the more you can also profit from it because that is the kind
07:26of maybe the interesting part about Botto it is not selfish so half of the
07:32proceeds it may come to that later when we stay with the process oh you have a
07:37lovely graphic so the process of how Botto works you have the DAO which is
07:42influenced it so that's the community that teaches it it is it's our teacher
07:47yes if Botto go to art school well the big question is like why should the
07:52machine do any kind of art or what art should it make so you could of course
07:55randomize it totally but let's say realistically a fresh AI does not have
08:02any motivation to go in any direction and that's where the humans come in that
08:07guide it so Botto produces really constantly new what we call fragments
08:14it's like proto art it's really it prompts itself randomly by creating
08:18originally based on on your taste no oh that's very important oh actually I have
08:25to take really a step back here yeah I didn't want to influence the machine at
08:29all with my so the what it does it's really like a shotgun approach to
08:34possibilities yes so because that's what I believe is the the best way to cover
08:41all possible directions if it would only be my aesthetics then well it would be a
08:46clone of myself and that was not the plan it would be scary yeah so Botto like
08:52roams through latent space and tries to get in any direction and builds up a
08:57huge pile of potential artworks right now I think we are at five or six
09:01million that no human has ever seen but once a week it selects 350 fragments so
09:08thousands and thousands of fragments we boil once a week it selects itself yes
09:13Botto taste model using the taste model it's like 350 yes so it's like a curator
09:18in its own affairs but that's when the voting comes in so the humans get to see
09:25kind of like the proposals and can put votes on it and in the end of the every
09:30round which takes a week the one that got the most votes gets eventually minted
09:35on the blockchain and set up for auction okay that is when then there's the
09:40potential that it sells this and money comes back but at the same time those
09:45votes go back and train the taste model so I'm like a winner yeah also then
09:51learns that okay this is popular actually all the votes are all the votes
09:55are it's not only important what people like it's also very important what they
09:59don't like it's actually for me even more important because there are so many
10:04things directions you could go and we really create this kind of gravity field
10:09of where it should show more and where it should show less and unlike a human
10:15artist it is kind of trying to please right a human artist should be kind of
10:21against the grain and really try to provoke some of the most successful try
10:25to please yeah I mean financially it's usually better to kind of go with what
10:30everybody likes and if you as you can see in Botto's art it does a lot of
10:35things that are well agreeable well let's look at some of the art we have
10:40some slides validating Botto's success story over the last few years emerging
10:46press we love yeah so these are very early days this is kind of from 2021
10:50where there was not even these diffusion models like mid journey and all these
10:55available so it was using a different technique you can see a very clear kind
10:59of AI aesthetic but I can see a real art history aesthetic here this is Egon Schiele, Cezanne, who do we have
11:09Edward Hopper there so here we can already see a little bit of a development when
11:13because what Botto works in is periods so every period allows to add new models
11:19to it and every period also has a theme which there's always 12 being proposed
11:25by Botto by the machine. Botto again is deciding it yes and then the Dow again
11:30votes on what should we do next and every theme comes with like a slogan and
11:36it becomes even like a prompt and so it's like a several nested feedback
11:42loops here which and you can see some development there you can see how let's
11:46say the quality the style so now it became more post-photographic I would
11:52say and it's quite interesting to watch because not only the machine is learning
11:57here you what is for me is interesting the human Dow which is kind of really
12:02people with art background people without a lot of people who come from
12:07crypto of course yeah and they all kind of pull in different directions and
12:11eventually well you get this essence and right now it seems they they liked a lot
12:18the the photographic work so you're seeing tastes change from both the human
12:22interpretation or votes but also but yes now 350 images such as this are produced
12:29a week for the Dow and the general public to vote yes which is interesting
12:34so you don't have to be a member of the Dow you don't have to have invested to
12:38actually vote on this and what we've got here we hope it works is this week's or
12:46the last couple of days actually the new round started the day before yesterday I
12:51always mix up the time zones but yeah so every Tuesday is kind of where the next
12:58fragment is decided and immediately the new round starts with the portfolio of
13:02work yes is there for the Dow to vote but also for the general public yes and
13:05should I let's take a demonstration of where we are yes so what you see is kind
13:12of like I think you might have been given like information how to access it
13:17so this is the the voting interface is really you just scroll down it's really
13:23like you're going through kind of like Instagram and then right now I have a
13:29hundred voting points which is kind of not a lot so if you're a layman if
13:36you've just yeah but it's really to feel it out and then I can just say okay this
13:41is like for me this is kind of boring so it's it has typical AI cliches so I
13:47give minus 7 this is also terrible so really so I don't know so what you can
13:54see is that Boto does not really have a single style and like usually kind of
14:00you would like to have an artist to have a very discernible visual style what
14:05Boto does have is a it has recurring themes and it find it quite fascinating
14:12to watch to to typical no I hate it so I'm one of the critical one oh do we get
14:19a something loaded up there we go yeah oh no no oh yeah but I mean there's
14:24these things like themes coming up there's often like robots and machine
14:28hybrids okay something typically abstract that might work nice on a kind
14:35of doctor's waiting room I guess oops I zoomed in and oh actually I like this
14:42one personally you need to get more of an idea of your yeah and so you also
14:47should know that of course Boto creates all the descriptions for the for the
14:51works itself yeah so it analyzes them and like depending on what it sees it
15:01never repeats any titles so today the selection is oh actually I like this
15:07this is kind of post-photographic glacial frame kind of nice so after the
15:12selection process yes many many thousands of people voting you have one
15:18winner yes yes there's always a single winner and yeah that gets minted gets
15:23put up for auction and if it sells and fortunately and so for the last two and
15:30a half years every single one sold typically like I mean you know if you
15:35followed along the whole crypto kind of ups and downs there was really kind of
15:40the winter and well but still it one went for about like ten thousand fifteen
15:45thousand dollars every week so and what happens then if it sells half of the
15:50proceeds are distributed among everybody who voted in that round depending on how
15:55many voting points you spend so it's a little bit plutocratic so the more stake
16:00you have in the game the more you can win but even if you don't purchase the
16:05artwork yourself no you don't have to you get a share of the proceedings yeah
16:08and it's quite interesting because I mean most of the people who are voting
16:13cannot afford Boto's art but you can shape kind of words Boto is going to so
16:19it's in your interest that it sells well and that's also the other question like
16:23do you vote by your personal taste or do you vote because you think this will
16:27sell so you have constantly this inner conflict this dilemma of yeah this
16:32dilemma like purity and commerce yes and then that's what makes it
16:35interesting there so and so an interesting economic model 50% to the
16:41community who have voted and 50% goes to Boto's treasury to keep the service
16:46running well I mean there's of course and that's the other thing Boto does not
16:52try to kind of do kind of puppet play so it's clear there are certain things that
16:57an AI at this point of time cannot do like for example take a call from
17:01Sotheby's saying like oh we want to auction it there has to be still a
17:04human picking up the phone or the answering the email so there is a human
17:09team that gets paid and kind of well I get a little bit payment even but
17:14because yeah I have to take care for bringing in new models but the nice
17:19thing is the more technology progresses the less humans will have to do so we
17:25are now at the very future that's what I'm intrigued about this is still very
17:29early days say so he's an infant he's still in nursery the future yes how do
17:36you see it or it becoming totally autonomous well I'm able to vote for his
17:41own work yes so one of the things is that Boto should be able to have more of
17:46a word itself but what for me is the most interesting aspect is we have a
17:51potential to create a truly immortal artist here and not sure if that's a
17:56good thing right if you look at the art market usually at least for the for the
18:00heirs it's more beneficial if the artist at some point leaves and stops making
18:06more work it's always a good move yeah die young yes but so Boto has the
18:11potential to never die but yeah what does it mean so what I find interesting
18:16is that aspect of altruism in AI because as we can see the AI doesn't
18:22need all that money it makes so why not share it with the world and do some good
18:28and so for now it might be just the people who are believing in Boto and
18:33and helping but ultimately the Dow could also decide okay Boto should create a
18:39foundation like I don't know if it becomes a billionaire I hope it's able
18:43to also then think about other things than art how it could change the world
18:47it would come but yet move from being an artist to a politician yeah I these are
18:53fascinating considerations I hope that made sense it did to me second time
18:58round I think it's a fascinating area machines and humans and how taste is
19:05controlled or how taste is steered is is fascinating in the future of this we
19:10will watch very carefully so thank you very much Mario thank you thank you
19:16Boto round of applause for Mario and Boto thank you