Episode 04

[00:00:00] All right, we're ready to rock and roll. Three, two, one. Welcome back to the podcast. We are here today with two very important people in the Metaversal family, Jillian Varney and Jack Addis. Jillian is CEO of Lumen Prize and Lumen Studios. Jack is the director of Lumen Studios. This is a organization that's very close to our heart at Metaversal and speaks to a little bit of the history.

Of how Metaversal first began with a focus around digital art. I'm going to get into it in just a minute, but let me first welcome Jillian and Jack. How are you guys? Hi, Dan. Great to be here. Hi, Dan. It's good to see you. It's been a while. It's been too [00:01:00] long. Uh, we've had some holiday break. Jillian is on the east coast, and Jack is on the other side of the pond.

Uh, but we both, both areas have been experiencing a pretty chilly start to 2025. Uh, but just chilly for the weather, because I think we're going to see that there's a lot of heat when it comes to what's happening at this intersection of art and technology, which is really what Lumen encompasses. So I thought we should start by talking a little of the history.

Of how Lumen came to be and Jack, I know you've been involved with Lumen for many, many years. So maybe you can kick off how you first got connected with Carla Rappaport, who was Lumen's visionary and founder. Uh, and tell us a little bit of that origin story. So I met Carla in 2015, um, when I was studying my master's in digital art in London.

Um, [00:02:00] my background before that was in, uh, digital art, but supporting museums and galleries and creating exhibitions and also making my own art. So I previously joined Illumina and I've been an artist and I've been working with, uh, digital means of making art since I was 18. Um, but Carla saw me, um, in an exhibition space.

You really drank the Kool Aid. You've been drinking the Kool Aid since, since your teen years. Yeah, I want to interrupt for just one second, Jack, because it, it reminds me, there's a lot of people today, when I speak about digital art, and they say, well, wait a minute, this is, this is just something that started in the last three or four years.

And so, by virtue of you even talking about how long you've been involved, I want to make sure you highlight a little bit of history around the digital art movement. Well, that's a long story to tell, and I guess it starts in the 1960s, and we could have a whole podcast, and there are a lot more, uh, well spoken people on this, [00:03:00] but I think Artists have always used new tools, um, and with the rise of any technology, creative people will take advantage and learn how to use that once it becomes available to them.

Um, I think in the terms of digital art, there are some unique cases where, where computers or, or Or machines were made available to the right people at the right time, and they were able to experiment with them. And for many decades, those works were kind of lost or forgotten, or not necessarily taken as seriously as they should be.

Um, and over the preceding decades, uh, due to many different forms of technology coming online, and how art history evolves over time, artists working with technology have had a bit of their own renaissance, I suppose, over the last 10 years. Um, and now digital art is very much at the forefront of a lot of people's minds within the art world and outside of it.

Um, so I think, you know, if you want to get a good grip on, on digital art history, Christiane Paul, one of Lumen Prize's jurors, has written a very, very well written and well read [00:04:00] book called Digital Art. And I think that's a really fun place for your average, uh, jury to have a look into what might be. Uh from the past and how that might influence the future.

I like that plug jack. Do you get any royalties from the sale of those books? Yes, I get about uh, 10 to 15 percent per copy sold from the link. You can find in the description of this podcast You've got a good lawyer job. I love it. Look at that. I thought he's gonna say 10 to 15 pence Okay, very interesting and Do you liken digital art today to earlier movements?

That eventually came to take contemporary art by storm as an example I think of the early days of pop art when it was Lampooned and lambasted right Andy Warhol couldn't sell a work He came to Europe and was basically left out of some of these German galleries And then as time progresses, [00:05:00] clearly it turned on its head.

Photography went through its own trials and tribulations and eventually became a meaningful canon within the contemporary art movement. And as you articulate, you know, we think about artists like Vera Molnar, who had recently celebrated a 99th birthday before she passed. There's a long and distinguished history around digital art.

And yet. To so many, they, they think of it as something that isn't worthy of being a central component in the contemporary art movement. How do you, how do you assess that battlefield? I think it's always, until recently, been quite hard to sell digital art. How do you sell, you know, things that aren't naturally sellable, like a video file or A digital image or a massive installation, and I think that is why, you know, in [00:06:00] reflection, maybe there wasn't this, uh, more understanding and knowledge of it because it wasn't percolating through how traditional art would, um, so it was harder for artists to sell their work as part of them to spend their full time on their art practice.

Um, and I think as You know, blockchain technology broadly developed, um, again, artists were able to kind of take advantage of that in unique ways and find ways to sell their work to interested parties who would themselves potentially not see themselves in the art world. Um, so, you know, it's a new group of collectors and a new group of artists finding each other and working it out along the way, which is for me very, always very interesting to see.

Kind of things happening in real time. I know the professionalization of the Web3 art space is quite interesting. Um, and I think with large museums now doing more retrospectives. of digital art from the past 50 or so years. You know, Take Modern [00:07:00] currently has a very large exhibition on. Um, I think it's kind of all to play for, really, with artists today who maybe, you know, haven't been able to get the exposure that they needed, and now finding it, whether they are still making art or not.

Um, and to the surprise of those artists, they're always still like, well, I was just doing this and it was fun. Um, they didn't necessarily even see it as a career. So I think, you know, and there are a lot of great resources out there for people to find out about those artists. So here in the UK, you have the Computer Art Society who run regular talks in London with quite, you know, now you might argue famous artists, um, from this period who, you know, are really keen to kind of share.

With a wider audience, what they've got up to and what they're doing now, crucially, and how they translate it through that career. Well, I love that connection because it plays perfectly to the theme and thesis of our organization and this podcast, which is Reimagining Ownership. What I hear you saying is that until [00:08:00] such time as The tools, techniques were available to make it easier for people to take ownership over some of these works.

Uh, digital art had a challenge in its resonance with broader audiences because there is this natural inclination that people want to not only appreciate the beauty of art, but they want to be able to have it at home, or their place of work, and to call it their own. So, you know, we've been Go ahead. So speaking back to the, my origin story, I wish I had been maybe 12 years younger.

And instead of in 2015, meeting Carla, the blockchain had been around and I might have been able to make more of a living from my art. But the reason I joined Lumen back then, really, in trying to drive it where it is, is to support artists through the prize and bring them that recognition that they, I feel, and hopefully all of us on this call obviously feel, and that [00:09:00] they deserve to support that practice and keep pushing.

You know, the boundaries of what art can actually be. Um, so there's my kind of segue into talking about the prize itself, really, I suppose, maybe. Well, and I interrupted, uh, I interrupted as you were finishing the origin story, but we know that you were a practicing artist. We know that you studied this, and then you told us that you met Carla.

Share a little bit of how that first interaction took place. So, as I mentioned, my background was in art, also being an art technician. And for those that don't know, they're the people that build exhibitions. So you have to be capable of understanding how to make things work in, in. Anything, whether that's a traditional painting or a more complex, uh, immersive experience.

Um, and I was one of the few people, luckily, that had had this broad range of experience. I was able to, you know, use a drill, put it in the wall, um, but also know some basic coding or, or how a projector worked, which, which put me in a unique position to be able to support the [00:10:00] prize at that time. Um, and so Kyla hired me on the spot because I was amazing.

And then from there, slowly together, we, we built the prize into what it was and what it is. Um, and, uh, you know, it's been a really interesting kind of 10 years now, I've been at William and which is a very long time. Um, and I think it's, uh, still an evolving landscape and more and more opportunity appears all the time to bring this type of culture to new audiences.

Um, because you know, the culture of it is always changing and the outputs are always changing and what people want is different and how you connect that into their everyday lives. You know, I'm very keen to democratize this type of work. I want people to understand how it works and why it's important and why are they seeing it.

And, you know, not to disregard it in the way they might have already done, um, because they have a way to understand it. So it's that educational side of things that, as I, as I move through my career, is becoming more and more [00:11:00] important to me. Awesome. Gillian, let's turn to you and share a little bit of your story.

Your background in the arts and, uh, your first exposure and experience to Lumen, which I feel like I was part of, but you were also part of, uh, some of my backstory as well, but I've always worked in the arts with the exception of three years at a hedge fund. Where I worked in the, I worked in the area of purchasing art, uh, curating art.

So I really have always been in this space and I've seen it from multiple different angles. I worked, uh, where you and I overlapped and was at a fine art storage and logistics company where you really see behind the curtain, how the sausage gets made. And you really earn an appreciation for the care and time and capital that goes into maintaining [00:12:00] collections, putting paint on canvases, on walls, moving them across borders between houses and buildings.

A lot of this is never seen or appreciated by the public, the extent to which these pieces maintain a small army, uh, behind them. And what has always fascinated me about the space in which Lumen exists is so much of that falls away. And digital art really maintains a, an intimate connection between the viewer and the work itself.

And there's far less time spent on maintenance. And care and storage and you can really get to the meat very quickly, which is how is this made? What was the idea? What's the means of production? And how does this live on in perpetuity, perhaps on the blockchain, perhaps through other means, but. The very concept of [00:13:00] digital art, I think, is so fitting for this time when we really want to get to the meat of it as quickly as possible.

Right. And I came across Lumen while I, while, uh, during my time at Metaversal, we had a very strong emphasis on generative art, which I still believe is really embodies the future of the art. World, the contemporary art world, um, art on chain, randomness, replicating the vision of the impressionists and we came to know lumen through our engagement in the generative art award, we created a generative art award with lumen, uh, in the hopes of instilling greater confidence in artists who maybe had never used code before to.

To create works on the on on chain and to support lumen in the process, which believes in supporting artists believes in democratizing access to tools that [00:14:00] enable artists to make unique works of art. And that spoke to me for so many different reasons. But ultimately. In that it connects the viewer to the art in a beautiful way.

And I saw the potential in everything Lumen did. And I think that's been the thesis of my career for the last, I guess, three years. It makes me think of the origin story, uh, that I, I shouldn't skip, which is here we are starting Metaversal in 2021. Uh, you rightly pointed out that when you and I overlapped at, at that fine art storage business, It was always, you know, in my head that we have so many works, tens of billions of dollars worth of cultural treasures that never see the light of day.

And the connection that binds across human history is our [00:15:00] storytelling, and often that storytelling is coming through works of art. So is it a disservice that so much of that shared cultural history is actually in crates? Sitting securely locked in these pristine temperature controlled environments. Uh, what are we waiting for?

And that's part of what started to really intrigue me about digital art, which, as Jack points out, uh, had been around. I had seen it. I had heard it. But 2021 was this unique point in time where all of a sudden, You are beginning to see more and more focus and attention on digital collectibles, and that would include digital art and most people today.

Here we stand at the beginning of 2025. If you say NFTs, they think digital collectibles, they may think cartoon JPEGs. [00:16:00] In the case of my older brother, but we know better and the thesis for Metaversal was simply around the tokenization of everything. The biggest opportunity of our generation is going to be real world assets that are getting tokenized, allowing us to use blockchain for economic incentivization for liquidity pools.

But it's also going to herald new opportunities for artists. Just think about the reach, early in Metaversal's history, we started acquiring some digital artworks. That was really the first vertical within our investment arm. And it made perfect sense that by spring, early spring of 2022, I found myself in London, sitting in Mayfair with this fella right here, Jack Addis.

For a [00:17:00] delicious breakfast. Jack, do you remember that orange juice? When we talk about fresh orange juice, I want you to remember that meal. Because they did it right. And I yearn for that type of orange juice today, Jack. I often will ask at restaurants, is this coming out of the bottle? Because let's spare us the nine dollars.

Well, here in the UK, you used to have a range of citrus fruits. But now they're all just called easy peelers, so you need to specify if you want your fresh orange juice. Yeah, it's, you don't get your satsuma or your other type of fruit anymore. It's just a year round easy peeler. So the quality of citrus maybe is declining in the UK and maybe you would never taste that.

again. So I think it's well, that that that would make me very sad. Is there someone that I need to contact about this? Should I write a angry letter? [00:18:00] Yeah. And if you can't get citrus in florida, I don't know if there's hope for any of us. I mean, we do have good citrus in florida, but maybe that's why I get spoiled.

I want to make sure that we can maintain this is a heart healthy part of Jack's diet. It is. I have orange juice every morning and I think that's that's why we remember this conversation. Jillian, we learned something new every day. Through these conversations. Mm-hmm . That's really, so Jack, next time I'm in, I'm in that side of the pond.

All right. We can, we can, uh, march over to Whitehall. We'll have a, we'll have a conversation with the right government authorities here to get this straightened out. Good. Let's get, I'll get the placards ready. But it was at that breakfast that, uh, not only did Jack open my eyes to really all that lumen touches.

But the various ways that we as an organization might get more involved and Jillian, I know you alluded to the fact that. Towards the end of 2022, we [00:19:00] entered into an agreement with Jack and Carla for us as Metaversal to support Lumen in a handful of different ways, but including launching this generative art award, the first of its kind.

Jillian, do you want to talk a little bit about that experience in 2023? Because you were really then spearheading our efforts. It was a great first experience working with Jack, first and foremost, and Carla. And what we were able to see and experience firsthand through that partnership was ultimately the trust that Lumen has earned in the ecosystem.

The number of artists around the world who put their faith in Lumen and who really credit Lumen to, uh, sometimes a small, a large extent with. The trajectory of their career today and the ability to really pull back the curtain [00:20:00] and see the way Lumen operated at that time and the thought and the care that went into how it engages with artists around the world, how it invites them to participate in this annual competition that's Very well structured draws experts from all over the world to assess these works and give them a platform, give these artists a platform.

Um, and they were really the, one of the only organizations doing that around the world. I can think of one other one, but it was unique novel and fundamentally artists first and had at that point, a 12 year track record and all of that. Felt credible and something that was leading the way, right? It was talking about digital art, blockchain really before it was mainstream.

And even today, I'm not sure it's entirely mainstream anyway, but Lumen is at the forefront and always has been in my mind. Let's, let's ensure [00:21:00] Lumen the right way. When you meet people on the street corner today, and if they were to ask you about Lumen. What's the description that you use for Lumen as it stands and it's present for?

Lumen, ultimately, is an artist forced, artist first organization that celebrates the very best art created with technology, both through an annual competition that draws applicants from 65 countries annually. As well as a studio that creates unique commissions, exhibitions and experiences created with artists from around the world to drive digital art connoisseurship and experiences with culture in new ways.

I know that my interest in Lumen, when I listened to Jack at that delicious breakfast in 2022, was a [00:22:00] keen desire to hear about emerging artists early in the process. And today, there are plenty who, who know of a digital artist named, uh, Turkish artist named Rafik Anadol. He happened to have been a prior Lumen Prize winner, 2018, I believe, Jack, uh, but there are many others that are noteworthy and, and may not have shown their work in MoMA yet, may not have shown their work at the Sphere in Las Vegas yet, uh, may not have opened or soon to open Dataland, a museum in California yet, but part of Lumen's mission is to actually elevate it.

All of those artists you talk to. Give us a sense of the numbers. How many artists have come through the Lumen process and are part of the Lumen community? You mentioned [00:23:00] 65 countries, which is a lot. It is a lot. Julian and I did an audit of this because we kept thinking that we had the right number and we didn't have the right number.

And I'm going to refer to Gillian to give you the approximate correct number of artists. So we, we're now entering our 14th year of the prize. And since our inception, we have celebrated over 900 artists. across 65 countries. And that number is quantified by our finalists and winners pool. And that doesn't even speak to the amount of artists who have applied over the years.

That's thousands. But the numbers behind Lumen are truly extraordinary. And this is something that's been organic every year. The massive spread of artists who come from all over the world from, uh, Iran to Saudi Arabia to Brazil. [00:24:00] It's truly a global spread. And not only that, but every year we are amazed that The applicants almost perfectly are split 50, 50 men, women.

It's almost perfect gender parity every year, which is very unique in our space. And we don't take that for granted and something that is. I think perhaps underappreciated about the artists that work with Lumen is the level of sophistication In their idea and the execution of that idea, right? so often we think of digital art as a static image on a wall, uh, right click save and When we say art made with technology, we are truly talking about any element of life, any artistic endeavor.

You marry that with technology and that is eligible for the Lumen prize. And I can give you multiple examples. We have operator. Who won the generative art award in 2023. They are an [00:25:00] artistic duo and they fundamentally work with choreography. So this is movement of the body. They bring that movement of the body on chain.

They then hide it in plain sight. And it's a fascinating commentary on what it means to be a person, uh, express your, your body, the movement, the very essence of your being in us and capturing that in a single image and wondering what you're actually looking at. So that's choreography. I can give you another example of, uh, today we think of technology operator duo happy to say that we've, uh, we've been able to, been fortunate to acquire a number.

Of their works and so in fact, I just saw them they were here in miami for art basel And and they would actually say that the mat the ultimate magic One of the most fascinating elements of their practice is here They have among their [00:26:00] roster of collectors, you know, you're a stereotypical crypto bro who's collecting Choreography dance and then is demanding.

When's the live performance of your dance piece ultimately, and that's sort of like the, their piece to read resistance, right? That they've been able to completely reshape that narrative and their. The education surrounding it is really fascinating But another example that we have is before you go on i'm sorry jillian before you go on to other examples I want to hear about them.

I just want you to highlight what that Judging process entails because it's not you and it's not jack Certainly not me. That is picking winners. Uh, you mentioned it in passing, but I think it's worth putting a finer point on what is that selection process and just to tee it up in years past. I want to say in 2023, there was something like 700 [00:27:00] artists from around the globe that applied.

For the lumen prize did I hear correctly that last year? Uh as a result of your efforts jack's efforts to continue expanding You guys had closer to 2 000 Applicants. Yeah, and so once someone applies, what is that process? Let's just walk through that briefly So on the applicant side, we have an open call that's open for a number of months And an artist from anywhere around the world, no matter their age, no matter how new or old the work that they would like to submit is, they submit it to a particular category.

Every year we have different categories. We'd like to think of ourselves as like the Oscars of digital art in that we have novel categories every year that speak to the direction of our industry, the very best of our, of the craft that we celebrate. And so an artist submits their piece to a category, they [00:28:00] can submit one piece to more than one category.

And then our work begins, which is we assign that work to a number of experts, not one, sometimes up to five members of our international selectors committee. These are curators, academics, specialists from all over the world who then assess that piece against criteria that we define every year. And then those artists that are deemed to be have works of particular merit based on the idea, the sophistication of the idea, the execution of the idea, and the aesthetic excellence of the piece.

Those works are then moved forward. They become finalists. 60 to 65 works this year to be last year in 2024 to become a finalist was to be in the top 4 percent of all applications. Those works are then passed on to our [00:29:00] jury panel. That's a body of 5 individuals who are curators at major institutions around the world.

They then pick our winners, and it's a multi month process that we do not take lightly. It's completely removed from any process. Lumen involvement. We have strict conflict of interest policies. So if you've submitted to the lumen prize, you can't judge the lumen prize and various other measures to ensure that works are judged based on merit and merit alone.

You mentioned some of the final judging panel. These are top notch curators from institution name brand institutions, ones that listeners will recognize. Why do they do it? It's time consuming for them. They have day jobs. Why are they interested and invested in Lumen at all? Well, the feedback that we receive every year is it's [00:30:00] deeply rewarding work to be a part of the journey of these artists.

It's actually quite a noble, uh, and responsibility that truly has weight and an impact on the careers of artists. And to be in this space to be in this pocket of the art world is one inherently in which we all understand the need to pay it forward and help support others in our in our space. And Lumen really embodies that spirit in that we pay it forward.

Our artists who win, who are finalists, they help spread the word about the Lumen prize, helping us grow and our judges who ultimately are supporting the work of this

Um, mentoring them, obviously not during the judging period, but we're all, we're all in this together. And that's the spirit of Lumen. And [00:31:00] so it's, it's never, it's never been a concern for us. We know that every judge is in it for the right reason. And we're deeply proud of that. I want you to finish, uh, talking about.

In the two parts to lumen, right? Because everything that lumen has done and continues to do is about showcasing the talent, the exceptional capabilities of these artists, uh, wherever they may come from and whatever their particular area of focus mentioned operator on choreography, that's not something that jumps typically into people's mind.

But when they see it, The work that, uh, the duo has produced it. It often leaves them astounded. I know I was astounded the first time I saw it and they walked through the evolution of how the work came to be, uh, typically in an hour long segment. That's how [00:32:00] complicated the work is. It takes 60 minutes on average to get through the complexity of it.

You wanted to mention a few other examples. I want to give you the opportunity to highlight other artists that So I hope that, uh, pop to mind. And then I want to give Jack the opportunity to talk about the other ways that lumen is collaborating with those that are in the lumen community and showcasing their works in part through the lumen studio exhibitions, and that's not brand new, although I know the initiatives and efforts that that you have underway that you accomplished in 24 and that you're focused on for 2025 are worth us.

I like to talk about Lumen artists who flip the very notion of digital art on its head because I think in part it helps to extend that invitation further to anybody around the world who is an artist to say this is for you. You can [00:33:00] be a Lumen artist, you can be an artist engaging with technology and it doesn't just have to be a static digital image.

And that's. Really representative of so many Lumen artists. One, uh, I can speak to two winners from last year. One, the British Computing Society award winner Kaken, that is a, uh, three individuals who work with haptic technology and a beautiful, uh, twisting of the very notion of technology today is they have created.

a haptic womb. So it's something that you wear and it's meant to actually connect you to your body. And this really flips the idea of technology on its head because today we think technology separates us from our body. It makes us less aware. It's really making our quality of life poor. And yet they've managed to come up with a piece of technology.

That is healing. That's meditative. And that can actually [00:34:00] connect you back into your body and be a meaningful healing experience. So and that's art. And that's a lumen winning, uh, piece of piece of art. So that's one example. That's particularly fascinating and resonates with our community. The other is Diego Trujillo Pisanti.

He won our still image award and he created a camera that's not guided by right. Light or sight. It's guided by sound. It's an AI model trained on the sounds of Mexico City and the images that it creates. Well, though they're visual, they are in fact driven by a sense that we would consider secondary to visual art.

And yet it is the primary data point used to create these stunning visuals. And that is, if you just think about that for a second, it's truly, it can be mind blowing in that this is art. This is art made with technology. This is flipping the very [00:35:00] notion of what it means to have a static image. On a canvas on a screen, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.