Creative Futures

I've been pursuing a future where artists are thriving on their own terms for 15 years. The years before that I was developing myself as an artist studying theater and English with a focus on poetry at the University of Iowa. I got into college without even trying. The night before my ACTs I was getting stoned with a friend and scored a 27. With that score I got accepted without even writing an entrance essay. ( I did end up needing letters of recommendations because the only thing I've ever failed at was my last semester of Spanish class in high school. I failed on purpose because I did the math and was going to graduate even if I failed. My whole point for doing school was to prove I could play their game successfully while putting in as little effort as possible) Studying art ended up being the best thing possible for me. I knew that I wasn't going to play their game and saw art as the vehicle to tow the line enough to operate in it while on my terms. The past few days I've been thinking about how easy it would have been to just go along and get the corporate job to be successful vs the insane struggle I've been through. It would have been a different struggle going that other route and possibly found me a the bottom of the bottle as my inner self rotted. For me the alternative to this path was a nightmare not even worth contemplating. ( The guy Luigi Mangione killed went to the University of Iowa and graduated around the same year as me. If I had chosen a "traditional safe path" that's job I could've had. )

Having come of age in the initial social media era but still familiar with pre social media internet I knew the potential but didn't align with how the platforms operated. I've always been a bit of a non-conformist but not just raging against everything. I could see the value of some what was available but always focused on my IRL community while exploring what else is out there. Metalabel is the first ecosystem that really felt totally values aligned and designed with creatives in mind. I've explored probably about extensively as anyone out there. I'm also the co-founder of a non-profit developing protocols, tools and platforms to empower independent creatives. My co-founder is a brilliant software engineer, I'm just smart enough to know we need it built and help with social connections.

Where I've seen things going for a long time and now starting to land is that an artist can run a business with digital infrastructure for a few hundred a month in overhead. Then when you use digital artifacts as a foundation for sales you can generate a sustainable income with a small number of consistent collectors. Once there's a small stable income there's more energy and time to promote the work. As this grows the overhead remains low until there's either enough to hire support or the artist is happy doing what they do. The digital though is just a baseline. As a poet it would be digital poems written, read with and without music and poetry videos. Once the audience is established physical artifacts can be produced. For a painter they could have digital editions, physical prints and the original one of one. The physical prints would be limited edition and the digital one being spread around and purchased creates the cultural value of the physicals. With the low over head of digital architecture and digital artifacts it creates a viable path to having a working career. That's the aim not fame.

I also believe that we will see parabolic success of artists using this kind of framework and social media. For myself as a poet I only need 420 people buying a digital artifact for between $3 and $11 dollars consistently to cover my basic needs. I've got a really small following on social media so even gaining 10k followers over a month or so as I was more resourced to do this work full time without side gigs would be exponential growth. Then these digital artifacts if not made into limited editions can be evergreen so the people that discover you later can have a digital edition but only a few have the physical. This is a long tail effect. If the artifacts are really verifiable limited edition, that can have ownership transfered and not just the download of a file. They can flipped on a secondary market with royalties for the artist attached. I'm thinking this can potentially happen with artist corporation tools instead of NFTS.

An artist with a deep catalog, mine is 20 years worth of poetry, once they have an audience is primed to just keep building. I think that mid career artists are actually the best positioned for what's coming. They say data is the new oil but I think an independent artist will be the new Medici. Though I'm not into that game of power and intrigue. I think artists thriving on our own terms and investing into the world we want will be what really steers our planet in an alternative direction. As part of this I dedicate a % of all my profits to support organizations doing regenerative culture.

This is a photo the majority of my writing from the past 20 years