Interview with Black Swan DAO (Live in Paris)
About a month ago I did the first live podcast interview in Paris at an event hosted by EBB with two members of Black Swan DAO, a Berlin-based collective pursuing horizontal and decentralised approaches to art-making. Penny Rafferty (@pennny_rafferty) and Calum Bowden (@calsbot) are both artists and the members of the DAO who came to speak with me in Paris. We spoke about the need for collective approaches, their quadratic voting tool, Cygnet, and much more. If you liked the podcast be sure ...
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Transcript
Test. Test. Testing. Testing. Test. Test. Test.
This one is number five.
I think we figured it out.
Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you all for coming to the main event of this entire, event. I know you've been waiting for this for several hours, so we'll get right into it. But if you don't know me, you may have seen my tweets on Twitter, called account's called The Blockchain Socialist. I have a podcast. And so what we're doing is a live interview with two members of a group called Black SwanDAO. But maybe to start off, I guess, before I start butchering, trying to describe what it is and what they do, maybe if you guys want to start off to describe who you guys are and what Black Swan is to you.
Sure. Hello. I'm Calum Boden, one of the cofounders of Black Swan. And, I, in another hat that I wear, work on a project called Trust, which you describe as a network of utopian conspirators. And I think that Black Swan kind of emerges from this notion of utopian conspiracy, trying to not only be critical of the world that we as artists, were operating in, but to to try and respond to that critique by prototyping, experimenting, and playing with infrastructures. And so Black Swan, as it stands now, is a kind of artistic research endeavor and software project, responding to the local issues of the Berlin art scene and the contemporary art world, and trying to to work with creative practitioners to better understand the psychosocial affordances of blockchains.
And, I'm Penny Raffety. I worked predominantly in Berlin for many, many years as a theorist and writer. And I guess, like, a big part of what drew me to Dao thinking was and Dao philosophy was trying to sort of understand the affordances and the mutability that was potentially able to be, exchanged and interchanged, throughout the Berlin art scene. And so particularly utilizing a test case and then trying to apply and modulate, this sort of spectrum of ideas and theories, in creating a more kind of interdependent section of the art world that could potentially create other models and systems and sorts that would eventually feed into and modulate, the next generation of artists.
Cool. So I think the name Black Swan DAO is pretty eye catching. So I think when people obviously know about the, like, black swan events type of phenomenon where something happens that you don't really expect to happen or something doesn't happen that you expect to happen and you consider it a black swan event. But I was wondering if you can maybe explain a bit, where, like, the where that name comes from, and, like, is that related to uncertainty or or risk or things like this?
I mean, I think, you kind of already outlined the underlying definition of it. But I think, like, the way in which the terminology was used is that and I think that's also something, like, listening to the talks today as well, is that sometimes in terms of, black swan, it's this idea that actually black swans were, not recognized as swans because people ultimately believe that a swan should be white, essentially. And until black swans were discovered and registered as such, then there was sort of, like, this fantastical prophecy of unbelieving. And I think that's also what happens very much within, like, the rhetoric of the arts. There is a heavily rooted notion of tradition, prophecy, terminology, and this mode of not believing that there can be another way because it's so heavily rooted in a system that we pertain to be the only system and allowing those kind of affordances and to implement this way of existing as an alternative to the point to which then you recognize that, you know, there always has potentially being another way or another version. But until we actually start to notice or to view, this in practice, like, we it's still an imaginarium.
Do you want to add anything to that, sir? Yeah. I think for me, it's,
it's also taking from Nassim Taleb's, like, theory of black swan events and thinking, like, in a hyperstatitional way that black swan Da'o will eventually become as, like, understood within frameworks of reality as black swans became. So I think it's like a hopeful again, it's like a form of utopian conspiracy. Eventually, black swan DAOs will be recognized as art worlds in and of themselves.
Yeah. It I mean, what it when I hear you guys speak, it's almost like, I think as well because you're working in the context of blockchain and there is this, belief, generally, I guess, that a blockchain is used for a specific way or, like, for a specific thing and, yeah, with a folk high focus on profiting, that it's almost like a black swan that you can find something else for it at this point.
This is I really like this interpretation also. Because, like, a catalyst for Black Swan DAO is also a general skepticism with the claims coming out of the blockchain industry around the use cases of the technology. Because, like, as you're saying, the main proven use case is making some people really rich, maybe crowdfunding. Sorry if you work on protocols. But, ultimately, we wanted to set our sights on, like, really understanding what this technology might do for our community of artists and for ourselves as artists trying to operate in a increasingly alienating art world.
Yeah. So do you want to explain a bit what the, like, what were the issues in the art world that you were involved in? So in in Berlin, basically, that's got you, like, to begin working on Black Swan.
I mean, when Black Swan was, like, first a thought form, it was very much coming out of a program called Realite from Kunstwerkke Gallery. And the notion was that there was a lot of conversations going on in that space about the accelerated gentrification, the lack of interdependence within the art scene itself, the gender dis, inequality, the disenfranchisement of certain practices based on a traditional scope, also the lack of funding, and also the lack of accountability in terms of what is known in the art scene as grooming. So, like Interesting interesting term. Yeah. Basically, the idea of grooming in the art world is that quite often an artist will kind of cut their teeth inside project spaces that are typically underfunded. If not, they're, just energetically produced by the community for the community. And an artist will define, organize, register their practice within these spaces. And as soon as that has gathered enough kind of, hype and enough structure around it that they'll be picked up by either a blue chip gallery or a museum or a space where they can then enter the market system. And I was doing a lot of research on how we could make this a more kind of equitable system in terms of these artist led spaces and also the conversations between these legacy institutions and these spaces that are nascent spaces for the creation of art. And what became very apparent to me at that point was that a lot of these legacy institutions, they endemically profit on these early spaces, but they don't often give back to the early spaces. So Black Swan was originally conceived with the idea that they would be held accountable to almost, creating a fertile ground for these artists to begin their practices, which I think is also a little different in terms of most DAO models. When Black Swan was conceived, there was an idea of, like, splitting up the stakeholders and the users. So a stakeholder would be an institution, would be a museum, would be a collector, a patron, who actually then offered, resources, whether that be money itself or a studio space, and also utilizing I mean, it's very, very local in terms of, like, the Berlin art scene. So for example, all the galleries close in August. That's dead space that's not used. Could you give that over to a nascent practice so that they could build upon it? And so the idea was that these stakeholders would then place their resources into the pool, and then the IDs themselves would utilize a sort of protocol to, envisage proposals that could make use of these resources, and then they would vote upon who actually gathers these resources based on the project itself, which is also a little bit different to how the art world typically works because it manifests itself often on a gift economy. So So as an artist, you will be gifted certain resources that might not actually be what you want to create in terms of your vision, but you actually model a proposal around a certain resource set. And so it was very much about actually instead of the artist working towards the demand of what was offered, instead it was like looking at the pool of what was available in the Berlin art scene, and then those artworks being constructed based on what the artist wanted to do and then utilizing the resources, which often can be a kind of chain of resources, which also doesn't really often happen in the art world. You typically get, like, one funding grant or one residency space, and actually, it's much more beneficial for these resources to be chained in order to have a more defining, set of tools, which of course are inevitably social when it comes to creating and practicing art. And so there was, like, a lot of kind of different models that were maybe, like, a little bit bastardized in terms of, like, initial Dao philosophy and how that was kind of, positioned, in the history of Daos. And I think this also comes to a very sort of social dynamic, in terms of, holding these legacy institutions, to stake within an art scene. And, of course, this is, like, not in any way unbeneficial for them because with every young scene, if it actually gathers the support that it needs at that moment to be created, the longevity of that means that those legacy institutions will inevitably profit further because the artists will have what they need as they're growing. And so I actually think this notion of, like, the starving artist doesn't make great art. I'm not, so into this kind of concept of, like, that we have to suffer and we have to exist in scarcity in order to energize our creative strata.
So then, so based on this, then, you guys came up with Cygnet, which I mean, do do you want to, describe that maybe? Sure.
So BlockSpan started from, like, a speculative proposal for how to begin responding to this critique of the local Berlin contemporary art scene. And as I was saying before, being, like, skeptical of the claims of the blockchain industry, but at the same time being very inspired for the possible ways that it might distribute value differently within networks and respond to the failures of platform capitalism to protect the the, like, data rights of its users. And, so we wanted to not just kind of jump into using blockchain technology, but to try and understand what use cases it might have for our community. And so we devised about a year and a half of experiments to begin understanding different variables that we planned to eventually go into, DAO toolkit that, we wanna make available to artist communities. And so we started looking at decision making. We then looked at tropes of organizations and hierarchies and the ways that different organizational forms relate to each other. Then we looked at, ontologies of value and the way that artistic practices and creative process more generally generates many types of value within a social context, that are not well captured by narrow and reductive market values. And so we wanted to understand that better. And so from these experiments, we began prototyping a consensus building tool that we've since called Cygnet, which, means baby swan. So it's our kind of baby Sticking to the theme. Exactly. Yeah. We've we have the swan theme. We will carry it through until the swan is dead. Like, is Cygnet the name of a like, what is That is what it is called in English. Yeah. It's called it no. It's just, like, that's the word. But it sounds it's okay. I thought Yeah. Because it's nets at the end? I thought it was Well, our website is sig.network. So Okay. Yeah. I know. Awesome. Smart. Uh-huh. Yeah. Branding is key to DAOs. And so from this initial activity around, decision making models, we looked specifically at, quadratic voting because we were interested in how it offered a more nuanced way of expressing opinions, but were skeptical of the ways like, just how complicated it was. And we thought that artists wouldn't like using this, basically, was our assumption going into the experiment. So we put it up against one person, one vote, and we put it up against a lottery to think about removing agency and seeing, like, what are the consequences of that. And we were really surprised to find that, the 10 participants that we were working with, like, all really enjoyed using quadratic voting even if they didn't understand how it worked. And I can explain a bit, like, quadratic voting offers, participants, like, a range of things called voice credits, that are spent across proposals. You can spend them however you want. And then to calculate the vote, the square root is taken of the voice credits spent, and then that's all added up. And, so we took these insights from this initial exercise and began, prototyping a quadratic voting tool that would, make this relationship between voice credits and votes more intuitive and visual. So we tried to, yeah, build visual indicators that told you how strong your vote was gonna be. And so, and we further refined this in in since the the year that we've been developing it so that artists generally like using it. And actually, a recent test case was with The Sphere who presented earlier, where they had the most users of the tool that we've ever had. And, it's kind of interesting that there's a lot of questions, I think, around, like, proposal formation, like, which makes a lot of sense because that's where ideas are generated and created. And then once voting happens, things get pretty silent. Like, you don't hear from the participants anymore once they're voting because it just kind of works.
Right. So, I mean, it it seems to me that, because there there is this question, I think, a lot in the earlier panel, like, people always asking, like, oh, well, if we use a new technology, like, will anybody understand it? And I guess what you kind of saw I guess you guys kind of had that expectation as well. Like, is anybody gonna understand this? Because I guess if you if you explain it as a we're taking the square root of the amount of, like, points you're putting here and then doing that, a lot of people are not really going to understand it. But I guess what you found is that, having a proper interface that sort of shows that gets the idea across of what kind of what they're doing, I guess, helps expose that a bit better. I mean, I think that it would be,
reductive to understand it purely through an interface. There's, like, also a lot of social contracts and checking in and also being, like, present and available to onboard people, not purely through, like, a sort of instruction sheet, but to be there. And, I mean, I think this is also something that has been, like, fundamental to black swan from the very early days, but is to continually, understand that, like, conversation is extremely valid when you're actually trying to create these structures for cultures and communities. And I think also in terms of understanding signet, there's also really a social dynamic to it as well because not only is it in the sense that, okay, a certain amount of proposals will be granted those resources, but also by that community reading through those proposals. That also offers, like, an alternative economy in terms of, like, I understand what you're trying to do with your practice. Maybe I can exchange with a certain set of labors that you are asking for in terms of your proposal. Maybe we can exchange together. Maybe you have something of value. And also to enrich the conversations and the practices that are part of that community. So instead of understanding that you're submitting your proposal in order to benefit from your individual practice, you're also creating this entanglement of knowledge and conversation. And that in itself, I believe, will actually aid the community in creating a sort of stronghold where it becomes interdependent. And it's not purely based on the technology to solidify its kind of circumference of, exchange.
So you're saying, like, the proposal because the proposals are public, that it it it helps almost like that scene that that cultural scene or art scene to, like, oh, that's what you're doing. Yeah. This creates a conversation. It creates a critique, which I think is also progressive. I don't believe that,
criticizing or, taking a different, viewpoint, I think that this can construct better, in a sense, creations. And so by having that ability to be able to understand what your peers are doing, that's also, of course, dismantling this notion of the individual artist and which is being in terms of, like, the traditions and the history of art that it's very much kind of speculated on this notion of an individual genius. And, actually, I think that when you really begin to unpick these kind of models and moments of art history, you find a whole, set of protagonists that have fed into those conversations. And I think that what we're trying to do is show that these protagonists are there rather than sort of isolating in terms of, okay, you won, so to speak. There's actually, you know, there's, there's an infrastructure around that.
Right. So to me, it seems like, what you were saying earlier, like, you're separating the the people who are funding arts with the people who are working on arts and then using this quadratic voting as a type of interface between as a almost like a to be able to converse with to come to consensus between these two.
There's no involvement from the resource contributors. True. True. The consensus amongst the scene, at least. Yeah. Amongst the scene. And maybe just jumping on what Penny was mentioning, but in, the research experiments that we've done, we found that when, like, following a more traditional grant proposal approach where you're expected to, like, put in some fully fledged idea for this thing that you're expected to follow or, like, everybody knows you're not gonna actually do what you've written on the page, but there's this expectation that you have to articulate the idea as though it's a fully formed thing. Following this more traditional proposal approach increases feelings of competition amongst participants because it creates this, like, more alienating environment where people are stood behind these ideas that they're trying to perform as being, like, immutable in some way. And I think that in, like, learning from this and learning how important the, like, off chain facilitation that we do in any, funding cycle or research distribution round is to the process. We've we've tried to build more time into, like, the proposal development phase so that people can be in conversation with each other's ideas before they're fully formed. And then I think this also furthers, the work in, like, demystifying the individual genius artists, and, like, de fetishizing the commodity form and showing how, like, conversations and, interdependent relations are at the base of, like, everything in the world already. But making that more explicit and inviting people into these processes produces more collective outputs.
Yeah. That was that was pretty well said. One of the one of the things the next thing I wanted to talk about because so, Penny, you've been and you wrote for, a part of, a part of the book, Radical Friends, which is coming out, through Furtherfield, which is like a artist artist collective based in The UK.
It's actually from TARC Press, but Often. Well,
it's with with with Furtherfield Yeah. It's,
I worked with Ruth Catlow, who's the director of Furtherfield Right. In the creation of this book. Yeah.
So so, like, in in this book, which is, I think is is already out now so people can check it. Yeah. It launched last Thursday at Serpentine. Yeah. So brand new. But you guys talk about in one of the essays that you wrote, with Black Swan was about collective staking, which I think was, like, kind of getting at where what what you were talking about, Calum. Do you wanna explain that concept a bit? I thought that was pretty that pretty interesting one. So in a essay that I wrote with Laura Lotte, who's another
wonderful swan, we pondered affirmations for art worlds based on mutualism and solidarity. And one of the insights that we propose in this text is, art making as a mode of collective staking. And a nice, way of thinking about tokens that is kind of initially proposed by other Internet, of which Lorr Latty was one of the authors of this text, is that tokens are promises. You know, they're not equities. They're not stores of value as the recent market collapse has shown. They're promises of some, like, future utility or they're, like, promises of a future in some way. And we kinda like this idea of, like, a token as a promise as some so it creates more of a social relation. And and so then we were also thinking of, like, the artist CV, a highly contested, like, document in the art world, but that provides an index of the relationships that have gone into any artist's career. So you in a CV, you have institutions, you have curators, you have education educational experiences, you have all of, these different stakeholders of an individual's art an individual artist's career that, we think should be made more explicit or could be made more explicit. And something that's also nice about staking as it as it works in blockchain is that it's where tokens are stored in some sort of locked treasury. So they can no longer circulate in the market. So they're kind of, becoming a collectivized promise in some way, like, where you're saying that you trust the thing that you are staking to to such a degree that you're willing to, like, remove, your tokens from from circulation. And so we're kind of, yeah, pondering the ways in which, staking could become maybe, a more explicit form of commitment making to, like, the gift giving that Penny was talking about is norm the normal, like, modus operandi in the art world. These, like, expectations of gifting or how, yeah, gifts circulate in this very opaque and often, like, nepotistic way. And so thinking about staking as somehow making explicit commitments.
Yeah. Like that. Because I think when most yeah. Obviously, when people are thinking of staking, when they're, you know, crypto pilled or whatever, They're they're thinking about is, like, staking into a new DeFi thing that's going to give them an APY or whatever. And so that because that's what people are associating with, that's what they kind of think of it as purely a a financial stake with an expectation of a promise of a financial gain. But I think the the point that you're making is that, we collectively stake probably quite a bit already. We just don't really think of it in that way and that we're, staking on something happening in the future that is not financially motivated or does not really have much to do with finance. But I imagine as well, we were I was speaking with Penny earlier about this, but that I feel that it seems that there is there is staking in the art world. I would think that there's staking in the art world, and that's, where where, like, all of the money goes in terms of, like, where grants are coming from or where very wealthy collectors are maybe putting their money. That is kind of a form of collective staking, but it's kind of like a anti democratic form of collective staking. That's still collective, but it's like not that many people are in the collective that are doing the staking. And so that sort of induces people from elsewhere with not as much resources to move in that direction or to, you know, incentivize to go where the money is almost, I would think. But yeah. So I guess the the point here that I'm making is it seems that's what you're trying to, I guess, maybe expand upon is how to make that collective collectiveness, like, more explicit and therefore,
like, impose that, you know, this needs to be more democratic or something like that. I guess it's also in this, like, the collectors all staking to the same artist. This is about minimizing risk. And I guess it's often, like, market risk because these are investments that they're making when they're buying the art. And what if through interdependence or through, like, solidarity and mutualism, artists can share that risk a bit more. So it's not like one artist succeeds on the heads of a 100 artists or whatever, but rather they're all, like, collectivizing the the staking that is already happening.
Can I just run on Yeah? Go for it. I mean, I think it's kind of what I also just wanna, like, reshuffle a little bit, is that in terms of, like, where the money is held in the art world, like, I know that we're all kind of, like, taught to understand this as, like, a sort of monster and that we shouldn't interact, that we should, like, take the side road and but then still want some of the resources. I think, like, in my personal experience, like, opening up these types of conversations to holders of economy within the art world and to holders of the resources, actually, what I've found as a sort of response is that they're actually very open for these conversations. And that in the same ways that, just relating it back to Dao's, you know, that there is always a problem with sort of voting fatigue. Like, how many proposals there are? How much hours you have to go through? And I think in terms of, like, the art world, I think there's also a sort of fatigue. There's thousands upon thousands of artists. And those resources, how is one humanly going to move and shift through the dynamics of these artists? And therefore, as Callum said, is specifically kind of channeled to a group of artists that we see continually performing well within the arts. But, actually, is this not more about the fact that there is a wall between us as practitioners and those who are holding resources. And that actually maybe by creating more of a sort of osmosis or creating more of a social space to be able to determine what artists need and what also these, in a sense, stewards of art want to in terms of how much they want to commit as well. And I think that, as the years gone by, I think less and less about sort of us and them. And instead, I try to think about how social norms are mutable and how we can create, cultural potentials, and we can sort of offer alternatives that may not actually be the cut cookie cutter alternative that you've offered up on a plate, but at least that there is some sort of tangible shift or currents that are available in terms of us kind of coming closer together, which may seem actually more eutopic than this notion of us and them. But, actually, this in itself is very difficult. It takes a lot of energy. You have to go places that, like, the younger version of me would never wanna step foot in. You but I think that they're I feel very positive about it purely through the experiences of, and, of course, that is as well a privilege to be able to access those spaces. And I think that that's also something that's really important in terms of Black Swan that this project was not built from being outside the art world, but actually understanding that you've been accepted, but you shouldn't forget what's outside of it. And to create bridges and to understand your position and to try to almost sort of contribute in a back stream rather than only thinking of streamlining how you produce and participate and perform in the art world.
Yeah. I think, well, I like what you said earlier that and you guys mentioned this in the in the essay, in the book, that one of the things that you like about blockchain actually or or, like, what you're I think it was, like, one of the four principles of something. I forget. I'm I'm ruining it. But, one of them was the fact that to that you can be very mutable, which is against all of the marketing that you hear from the blockchain or crypto industry that it's all about it's the fact that there are only 21,000,000 Bitcoin makes it, you know, fantastic and, you know, the next thing. But the fact actually is that you can change these things if you just decide to do it. It's kinda like, it almost seems, like, kinda stupid when I say it out loud, though, but it's like Like It's just it's so funny that they think of themselves as immutable when, like, you could just make another blockchain. You could literally fork it. You know? Right. It it's the but it's like this contradiction that there's immutability and there's exit. Yeah. Like, and there's, you you know, just you you can fork whatever you want, but then you've you just contradicted the whole immutability arguments. But I think it's I mean, what I was saying earlier, but, like, this is all, like, marketing just for a very specific type of person to come onboard into the crypto ecosystem and and put their money in. And I think the type of person who is dumb enough, sorry, to put a ton of their money into the crypto ecosystem is someone who's probably really, enticed by this type of marketing.
But the crypto ecosystem is purely a worlding. And, you know, it's a worlding. It's a reality. It's a form of terraforming, another way of, participating within a certain social or societal spectrum. And in those modes or means, like, you know, who has that authority to make reality? You know, technically, everyone We do. Yeah. So they can make a reality. We can make a reality. You know? There has and I think that's also something that we often forget that, you know, reality is a set of collective hallucinations that we agree on. And if we decide on another set of hallucinations, we can also participate and live within that.
Alright. Do you guys see that thing over there? Right?
Look over there.
Absolutely. A little disturbing.
Yeah. I think we're at, we're a little bit past thirty minutes, so I don't know if we have I think we probably have to end it here
around ish. Do we have questions?
Oh, yeah. Maybe we should ask a question now. We should ask a question to them. Yeah. Well or should we ask if if they have a question for us? We've got some questions for you.
Probably.
Should we do maybe, like, one question from the audience?
What kind of art do you guys do?
What kind of what kind of art do you guys do?
I work in a collective called Social Club where, we create role played immersive works that, test, different spectrums of reality and are particularly very long durational from seventy two hours to fifty eight days. Like What's up?
Hard act to go after. Is yours cool initially approaching reality shaping from other angles? But currently of the practice that infrastructure can be artistic and should be a part of artistic practice. And I think, like, encouraging artists and creative practitioners to think infrastructurally and to think about the work that they're doing as infrastructures, is really important in getting beyond this, like, implicit reinforcer vacation of, like, existing hegemonic powers. Like, think about the amount of value that artists have created for Instagram and Facebook and, like, if that energy could be put into coalescing alternative platforms, alternative ways of being social using and leveraging technologies is kind of the work that I do. And also, like, with trust is the the type of work that we're doing.
Destroying hegemonic powers as arts and, distorting reality.
It's about the way it works. You can call it interdisciplinary
practice.
In arts, I call it interdisciplinary. Research. Alright. Cool. Well, thank you guys a lot for being my guinea pigs for the first, live interview I've ever done.
Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thanks so much.