18 Nov 2023/64 min/ROBNESS
MLow X ROBNESS Interview
ROBNESS tells the Trash Art story firsthand: the PhotoMosh fight, the 64 gallon toter deplatforming and vindication, Rare Pepe history, and why the Impressionists are his blueprint for the AI era.
This is the movement founder episode of the archive. ROBNESS opens by warning collectors that he changes all the time, consistently inconsistent by design, the explicit opposite of XCOPY's locked style, then tells the Trash Art origin story from the inside. He and artists like Max Osiris managed to do everything wrong by the standards of the day: minting too much, collaging sources, and above all using PhotoMosh, a tool he had quietly used for years on glitch and vaporwave subreddits. When he disclosed it, Twitter decided the work was too easy. His answer, delivered here with relish: you liked it after I made it, so what is the point of the method? He knew from art history he would win that argument, went for a run listening to the Sex Pistols, declared his output trash gifs, and cranked them out on overdrive.
The center of the episode is the 64 gallon toter saga told by the man it happened to. SuperRare removed the trash can piece over a perceived copyright issue and removed him from the platform, and he admits he feared it was the end: do collectors even want my work, I have to make a living here. Rarible DMed him and Max Osiris offering a home with no questions asked, rebel collectors like Colborn followed when conventional wisdom called Rarible worthless, over 10,000 trash can remixes eventually flew across the internet, and two years later SuperRare reinstated the piece, with the platform owning the removal as one of its biggest mistakes. From there he defends giving new platforms time, backing Colborn's Zero One on Avalanche and citing Tezos, once declared dead and now in the news, arguing a platform can only be judged by its secondary market on a one year horizon.
The back half roams through his whole world: collecting Rare Pepes in the 2016 telegram and watching the $40,000 Homer Pepe sale shatter reality, buying Coldie's Edward Snowden piece in SuperRare's first thousand dollar sale, the AOTM digital landscape series he made by rejecting commentary art, the years long collaboration with Norman Harman archived at lastconfirmation.com, his Midjourney techniques (including preferring an older algorithm for his 40,000 image desktop statues project), a defense of Rare Pepe history against Bitcoin maximalist ordinals purists, and his influences: the Impressionists, whose fight against the salon and the camera mirrors trash art's fight with AI, and David Bowie, the chameleon. He closes by crowning MLow the Joe Rogan of crypto art interviewers.
What this episode teaches
- The easy tool argument always loses eventually
ROBNESS knew the PhotoMosh backlash was an argument he would win because art history repeats it: people learn a method, feel cheated by its simplicity, then realize the person's whole life had to get to that point. His response to the criticism was to make more of the contested work, not less.
- Deplatforming can build a movement
SuperRare's removal of the toter produced the migration to Rarible, the freedom to mint memes and abstraction without gatekeeping, over 10,000 trash can remixes, and a public reversal in which SuperRare called the removal one of its biggest mistakes. The punishment became the provenance.
- Collector courage is a scarce input
The Rarible migration only worked because collectors like Colborn and others took a real risk following artists to a platform the market had labeled garbage. ROBNESS is explicit that the artists owe them for that.
- Judge platforms by secondary markets, on a one year clock
On Zero One and every new platform: launch week discourse means nothing. The test is whether a community of artists collecting each other matures into a secondary market, which takes about a year, and crypto time compresses everything: one week is a month. Tezos was declared dead and proved everyone wrong.
- Write your notes into the mint
His first SuperRare portfolio doubles as the primary source document of Trash Art because he wrote contemporaneous notes and hashtags into the descriptions as things happened. Viewed in chronological order it tells the whole story, the manual ancestor of story inscriptions.
- Trust is the engine of collaboration
In his 60 to 70 piece ongoing collab with Norman Harman, the method is trusting the other artist's output: what comes back is usually nothing like what he conceived, which forces him to attack the piece again. And you need enough confidence in each other to let the other person say it is done.
- Fight new algorithms for your old prompts
For his desktop statues project he requested dedicated Midjourney capacity for 40,000 generations, tried the newer algorithm, and found it too clean. He went back to the old one. His rule: when a prompt you love changes character on a new model version, test it across versions rather than assuming newer is better.
- You beat AI with heart, not technique
His Impressionist parallel: they organized to reject the salon while the camera threatened painting, and answered it with feeling rather than technical fidelity. Artists will not out-render AI on technical ability, so the differentiator is the same as it was in the 1870s.
- Do not become a broken record
He rations his own signature moves: no more burns after the crypto punk, silence when the space offers nothing worth commenting on, and a permanent rule that the work has to stay interesting to him first. The three pieces people remember (the toter, the burnt punk, the McDonald's application) earn their place by being events, not repetitions.
The conversation, topic by topic
Consistently inconsistent
ROBNESS tells collectors to pick a period: he changes constantly, jumping styles once a body of work has said what it has to say, a self described visual junkie. He contrasts himself directly with XCOPY, whose style is fixed and finished.
What Trash Art is
His firsthand definition: he, Max Osiris, artists like Second Realm and others doing everything wrong, minting too much, making collage with sourcing questions. The flashpoint was PhotoMosh: collectors loved the work until he named the tool, then demanded a higher standard for art. He doubled down, declared his pieces trash gifs on Twitter (he no longer remembers who coined trash art itself), and made almost everything with PhotoMosh afterward.
The 64 gallon toter and the deplatforming
SuperRare removed his trash can piece, the 64 gallon toter, citing what he understood as copyright, and removed him from the platform. He recounts the fear honestly: wondering if collectors would ever buy again, since he had to make a living. Two years of ideological debate later, SuperRare reinstated the piece and Zach at SuperRare called the removal one of the platform's biggest mistakes. Over 10,000 trash can remixes now circulate.
The Rarible refuge
Rarible DMed him, Max Osiris and others offering a platform with no questions asked. They had a ball minting memes and abstraction freely, chasing the front page card leaderboard, and rebel collectors including Colborn and others crossed over from SuperRare despite advice that Rarible NFTs were valueless garbage.
Zero One and platform patience
On Colborn's new Zero One platform on Avalanche, ROBNESS defends the founder as someone who genuinely cares about art and travels the world championing artists, notes that anyone starting a platform becomes the number one target for critique, and lays out his test: whether a secondary market forms, which will take a year. He minted ten editions there in a new motif and they sold out.
AOTM and the landscape turn
He treats AOTM, run by his friend VVD (whose support of the Pepe community he salutes), as a record label slash gallery. His pieces there are digital landscapes made in deliberate rejection of commentary art: tired of reacting to crypto Twitter noise, he wanted to make something simply beautiful. MLow adds that Jake Fried and Grant Yun praised AOTM in earlier episodes.
The Guild and the Norman Harman collab
He was on the first two Guild pieces, where artists stacked layers and passed stems like electronic musicians trading tracks. His longest running collaboration is with Norman Harman: 60 or 70 pieces with no declared end, archived by Norman at lastconfirmation.com, each addressing current or historical crypto events drawn from his time in the space since 2014.
Rare Pepe roots
He entered Rare Pepes in 2016 after, per Rare Scrilla's memory, raving about the counterparty asset in the Poloniex trollbox. He was in the telegram (peaking around 2,000 people) trading like fiends through the bear market, watched the $40,000 Homer Pepe sale live from the chat, and calls it proof of concept that shattered reality. His first tokenized asset came even earlier: beta testing Spells of Genesis in 2015 with the Satoshi card presale. He credits Joe Looney among the Rare Pepe scientists.
Collecting when everything was cheap
Arriving at SuperRare with Rare Pepe price expectations, everything looked cheap. He won a bidding war for Coldie's Edward Snowden piece at close to a thousand dollars, the first thousand dollar sale on SuperRare, and picked up an XCOPY piece for around 200 dollars. Collecting crypto art, he says, is like collecting music: instant, and no house required.
The studio walls
Behind him hang signed prints of the toter and XCOPY's Right Click Save As (spares from a giant print order a collector had him sign), a blazing lightbox piece, a Van Arman print from the artist himself, and a skull painting given to him in Paris by painter Ronan Barrot from the series made with Robbie Barrat, whose studio visit he describes with awe.
Ordinals yes, maximalism no
He supports ordinals and the community around it (naming Leonidas as leading the charge) but rejects the Bitcoin maximalist move of disavowing Rare Pepes and Counterparty: the Nakamoto card is legit history, bigger than most ordinals assets, and he calls out the ordinals creator's dismissal of XCP directly. His line: leave XCP alone, it did nothing wrong.
AI as a new paintbrush
His first SuperRare portfolio used Artbreeder portraits that now look like Cro-Magnon cave painting AI to him. Midjourney hit differently: each algorithm paints with its own strokes, and he works prompts so results do not look Midjourney, including the trick of asking for a photograph so the model dampens and blurs the render. The desktop statues project needed 40,000 generations and taught him old algorithms sometimes beat new ones.
The McDonald's application and the three notches
Asked to string his work into one tale, he names its theme as self criticism and constant novelty, anchored by the three pieces people always remember: the toter, the burnt punk, and the McDonald's application form, a 4 a.m. lightning strike where he got out of bed, printed the form, filled it out in all caps, minted it, and woke to McDonald's itself tweeting at NFT Twitter. He has no roadmap beyond making some of the best damn crypto art in the world.
Impressionists, Bowie and the beat scene
His influences: the Impressionists, organizing against the salon while the camera loomed, exactly as artists now face AI they cannot beat technically but can beat with heart; David Bowie, his number one, the chameleon who embraced change; and musicians generally, from Aceyalone's odd time signature Book of Human Language to J Dilla, Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar. Forced to choose Biggie or Tupac, LA loyalty picks Tupac; New Yorker MLow takes Biggie.
In their words
“I'm consistently inconsistent, so any collector that comes in, just be prepared for that.”
ROBNESS“You guys liked it after I made it. What's the point of the method?”
ROBNESS“The person's whole life had to get to that point and create that work.”
ROBNESS“With crypto time, one week's a month.”
ROBNESS“My plan is to make some of the best damn crypto art in the world. That's the plan. Number one.”
ROBNESS“You're not gonna be able to beat it with technical ability. You beat it with this.”
ROBNESSCite this conversation
ROBNESS in conversation with MLow, "MLow X ROBNESS Interview," The MLow Show, 18 Nov 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-11-18-mlow-x-robness-interview.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.