29 Nov 2023/94 min/All Seeing Seneca
MLow X All Seeing Seneca Interview
The artist behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club art reveals unreleased pieces from Perils live on the show and refuses to explain them, handing MLow the interpreter's chair instead.
Recorded days before the Perils launch, this is the archive's exclusive: All Seeing Seneca, the classically trained visual development artist best known for creating the main art behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, walks MLow through unreleased pieces from the collection for the first time anywhere. Seneca frames Perils as the culmination of a lifetime of world building, from childhood characters and an attempted novella through art school figure drawing and a career in commercial illustration, structured around Freud's theory of the psyche, with chapters like Ego and Id and characters built as tangible depictions of those abstract concepts. Every attribute is hand drawn and painted, no AI, with the generative structure inspired by collecting animation cels: each output is a significant key frame of a nonlinear story.
The technology matters as much as the paint. Perils launches on a new Transient Labs token standard where the art evolves the longer it is held and collectors write their own page of the story, extending story inscriptions into something like a permanent comment section on the blockchain. MLow, mid conversation, decides he may use the same contract to mint his interviews. The interpretive engine of the collection is contradiction: damning cosmic harmony, skull plants inverting flowers, chaotic minimalism (a design challenge Seneca once posed to followers), a website song that is all periods and hush with aggression underneath. And Seneca deliberately withholds meaning: when MLow reads death, transcendence and endings out of the skull clouds and a character buried in the ground, the answer is only that as long as that is his truth, it speaks to the piece.
Around the reveals, the conversation covers the mask persona and partial anonymity in the tradition of Martin Margiela, the third eyes and missing mouths of a silent observer, Lovecraftian cosmic horror, the strange fact that the Bored Ape was a small sliver of years of practice, and the team behind the drop: Transient Labs as artistic partners, manager Roger Gastman, UTA and Jen. Influences run from David Lynch (make the idea, then pick the partner) through Maurice Sendak, Mary Blair, Klimt, Schiele and Joe Hisaishi. Seneca's answer to what Perils represents is the emotional center of the episode: a vulnerable kid trying to get through life, meeting monsters and angels, and finding moments of courage.
What this episode teaches
- Withholding meaning is a strategy
Seneca refuses to explain the story on the record, preferring to hear what the viewer takes from it: as long as that is your truth, it speaks to the piece. Declining to fix the meaning makes every collector's reading valid and turns interpretation into the collector's own contribution to the work.
- Contradiction is a reliable generator
Pair a transcendent noun with a damning modifier (damning cosmic harmony), tear flowers into skull plants, render chaos minimally. Seneca builds tone from concepts that should not coexist, and the friction does the expressive work without narrative exposition.
- Story text can be a generative trait
In Perils the caption is part of the artwork and varies per piece: one page carries the child feeling a damning cosmic harmony as something ignites, another just says and they became nothing. The words carry as much tonal load as the image, and change what the same scene means.
- What a viewer picks is diagnostic
When MLow chooses which unrevealed pieces to discuss, Seneca turns it around: depending on which one you pick, what does that mean about you? Selection order is information about the audience, and the whole collection is built so viewers project themselves onto it.
- Slow the collector down with evolving art
Seneca thinks the space moves too fast, so the Transient Labs contract makes each piece evolve the longer it is held, granting the holder time to take it closer to their heart. It is an anti flipping mechanism built from curiosity rather than penalties.
- Make the idea, then pick the partner
Quoting David Lynch on staying true to the idea, Seneca never picks a partner and then invents a project for them: the concept comes first and the collaborator must fit it. That is also why the Transient Labs pairing worked; it came together serendipitously around an idea that already existed.
- One person noticing beats a thousand followers
Advice for new artists: come in without expectations, know where your work thrives, improve slightly with every piece, and do not be discouraged by numbers. It can take a single influential person noticing you, which means more than thousands of passive followers.
- A fake persona burns out
Seneca's mask persona works because it is authentic: a compromise that shows the eyes, where the emotion lives, while protecting privacy and mental health. Both agree a manufactured persona is unsustainable; your true colors show quickly, so do not start there.
- Your hit may be a sliver of your ability
The Bored Apes work was, in Seneca's words, such a small sliver of everything made, and it is strange which things resonate. Perils exists partly to show the fuller range: not just one image but art direction of an entire world, because you never know which piece of your practice the audience will find.
The conversation, topic by topic
Who Seneca is
A visual artist specializing in visual development, turning concepts, scripts and world building into polished design; classically trained at art and design school, an illustrator by trade, digital since age 10 in Microsoft Paint, and best known in web3 for the main art behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, which opened the door to everything since.
Into web3 through the story everyone knows
Seneca was situated in commercial art and knew NFTs only from news and memes. What pulled the artist in was the well known story of the ape work finding a home in web3 and taking off, which raised the question of what the technology really meant and how to play in the new playground.
The long road to Perils
Perils is described as a long time coming: world building practiced since childhood, an attempted novella with political camps and hand drawn maps, music and cinematography imagined in the head, now flushed out and shown on a bigger stage for the first time, which Seneca admits is nerve wracking.
Freud and the audience's role
The story structure is inspired by Freud's theory of the human psyche; characters embody the ego, superego and id. Introspection cuts both ways: the collection asks viewers to analyze themselves rather than decode the artist, and the generative tools give the audience choice over which path they take through the story, including writing their own page.
The Transient Labs standard
Perils is the first project on a new Transient Labs token standard where pieces evolve the longer they are held. MLow calls it the next step past the doppelganger contract (which he is using for a 12 OG artist collaboration minting soon) and resolves on air to consider minting his interview archive on it. Both praise story inscriptions as a permanent on chain comment section between artist and collector; Seneca compares notes with Sam Spratt's Monument Game and its invitation for viewers to give a piece of themselves.
Hand drawn, no AI, cel logic
Every attribute, pose and environment is hand drawn and painted by Seneca; AI was respected but did not fit. The generative plus hand drawn structure comes from collecting animation cels: each output is one significant key frame of the story, and the same scene reads differently depending on whether the protagonist appears friendly or attacking.
Eyes, threes and the silent observer
Eyes obsess Seneca as the seat of truth and the human spirit: the characters stare into the void with third eyes and often no mouths, seeing more because they stay silent, feeding Lovecraftian cosmic horror themes. The number three recurs unbidden; MLow points out the name itself is three words, prompting a laughing admission that the interview has become a therapy session.
The mask and Margiela
The lower face mask predates nothing to do with Covid: it is a deliberate partial anonymity adopted on entering web3, in the lineage of Martin Margiela, the fashion designer who hid his face and blanked his labels so the art would come first. It lets Seneca show the eyes and stay engaged while protecting privacy and mental health.
The live reveals from chapter Ego
MLow screen shares unreleased pieces. In the first, the child protagonist is blurred and shoved into the background while chaos dominates: Shermachus with hypnotic blood red eyes, eye plants and skull plants littering the landscape, the rare deer caterpillar, and story text about damning cosmic harmony igniting in the creature's company. It inverts PFP grammar: the protagonist is pushed out of focus on purpose.
And they became nothing
The second reveal, same chapter, shows the tonal shift mechanic: the clouds occupy the same placement but have turned to skulls, Shermachus lies closed eyed in the ground, the protagonist is now in focus, and the tagline is a flat and they became nothing. MLow reads death, transcendence and an ending; Seneca will not confirm, saying only that death is a prominent concept and the reading speaks well to the piece.
Chaotic minimalism and quiet chaos
Seneca once posted a design challenge asking followers for artworks embodying chaotic minimalism, since chaos is easy as clutter but hard as quiet. Perils lives there: noise rendered as static, a website song with no exclamations, all periods, all hush, with enormous aggression underneath.
Chapter Id, Catechus and the white bird
The video call background is literally the raw background of a chapter Id piece: foreboding red sky, barren wasteland. A third reveal from chapter 8, about animalistic temptation and chaos, shows the character the transcript renders as Catechus unfurling extra necks (a Hydra like three headed trait, with a nod to the film The Thing), frazzled flowers primed for violence, and Seneca's recurring white bird, labeled freedom: the part of the artist that always wants to break out of the frame.
Team, launch and the alpha group buzz
Seneca credits the village: Transient Labs as artistic partners and innovators rather than a dev shop, manager Roger Gastman as a rock, UTA and Jen. MLow reports the project being alerted a million times across his alpha groups, predicts on record that Perils will be iconic (unique pieces, new token standard, real story, beautiful art), and worries only that he will not get enough of them.
Influences and advice
Influences: David Lynch above all, Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, Mary Blair of early Disney, Klimt and Schiele for the hand feel, Joe Hisaishi's Studio Ghibli scores on vinyl; in horror, Cube (psychological, claustrophobic), Del Toro, and watching Saw traps on YouTube. Advice for artists entering the space: no fixed expectations, know yourself, evolve a little with every piece, share the work, and remember one right person noticing outweighs the numbers. Perils, whatever happens commercially, represents a vulnerable kid finding moments of courage, and Seneca calls it not an end but the start of something.
In their words
“I can maybe tell you my interpretation, but I'm more interested in hearing what you want to take from it.”
All Seeing Seneca“There's no exclamation. It's all periods, all hush. But there's so much aggression.”
All Seeing Seneca“Depending on which one you pick, what does that mean about you?”
All Seeing Seneca“It represents a vulnerable kid trying to get through life. Meeting monsters and angels. And finding those moments of courage.”
All Seeing Seneca“I don't pick the partner and make the idea. I make the idea and I pick the partner.”
All Seeing Seneca“It only takes one person to notice, and that will mean way more than the thousands.”
All Seeing SenecaCite this conversation
All Seeing Seneca in conversation with MLow, "MLow X All Seeing Seneca Interview," The MLow Show, 29 Nov 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-11-29-mlow-x-all-seeing-seneca-interview.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.