14 Feb 2024/length unknown/DEAFBEEF
MLow X DEAFBEEF
Fully on chain pioneer DEAFBEEF on writing C on a cheap laptop, satirizing the mania with FIRST, and why permanence is a dogma of crypto culture.
Recorded February 14, 2024 and never published, this is one of the archive's most valuable conversations: a patient first person account from one of the most respected fully on chain artists working. DEAFBEEF explains the practice behind his six 2021 series, Synth Poems, Angular, Glitch Box, Transmission, Entropy and Infection: low level C code written on a cheap laptop, synthesizing abstract sound and animation, with the generating instructions stored directly on Ethereum. The method predates his knowledge of NFTs; it grew from pandemic evenings synthesizing weird sounds while raising young children, posted to Instagram's modular synth community, until the Art Blocks Discord pulled him down the rabbit hole in early 2021 and Snowfro's encouragement helped him, as he puts it, hit the jackpot.
The conversation's spine is a philosophy of constraint. He avoided bleeding edge tools because they obsolesce, cost money and become their own job; plain C producing sequences of images and sound will still run if he picks it up in ten years. That ethos doubles as a message to a synth culture obsessed with expensive modules: you can experiment with sound using very simple tools. From there the talk moves through his satirical turn: FIRST, the Mad Libs style generative texts mocking the space's obsession with being first, built in three days, minted at 0.01 ETH by 5,000 collectors, with every dollar including 1.4 million in royalties donated to GiveDirectly, and its predictions still coming true years later.
The deepest material is his heresy about permanence: he calls it a dogma of crypto culture, arguing the data may be permanent but the interpretation is not, and that what actually persists is what people pay attention to. Entropy, which degrades with every transfer even though its on chain code could regenerate it pristine, and Hashmarks, his Bright Moments project of 100 hand forged sculptures whose on chain images fade unless refreshed yearly with a secret hash chain, both play that question out. He closes on AI (Holly Herndon's Holly+ as the thoughtful model), the hexspeak origin of his name, and a generous turn interviewing MLow about why the show exists.
What this episode teaches
- Choose constraints that survive
He works on a cheap laptop in plain C because bleeding edge tools become obsolete, expensive, and a job in themselves. His test: the work should still run if he picks it up ten years later, and the practice should fit the few free hours a parent in a pandemic actually has.
- Audiovisual is its own medium
Sound and image composed together are not the sum of the parts: each perception modifies the other, so the silent animation and the isolated audio deliver different experiences than the whole. He places this in the visual music lineage running back to John Whitney.
- Music NFTs fail perceptually, not technically
People accept a rare painting as valuable and like living with silent paintings on the wall; a song has no equivalent way to sit on a pedestal as an artifact unless it becomes something like rare vinyl. The solution, he argues, needs new experiments in creator economies, not better contracts.
- Permanence is a dogma
Data on chain may be permanent, but value lives in the social layer above it: the index, the catalog, the attention. Like the library of Babel, everything being stored means nothing without curation, so our interpretation, which changes as humans change, is what actually decides what lasts.
- Blockchains are interaction machines
Beyond buying and selling, programmable blockchains enable mechanisms for social interaction and meaning making: Glitch Box let owners author new works by changing parameters, Degenerative pays gamblers in rarer slot machines, and Hashmarks binds physical and digital custody for ten years.
- Satire can be structural
FIRST was built in three days as catharsis about the 2021 mania, minted cheap, direct from contract, with all proceeds, 1.4 million dollars including royalties, donated to GiveDirectly. The speculative frenzy around it enacted exactly what it satirized.
- Credit your lineage
He repeatedly redirects credit: Rhea Myers was making blockchain art in 2014, Sarah Meyohas and others thought about these ideas long before 2021, and artists have backdated work to claim firsts throughout art history. First-ness is a narrative pattern, not a fact of nature.
- Meet your audience where it is
His early work is square and one minute long because that is what Instagram rewarded, and Instagram is where the experimental synth audience lived. Format follows channel, and channels change.
The conversation, topic by topic
The practice
DEAFBEEF is best known for six 2021 audiovisual series: Synth Poems, Angular, Glitch Box, Transmission, Entropy and Infection. He writes low level C on a cheap laptop to synthesize abstract sound and animation, and because the work is code, the generating instructions live directly on the Ethereum blockchain rather than rendered output.
Litecoin, family, and the rabbit hole
He mined Litecoin in his basement around 2012 or 2013, sold everything when his first child was born, and ignored crypto for eight years. During the pandemic he wrote code in the evenings to synthesize weird sounds, posted them to Instagram's experimental synth community, and dismissed repeated NFT suggestions until early 2021, when a small link at the bottom of the Art Blocks site dropped him into a Discord of pixelated zombie avatars. Snowfro was among the first people he DMed and was deeply encouraging; he says he hit the jackpot with his entry.
Why music NFTs have not worked
His diagnosis: music is ephemeral, so owning a song as an artifact is hard to hold in mind, while static generative art has the killer use case of hanging like a painting. He ran a recording studio in his younger years, wants new creator economies for music, and admits nobody has the solution yet.
Visual music and VR
With a background in music tech and academic computer animation, he combined the two into what he insists is its own medium, citing John Whitney and synesthesia. He hopes headsets expand the audience, stereoscopic rendering and spatial audio being obvious territory; MLow cites DCinvestor's tweet that seeing Squiggles and DEAFBEEF in VR is not to be missed.
The ethos of constraint
No teams, no bleeding edge gear, no dependence on tools that churn: just what he can do himself with what he has, in the play time he designed within his own self contained world while raising kids through a pandemic. It was also a pointed message to modular synth culture: you do not need thousands of dollars of modules to experiment with sound.
FIRST
September 2021: a series of satirical generative texts, Mad Libs style, commemorating and mocking the space's narratives, actors and incentives. Built in three days as catharsis, announced with a tweet that tripled his followers from 10,000 to 30,000 in hours, minted at 0.01 ETH with 5,000 supply direct from contract. None of the money touched his wallet: primary and secondary, 1.4 million dollars, went to GiveDirectly.
Satire that keeps coming true
The absurd combinations, the first NFT to land on the moon among them, keep matching real headlines; MLow points out Jeff Koons literally sending work to the moon. He wants to publish a Book of Firsts pairing minted texts with press clippings, and notes artists have backdated work throughout history to claim firsts, a pattern now replaying on Bitcoin ordinals.
Against the permanence narrative
Though seen as an on chain maxi, he rolls his eyes at thousand year narratives: permanence is a dogma of crypto culture. Storage is easy; being found is the hard part. The catalog, the index, the OpenSea page, the social layer deciding what matters, none of that is on chain, so the data is permanent but our interpretation is not.
Entropy
An audiovisual work that artificially degrades with every transfer, tracked by the smart contract: blurrier, more faded, the sound rolling off into noise. The joke inside it: the code is stored permanently on chain and could regenerate the piece pristine, but the chain says it has degraded, and we collectively agree to assign value that way. He made it as a sensorial piece first and is proudest of how it looks and sounds.
Hashmarks
His Bright Moments project: 100 small metal sculptures he hand forged as a practicing blacksmith, chosen by collectors at an event in Patagonia beside a glacier erratic. Each back carries a 256 bit hash chain root; holders claim a fully on chain SVG rubbing of their sculpture that fades after a year unless refreshed with the secret only they hold, he destroyed his copies, and becomes immortal after ten years of care. It binds physical to digital and plays with irreversible one way processes, from hash chains to climate change. Brian Brinkman owns one.
The care based lineage
MLow connects Hashmarks to Lauren Lee McCarthy's Good Morning, which demands daily interaction. DEAFBEEF shouts out his own influences: Sarah Friend's Lifeforms, which dies unless given away, and Rhea Myers' Secret Artwork, knowable only through on chain cryptography. He stresses Rhea Myers was making blockchain art in 2014, long before the 2021 wave he belongs to.
AI, Holly+ and the middle path
He was part of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst's Holly+ in 2022, a voice model with a DAO managing rights, before Grimes and the Drake clone made the idea famous. His position sits between doomers and boosters: making art with AI is not a sufficient condition for it being good, and the interesting AI art, like Holly+ or Botto, matters for its social structure, not its shiny images.
The name
DEAFBEEF is hexspeak: DEADBEEF is the classic value hackers wrote into protected memory so a hex dump would visually reveal corruption. Dead Beef was taken, so he swapped in DEAF for the sound connection, enjoyed the absurdity of serious art publications having to print it, and liked that Google returned zero results: a clean slate.
DEAFBEEF interviews MLow
He turns the format around, asking why MLow does the show. The answer: it began as curation vetting, became a form of curation itself, and now aims at real time art history, minting interview clips on chain with artists' permission as a museum of the movement. DEAFBEEF compares it to Kristine Stiles' collected artist interviews and praises the selection for escaping the usual pigeonholes.
In their words
“I use a cheap laptop and a C compiler to synthesize sound and animation.”
DEAFBEEF“You can't know about it unless you make the choice to fall down this rabbit hole.”
DEAFBEEF“If I write in C very plainly, that's not going to go away. I can pick that up ten years later.”
DEAFBEEF“When you win, you don't win money. You win additional slot machines.”
DEAFBEEF“The data might be permanent, but our interpretation of it is not.”
DEAFBEEF“Just because you make art using AI, that's not a sufficient condition for the art to be good.”
DEAFBEEFCite this conversation
DEAFBEEF in conversation with MLow, "MLow X DEAFBEEF," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 14 Feb 2024. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2024-02-14-mlow-x-deafbeef.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.