20 Feb 2024/52 min/Ryan Koopmans
MLow X Ryan Koopmans Interview
Lens based artist Ryan Koopmans walks MLow through The Wild Within, his time zone aware Enchanted Hour, and how he finds abandoned Soviet grandeur, and MLow answers with his fullest statement of why the show exists.
A full Google Meet conversation of roughly 53 minutes. Koopmans introduces himself as a Dutch born, Canadian raised lens based artist: a grad degree in photography, video and related media, years of fine art, editorial and commercial work, then a shift to pieces where the camera is only the base layer under 3D, animation and mixed digital media. He minted his first pieces in early 2021 after a year of watching the space. The opening stretch covers The Enchanted Hour, his second dynamic piece with Transient Labs: every hour, in the viewer's own time zone, an owl leaves the painting on the wall, flies a different pattern around the room and hoots the hour, a contemporary take on the cuckoo clock that also switches between day and night at 7am and 7pm.
From there he lays out The Wild Within, the larger body of work built with his partner, Swedish artist Alice Wexell, broken into chapters by year. Chapter one, the 2021 Genesis series, centered on Tskaltubo, Georgia and its abandoned Soviet era sanatoriums and hotels; later chapters move through Eastern Europe and now Italy. His scouting thesis: formerly grandiose baroque and neoclassical buildings survive as ruins only where strong architectural history collides with rapid sociocultural upheaval, which is why Western Europe, where such buildings get protected and restored, yields few of them. He details the craft too: tilt shift photography on a tripod, rebuilding the room in 3D from the single frame, digitally manufactured foliage, and for Sanctuary a full photogrammetry scan from thousands of photos.
The back half turns genuinely two way. Koopmans asks MLow how he engages collectors, and MLow delivers his thesis: become your own gallery, own your lists of emails and wallets, treat likes and retweets as social capital from shareholders, and build relationships in the down market. He states plainly that he started the series because discoverability is broken. The two then work through physicals versus digitals (the value lives in the token, the screen is replaceable), the CC0 debate from Moonbirds to XCOPY to Cath Simard, and AI, which Koopmans predicts will normalize into an assumed tool the way Photoshop did. Koopmans closes by distilling his work into five words: built environment, surreal, nature, time.
What this episode teaches
- A repeatable scouting thesis for ruins
Koopmans looks for formerly grandiose villas and elaborate structures, often baroque or neoclassical, in countries that went through rapid or dramatic sociocultural transformation. Strong architectural heritage plus geopolitical upheaval produces the abandoned buildings; in Western Europe the same buildings get protected and restored, so they rarely exist there.
- Dynamic art answers what a token can do that a JPEG cannot
The Enchanted Hour resolves to the viewer's own time zone, so the owl flies and hoots on their local hour and the scene flips between day and night at 7 and 7. Koopmans frames it as living with an artwork that interacts with your everyday life, a fixture of a household rather than a file.
- Read the wallet before you reach out
Collecting is transparent, so Koopmans studies what a collector already owns before making contact. Whether someone has collected 1/1s on SuperRare since 2018 or lives in the PFP world determines whether and how the initial outreach happens.
- The value lives in the digital token
For Koopmans the physical print or screen is a secondary representation of the original, which is the digital token. Only the collector of the 1/1 can receive a high res print, and if the display screen breaks it can simply be replaced, because that is not where the value sits.
- CC0 is a tool, not an identity
Koopmans keeps his 1/1s under copyright but made his 6529 meme card work CC0, arguing the status should be applied per piece with real intention rather than across a whole body of work. MLow adds the cautionary case: Moonbirds giving away rights holders thought they owned helped crater the collection.
- Become your own gallery
MLow argues web3 lets the artist own distribution: choose how to show work, reach out to collectors directly, and own the lists of emails and wallets instead of leaving that data with a gallery or platform.
- AI will normalize like Photoshop, so lead with intention and honesty
Koopmans predicts AI will soon be as assumed and unremarkable as Photoshop, and that work made without concept or intention falls flat in any medium. MLow adds that artists should disclose when AI is used, and Koopmans expects a countervailing rise in the value of work grounded in something physically real.
The conversation, topic by topic
From photography to lens based art
Koopmans describes his path: a graduate degree in photography, video and related media, years across fine art, editorial and commercial photography, then about half a decade focused on what he terms lens based art, where a camera and lens sit at the base of a digital work that also involves 3D, animation and mixed media. He watched the space through 2020 and minted his first pieces in early 2021.
The Enchanted Hour
His new dynamic piece with Transient Labs: every hour, keyed to the viewer's time zone, the owl in the painting leaves the frame, flies a flight pattern that alternates each hour, and hoots the time of day, a contemporary take on the cuckoo clock. The piece switches between day and night at 7pm and 7am. It is his second dynamic Transient Labs piece; the first was a day and night collaboration with TJO earlier in the year.
The Wild Within, chaptered by year
The larger body of work breaks each year into a chapter tied to different locations and themes, all revolving around the relationship between the natural environment and the architectural built environment. The 2021 Genesis chapter focused on Tskaltubo, Georgia and its unique collection of abandoned Soviet era sanatoriums and hotels; later chapters cover other parts of Eastern Europe, with Italy the new focus. The through line dates to work he began around 2009.
Finding and entering the buildings
Locations are found through online research, and by the time he travels there the building may already be burnt down or demolished, since rapidly modernizing societies replace decades old ruins overnight. Access varies: sometimes one person in town happens to hold the key, sometimes the building is wide open, and sometimes it takes creativity, always respectfully and without damage or undue risk.
Contrast, paradox and suspension in time
Koopmans explains the core inversion: the photographed architecture is human made yet real, while the foliage, normally the natural element, is completely digitally manufactured. Beyond decay and overgrowth he aims for suspension in time, with the infinite loop leaving the viewer caught between the past, the present and the future.
Technique, from tilt shift to photogrammetry
The process starts with a tripod and tilt shift lenses for symmetrical geometry, then the 2D photograph is rebuilt as a 3D room, walls, windows and floors placed from the image as reference. Foliage comes from 3D scans of plants, modeling or altered assets, with final assembly in video software like Premiere Pro. Sanctuary, released earlier that year, came from a full photogrammetry scan built from thousands of photos.
MLow's metadata idea
MLow asks about Google Maps; Koopmans uses it constantly for locating places, entrances and route planning but never its visuals. MLow then proposes embedding the location coordinates in the NFT metadata. Koopmans calls it a super interesting idea and connects it to what excites him most: aspects of an artwork that only exist because it is tokenized on the blockchain.
Hollow, Devotion and the equality of 1/1s
Asked for his most iconic pieces, Koopmans names Hollow, the Genesis mint with the circular hole in the floor from Tskaltubo, and Devotion, collected by Jim Carrey and the closing piece of the 2021 chapter. Because he releases 1/1s slowly and with intention, he sees every piece as roughly equal, and finds it interesting which pieces audiences connect with in unexpected ways.
Collectors and the discoverability problem
Koopmans builds long relationships with collectors who share his values, often talking about things other than art, and calibrates outreach by what a wallet already holds. Group chats degrade into artists posting work. SuperRare was once a real discovery surface, then attention moved to Twitter presence, and now, in his words, there is not an ideal location for artwork discoverability.
MLow on curation, social capital and why the show exists
Turned into the interviewee, MLow describes finding work by tracing who artists he likes collect from and building his own network and lists. He argues web3 makes you your own gallery, owning the email and wallet lists, and that social capital from shareholders, people supporting you with likes, retweets and comments, is underrated. He says he started the series to build relationships and because discoverability broke, blaming the focus on PFPs and the X algorithm since Elon took over, and notes he has helped artists make several sales without that even being the intention.
Bridging web2 and web3: events, physicals and screens
Koopmans praises in person events, NFT NYC, Art Basel and NFC Lisbon, for solidifying connections, and MLow points to ACK selling at Christie's and Grant Yun at Sotheby's for roughly 50 to 100K as proof the worlds are merging. On physicals, Koopmans holds that the value is stored in the digital token: only the collector of the 1/1 can receive a high res print, and for dynamic work he is exploring supplying screens that play the piece seamlessly and can be replaced if broken. MLow cites Dave Krugman's print shop model and Avant Arte's work with CryptoPunks and Nina's Super Cool World.
The CC0 debate
Koopmans keeps his 1/1s under copyright, open to discussing uses with collectors, while his 6529 meme card work is CC0; he sees huge value in the memetic spread CC0 enables but wants it applied with intention. MLow argues Moonbirds' switch to CC0, taking rights holders thought they had, catalyzed the collection's fall, while XCOPY, Grant Yun's cow and Cath Simard's free Hawaii photograph show CC0 building brand awareness, and Patrick Amadon embraces it because the source of truth is on chain.
AI as the next Photoshop
Koopmans loves the early AI trailblazers and sees AI becoming a normalized tool, assumed the way Photoshop is for photographs, empowering rather than threatening intentional work. MLow argues artists should be honest about AI use until it normalizes, given fake images everywhere. Koopmans adds that AI's prevalence will shift appreciation toward work grounded in something real, like Cath Simard actually hiking the mountain.
Five words and Miami
Asked to distill his work into five words, Koopmans lands on built environment, surreal, nature, time. They close planning to meet at Art Basel Miami in December, and MLow calls it one of his favorite conversations of the series.
In their words
“What's actually real is artificial, because it's human made, and what's typically natural, the plant life, is actually completely digitally manufactured.”
Ryan Koopmans“Something that could have been sitting there for decades, totally abandoned, can all of a sudden have been demolished.”
Ryan Koopmans“You become your own gallery, in a sense... you get to own the lists of emails and you get to own the list of wallets.”
MLow“One of the reasons why I started this artist series was first off to build my relationships with different artists, but also I felt like discoverability was a huge problem.”
MLow“It's not specifically AI that is good or bad. It's about how it's used.”
Ryan KoopmansCite this conversation
Ryan Koopmans in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Ryan Koopmans Interview," The MLow Show, 20 Feb 2024. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2024-02-20-mlow-x-ryan-koopmans-interview.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.