Art vs Content: Choice Art, the Social App for Artists Pt. 1

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jon: if Instagram made everybody a photographer with choice, we want to make everybody a curator. You don't have to necessarily be a creator, but maybe you have a creative eye and you want to learn more about art and you want to share your sensibilities. So that's our main goal is to really just turn other people onto other artists, and art.

[00:00:18] Jon: So I think we're just trying to get the main consumer to, play a role in this curation. It's not necessarily about, creating your own work, but it's about turning others onto work.

[00:00:28] Isotta: This is Art Is… a podcast for artists. where we brainstormed the future of the art world and the creative industries today. I'm sharing part one of my conversation with Jonathan Smith artist designer and co-founder of choice

[00:00:46] Isotta: A new contemporary platform that is revolutionizing the virtual. along with the way artists connect with each other and with their audiences

[00:00:55] Isotta: in this first half of our conversation, John shares his journey as an artist or counting his cross-country moved to San Francisco and the formative role of flicker in his creative and professional network development We discussed digital authenticity, the issue of art versus. And his exciting new app choice, which grew out of the pandemic lockdown. I really liked the choice app and really appreciated speaking to John. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did also, before we start, I would love it.

[00:01:23] Isotta: If you took a moment to reflect on who in your life might also benefit from listening to this. When you do, please share art as a podcast for artists with them. so we can continue to reach other emerging creatives and brainstormed the future of the art world together.

[00:01:38] Jon: my name is John and I'm from Lowell mass, just north of Boston. I grew up always drawing and creating as a kid, ultimately ended up going to UMass Lowell for, fine arts. you know, and it was tough.

[00:01:50] Jon: I really didn't have a blueprint of how to be like a professional artists. No one in my family was a professional, creative. while I was there in studying all these foundation courses, I just started to explore different viable options for a sustainable career that I could pursue in the creative.

[00:02:05] Jon: so I kind of transitioned from painting into design. Mainly around the time I started designing all these flyers from my friends who played in a bunch of different bands around like the Boston area. And through that, I started to really learn Photoshop and illustrator and all these different design software and started taking design more seriously and started taking more design courses.

[00:02:23] Jon: so ultimately I ended up graduating with my BFA and concentration in graphic design, but after graduating, it was really tough. I was no longer surrounded by peers and I didn't really have a professional network to leverage. So it was a little intimidating, So I started to pursue a career in design.

[00:02:40] Jon: I was just looking for jobs on Craigslist and ultimately ended up landing one, at a publishing company in Boston. And, you know, I was continuing to paint my spare time and having small shows here and there at little local galleries. you know, it was really my passion, but I did, I love design as well.

[00:02:55] Jon: And really that's how I had to pay the bills. It wasn't until I met my friend, Frank, who creates artwork under the earliest I formation, who was really the first person that I knew that just created artwork every day as his main job, which I thought was just amazing. Like, you can borrow, you can really do this and, you know, he's, he turned me on to.

[00:03:14] Jon: at the time, it was really popular, the photo sharing site, where he was meeting and connecting with a lot of people and a lot of different artists from around the world. And through that, he was flying out to LA and taking part in different exhibitions out there. And I just thought wow, this is wild.

[00:03:27] Jon: I've got to get on this. so yeah, naturally I signed up for flicker and start. Join different groups like lowbrow art, collective fecal, face.com, Wooster collective, and just meeting a bunch of different artists from all over. And we kind of bonded through trading sticker art or geeking out over the latest work that John trip was covering in the bay area.

[00:03:44] Jon: Or Aaron Rose was curating at alleged gallery in New York. And these little tight-knit communities really provided the foundation of my creative network and were really encouraging in my formative years. I started meeting other artists with similar sensibilities for on my skill level. And it really made it seem like being a working professional artists was something that was against.

[00:04:03] Jon: so yeah, it was on flicker. And then a few years later, I followed the crowd over to Instagram, which seemed like a really special place early on. But in recent years, it's started to feel more of like aa place where advertisers and brands, rather than a community for artists and inspiration. So as Instagram became more popular with the masses, it became tougher to get your work seen and receive meaningful feedback and knowledge sharing from it.

[00:04:26] Jon: Quickly became the norm to just like rapidly crank out posts in order to get back likes and fire emojis. and in an effort to cater to the algorithm, to raise your profile. Artists weren't really sharing as much like nitty-gritty in progress work or having meaningful conversations. It seemed like it was more about how to stand out in a sea of brands and influencers and viral videos.

[00:04:47] Jon: So, I mean, I even found myself starting new pieces, specifically designed to Instagram's dimensions or trying to create videos of paintings and an effort to get my work seen rather than just creating something for myself or just creating something for my friends, just started to seem inauthentic.

[00:05:04] Jon: And Lisa Congdon has a really great post about this, where she mentions how Instagram's focus has been on video content on rails and on satisfying and audiences. Who's addicted to full screen, immersive mobile video entertainment, sort of. Tik TOK, suffocation of everything. And it's not a knock on Instagram.

[00:05:22] Jon: I mean, they're amazing and a lot of different things, and I still continue to use their product daily,

[00:05:26] Jon: but this highlighted a need for. In artist-driven social community that was more conducive to artists making meaningful, authentic relationships. So these are all things that I'm thinking about and all of a sudden the pandemic hits and we're sheltering in place. My friend, Dan, who's the co-founder of choice.

[00:05:43] Jon: He'd reached out to me with an idea that he had for an app that would make learning about art and discovering art, more approachable to the average person. he's not an artist himself, but he has like this new found love of the art world. I think it's sort of all stems from. A few years ago, Dan and I had moved out to San Francisco from Boston to work for a FinTech company that he had co-founded at the time called plastic.

[00:06:06] Jon: and it was just a small group of us that made the move out from Boston. We didn't have any friends or family. So, you know, we're in this fun new city and there's so many great galleries in San Francisco and, you know, not knowing anyone, I started to just occupy all my free time by visiting all the galleries I had learned about through friends on flicker or read about on different design, blogs and articles.

[00:06:25] Jon: and Dan just started tagging along with me and we'd constantly check out shows at the luggage store gallery and spoke art and she, Andrew and gallery. And, Dan had mentioned how it was such a different experience tagging along with me to these gallery openings. That seem much more like a fun social experience compared to some of the more traditional uptight galleries and museums that he was used to visiting as a kid back in Ohio.

[00:06:47] Jon: you know, running around the city, checking out these different shows with a friend who could give you insight on an artist, backstory or share similar artists to check out it made visiting galleries and learning about art, much more approachable and enjoyable forum. So when the pandemic hit, we found ourselves with more free time to focus on what's important to us, and really what brings us joy.

[00:07:06] Jon: And Dan had mentioned that he wanted to try to recreate, try to recapture that experience of going to all these galleries with an art minded. So it was March of 2020, and everyone was isolated and working from home and all the museums and galleries were closed. and as a way to stay connected, our friend group was, we were already sharing on Spotify playlist and turning each other onto different artists and dance.

[00:07:29] Jon: So as part of this project, Dan started to code up what is the stack, in choice, which is a collaborative collection of artwork from different artists that we had liked. You could swipe similar to Tinder. You can swipe left. If you didn't like it, you could swipe, right. If you did, or you could swipe up to learn more about the piece.

[00:07:46] Jon: More about the artists and go to the artist page. this was just a fun, digestible way for us to share and discover different artists with our friends, really similar to how we were already sharing songs and bands that we had, like on Spotify. and from there, we started to open it up to her larger friend group.

[00:08:01] Jon: And really, we were just sharing a lot of photos of shows that we had previously been to. And San Francisco has so many amazing murals and street art, and we're sharing a lot of that. And more and more friends started to share the app with their friends and we created a website. And it was really a good way to sort of state again, stay connected and discover new artists while we were in the shelter in place.

[00:08:24] Jon: But what we started to realize it was war,like art lovers and our friends signing up, but more artists wanted to join the platform. and we found with the stack, swiping left, and right, this sort of discovery mechanism, it was almost the siloed experience we wanted to, drive more engagement within the community.

[00:08:42] Jon: And in the same way that our friends were kind of talking about artwork via text and email and stuff, we wanted to try to drive more of the. Interconnectivity between users and artists and share more nitty-gritty stories or maybe talk a bit more about their process. so we started to launch a couple of different features based on some of the feedback that we had.

[00:09:01] Jon: the next one was, after the stack, the next one was collections, which really, it's almost like a visual playlist in a sense. Right. It's it reminds me of when we were younger in school, we would make, zenes go down to the photocopier and piece together, all like different drawings or lyrics or whatever it might be.

[00:09:16] Jon: So we started collections where you could save. name and categorize a collection and people could follow it. And basically just, if it's almost like,a lot of times we talk about having that older sibling, that older brother or sister, maybe the weird neighbor next door that turns you on to this like Seminole band from your youth and like kind of blows you away.

[00:09:36] Jon: And then you start digging through and learning all different other bands that are on that label. And it just kind of stays with you. So we're like, how can we kind of recreate that experience? how can we. You know, intro someone to an artist and then show them, learn a bit more about them or show them that artist's contemporaries just really send them down like this curiosity-driven rabbit hole.

[00:09:57] Jon: We just thought it was just a fun way to learn about art and it was more approachable. So with collections, we tried to do that a little bit more. We try to, it's a way to almost curate your own little gallery show or publish a collection of all different artists and work, and it could be theme driven or whatever.

[00:10:11] Jon: And that started to gain a bit more traction with the community, so during that time, we still wanted a better way For artists to exhibit their work and to talk about it. And it was around this time that clubhouse was really blowing up. We were, tuning in there, and listening to it, almost like a podcast, Were a lot of people were talking about, how to make it as an artist and, just sharing some nitty gritty into the insight of being an artist. so we were like,

[00:10:34] Jon: It would be great if we could do something similar to what clubhouse was doing, where you had these intimate conversations, but there was a visual component to it. I think one thing that sort of lacks right now on clubhouse and now we're seeing on Twitter spaces is the ability to show what it is that you're talking about.

[00:10:50] Jon: So we thought it would be great to create like these virtual galleries, which we call channels. So you can go ahead and they're a bit different from the way it works with Twitter and clubhouse, where on Twitter and club hosts, the very ephemeral you'll start one and end it where

[00:11:05] Jon: You can create that into let's just say like low route art collective. You can spin up a chain. And upload a bunch of different pieces of your work or anyone else's work. You have the audio component and you can bring speakers up onto the stage, discuss the artwork. And then we thought it would also be great to have a chat, a text chat feature.

[00:11:23] Jon: So people in the audience might want to ask a question or, maybe there's side conversations that are going on via the chat mechanism. So we introduced that as well. and it's been great. we're seeing these organic relationships just forum. And we're seeing some cross collaboration between artists of different disciplines, which really excites me.

[00:11:41] Jon: And really, it's almost just like a little town hall for people to sort ofpop in of something. Interesting. And you can even background the app and keep the audio running while you're doing something else. And maybe if something speaks to you or catches your attention, you can pop open back the app and you can reference the focus piece that the artist is currently talking about.

[00:11:58] Jon: So that's the latest thing that we just latest feature that we just launched about a month ago now. And we're seeing a lot of very interesting use cases. I mean, I'm sure being in the art world, you've certainly heard about NFTs, which is a huge topic right now.

[00:12:12] Jon: and it seems to be very polarizing. There's a lot of people that are for, and a lot of people that are against it. I'm always for any new revenue stream for an artist to make more, more, more money. I think it's very much in its infancy right now.

[00:12:25] Jon: if you think about. If you think about like apps, when they first came out, they were very much novelty. At first it was like sound effects and fart noise apps before it really took off. You know what I mean? So I try to look at NFTs in that same way. I think it's interesting. And I'm excited to see where the medium, where artists take the medium.

[00:12:44] Jon: I think there's people doing some really interesting things in that space right now, electricity. Eaton's doing some really cool stuff with a cereal box. And, you know, as suppose Steven Powers is doing some great stuff with his three receipts that you can redeem for a personalized painting. but yeah, so we're seeing a lot of people utilize channels in order to have these NFT drops and showcase some of their works, which has been fun to see.

[00:13:07] Jon: something that's really apparent to me that is really exciting on choice is the usage of curation and being able to curate digital spaces, which I think is such an exciting, evolving, aspect of, you know, engaging more with digital art and, that really relates to NFTs.

[00:13:25] Isotta: We've been talking a lot about the need for curation. In the NFTE space, on the podcast So I was wondering like, how do you see the relationship between creative and consumer and client working out on the app? it seems to be very horizontal, which is really nice. but I was just wondering if you could speak to like the social dynamics, or like any of the kind of community aspirations that you have for the.

[00:13:51] Jon: I think one of the biggest things that we wanted to do with choice,you know, with Instagram, I feel like. You kind of get burnt out, constantly having to churn out work and try to appease the algorithm in a sense with choice. You don't have to create anything to post it.

[00:14:05] Jon: if Instagram made everybody a photographer with choice, we want to make everybody a curator. You don't have to necessarily be a creator, but maybe you have a creative eye and you want to learn more about art and you want to share your sensibilities. So that's our main goal is to really just turn other people onto other artists, and art.

[00:14:22] Jon: So I think we're just trying to get the main consumer to, play a role in this curation. It's not necessarily about, creating your own work, but it's about turning others onto work.

[00:14:32] Isotta: think that's really exciting as well, because something that immediately comes to mind is this idea that on Instagram we're really obsessed with, oh, how many people watch this reel or watch this video or attended the live, or how many likes does this have?

[00:14:44] Isotta: And we attribute that with the value rather than actually seeing the. For what it is. and so I was wondering, I know that you guys are really excited about. You know, changing the attitude around, art versus content. And that really relates to this idea that you were just recapitulating around, this churn that you have as a creator on Instagram.

[00:15:06] Isotta: And I was wondering, what are your thoughts around art versus content? And also how can we avoid creator burnout?

[00:15:13] Jon: you become like a content machine where you're constantly trying to stay top of mind or, play nice with the new feature, that whatever app that utilizing is currently pushing in order to get more eyeballs and likes on it. But I think with us, again, it's about turning people onto different artists and more about the conversation that comes through that I'm much more interested in.

[00:15:33] Jon: Learning about someone's artistic process or maybe some of the stakes that didn't work along the way, seeing some in progress work, as opposed to this very high fidelity piece that people are just going to like and leave emojis on, and again, with choice being more so about curation than actual.

[00:15:48] Jon: content creation is in order to even upload something to choice, you have to earn a choice, which is a token given in the app after 20 swipe. So you actually have to look through other artist's work. And after 20 swipes, you have the ability to then upload a piece of your own, or you can upload work from other artists.

[00:16:04] Jon: And, you know, one thing that we found that was really interesting is when artists were starting to use. choice joined the app. They're uploading a lot of pieces of people that they collaborated with and their peers, and giving them a little bit more shine. And I think that kind of takes the onus off of you constantly have to create something yourself and kind of, you know, just make someone else hip to one of your friends that are making some great works as well.

[00:16:26] Isotta: I love that. I think that's so exciting because I think it much more speaks to the actual social and emotive relationship between creatives, and how, in the studio or. In the classroom or whatever, we would be supportive of each other's work and want to collaborate and, build each other up.

[00:16:43] Isotta: And then with the competition that has, aroused because of Instagram and just this like machine, I feel like we've really lost that. So it's really exciting to see this impetus to building more community and comradery between creative people and between, consumers.

[00:17:00] Jon: you know, one of our main goals that we believe that by bringing people together from around the world and bringing them together through the common language of art, we can broaden perspective and help people see their work in a different light or bring a new passion to their work, which maybe they wouldn't have gotten initially.

[00:17:14] Jon: We're also trying to bring together maybe people who would normally wouldn't have known about each other, this I think can make for better artwork and just richer connections.

[00:17:22] Jon: So I think I'll make it super simple. So if you just go to www.choice.app, and you can download the app there and the apple app store or Google play, and there's also a link to all of our social channels.

[00:17:38] Isotta: Thank you for listening to Art Is… a podcast for artists. I'd like to thank Jon Smith for sharing his story and his work with us. Stay tuned to hear part two of our conversation. Coming later on in season three, please leave art is a podcast for artists, a rating and review in apple podcasts. It really helps others find us. You can support the work I do by subscribing wherever you listen.

[00:18:00] Isotta: And by donating to the podcast, the link to do so is in the episode, discuss. Okay. That's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday.