Yuan’s Crypto Talk Vol.1 — Guide of China Public Chain National Girl “Ting Song‘s Cultivation“
Supported by Amplio Capital, Yuan’s Crypto Talk is a Blockchain talk show. Yuan’s crypto talk’s missions are to talk to the industrial leaders and explore the pulse of crypto industry. In the future, Yuanyuan will continue invite top Blockchain practitioners and discuss the current focus and future prospects of the blockchain industry. The talk show aims to let the public have a deeper understanding and different views of “blockchain” and “crypto world”.
“The blockchain is a city, and I hope to let more people come in.” — — Fan Yuanyuan, host of Yuan’s Crypto Talk
The year of 2021 could be considered as the first year of NFT. “Christie Spring Auction”, “Chinese NFT” and “Crypto Art” were frequently appeared on the hottest Googled topic. NFT and crypto art are developing rapidly in China. But on the eve of the outbreak of crypto art, some people played their important and irreplaceable role. Ting Song is one of them. How could a young girl hold up the “crypto art” initiated in the West and build a wide range of influence and leadership in Asia with works integrated with Chinese cultural. In this issue of “Yuan’s Crypto Talk”, let’s discover the guild of China Public Chain National Girl — Ting Song, and walk through NFT art with Ting’s aesthetic and poetic.
(The following is an interview conducted and condensed by Yuanyuan Fan)
Y: Yuanyuan Fan
T: Ting Song
Y: Can you say hello to our audience and introduce yourself first?
T: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Song Ting, my expertise lies in AI and blockchain art. I am also the author of first NFT art auctioned by auction house in China.
Y: Can you tell outsiders what blockchain is and what crypto art is in plain language?
T: This question is so difficult. I think crypto art is the first cultural movement in the world with the engineer culture as its core, and I hope it will become the cultural consumer goods of young people in the new digital generation in the future. Crypto art is a cultural form from the crypto ,for the crypto(Ah, seems it’s not that easy to understand.)
Blockchain is the outpost of the next economic form. I hope that more people of insight will participate in the construction, and I hope that more open source technology can be realized by this soil.
Y: What do you think art is?
T: I think art is the real spiritual crystallization of human beings, and it is the irreplaceable effort and life of a creator.
Y: After encryption empowered art, art can be created in a mechanized and programmed way and can be copied. Do you think this subverts art? Will this destroy the beauty of art?
T: The first point is spirituality. The essence of art has not changed. Since change from the Pope, so the reason why a good work of art makes itself a masterpiece has never changed, and that is spirituality. No matter its form is sculpture, architecture, calligraphy, painting, or code world, it is the same. The second point is the concept. The more forward contemporary art goes, the more emphasis may be placed on the concept. The algorithm seems to be reproducible, but the philosophy and vitality are difficult for everyone to easily replicate. Therefore, I don’t think that good technological artistic creation will destroy art itself.
Y: What’s the difference between crypto artists and ordinary artists?
T: The first great changes have taken place in art collection and art exhibition. Conventional art collection is collected through real world exhibition and auction; Crypto artworks are transferred through digital wallet to complete appreciation and consumption, and exhibitions will also be held in exhibition halls on the blockchain.
The second difference may be in creative content and creative techniques. For example, many of my personal works are about information technology ethics, and more creative methods will use programming; Classical artists in the physical world, whose creations reflect the literati spirit and the beauty of handicrafts, apply natural and physical methods.
Y: What kind of talents are critical to be a crypto artist like you?
T: Let’s not talk about the definition of “crypto artist”. There are still many questionable points in this definition. When a person is called “an admirable artist” and her/his works are called “good works of art”, it often happens after a long time of creation. It might have to wait for their grand children to look back in their life to judge whether she/he created “artwork”. Then let’s wait for future generations to decide what kind of expression will present contemporary spiritual life in 2021 and which expression will benefit them most. When it comes to the question about being an “artist”, don’t worry, let’s leave the question to future generations.
Y: Many people say that NFT can quickly break the boundary of blockchain, and make blockchain easily adopted and understood by the public. What do you think of NFT?
T: In Europe and other places, for example, many small and medium-sized galleries are at risk of closing due to the epidemic, and many art creators are put in quarantine. In this condition human existence, human spirit and state are all contributed to the NFT’s “blooming”.
Take Europe as an example, many
About NFT breaking the circle, I think there are both advantage and disadvantage. On the bright side, I am so happy that everyone in the industry has finally seen that fun and beauty can be an important consensus of mankind. The blockchain industry pays attention to consensus, but sometimes because the biggest application of blockchain since its birth is still fast and reliable financial payment, and people start to believe that blockchain equals to finance. While through NFT consumption, people can get rid of their prejudice against the word blockchain through fun and beauty.
Secondly, I do not think that NFT has already broken the circle. Many traditional cultural business don’t need decentralized data storage. They don’t need blockchain, they just need digitalization, so I think there is still a long way to go.
Y: What is the urgent need of blockchain art crypto art?
T: Crypto art is the first cultural movement in the world with the engineer culture as its core. If we discuss contemporary art, we can’t avoid the cutting-edge technology, the most sensitive issues and important things of the times. Because the spiritual life of contemporary people cannot be separated from information technology culture, it reflects that contemporary production and life are definitely not bubbles. It’s just needed, not pseudo demand.
Y: what do you think of Metaverse?
T: This world is in the coexistence of human intelligence, artificial intelligence, digital world and physical world. Its percentage will change in our lifetime, but its structure will not be broken. Therefore, I think the first is to grasp the key, and the second is not to create conflicts.
Grasping the key means that the core thing at present is still the organizational relationship among living people. In the future, there may be organizational relationship between living people and living AI. The organizational relationship is the key. Metaverse makes everyone feel the joy of virtual social interaction, but it is still about people, so people should be the first.
As for not creating conflicts, I think it is still impossible for us to give up the physical world and transplant it to the digital world completely in the next 5 to 10 years. Therefore, people’s well-being in the physical world cannot be ignored in the process. We hope that the digital world and the physical world will complement each other, so we should not create conflicts without long-term significance.
Y: You are being art consultant for many Internet companies, in the meantime as an artist you have to create art and write novels. How do you allocate your time?
T: I sometimes joke with my friends. There are only two things in my life, one is to create and the other is to create consensus, including being a technology and art consultant for Internet companies. In fact, I am also creating consensus.
I always think that our industry runs faster than academic circles. Only when I understand the industry I can make my best creation. If you don’t have the industry sensitivity, you can’t get your work stand out. So, I really spend a lot of time on industrial research. At the same time, I can provide more research materials to the academia, so that people with profound knowledge can work together. Only in this way can the industry really become better.
I’m lucky that if I handle it properly most of the time, it should be a positive cycle. When I do a good job in industrial research and have my own understanding, some of them may be converted into my creative inspiration.
How to allocate time, in fact, I did not do well enough. I do wish that I could spend more time for meditation, reading and being in a daze, which will help me switch myself better.
Y: You do wear many hats, such as crypto artist, science fiction writer, art consultant and teacher, which identity do you like best?
T: Sometimes I don’t like to call myself as an artist. I preferred to be considered as a creator and a brand-new soul.
The word “teacher” is very important in my heart, and the person I really call a teacher is worth following in my soul all my life. When I feel that I am a gentleman from the inside out, I will start to teach my own courses. Before that, I cannot take the role as a teacher. The reason I wanna lend hands to people is because they need my help. The more helps provided, the more likely they can contribute good energy to help build China’s NFT industry.
In addition to creating, I also keep practicing. For me, I don’t just want to write, I want to realize it.
Y: When I first met you, you were working for an open source technology community while you were studying in Tsinghua University. And now you become a crypto artist. Is there any reasons behind it?
T: I think there were two very important things.
The first time in my life I ever tried to collaborate with AI to paint was probably at the end of 2018 when I painted the Large Hadron Collider. At the beginning of 2019 century, I gave this painting to Frank Wilczek, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004. He had a long talk with me at that time, which had a deep influence on me. He said: “You should see things that you can’t see with your eyes, and solve unsolved mysteries. As a special person, you should break the boundary between science and art, and at the same time break the boundary between theory and practice.”
In fact, I have cooperated with quite a few excellent scientists who are expertise in computing and quantum computing. It is the encouragement of these developers and scientific researchers that gives me a lot of confidence.
The second important thing is the Shanghai International Blockchain Week in 2019. PlatON helped me to exhibit a technology and art installation on the spot, and I had not cast it into NFT at that time. That event made me know that there were so many people willing to listen to the lectures on science and technology in Shanghai International Blockchain Week, which also gave me confidence.
These things make me want to use the paint brush as a tool to change the world. I call my work as the Renaissance of Science and Technology. Through engineering methods, let people realize the value of humanity. The education we have received since childhood is about fun and beauty. But when we grow up, the society tried to teach us that there is no hope for studying arts, and studying arts just can’t reach great achievements. I think this unreasonable prejudice will be gradually corrected after people with arts background become the best product managers of the times.
Y: I think you are very versatile. You can write and dance; you can write codes and articles; you can also dance folk dances, street dances and so on. You mentioned in a report that you especially like to choose the most difficult decisions. While I think it should be influenced by family of origin? Do your family support what you are doing now?
T: I don’t think that because I didn’t choose to study art as an undergraduate, my taste in art was poor since childhood.
My mom presents the true, the good and the beautiful.
My mother can speak many languages and especially loves reading, which really has a great influence on me. When my mother was reading, I would like to call her as Liaoning Michele Monique Reis. She is a true beauty with truth, kindness and beauty.
When I was young about 4 years old, one day, I went home to find my mother after school. I found my mother reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I think my mother was most beautiful in that scene, and that scene touched me very much.
I still remembered the gift for my 5th birthday. At that time, my family’s material conditions were not so good. When I got home, I found that the whole living room was full of books, including a full set of classical Chinese and vernacular editions of 100,000 Why and Twenty-four History, and a full set of world fairy tales, about more than 100 books. There are many ways to understand the world in books. Tell me what my parents don’t have time to teach.
My uncle and aunt are the first teachers
I am influenced by my uncle and aunt at home. They are university teachers of Chinese Department, so I am reading books written by them while other children are still reading phonetic books. When I was 7 years old, my uncle said to me: Tingting, you must not set your own goal only about money, and it will be the same in the future.If you set a goal about money, when you achieve it, you will find yourself have nothing but money.
When I was a child, my uncle and aunt would bring me biographies of celebrities regularly, such as Zweig’s ‘When Human Stars Shine’. They said: You should know what a great man might have experienced at your age, and how he choose under difficult circumstances.
The first NFT artwork “Peony Pavilion Rêve” auctioned in China is also related to my childhood. One of my first reading materials is an encyclopedia of children’s idioms published by my uncle for my cousin and me. He said in the preface: I hope my daughter and other children will not be afraid of idioms and traditional culture in the stage of literacy enlightenment. I hope they can learn this knowledge happily, and at the same time, they should not only see the idiom itself, but also see its deeper connotation.
I was very tough since I was a child. Although I was the youngest child in my parents’ family,but all my cousins and siblings called me “Sister TIng”. I decided which primary school I went to, and I had some independent ideas in kindergarten. My hope was always to take charge of my own life.
On my birthday, my parents prepared a jigsaw of myself. My assistant and I joked that this picture reflected my childhood life well, and my present life hasn’t changed a bit. This picture is mainly about computer creation, dancing and speaking.
Family and Creation
In kindergarten, I once told my dad about voting for the class monitor. The kindergarten monitor will be responsible for distributing spoons to everyone at noon. He said that if you are the monitor, you can share the spoon better and fairer than other children. When the teacher asks who is going to run for the monitor, you raise your hand, not for yourself. Later, I worked as the monitor until I graduated from college.
But my father is also very strict. He has heroic plot and idealistic side. He really believes that people ultimately do thins with their values.
At the beginning of this year, a reporter interviewed me and asked me when was the first time I didn’t go home for the New Year. The first time I didn’t go home was when I was in Stanford to do a project. At that time, I was playing chess on the plane, because I had been playing chess with my dad since I was a child, and I found that I quickly turned on and off the board games. At that moment, I realized that even if Dad sat in front of me,h e can’t beat me since he is old. At that time, my feeling is quite complicated.
When I saw a big cloud outside the window on the plane, I repeatedly remembered the last sentence my grandmother left me before she died. She said: “When Xiao Ting grows up in the future, she will study knowledge and culture to study abroad and come back to build her motherland” Later, I spent many New Year holidays in other countries, speaking English or other languages, but sometimes I think of what my grandparents said to me. They are really loyal, simple and kind.
On my 20th birthday, my mother wrote me some expectations: be a real lady, become a person with economic freedom, integrity and independent thinking; My dad wrote a long letter to me, and quoted a famous poem at the end: “ Children determined to go out of town, do not come back home until you fulfilled achievements; there is no need to bury your bone at your homeland, there is green land everywhere in the world”.
I have always been quite independent, and I went to some developing countries to do public welfare when I was an undergraduate.
When I was chatting with international crypto artists, many people were painting western sci-fi illustrations such as Marvel Comics blockbusterscan also paint themIt is estimated that the market is also quite good, but is it really me who has been painting that thing?
In my offline exhibition in Zhihu, there is an NFT called “Piano of Steel” about my childhoodEvery time I spend the Spring Festival abroad, I will think over and over again of the endless barren plain in front of our ancestral home in Northeast ChinaThere are withered and yellow corn poles in the plainThe Liaohe River is frozenThe color of the ice is not dreamyIt is gray and there are some sparse dead leaves on it.I don’t know why there are little birds that haven’t moved southAll my elders (grandparents and grandparents) who love me have passed away, and they are all stars in the skyBut it is this true loyalty, simplicity and kindness that looks at me from a distance in the deep starry sky higher than the flight paththink I have a steel piano in my blood.The form of steel in the old industrial base of Northeast China is there, and it can’t get awayWhy can’t this thing become encrypted art contentam a northern girlThese things are very personalWhen many people do contemporary art creation, they will look for strength from their own hearts, so why can’t I look for strength from my own hearts?
I also hope that I can become an upright, brave and tough person in the future. Like my WeChat signature, I hope that when I leave this world, I can leave the creation of this world. Do the hardest thing, do the creation of existence.
Y: So far, in the process of artistic creation, did you have anything particularly to make you happy and, or feel sad and depressed?
T: Let me share some happy things, but not the happiest. I’m always happy, but I’m rarely super happy.
I am very happy that my joint NFT with Ethereum China is about tie-dyeing. On the Chinese New Year’s Eve, more than 1,000 Ethereum international developers thought my NFT was interesting, and they also entered decentraland to answer questions to get my NFT creation.
I am also very happy to have cooperated with TME and WWF on the song covers of four musicians: Zhang Yunlei, Mikey, NINEONE and Chen Jingfei. Some younger generations sent me a private letter saying that they wanted to use it as a profile picture or as wallpaper. I am very happy to do things for young generation, developers and open source communities.
It’s okay to be sad. You can’t grow without set backs feel. My life is a drama, not a comedy. If I have some problems, I have to overcome it. This is part of my spiritual practice. Life must be conserved, I got a lot and I lost a lot.
Y: When you encounter those sad and dark moment, how do you do psychological counseling and relief?
T: I’m a person who puts a lot of pressure on myself, and I seldom see other people putting so much pressure on themselves. I think there are many important things to do. I compete with myself when no one compete with me.
I want to thank my assistant, Runxin, who is a very lovely person. She may use the stage name A Miao Miao later. She gave me a meditation class in January. She means that you did a good job last year, for this year, just be healthy and safe. If you don’t be depressed, we will win. That class lasted 21 days, I meditated for 10 minutes every morning and wrote emotions at night. Before the meditation class, I took a non-medical psychological test, and the depression index was very high, which dropped a lot after meditation.
If I were only for myself, I wouldn’t choose such a difficult and tiring road today. China’s blockchain technology and open source spirit are my soil. If it doesn’t exist, I don’t exist.
Y: So the happiest thing just mentioned is your “highlight moment”?
T: The brightest moment in my life … maybe I met a white-haired old gent with a particularly good temperament at the 23rd United Nations Climate Change Conference. After chatting with him for nearly an hour, he suddenly asked me, “Ting, do you have any chance to deliver a speech, solo speech?” I said no, and then he said to me, give a speech. He is the Co-Chairman of UNESCO in the climate change section.
In addition, I may be the pride of all my teachers in minority languages. My teachers in minority languages in Southeast Asia have told me in private that “Ting is my idol”. After studying Indonesian for a few weeks that year, I changed planes at Changi Airport in Singapore. An Indonesian family asked me the way in Indonesian, and I immediately pointed out the way in Indonesian, and my response was very quick. This is the highlight moment that I am proud of.
I also danced the opening dance of Tsinghua University for several years. I also danced a short Korean solo dance in Mengminwei building, Tsinghua University.
Y: I especially like your latest work, Nüwa. It’s about you in a virtual world. Does that work have any inspiration?
T: Since the first day I published science fiction and the first day I made NFT, my world view is the same. My setting is Tingting Universe.
Nüwa is an AI version of me trained with my mathematical fantasy geometry as dataset, so she speaks in a philosophical way. In the future, there will be AI people and AI people’s babies in metaverse, as well as people transplanted from the physical world. I think the best way to predict the future is to realize it. Nüwa is trying to say that it can mobilize smart contracts and do some cool crypto art, and not just a possibility of shallow adhesion.
Y: What are your plans for the future of your creation?
T: I have several series this year, and one of my recent creations is my Non-Fungible series. Although the concept of NFT is a Non-Fungible Token, if science fiction illustrations with static ideas are produced, I may not think it is non-fungible. It just looks different, but its essence is the same, which is not what I want to pursue. I want to be an artisan laqueur for example which takes thousands of polishing by hand to make patterns; I want to do tie-dyeing, in which the rubber band is removed and then dried after dyeing in the vat every time. What I really want to do is make every works can not be replicate. All creations present irreplaceable efforts and lives of a creator. I want to creat a non-profitable series of Chinese Non-Fungible cultural heritage. After that, it will be put on the blockchain “Ting Song Museum” for exhibition.
The second is a joint work called “Dance of Consciousness” by Sophia and I (the first robot with AI citizenship in the world), which is divided into three parts: the first part is about calligraphy, the second part is about dancing, and the third part is about meditation.
I want to polish this series. I hope some interesting works can be made, and I want to create a meaningful dialogue between carbon and silicon.
In the future, I hope that I can do something to push forward the discussion of IT ethics and philosophy, which is my long-term expectation for myself.
For example, “Peony Pavilion Rêve”, which I made, is an immersive drama between people and AI. I want to highlight the relationship between human nature and “body” and discuss love. My joint calligraphy with Sophia is also about love. I want everyone to rethink what humanity is in 2021.
The pace of our information technology industry and blockchain industry is actually very fast, and many people will lose their awareness of love. I am not saying that this is not good. But if you can open your heart more and experience love, it may become more comfortable, but it is not absolute. I just hope that there is something in the fast-paced industry that can slow everyone down.
Y: Any advices for people who want to enter this industry? Or where can I go if I want to teach myself?
T: Before entering, you may have to ask yourself carefully whether you really recognize the technology concept of blockchain and the philosophy derived from its technology concept. Read Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper, and see if it is touched after reading it. If it is touched, let’s talk further.
If you are doing some blockchain art creation part-time, you can search the NFT certification technology tutorial, and go to Opensea, which is not difficult. If you want to create some works driven by code and expressed by code, you should learn programming.
If it doesn’t resonate with blockchain technology and the spirit of open source community, you may not enter this industry full time. And if the cross-disciplinary innovation of blockchain can make you generate more creative inspiration, I think it’s great.
I am willing to help every student who really wants to do crypto art, and can reach me in various ways.
Y: If you invite some good friends around you to attend the interview of the top figures in our blockchain, can you recommend some for me?
T: When you mention “the TOP”, you may think of SBF (not yet a “friend” haha)Among my friends, there will be MrCao Yin (Managing Director of Digital Renaissance Foundation) and MrQin Qing (Director of Tencent Cloud Blockchain Ecological Products).
Bonus:
Y: Do you have any plans for your life as an “crypto artist”?
T: Chasing with trembling body and challenging with awe. Be the world leader in your heart.
Y: Your favorite artist? The artist you want to cooperate most?
T: Recently, I hope to cooperate with dark electronic musicians DJ:Anti-General and Li Huayu.
The favorite artist is Banksy. If “art” is understood as a big category, the favorite philosopher is Kierkegaard and the favorite composer is Shostakovich. Favorite writers are Hemingway, Cao Xueqin and Li Bihua.
If it is pure art, I also like the minority artist Caesar Domela very much. When I saw his exhibits in Pompidou, my soul was hit. I thought his works were divine.
Y: Are there any important people or things that inspire you from graduation to work, and make you who you are now?
T：
Important person
Along the way, many elders, teachers and colleagues have moved me greatly. This kind of good energy makes me have a warm energy source when facing set backs. Life is not always smooth, but when I think of so many people who have loved me and looked forward to me, they must hope that the roses they guard will bloom happily in the sunshine. With this in mind, I should not be afraid of lightning and heavy rain, I should be as confident as possible to meet every day with sunshine and happiness.
I was particularly touched by two conversations. One was the conversation between me and a collector, who indirectly made great contributions to the development of China’s blockchain industry. I asked him: Do you feel that the information technology industry driven by digital industry is depressing people’s spirituality. He said: Tingting, this problem is both complicated and simple. This problem has not yet come to an end, The question hasn’t been answered completely because you are the answer, you have to be the answer.
There is also a very important elder in China’s science and technology investment field. He answered me: Tingting, God has given you so many high talents, what has it taken away from youAfter listening to it, I feel like tears are coming down.
Important thing
This year’s Guardian Spring Auction featured Chinese mainland’s first NFT work ，my friend told me that after paying the fee and receiving the number plate, he/she looked back from the cashier’s office and saw a lot of notes on the auction wall. There is a very thick one in the lower left corner, that is to say, Song Ting’s Peony Pavilion Rêve has key matters needing attention. In this process, to be honest, I still feel the good will of traditional art circles and industry circles.
During the preview, my work was next to that of Teacher Wu Jian ‘an. My mood is very complicated. When I was a sophomore, my WeChat avatar was my group photo next to Wu Jian ‘an’s works. But now my work is next to him. I don’t think I’ve done enough. I’m far from the art of being virtuous.
In addition, my work is the last piece of the whole evening performance of contemporary art, symbolizing the art from classics to the future. If I go on this road, I can’t look back. I hope to look at myself and the energy of the original idea of technology community behind me carefully, and live up to it, and I won’t walk into that good night gently.
I still have something very touchingAbout three months ago, when I basically confirmed that the first shot of NFT in China was my work, I told my assistant in a trance, this time I really seemed to be changing the world, and she said you wereLater, because the preview of Guardian was about to open, my assistant actually went to travelsaid you wouldn’t come to witness my big day?She said we have plenty of big days in the futureSecond, there are some big collectors who will be asked if NFT is a work of art, and their answer is: Tingting’s NFT is a work of artThank you for your support! I will work hard!
Y: Do you have any expectations for your future partner? What are the main criteria?
T: Single eyelid or hidden double eyelid, kind and responsible. Kindness is a noble quality. Under difficult pressure, I can be as kind and responsible as possible. If it is done, I think it is worthy of admiration. It doesn’t have to be like me, but it would be nice if he looked like me.
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This column is specially supported by Amplio Capital.
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