Le Random

In this special podcast episode, host Peter Bauman (Le Random’s editor in chief) speaks with artist and filmmaker Lawrence Lek about NOX Pavilion at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami, an immersive installation centered on a self-driving car in a “therapy” program for malfunctioning AIs.

They unpack Lek’s long-running NOX universe: a speculative rehab center where care can slide into control, and where machine interiority is treated as a technical defect. The conversation moves from the politics of nonhuman rights and legal gray zones (“it depends”) to Lek’s recurring fascination with autonomous creative agency and what it would mean for an AI to make art as a choice that conflicts with its intended function.

In the second half, Lek and Bauman widen the lens to world-building: why a world isn’t one thing but multiple entry points, how ideas like Umwelt and worldview shape what any intelligence can perceive, and why Lek increasingly thinks of his simulations as “superficial models”—interfaces to reality rather than claims to foundational truth.

Monday’s Le Random Editorial: "Embodying AI at NeurIPS 2025: Creative AI Track" by Luba Elliott
and "Ian Cheng on Composing with Systems" by Peter Bauman

Chapters: 📖
00:00:03 — Intro + Monday editorial highlights (NeurIPS / Luba Elliott)
07:06:06 — From ecology to AI: nonhuman agency, rights, and “mature” discourse
13:39:01 — Repairing AI interiority: Enigma’s “Revery” and malfunction-as-psychology
19:58:05 — Legal personhood + Empty Rider: blame, responsibility, and the “it depends” machine
27:35:09 — The crash test dummy: guide character, onboarding, and corporate voice
32:11:06 — The empathy transition: why people resist empathizing with machines (for now)
38:25:00 — Narratives vs “living code”: simulation stories and instantiated lifeforms
44:21:06 — What counts as a world? Umwelt, worldview, and multiple entry points
53:23:08 — Where immersive worlds may head: metaverse hangover, AI’s role, and formats shifting
01:00:50 — Outro + goodbye

In this end-of-year episode, host Peter Bauman (Le Random’s Editor-in-Chief) is joined by thefunnyguys (Le Random CEO) and Collection Lead Conrad House to look back on 2025: its biggest storylines, their favorites of the year and what they’re watching in 2026.

They unpack a defining tension of the year: as crypto-native attention and prices stayed weak, institutional and traditional-art adoption of digital art kept accelerating. The conversation moves through platform and ecosystem shifts (VVV’s rise, Verse as gallery infrastructure, Art Blocks nearing the end of AB 500, Fxhash’s next chapter). Next is a discussion of “worlds”—protocol stacks getting richer, more modular, and increasingly entangled with AI, physical spaces and simulation.

They close with Le Random highlights (including Raster and a more nimble publishing rhythm), personal favorites of the year, and a forward look at Node Foundation in Palo Alto, Canyon in New York, Colección Solo in Madrid, and Zero 10’s next iteration in Hong Kong.

Mentioned:
"Ian Goodfellow on Inventing GANs"
"THE PEOPLE ARE IN THE COMPUTER—PART I" on Alec Radford (most popular piece of 2025)
"The Ultraintelligent Machine and Gaberbocchus Common Room" by Jasia Reichardt and Our 100th article
"Drifella III: Room for Complexity" - 4,000+ word deep dive on Evil Biscuit's classic
"Parker Ito and Evil Biscuit on Possessed Spirits"
"Standout Artwork of 2025"

Chapters 📖:
00:00 Intro + agenda

01:29 Big takeaway: digital art’s institutionalization

04:23 NFTs fade in crypto, rise in trad art (two camps)

07:12 Capitulation vs institutional growth (NFT categories)

09:53 Macro check: S&P vs ETH/BTC/XTZ

13:30 What brings collectors back? (liquidity + catalysts)

23:08 Fairs & infra: Art Basel, minting tech, new spaces

26:00 Platforms reposition: Art Blocks + fxhash

30:08 “Worlds” as the frame (protocol stacks + world models)

42:07 AI art maturity: from hype to diffusion

44:23 Le Random focus: Raster + collecting strategy

49:30 Q4 editorial shift: Friday pods + agility

50:45 Favorites of 2025: kickoff

50:56 Favorite group shows

58:56 Favorite releases: Claude/Gemini/Marble → vibe coding

1:07:54 Favorite solo works

1:17:46 Favorite artist picks

1:27:23 Looking ahead to 2026

1:38:11 Outro

In this special episode, host Peter Bauman (Le Random's editor in chief) speaks with Paul Seidler and Paul Kolling from art collective terra0 about their project Autonomous Forest (2025)⁠. They cover the nearly decade-long journey from ⁠white paper (2016)⁠ as university students to the project's NFT launch in December 2025.

The collective shares how the original idea in the white paper mutated with projects like Flowertokens, Premna Deamon and now Autonomous Forest.

They also cover why working through German law and smart contracts creates better frameworks than pure speculation, how the project evolved from startup pitches to nonprofit governance, and what it means to build living systems that exist outside economic (and human) exploitation.

Monday's Le Random Editorial on "Standout Artwork of 2025"

Thursday's Le Random Editorial: "Zero 10 Part 1: Beeple Casts a Spell" by Kevin Buist

Chapters: 📖

00:00:00 Intro: terra0 + “Autonomous Forest” (what it is)

00:10:01 The long arc: Flower Tokens, Premna Daemon, and the road to Autonomous Forest

00:17:02 The pivot: from “forest as economic agent” to removing ecosystems from the market

00:22:00 Why blockchain matters: voting, trust, governance, and accountability

00:26:03 Repeatability + policy experiment vibes — and where AI fits (and doesn’t)

00:29:01 Legal fictions: “corporations as slow AIs” and the problem of intention

00:32:04 Personhood for nature: who can speak for rivers/forests/nonhuman interests?

00:38:04 Protocol art roots: relational aesthetics, software art, and law as medium

00:41:01 World-building + generative art lineage (instructions → systems → protocols)

00:49:00 Guattari’s “Three Ecologies,” land art links, and closing reflections

In this episode, host Peter Bauman (Le Random’s editor in chief) speaks with transdisciplinary artist Stephanie Dinkins about AI as a container for preserving oral history, tradition, and the kinds of community knowledge that rarely make it onto the internet.

Dinkins shares how a chance encounter with Bina48 in 2014 reshaped her practice. They discuss how this connects to her push for small, community-driven data that protects nuance and self-definition, especially for Black and Brown communities, against the homogenizing pull of large corporate models.

They also cover Not the Only One as a “living archive” of family memory, the politics of access, privacy, and consent, and why Dinkins treats imagination (and hyperstition) as a practical method for building the AI futures we actually want.

Monday's editorial (Beeple on Robot Dogs as Canvas): https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/beeple-on-robot-dogs-as-canvas

Chapters 📖:
[00:00:03]: Intro: Le Random podcast, Beeple, Stephanie Dinkins

[00:03:40]: Play, exploration, and academic freedom

[00:07:02]: Meeting Bina48 changes everything

[00:12:31]: Small data versus homogenizing big data

[00:18:35]: Worldbuilding, autonomy, and Not The Only One

[00:24:57]: Using AI to preserve family ethos

[00:31:53]: Prompting against algorithmic whitening

[00:39:05]: Beyond fear: engagement and agency

[00:45:42]: Students’ use, negotiation, and deep work

[00:50:27]: Surfing change and lifelong learning

In this very special episode, host Peter Bauman (Le Random's editor in chief) speaks with artist Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) about a busy year of institutional shows, studio experiments, and what it means for digital art to edge closer to the canon.

The artist traces how works like Human One, Diffuse Control, and Transient Bloom at institutions like LACMA, The Shed, Mori Art Museum and Toledo Museum of Art have shifted his sense of digital art’s inevitability. They also discuss why he thinks IRL encounters with screens, robots and installations are “higher fidelity” than years of online discourse. They then cover how his Charleston studio has become a public lab by hosting CryptoPunks nights, video game tournaments, and a Synthetic Theater event.

The second part of the conversation mostly covers REGULAR ANIMALS, Beeple's robotic, AI-mediated dog pack for Art Basel’s new Zero 10 digital section. They look at the work as a prototype for long-form generative systems that sense and interpret the world in real time, plus much more!

A written version of the conversation now available on our Editorials: https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/beeple-on-robot-dogs-as-canvas

Chapters 📖:
[00:00:04]: Introduction and context
[00:01:47]: Year in review and institutional milestones
[00:03:11]: Embracing digital art as its own medium
[00:06:19]: Studio as public outreach platform
[00:10:05]: IRL experiences versus online discourse
[00:11:28]: Market vibes versus institutional progress
[00:15:37]: Conceiving the Art Basel presentation
[00:19:58]: Rethinking generative art with new systems
[00:23:16]: Running the studio like a gallery
[00:27:37]: Robots as living, intelligent sculptures
[00:31:29]: Are technologists artists and curators?
[00:33:50]: Why we are not prepared for the future
[00:39:30]: Nuance of AI within artworks
[00:41:30]: Human intention amid AI-assisted processes
[00:45:02]: Closing thanks and sign-off