Imagine a space that merges your favorite communal spaces during the day and night. Wouldn’t it be great to have everything in one place? A lifestyle brand that allows you a lifetime membership? At Future Factory, all these things are possible and more. In this episode, we have Paul Hemming and Galen Oakes, the brilliant minds behind Future Factory, to tell us how they are redefining the landscape of immersive music and art—merging a nightclub, art gallery, marketplace, yoga studio, and more. Learn how they transformed years of immersive spatial design ideation into a vibrant multi-dimensional and experiential membership that lasts a lifetime. Find out how they utilize NFT and what it means for the future of utility. Plus, hear from Nate Minsberg of BNV as he shares their amazing work of bringing fashion to Web3 through NFT-backed ecosystems that take fashion to the outer edge and beyond. Don’t miss out on this very exciting conversation!
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Listen to the podcast here
Future Factory — The NFT That Allows You To Unlock The Future Of Utility, Plus: Nate Minsberg Of BNV
This is Paul Hemming.
I’m Galen Oakes from Future Factory, the platform and membership that invites you to design your own adventure through sight and sound.
We're on the Edge of NFT, your gateway to embark on an adventure through the ever-evolving landscape of Web3. Keep reading.
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NFT curious audience, stay tuned for this episode and learn how Future Factory has transformed years of immersive spatial design ideation into a vibrant multi-dimensional and experiential membership that lasts a lifetime.
Plus how obtaining their very own spaceship completes one creator's artistic vision.
Also, hear how BNV is bringing fashion to Web3 through NFT-backed ecosystems that take fashion to the outer edge and beyond. Before we roll on, don't forget that our Outer Edge LA event returned to LA from March 20th through the 23rd, 2023. You can now catch up on all the discussions, presentations, and more. You can head over to watch at TheOuterEdge.live and register with your email address, then you'll have access to over 60 captivating conversations and performances. Binge watchers are welcome. Netflix, watch out. See you inside.
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This episode features Paul Hemming and Galen Oakes to deeply creative minds behind Future Factory, a venture that's redefining the landscape of immersive music and art. Let's get a little bit on Paul. Drawing from a diverse tapestry of life experiences, Paul's path has been anything but conventional. From obtaining a Film degree to running a record store in Oakland, these experiences have shaped him into a creative force. Now he channels his amalgamation of sight and sounds into this ambitious project Future Factory in LA. He sees this endeavor as a testament to the limitless potential of an imagination unfettered and the realization of unbound dreams. Accompanying Paul is Galen Oakes, the Creative Director at Future Factory.
Galen is a visionary digital architect from Northern California blending tech, humanity, and nature. From Bali to San Francisco, his vibrant creativity has transformed passion into a profession. With notable ventures in music, fashion, blockchain, and Web3, Galen's groundbreaking NFT Project showcased his unique style and AI expertise. As a Creative Director at Future Factory, he shapes narratives integrating Web3 and AI across diverse initiatives.
Together, we'll explore Future Factory. It's a lifetime membership space that merges a nightclub, art gallery, marketplace, yoga studio, and more offering an extraordinary immersive and communal experience. Future Factory has roots in three distinct cities, each echoing a different facet of this artistic convergence. We also had the opportunity to partner with Future Factory as part of Outer Edge LA this 2022, and it was an incredible partnership. Paul and Galen, welcome to the show. Good to have you here.
Welcome to the Future Factory. Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure to be here with you guys.
I've been excited to have you on the books for a while. It was such a blast to hang out with you guys at Future Factory for the whole week of Outer Edge and have you guys at our event. I remember that first moment that we met. Now that I'm reading your bio or hearing your whole bio, I knew Paul reminded me of someone. I think his name was Richard Branson or something like that. I wonder if you guys have some of the same DNA.
They’re definitely an inspiration. Richard and Elon are all truly inspirational entrepreneurs on the planet who are pushing the frontier. We're excited to be doing our own experimentations here in this project. It's been a decade’s journey for me, so it's exciting to be in LA. The energy here is so inspirational. There's so much creative energy. We're excited to be here. We’re making a lot of progress. You can see the rooms come to life here.
It almost feels like Future Factory is a life-size, choose-your-own-adventure game. Maybe we can start things off by telling our audience a little bit about the inspiration behind this amazing project.
I'll interrupt real quick. Visually, your space is so interesting, and I want to give the audience a little taste. Josh and I have been in this space. It's a huge gigantic warehouse space, and then there are multiple parts of the property. The space that Paul and Galen are joining us in now has LED screens or some type of video projection screens everywhere in the space so they could create a holodeck experience and do anything they want. We're seeing outer space scripting across the top and some cool avatar images in the background. This is to give you a little taste of what everybody's referring to when they say that the space is incredible. Back to the inspiration behind this, Paul, we’d love to hear about it.
There are so many inspirations. It's a lifetime of inspiration. When I was a kid, my toys have gotten bigger, but I love immersive experiences. I've been building immersive entertainment complexes for many years. It started with my record store after our spot in Oakland. That's where I was DJing. I went from film school to DJing to opening a record store. I always wanted to reinvent any kind of endeavor that I started. The record store was such a fascinating microcosm of the nightlife community. You had the record, the DJs, and the label owners. The club kids would come to get the flyers, and there was this entire community. I designed it in a way that made it immersive. We had a music studio in the basement and we threw parties. That was the seed that grew into everything that I'm doing now.
I was able to open the first Nightclub Temple in San Francisco in 2007. I was always committed to immersing everybody in artwork, having installations everywhere. I had a bunch of friends that were artists that I'd met over the years. This was years before I'd opened the art gallery. I would turn the entire experience into something memorable. Before, people were using words like immersive. It was important to surround the space with art and depart from a traditional nightclub design where you had flashing lights and movers. Instead, you were embedded in a sculpture. My fascination with art began at an early age too. I started collecting stamps. I guess those are the original NFTs, and then it went to baseball cards and comics. Now, I trade actual art pieces.
A natural fusion of music and art has been the two driving forces of my creative process. Music has always been a spiritual experience. The record store was called Zen City Records, and music was always a Zen state of mind for me. It is being at the oneness with the moment. That's the original brand. The artwork blew my mind. I didn't go to art school, but I was drawn to certain types of art, art that could crystallize the unfathomable, something that spoke to you instantly and wanted you to gaze into it and try to understand it. I've spent many years blending these two passions together. It's continued to iterate and evolve. The nightclub has given me the ability to experiment at a high level with all these different business modules.
Nightclubs can be very wasteful in the use of space. A lot of times, it's a Friday or Saturday for four hours when it comes to life. Other than that, it's empty. I was always looking for different ways to throw events. I came up with the co-working component. I brought in a bunch of entrepreneurs in there. It was a membership model similar to WeWork. I was able to take money from the nightclub and start investing in different tech companies as well. A lot of it is our own incubators. I invested in different companies that were in music and entertainment technology. It was a perfect synergistic ecosystem daytime and nighttime.
There was a health and wellness component. Yoga instructors would come in sometimes and offer to be able to teach yoga classes in the space during the daytime. I was always looking for many different ways to evolve and adapt the space and give people a reason to stay all day and all night. In 2015, we were able to orchestrate our first phase of what I call cell division of mitosis, taking the DNA of the fifteen years of experimentation at that point and dropping it into Denver. We didn't have much experience or knowledge of Denver, but our plan was to take this around the world. Denver became the first city that we chose to do that experiment in, and it blew up.
We have the number one nightclub in Denver, and it was exciting to see the community grow around the project, and then the pandemic knocked it all down as it did to everything. That was a challenging moment for the entire world. For the organization, I watched many years of entrepreneurial effort all come crashing down. It was tragic for everybody. It was a dark time of uncertainty for almost everyone. I had to sit with the reality of watching everything that I spent my lifetime building potentially disappear forever.
What started out destructive ultimately became a creative process. We got lucky with some government stimulus money to come back, and we decided to come down to LA. I got a two-year break. I got to watch all the building blocks of all of my experiments in front of me and the incredible opportunity to come back. LA has always been a dream of mine to come down here. This was the moment that we seized to bring the Future Factory down to LA, which is the new concept, the amalgamation, the merging, and synthesis of everything that we've spent many years doing.
What started out destructive ultimately became a creative process. Click To Tweet
It sounds like there are two. I was going to ask you what the secret here is. We got yoga probably a little bit and then many years of experience, but I don't know how else you're going to pull off all this stuff without getting very stressed out. It looks all relaxed there, but I'm sure it takes a lot to put this together.
Fortunately, Paul has an amazing team including Galen. I imagine Galen was sucked up into the Paul Hemming vortex at some point along the journey.
I actually met Paul several years ago. I'm from Northern California originally and came down to San Francisco with a camera and was cruising around San Francisco. I’m fascinated by the city. I had never been to a city before. I grew up in a very rural part of California. I was going everywhere with my camera and went into Temple Nightclub one night. I was taking photos for fun and ended up taking photos of the marketing director at that time, Jenny Dozier. Jenny was like, “These are great photos. You should come to work for us.” I started taking photos once or twice a week and then started taking videos. I had a 5D Mark II, which revolutionized digital video at that time.
I started doing video, and Paul liked the video. I created a WordPress website called The Temple TV and was hosting all the videos. Me and Paul go back many years. We went our separate ways. Since then, I've been an artist and entrepreneur, always fascinated with technology, and discovered AI over the summer. When Paul came down to LA with mirrors, we reconnected and had a conversation in January 2023. I have a project called Future Factory. I want to create a membership layer for it. I want the memberships to be NFTs. I came on as an advisor and we started talking about how we could make these memberships unique and use AI to power them.
I would love to hear about what you guys are thinking in terms of this lifetime membership concept and from Paul a little bit of a rundown on why you chose to do a lifetime thing and what you envision there.
The membership model has been an experiment that I've done over the years. We made an app a few years ago for the nightclub that people could download. It was a way that we were gamifying the experience. You'd earn points for showing up, you could check in on Facebook, put friends on the guest list, and upload photos. We had a way to keep track of points for all of this and then you could earn different rewards. There was that experiment that we did for a couple of years and then we also had a God and Goddess membership card that we would give out to different friends. If they showed up, they could flash the card. I did a private line come right in.
It was a way for the club to know friends that I had and the different promoting partners that we had. I've always wanted to launch a membership model and with the Future Factory, the whole intention is building this lifestyle brand and it's all the things that I want in my life. The quality of life that I want. I want music, art, creativity, community, and wellness. I want to offer that to everybody that comes here. The idea of the lifetime membership was, “How do I offer something so over the top full of value?” I love this line. I was like, “Unlock a lifetime of utility. Choose your own adventure.” That was my favorite book as a kid. Life is an adventure. What choice do you want to make? Unlock a lifetime of utility.
I thought I would go over the top because I was studying all the NFTs. I’m fascinated by art. As soon as NFT jumped on the scene, I was researching it. I had this concept for this fractional museum concept a few years ago that I was working on where you could own a piece of history. I was going to fractionalize a collection of art that you could buy into and own a piece of. When I was studying all of the NFT projects, looking at PFPs, and grasping how utility was the future.
That's what people wanted. So much of what happens in these projects, I see a lot of empty promises or promises of some cool utility down the line or we'll throw some cool party. I had this moment where I was like, “We have built all the services and experiences that people want already. What if we gave them lifetime access? How many could we sell? How many could we service? How much money could we raise?”
I got excited because this is going to be the key to being able to fund expansion, expand cell division, and truly deliver on the promise of a lifetime of utility. We've been here for a lifetime already. We've been open for many years. We're in three cities. We survived the pandemic. I believe that we can provide and deliver on that lifetime of utility. I want to be able to reward people for believing in the vision and the dream and wanting to come in early and say, “You are a founder. You are a Future Factory, futurist, founding member.” That has its benefits and it comes with a lifetime of access.
I had the privilege of seeing the LA Downtown location and its early infancy and how your crew of 20-plus folks came in and transformed it into the vision in your head. I felt like I needed a hard hat or something, but there are a lot of components here that we should break down because it melds wellness, yoga, co-working, nightlife, and art. Without moving the camera around, can you talk us through a little bit of a tour of the space?
One of these projects in San Francisco was in one 40,000-square-foot building. There's a basement, three levels, and a rooftop. The second version was in Denver. It was two buildings, side by side conjoined with openings. The third version in LA is more of a campus. It's what I've been looking for in this evolutionary journey. More space and indoor-outdoor connecting volumes of space that can be utilized for different purposes at different times of the day. I've always been searching for maximum utility, functionality, and modularity. That's what we're doing here. In this room is the holodeck and the immersive experiential entertainment space. It’s one of them.
It's a sound and light healing chamber, a podcasting studio, a film set, a hackathon space, or whatever it needs to be. This is the main show-stopping room where when people come in through our tunnel of light and blast through the wormhole fog screen that we're installing, they're entering into a new dimension of nightlife. That's the jumping-off point. As soon as they come through the space, they're always presented with a fork of options. You go out into building C, which is a 360 projection-mapped room that will also serve as a multifunctional space. We'll be doing film shoots in there, aerialists performers, and dancers, however we can use the space all day, all night.
We had ice cream chuck, the adult puppet show, the beat-making puppet rapper, and the stilt walking flame-throwing robot. We had a UFO on a scissor lift. It is an immersive circus. It's the Future Factory and the interdimensional circus is one of our taglines there. There are three essential event spaces. From the event space, there are two more buildings that you can access. One is the marketplace. That's where the record store will live and the clothing store boutique where we'll be working with different local fashion designers. That's our merchandise and our version of the Disney gift shop. When you're exiting and you're like, “I want to buy the hat, shirt, artwork, some music, or clothing,” that's where you buy the NFT.
That's the end of the sales funnel where this whole experience is giving you the experiential moments that will want to steer you to buy one of the memberships. On the other side, there's going to be a giant robot head and you'll be able to go into the museum through the robot head. There'll be an immersive music instrument there, like a modular jam station where five people can press buttons, turn knobs, make the robot talk, and make music essentially. Eventually, it'll print your experiment and be able to turn that into an NFT as well. Through that, there'll be a museum with about 200 original pieces.
Some of which will be augmented. I've had this vision about augmenting a museum where you have original pieces. You could stand in front, hit a trigger with Apple glasses or something and you would have the artist pop up like Princess Leia out of R2D2 and tell you about the piece. Instead of listening with the headphones, you have the artist tell you about their process and the piece that they created. It's a vision I’ve had for years. You then go into the art gallery space, which is also a co-working space community lounge. Upstairs, we have the maker space labs. You then go over across the tunnel and then you go into the daytime yoga space.
Is there a daycare?
Night care is what we do for adults because we never grow up.
It's incredible and it has to come from a vision that starts from somewhere. It's pretty impressive. You guys are incorporating AI in some creatively charged IRL stuff. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you're integrating some AI into things?
I'll talk a little bit about the starting point and I'll kick it over to Galen. He can break down the process a little bit. I'm a futurist. We all are. I can hear the future in music, I can see it in art, and I can grasp it in ideas. Anytime something pops up, I'm on it. Projection mapping is what we were doing a few years ago. Motion connect interactivity, we were doing it, and soon as AI emerged, I was all about it. How can we optimize using ChatGPT to write blog posts and bios and to help fine-tune and iterate ideas to have a brilliant assistant available at any moment to answer your questions? It's incredible. We are living in the future. When it came to the NFT side of things, we've done a bunch of experiments. I've always wanted to create.
I thought, “How cool would it be to do a completely original NFT?” Much of it is a templatized thing. There's a certain formulaic approach where there's some creativity, but I thought with the mid-journey there was an opportunity to create 10,000 completely one-of-one avatars and to also give the customer the ability to choose what they identify with. Much of it is randomized and then you have to trade, the one that you have for the one that has the same hair color as you. You see that happening the demand for having something that's reflective of what you identify with. With those conceptual building blocks, I saw the opportunity where the cost to be able to create unique avatars was now available to us.
I conceptualized this spectrum of types that I wanted to reflect all of my interest in history with archetypes and cultural icons. We came up with about 100 different types. I was able to program in and say, “I want the Goddess, the warrior, the priest, the shaman, the sorcerer, the hacker, or whatever different type that we could come up with.” I then handed it over to Galen to work his magic. He's been doing some amazing stuff with AI. I was watching a couple of projects that he did and it was blowing my mind how brilliant some of these pieces were. I knew he was the perfect guy to be able to add his magic to bring them to life as you can see in the background. I'll let him talk more about his process and what his journey that he has been on to be able to gain mastery of that tool.
I'm creative and I want to say first and foremost that being creative, I embrace AI and any tool that I can use to radically generate ideas. I’m a big fan of AI and all of the potential that it holds. I worked on the NFT project years ago that Paul saw. It was live-generating avatars and three scanning them. He saw that. With that project along with some of the mid-journey art that I was creating over the summer, it began our conversation. To date, I've talked about 400 hours on mid-journey since July 2022 and tens of thousands of art pieces. When we were starting to talk about membership, the utility isn't in the art. It's extracted over time through coming into the experience which is the Future Factory.
We didn't need to worry about rarities and attributes and all of those things because every avatar gives the same utility. It's the same gold. We thought we were playing out with the idea of doing 101 avatars and using mid-journey to generate all of them. For the first collection, we created 1,111 one-of-one avatars. There are 50 different categories and about 20 different variations of each category. The two prompts that I used in every avatar was 50 millimeter to define the framing of the art and octane render to define the style. In between those two prompts, I got psychedelic with words that were all attached to the foundation of the characters that Paul provided me. Paul gave me characters and different types of beans that he wanted to create and then I got psychedelic with the prompting.
I appreciate that. We could mention this, Josh. We will be releasing an AI podcast soon. We'll put that out there, to tease that, but this is the type of thing we want to talk about on there in some cases. Here are the interesting use cases people are doing. A lot of us have messed with mid-journey a little bit, but you've gone a little bit deeper and been able to pull off some cool stuff that the average person can't. There may be a deep dive with Galen at some point in the near future.
For full disclosure to our audience, we are members of Future Factory and we had a chance to go through the minting process and choose avatars that represented the likes, interests, and passions of our team, and some pretty special ones popped up like some incredible art that will show our audience. Sum it all up. You guys are doing some incredible stuff. You have a grand vision and there's an ambitious roadmap going forward too. Paul, I'd love to touch on any of the partnerships, artist collaborations, or other features in the future of Future Factory.
We've been under construction for about a year now, the grand opening, some moving target of sorts, but we're approaching that date. We're going into a 90-day march here beginning June 1st, 2023. In the meantime, we've been opening up the space, doing a few select events, and seeing who shows up. We want to build the community organically. We're curating all of these interconnected communities and there are different verticals. We have the nightlife, art, wellness, and Web3 community. With that commitment, we're lining up a bunch of partners and some incredible people that we met at the Outer Edge event. That was inspiring and it was great to be there and spend 2 or 3 days. Every single day, we were there and met incredible people.
We want to be the hub for Web3. We want to be able to provide the space for all of the communities to come in and throw their IRL events. We've mastered that part. We know how to throw events, we have the space for it, and we want those communities to come in. Now, we're planting interdimensional seeds. The more the merrier. If there's anybody that has a project that wants to hit us up and plug in, that's what we want to do. We're here to support all of the vibrant cultural threads in this incredible city. NFTs, Web3, blockchain, and augmented reality. Anybody that has a project in any of those sectors, we'd love to work with.
Our club for Outer Edge LA was the beginning. I'm sure there will be more adventures in our future as well.
Thanks a lot for all the answers to the questions, the inspiration, and everything guys. We'll head on over to our Special Spotlight Hot Topic Segment now. Let's get rolling with that soon. Our featured guests can jump in and we'll give an intro for him and what's going on.
Today's Hot Topic features Nathan Minsberg of BNV, the virtual destination for designers, creators, and global fashion brands. Nathan is a trilingual content producer and creative strategist with over a decade of experience in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East with an affinity for mediated semiotics and audio-visual experiences elevating human agency. He has worked on high-profile projects and film and TV production, advertising, PR, and journalism. In 2017, he directed and released his first documentary film. Nate, welcome to the show. We're excited to talk about this.
Thank you for having me.
It's great to have you, Nate. It's such an appropriate episode where we're talking about this IRL visually stimulating immersive experience and you've been breaking ground in the digital world in this area for quite a while. Could you share a little bit about how digital fashion is acting as a platform for co-creation in your latest project?
First of all, as a side note, it's quite funny because I bumped into Galen in New York when we were there for NFT NYC. That's where we met. This is the second time where we seem to be meeting and we had a very deep conversation inside a nightclub about what is IRL experiences and what it means to bring this digital landscape into the lives of people physically, digitally, and fiddly. It's great to be here. What we're doing at BNV is building an ecosystem first and foremost. It might sound like a very technical word, but we believe that there's no reasoning behind NFTs if it's not backed up by an entire ecosystem that allows for these digital assets to have influence, especially power for the user himself and not the brands and the creators that come in.
BNV is Brand New Vision. We deal mostly with digital fashion. We've also moved over the last few months into digital fashion as well. The idea is that we work with big brands from Tommy Hilfiger, Coach, Diane von Furstenberg, and smaller and coming designers Victor Vine Santo and Natasha Ziko. We help them transition into this new exciting landscape that is Web3. We build in-house all of our wearables with an incredible team of 3D designers in metaverse tailors. We also build all of the smart contracts.
We own land in various metaverse worlds from Sandbox, Decentraland, and High Street. We're also about to launch, which is the most exciting part, our own metaverse world called BNV World. BNV World is a little different from other worlds. It's an infinite loop rather than a flat surface world. Your avatar, which we've built is our own unique avatar system. Your avatar comes naked. You dress it, modify it with text image AI, and you're also able to onboard and import your PFPs into this world so that you basically give a three-dimensional body to what is otherwise a two-dimensional JPEG.
I want the ability to eat pizza, ice cream, and steak whenever I want, and pasta in particular without my avatar gaining weight. That's the goal.
That's the goal for some because there's also the dynamic avatar ideology that if you're running through a forest and you hit a rock, then your garment should be torn up. If you spend a couple of years lost inside the forest with no food then you should get skinnier. Everybody has their own different understanding of what it means to be an avatar in the virtual world. The definitive answer is that you can be anything you want to be.
I want to throw the avatar I minted for Future Factory into your virtual world. That would be dope. What do you think, Paul?
We created the smart contract in a way where we can upgrade the assets that are attached to them. Our plan for the long-term is to be able to turn that portrait into a skin that you can walk around whatever metaverse you prefer.
That's exactly our thinking. We're not trying to be a closed-off metaverse where we want people to come into our world and play within our system. We're base. We want people to come in dress and modify, but what we provide is interoperable copies of your high-resolution wearables so that you can go into different worlds still wearing your asset and earning from it. Various play wear, earn craft waste. Also, as you said, Galen, we want people to come in and take their Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, and doodles, and be able to wear them as skin on top of the face and the helmet. That's awesome.
You mentioned interoperability. That's so essential, especially in digital fashion. I so appreciate taking strides to make sure that that's a possibility. How far along are you in terms of making interoperability possible and some of the challenges and looking into the future of how that works?
We are already making interoperable digital assets. A lot of it is done manually through hard labor in-house. That means that you buy high resolution and then our team of designers converts it into Vox accelerated format, low res for DCL, and so on and so on. What we are currently working on in-house and are very excited about is finding a way to scale up this process through, of course, our favorite two letters, AI. Doing so by training machines to learn the different aesthetics of different worlds and allowing that process to be done a lot more automatically.
We met you and the rest of the team. This is hopefully the beginning of much many more adventures to come. We're excited about the adaption of real-world use cases to traditional fashion brands and you guys are pioneering in that way. Before we adjourn this beginning conversation, we would love to talk a little bit more about the role of tokenization in BNV and how it impacts the digital fashion ecosystem.
Tokenization is everything. We're not trying to do agency work of beautiful videos and 3D content. Everything for us goes through tokenization because we believe in co-creation. A brand offers a product, but then the end user should be able to modify it or play around with it. Also, most importantly, earn passively or actively through different digital experiences. Tokenization in simple terms, it's your authentication and certificate of ownership, but it's also your membership. It's where you can rack up points.
It's where you can be told that this is London Fashion Week and now you get exclusive access to the Mark Jacobs show because you're a G holder from the BNV membership team. These exclusive access passes and experiences are something that we're bagging a lot on. The second part is that we believe that where fashion is going in the digital landscape through AI and all of the different game engine abilities that you have to create. Brands are going to have to become more and more comfortable with the idea of creating together with their customers rather than ahead of the trends.
It's exciting to hear about, envision, and look forward to playing around, especially the metaverse sounds cool. Unfortunately, we have to wrap up the segment. We don't always have a lot of time for the Hot Topic, but before we roll, can you give folks an idea where they can go to find out more to follow along and keep the rest of the story?
Head over to BNV.me and you'll find out everything you need about BNV. Excitingly watch out because we're launching the MEID station and that is essentially the first phase of BNV world, which is the wardrobe system and avatar creation station. You'll be able to do a lot of fun things in there, including, as I mentioned, text image modification of comments and onboarding and importing of your PFP personalities.
That sounds incredible. Whenever you want to do a fashion show here, we can do a phygital fashion show here at the Future Factory where we could have an actual real-life fashion show and then simulcast it in the metaverse. We're working with these incredible partners called RedPill VR. They have some mind-blowing tech. They're streaming.
They have a DJ set up where DJ shows up and he records a set and streams simultaneously into the metaverse where you can meet with friends all around the world. I’m thinking if we did a version of the fashion show with that technology. I would love to. This is exactly the experience we want to do. We do everything from holograms, AR filters, metaverse, and activations. I'm pretty sure I handshake with Galen at some point that we would work together so it will happen.
The phygital fashion show, I don't think I've ever heard of it, but it's got a nice ring to it.
Count us in. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll talk soon, Nathan.
Thank you very much. I was making deals here on Edge of NFT. It's fun.
It looks like it will be fun to head on over to our Quick Hitter segment this time around. What we can do, since we have two guests, is we'll try to squeeze it in. We'll hit both of you with these questions, but we'll try to keep the answers extra brief. Here's an idea of what Quick Hitters is. It's a fun and quick way to get to know you guys a little bit better. We're looking for a short, single, or few-word response, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. Are you guys ready?
Yes sir.
Let’s go.
Question number one. We'll go to Paul first. Paul, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Toy space gun in Taiwan.
In Taiwan? Not Made in Taiwan but in Taiwan.
I was made in Taiwan.
The space gun might have been made in Taiwan too.
Do you have a tattoo that says Made in Taiwan on the back of your neck or something?
I was thinking about getting one.
You got it. Don't come back and complain to me though if it gets old. Go on over to Galen. What's the first thing you ever purchased in your life?
This is probably not the first thing I purchased, but the first thing that I remember is Dr. Dre's The Chronic 2001 CD.
That is OG man. I love it. We'll go right back to you, Galen, for this one. What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Probably cannabis.
That is not the first time that's come up on the show, but it is Web3.
I grew up in Mendocino County, so I got started a little earlier than others.
Question number two over to you, Paul. What's the first thing you remember selling in your life?
I was quite the budding entrepreneur early on. When I was in second grade, me and a couple of the neighborhood kids would go around collecting all the cans and bottles. We'd build stockpiles of them and then our parents would take us to the recycling center. We get $2 and then I'd take that to Safeway and play Asteroids. Nothing has changed. Video games, toys, and space. I'm a big kid now.
Back to you with this one, Paul. What is the most recent thing you've purchased?
I've been buying a bunch of modular synthesizer gear. I've been going down the modular rabbit hole, which is essentially creating your instrument and tuning in the aliens.
Galen, what about you?
The last thing I purchased was a subscription to a third AI note-taker so that I can compare which one I liked the best.
A little A, B, and C testing there.
I purchased Firefly. I've been using Otter in Supernormal and I like Supernormal the best so far but they don't have an app like Otter, so I'm trying to figure out which one works the best for my use case.
We were a bit frustrated because Otter was trying to join our show interview.
AI is already taking over.
I had some AI summarize at the meeting. I don't even remember subscribing to it so there's something there. I don't know what's going on. Galen, what is the most recent thing you sold?
The most recent thing I sold was a drone. I sold a drone that I'm not using anymore.
Did you get an upgrade?
I have the Maverick C3 and I've had the Maverick 2 Pro sitting in my closet so I finally sold it.
Paul, what about you?
I don't know if I ever sell anything. I keep it all. I'm a pack rat. People have to force me. I could be on an episode of Hoarders.
I'll give you a hint. Did you sell a membership lately? Did you sell drinks maybe?
That's the business. That's not him personally.
No personal sales. Next question number five. Back to you, Paul. What is your most prized possession?
Probably a couple of paintings. There are a couple of paintings by my favorite artist. There's one called Transcendental Disaster from MARS-1. It's a magical painting. You guys are good to see it. It's going to be in the museum. It'll be augmented. It's what heaven I think would look like.
How about you Galen? What's your most prized possession?
I would say it's being able to be working here at the Future Factory with Paul and all the amazing people that we're interfacing with daily. I can't put a cost on it. It's better than any material thing that I have now in my life.
Question number six. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service, or experience that is currently for sale, what would it be, Galen?
It would probably be my dream eco-resort that's been already built and I could buy it from them.
Back to you, Paul. If you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical service, or experience that is currently for sale, what would it be?
It'd be a spaceship all day. The actual see-now one that's superluminal. I don't have years and years to try to travel at the speed of light only. I need warp drives. I want to visit other galaxies. It's a big universe out there.
I think about it. We've had several guests say that they would like to buy a trip into space, but nobody has said, “Why don't I get the actual spaceship and take it whenever I want.”
Now, I'm building nightclubs that look like spaceships. Someday I can build spaceships that look like nightclubs.
Paul, I'm excited to hear your answer to this one. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
My creative passion, energy, and spark to always be building and to share the wonder and the mystery of existence and to keep building.
I love that. The wonder and mystery of existence. That's beautiful. What about you, Galen?
Honest, inspiring, and optimistic intention. I want people to be optimistic about the future in all of the ways that technology can help us live more harmoniously with each other on the planet. There's so much potential within reach and we need to keep believing that anything is possible and we'll be able to create whatever we want to.
I wonder if there's a German word for that, the joy of the future. Back to you, Galen. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would it be?
Overthinking.
You didn't overthink that answer.
Paul, what about you? What personality trait would you eliminate?
Stress is always a perpetual battle.
This is the plight of the entrepreneur. Stress can be healthy and cause the drive to get things done faster than other people would think is possible, but it's also very stressful to have those ambitious goals and to try to execute them. It's a double-edged sword there. I appreciate your response.
We're going to move on to number nine and we'll kick it back to Paul. What did you do before joining us on this show?
I was problem-solving. I was juggling planets. My avatar is the interdimensional robot juggling planets. We have two events. There was some miscommunication. We had a podcast studio to set up so we were doing our thing.
How about you, Galen? What were you doing before you joined us?
Earlier this morning, I was using ChatGPT to write the bio that I gave you for this episode. I also was generating some mid-journey avatars to sell Pride Month which started.
I hope ChatGPT didn't fabricate any of your histories because it's not good at history.
What I use it for is I write a bio. I wrote my bio and then I run through ChatGPT. A lot of people are having issues with AI because they're treating it very transactionally. If you can talk to it an amazing writer and be like, “Here's the first draft, run with it.” You can do amazing collaborations with AI. You just need to know how to talk to it.
We covered what you did before and the next is the reciprocal. Back to you, Galen. What are you going to do next after the show?
Get back to work. Every day in the Future Factory, I’m working on all the amazing things that are coming in the future. I'm going to probably sync with Paul and see what's next on the list to get done.
Paul, finally, let's wrap it up with you. What are you going to do next after the show?
I got a bottleneck of meetings waiting for me, but I've got an incredible team of super creators that are showing up. It's the fun part. We're jamming and iterating. I love to bring as many creative powerhouses to the table as possible.
I understand we have a bonus question Josh would like to ask. Let's hit that, Josh.
Paul, you've been in the nightclub and event business for a long time. What is the most memorable performance in any of your venues that you have had the opportunity to experience firsthand?
There's been so many, but one of the most memorable experiences that I've had of late was the first event that we got to throw after the pandemic. There was a certain magic that was in the air after being shut down for two years. Much of what everybody took for granted was taken away, like dancing, hanging out with your friends, and going out to a venue. When we were able to fill that room, I was in Denver for this artist named Medusa who had a bunch of hits. I'm getting goosebumps a little bit reflecting on that moment because it was magical to see everybody there. It was New Year's time. It was palpable electricity in the room and it was magical.
Medusa. We'll check that performer out too.
It's so nice to get goosebumps and not think it's a symptom of a fever from COVID or something. that concludes our Quick Hitter segment so we'll get on to the next one. That will be our shout-out. We like to give you guys an opportunity. 1 or 2 people or projects or anything you think might be fun to shout out. We can give them a tag on socials or something. Does anybody come to mind, Paul or Galen?
I want to shout out my incredible team that I would not be able to do this without. I have the vision and the dream and I get to build a container, but it'd be nothing without all of the incredible visionaries. I'm a leader of leaders so there are so many people that have helped contribute to this project. Many years of people.
Is anybody for you, Galen?
I was going to mirror Paul. All the people that we're working with Daley to bring this vision to life from a Rainey handling mirrors art gallery and all the special events. Melissa is in special events. We brought on Andrew Sealy who's going to help curate our wellness program. He's an incredible ally yoga instructor. We have a lot of different people that we're working with and it's incredible to work at such a high level with some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.
Brilliant minds. Leader of leaders. Can't get any better than that. That's nice to note to end the general content. We'll start to wrap it up here. The next thing would be to find out where the audience can go to learn more about you and the projects that you're working on. Paul, what do you think? Where should we go? Websites, social or stuff like that.
We have FutureFactory.xyz where you can find all the information about our membership model. We're about to launch our V2 of the website. All the information will be there.
We're also on Instagram @FutureFactoryXYZ and Twitter @FutureFactoryLA. You can find Discord links on both of our social channels. We've been posting about events that we've been having. We're not officially open until September 2023, but if you follow us on our socials you can maybe hear about some popup events that are happening before then. We're going to be having our ten-year anniversary at Mirus Art Gallery on 7/7, and we're going to be having an incredible art exhibit with someone.
He's unveiling his new project on a 75-foot 3D screen. I've seen a lot of amazing stuff in my life. He's my favorite living visual artist, so he's having an event here on 6/23 and 6/24. We’re announcing those ticket links on our social channels as well. There's lots of magic happening and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you all.
That's going to be a great one. I heard about that from one of the individuals with whom he collaborated on his first exhibit, and they said that it got so big they had to move it to a new venue. I was wondering, “I wonder what venue that is. I wonder if it's Future Factory.” It confirms. It makes a lot of sense. That was a popular sold-out exhibit, so this one I'm sure is going to be incredible as well. Guys, thanks. We're doing a pretty incredible giveaway. If you're enamored by Future Factory, Paul and his team have graciously given us one of the OG Genesis memberships. Is that correct, Paul?
That's right.
Tune in to our socials for that contest. It's going to be epic. One of the more highly valued contests that we've done. Lifetime membership to a multiple-city Web3 think tank. You're not going to want to miss this contest. Thanks, guys.
It’s awesome stuff. To follow up with people that didn't get the idea, you'll see on the websites beautiful spaces, inspiring visually, but also, what it comes down to is the people that you meet in places like this. I don't forget that when you enter to try to get your hands on that, it's not a pretty picture or a fun space. It's a lot of cool relationships that you'll be able to get into.
It's a lifetime membership of unlimited nightlife, music events, unlimited yoga events, and unlimited art events. There's a lot there. It's hard to wrap your head around but it's a lifetime to be able to come in this space whenever you want when we're open to the public.
Rock on. We have officially reached the outer limit at the Edge of NFT Sport. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this Starship, maybe Paul Starship as well. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes. Rate us and say something awesome then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Look us up on all major social platforms by typing @EdgeOfNFT and start a fun conversation with us online. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Future Factory
- BNV
- TheOuterEdge.live
- RedPill VR
- @FutureFactoryXYZ – Instagram
- @FutureFactoryLA – Twitter
- @EdgeOfNFT – Twitter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
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