Marc Aptakin With MAD Arts

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio now. Here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor. Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio, we have Mark Aptakin with MAD. Welcome, Mark.

Marc Aptakin: Thank you.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about MADD. How are you serving folks?

Marc Aptakin: We’re kind of a strange full service agency with a heavy, a heavy avenue toward tech. We do a lot of motion capture, 3D volumetric studios. We’re just kind of all over the place on the tech side, heavy into Nfts, as well as all your kind of everyday advertising.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Marc Aptakin: I just kind of fell into it. I was a fine art photographer and I was working at a print shop while I was in school and just kind of started. The owner of the print shop would let me play with the computer at night. So with that, it kind of led into graphic design and the print industry. And in the mid nineties, a lot of the big print shops were trying to have in-house ad agencies. And so that’s kind of when I got into the business and learned about advertising, always had kind of a love for data and tech and kind of went from there. And then other than that, the business just kind of grew by opportunity when one of our clients would have something that they wanted to get into, we would kind of pilot it on ourselves and then prove that we could do it and then come back to them with what we’ve done. And a lot of times that opened the door for us to be able to do it for them.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk about your lens of coming at this through the eyes of an artist into the world of using art and creativity for commerce?

Marc Aptakin: Yeah, I mean, it’s really the backbone of everything we do, right? So I think we look at everything that anybody brings us as a problem to solve. And so we do it through creative thinking. So everything is solved from the creative process, and that even comes down to hardware solutions. Or we, we did a photo booth for Southeast Toyota Jam family and they came to us really for software. And as they talk to us about it, they wanted someone who could actually do both a hardware and software solution and through some of the manufacturing and printing things that we did, I explained how I kind of do what they do, but on a smaller scale with some stuff we do for the telecom industry. And we had to get super creative with the footprint, with the speed that they needed to do things and everything like that. So for me it was just sitting down with surrounding yourself with super smart people and having creative conversations to solve problems.

Lee Kantor: Now, part of your work is through this Mad Art and Mad Labs. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works and how those were born?

Marc Aptakin: Sure. So Matt, Arts was something that we’d done for quite some time, and it was really a nonprofit part of the business that was like a pay it forward. It was based on something that was done for me while I was an artist that had an influence on basically everything that I’ve ever done. And the the gallery that used to show my work, the gentleman who ran it, Brooke Dorsch, he he would give me space, like inside the gallery to go play and just things that I wouldn’t have had access to because I had no money. Right? So space resources, time. So with that, that had such an impact on everything that I ever did. That understanding and that ability to play. We when we were in a position to, we decided to create mad arts as a pay it forward and we would give artists space and resources that we had within the agency or the print shops or friends or whatever we could give them to help them complete a project that they were having trouble bringing to life. Through that. A lot of the things that we were doing on the tech side, so a lot of the D stuff now Nfts but just the technology side and a lot of the technologies that we were using, which was turned into the Mad Labs division of our company. So now we’re about to open a museum on the second floor of our building. That’s going to be kind of an extension of both mad labs and Mad arts. It’s almost like a mash up between the two.

Lee Kantor: Now, how important is it to have that type of a community where artists can collaborate, mash up, you know, help each other, but help themselves in the art world? I would think that something like that is critical in terms of building an ecosystem that supports artists.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah. I mean, it’s not I know that there’s lots of organizations that help artists like that. I don’t know of one that does it in the same way. A lot of times it’s they apply for a grant and they just get money, right? And then they’re still left to kind of just figure it out.

Lee Kantor: Right. Like they’re still on their own, like they’re isolated. This is kind of sounds like it’s fostering community and you’re trying to help everybody help each other, but also help the community.

Marc Aptakin: Right. So when we put on a show for the artists, the we only take 25% of a typical gallery would take 50 or 60%. So we take that 25%. But we make the artists choose. We donate that 25% to the next artist or an artist of the artist choosing. So we kind of force them to pay it forward, kind of like we are and create that niche. Some you just see it makes the artist look at it a little differently and you know, it took a little while actually to get it going. When I first tried to do it, there was a lot of skepticism with the artists that I was trying to talk to to get it done. And once once you got it rolling, then you just saw really a community build behind it. And a lot of the artists that we help you, you you find that they find each other, you know, either through events here at the building or they just learn that, oh, you’re one of the we used to call the space battle space. And they’re like, Oh, you’re one of the bad space artists. And yeah, it’s it’s honestly, it’s one of the most rewarding things that, that I do. But I also think. You know, we get creative energy from it being around super creative people with whacked out ideas. It couldn’t be better for or for for what we do on the business side.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you share a story? Maybe that origin story where there was an artist that kind of the light bulb went off and they’re like, Hey, I get this. And then maybe they were able to bring on another artist or they were able to support a different artist and give them an opportunity.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah. So when I originally took the space, I was I just wanted artists to come in and use the space. And every artist that I brought in, the first one that I brought in or told about it, he came by and I was still cleaning out the warehouse and it was it was super dirty and we kind of called it the. For for the type of space it was. I called it the right amount of shitty. It was just right. It was a dirty warehouse that you see an ironworks factory. A lot of the stuff was still in there, but so he came in and I was telling him I was like, Yeah, I’m just looking to give a space away. Sort of like back and back in a way for the door. And he was we had friends in common and I had known him over the years. He had done some album covers for some musician friends of mine and just he, he just didn’t believe that it was really free. Right? So there was an architect friend of mine who had decided he was going to stop doing architecture and try and be a full time artist.

Marc Aptakin: His medium was ceramics, so I brought him in and I’m telling him, I’m like, Hey, this is what I’m trying to do. And, you know, come bring your your wheel and all your tools and just set up here, man. And he’s like, It’s free. And I’m like, Yeah, it’s free. And we kind of went back and forth, free, free, free, you know? And so finally I was like, Scott, just bring your stuff. And so once he was in there and then other people would come and he was kind of like this good. He was a little older. And so I think he was a good kind of safe mouthpiece that, hey, this is a legitimate place and they’re doing good and they really just want to help artists. And from there, in a pretty 2000 square foot warehouse, we ended up with about eight artists working, and I think they really collaborated in some of the work that they did was really that they were able to do in that space, really kind of push their career pretty far. You see that some of those are kind of top emerging artists in South Florida right now.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned Nfts. First off, can you explain Nfts for the folks that aren’t familiar with that? And I know it’s in the news a lot, but some people still don’t know what it is. So if you could explain kind of foundationally what it is and then how you’re able to kind of leverage that for the art world.

Marc Aptakin: Sure stands for Non-fungible token. It’s more or less just the digital asset of any kind is really what it is. The way it’s used in art world is it’s it’s a digital piece of art sometimes with a utility attached. So, you know, an artist can create much like a print, they can create a series, right? So it could be a one on one or it could be a one of 1000. And so it’s mostly I shouldn’t say mostly it’s collected using cryptocurrencies. So it’s when someone buys an NFT, that transaction is reported on the blockchain. So it’s an absolute proof of authenticity from the artist as well as a forever record that you purchase this in what price you purchase it for. Everything on the blockchain is super transparent, so you can look up how many times that piece of art has been sold. You might not know who bought it exactly, but you’ll know what digital wallet had it. So we got into it. We’re not really crypto people, but we love the blockchain and the power of what it can do and then the the ability and things that you can do with NFT art, such as have it intersect with data and be a constant piece of living art that changes constantly by letting it have a data feed or just one of the pieces that when I was first exploring it that I loved and artists said, Hey, in eight months this piece is going to change.

Marc Aptakin: And he wrote that into the Smart contract, which is basically the code that makes up the NFT. And eight months later he changed it to something else that he had a vision for, for the piece. We ended up getting heavily involved with Nfts as they intersect with public art, and we recently created a NFT platform called COTA made where we’re helping municipalities create and sell nfts from the public art that they do within the community and are able to pay for a lot of the like the maintenance and the conservation of these pieces as well as other pieces in the community, and then also be able to create additional pieces of public art with the hopes that one day the public art agencies will be able to self-fund and not take taxpayer dollars for public art, but be able to almost be kind of a self funded agency.

Lee Kantor: So I understand like a piece of art could be a painting, and I understand that if I buy a painting from an artist, I can put that painting on my wall and I see it how if I own an NFT, what am I? What do I have and what can I do with it?

Marc Aptakin: So the actual NFT lives in your digital wallet. And that’s that’s where I think a lot of the the question has come. Certainly I had the exact same question when I first started. Oh, that’s weird. I just have this digital file. But any smart TV can display your. Any scream can do it. So with made that we got into we have a hardware component where we’re doing hardware sales. Anything from LED walls to simple screens that can display it in your house or projectors. You know, since we do, we do a lot of projection art and a lot of the artists that we work with do projection art. There’s ways to do it with projectors. So it can be on your computer, it can be on your phone and it can be displayed any way. It’s just it’s just digital art at the end of the day.

Lee Kantor: But if I have this painting that’s on my wall, that painting, if it’s not a print, if it’s the actual painting of the original, I have that on my wall. If I have an NFT and I’m projecting it on the wall, like how does somebody could have a copy of that or a print of that and wouldn’t it look exactly identical to what I have?

Marc Aptakin: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And you know, it’s it’s hard to make an argument one way or the other, depending on what your view is on it. Right. So I could say that I can go into a poster store and buy a Gustav Klimt poster for $10, but yet the actual paintings, millions of dollars, if not priceless. Right?

Lee Kantor: Right.

Marc Aptakin: So but lots of people have those Gustav Klimt paintings framed and in their house, you know, recreate recreated recreations that are not very expensive. So it’s at the end of the day, there are recreations of something that’s worth a lot of money. You know, the authentication here is your your your asset is that digital file that sits in your digital wallet. You can have prints of it. You can you could print it and frame it. You know, there’s there’s nothing saying you can’t do that. You can project it. You can put it on an LED screen. It’s just a different medium. You know, people have been doing digital art for a long, long periods of time, you know, And we we we helped an artist named Edison Pena, Phil, and he did a 12 project and he had a solo show in Madrid at a at a gallery there. And he had it was 12 projectors that took over the whole gallery. But how does he sell that? And that was a big problem, right? It was this amazing piece of art with actually a lot of thought and effort put into it, and it had a social statement attached to it. But how does he sell a 12 projection installation? And so utilizing Nfts, you can and somebody can display a portion of that that so a collector that would buy it unless he set up those projectors at his house or in a warehouse or somewhere else. He just owned the intellectual idea of that show. So this is a way that he can display and show portions of it. So that’s that’s one aspect of it.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it? It feels like we’re at the very beginning of the beginning for Nfts 100%.

Marc Aptakin: It’s like the Wild West. I love it as a medium. I think as a photographer prior there was a time where photography wasn’t considered real art, right? Anybody can press a button. It had no value artistically. Painting and sculpture and all these things were real art and photography wasn’t. And that changed over time when people saw the creative things that were done with it. And, you know, you could you could say a lot of the things that you’re saying about NFT is about, hey, anybody can have it is very true with prints, right? So if I had a photograph even prior to the digital days that we’re in now with a darkroom, I could just with my negatives, make hundreds, if not thousands, of prints and lessen the value of my art. Right. Because it’s it’s out there. So I think the nfts, it’s just a new medium and kind of what the artists end up doing with it is where the value is going to be created.

Lee Kantor: And and we’re just at the beginning. So right now it’s just clunky and chaotic because we’re all learning together in real life, in real time.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah. And you know, a lot of the early day nfts were were like these apps, which is a picture for profile. I wouldn’t say that. And again, I’m not going to judge it one way or the other, but for my liking, I don’t think a lot of the art was amazing. And then kind of with the downturn and some of the things that have happened with the cryptocurrencies, you saw a lot of the artists that we’re doing just amateur type work, they kind of fell away, but artists that were doing real work, the value of their nfts stayed right, because they’re professional artists doing professional grade work. And you know, Rafiq and Doll, somebody that is in the public workspace like, like where we are. He had two nfts recently that sold at Sotheby’s, one for $1.3 Million and another one for 1.8 very unique pieces. You couldn’t really do his pieces any other way. So I think he’s someone who’s kind of at the forefront of finding. Really exploiting the medium for what it can do right now.

Lee Kantor: And it’s one of those things I remember at the beginning of the Internet, they were saying that if you’re not in Web one, you’re never going to be ready for Web 2.0. And it sounds like it’s the same thing here. If you’re not playing around with this space and experimenting, you’re not going to be ready when it starts maturing and then it it’ll leave you behind.

Marc Aptakin: That’s 100% the way we’re looking at it. Again, it’s I don’t think being attached to cryptocurrencies is a is a help for it. Currently with the existing art market, you do have the current NFT community, which isn’t ginormous, but it’s big that that likes it that way. But I think really what they’re doing is commodifying something in a way, much like the sneaker community commodified sneakers. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I just think it’s it’s missing the mark for fine art is And I think that’s going to have a correction over the next 3 to 5 years.

Lee Kantor: And it’s one of those things when it paired with crypto, you’re getting two new chaotic, confusing entities together. And that didn’t bring more clarity. It might have created more confusion.

Marc Aptakin: I think it did. And all the all the all the NFT marketplaces, particularly, I’m not going to say all but the the ones that are that have a lot of art on them and that are well known. Opensea, which does about 80% of the NFT sold sell on Opensea. They now accept credit card payments and they put the value both in US dollars and in the value. Right, Right. Nifty Gateway Foundation, Rarible. Superrare All these NFT marketplaces all followed suit. They all take credit cards now. So that’s going to be a big change for it. And that’s going to make it that’s going to open it up to a lot more people. But kind of like what you said, it’s early days and it’s if nothing else, it’s been a learning curve and a lot of fun.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned card named and and talking about public art. So are you finding these the the public art is a group that is open to this.

Marc Aptakin: Very much so. So, you know, you have when you talk about the public art artists, these are a lot of the time it’s high value pieces that they’re doing and they’re large scale pieces, right? So there’s a piece where I am in Fort Lauderdale. An artist named Susan Ardley had gotten commissioned to light two of the bridges here in Fort Lauderdale that are about three blocks apart, you know, And so when she talked about what can I do to to do this, you know. It was like there’s a sense of community behind it, right? So I can’t take her work home with me. It’s on this giant bridge, right? So the idea of that that people within the community could own a piece of the work that’s represented that’s represented in such a large way within the community, there’s been an immense amount of interest in it, both from the artists, from the public art agencies, from the fabricators that help that help the artists with a lot of these things. It was it was a community that really opened its arms to the idea of it.

Lee Kantor: And it creates another path to monetize an experience.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah. I mean, there’s I think with Nfts, there’s a lot of different ways to look at it, right? It can absolutely be monetized. There’s utilities that could go with it, right? So there’s something called the Poe app, which is a proof of attendance. Nft, which generally are not it’s not a monetary transaction. It’s proving that you were at an event. So if there was a grand opening for the the the unveiling of a piece of public art, you can have this proof of attendance, NFT that was given away to everybody that came. You’d scan it, you’d scan a code and you’d receive it and you transfer through your digital wallet. Now you’ve gotten this, you know, it’s think of it almost like your ticket ticket stub back in the day, right? This it’s this memorialization that you were at this event and you’re taking pride in art that’s created in your community and it’s and it’s building again. And I think like most things with Web three, there’s generally a sense of community that’s behind it. Most of the NFT artists, when they when they do sales, they have a certain percentage that goes to a charity. So you see that almost 100% of the time.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Marc Aptakin: Awareness, really just we’re not real good at touting what we’re doing. And I think just an awareness to what we’re doing and the community that we’re trying to build here.

Lee Kantor: And that’s for the arts community.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah.

Lee Kantor: So you’re looking for more artists and you’re looking for more folks to kind of support these artists.

Marc Aptakin: Yeah, you know, just to be aware of what we’re doing and, you know, even if it’s just coming out to see what we’re doing, you know, that that’s great. That supports the artists when they come and they see how the shows are already busy. But, you know, the more people that come and see it and that are aware of the artists, that that always drives more things.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to connect with you or learn more about this, what’s a website? What’s the best way to plug in?

Marc Aptakin: Yes we are mat arts dot com and then if they want to check out Kota and the things that we’re doing with with the public art, it’s kota made.

Lee Kantor: Well, mark, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Marc Aptakin: All right. Lee thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio.