Interview with LEP, the artist and persona behind ‘Low Effort Punks’ July, 2022
Hello fellow punks! Presenting a series of queries that I had been waiting to ask LEP - the inimitable crypto artist. What kind of person is behind the quest for the first fully hand-drawn 10K NFT project? Currently at a little over 5,000 NFTs produced and 50,000 Tweets later, what has he learned while pursuing his low effort art style? LEP sat down fireside at LEPEMPIRE for the following conversation as I attempted to understand more about this prolific pixelated punk. Dreuseff
What is the low effort punks (LEP) origin story? We know you slipped in from between the digital 0 and 1 but was there a particular catalyst or ‘moneygrab collection’ that provoked you to start creating NFTs? LEP came right out the gut after experiencing "punks" using the blockchain for their own good not thinking about other peeps coming to their shores, a lack of responsibility for these souls seeking freedom made this what it is.
Please describe your view of what the ‘low effort style’ is avoiding. low effort avoids the implicancies of the technical path as the only path there is, low effort is a way to be closer to message delivered thru conceptual meaning. Common ‘criticism’ of your style of art is about its simplicity and lack of sustained effort in order to create a piece. What intrinsic value have you found in exploring this style of art? the criticism behind it is part of the opus itself. You have set the criteria for loweffortpunks as ‘made in one minute each without care’. In what form have you otherwise applied this principle to your life?
i say a lot if more than 5 minutes drop it, keeping that essential POV on inner thought to make everything fresh and not overthink stuff since it leads to nothing most of the times, speedhack basically.
The primary loweffortpunks collection is considered in the realm of a PFP (Picture for Proof / Profile Picture). Why did you choose this form of humanized art expression compared to say, landscapes? pfp as proof of punk, chose this way since the project is for the punks by the punks in a lot of ways, sense of identity was necessary. You have said before Cryptopunks provided the blueprint of an NFT collection / LEP is providing the blueprint of community building. Please explain how the LEP collector community has played a part in influencing your work as it has progressed. basically if you do stuff with really good intentions being true with yourself you'll bring some amazing people on your circle, amazing to the level of generating some clean ecosystem within the inner part too.
The often-stated main goal is completing 10,000 punks. What can we expect in terms of your involvement or further related art once the core work is done? save the world basically, i'm up to some real change of viewpoints and shared learning on the way. If the goal is to complete 10,000 cryptopunk homages - can we expect that the ‘oddball’ LEPs (like Hashbastards, BitAliens collaborations) will ‘count’ within that 10K or are those in addition to? yes those will count within 10k and there will be some punks left that maybe will see the light in another form of punkness.
You are currently a little over halfway done with the 10,000 punk collection. Are you feeling the pain of the ‘middle’ of this project and how do you plan to stay motivated to finish? no tbh i feel happy for the achieved and excited for what's to come. Early into your collection, many of the ultra rare punks (aliens, apes, zombies) so familiar to the original cryptopunks collection were created and sold. This leaves less opportunity for new collectors to acquire a rare piece. Do you think this will affect larger collector interest until the entire collection is complete and a more robust collector market develops? the actions were done to influence the right kind of punks around and the attention needs to be more on the art and interpretation of stuff rather on bag-stuff.
We have seen your style change as the punks collection has grown. You began with shakier line work, sharper edges and the odd missing pixel. Now in the low 5,000 serial numbers of punks, we see smoothness and a more exact execution. Have you consciously changed tools or methodology along the way? i think interpretation of punks adapted to time and all happened for a reason, being able to watch the different phases of LEP on each punk is really something.
You have claimed the software you use to create your art, Windows69, is a modified version of Windows 98. What is the appeal for you to choose an ‘older’ style technology when operating within the new art space of NFTs? Anything you’d like to upgrade in the next version? you can see it as old or you can see it as essential/out of distraction stuff, windows69 is personal point of view of those essential stuff.
Instead of simply regularly releasing more punks, you have created subplots alongside the slow drip release of the collection searching for the ‘Golden Bust of Vitalik’,the ‘Prison Story’, etc. Why is this element of storytelling alongside your art important to you? i think movement needs to find many forms of experience, that experience adrenaline and sense of living the moment can also be achieved with low effort by anybody. LEP ‘side quests’ have recently been culminating in a largely symbolic sub-collection called the ‘Blockchain Survival Kit’. Including items such as ‘Agent Radar’ and ‘Gas Meter’. These seem to be instructional in nature. Do you feel a responsibility to educate your collectors throughout your work as LEP? basically.
The ‘Words by LEP’ collection was a result of call and response Twitter interactions between you and collectors submitting words of their choice for you to interpret visually. This felt like you wanted to showcase the possibility that anyone could participate in the low effort approach to creating. What do you hope people understood from this project? words by LEP is a way to represent that anybody can a lot of things, influence, create a reality, make artwork from inner sense with recurrent tools,impact into something greater with the power of what brought us here. Collecting LEP for the first time nearly simultaneously demands participation from the existing LEP punk community to be further involved. Be it on Twitter, Discord or within the Cryptovoxels metaverse - collectors are actively participating through their LEP punk personas. How do you view this result as an extension of your artwork and is it important to shape it or let the community develop naturally? as an artist i need to make sure that those #fineart pieces are owned by the right peeps since they're whom give soul and life to the NFT basically. More than the original Cryptopunk collection itself, loweffortpunks has championed an anti-establishment punk-like attitude by yourself and collectors. Is this the natural fate of a derivative project battling for recognition by its predecessor community? i'm not battling for recognition tbh, i want to bring a safe space within all the crazy stuff happening for the big hearts of the blockchain and i think we achieved that all 2gether.
Which of your works do you feel most deserves the attention of the viewer to learn something from? twitter/voice/experience of sharing. Your primary ETH account was first funded March 29, 2021 for 0.07 ETH from a fellow Cryptovoxels user under the name ‘Koi’ - what is your relationship together? glad you asked this, he was a fellow soul of the blockchain that i encountered at metaverse and after some shared punkness he helped to fund with ethereum what now we know as low effort punks, i wanted to seek the ethereum with words rather than mining with GPU to make sure that i was on the right path always and to make a point ofc, idk what koi doing now hope he's well basically. You have said before you are a self-taught artist. How did your passion for art develop? passion for art developed long ago experiencing life basically. What is the most challenging thing you face in the meatverse (real life) when communicating the work you do as a digital artist? myself trying to explain something only explainable thru experience that really goes far away of what a lot of meatverse peeps understand as art and content. When you look at other artists' work, what gives you immediate impact? message as priority, mental shakedown, not 2 much abstractism or something.
What is a frustrating behavior you see within the NFT space?
whale collectors that don't know why they're doing what they're doing and then acting like Super Saiyan or something. When creating art, do you focus more on the ideas, physical presence of some inspiration or the process itself? i focus on what's happening now in all extent.
Would you be excited to ever reveal your identity or is the mystery more interesting to you? idk tbh, i'll maybe crush the mystery to prove a point too you kno me LEP the low effort punk basically.
Above: A new work under the ‘LEP Exclusives’ collection entitled ‘mastermind’.