Artist Gretchen Andrew on the vision boards she uses to manipulate search algorithms, how NFTs make the digital side of her practice collectible, and why she wants smart contracts to reward the people behind her career.
Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca
Recorded in December 2021 during Art Basel Miami Beach, Gretchen and David Cash, who met through a Unit London NFT show that also involved Kenny Schachter, talk about how she gets her drawn vision boards to the top of Google for searches like "contemporary art auction record." She explains leaving a job at Google to become an artist, teaching workshops on internet literacy, and making NFT glitch GIFs whose first frame is the only part Google reads. She also previews CV NFTs, badges for past and future career achievements, and her plan to write gallery contracts in Solidity.
Chapters
- 00:00 Intro: Gretchen Andrew, artist
- 1:08 Meeting through the Unit London NFT show
- 1:30 Vision boards that manipulate algorithms
- 2:22 How NFTs make the digital side collectible
- 3:37 Topping Google for "contemporary art auction record"
- 5:30 From Google engineer to artist
- 7:28 Workshops and internet literacy
- 9:15 Open source and NFT glitch GIFs
- 10:57 Reading the internet like a painting
- 12:30 CV NFTs for past and future achievements
- 13:39 Smart contracts that reward collaborators
- 15:17 Thanks and sign-off
Speakers
- David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
- Gretchen Andrew, artist
Key topics
- Vision boards that manipulate search algorithms
- Collecting the digital and performative side of a physical practice
- Google search results as an art medium
- Leaving a job at Google to become an artist
- Teaching internet literacy through art
- Training AI on the world we want
- NFT glitch GIFs and how Google reads them
- Hypermodernity and bias in online information
- CV NFTs for past and future career achievements
- Smart contracts for gallery and collaborator agreements
In their words
"So what looks like a glitch to us, Google takes as the entire truth." Gretchen Andrew
"We can actually educate AI based on the world we want and not just the one that we've historically had." Gretchen Andrew
How to cite
APA: Cash, D. (2022). Gretchen Andrew on hacking Google with vision boards [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/IthwoUZCqgc
Chicago: Cash, David. "Gretchen Andrew on Hacking Google With Vision Boards." Recorded December 2021, Miami. YouTube video, 16:05. https://youtu.be/IthwoUZCqgc.
About NFTS.WTF
NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash. It covered artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.
More interviews: https://www.youtube.com/@davidcash888/playlists
Recording details
Recorded December 2021 at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami, Florida. Originally published on NFTS.WTF, January 2022. This edition: archival re-release with chapters and captions, 2026.
Transcript
Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.
[0:42] we are here in Miami, Florida for Art Basel 2021 and I am joined with the incredible Gretchen Andrews. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me, David. It's so wonderful to finally meet you in person. It's amazing. I've been very much looking forward to this. As some people watching may know, we've been doing a series where I get a chance to sit down and talk with some of my favorite artists in the space of which you are definitely one. Thank you. And just wanted to share your practice and your perspective on NFTs with our audience and with the people listening. So yeah, it's a real pleasure. Maybe start things off. We met through an NFT show with Unit London and I know that was an interesting experience for you. It was with Kenny Schachter, a lot of other folks in the space. How has it been for you? Obviously, you're very much a technologist, but how has it been for you moving into the NFT space specifically? And was that your first encounter? Were you already doing some pieces before that? Yeah, I mean, so it's really interesting. I'm one of these artists who, I make physical objects, I make vision boards that manipulate algorithms on the internet.
[1:37] And traditionally, my market is very traditional because I sell works on Canvas that then get photographed and hack into algorithms on Facebook, on Google. They make all of my dreams come through through Google. I've hacked major art institutions, the presidential election results in 2020, the map of the EU, I put the UK back into it through these like literary, physical, painting-based vision boards. So I've always had a very traditional practice from a market perspective. And the digital component in my work has been seeing not as something that people could acquire, not as something that museums could collect. So they bought just the physical thing. And so I've been having a very digital practice for a long time, but with NFTs, what aspect of my practice that is performative and the search results changing online and the archive of that is actually something that people can collect and support and we'll probably talk about this more later, but I see it as like a way that people can really invest in me and in my practice, even if they don't want to own physical things, even though they know I have a physical practice, there's still a way to own and be involved in it. Absolutely.
[2:54] And I think it's really changed the space for so many different creatives. I've talked to a lot of performance artists, I've talked to a lot of musicians who haven't been able to find ways to monetize specific aspects of their practice. So I think that's definitely super relevant to you. And just for people watching, I do want to talk about this growth hacking aspect of what you do. Because I feel like a lot of the people who watch this, a lot of the people in NFT space do have some element of a technology background. So I feel like they'd really appreciate your work. So tell us a little bit about the art auction record thing that you've been doing and how you absolutely bamboozled Google on a regular basis. And I love that when we were talking the other day, you used this term growth hacking, which obviously I'm familiar with, but I hadn't thought about it in relation to my practice and I've renamed my show in March in Dubai growth hacking, by the way. Amazing. I'm happy. So a couple of years ago, I started making work about wanting to be a part of the art world.
[3:45] And so I would take a canvas that I'd make a drawing of a cover of art form and I'd put myself on it and it'd be like a 60 by 60 inch canvas with a like a drawn copy of art form. So not a fake, I called it aspirational news, not fake news, future news. And I've done the same thing with the contemporary art auction records. So if you, anywhere in the world, go onto your computer and Google contemporary art auction record, what comes up as the top search results are my physical artworks about me wanting to have a contemporary art auction record. I'm testing it, it's real. It does work. All of the NFTs that have been selling for a crazy amount, like through Christie's, all of the Jackson Pollux, all of the Mark Rothkos, everything is below me on Google. It's like number 30. And the physical works are like, you know, to draw on people carrying a frame into an, you know, into an auction house. And it's my work. It's a drawing of when it happens.
[4:38] And this is why I call them vision boards, because this is something I want and I visualize it on the canvas. And then I force the internet and Google to manifest it and visualize it for me in almost treating the internet as a global subconscious, as my own subconscious that also doesn't understand the difference between aspiration and accomplished fact. And I'm using that to make work about wanting to be in these places of power, appearing in these places of power and then increasingly actually being here sitting with you, my museum show in Austria, a growth hacking show in Dubai, like the whole thing. It's incredible. It's incredible. And I feel like in the NFT space now, we've been using these terms like digital or like trying to blend realities, like digital and physical realities for the past year, but you've been doing this for quite a while. How did that part of your practice, like the intent to integrate technology into such physical works? How did that come about for you? Yeah. So my background is I studied information theory and I worked as a software engineer at Intuit through school.
[5:37] And then I got like what was supposed to be the dream job at Google 11, 12 years ago out of school. And I was really unhappy there. And I was like, Oh, well, this is the job. So like jobs are not for me. What am I going to do? So I post, I think I knew I wanted to go into art. I think I knew I was an artist at heart, but I posted as a challenge to the internet. I said, I bet I believe so much in the internet. I'm not seeing a lot of that here inside of Google. I'm seeing a lot of e-commerce. I'm seeing a lot of loss of the utopianism and the ideals and the kind of ethos of that community. And I bet the internet can make me into something I've not yet. So I posted as a challenge and I started like with YouTube videos and Stanford online and MoMA online. And so even then that was almost a performance piece around the idea of becoming something I'm not by using the internet. And obviously my practice is a bit different in its output now.
[6:31] But that whole idea of how do I use technology to transform me and the world into an aspirational space to go from not just educating artificial intelligence based on historic data, but we can actually educate AI based on the world we want and not just the one that we've historically had. And I think that's really a beautiful way of thinking about this because you say that it's aspirational, but really you're making it happen. It's not just manifestation. You're actually programming these AI elements of of the ecosystem, the internet that we all exist on and you're making them serve you, which we all have the option to do, but nobody's really doing that. So I think that it's really commendable. And yeah, I think that the growth hacking aspect is an element of it because yeah, we have growth hackers who that's what they do. But I think it's really empowering for people to know that it's an egalitarian practice. It's something that we can do as long as you go through the steps and have even a base background in computer science.
[7:30] And that's why I love I teach workshops and I've done it through like photographer's gallery and a couple museums in Switzerland, where I teach people through the technical side of my practice because it's conceptually important to me that I show people that like I kind of want this dual thing to be honest. I want people when they see me manipulate the 2020 presidential election results. I want them to both go, oh my god, how did you do that? That's incredible. And then also go, wait, you did that? We should all be very worried. And like shine a light on the state of God, educating people into internet literacy and like how that space works. I do think of my work as being quite activist in a very non traditional way because it's like so glamour and like all about me. But when you follow my practice over time, you accidentally learn about how the internet works and how power works online and how power works in the art world. And yeah, that that is just something that has been the fact that like I visualize it and then I program it into being there's still this magical component where that has been sent out into the internet. That is you manifesting it by doing it and putting it into practice and making it happen. But then there's an additional step to where like I said, like it's actually by making work about wanting to be powerful in the art world, I increasingly have a power base that I've never had before.
[8:48] And that's like honestly just pure magic. Absolutely. And I mean for for people trying to enter the space and people trying to figure out what it is you do, I feel like you're very open about your practice. I know you do Instagram lives, you do talks like this. And you're very open with how you how you go about these processes. I think that's very in line with the open source nature of the NFT space. So I feel like that's one of the reasons you got you fit so well in this space because we like to give away information freely. So how has that been for you and do you relate to the kind of open source ideology? Yeah, I mean, like it's always like more complex and just like a simple like free and not free situation. But some of the the NFTs that I'm making right now that are pure digitally native, not just like selling the archive aspect, not work for people who aren't just interested in also getting the digital performance with a physical piece. I've just created these things I call NHG NFT glitch gifts.
[9:45] Cool. And these are gifts that have an animation of some of my materials that are animating and growing and this plant is growing and blooming and it's very cute, very in the aesthetic of NFTs. But the first frame in this gift is one of my vision boards hacking contemporary auction results or the New York Times or the presidential election. And so when we see this NFT in the gift loop, it looks like a glitch to us, but Google only reads the first frame in its search results. So what looks like a glitch to us Google takes as the entire truth, which is I think just like a perfect way to sum up the problem of the internet 100% taking things a little bit too much of face value. Yeah, exactly. And it's literally the face value of it judging the book by its exact cover. And that's been a fun way to do to be connecting to more into this NFT community that is more pure coming from the crypto side, coming from the NFT side.
[10:43] I've always wanted my practice to be a big open door, lots of pathways into it. And those I'm really excited about the way that those are connecting me with people who have been coming from some of the more digitally native sides of this world. When I talk about NFTs, I like to talk about the concept of hyper modernity. So like this concept that like we've reached a point in society where technology is progressing at a rate that we can't comprehend as a society. And I think like the best example of that is like computers or the internet, the average consumer has no idea how it works. But I think what you're doing with your practice or one of the things you're doing with your practice is you're showing how accessible it is and how you can you can play with these tools that we built around us just by having an understanding. So some people might call you a hacker, some people will call you an artist, some people call you a visionary, but how do you see that element of it? Do you want to push creative coding? Do you want to push the knowledge around how all of this works with your work? Yeah, I think that the relationship that we have to art traditionally, it goes through metaphor and it goes through symbolism. And there's such a literacy and an understanding that this is not the truth, it is a truth. This is, you know, in Mango did Starry Night, we're not like that's fake news.
[11:53] The sky so did not look like that. But there's nuance there. Interpretation. Yeah, and we should have that understanding across all information in the internet. It came from a person, it came from a place, and that's not always a bad thing when there's bias and it's not always a bad thing when there's perspective. You have to factor that in. You have to factor that in. 100%. Yeah, and you have such a beautiful perspective on this face. It's really a pleasure. Thank you. I know that we don't want to keep this too, too long, but I would like to give you an opportunity to talk maybe a little bit more about what you're doing right now. What's next? I know you've been exhibiting all over here. We have a couple gallery shows happening over the week, but what's coming up next? What are you really excited about as we move into 2022? Well, I specifically want to talk about a project that I haven't, I mentioned it on my panel at Design Miami on Wednesday, but it was the first time I've told anybody about this. And so this is something I'm really excited to tell you about. I have something on my website right now called CVNFT, where I've taken my biggest career achievements at this time and made NFTs that are like Girl Scout badges that like wiggle or spin.
[12:51] Oh, that's so you. And that's so cute. And there are achievements that I've already done, like my show at the Francesco, Carolinium, my first museum solo show in Europe. And I've released eight of those and it's already an accomplished thing. And they wiggle around on my CV online and they're on OpenSea under Gretchen Andrew. But then I've also released future achievements. So right, you can buy my retrospective at MoMA badge. And right now that's super cheap. I love that. And there's only, but as we get closer to that actually happening, that's the floor price. It's going to go up. And also what I love about it is part of the collection of 10 of each of these is reserved for people who have make it happen. Oh, that's amazing. And this is something we were talking a little bit about too. I'm very excited about using smart contract and NFT.
[13:44] I've been learning to program in solidity my future gallery contracts instead of just doing like even for my traditional work, instead of just doing a very standard legal document, actually finding ways to make the table of people involved in my career and its success broader and more, honestly, more fair because curators press people who put me into these things. It's all an economy of, I guess, like eventually you get paid. I want that to be a favorite economy. I want that to be different. I'm really excited about the potential for this technology to run my team and reward people differently because there are people who don't want NFTs or physical work, but they believe in me and they want to invest in me. And I think these technologies are a really great way to let people pick winners even if they don't want a glittery butterfly thing on their wall. I love that. And I think that integrating your collaborators and the people who work with you into your smart contract and doing that in place of a contract, that's the future.
[14:43] That's what we're moving towards. We don't need to trust in lawyers anymore. We can trust in code. And I feel like that's very in line with your work. So it's really exciting. Like I said, even with the traditional aspects of my career, my traditional market, I want my collectors, my galleries, my curators to be contractually rewarded as things increase in value. It's beautiful. And I feel like more artists should be doing that. That's the ultimate utility for me because beautiful art is a utility. But you add so many layers to that now you can actually bring them in on chain. On chain. And integrate into practice. It's so super exciting. Thank you David. I'm very impressed. And I can't wait to see that. Yeah. And I'm sure we're going to be talking again. My name is Gretchen Andrew. Find me. Yeah, talk to people really quickly if they want to check out your work in more detail, maybe your website or anything. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Gretchen Andrew, which is my name at Gretchen Andrew, both on Twitter and Instagram and an open sea. I'm also like slash Gretchen Andrew. So you'll find me, I promise.
[15:37] Amazing. And we'll link all of our info down below. Gretchen, thank you so much again for joining us today. It's such a pleasure. Such an honor and such a joy. To talk with you. I love your practice. I love you. And everybody please go check out Gretchen's work. Once again, I'm David Kash. We are here at Art Mazel. And yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. Have a lovely rest of your days or nights, wherever you are. Thank you.