I’m from small town Oklahoma and I grabbed onto a few bad habits early on that landed me homeless in Seattle, WA for a bit. When things fell apart there, I came home and found myself getting sober. As I did, I began feeling all of the social pressures that come with not being loaded all of the time. As I would be out trying my very best to impersonate a human, I would get more and more terrified of general interaction with other people.
One day I was scrolling through Instagram judging people harshly for things I was guilty of as well, when I came across a photographer’s page and my jaw dropped. I decided I needed to learn how to do this photography thing. I immersed myself in everything photography education. And as I would be behind the cameras I would borrow in these social situations, I felt more comfortable. I could be there passively, if that makes sense. I finally decided I was going to buy a real grown-up people camera. I needed a camera that wouldn’t produce a lot of noise in low light images. I decided on the Nikon D7200 which was supposedly this “low light beast”. It turned out to be the noisiest damn camera in terms of grain in low light settings – maybe ever in existence. I named it noisy. My Instagram became “noisycamera“.
Fast forward a bit and people started calling me noisy. I took on the name so I could stop explaining that it wasn’t me – it was my camera. Then, as the NFT run kicked up in 19/20, I entered the space as “noisy”.
Fast forward ONE MORE TIME and I saw an ad on TikTok where I could be a Scottish lord for fifty bucks……it was the best fifty bucks I’ve ever spent and I’ve never looked back.
You’re billed as a metaverse architect. What drew you to the world of voxels even though you really love photography?
When I was a kid, I would pull out graph paper and make blueprints of dream homes. I would put little doors and toilets throughout the place – the whole nine yards. I would take those and try to imagine what the house would look like in three dimensions. As I got older, I would build elaborate houses out of Lego.
When I returned home from Seattle, I took on construction work. As it turns out, you can do very well in construction if you just show up and work. I progressed quickly up through the ranks and found myself at a desk a few years later designing roof system drainage and a whole host of other things that closely resembled what I used to do when I was 8 with the graph paper.
I took this lifetime of interest with me into the NFT space. When the photography run began in 20/21, it was the greatest failure of my photography career. I was completely skipped over and got so angry, sad, and all of the other emotions that come with that. I went from being approached by Google and Microsoft for photography work to being left behind for ten year old Instagram trends while listening to the “distinguished Twitter collectors” spew their nonsense advice from atop the towers of high finance. I scrapped photography altogether.
As I was headed back to Crypto Twitter to be a toxic PoS with the rest of them, I came across Mad Maraca whose work floored me.
“WTF is a voxel?” I remember wondering.
I downloaded MagicaVoxel (after researching what voxels were and what I needed to be the next Mad Maraca). I don’t know why – I would like to think it was because of everything I had accumulated related to building things since I was 8 – but it came very easy to me. I started a project called Murder Houses. That went really well. From there I’ve focused on building my brand and trying to install myself as a household name for when people need voxel work.
What are some notable projects you’ve worked on?
I don’t think I’ve made it yet, to be honest. I hope to make something notable. Notable, to me, is when the masses take note. Not necessarily what I like the most. I’m wanting to show that voxel can be used as a medium to convey emotion as well and that it’s not just about Minecraft. VXLND is my first attempt at that outside of Murder Houses.
Your work is comparable to and often surpasses the quality of what you see offered by high-ticket metaverse architecture firms for hundreds of thousands of dollars at a fraction of the cost. What needs to be done for voxel artists who aren’t attached to a publicity or marketing machine to get out there and make it?
I’m a huge believer in the idea that, if they won’t let you play in their “reindeer games”, you disrupt their market. I would love to be able to charge hundreds of thousands, but that would benefit me and that’s it. I have no interest in benefitting only myself in this space. It’s supposed to be different this time. We ran away like mad people to try and create this brave new art world. We had such little time to do it and we failed. The big money has and is continuing to enter. Big money only knows how to do things one way so in turn, we are now in a replication of the analogue art world. My idea isn’t to pillage people for their ETH. I want people to have what they couldn’t in the analogue world. THAT’S what this is all about. To level the playing field. To give that struggling kid in the slums a chance to change their entire world. My contribution is to give people the metaverse property of their dreams for a price that isn’t out of reach.
Learn more about Lord Noisy and his work by following him on Twitter.
