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Erik: What part of what you do is art? And what part of what you do is commerce?
Matt: Sometimes the way I feel about it is like art is just sort of the selfish, you
know, like, say whatever you wanna say, or make whatever you wanna make, and don't even
worry about whether it's, you know, gonna make you money or you know, what's the—how
does it further your career or whatever else your agenda is. Whereas the commerce-side
of things would be like, alright, how am I getting paid? Because you gotta do that too.
So I think part of the challenge is figuring out how to bridge those two, you know, if
you can. Like, you know, how can you get paid or you know have a career or produce something
that is, you know, commercially viable to some extent and then also how can you be making
art, how can you be making something that you're proud of or that you think is, you
know, part of your vision or something that you wanted to make or see in the world. What's
the—and then how do you overlap those two, and I think, you know, that's a spectrum that
everyone can kind of choose their own point on there, like I'm—I think you—I think
sometimes the worst thing you can do is sell out and not sell anything, that's like the
worst option. But, you know, just being a complete artist and, you know, just being
completely selfish and no one cares at all about it does pretty bad too. So, you know
I think having, you know, a modest amount of commercial goals, you know, with what you're
making is, in my mind the right path of like—it's also validation that like whatever you're
doing is worth something to someone, you know, that like, oh yeah, this is good enough to
either you know get paid for or you know if you're, you know, making a show that people
sell ads on or you know someone's gonna watch it or, you know, something like that is happening
to sort of encourage you to do more of it.