Yancey Strickler

And I've been fortunate to get to do that with some great people working on some interesting things.

And right now I'm in the midst of a bunch of them.

Yeah, I think just first, my primary form of research really, I think, is.

looking inward and reading old books.

I feel like both of those things are so much of what allow me to see the present more clearly, or probably differently is the better word.

But there's a lot in that happens.

But specifically what you're talking about, we have done three big surveys of artists the past couple of years at Meta Label.

Two are this anonymous creative futures, it's called,

where we have just reached out to year one, it was 75 artists.

This past year it was 300 artists.

with an anonymous questionnaire that's just, what are you scared of?

What are you feeling?

Are you feeling more secure economically, less secure?

And we just take the temperature.

And in 2025, what we found was that someone had a line about how everything was dissolving into air, something like that.

And so people could feel the free fall, but they were optimistic.

And this past year's survey, the free fall is undeniable and there is not a lot of optimism.

And instead, what I saw was the determination that we're going to do this anyway.

Like, I realize it might be dumb.

I realize the machines are fast.