[music playing] Hey, guys.

We're outside the offices of "The Thing" in San Francisco.

It's a quarterly publication that invites artists to create useful objects that incorporate text, which are then reproduced and distributed to subscribers.

It was co-founded by John Herschend and Will Rogan who have their independent careers as artists, but collaborate to make this project.

John works in a wide range of media, and has used such structures as PowerPoint and infomercials to pose questions about how we assess truth.

And Will's practice trains his eye on the everyday landscapes around him, which he then uses as a starting point for playful and profound interventions.

In each of their practices and in this shared project, John and Will think a lot about things and the meaning of physical objects in an increasingly digital world.

So let's go talk to them and see what kind of a thing they want you to make.

Hi, I'm Will Rogan.

And I'm John Herschend.

And this is your-- Art assignment.

We met in graduate school at UC Berkeley and at the time were both making work that contained language in some way.

And we were also both highly interested in finding a way to publish something.

At the time there was a lot happening, I think, in terms of magazines disappearing.

Uh, there was a fear, it was like 2007, that we were going to lose all this to the virtual world.

And we really wanted to not have that happen.

And so the desire to publish on objects is where this came out.

And we also really loved the idea of publications, and we modeled "The Thing" after the, what we thought a publication was supposed to be with, you know, editors and managing editors.

Four times a year we release an issue with an individual creative person.

Each issue is conceived of by that creative person.

We act as the editors and sort of help them get to something that makes sense within this context.

And then those issues are shipped out to subscribers and sold in stores.

What we try and get across to the person who we're working with is that we're after making an object that will-- that people will be forced into the situation where they have to use it or not use it.

The artist needs to know that this is about people interacting with their work, potentially.

Your assignment is to take something from the virtual world and make it physical.

Like an emoji that maybe you want to send, like a crab or something, or a thumbs up to a friend, make it physically and then send it to them.

Or put something on someone's actual wall.

And then send it to us so we can see it virtually.

John, I like this assignment, and it has the potential to be very funny.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it's pretty serious and poetic, too.

Like, it reminds me of your favorite saying about light.

Oh, light, the visible reminder of the invisible light?

That's the one.

Because when I started to dig back, I mean, all art is kind of an effort to make the invisible visible, right?

Like, you can think back to ancient depictions of mythological beings, or the long history of religious depictions in art.

I mean, I get totally overwhelmed thinking about this assignment and its precedence.

Yeah, I think you might be going back too far though.

I think there's, there's more recent stuff that-- Yeah, well, then I was focusing on like that last step of, of sort of making the virtual physical and then virtual again by sharing it.

And I was thinking about the piece from the '60s by Robert Morris, "Box With the Sound of its Own Making," where you see this wooden box and from the inside you can hear the sound of its own making.

I love that piece.

I think I might actually have a better art historical precedent.

For the first time ever, I should do the voiceover.

Because I want to talk about the French street artist Invader.

All right.

He's good, right?

He's good.

Yeah.

Although he actually attended the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Invader claims to have graduated from a tiling school on Mars.

And since the 1990s, he has traveled the world, covertly installing mosaics inspired by '70s and '80s video games.

There's 8-bit Pac-Man ghosts, Donkey Kong, and of course Space Invaders from the eponymous 1978 video game.

It's the perfect image, because of course, Invader the artist is invading real public spaces with his art.

The idea is to bring the virtual world into reality, he has said.

And by making the virtual physical, we're reminded that the pixel itself has an art history.

I mean, pixel-like shapes were used to create images long before they were ever used in Space Invaders or Angry Birds.

And then there's the question of physical and virtual privacy.

Like many street artists, Invader is anonymous.

And when he's photographed, he insists that his face be, you guessed it, pixelated.

Like John and Will's assignment, Invader's work asks us to consider the relationship between our offline on online lives.

What's the difference between the virtual and the physical-- is there one?

And I think the idea of art pushing boundaries is, is so important.

And I-- part of what we're doing with "The Thing" is, is trying to play around with those boundaries, both for us in our own work, but also for the larger conversation of what is art.

Is it commodity?

Is it utilitarianism?

Is it decoration?

Is it inspiration?

Those are things that I think art functions can function in all those-- it doesn't have to be one.

With the internet it's hard to, it's hard for something special to rise to the surface.

And I kind of see-- and, and yet, we all, like, put so much energy towards this thing, right?

We're all constantly dumping our attention and energy into this place that reduces everything to one context.

So I think to take something out of that and make it real and make it in a physical thing is a resistance to that, I guess, in a way.

What is quality I think is something that it's made with enough care that you want to take care of it, that you want to keep it and have it on your desk, and give it to your kids, or, you know, give it to a friend that you really care about this thing.

Because we live in a-- we live in a throwaway culture, right?

I think the aesthetic in the beginning was this kind of like really classic, like, mailed object.

And that's why it's so reduced to looking at so sort of brown with black text.

It's about, like, what's the best vehicle to just get this object from where we are here to this other person?

We're going to take this recording and turn it into a VHS tape.

And we're going to package it up.

Make it really beautiful, nice labels, nice box.

And then we're going to share it with our parents.

Then we're going to find someone to be a chess player, yeah-- our parents, probably.

My reactions are like, smiley face, thumb up, thumbs down, unicorn.

I mean, those are like the crab, make a crab.

So maybe, you know, pulling that crab out and making it real, and giving someone a crab instead of an emojicon-- or emoji.

[music playing]