WHO is Lord Of The Files & WHY he is “Ruining” His Favorite Bored Apes?

Creative Director. Digital Diva. Foxylee unearths local gems and builds…

Marcus Macdonald. A contemporary artists born in Edinburgh, raised in Montreal and now residing in White Rock, B.C. While Marcus has always enjoyed physical painting, sculpting and In-Situ installation art, he is the Oldest digital art creator from Montreal. He has been creating digital art since 1979, during the advent of the very first colored photocopy machines.

“This work is so nostalgic and raw and REAL. It’s the legit low-res, analog, early GIF animation. My favorite piece is the running red buffalo, placed on a white Background. So much of what is trendy in the NFT community all looks the same, it’s 3d and shiny and very enjoyable to look at but it’s not that unique. There is a very manual and gritty style in Marcus’s work, combined with the laser-precise eye of an architect.” explains his sister and agent Lisa Mac aka Foxylee “he is the 4th architect, in a long line of Macdonald architects, from castles to parliament, the Macdonalds have build some of the most impressive stuctures in Scotland. In this case, he is a pixel architect with photons instead of ink. Even though he uses some GIF animating software, most of what you see if laborious frame-by-frame manual hand/mouse animation.

Recently, Marcus has embarked on a special NFT project, under the pseudonym Lord Of The Files. He is a verified Rarible creator and recently, he was accepted into Foundation. His Digital NFT project has a few distinct collections that contain colorful rapidly animating GIFS of animals in motion, Trees, Clocks and Gears and most recently Ruined Bored Apes! We decided to ask Marcus what compelled him to Ruine the most notoriously expensive of The Bored Ape Yacht Club, in a sudden Bansky-esque move.

What compelled you to ruin some Bored Apes, do you dislike the Art?

Marcus Macdonald aka Lord Of The Files:

Lets take the Gold furred APE for example. It is one of the few Bored Apes that I used in a series of works inspired by the (heroic) misdeed of a bored security guard, who recently defaced a million dollar painting, using a ballpoint pen (because he was bored on his first day of work at the museum). I am connecting this gesture to a long history of iconoclastic and pivotal moments in art. The Sphinx was defaced in ancient times… It was of critical importance to the Roman Empire to reduce all Greek art to rubble, before they engaged in copying it.

In modern times, Dadaism ends the progression of Art History, by allowing everything, or disallowing limitations. Marcel Duchamp explored the limits of authorship by signing a urinal with a false signature (R. Mutt), and created the notorious collage:. L H O O Q, in which he defaced the Mona Lisa with a moustache.

WHO is Lord Of The Files & WHY he is "Ruining" His Favorite Bored Apes? 17

The bored security guard was promptly fired… The heartbreak he left behind was ruined art, shamelessly defaced with crude, circular eyes: two circles, so very emblematic of human perception/sight. His apparent boredom, the result of cultural blindness…his gesture, an angry statement about his own boredom/inability to see. The obfuscated institutions, were scandalized to their trembling cores, even as the general public felt vexation (if not fear) that no art was safe from the (random) destructive forces of boredom.

I couldn’t help but notice a fortuitous alignment of the ‘O O’ from ‘L H O O Q’ and the bored security guard’s two round eyes scrawled on the blank heads of the defaced painting.

I began by playing with the defaced work. Could I further deface it? The next step was ‘ruining’ the Mona Lisa by removing her eyes and replacing their elevated gaze with the graffitied circles of void, expressionless eyes. I felt the cycle closing. The next step was ‘ruining’ an important contemporary icon. Bored Apes closed the circle in an obvious yet exciting and unexpected way.

In the Twentieth Century, the very nature of art is questioned, with the resounding answer: Art has no boundaries. In the Twenty-first Century Bored Apes Yatch Club forces the art world to reconsider placing boundaries on art. Can a commercial enterprise that hires creatives to design be an author? Can AI that produces endless “Rarity” features be an author? How long before the great auction houses themselves produce the art they sell?

Do you think The Bored Ape Yacht club creators would be ok with your Ruined Apes?

Since they are focused purely on profits, they would hate this. All isnpired BAYC NFT art, helps them sell their originals though, it’s all part of the culture snowball that they have created. If there weren’t non-BAYC Apes out there, they wouldn’t get to say that theirs are the originals, the legit BAYC, The REAL-DEAL Rolexes and Gucci bags and so many other overpriced luxury goods that rich people buy for pure ego status. BAYC holds an added promise, beyond pure AVATAR fame. You might get to go to one of their parties with other superficial

How much do you feel your Ruined Apes are worth?

That’s one area that is much different in my work than let’s say the
deliberate “fake ape” attempts at tricking the public into buying a try BAYC. I have allowed open bidding, and I would allow
someone to take the work, in exchange of a fair exchange of my time both conceptually and manually. Each Ape takes me about
5 hours, and if I’m alloting myself a decent wage for a carreer artist, with Paris exhibits and other proper work history caliber, I would give myself $150/hour so I would accept a stranger’s bid for about $750 USD, or 0.3 ETH. I would let them go to friends for a bit less – maybe $500 or 0.2 ETH.

Would you be ok with someone copying your art, modifying it and also turning it into NFTS?

That depends how it’s being done. If it’s being just directly copied, with no real message or thought put into it and then placed on the market for millions, then no. That being said, I just started getting into NFT’s a few month ago, so any such hijacking of my work, would be also shocking and flattering.

We see that you’ve ruined 5 Bored Apes on Rarible, how many more do you plan on “ruining” and do you take custom “Ruins”?

This is not the focal point of my work. I will likely do 2 or 3 more and then get back to the art of capturing organic movement. I actually uploaded a few more after we spoke. I had to include the famous baby bonnet bored Ape which is implcated in a law suit with OpenSea at present. I played on the idea that the cartoon was kidnapped and given some fun psychedelic drugs like magic mushrooms. That is is in the header of this editorial.

Foxylee

Creative Director. Digital Diva. Foxylee unearths local gems and builds brand cultures. She directs the content creators and manages the BKM brand. She also takes care of the company mascot — a pug named Tucker. Her current interests are music, fashion, fine dining and wellness.

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