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In this episode of Unlocked, we speak with Chris Maestas (0009), a Los Angeles–based artist whose practice bridges AI, digital systems, and visual culture. He reflects on his early days in street culture, his entry into crypto and NFTs, and how these worlds naturally converged in his work. We discuss authorship, anonymity, and the evolution from illustrative to photorealistic outputs, as well as his ongoing exploration of “urban fabric” as a visual language rooted in memory and identity. Chris also shares his thoughts on community in Web3, the importance of participation, and why the future of digital art still needs its own direction.
There is a visual language that belongs to Los Angeles the way that the École de Paris once belonged to Paris - not just a place but a formation, a history of looking and making that marks everything that comes from it. Chris Maestas, known as 0009.eth, has spent years building that language in digital form: a practice that moves through street culture, crypto communities, AI systems, and the visual culture of urban memory to produce something that is genuinely its own.
Chris Maestas - 0009.eth - is an LA-based artist whose practice moves through street culture, crypto, NFTs, AI, and digital systems to build a visual language rooted in urban memory and identity. His path from street culture to crypto to digital art production reflects the specific trajectory of Los Angeles's creative underground - a world in which visual culture, community, and technology have been in close conversation for decades. He is one of the artists at the forefront of developing a coherent visual language for the intersection of AI, digital systems, and the "urban fabric" that his work consistently returns to.
The question of what a digital art language looks like - how it develops, what it draws on, where its roots are - is one that most discussions of NFTs and AI art avoid. Chris Maestas addresses it directly through his practice: a sustained effort to build something that is identifiable as his, that draws on the full history of the communities and visual traditions he comes from, and that uses AI and digital systems not as shortcuts but as materials in the construction of something specific and lasting. This conversation is about what that process actually involves.
Street culture as artistic formation
LA street culture is not background for Maestas - it is a primary visual education, a tradition of making that develops technical skill, community connection, and aesthetic sensibility simultaneously. That formation travels intact into his digital practice.
Crypto community and Web3 belonging
Maestas's engagement with crypto and Web3 communities reflects a desire for the same kind of belonging and collaborative energy that street culture provides - a community built around shared making and shared values rather than individual achievement.
AI and digital systems as materials
The use of AI in Maestas's practice is not a strategy for efficiency - it is an engagement with AI as a material with its own characteristics, resistances, and possibilities. His visual language emerges from that engagement rather than from imposing a pre-existing vision onto the tools.
Urban fabric as subject
Memory, identity, and the visual texture of urban life are the recurring subjects in Maestas's work - the "urban fabric" that accumulates in streets, walls, and the shared visual inheritance of people who grow up in the same places. His digital practice is a continuation of that attention.
The most significant digital art builds on real foundations - not just technical skill or market awareness, but a visual tradition, a community, a set of subjects that genuinely matter to the artist. Chris Maestas's practice is an example of what that looks like when it comes from street culture and urban memory rather than fine art institutions. For collectors looking for digital art with genuine roots, this episode offers both an introduction and an argument for why roots matter.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
