About Metalabel

Scenius is the gateway

Yancey Strickler

29 May 2025 — 6 min read

To prove we're not AI and to say hi, we're presenting this week's post in both written and video essay forms. Watch or read below.

It was probably too early for this, but we're all friends here, right?

Scenius is a term Brian Eno coined in the 1970s to describe the collaborative energy behind artistic breakthroughs. He talked to us about it last year:

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Put another way, scenius is a way of seeing — a recognition that our best work emerges not alone, but through the people, scenes, and shared contexts we’re part of.

I’m an example. I wrote “The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet” about disconnecting from the world, and instead became intertwined with a dozen internet heroes in a network of output that keeps growing and reaping benefits for us all. The connections and potential were always there. But it took a willful act to acknowledge them. Once I did, new possibilities opened up.

In a time of hyper-individualism, scenius is a more empowering way to see. The internet is programmed for us as individuals to doomscroll to our heart’s (never) content. Platforms want us to be lonely little shoppers forever.

But in groups we become something more. Amplified, conspiring, unpredictable, more emotionally and economically secure. We can align with others even while maintaining our individual voices and ideas. We can square the circle of being both individuals as well as part of something bigger than ourselves, as Adam Curtis told me years ago.

If we actively apply the philosophy of scenius to creative software as we have with Metalabel, it's more than an idea. Scenius is a gateway to new income, shared legitimacy, and lasting ownership and autonomy for creative people.

New income

In a world of individual creativity, we can only make money from work we personally do. But by collaborating or co-releasing as part of a larger structure, we unlock the potential for not just shared income, but new forms of it. In the case of the Dark Forest Collective, a dozen internet writers got passively paid thousands of dollars for work they'd written more than a year before, all of it seamlessly distributed. For others it may mean discovering new shapes and forms that can create and accrue value for others. Collaborative income tends to be more bountiful, less direct hard work, than doing it all yourself. Tapping into our shared connections is a way of unlocking unseen pools of value that exist between us.

Shared legitimacy

Many of the most important creative scenes — punk, hip-hop, independent film, outsider art — began with artists legitimizing one another. They made their own platforms, published each other’s work, and became credible together. In an age of crumbling and struggling institutions, this is the case for everybody. There's little legitimacy left to pursue. In response the herd today chases individual metrics. But history tells us that people legitimizing and supporting each other has always been how lasting value and reputations are made.

Lasting ownership and autonomy

We believe this is the Creative Century: the era where creative thinking, creative philosophies, and cultural expression are at the center of human life. Scenius is, once again, the path to getting there, especially when combined with a container designed to meet the needs of creative people today. In a few weeks, Metalabel will unveil a proposal that gives form to this idea. Scenius isn’t just a vibe. It can become an economic, institutional, and legal foundation for us all.

What you can do

Scenius is not a product of privilege or luxury. It's accessible to every single person. So how do you increase the scenius of your practice?

Look for how your existing work connects to others. Think of what I did with the "Dark Forest." I found other people who had written about the same idea and reached out to them to reissue work together. You can do the same. Find your best work and extend it — invite others in, build around it, expand its life, see what happens.
Release something with others. Don’t wait for permission — initiate a joint release, a series, a co-exhibit. It doesn't have to be a full collaboration (scary). Even a co-exhibiting or co-dropping can suffice. But open yourself up to the energy of others.
Start a Metalabel page. We’re a platform built around scenius, and designed to help you increase your scenius. Create a label, start a page, and turn your connections into something lasting and bigger than just yourself.

Thank you for being part of this scene with us.

❤️

RELEASES WE LOVE

Some work catching our eye this week.

Costanza Parigi and Clayton Junior, rIspàntu

A beautiful, wandering series of photos and sketches capturing Sardinia's beaches. Like walking with you local friend who's pointing out what you can't immediately see.

Pegg & Van Dyke Parks, Presque Tout: 500 Piece Puzzle

Shouted this one out last week and we're still in love. Pegg & Van Dyke Parks's sonic release plus 500-piece puzzle so you can literally build their world in yours.

A Thousand Forests, Legal structures for creative practices

Collectives often need some structure on paper to protect everyone. A Thousand Forests is doing the good work of making the right information available. For free.

Last Human Collective, LAST HUMAN #002

The second installment of Last Human's open prototype zine is all about ghosts. When we climb inside dead internet theory—that much of the contemporary web now populated by bots and algorithmically generated content rather than human presence—how do our own identities fracture and crack?

Nanotopia, Spora Ex Machine, Phase I (2025)

It's the final days of InterAccess's month long benefit exhibition and sale by some of the brightest starts inCanada's digital art scene. Spora Ex Machine is one of our favorites, an IRL video and sound installation powered by living fungal signals where collectors receive access to a special, evolving VR portal.