Studio Sessions

Matthew O'Brien, Alex Carter
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Visual Arts
  • Updated Biweekly

Discussions about art and the creative process. New episodes every other week.  Links To Everything:    Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG 

  1. 6d ago

    79. We've Been Sold Enough Chairs - Thoughts on The Future of Ai

    Send us a message. We spend this one disagreeing about what a computer is going to be in ten years. One of us thinks the mouse and keyboard have run their course, and that whoever ships a voice-first operating system with screens spread through the house does to personal computing what the iPhone did to phones. The other thinks the appetite for that shift is gone, that people are worn out from being sold the next thing, and that whatever arrives will be software every company can copy rather than hardware anyone can corner. Getting there, we cover the steps OpenAI puts between you and your own exported memory, why switching costs keep collapsing, what it means that someone's $20,000-a-month dashboard shows up as a power bill in somebody else's house, and the Seinfeld episode where George gets the department store security guard a chair. The chair turns out to be the argument underneath everything else. Every fix introduces the next problem, the simple version of a product exists to prove its value, and the complicated version is where the money is. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  2. Aug 4

    78. Waiting to Talk - Conversational Narcissism, the Ego Myth, and Reading a Room

    Send us a message. We open by talking about the show: why we want to own our own platform instead of relying on YouTube, and what we'd want out of having guests on. Neither of us wants to do the standard interview where someone walks through their résumé. We're more interested in how a person thinks over the course of a long conversation than in the story they've prepared to tell about themselves. That leads into a conversation about friendship and how hard it is to stay in touch as an adult, especially when the work you do doesn't have set hours. We both notice that our closest friendships are the ones with a shared project attached. Matt brings up an idea he came across recently: in any conversation, people are either listening or waiting to talk. We use that to get into conversational narcissism, the reasons we ask each other questions, and whether it's possible to get rid of your ego or if the better goal is learning to work with it. The second half gets into restaurants. Servers who interrupt at the wrong moment, servers who never come by, and reservation systems that try to manage how long a table stays. It's the same question in a different setting: figuring out what someone actually wants from you. We also talk about how texting has changed the way we communicate in person, and finish with an update on the photo walks and our gallery idea. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  3. Jul 21

    77. The Camera Opens Doors

    Send us a message. We start with a chance encounter. A stop to photograph an old Dodge pickup and a chain-net basketball hoop turns into an afternoon inside a stranger's garage, looking at restored Mavericks and pulling vintage car t-shirts out of a rag drawer. From there we get into what a camera actually does when you carry one everywhere: it gives you a reason to stop, talk to people, and end up somewhere you never planned to be. We talk about portraiture, about the woman who cried handing over a Nirvana shirt she'd kept for twenty years, and why one photograph from a whole day spent with someone beats a hundred quick frames. The second half turns on a prompt about quitting, and we land in different places on it. One of us reads walking away as evolution; the other keeps circling a line from Mad Men about only liking the beginning of things. That pulls us into screenwriting: the years of writing five pages a day in an LA apartment, imposter syndrome in studio meetings, a script that went out wide and didn't sell, and the decision to leave. We get into the difference between working and waiting, killing the small "bad problems" so there's room for the good ones, and whether you make art out of ego or out of a plainer need to communicate. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  4. Jul 7

    76. Matt Went to the Movies

    Send us a message. We start with a night at the movies and end up talking about why some art grabs you and some doesn't. What makes a theater different from a screen at home, why certain films only land years later, and how much of the experience is the room you're in versus the thing you're watching. From there we get into horror and what it does that other genres can't, how a story changes once your own life catches up to it, and why unfinished work feels so exposed. Mostly it's the usual: two people following a thread about how art gets made and why it sticks. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  5. Jun 23

    75. Leave Room for the Accident

    Send us a message. We open on what a trip does to you once you're home. Time away, then the return, where the familiar looks sharper and the work feels urgent again. That sets up the thread running through the whole episode: the difference between a trip planned down to the hour and one you make up as you go, and why the unplanned kind tends to leave the stronger memory. No itinerary, no booked room, just landing somewhere and letting it unfold. From there we get into friction: the small obstacles we put in our own way to avoid doing the things we actually want to do, and how clearing them is most of the work. That carries into gear. The pull to bring everything, the freedom of bringing almost nothing, and the old principle that a fraction of your tools does most of the lifting. What sits in front of the camera matters more than what's in the bag. The back half settles on one question: when does skill start working against the work? Too controlled, too finished, no room for the accident that makes a thing feel alive. We talk about how constraints, small budgets and short schedules, can produce better work than freedom does, and why mastery alone isn't the whole story. If it were, the most experienced would always make the best thing, and they don't. We close on keeping expectations small enough to leave room for chance, plus a sweet interruption from home. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  6. Jun 9

    74. Proof of Work or How the Floor Gets Raised

    Send us a message. We open with Daniel Arnold's new book You Are What You Do from Loose Joints — the sequencing, the blank pages, the editor's role — and end up on a harder question: what happens when you spend a decade on something and the first question someone asks is "what's next?" We talk through Josh Safdie's account of finishing Uncut Gems and why that question lands like an insult, and whether there's also something honest, even useful, about just moving on. That leads into the photo walk question: can you actually make work when you're with other people, or is this a medium that demands solitude? We use it as a way into what we think is genuinely missing from the Omaha creative scene — not talent, but the kind of competitive pressure that only comes from being around people operating at a high level and taking it seriously. We draw a line between community (people talking about ideas) and scene (people making work and raising the floor for each other). We also get into the difference between finding something valuable and making something from nothing, what it actually takes to own the label of photographer or writer without feeling like you're lying, and why "what's the point?" is the specific thought pattern that keeps you consuming instead of working. The answer, more or less: momentum is the point. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  7. May 26

    73. That's a Pretty Good Tree

    Send us a message. Matt picks up a Cartier-Bresson book at the used bookstore and we read two passages from it — one on prowling the streets, one on primitivism and the hobbyist trap. The quotes pull us into a longer conversation about what it means to make work outside commercial pressure, and whether the thrill of hunting for things to sell has become a structural parallel to street photography: the finding, the deciding, the sharing. We don't fully settle it, but the overlap is hard to ignore. From there we move through John Ruskin's definition of great art — the greatest number of greatest ideas, received by the highest faculties — and Alex reads a passage from Swann's Way, the moment where music briefly restores Swan's belief that there's something worth devoting a life toward. We've talked around definitions of art on this show before, and this episode probably gets us closest to something we can actually use. The last third of the episode centers on an Italo Calvino essay called "The Written City: Inscriptions and Graffiti," written in 1980, which frames words on walls — whether graffiti, political signs, or advertising — as a form of aggression imposed on anyone who happens to walk by. We spend some time with the idea and push on it: what it exempts, where we agree, where it gets complicated, and what it says about the visual state of things fifty years later. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

  8. May 12

    72. The Critic Problem: Why Great Art Resists Easy Explanations

    Send us a message. We open with a letter — Rilke's first letter to a young poet, written in 1903 — and the question at the center of it: must I write? Not do I want to, not is it going well, but must I. We talk about what it means to look outward for reassurance while making something, how that search for validation reshapes work before it's even finished, and what happens when you're writing toward an external voice instead of your own. That leads us into a broader conversation about photography as a practice of finding things rather than making them — and what that distinction reveals about why certain work holds and other work doesn't. We walk through what it means to stand in front of a print by Eggleston or Crewdson or Deana Lawson, what a body of work asks of the people presenting it, and what gets lost when criticism becomes a form of signaling rather than a genuine attempt to see. We end somewhere near solitude: the argument that if you've found the thing you need to do, everything else is secondary — and that's been true since at least 1903. -Ai Support the show  If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a rating and/or a review. We appreciate and try to read all of them. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.  Links To Everything:  Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Matt’s 2nd Channel: https://geni.us/PhotoVideosYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG

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About

Discussions about art and the creative process. New episodes every other week.  Links To Everything:    Video Version of The Podcast: https://geni.us/StudioSessionsYT  Matt’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/MatthewOBrienYT  Alex’s YouTube Channel: https://geni.us/AlexCarterYT  Matt’s Instagram: https://geni.us/MatthewIG  Alex’s Instagram: https://geni.us/AlexIG 

Information

  • Creator
    Matthew O'Brien, Alex Carter
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    79
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Studio Sessions
  • Show Website
    Studio Sessions