Building RTSN
My next connecting flight was in three hours.
With time to spare, I wandered through the airport, drawn to an intriguing art installation: a sprawling, metallic tapestry showcasing the evolution of transportation across various modes and eras. The piece featured a gleaming, silver bullet of a train, a vintage, copper-plated bus, a delicate, filigree-patterned rickshaw, a majestic, bronze-colored airplane, and a sturdy, iron-clad bullock cart, all interconnected and appearing to be in motion. Some people rushed by, some stopped and clicked pictures standing in front of the train, others looked at the wings of the aircraft - pausing to take it in.
I'm not someone whom you can call an avid art enthusiast, but great artworks have always left me in awe of the imaginative powers and skills of the ones who imagine and create these pieces. Questions like how would they think, how do they envision these forms that can deliver these experiences? It always made me wonder.
This time, curiosity nudged me further - Who actually created this?
I took out my phone and searched with all the different possible keywords that can help identify this piece. I did find mention of it in online forums and articles, but nowhere did it mention the artist's name. Wow - that was strange. On Instagram too, I found pictures of airport travelers with it - but who was behind it? I stumbled upon potential names of some artists who create those sorts of works, but their websites were long due an update. I heard an announcement of my flight boarding. I let it slide for then, but there was a sense of an internal “what” - like how is it even possible that artists who create these works are so difficult to discover.
18 hours later, I landed in San Francisco. As I was heading towards San Jose in my Uber, I came across a wall mural that was like no other. As I looked out of the window, I noticed that it was not just another wall mural, but it was a collaborative effort done by maybe 50 or more artists, each with a completely different artistic style. Took out my phone and searched for it - I found that it was a collage by 100 local artists and a couple of news articles about that. But who were those artists? Well - same as the last time. Republished blurbs of the collage wall mural announcement on many websites, but no mention of the list of artists involved.
After 11 days, India → Bombay → Bangalore, art installations at airports, and like earlier, search trail went cold quickly again. It was actually painful - no way to find out who created these marvelous pieces of craftsmanship. And knowing the fact that, at the airports, the installations are rotated every few months. Which means that in a few months, no one will even know about the artist or the artwork, except it being in the background of some Instagram posts. The artists - invisible, unrecognized, and unappreciated - it felt just plain wrong on so many levels.
Why was it so hard to find them?
The seed was sown. It eventually became a massive question that I just had to know. Why is something - so simple and obvious - not there? It’s not difficult. Even the snacks that we buy from a supermarket have the name and location of the manufacturer, but not the art pieces.
The consequences of something so simple not being present were obvious.
The artists were not getting discovered by people who wanted to find them. This meant that especially newer artists would find it extremely difficult to grow - because nobody knows them. They will be unable to find good projects. And that’s what was happening - most of the projects were going to creators who were already extremely popular.
It made me curious to know the other side of the story? What do the artists think about this? How do they get discovered then? How do they find new work?
This quest began to unveil a labyrinth of obscurity within the art world.
A maze where creators were invisible, and their stories untold.
The deeper I searched, the darker the reality became.
The creative world was fragmented into pieces. There was no common way to search for someone or to know about an artist or designer who created something. This whole layer of Discovery of Creatives was non-existent. There was no way that someone could find out who’s the artist behind an artwork that they came across somewhere. And often those works are created by multiple people working together - it was a collaborative effort - but it was nowhere recognized.
At first - I thought I was missing something. How can something so fundamental has not been addressed. To find my answers, I decided to talk to artists, designers, creatives of all sorts, I attended conferences - so many creators talked about their work being a collaborative effort and it was tough to find someone - but then everyone just went on talking about something else - as if this problem was accepted. Nobody really seemed to bother about it, whereas it was burning me from inside. All the talks about empowering artists & creators - what’s the point? What’s the point of efforts building the top, when the foundation itself is not there.
I found that New Creatives were longing for work and longing to work with the right people.
Talented Artists were in shadows, not by choice, but because they weren't visible to anyone who mattered. Their ideas, labored over tirelessly, after a few days of praise and acknowledgements, vanished into obscurity upon release.
Established Creators also had their own share of challenges. They had Limited bandwidth. They didn’t know where to find people whom they could team up with. And thus, they had to suffer the pain of not taking on projects that they thought meant a lot for them.
Projects that could have sparked revolutions, remained mere ideas. This was more than just missing names or absent credits—it was a whole system broken. It was suffocating the very people it was meant to support. Creative genius slipped through cracks. Artists were losing themselves to burnout, frustration, anxiety, self-doubt. Their creative passion faded bit by bit.
Is it possible to solve this horror that’s unfolding in clearsight yet people’s vision seems to be so suspended - that they are not doing anything? And if something can be done, what is it?
So I thought : let’s first clarify the problem further. What are the main issues here?
Three things kept surfacing over and over in different ways:
My work is not creating the impact that it should. I feel stuck. I create stuff, and then I wait for new opportunities. There’s no consistency. And I don’t think I’m getting the kind of projects that I deserve. I feel unseen and unheard.
I know I can grow faster but I need the right people to take on more. I don’t know where to find the right people. I don’t think I’m able to do meaningful projects that could take me where I want to be.
I want to work with other artists but I don’t know how or what to do. I think I’m in a box that I’m unable to break.
Many were also going through mental fluctuations. Frustration turned to doubt, and doubt to disappointment. The creative world was not just losing great art—it was losing great artists.
And that’s when it hit me:
Collaboration is the Lifebreath of Creativity.
With Collaboration, artists can find the right people, evolve their craft and also if the collaborators are shown, they would get more and better work enquiries. In a multidisciplinary collaboration, all collaborators get a chance to expand their perspective, and with the combined creative genius - add details to their work making their work more immersive, engaging and impactful.
The core of each surface problem turned out to be a deeper issue.
Well, there’s the solution - Collaboration.
Definitely someone would have thought of this - but No! It wasn’t solved.
Collaboration itself was Broken. There is not a single platform where people can find and discover the right collaborators. The platforms of today - they are not built for this.
But why?
So the current platforms that we have, I found, fall in two categories:
Communication Platforms : Instagram, X etc.
Portfolio Platforms: Behance, Dribbble, Layers etc.
Fan Platforms : Patreon
For Communication Platforms like Instagram and X, as I was scrolling through the endless amount of reels that different artists had uploaded to the platform, I realized the reason : It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s intentional. The current networks are designed for consumption, not creation. Their revenue comes from people watching ads which correlates to the amount of time consumers spend on the network. So they are incentivized to maximize the time spent on the platform. So they are bound to prioritize sensationalism over substance and ad revenue over artistic value. And so these platforms weren’t built for creators—they were built for consumers. They reward noise, not nuance. Sensation, not skill. The whole game is rigged to keep the audience scrolling to generate as much revenue as possible. First, finding a particular artist is like finding a needle in a haystack. And once you find it, then it’s very likely that the message might not be even seen.
For Portfolio Platforms, like Behance and Dribbble, while they do have an element of jobs, it’s about hiring for a role. It is not about finding a Collaborator for a one-off project. And that’s fine - those platforms are not built for Collaborative Discovery.
For Fan Platforms like Patreon, they are focused solely on communication between the Creator and Followers. It is not geared towards finding new creators or new artists. It’s for existing artists that you already know of.
Searching for Collaborators is not like finding an employee. When it comes to finding Collaborators - or to Find the Right Collaborations - it’s not like finding an employee or finding a Job. It’s not even like hiring someone for a gig. So it’s not freelancers that one is looking for essentially. It’s not about finding anyone, it’s about finding the right one. It’s about a shared artistic vision. One who can help bring a certain vision to life. It’s about finding people who have an artistic coherence while having a certain level of craft.
And there needs to be a way for someone to work on Collaborations and to use it as a way to build their profile. So that they don’t simply mention on Linkedin that they worked as Freelance 3D Designer from 2022-24. No. That’s not how we want it. We want us to be able to showcase what we have worked on. And be represented in those works. Represented in a way where anyone who wants to find us can find us easily. Everyone knows, it’s not only about the work that you do, but also about who you have worked with.
And these things - they are not a secret. It’s not hidden in a way that nobody knows. But rather the opposite. Everybody knows about this, and that there’s a problem that needs to be solved. But no one is interested in solving this. With the platforms of today, it can’t be done. What’s needed is not minor feature modifications or additions in existing platforms, or a quick new platform that’s built with AI in 48 hours, but what’s needed is a thoughtful exploration that creates ideas for solutions that solves the fundamental core problems – so that the issues are fixed, for the times to come.
So we need a new type of platform.
One that is built from group up - around two pillars - Collaboration and Discovery.
Only then, we can have artists, creators and designers find the right people to work with, the right projects to work on, and be easily discovered and found.
This new platform must not monetize attention. To build a sustainable future where everyone can follow their creative genius, it can not be done by incentivizing users to spend more and more time on the platform for consuming content, but rather by becoming more and more creative. There’s a better way to build a business which also includes creative, emotional and professional growth of the people who are on the platform. And while a business must generate revenue, it should do it in a way that continues to allow the early-stage creators and designers to use the platform freely.
The tools and platform that we build - should be to enhance people’s ability to become creative.
As I was exploring ideas, it all sounded good in theory, but there is something that was still unresolved in my mind.
If I decide to build this platform, I’ll have to commit to it.
It’s not a platform that is quick test run and if it doesn’t work, the founder switches to another idea.
It’s about commitment to solve a problem that matters.
It means spending at least the next couple of years fully focused and invested, with all the time and money I have in this direction.
It’s a risk. A big one. It can go wrong in so many ways.
Last 13 years of my life, I’ve spent building a business and building my reputation in cybersecurity - in creating ways to educate organizations about IoT Security and Mobile Security, about how to find vulnerabilities in their Mobile apps, their Smart Home devices and also in critical Industrial Infrastructure, teaching them how to build Secure products that is safe to use for their users - to now this. This direction. It’s like a reboot. Like starting from Zero. In a completely new industry with absolutely no connections - shelving aside the compounded effort that I’ve poured in to master the domain of Information Security - a course of 10+ years where I authored multiple books, spoke at all possible Cybersecurity conferences around the globe - all those sleepless nights of learning the craft of reverse engineering software - on how to discover security issues in the most securest of the websites, applications and devices in the world - all the sweat and blood - sacrificing all that, for this new vision :
Do I really want to take this step?
No. My Mind Said. I’ve gone nuts. It’s not rational. Not logical.
But if not me, then who? Nobody else seemed to care about the problem really.
And then a strand of thought emerged from the deepest of silences :
Hacking, at its core, is about building a mind that can Experiment and Tinker.
And while this might not be tinkering with software, this is about Experimenting with a different possible reality of the Future - in which humans have the ability to pursue a creative path of their choosing - with Collaboration being the rocketfuel.
And here we are.
After many months of living and breathing this idea - after countless iterations - it’s finally here - It’s live. It’s completely free for everyone. If you use it as your personal portfolio to highlight your works and collaborators, not only would it mean the world to me, but it would also mean that you care about solving this problem. A problem that’s eating up the creative industry of its very creative element. A problem that is solved with RTSN.
The most complex aspect of anything is Simplicity : Creating something that can be powerful enough, yet appear simple on the surface - it’s challenging. I’m sure there are many improvements that are possible and I’m looking for people who want to work on this. So that we can fix the countless pending bugs. But most important of all - You can go to rtsn.xyz right now. It’s there for you to make use of.
There are 3 things that you need to know to make the most of RTSN:
1. Your Profile: Your RTSN profile (rtsn.xyz/@yourname) showcases all your work and all the collaborators that you have worked with.
2. Your Collabs: Each Collab gets a dedicated Collab page that documents not just the final work, but also the people who made it possible. It also includes ways to showcase the Creative Journey with “BTS” and to showcase the social success with “Social Highlights”.
3. Your Contributions: On RTSN, you can contribute any artwork that you come across, and tag it to a location, and add collaborators. This creates a global map of creativity that ensures no artist goes uncredited. If anyone wants to find out who’s behind a particular artwork, they can easily do so by searching for that location on RTSN.
If you are an artist, designer, creator, or a collaborator, or if you know someone who is - it’s time that you sign up on rtsn.xyz. It is important that we create a world that enables people to explore their creativity in a way that’s beneficial for everyone. The future can be very much different, and much better than right now.
And RTSN is built for the future. Today is just the beginning. And the truth is - The platform can only do so much. So this is not about just the rtsn.xyz platform - it’s about You. It’s about what you do with it. It’s about how you explore your creativity. The real story of RTSN will be written by the artists, designers, and creators who dare to dream. There are many things that I have in my mind. And I’m looking for those who care for this future. If you want to get involved in any way or would like to share ideas - let’s talk.