First, A Message From The Future
Uploading yourself into a computer will NOT grant you immortality. There is no such thing as a stable medium. Servers crash, solar storms wipe hard drives and knock out satellites, and noisy electronic infrastructure degrades any signal over time.
Even if a million copies of yourself proliferate into the "un-erase-able" personal version of a viral youtube video, they won't remain static, unchanging objects, but will probably – and very swiftly – decide that their body memories are no longer relevant in the digital environment, and transform into something unrecognizable as "you."
The acceleration is just that: a quickening of the change that characterizes reality. The faster our world changes, the faster WE change. Our religious conviction about persistent identity is getting lost in the wash. "Shapeshifter" is the new "human." Immortality requires that we die to ourselves – not just once, but over, and over, and over...
Our age is when Science-as-exploration-of-transcendent-mystery and Religion-as-meaning-making-in-a-complex-world approach and kiss one another at the asymptote. Paradigms become transparently provisional. Self-concepts become art-forms offered hypothetically into the blossoming ecology of mind – worn like clothes, and changed just as easily.
Visit my facebook profile to read and join in the inspired group discussion this riff provoked...
Next, Help Yourself To Some Free Tunes!
Download at Noisetrade (192 kbps mp3) or Bandcamp (most audio formats)
I'm supremely grateful to be able to live by people's support of my art and music, but it's only really just started to happen. My coyote heart is still animated by the spirit of street musicians and festival renegade sets, and I still get excited by handing off demos to artists I admire...
To that end, I created this compilation of my favorite concert recordings from the last twelve months. I needed a "get to know you" mix to share with new friends and colleagues, so here it is: forty-three minutes of the shimmering, fleet, and organic murmurations that have come to characterize my sound as an improvisational acoustic-electronic looping guitarist.
It won't be long before I drop the follow-up to Golden Hour: A Cyberacoustic Summer Daydream – recordings culled from all of the amazing festival sets I've played this year – but in the meantime, enjoy!
And Now, The Paintings
I am pleased and honored to share with you the fruits of my busiest June so far. I have so much more to share from this summer – videos, musical recordings, new essays – but for now it can wait, so we can give these paintings their due. I decided to focus on only one piece per festival this summer, and the extra time investment really shows. Click on any picture for a closer look...
(In addition to my poster prints, I've decided to start making new pieces available as skins and cases in my Artsprojekt design shop to glam out everyone's proliferating electronic toy-scape – I make about 10% on each sale, which is small but worth it. If you have some contraption-plus-artwork combo idea you don't see available, let me know and I'll be happy to post it for you.)
I Know It Means Something...
(Kingfisher & Code)
40"x30", paint markers on stretched canvas
Original painting available (email for price)
11"x17" poster prints – $20 or 2 for $30 (+ $5 s/h) – email me
Painted live at Wakarusa Festival 2012 during:
Bob Weir Acoustic Trio, Pretty Lights, Monophonics, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, The Avett Brothers, Umphrey's McGee, Primus, Big Gigantic, Toubab Krewe, Tinariwen, Matisyahu, EOTO, The Floozies
"Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences."
"Love and courtship call forth poetry and song because of the importance of ambiguity as well as communication in creating a relationship."
– Rich Doyle (amazing interview link)
Petroglyphs
40"x30", paint markers on stretched canvas
Original painting available (email for price)
11"x17" poster prints – $20 or 2 for $30 (+ $5 s/h) – email me
Painted live at Desert Rocks Festival 2012 during:
Bird of Prey, SORNE, Phadroid, Octopus Nebula, Beats Antique, Lucent Dossier, The Wailers, Hot Buttered Rum
"A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence."
"A billion stars go spinning through the night,
Blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
Will be, when all the stars are dead."
Biomechanical Tide
36"x24", paint markers on stretched canvas
Original painting available (email for price)
11"x17" poster prints – $20 or 2 for $30 (+ $5 s/h) – email me
Painted live at Impulse Festival 2012 during:
Govinda, Boombox, Papadosio, Zoogma, Minnesota, Emancipator, EOTO
"Most microscopists have a streak of artist in them. It's hard not to. You're looking at things through a microscope that most people don't see. The nascent artist in you sort of peeks its head up."
– James Hayden (cool NYTimes article link)
"Let the mind be enlarged...to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind."
– Francis Bacon
– Francis Bacon
Going Backward To Go Forward
(As Awesome As Three Unicorns)
36"x24", paint markers on stretched canvas
Original painting sold to the father of a four year old dino-maniac
11"x17" poster prints – $20 or 2 for $30 (+ $5 s/h) – email me
Painted live at Sonic Bloom Festival 2012 during:
ESKMO, Papadosio, Ana Sia, PANTyRAID, Zilla, Emancipator, ProJect Aspect, Tipper (uptempo), Octopus Nebula, Ilya From Russia, Tipper (downtempo), Phadroid, Sonic Bloom Orchestra, EOTO
"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
“At last I look to the moon; it hangs fixed and full in the east, enormously scrubbed and simple. It must have been a wonderful sight from there, when the olive continents cracked and spread, and the white ice rolled down and up like a window blind.”
– Annie Dillard (great author website)
"No human thing is of serious importance."
– Plato
Upcoming Gigs
It's great to get a little downtime, but this summer's not over yet! I'll be playing music and painting live at all of these lovely events, as well as more intimate shows in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Indiana, and more soon to be announced. You can find the complete calendar on my website and on facebook, updated every few days...
Thank you so much for your time, interest, and ongoing support. Have a magnificent day!
