Gaian Radio Podcast | My Set from Art Outside Festival | New Painting & Custom Hats | More Articles for Globalish | Attending Gem & Jam

"Don’t hanker for the other world. Live this world, and live it with intensity, with passion. Live it with totality, with your whole being. And out of that whole trust, out of that life of passion, love and joy, you will become able to go beyond."

– Osho

Happy New Year, everyone!  2014 was intense.  Maybe it's just the chronic optimism that seems to infect me at this time of year, but I think 2015 will be less about hard lessons and more about putting those lessons into practice.  I look forward to practicing with all of you.

Since we're on the cusp of what Back To The Future II officially recognized as "the future," here is a great conversation I had with the hosts of Gaian Radio Podcast about artificial intelligence, life extension, the end of privacy, and more awesome future things.  It's guaranteed to be more complicated than pro-future armchair philosophers let on, but it doesn't have to be scary.  We walk a razor's edge in this fun hour-long chat between ?? and !! – it's free to listen/download here.

And then there's this:

Live at Art Outside 2014

Free Download Here

Acoustic-electronic inventions performed at the Tenth Annual Art Outside Festival on a gorgeous and mystical laser-cut stage hidden in a grove of old pecans.

There amidst the branches and the hanging lanterns, people sprawled in blankets, chairs, and hammocks, some bizarre new breed of soaring anti-folk infused with jazz took shape – atmospheric improv raw and wild, heartfelt, numinous.

Accompanied by visual performances from the legendary florist Anthony Ward and live painter Chris Morphis, featuring guest instrumentalists Andrew Stocker (triple harmonic flute) and Jared Buchsbaum (clarinet), this music overflowed its banks and sprouted something beautiful – often dipping into darker territories, veering into strange terrains, but always moving, always full of life and curiosity.

Many thanks to everyone at Art Outside for holding such a wondrous space for work like this to grow!  (And thanks to David Titterington for the lovely cover art...)

New Studio Painting

"Ediacarans I" (2014)

Studio – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

16"x20" (four 8"x10" panels)

11"x17" prints available here

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An ode to one of the great mysteries of paleontology.  From Wikipedia:

The Ediacara biota consisted of enigmatic tubular and frond-shaped, mostly sessile organisms that lived during the Ediacaran Period (ca. 635–542 Ma). Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms.

Determining where Ediacaran organisms fit in the tree of life has proven challenging; it is not even established that they were animals, with suggestions that they were lichens (fungus-alga symbionts), algae, protists known as foraminifera, fungi or microbial colonies, to hypothetical intermediates between plants and animals.

Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms: they resemble discs, tubes, mud-filled bags or quilted mattresses. Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms some paleontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism. One paleontologist proposed a separate kingdom level category Vendozoa (now renamed Vendobionta) in the Linnaean hierarchy for the Ediacaran biota. If these enigmatic organisms left no descendants their strange forms might be seen as a "failed experiment" in multicellular life, with later multicellular life evolving independently from unrelated single-celled organisms.

Custom Hats

I'm so busy writing for Globalish.com these days I haven't dedicated that much time to hat work, but with new fluorescent pens a new horizon's opened up for UV-reactive lids, so I'm excited by the prospect of a new round of commissions.  Feel free to contact me if interested!

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More Articles For Globalish

I love my job.  If you're attracted to the seeker's path and wonder how it looks in our accelerating age, my friends and I at Globalish.com are writing for you:

Channel 1: Revolution

China Bans Puns in Attempt to Control Government Criticism

Channel 2: Travel

Damascus: A Mystical Tribute to an Old and Precious City

Yiwu: The Chinese City Where Christmas is Made and Sold

Clark's "Beacon" Music Video: Another Foray into the Psychedelic

Downtown Divas: Portraits of Russian S3x Workers in Designer Clothing

Toronto Skyline Pørn: A City is a S3xy Thing

Channel 3: Art

Splash Heroes: Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz Uses Milk To Create Costumes

Jamón: Being an Outcast in a World Full of Humans

"Pretty Doesn't Interest Me": The Avant-Garde Perfumes of Christopher Brosius

Channel 4: Life

Geography as Mind: Recho App Brings GPS-Tagged Audio to Storytelling
100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute: Who's Aware of the Story?

Heile Gansje: German Film Explores the Wilderness We Are in Bed

Gem & Jam Will Be My First Festival of 2015

This year, I'm focusing on fewer, more deliberate bookings.  I'm looking forward to this one and what's shaping up to be the finest live art lineup I have ever seen...it's been since 2010 and I can't wait to reconnect with all my homies in AZ.  Perhaps I'll see you there!

Stay Warm In Style This Winter

Just a reminder that my friends help me provide a wide array of wearable designs (including those for phones and such, since, yes, devices are a part of us, these days):

And that is all for now.  Thank you so much for reading!

New Paintings: Giger's Alien, Spinosaurus, Crystal Egg | Year-End Print Sale | Another Killer Time-Lapse | More Articles From Globalish

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

– Gospel of Thomas

I ordinarily try to space these out and keep things focused, but it just happened that I recently completed THREE new paintings I'd been working on for quite a while, PLUS a time-lapse video, PLUS a bunch of writing for the awesome Globalish.com – so this newsletter's kind of overfull.  

Suggestion: open in a separate tab and read at leisure.  There's a lot to dig, here.  Be well and enjoy!

$10 Year-End Print Sale

Every print older than this newsletter is only $10 until 2015 – these above and dozens more, which you can browse on Bandcamp.  If you want to do all of your shopping in one place, I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for you.  Happy Holidays!

New Time-Lapse Video:

The Common Core of Science, Art, & Spirituality

Watch in HD / Share on Youtube

Free Downloads: Music | Narration

A look into my process and philosophy, inspiration and commitment as an artist.  Recorded through Google Glass; soundtrack from my New Year's Day 2014 sunrise cyberacoustic guitar set; narration from my talk at Firefly Gathering 2014.  You can get a better look at the final piece below...

Rainbow Warrior (Giger Tribute)

Buy 11"x17" Prints | Share on FB

20”x20” – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

Original painting available – email with inquiries

Painted at
• 2014.11.15 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)

for Govinda, Living Light, Cactus Bath

•  2014.11.14 - 18 – Studio (Austin, TX) 

H.R. Giger's alien has haunted me since childhood.  I swear their hives must occupy the bulk of my imagination's dark side.  And now my friends at Synergetic Press have just released a new book, H.R. Giger and the Zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century, by pioneering LSD psychotherapist Stanislav Grof.
It's amazing – both Grof's essay and the Giger art inside, a lot of which I've never seen – and if you would like a copy, enter "Garfield" for $10 off at checkout.

Godzilla Was Real! (Spinosaurus aegypticus)

Buy 11"x17" Prints | Share on FB

24"x36" – oil & acrylic paint pens on canvas

Original painting available – email with inquiries

Painted at

• 2014.09.28 – Zelicks (San Marcos, TX) – Fractālà

• 2014.10.18 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX) 

for Pretty Lights Music Showcase: Paul Basic, SuperVision, Michal Menert, Eliot Lipp

• 2014.11.18 – Holy Mountain (Austin, TX)

for DJ QBert, Jeremy Ellis, Table Manners Crew

Spinosaurus aegypticus was first discovered a century ago, but its type specimen was destroyed when the US bombed Berlin in WWII. We had no idea what this creature looked like, or how it lived, until another expedition recently discovered even more complete specimens. And the truth is weirder than anyone expected: Spinosaurus had a body specialized for living and hunting in a shallow freshwater environment: short, probably webbed hind legs, high nostrils, heavy bones to help it stay submerged...

We are talking about a fifty foot predator with a five foot head and claws longer than your foot. IT ATE SHARKS AND CROCODILES. AND while I MAY have taken artistic license with this painting, it might also have glowed with radiation...

Crystal Moon Egg Bathes in Silver Light

Buy 11"x17" Prints | Share on FB

2014 – oil & acrylic pens on canvas
Original painting available – email with inquiries
Painted at
• 2014.11.05 – LANAI Rooftop Lounge (Austin, TX) for Create Culture

for Shanti Planti, BogTroTTeR, EazyT, Shuniya, Fractālà
• 2014.11.19 – Empire Control Room & Garage (Austin, TX)

 Art Seen Alliance, Fool's Gold Records, & Brainfeeder present Azizi Gibson, Kamandi, & Barnes 

• Studio (Austin, Texas) 2014.09.30, 10.08, 11.04, 11.22-25, 12.01, 12.04

"They proceed to sing objects into existence. Amazing objects. Objects that are Fabergé Eggs, things made of pearl, and metal, and glass, and gel, and when you're shown one of these things, you look at it and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if it were right here, right now, this world would go mad. It's like something from another dimension. It's like an artifact from a flying saucer. It's like something falling out of the mind of God – such objects do not exist in this universe, and yet, you're looking at it."

– Terence McKenna

More Thought-Provoking Articles at Globalish

I can't think of any other site that keeps its finger on the pulse while staying deep like Globalish.  If you're the kind that wants both gorgeous videos and excellent companion text, we work for you:

Revolution

2014 Year in Review: DJ Earworm's Mashup on the United State of Pop

Travel

Slow Life: Where Underwater Creatures and Psychedelic Journeys Meet

Pripyat, Chernobyl: Postcards From A Nuclear Disaster

Inside the Gay Wing of Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles

B Style: Japanese Girls Who Want To "Look Black"

Art

Money Collage: Giving Dollars Value By Destroying Them

Karim Jabbari's Light Calligraphy Illuminates the Desert Night

Seeing The Invisible: Merging Music and Science to Visualize Sound

A New Take on "Depth of Field": Android Jones with "Electric Love"

Life

Living Buildings: Futuristic Family Homes Based on Biogenetic Forms

Meat: A Visual Poem on Youth Sexuality in Online Spaces

Barnyard Human-Horse Burlesque: Who's Aware of the Story?

Tis The Season For Ridiculous Trippy Clothing!

Because if it doesn't cause permanent brain damage for innocent bystanders, it's not worth wearing.

On a slightly less hyperbolic note, you are in fact guaranteeing that you will become a walking conversation piece if you leave the house with this stuff on.  With great power comes great responsibility.

...Printed Leggings, Finally! | The Sunrise Set I Played Inside A Geodesic Dome | New Time-Lapse Video: The Power of Visionary Art

“When you see the Earth from the Moon, you don’t see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.”

– Joseph Campbell

Happy Holidays, folks!  I'm grateful for this life, even though I'm not the best at saying so.  But while I'm exercising gratitude, let me extend it all the way to you for simply reading this.  Knowing I have people getting something from my work is powerfully supportive.  May this cold and stressful season open for you like a pomegranate to the recognition of a deeper self amidst the noise, blue sky beyond the leafless branches...

This week: a truly deep, weird, and wondrous sunrise meditation on guitar and pedals; my latest time-lapse video through Google Glass, which doubles as a manifesto for my fellow artists; new leggings, hoodies, shirts, and cases just in time to help Black Friday muddy the relationship between the sacred and profane; and a baker's dozen of new articles for Globalish, the writing gig that lets me wax poetic about cyborgs, psychedelics, yoga, travel, and a world of other awesome things.

Thanks again for reading and feel free to write me any time!

Sunrise: Electronic Guitar for Awakening

Stream/Download Here

"Wow...awesome!"

– Dixon's Violin

"Dope. Evolving cyberacoustic experimentation recorded in a geodesic dome..."

– Infinite Third

"Electic elegance. You got it, keep it up, the world is hungry for the real deal."

– Erial Ali

Misty late spring sunrise meditation music from a sacred grove, improvised and captured live in May 2014 in a geodesic dome at Flipside (Downtown, TX).

Hypnotic, glitchy instrumental ambience throughout which pulsing grooves and wisps of melody mysteriously flicker like ghost animals in the periphery...timeless forest music that explores an utterly unique and haunting tonal landscape, burning slowly and continuously shifting. An album made for traveling through states of consciousness, from quiet somnolence to twirling hypnagogia to urgent wakefulness, a mirror of the coming day.

For fans of Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Daniel Lanois, Christopher Willits, Adrian Belew, Tortoise, Boards Of Canada, The Books...

New Time-Lapse Video: The Power of Visionary Art

Watch on Youtube

On how to "plant a seed of liberation in the mind-stream of the viewer," to borrow a phrase from Alex Grey.  On art's potential to change the world, set to the POV time-lapse video footage I took while painting "Manna Vesicles."  Links to both the music and the full talk are here.

New Leggings, Hoodies, T-Shirts, & More

I'm grateful to announce that I have finally found someone to print my art on leggings!  Seven new designs to grace your lovely stems are up at Artist Threads, as well as plenty of new goods at Ravenectar, Infinite Bit, and Nuvango.

Click pics for info/buying options on each new design – they're all on sale right now:

New Articles for Globalish.com

Globalish brings esoteric insight to the web's best videos.  This is a different angle on the news – a deeper one, exploring our new planetary self emerging in the intersections between cultures.  Here are my latest articles:

Channel 1: Revolution

Words Reverberate like Atom Bombs: G. Yamazawa with "Elementary"

Channel 2: Travel

Waking Up: Everything the Media Told You About Psychedelics is Wrong

The Answer Is Yes: Visiting LAX's Bradley International Terminal

The Fajr Fashion Show: A Front Row Seat to Iran's Fashion Renaissance

Channel 3: Art

Calling The Others: Where Post-Religious Church and Art Museums Meet

On Loop: A Glimpse Into The Insomnia of Living Lost in Memory

Castel Del Monte: Magic Digital Carpet Covers the Floor of Italian Castle

Fried Chicken & Waffle Communion: Space Jesus with "The Weed"

Channel 4: Life

Future Tourists Could Travel the Virtual World Instead of the Physical

Beings Made of Mystery: Who's Aware of the Story?

...In Which I Share New Paintings and Apparel, Muse on Art As Activism, and Recount Guitar Adventures!

So ends my festival season and begins a fertile period of work at home and in the cybernetic ethers...

Here's round one: a wrap-up on the best of my adventures in experimental electronic fingerstyle guitar; my talk from Firefly 2014 about our power to create world-changing media; two eggs I laid (proverbially); a bunch of great new articles for Globalish; and more new shirts than you have time to shake a stick at.  Thanks for reading!

On Four Years of Raw Guitar Experiments at LostInSound

Read More & Listen Here.

Above all, looping’s an experiment with time travel – evoking different faces of both Kronos (linear clock time, measurement, eternity) and Kairos (the quality or feel of time, duration, opportunity). These pieces are, then, time machines – transporting audience and artist to specific times of day or moments in the mythic cycle.

Certain pieces presence layers in the archeology of consciousness: primordial intensity, nostalgic sweetness, sci-fi western sunsets, bad trips, and android blues.

Others sound like they were made by clocks. And in a sense, they were – these tunes are the performance of a complex biochemical machine that tracks the rhythms of the seasons, night and day, and plugs itself into the pulsing periodic thrum of our electronic infrastructure, the two uniting musically.

Art As Activism 101: 

Your Primer To Participation in the New Millenium

Free Download Here.

On the significance of claiming our authority as artists in a world shaped by mass communication's influence on mental states.  How everything we do is a creative act – how visionary art and marketing are both forms of activism – and how we can use a basic understanding of the human mind to tell a more contagious story, so it sticks and shapes a better future.  

These ideas inspired me – and they might inspire you – to take a more enthusiastic, savvy, and empowered role in our short lives on Earth...

Two New Studio Paintings

Buy Prints of "Phoenix Egg" or "Holy Hand Grenade"

October 2014 – 18"x24" each – oil & acrylic pens on canvas

Originals for sale independently or as a pair – email me.

More time at home means more time listening to podcasts with a paint pen in my hand.  For the first time ever, really, I am taking live art home with me and doing it as therapy and meditation in my downtime.  Since I've always had a thing for fabergé – maybe as part of my enduring fascination with the odd geometries and jeweled, mutating entities of hypnagogic space – these eggs seemed like a fine place to begin.  (There's something incubating here, for sure.  I'll share what's hatched from these in my next updates.)

More Revolution, Travel, Art, & Life at Globalish

My gig with Globalish is such a fabulous new evolution of my love for writing and my interest in exploring the Big Picture of the changes we are feeling as a species.  This website is for "creative urban seekers" and the odds are good that if you're reading this, that's you.  

Here are my latest articles – enjoy!:

Prepare To Be Seduced By The Sacred Music of the Manganiyar

Underground Roots: A Map of the Territory Only Psychonauts Experience

Wearable Technology Allows You To See Your Feelings

Little Girls & Wild Animals: Who's Aware of the Story?

Nowhere: A Visual Symbol of 30 People Becoming A Single Organism

Here's What A Human Body Looks Like Doing Yoga in an X-Ray machine

European Space Agency Lands A Robot Probe on a Moving Comet

Tyler: A Film About Boyhood, Young Love, and Growing Pains

Rotating Anamorphic Glass Animals: Who's Aware of the Story?

God Is Not A Wizard: Pope Francis Supports Evolution & Big Bang

Psychedelic Rock Band Telesma & Adam Scott Miller with Chapter One of Lotus Chain

And Then, I Release Entirely Too Much New Apparel

Constant Unfolding Creativity – New Painting, Articles, Apparel, & Fall Art Sale

"Great art, music, and literature forces us to reassess our place in the cosmos. That’s what science does.”
– Lawrence Krauss

If we are to judge by petroglyphs and monuments left strewn across five continents and several thousand years, astronomy might be the oldest human discipline. The great cultures of human history saw and emphasized their relationship to the cosmos, through ritual, celebration, inquiry, and architecture. They re-enacted their creation myths in how they built their cities and their homes; they taught their children how to see the world as one coherent pattern, in which each life has meaning as a fractal microcosm of the whole.

Today our story is of randomness, our lives divorced from deeper purpose, and we see the fruit of this in burning forests, broken homes, and epidemic existential grief that manifests as cynical constriction to a smash-and-grab mentality, or worse, apocalyptic dread that seeks release in suicidal wars. We need a better story, one that honors our humility as infinitely modest members of a giant universe but also emphasizes our importance as the stewards of our planet and an adolescent race about to take its maiden voyage out into the stars.

It isn’t either/or. We are both infinitely insignificant and infinitely great, our vast potential matched by how profoundly tiny we must really understand ourselves to be if we’re to act with humor, grace, and decency as we develop godlike technological abilities. And for this reason, science justifies itself – not as the means to greater ends, but as the process by which we discover both the deeper meaning and the silliness of life, a post-religious holiness and future arts beyond today’s imagination. There isn’t any end to this at all. The end is in the constantly unfolding curiosity.

[...from my new writing gig at Globalish.]

Find me on Tsu

Right now I'm excited about a new social network that pays its users 90% of the ad revenue we generate – if you've ever felt like Facebook and others are this century's version of slave labor, join me over at tsu.  It's badass.  I'll still frequent those other sites but I'm eager to participate in what I see as an evolution in how we organize ourselves online.

(It isn't as progressive as minds.com – it's still proprietary, not open source.  But it's a step in the right direction.)

New Painting: "Fire Flower"

Buy Prints | Like/Share on FB

Oil and acrylic paint markers on 24"x36" masonite panel

Check out the process on Instagram here, here, and here.

Painted in studio 09 02 – 10 21 2014 and live at:

• 01 October – Austin, TX – Lanai Rooftop Lounge for Bumble, Funky Jesus, Luxor, Twips, Fractala

• 10 October – Austin, TX – Swan Dive for Jabu Mbara, Meganoke, Satalights, Myth Magic, Matthew Squires & The Learning Disorders, Deadbeat Poetry

Original painting available and currently on discount (see below).

New Articles For Globalish

Anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about the big perspective – the importance of placing our quickly shifting age in context as a moment in the evolutionary story, to connect our generation's challenges with a greater understanding of life, the universe, and everything.

Globalish is all about that, and I'm so grateful to have a regular gig writing for them.  If you consider yourself in the growing global movement of creative urban seekers, you'll be just as glad as I am to have found this site.

Here are some of my most recent articles for Globalish:

Revolution:

Ai WeiWei Takes Over Alcatraz For New Exhibition

Harvard Students Answer: Who's A Bigger Threat, America or Isis?

Travel:

A Bouquet of Moments: Discover the People and Places of Turkey

Take a Virtual Stroll Through Kitengela Road in Nairobi, Kenya

Wear This Technology to Experience Psychosis with Digital LSD

Art:

DJ Ta2Mi: Buddhist Priest Doubles As Electric Music Producer

Relativity of Scale: Your Body is a Wonderland

Visionary Artist Android Jones with Burning Embrace

Birds on Power Lines Equal Symphonies of Sound

Experience a 36-Hour Art Vigil with Visionary Painter Eric Nez

Israeli Grad Student Creates Jewelry That Harvests Energy From Your Veins

Life:

Creeping Garden: The Quest to Create a Human Slime Mold

Ice Cream Is A Feeling...But Who's Aware of the Story?

Can Brain Scans Reveal Your Ideal Self-Image?

Nature's Imagination: The Importance of Our Constantly Unfolding Curiosity

New Tanks, Tees, & Sweaters @ ArtistThreads

I'm excited to release a whole suite of new apparel through this California-based company, whose contracts are respectful of participating artists and whose prices are super reasonable considering the expensive dye-sublimation process that gives these awesomely bold, never-going-to-fade colors!  Check out their site – I'm on there alongside several other fantastic artists.  

Original Paintings Negotiably Cheap Until December 1st

If you're looking to gift someone some totally rad original art – lovingly-produced, hypnotically vivid eye candy created in high-energy environments and inspired by our world's deepest mysteries – I've discounted all of my live paintings to a pretty ludicrous degree for the next month or so.  Have a look. – the absolute worst thing that could happen is I distract you for the next five minutes.  Best case scenario, you take advantage of an awesome opportunity and we all go home happy...

Thanks for reading and have an awesome weekend!

The Very Best I Have To Offer: Painting Sale, Live Music 2011-2014, New Art, Discussing Ayahuasca, More Art & Future Coverage for Globalish

“One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition.”

– Alvin Toffler

Many thanks to all of you for your attention, for reading and listening to my work, for sharing my posts – every once in a while money gets tight but it makes me happy to know it's in service of large audience who are are (even silently) benefiting from what I share and create.

This edition's big news are my cyberguitar retrospective, a sale on my original art, a new painting, and some of the finest writing I've produced to date.  Enjoy!

25% Off All Original Paintings

Browse Available Pieces Here

I think it's actually been over a year since I last offered discounts on my paintings...at any rate, I'm back to wanting them to find good homes more than wanting to ask what people tell me they're really worth. If you connect with a piece but can't afford 25% off the marked asking price, let me know – I'm happy to split the cost up into payments, budge a little more, possibly even make partial trades.

Any money I make on this is going to help me make it through the festival off-season and to continue volunteering my time as a writer and musician. Most of what I do is unpaid labor and I am deeply, deeply grateful to all of you for your support in helping me dedicate my life to my creative work. If you want to show some love but original art is still out of your spending range, I have plenty of poster prints and pins for sale.

My Epic New Name-Your-Price Retrospective

Click Here & It's Yours

"Michael has mastered a method of looping and playing that is on a pedestal all on its own. Ultimately [this album] is an exploration into what you perceive music, the guitar, and technology can do…completely altering it. If you want to go someplace else, someplace new, get this album." 

– Mixolydian Blog

These twenty-seven tracks are fossils of my favorite moments in four years of fully improvised performances. They chronicle the maturation of my voice and sketch the outlines of an epic tour and self-discovery...

I never thought this music would be soundtrack to the art, lovemaking, yoga, writing, childbirth, and magic that it has. I'm honored that it resonates with anyone at all. But then, we live in times when cyborg folk makes sense.

For now, this is what I consider the definitive collection of my work – THE place to start, for people new to what I'm doing, and rich terrain for introspection as I prepare for my next phase in life and music.

New Painting

"Freshwater Kraken"

Studio – 2014 – Paint pens on masonite – 16"x24"

11"x17" Poster Prints

Fourth in a series of chromatic explorations into the basic visual language emerging between microscopic life and antique vegetal design. Floral patterns, paisleys, and damasque collide with retroviruses, trichomes, and DNA in a self-organizing burst of juicy color...

More Writing For Globalish

I love to write.  I LOVE it.  And for years I have neglected this because I wasn't getting paid.  Poor form!  I know.  But now my friends at Globalish have me on board as one of their lead authors, and I'm deeply in the game again.  The topics reach from visionary art and futurism to religion, politics, and music.  You will love this website.

Here are links to all my latest – there are too many to read, realistically, so I've starred a few of my favorites:

    • Channel 1: Revolution
    Reza Aslan: There's No Such Thing As "Muslim Countries"
    Prince Ea & Glenn Beck Talk Love and Consciousness *
    The Equivalent of a Lady Pope: India's First All-Female Akhada
    City of Philadelphia Decriminalizes Marijuana

    • Channel 2: Travel
    Google Put Cameras on Camels to Map the Arabian Desert *
    Explore a Miniature Tokyo in this Tilt-Shifted Time-Lapse
    Eye of the Needle: A Psychedelic Journey with Ayahuasca

    • Channel 3: Art
    New Apps Turns Text Messages Into Face-to-Face Meetings With Strangers
    Check Out Mars-1's Freeform Psychedelic Masterworks *
    Journey Through Time and Swim at Midnight with Tokimonsta
    Drone Du Soleil: Quadcopters Join Popular Dance Troupe
    Portrait of a Dancer: José Navas Shows Paradox of Living Today *
    Is the Future of Car Commercials Visionary? *
    Inside Me: 3D Scanner Imagery Digitizes the Human Body *
    That's Not Supposed To Happen: A Film About the Mystery of Life

    • Channel 4: Life
    YourBot App Sold As Way To Preserve Legacy for Hundreds of Years
    Smart Chopsticks: Your Simple Cyborg Health Ally
    Enlightened: Divinity Will Not Beckon On Your Terms
    An Indian Satellite Is Now Circling Mars
    Prophecy: The Future Will Be Absolutely Fantastic
    The Human Heart Is No Longer Necessary To Life
    Cymatics and 3D Language: Who's Aware of the Story? *

Art Outside is in One Week!

My last festival appearance for the time being is going to be a doozy: in addition to performing my fifth annual set and live painting, I'll also be performing alongside cellist Jen Mulhern and vocalist Tina Rodriguez as the musical accompaniment to the ethereal dance & projection work of ARTheism.  Add about a hundred awesome musical acts, a superb and extensive visual art lineup, and some choice workshops, and you get probably the best festival for its price in the United States.  No joke.  Hope to see you there...

Aya Awakenings Panel Discussion Video

Full HD Video | Stream/Download the Audio

The full half-hour video of the panel discussion I had with Mitch Schultz (director of DMT: The Spirit Molecule) and Rak Razam (director of Aya: Awakenings) after Rak's film screening in Austin this February.  Rak and Mitch are amazing guys.  We went DEEP.  It was awesome.

Parting Shot: MG Ravenectar Dress in Cosmic Village's Video

Full HD Video

Uche Sandra Ike wears it proud in this cool shoot for her "Creation Sessions," making music alongside painter Ali Kapper and flow artist Christine Katherine Dice.  It's a cool song and a lovely pastoral clip.  You can buy that dress she's wearing.

Thanks for reading, listening, and sharing.  I hope you have a magnificent week!

My TED Application, Three New Paintings, Debating The Singularity, Collected Musical Works Volume I

"A man is a method, a progressive arrangement, a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own, out of multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him." 

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here's to change.  Now that festival culture is getting featured by The New York Times, perhaps it's time for me to move on...or at least grow, to include my last seven years' of work in the body of something greater.  Something that serves you better.

Let's start with my bid for the big time – an amazing opportunity to join a few dozen people selected from a worldwide pool of applicants to attend the TED conference all expenses paid, speak at the conference, and benefit from free professional coaching. Filling out this application was exciting, hopeful, inspiring, and deep.  Having to explain why you're a promising young human to The Wizard of Oz is a ripe moment of reflection...

My 2015 TED Fellows Application

Q: Tell us about your work.

A: The goal of my work is to heal the divide in people's minds between art, science, and spiritual practice – to help others see these three domains as lenses through which anything can be explored, in service of a map that marries disciplines and sees beyond the isolation of modernity into a world whose richness only deepens as we add perspectives.

I am a liminal creature, standing between cultures and traditions to help suture them together – speaking one world in the language of another, juggling metaphors and dancing in the flow of information. My work is an evolving map that links our generation's struggle to a cosmic story, and hopefully empowers people to be true cosmopolitans creatively engaged in our world's future. We need all hands on deck right now. I'm a life-as-art recruiter.

Read my whole application here.

Three New Paintings

A series of chromatic explorations into the basic visual language emerging between microscopic life and antique vegetal design. Floral patterns, paisleys, and damasque collide with retroviruses, trichomes, and DNA in a self-organizing burst of juicy color...

Dragon Tail

11"x17" Prints Here

Dragon Eggs

11"x17" Prints Here

Happy Kraken

11"x17" Prints Here

Global Brains & Singularities: Debating The Technopocalypse with Cadell Last

Cadell Last and I put a ton of time into this thorough exploration of light and dark potentials for our future. If you've ever gazed at the stars wondering what's in store for us, check this out.

It goes without saying, please share this. I think it's an important conversation.

"Humanity” will probably come to mean all kinds of wacky things – I know a bunch of people who are already camping in a proverbial line around the block for their new tentacles, gills, wings, computer backups, etc. But I seem to have a harder time than you do imagining that some watershed moment is ahead of us in time that marks an epochal break point into a radically different state of being than any previous radical shift. As far as I’m concerned, we’re already over the rainbow – it’s just become the new normal to us.

Read the whole thing here.

Collected Works, Volume I

Stream Selected Clips & Download Here

321 TRACKS across THIRTY live releases chronicling my evolution as an avant-garde guitarist and singer-songwriter – including previously unreleased material recorded everywhere from underground caves to mountaintops – now exclusively available in this bundled collection!

FOR SUPER-FANS ONLY – if you're just getting started, turn back now. This collection captures some of my weirdest musical moments to date – tripping in the desert west of Albuquerque, jamming under tarps during a central Texas rainstorm – as well as improvs from the Costa Rican jungle and MAPS Psychedelic Science conference, radio broadcast performances, coffeehouse gigs, festival sets, and records of more wild house parties than you can shake a stick at.

New Art & Future Writing For Globalish

My big thing recently has been writing for the awesome website Globalish.com, covering visionary culture, technology, and perspectives on our ever-faster headlong dive into the future.  Here are my latest pieces on our strange and beautiful age:

Current Future

• The Future of Journalism is Virtual Reality
• Silicon Valley Children Interviewed About Earth’s Future
• Interspecies Internet: Apps for Ape & Dolphin Computers
• New “Electree” Solar Chargers Mimic Potted Plants
• Meet Pepper, the “Love Powered” Robot that Knows How You’re Feeling
• Humans are Next: Reprogramming Mice’s Brains with Light
• New Website Promises Social Media Fame to Subscriber Who Dies First

• Air Purifying Billboard Cleans Construction Site in Peru

• Love Project: See Human Emotions Transformed into 3D Printed Objects

Visionary Culture

• Discover Liquid Stranger’s “Underwater Extraterrestrial Bass Music”
• Quixotic: Barnum and Bailey’s Circus for the 21st Century
• Desert Dwellers: Celebrating Tribal Culture with the Temple Step Project
• Eskmo’s New Track & Video Addresses California Drought
• Dance & Animation Merge in ARTheism’s Colorful Light Shows

And Now A Message From Our Sponsor

I couldn't do it without you...seriously.  If you have any suggestions for how my art could go on clothes, or gear, or anything – please let me know!  I am so dedicated to producing what you want.

That includes original art.  I've got a long season at home ahead of me and would love to make you something at a price you can afford.  Meanwhile:

My Next Big Gig

One of my favorite festivals all year, now even more amazing than before.  The lineup this year is incredible.  I'm putting a lot of love (and guests) into this very special set...and have some tickets at a discount if you'd like one.