New Music + Yoga Mats + Digital Art Time-Lapse + Future Fossils Episodes

Hello friends!  I've got a lot to share this time so I will keep the introduction brief.  

Before I shower you with new creations, let me recommend this episode (304) of the Mixed Mental Arts Podcast – in which we chat about the silver lining of epochal change and how we're going to organize our knowledge into wisdom in the years to come.

I had their host Hunter Maats on Future Fossils Podcast last year and we hit it off.  My episode on his show is some of the best two hours of conversation I've had in a while.

At any rate – I hope all's well with you, and shine my love like sunlight to you through that void across the screen.  Say hi if we haven't spoken in a while!  I'd love to hear from you and how it's going.  

love

Michael

New Music

Hi-Fi Downloads at Bandcamp & Patreon

Streaming at Spotify & Apple Music

I just put out one of my favorite sets of all time and invite you into its gritty, luminous realms...

Recorded live at 3 AM at the Tenth Annual Utopiafest's Guan Yin Tea House tipi, this renegade set was made possible by my friend's questionable Chinese mobile PA system.  (I found out later everyone could hear me play outside the tipi as they walked by, which provided a surreal soundtrack to the nearby silent disco.)

This downtempo quadrupedal trip from the cockpit of my acoustic-electronic starship is a celebration of the sacred hours and an invocation of the magic of a place and time, drawn down into the cozy weirdness of a psychedelic Sunday decompression on a gorgeous autumn evening...

(Cover art by my friend, the amazing Todd Norman Guess.)

New Digital Painting & Time-Lapse

Watch in HD at YouTube or Vimeo

Like with almost everything in life, fate dragged my lazy and protesting ass into the digital painting world eventually.  And lo!  It's wonderful.  I'm still just learning basic skills in Procreate for iPad, but here's an early piece adapting my technique to tablet stylings.  

Because the app will automatically time-lapse whatever you do in it, I can guarantee you you'll see more of these here, soon...

And because it's 2018, you can buy this piece on damn near anything:

 Art Yoga Mats Are Here!

I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for this.  Hop on over to Live Sankalpa and grab one!  

(I mulled this over for a while before deciding on this company.  They're serious about their quality; these are some awesome yoga mats.)

All Prints Permanently Cheaper

Exactly what it sounds like.  I used to sell my prints for $15 each and then it felt like time to give myself a raise...but nobody else in my generation got a raise, because of the recession.  If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they wished they could afford my art, I'd be a rich man. 

I want my art to be there for you no matter what you make, so I've returned the prices on my paper prints to what they were back in 2008, when I was truly awful but it didn't matter.

Also I've dropped prices on ALL canvas prints and ALL original paintings.  

Merry belated/early Christmas.

New Future Fossils Episodes

  

 

If you haven't listened to my podcast yet, now is a great time to dig in.  I have the next 12 weeks' of episodes recorded and post-dated and from here it seems the show just keeps improving on its mission to inspire great conversations on our place in the Big Story...

(Also, I am looking for new sponsors for the show.  Can you recommend someone who believes in the importance of the podcast as a medium for doing Good Work in the world, and wants to put their money where my mouth is?)

Upcoming Fun Stuff

Returning for my fifth year since 2009 to paint, speak about futures, and play cyberguitar.

Moderating a Sunday panel discussion on psychedelic therapy and consciousness hacking.

Playing cyberguitar, painting, and giving a talk at my friends' award-winning mini-festival.

We Begin 2018 with 1 Huge Collab + 14 Tiny Paintings + 3 Podcasts + 7 Digital Time-Lapses + 1 New Crypto Newsletter

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope your 2017 wrapped up with beauty, warmth, and generosity, and that your 2018 launched with peace and inspiration.

Updates For People Who Like To Read

I've spent the last month going hard on mostly-secret upgrades, just grinding on a bunch of overdue developments – including daily painting, learning how to paint digitally on a tablet, teaching myself to use a laser cutter, taping awesome conversations for Future Fossils Podcast, and immersing myself in the flood of news on distributed ledger technology (including Bitcoin and over 1000 other projects) and its potential to transform society.  

Now that we're watching evolution in real-time as it transforms society, it feels like time to put my evolutionary insights into practice and help make some sense of where we're headed.  Mapmaking's an art, and art has always felt like mapmaking to me.  (I hope the maps I make and share with you are useful and empowering!  What else would you like mapped?)

I'm also tinkering away at my first studio recordings in too long...the first new tunes will be on Patreon and Bandcamp before you know it.

So!  Some quick links – and then tons of new art and recommended listening:

ALL Poster Prints & Original Paintings PERMANENTLY Discounted

From now on, all of my 11"x17" posters are $15 instead of $20.  I've also permanently lowered prices on all original work.  I'm doing well enough and know that my art could be more affordable and easier to share.  I hope this helps you out!  Browse years of paintings here.

Crypto Reader Weekly Emails

Starting a weekly new email list to share digests of the most interesting links I find on cryptocurrencies and the future of a planetary digital society powered by distributed ledgers and other decentralized technologies.  Sign up here if that sounds interesting to you!

Coloring Book Pages & Digital Painting Time-Lapses

Posting numerous new time-lapse videos of my experiments in iPad's Procreate art app on Instagram.  Watch me discover a new way to render hyperspace!

Watch on YouTube

New Paintings!

Codex/Gnosis (or, The Magic of Reading)

36"x48" – oil and acrylic paint on gallery-wrapped canvas

Just polished off this new collab with Elliot Rogers & William Allan Ross, two of the coolest dudes I know in Austin.  This piece has been an epic journey, and to our surprise and wonder was given props on social media by Raja Ram of Shpongle AND the Dead & Company tour page.  

(We'll have canvas prints soon, signed and numbered in a couple different sizes.  Let me know if you would like me to send details on that, when they're ready.)

Check out my feed on Instagram for plenty of close-ups and shots of it in progress...

Here are a bunch of tiny paintings that I made – the first six 9"x12"s, the last eight 8"x10"s.  I plan to make a ton of these if you would like to order one ($120, s/h included).  Some of these are still available; some have already found new homes as gifts.  Click any of them for a closer look:

   

  

   

   

New Podcast Episodes!

This week I sit down with Jennifer Sodini (EvolveAndAscend.com) and Michael Phillip (Third Eye Drops Podcast) to cut through the technical jargon and discuss the economic, cultural, and even spiritual implications of blockchain technology.

Everything we took for granted is about to change…beyond Bitcoin and quick riches, there’s a new planetary culture based on the scalability of trust. This podcast explores what that means for you – and why so many of your friends think that this new evolution of digital money and contracts is one of the most important events of our lives.

This week – in a brazen display of anachronism – original Future Fossils cohost, electronic music producer, and sci fi aficionado Evan Snyder and I go deep on what we liked and disliked about Alien: Covenant, and speculate on how this film fits into the still-murky larger mythos of Ridley Scott’s expanded Alien universe. We get into atheist Scott’s weird fixation with the Bible; how the Alien films represent and handle philosophical questions about the relationship between humanity and technology; and why people from the science-fictional future ARE SO DAMN STUPID.

This week’s guest is my friend from college, painter David Titterington. He introduced me to Buddhism AND Gender Studies; paints extraordinary, sometimes-macabre landscapes you might call “trans-realist”; and teaches at Haskell Indian University in Lawrence, Kansas (thus has some interesting angles on the intersection of white and indigenous culture).

COME PARTY WITH ME!

Parting Thoughts

“I’ve heard that the dirtiest place in a Catholic Church is the holy water, because all these people are putting their hands in it. The new paradigm is that bacteria’s good and that strong immune systems are built by eating dirt. And maybe, the people that went to church survive, not because they’re in touch with some deity that’s protecting them, but because they’re in touch with each other’s a**holes! Even if it’s a church that doesn’t use holy water, you’re still in the same small room, breathing the same air, sharing bacteria that way.”

– David Titterington