Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: Notes from InterPlanetary Festival • New Coloring Book Pages & Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

20 June 2018

Notes from InterPlanetary Festival • New Coloring Book Pages & Future Fossils Podcast Episodes

“Nations are Destroy’d or Flourish in proportion as
Their Poetry, Painting and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish:
The primeval state of Man was Wisdom, Art and Science.”
– William Blake

 

Last weekend I participated in one of the coolest festivals I've ever been a part of – InterPlanetary Festival was the starting pistol shot for the Santa Fe Institute's InterPlanetary Project, a new initiative to open up the esteemed complexity science think-tank's research and conversation about the future of our species to...well, the rest of our species.

I interviewed SFI President David Krakauer about it on Future Fossils Podcast Episode 75, and there will be many more interviews from SFI associates to come – and that's just it: this was the juiciest collection of brilliant minds I've ever seen come together for the purposes of celebrating something. And in this case, they were celebrating a new public era in which collective intelligence out-performs the ivory tower and we can start to think and work together on the biggest questions facing civilization – questions like, "How did life begin?" and "How can space exploration and sustainable stewardship of Earth's biosphere be pursued in synergy?"

This event gathered planetologists, science fiction authors, technologists, digital artists, and other genius weirdos together to entertain these questions as an annunciation of this newer, more inclusive phase for SFI.

I played concert of my own sci-fi-inflected songs – as well as offer something I have wanted to do for a while: live notes, projected on a giant LED screen on stage, during three panel discussions and one awesome concert. Inspired by Kelvy Bird's philosophy of "Generative Scribing," I wanted to go beyond merely taking notes on the panels to providing an additional idea channel during the talks to synthesize and surface additional insights.

It was a hit. Here are the results (along with my rapidfire live paintings from Rob Schwimmer's incredibly dope theremin and Haken Continuum sci-fi soundtrack concert):



I've been starting to put in maybe too much time on this coloring book project...making each page maybe too intricate, but naw, that's silly talk.

Patreon supporters get each page in print-friendly .jpg, .psd, and .pdf to suit your tablet/printer pleasure. Right now, $5 gets you access to all twenty pages and staying subscribed means you'll get at least a few more every month in addition to the podcast extras, music, and more. Thanks and enjoy!