My Burning Man Talk, "Evolutionary Transitions In Individuality"

"The challenge of the transhuman is to actualize our unique individuality within the much larger planetary collective...most recent usages of 'transhuman,' it seems to me, have forgotten most of this, and mistaken the 'transhuman' for the 'ultrahuman' – a kind of upgrade to the same basic model, still denying our connection to each other and the environment.   In my view much of what we call 'transhuman' these days – the technological enhancement of our already existing nature to cling to life and deny the role of death, for example – is, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, 'human, all too human.' It is an individual ego’s vision of evolution."

– Prof. Richard Doyle

A temporary break from visual art while I run off to Austin's Art Outside Festival this weekend and paint up a storm...in the meantime, enjoy some food for your brain and heart with my definitive rant on the evolution of our species beyond our current notions of selfhood and into a new planetary unity:

Evolutionary Transitions In Individuality

From the download page:

As electronic media and ecological catastrophe converge to unify individuals in a new planetary culture and identity, we can look back to the emergence of multicellularity, the advent of social behavior, and the appearance of syntactic language (all of which have occurred numerous times in separate groups of organisms) for insight on how humankind will make it through our own apocalyptic era.

This talk, given at Burning Man 2011's Red Lightning Camp, explores how converging crises catalyze organizational transformations biologists have come to call "evolutionary transitions in individuality" – and how this all applies to humankind's current global rite of passage.  Don't worry, we've been through this before...

(In the spirit of the gift economy, all of my recordings are available for free. If you are inspired by this talk, please carry on the spirit of giving by making a donation, or paying it forward with random kindness.)

For the more visually-oriented, you can watch the first ten minutes of this talk on Youtube:

A Philosophical Disagreement

If you resonate with and would like to join the discussion about the future of the human species, let me suggest jumping in on the comments thread for Jason Silva's recent blog at Huffington Post, "The Beginning of Infinity."

I don't ordinarily invite people to participate in philosophical disputes, but this is a special case: on the one hand, I'm honored to have been quoted by Silva alongside Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller, and Paul Stamets; on the other hand, I am horrified that my words were used to support his manic, uncritical techno-utopianism.  Silva completely ignores the reality that new technological power requires an equal evolution in human consciousness, if we are to survive these changes.  It's the exact naïve, power-enchanted hysteria that Disney criticized in The Sorceror's Apprentice seventy years ago.

Of course, I might be over-reacting, or just plain wrong.  Let me know what you think...

For those of you who feel like participating in the debate (or at least watching from the sidelines), I left my response in the comments to the article, permalinked here.

New Cyber-Guitar Video

And in music news, you can now watch me improvise "Mamma Gaia," closing track from my album A Million Anniversaries: CyberAcoustic Guitar For Lovemaking – which, by the way, recently topped 2,000 "likes" and is still completely free to download...

You can watch all six videos from the album in my new Youtube playlist for A Million Anniversaries while I'm getting the next series of live music videos from Burning Man ready to go.  Starting next week, I'll post a new video every week until the free release of Rites of Passage: Live at Burning Man on 11/11/11.  Lots of great footage I'm excited to share!

As always, don't hesitate to reach out to me for any reason.  Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week.

Inducing Synaesthesia, My First Mural, Burning Man Schedule, & More Hats

"Remember to ask the phrase, 'What do you need?' It's a powerful phrase that will allow you to find out what someone else needs and start figuring out who you know that can help this person. And of course, don't be shy in sharing what you need. You never know who that person is connected to, who could help you!"

- Taylor Ellwood

"Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive…then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman

In this recent article, techno-optimist and singularity-surfer Jason Silva succinctly outlines my job description:  "the creating and sharing of awe" via novel and evocative media recombination; "performance philosophy" in an age of collapsing boundaries and exponential creativity.  (You have to be in a state of wonder to share it...but luckily, the world provides more than enough wonder.)

This manifests in my work as electronic music for acoustic guitar, scientific illustration of psychedelic realities, and using science to challenge materialism...playing hopscotch across illusory divides in the intertidal zone between technology and spirituality, science and art, self and other, individual and collective.  It's how evolution works!  And it is the finest way to illuminate otherwise invisible connections, opening the mind to the lush poetry of existence.

Every once in a while I'll attempt this through the time-honored medium of the music video.  The brain automatically attempts to align what it sees with what it hears (Ever watch muted kung fu movies to techno?), and using music to accentuate the emotional undercurrents of the small moments in my life (the reflection of light on water, a flock of birds in flight) allows these moments to unfold and evoke the true mystery and grandeur of everything – what William Blake called "the world in a grain of sand."

So here you are...a tour of some small wonders I've witnessed on my journey, scored to apocalyptic solo guitar from this summer's festival bedlam:

watch/like/share this on youtube ~ download this track for free!

• The Road To Burning Man •

My first trip to Burning Man Festival back in 2008 changed my life.  It inspired me to live outside the rules I had inherited...to find better rules, and to treat the world as a playground, lover, adventure.  I wrote "Giving In To Astonishment," one of my most epic essays, there – and during the weeks after, while I was vagabonding around the luminous grit of San Francisco.

THIS year, I'm hitting the playa hard all week with music, live art, and talks on this year's theme, "Rites of Passage."  I'll be camped with an epic all-star line-up of event producers and visionaries at FractalNation Village (Android Jones' camp!), where I'll be heading up a live art team and managing the stage for some truly epic parties.  I'll be playing interlude music for an amazing speaker series featuring cultural icons and personal heroes John Perry Barlow and Cory Doctorow.  I'll be test piloting a new "cultural first responder" emergency music studio designed to be dropped into disaster areas.  I'll be participating in what is now an annual panel discussion with author Daniel Pinchbeck on the subject of art and artists in rites of passage.  And I'll be improvising a cyberacoustic score for this year's aerial fabric dance showcase at the magnificent Center Camp Café...basically, creative potentiation beyond my own wild fantasies, and I'm incredibly humbled and honored to be a part of it all.

If you won't be at Burning Man this year, don't sweat it.  I'll be recording everything to share with you soon.  If you are going to be there, let's meet up!

~ view my full Burning Man music, art, and speaking schedule ~

Whether you make it out or not, audio excerpts from my "Giving In To Astonishment" have been reworked into a Burning Man-themed musical podcast by DiscoPup that you can listen to right here:

"Assenza," by DiscoPup presents: Danceteria (featuring Michael Garfield)

• Ladies & Gentlemen, My First Mural •

Yeah, it finally went there.  I am delighted to share with you "Subterranean Windows," my first commissioned mural project for a friend's basement jam room and recording studio.  This was a rite of passage in its own respect: it was an initiation into working VERY LARGE.  Relating to a work of art is completely different when you can stand in front of it and it fills the entire space before you...I was going to go rainbow all over, but after laying down the first white layer I realized that it looked like light splashing on the walls and chose lacey detail over vivid chromatics.

Here is a micro-tour of the work...you can click on any of these images for a better look:

Subterranean Windows

• Custom Hats All Day Long! •

The custom hat thing is rolling right along, with two new designs that will likely become production hats by festival-scene mainstays Grassroots California (again, click for a better look):

for Ryan Connelly of Grassroots California

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for Ryan Connelly of Grassroots California

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for Sarah Hollington

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for Ryan Sandman

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If you want a hat like one of these, you know how to get ahold of me.  :)

The last thing I have to share with you before I bounce for the Black Rock Desert is "Atavism: Old is the New 'New'," my new article for trickster/genius/tastemaker RU Sirius' new technology and philosophy magazine, Acceler8or.  I'm a big fan of The Singularity and Transhumanism in general, but I have to poke fun at "nerd rapturists" who think that technological progress is a one-way street to total transcendence.  If you think time is a cyclical (or helical) affair, then you'll get a kick out of this...because sometimes, going forward means going backward.

Enjoy the read, and thanks again so deeply for your time and support!  I'll see you on the other side...