Back on Tour, BioHorror, DeepFakes, Cosmic Evolution, Psychedelic Therapy, World Travel & Space Exploration

I'll keep this brief.

In summer 2017 I wrote a story about how AI would change the very nature of reality. I shared it with some friends and read it as an episode of Future Fossils, but I never tried to get it published. Then it started coming true, and I knew that I had to get it out there while we still live in a world in which the categories "real" and "fake" still make some sense.

Now folks are sharing it on Twitter. I heard today that it's effective horror. I hope it helps prepare you.

Here it is:

An Oral History of the End of 'Reality'

(Artwork licensed by Giacomo Carmagnola.)

If you find non-fiction easier, here is an essay about our accelerating evolutionary arms race with deep learning AI fakery, and why it matters that we start to take these matters seriously:

Welcome to the End of Reality: Living in a #Deepfake World

(This is not actually a conversation between Jeff Goldblum, Tom Cruise, Ewan McGregor, Robert Downey, Jr., and George Lucas. Allow me to explain.)

–––––   New Artwork   –––––

Since most of you signed up to see new paintings and an artless update might be mild betrayal, here are the collaborations that I'm working on with friends across the country, after baby goes to sleep.

None of these are done, but they're all getting close. If you want any of them, let me know...

This first one is a 24" canvas with Gregory Pettit that we started just before I moved to Santa Fe:

These next two are small (16") collabs with Jamie Gaviola. 

She began them both and shipped them to me to complete:

I feel extremely lucky to be working with these artists, both of whom are not just masters of their craft but awesome people. Check out their other work!

(And, obviously, follow me on Instagram to see more updates as we finish these and other pieces.)

–––––   New Podcasts   –––––

I know I always say this, but it's true: Future Fossils just keeps getting better, and I am convinced these latest episodes are some of the best yet. Here's what you've probably been missing:

 

 

The Future Fossils Book Club just had an AWESOME conversation about Borne, Jeff VanderMeer's amazing postapocalyptic biohorror novel, which remixes "cute" and "weapon," "enemy" and "family," and makes us ask important questions about personhood and love and beauty.

Next up we're discussing VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts, so get in here and join us!

(Artwork licensed by Pat Hughes.)

–––––   Upcoming Gigs   –––––

I haven't traveled much since I became a father, but if you're in Austin or Phoenix this month maybe we will see each other! I'll be playing music and giving a talk at Cosmic Music Festival in Mesa, Arizona on March 28th and speaking on complex systems and society at the SXSW Interactive party for EFF-Austin (March 14th) and hosting a live Future Fossils Podcast at The Technodelic Temple for Andromeda Entertainment (March 17th).

More info at the links below:

My First Painted Skateboard, Festival Photos, and What Inspires Me

"The truth, from my perspective, is that the world, indeed, is ending – and is also being reborn.  It's been doing that all day, every day, forever.  Each time we exhale, the world ends; when we inhale, there can be, if we allow it, rebirth and spiritual renewal.  It all transpires inside of us.  In our consciousness, in our hearts.  All the time."

- Tom Robbins

So!  Craziest summer of our lives so far?  I'm only twenty-eight but this year's cross between the energies of 1929 and 1969 has me singing the changes; regardless of what futures you imagine are on their way, everyone I talk to is feeling a massive shift in our understanding of social norms, relationships, and personal beliefs at the same time that rapid technological changes are reshaping our very definition of "human."  What a perfect time to be on tour working to inspire everyone to ground themselves in loving participation through these transformations!

On that note, my intense schedule has kept me from posting all of the new art and music as quickly as I'd like, but here are my photographs from Wakarusa, Desert Rocks, and Impulse Festivals over the last few weeks.  I'll continue to add to this album as the summer continues – for now this is the best way to get behind my eyes and see festival season as I do (minus the rain- and dust-storms).  Enjoy!

View the entire album on FB

Oh, and I painted a skateboard!  Picked up a couple of blank decks in Wichita during my move to Austin last fall, and this is the first of them – dedicated to my awesome skateboarding brother John Garfield, who wows all with his legendary skillz.  Click the pictures for a closer view:

 

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Yes, it's for sale.  I'm not sure for how much but if you want it, drop me a line.  This is a concept piece, not meant for skating – but the hope is that I can show this to a skateboard company and convince them to collaborate on something.  (Know anybody who'd be into that?)

On Creativity, Evolution, & Inspiration at SXSW:

Riffing at the New Basics Poetry Series

Watch on Youtube

For anyone who wonders what inspires me – or wants to see me at my jazziest, my friends at New Basics Poetry in Austin set up this cool speaking opportunity on their bus (aka guerrilla venue) downtown during South By Southwest.  I winged this forty-five minute talk about creativity, evolution, aliens – oh yeah, and my work – with musical accompaniment by my favorite cyberguitar recordings.  It's a DIY multimedia philosophy performance, as lively and spark-throwing as I could make it.

Upcoming Gigs

I'll be playing cyberacoustic guitar improvisations (folktronic prayerformances honoring the sacredness of each here and now) as well as making live art at all of these amazing events this summer.  These are just the festivals, though – I have more dates all over the country on my full calendar, here on facebook and here on my website.  Hope to see you out there!

New Paintings & Music From SXSW, Untz Challenge, Festival Dates

"Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love."
– Mahatma Gandhi

This one's a special SXSW-themed newsletter – even though that week was so productive it deserves more than one!

Don't let me give you the idea that the infamous South By Southwest in Austin every March is, like, the coolest party ever. Watching as an entire city mutates into a giant convention-festival (with intricate lanyard hierarchy) swarming with corporate sponsors and starry-eyed out-of-town wannabe rockstars while I was inside it made for one of the more stressful weeks of my life.

But it was also an amazing opportunity to get out there and do it.  So I did.  It looked like this:

Which was super intimidating!  But luckily, I had friends:

That's Chance Roberts and Chaeli Cardenas, two of the badasses who will be joining me on the Wakarusa Live Art Team this year.  With them and my friend, songwriter Luke Redfield, SXSW felt that much more like an insane week-long slumber party.

Anyway, I'll start you off with a couple of videos of my cyberacoustic live electronica - first, the romantic one, then the anthem - from my set with Luke at Hole In The Wall on March 13th.  I was busy rocking out, oblivious to the fact that at that exact moment, I was getting a parking ticket.  They'll make for good reading music while you absorb the rest of this newsletter.  (If you can't watch them from your email, try reading this on my website.)

Okay, so you're grooving on that, hopefully...time to hit you with this:

People, I am ordinarily a give-everything kind of guy.  I really only ask for help when the stakes are nuts.  And right now they are!  So I've made this another opportunity to give...vote for me in The Untz Challenge and then let me know – I'll hook you up with a free copy of my best cyberacoustic guitar album yet:

Help me play at

Summer Camp, Wakarusa, Sonic Bloom, & Electric Forest!

"If you are like us, then [in you] lies a yearning to discover something DIFFERENT and new, something that floors you, something that moves you, something that gets you excited to go home and download everything of theirs available online and to tell all of your friends about it...Michael Garfield could do that for us this summer."

– Sparkleberry Lane (interview link)

I'm now a nailbiting third place out of 100 in this national vote!  There's some stiff competition, but I know I can win this with the support of all of the people I've inspired in some way over the years.  (Hopefully that includes anyone reading this!  If not, please tell me what I can do better.)

You can listen to the track I submitted here.  Thanks in advance to anyone else who is willing to donate a whole minute of their time to help me out.  :)

And to be clear, I'm not just in this for me. I'll use my opportunity to invite hoopers, live painters, and other performers on stage with me. Success is supposed to be shared!  So please, vote.

SXSW Live Art Explosion!

And now, onto two of my favorite live paintings yet.  Because each piece was my constant companion through every waking hour for days, through the madness...

They're huge, so be sure to right-click the pictures for a better look.

Parallel Realities

30"x30" - paint markers on stretched canvas

original painting for sale – comment / declare interest on fb

11"x17" prints for sale – $20 + $5 s/h – email me to order one

Painted at:

2012 03 09 St Elmo's Studio - CODEX, The DMT RMX Party

(Sorne, Birds of Paradise, Something Fiction, Skytree, The Wave Farmers)

03 12 The ND (Eliot Lipp, Robot Koch, B. Bravo w/ Starship Connection)

03 13 Hole in the Wall (Luke Redfield, Rogue Valley)

03 13 Ruta Maya (Ocote Soul Sounds, Afrolicious, Ursula 1000 ft. MS.G, Cilantro Boombox, Hard Proof Afrobeat)

03 14 Stubb's (outside the venue, at the creek) (Fiona Apple)

03 14 Pure Lounge (Various Austin DJs)

03 14 Club DeVille (Tycho, Matthew Dear)

03 11 & 15 Studio

For the DMT RMX party that kicked off my first SXSW, I remixed two earlier paintings – "Many Worlds" & "Sound Pond"  – and ended up with something appropriately evocative of both a rippling pond surface and a cross-section of oceanic jasper, micro-universes captured in each pore.  It was a strange night, on the verge of spring only to be suddenly overwhelmed with torrential winter rains...the streets flooded, my car in amphibious mode on the way to the gig...hence the aqueous vibe of this piece.

For those of you unfamiliar with the DMT RMX project, it's an effort by my friend Mitch Schultz, director of the documentary, DMT: The Spirit Molecule.  He collected over 100 hours of interview footage for a one-hour film, and decided to release the rest of it into the Creative Commons so other film-makers and artists could remix it as they please – into their own docs, or music, or whatever.

It's a total pleasure to have connected to Mitch when I moved to Austin and to have been a part of their amazing launch party – you can find two of the tracks I played at that concert on my latest album.  Should give you an idea of just how intense that party was.

Right-click to view the process:

Right-click to view the detail:

Rainbow Dragons

24"x36" - paint markers on stretched canvas

original painting for sale – comment / declare interest on fb

11"x17" prints for sale – $20 + $5 s/h – email me to order one

Painted at:

2012 03 16 Doc's Motor Works (Black Box Presents – The Hannah Barbarians, ISHI)

03 16 Far X Far Out  (White Ghost Shivers, The Trim, Tea Leaf Green, ToasT)

03 17 Papa Tino's (Luke Redfield)

03 23 Flamingo Cantina (Weston Wimberly, Dak Androyd, ToasT)

It's the year of the dragon over in Asia...and I'm totally feelin' it.  After a week of sleep deprivation and bad traffic, something adrenal was welling up inside me – something fierce – and it erupted in this convergence of my paleontology training and my love for fantasy creatures.  Seeing as I didn't grow up to design movie monsters like I suspected I might, here we are living an alternate-universe approximation.

Not to mention that the Archangel Michael is always depicted slaying The Serpent, frequently depicted in dragon form, and drawing dragons is an integrative act for me, a resolution of my inner conflict between the spiritual and animal dimensions of my being – a marriage of the brain stem and prefrontal cortex.

Here's a bit more reading on dragons, for the magically inclined.

Right-click to view the process:

Right-click to view the detail:

 Other Festival Dates Just Announced

I have the honor of not only painting but also playing music and speaking at all three of these awesome events!  These are some of the most wonderful festivals I know of – overflowing with inspirational speakers and films, in addition to some of the grooviest musical acts I know.

AND they're all small – 3,000 people or less – which always makes for a more intimate environment, a safer space in which the potential transformations can blossom:

More soon, of course.  Onward and upward, friends!  Conquer your opponents with love...

Evolver Mixtape, The Untz Challenge, & 420 Painted Flatbill

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have some huge things to share this week – but first of all:  D'oh!  I forgot to make a list of all the shows I painted at during South By Southwest before I left for tour – so before I can share two of my favorite paintings yet, I have to get back and dig through my records for the details.  Hold tight on that – and in the meantime, here's a sneak peak courtesy of my friend Jenna Jasso:

Process pics of both paintings at various stages of completion can be found here and here.

And now onto some great news.  :)

Evolver Social Movement Mixtape Vol. I

Q:  What do Thievery Corporation, Tipper, Phutureprimitive, KiloWatts, The Nadis Warriors, Dynasty Electric, The Portal, Cualli, Greg Howard, and Michael Garfield have in common?

A:  We're all on the new benefit compilation I curated with my friend Annie Philo!

For the last few years, I've been a contributor to Reality Sandwich, an amazing online magazine featuring esoteric perspectives on our changing times.  Recently I was recruited to help them put together a futuristic mix to help support their online social network, Evolver.net.

Check out this lovely new album of music from, and for, the evolutionaries: a planetary mycelium of explorers, artists, and builders...neotribal, technoshamanic, trans-urban grooves for new humans in the next nature.

We believe in the gift economy and want to make this available to everyone...it is also an experiment in sustainably supporting a thriving transformational community, and requires your support, so please make a donation or become a member of the Evolver Social Movement.

"Acoustic instruments and organs, synthesizers and trance beats, guitar riffs and bass props; this mix has it all...
blended together perfectly for the sake of an innate groove."

- The Untz

(FYI, I'm not making any money on this project.  I'm just lucky enough to be involved.)

Please vote for me in The Untz Challenge!

I do my best to live inspired because it's the best way to be an inspiration.  The more I strive to show people the ways in which we are all participating in Something Greater, the more I feel it and live it myself.  The giving and receiving come together to form an endless braid.

So before I say anything else, the opportunity of a lifetime is before me I need your help.  Click the pic or keep reading for full details:

If you'd like to see me play for you and your friends this summer, please vote for my music at The Untz Challenge (or here's the contest page for those of you who aren't on facebook).

If I win, I get to perform at four amazing music festivals: Summer Camp, Wakarusa, Sonic Bloom, and Electric Forest. It'd be the culmination of over a decade of tireless effort to bring my music to a new audience of appreciators – and it'll be a great counterbalance, to offer my improvised instrumental prayerformances as a glen of peace amidst the raging grimy beats.

"Golden Hour," the track I entered in this competition, is one of my finer moments – you can listen to it here.

Not only will I give everyone who votes for me a copy of the entire unreleased hour-long "Ratatat & Sigur Ros in bed" set featuring "Golden Hour"...if I win, I'll also improvise a completely unique set at each festival, record it, and make that available for free to everyone as well.

"[Michael] is leading the charge in bringing a more human and soulful aspect back to electronic music."

– Jason White, aka Zympht

(I'll also give discounts on my prints to anyone who helps me spread the word.)

And I'm not just in this for me.  I'll use my opportunity to invite hoopers, live painters, and other performers on stage to collaborate.  Success is supposed to be shared and I want a circus up there with me if I win!

For example, here's a pic of me playing at the DMT RMX party during SXSW with Teresa Cantu doing live painting ballet (Listen to this on the Evolver Mix, if you're curious.):

I want to spend my life doing this.  Your help is HUGELY appreciated.  Like, "I'll never forget this" appreciated.  So please vote, and get your friends to vote...and let me know about it, so I can hook everyone up with those unreleased tracks!

Another "Dope" Hat

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I guess it was only a matter of time before this got literal.  Click on the picture for a closer view of all the sticky details...it's not like I really want to keep making these, but I really won't mind if you want me to do an encore in your favorite colors.  Just shoot me an email...

...and of course, there is still time to preorder the embroidered flatbill I did in collaboration with Grassroots California.  Details on that here.

Thanks again for your time. Don't hesitate to write, and have a beautiful day!