Michael Garfield's Love Without End Tour Newsletter: digital art
Showing posts with label digital art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital art. Show all posts

19 May 2021

There is no path. The path is made by walking.

Traveller, there is no path
The path is made by walking.
Traveller, there is no road
Only wakes in the sea.
– Antonio Machado

Hey, everyone (weary smile). It's Spring, finally, and beautifully so. Some things are starting to feel like The Old Ways again and some never will. I hope this new work finds you well. I talk so much these days, I'll let the work speak for itself this time.

You can watch the time-lapse of my latest digital art explorations on Instagram, where I have also been playing the wonderful Chapman Stick almost every day, writing new short pieces that will fit the narrow format. It's an amazing instrument. It's kind of saving my sanity, lately. Speaking of which:


My most recent article to share with you, the first stabs at an essay for a compilation on the topic:

As artists, our improvisation with the dehumanizing algorithms of predatory surveillance capitalism is a kind of tango — an exploratory, open-ended, provisional, context-dependent, time-bound, blindspot-defined process of mutual adaptation. The economy — and the ecology of which it is a subset of dynamic interwoven agencies — is an evolutionary system, and evolution is improvisation via the appropriation of existing forms. The algorithms we design are just the visible tip of the algorithms we enact unwittingly, the action of distributed intelligence in a long, complex arms race with itself. The only way to win is to refuse the rules and act from true and nameless spontaneity.

Read the whole thing here.


My first concert in months! Freestyle explorations from within a tangled bank of musical electronics, far-out ideas, and intertwingled subjectivity, for your journeying pleasure. Live streamed on 2021.04.18 as part of the Mt. Tam Psychedelic Integration Jam, hosted and organized by Daniel Shankin, with a special live painting appearance by visionary artist Amanda Sage.

Download it for for free (or for tips) on Bandcamp or Patreon. Watch it on YouTube:


Also on YouTube: the full recordings from our recent Future Fossils Book Club discussions on Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and Distress by Greg Egan, two of the coolest books I've ever read. We went deep!  I love the scrappy and profound community that has clustered around the conversations we have on the podcast. 

Subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch future book club recordings or become a Patreon supporter to participate in them yourself! Our next call will be on May 30th to talk about Dark Constellations by Pola Olaixarac, and then in June we're getting the author on the call to talk about Eric Wargo's Precognitive Dreamwork and The Long Self (!).

Meanwhile, excellent Future Fossils episodes continue to trickle out every two weeks:


That's "all" for now. Thank you for reading and for being. Reach out any time. Be well...

Until we meet again, here is where I put all of the cool new music I discover:


And where I sell art prints and original paintings — proceeds go directly to feeding children:




16 February 2015

Love Takes Shape As Art & Music: New Tunes & Talks, Dinosaur & Mantis Art, New Gigs & Articles for Globalish

"Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of 'being and becoming!' That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world."

Happy birthday to Ernst Haeckel, born 16 February 1834, who coined the term "ecology" and as one of the most influential and insightful scientist-artists in history, an absolutely prolific illustrator, a romantic, and a visionary, I see him as a kind of patron saint.  And a belated Happy Valentine's Day to each and all of you!  I wouldn't dedicate my life to art and music if I didn't think that love's the most important thing worth sharing and the motivation for it all.  (Love is the feeling, Life the means, of Creativity.)

I have a lot for you in this one.  May it find you well...enjoy, and stay in touch!

love,
Michael

Neverland: Electronic Improvisations on Acoustic Guitar

My latest live album – and my last for a while – is the result of six years of exploration into pushing the envelope with the looper as a live sampling and remix instrument, turning the guitar, voice, and a sixty-pound pedalboard into a quadrapedal one-person electronic orchestra.

These 80 minutes were recorded over five months across the Western US and run the gamut from atmospheric psych-western scores to films that don't exist to glitched-out proggy slow burners.   Enjoy, and thanks for your support!

Fan reviews:

"Like walking through a cathedral being constructed before your eyes. Stained glass shiftin around and mutating with digital light statues."
– Chance Roberts

"'Hopeful' is so amazing! It made me tear up within the first two minutes and had made it into my top twenty favorite songs of ever by halfway through."
– Xandrie Sampson

"A great wake up soundtrack. Your music is so thoughtful, it would be amazing to collaborate with you as a movement artist..."
–  Nnedi Nebula

"Barney Was Real!" (Nanotyrannus lancensis)
12"x12" – Original Painting Available
Oil & Acrylic Pens on Artboard
Buy 11"x17" Prints ~ Like/Share on FB

Believe it or not, there really was such a thing as a pygmy Tyrannosaurus. Nanotyrannus stood about six feet tall and seventeen feet long – still a formidable predator by any modern standards, but more "ride into battle" size than "swallows you whole" size. While scientists can't be sure that they were actually purple, their close relationship to birds makes it likely that they at least occasionally broke out in song...and it's a fair bet, given their stature and dentition, that real life "Barney" would have loved children (probably several at a time).  And in related news, Godzilla Was Real.  ;)

New Art for Cello Joe
Graphite & Digital Coloring

It feels good to be back in the saddle with my Wacom digital stylus working in Photoshop...you can definitely expect more digital shenanigans from me in the months to come.  There's something truly meditative and aligned about working in this format; I found it super easy to get into flow with it.  Anyhow, Cello Joe is a friend of mine and a very talented looping cellist and beatboxer, and I recommend that you go listen to his music (all of it is pay-what-you-like).

My Talk from Gratifly 2014 on Entertainment As Social Action

“Only by realizing that you’re a robot are you able to reprogram that robot. And that’s where the divine invasion occurs. That’s where the choice enters this matrix of causative endless karmic billiards. That’s where the real magic occurs. And that’s the opportunity that we have before us.”

Find an hour to chill on this laid-back but heady talk I gave at Gratifly Festival last year...  The first hour of a longer talk – apologies for the abrupt ending, but what's on tape is still one of the more interesting festival talks I think I've given.  On technology, culture, and consciousness, and how art can be used malevolently as mind control or for the good of all as a liberating force.

(I go into these knowing the theme but they always go off in new directions I didn't plan, so this one is pretty different from my previous rants on the same theme from Art Outside Festival and Firefly Gathering.)

MG on the Project Bring Me To Life Podcast

This conversation with the super fun Project Bring Me To Life crew includes probably my best rant to date on the historical significance of visionary art, as well as a lot of lively banter on adventure and mystery (!) and things like my favorite science fiction, and how to live the life you love and still get along with your family...

New Articles for Globalish: Read. Watch. Awaken

At Globalish, we're offering a totally unique online experience exploring post-religious spirituality in an age of electronic media.  We share the most engaging videos that we can find and frame them each as lessons in non-separation – opportunities to practice how to live and breathe a path of practice that is not afraid to actually be a part of – even celebrate – our wild world.  Here are my latest articles:

Channel 1: Revolution

Channel 2: Travel

Channel 3: Art

Channel 4: Life

Upcoming Gigs

The first night of this new monthly event I'm facilitating at the exquisite Strange Brew Lounge in Austin was a smash success.  Exploring spontaneous collaborations between instrumental electronic musicians is a recipe for emotionally compelling and intellectually intriguing live performances – and next month's way-cheaper-than-it-should-be show is going to feature several awesome new musicians in addition to the crew who took us all to hyperspace the first time!  I'm excited to be part of this.


Still a ways out, with plenty of great things happening between now and then, but I'm happy to announce that I'll be playing music and painting at the new Luminosa Festival in Eastern Texas.  Its ancestor, Archaic Revival, was mentioned in the New York Times in an article on the transformational movement – and this one has a very juicy lineup, including Kalya Scintilla, Bluetech, Erothyme, The Motet, Mingo Fishtrap, Henry & The Invisibles, and more...

"I want to be free in the mystery of love. I want to be wild when the world begins again. I want to wake up and listen, be in love with my life and death. And I want you to be there with me. I want all the children to have enough to eat. I want all the angry men to destroy their own pain. I want us all to be happy and crazy and safe and real. I want everybody to be loved."

25 September 2011

What do acoustic guitar, hand-painted hats, and the science of fractals have in common?

"There will come a day when music and its philosophy will become the religion of humanity."
Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Music is everybody's possession; it's only the publishers who think that people own it.”
John Lennon

After three years of talking about it, I'm taking a leap of faith to more completely dedicate myself to a life of art, music, and performance philosophy...and finally moving from Boulder to Austin at the end of October.  If music is my religion, then Austin is Mecca, and this pilgrimage is the natural fulfillment of my faith.  Just maybe, it'll also be the next stage of my development as an artist in service to the planetization of human culture.

Between now and my official first gig there on 11/11/11, I'll be down in Austin for Art Outside Festival, and playing a few going-away shows in Denver on the 14th and 25th.  I've met a lot of wonderful people over my four years in Colorado.  Hope I'll see some of you out there!


While I'm getting ready to make the move, it's a good time pick up some of my original artwork at cut rates we can decide together.  I'm holding another art sale to help me fund this transition, and you can read all about it and browse the available paintings on my facebook art page.  Please share with anyone you know who's looking for some art to tie the room together...

In other, more gift-related news, editing the talk and concerts I gave at Burning Man is taking longer than I expected.  But while all of that slow-cooks to tender, delicious completion, I'm excited to share my latest live recordings, digital artwork, philosophy talk, live art video, and custom-painted hat.  Enjoy!


These latest live recordings strike a new balance between my jazz-inflected folk roots and more recent forays into improvised cyber-acoustic psychedelia...alternately tender and apocalyptic, it's a showcase for both sides of me: the performing songwriter and the hyperspace engineer.

Performed live at the extremely ironic Buddha Asian Bistro in Kansas City, Alive in the Zone of the Rose is a record of my attempt to transform the restaurant's hipster-chic spirituality into a genuine experience of the transcendent for a roomful of distracted weekend diners.  Did it work?  I don't know...but I got some good tracks out of it.  And an excuse to conjure up some intense new digital artwork for the album cover!

In the spirit of the gift economy, I make all of my music available for free.  Anything you can offer to support my work is greatly appreciated – even if that means simply sharing it with your friends.  Thanks for listening!


"If you ask three questions – 'Who are we?' 'Where do we come from?' 'Where are we going?' – any answer to those will give you a myth. You can give a Marxist answer, you can give a sociobiological answer, you can give a Christian fundamentalist or Moslem answer. So myth is basically macro thinking. Technical thinking is micro. It's saying, 'I'm a neuroscientist, I'm a geneticist and I'm not interested in answering the big questions.' If you step back and ask the big questions then you're beginning to think mythopoeically. Science is inherently mythic."

In this talk I gave at Tribal Convergence 2011, I examine the changing paradigm in modern science – articulating an emerging worldview that sees a fractal self-similarity between cells, organisms, and planets, and a correlation between the complexity of mind and matter – a worldview that highlights our participation in a cosmic superconsciousness which might eventually become a part of the everyday experience for humankind.

Inspired by poet and cultural historian William Irwin Thompson's "intellectual free jazz," this talk roams through chaos theory, developmental psychology, philosophy of science, and personal narrative to suggest a vaster world than any one domain provides...

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."

"As a poet, of course, I have a highly developed imagination, so I ask no one to believe in anything I write here."


My apologies for taking so freakishly long to publish this in our instantaneous culture, but here it is!  Working as live art director for Sonic Bloom Festival again this summer was so fulfilling – three days, two domes, and over a dozen artists made this one of the real standout live painting events of my summer.  Visit the video page for full information on the artists...

~ New Custom Hat ~

...lastly, here's the latest to show from this enjoyable new pastime.  Click on the picture to take a closer look at the layered design:

for Kyle Dietrich

If you'd like one of these, email me with your budget, hat size, and any stylistic preferences you have.  You can check out my full gallery of custom hats for inspiration...

~ In The Next Newsletter ~

• Full audio from my talk at Burning Man, "Evolutionary Transitions In Individuality;"
• Video from my forthcoming live album of Burning Man musical highlights, Rites of Passage;
• More hand-painted and digital artwork from the highest branches I can reach!