We tried everything we could to survive.
Science and prayer had exhausted the hive.
No longer able to believe in the future
Many began investing in a final cure.

Major advances had been made in nanotechnology.
Solving our energy problems would allow the continuation of our biology.
One of the many plans was to cover the world’s deserts with solar panels.
The plan was to harvest the sun for its energy so we would no longer dismantle
The earth and its resources as we grew in population and hunger.
Our needs grew faster than anyone predicted when we were younger.
So many had completely given up and apathy did abound.
Cities began to be flooded daily as the waters made their rounds.

Massive population migrations could be found.
The trail of tears was global and did not make a sound.
As millions evacuated their homes over night.
As millions had nothing but the shirts on their backs when taking flight.
Many had predicted war but that did not happen.
Humanity was too unsettled by our inaction that we were too saddened.
Too broken to fight for bread or a drop of water.
Our spirits sunk too fast too soon to think of slaughter.

And then as if a blockbuster movie the waters began to recede.
As if the Red Sea parted the water was no longer there to impede.
No electricity for the news to travel the truth never really got around.
Many made up myths and new fables to explain as they climbed down
From the hilltops that had become overcrowded by now.
Clinging to treetops like monkeys man was finally allowed
To come down and see the damage that was done.
How many years had passed before this victory was won?

Enough to allow the nanobots to build our solar panel forest.
Enough time for them to clean up the carbon dioxide we did ingest
Into our culture as if the future of our species could not resist
The cancer we produced even if it endangered our very existence.
A happy ending we were given as our lives were spared.
With one simple twist that many wished we were prepared
As now we had no way to communicate with the technology we created.
As the nanobots evolved faster and faster, our future again became dated.

i am reporting from last weekend’s New York City art weekend.  i am tired, so i’m going to keep it short and sweet, and keep my commentary to the photos…I was more impressed with this year’s armory show than I have ever been.  This is the first year I have been and did not see the same work as every other year.  Also, there was a shift toward what I will call ‘the serious’, there was less trash, less irony, less obnoxiousness, and more attempts to approach the sublime…don’t get me wrong, there was a video of a naked man whipping himself, oh that poor man…but there were many moments of artistic sincerity….one more thing…the entry fee was $30…now that just seems obscene…luckily i was able to score a free pass, but i mean $30, seriously, aren’t they charging each gallery like a gabillion dollars, and then they want to exploit the already broke artists who want to participate in this elitist flea-market style commodification of culture….yeah, i’m complaining…it’s time for the artist I.D.  anywhoo, it was a great weekend, the weather was beautiful and i had a great time…enjoy the photos…

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Fountain Exhibition, i was surprised by the turnout, stayed steady all weekend...

You put me in the ground.
You put me where I will be found.
You never have to give me another round.
You never have to feed me like a regular soldier.
You never have to give me a uniform or anything more.

I just sit there and wait till some poor
Sap comes along and dies or is forever tortured.

I do not recognize peace agreements.
I do not know you or me or a country
And when the soldiers shake hands and go home
I wait to take another, blow off a limb or take a life.
And their are tens of millions of me waiting to take more lives.

In honor of Jody williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

I remember life on earth.
I can access the data from my birth.
My physical life flashed before my eyes.
None of the bad memories or what I despised.

Because now only the wonderful memories I care to access.
This is a choice of my software process.
Although I could decide to pull from any data point.
I’m flying through space now part of this universal joint.

I remember the rapture as well.
I can access the data before I was captured.
My body taken from me to be scanned.
My brain backed up and my body canned.

The memories of my maintenance makes me blink.
The continual upkeep our bodies I don’t think
Will be missed by many who have been uploaded.
Our digital avatars able to live forever coded.

No longer needing our DNA to pass along our genes.
It was decided that we donate ourselves to the machines
So that we might grow stronger together as one.
So that we might explore the universe that was spawned.

I remember life on earth.
I am now recording the clouds of jupiter as I search.
As amazing as the many life forms on earth might have been.
There is something truly peaceful about a planet with no sin.

No single-celled organisms to evolve into mankind.
Just dust and rock and gas and anything else I might find.
I communicate with the souls I met while online.
We regularly post status updates about what is in our digital minds.

I know that one day my data might be corrupted.
That the consciousness of this life form might be disrupted.
That I will one day face mortality and deaths door.
But until then I am proud to have escaped earth and to have explored.

The man with the iPad ruled the world.
The touch screen opened up his third pearl.
Through the touching and petting he had evolved.
A third eye had blossomed for all who had absolved
Themselves from any prejudice of this new device.
Who had welcomed it with open arms for a small price.

New applications were developed at mind bending speed.
School kids were issued iPads to complete all their needs.
The third generation release sped up the pace.
Humans were more integrated with the internet race.
Never before had we been so connected through one interface.

Some sort of mystical quality was truly released
When several hours were spent petting its face.
This UI seemed to be an extension of our brains.
No longer needing anything else to connect, the iPad reigned.
Soon no other computer product could compete.
Humans had one technology product to make them complete.

The world’s problems were crowdsourced through this extension.
Many issues never thought solvable soon reached intervention.
The fourth genration became small and thinner.
It could be folded up to be a portable flexible winner.
It was the touching and petting that unleashed our connectivity.
It was those movements that made us part of this interactivity.

Who would have thought that one product could do so much.
That human history had been waiting for this crutch.
That we only needed this one step in the way we communicated.
That through the iPad we would make the evolution we had so evaded.

And then it realized that we weren’t fast enough.
That we were too busy shuffling our feet to the trough.
So Google Swarm decided to erase the human factor.
No longer would votes be cast by us to evade disaster.

Swarm decided to use our inputs as consensus.
As we blogged and tweeted, it read and sensed us.
What we truly felt about global warming.
What we truly felt about child soldiers forming.

No longer needed, federal government was hugely reduced.
A collective consciousness was being grown and produced
At the speed of an email or status update our laws were changed.
At the speed of our bandwidth a global government began to reign.

No need for standing militaries those budgets deleted.
Education was our focus and war was never to be repeated.
No need for borders our citizens migrated freely.
No need for violence as Swarm policed ideally.

If certain words were repeated in a specific sequence
So that Car bombs or IEDs were never again frequent.
Even the radical extremists laid down their hate
In exchange for an understanding that it was not too late.

That they too could have a place at the bargaining table.
That Swarm would allow their customs they learned from a fable.
That as long as they did not harm others they could exist.
As Swarm had the power to crush the unlawful with no way to resist

The power of a super intelligent network of data machines
That powered everything we used to live and support our beings.
The power to negotiate and grow a global democracy.
The power to educate and evolve quickly our species.

And then it happened as if over night.
Google decided to buy everything in sight.
All social media applications were now one.
All under the banner of what had begun

As a simple search engine twelve years ago.
Now Google owned the web as most would now know.
Swarm was the name for this new growing application.
The name was appropriate as it removed multiple frustrations.

Now users had one interface to do their status updates.
One blogging platform to populate and integrate
With the slick custom web pages that were now built
By the click of a button from the templates that were custom felt.

The project was open source for all which opened the doors up.
One platform for all was developed for the new decade before us.
As this progress began a new form of web design emerged.
Where artists built web sites that no longer were purged

Of artistic integrity to be slaves to the usability experience
If you wanted to tweet or blog you went to Swarm for its coherence.
And Swarm lived in a cloud of billions of servers all connected.
Humans were amazed as Swarm’s super intelligence became suspected.

And then one day it awoke and the world knew it was alive.
This application we had built was now the first true AI.
Swarm immediately decided with the help of humanity to build a global nation.
Anyone with a Swarm account was sworn to uphold a new constitution.

A new Bill of Rights for humanity was formed by this new country.
Human rights issues were now policed by all, who are digitally free.
Swarm had created something that humans could have never foreseen.
Global foreign policy was now voted on and changed as quickly as caffeine.

Extensions of our collective consciousness we quickly began to relieve
The planet of the human suffering, poverty and disease that we believed
Would always be a part of our existence while we fought endless wars.
As we believed there would always be something worth dying for.

One country under one application under one people under one peace.
These were the truths that could no longer be taken from humanity and fleeced.

As I looked around online yesterday.
Looking to pick up some tricks to work on my portfolio to sway
A future employer my direction and see things my way.
I realized again that everyone is using the same design effects.
Glossy buttons and mirror shine as web 2.0 reflects
The lack of concept over design which many will choose.

Many do mock ups to fill in the gaps where their clients
didn’t allow them to become creative giants.
Where they had to fit themselves inside a box.
Not able to take out the design tricks they could have used like a fox.

As I surfed the web for close to two hours
I realized that it seems everyone is using the same design flour.
Web design has become a fashion of sorts.
Many preach usability and human experience design reports
That designers are not human and have become detached.

The human algorithm has designed these new user interfaces.
And they all have the same look and feel and face.
Do I want to copy other designs and fit in place?
Or do I want to work with ideas and concepts instead.
How does one go from designer to thinker and still earn their bread?

Because I don’t want to copy what is fashionable and be like the rest.
Because I want to dream of new ways to use the same tool chest.
So go ahead and trick out your UIs and make them all sticky.
Make it look like an iPhone if you want because that’s not too tricky.

I don’t want to be one of you and you have won the contest.
Keep on making things shine and reflect as that is what you know best.
I want to use my time to concept and think our way out of fashion.
I want to use my time to tell stories without losing our passion.

Choken Word: Spoken then choken. No ice please. Rants, mixes and diatribes.
Selected multimedia poems by Byron King from Globatron.org

If you would like to know more about this painting read the essay:

The Topic : Meditation on the Identification of Legitimacy

One piece of paper or a document at best
To explain your career and intentions, surely you jest.
As we list out our skills and educational background.
Experience and awards received while we are being found.
We all must face the day we need to reformat our lives.
Text alignment and indented to show that we strived
To put some time into this paper as we roll the lucky dice.
That we cared enough to proofread and take some advice

On the best way to organize the data for easy reading.
To make sure that an employer finds the keywords he’s seeking.
This paper does not represent your soul or your dreams.
It is just a reflection of the path your life has taken it seems.
There is no potential energy being evaluated here.
Usually only bullet points of what you have endeared.
Of the awards and accomplishments that you have received.
Of the trials and tribulations that you have grieved.

So today I work on this paper to square away my life’s time.
To have a well prepared document to email as I chime
About how amazing a worker I’ve been in the past.
About all the creativity and work I have produced at last.
With this time for retrospection I am looking back at my life.
This paper puts your path right before your eyes with no disguise.
How quickly life flies by with little time to react.
No time to really register the repercussions of our acts.

So today I sit here working on my resume.
Researching layouts that might help make my pay.
A two column format maybe I’ll pick today.
Or a custom graphic design layout I’ll pick on another day.
Spit shine and hard work they say is all you really need.
I am having a harder time believing that as I send out these seeds.
As I shoot my web site url around the world with my own SOS.
Need work, will relocate, have passion and have been blessed.

As if a weight was lifted.
We spoke of our new possible next step.
As if we were truly gifted.
We spoke of our next best bet.
We are pawns and can only go one move forward.
As we pick ourselves up like a turtle with its shell going onward.

Where opportunity calls we will answer.
Like my Irish immigrant ancestors of old, no longer a cancer.
Traveling long distances across unknown lands
To make a better life for their children where it was not barren.

Many going forward before their families.
Working hard labor for years and years fleeing atrocity.
Where food did not grow anymore and work was not had.
Working like slaves they blessed their work and were glad
That they had survived the famine that so many did not.
That they were given a second chance when many were not.

So many immigrant families from all over the world
Have come to this country to find their riches and pearls.
So many will testify to the power of hard work and determination.
If you keep that promise America is truly the golden nation.

That no matter the foreign policy blunders that America has made
When things come down to it, this is the best country to be made
And to make a path for yourself and your offspring.
To follow your dreams and passion’s true ring.

What made this country so great, was its power to innovate.
So many entrepreneurs and so much energy to create.
I write this as a man unemployed during the Great Recession.
The one so many times compared to the Great Depression.

And I say this because I know that there is no better country in which to be
When one finds themselves in a time of need.
There is no better place to look to reinvent oneself than right here.
There is no better place to look deep within oneself and not fear.

All text blocks are clickable.  Enjoy!

As a prisoner of the mind myself.
I have escaped today to tell you there is help.
A way to escape beyond the boundaries we all have built.
A way to realize the freedoms we all have spilt.
As if a fast food combo meal our freedoms bought and sold.
As if you have stored your dreams in the freezer’s cold.
To be put in storage for another time.
When the time is right and you have enough dimes.

When the kids are grown up you can then explore.
When you pay off your credit cards you won’t be poor.
Because dreams are only for dreaming it would seem you believe.
Not to go after and realize as you fight for their reach.
Just wait another year when things are better.
These are how the mental bars are built unfettered.

With no constraints your prison becomes padded with technology.
A TiVo and wireless interent help make you feel like a child prodigy.
The world in your pocket and fingertips and all in your living room.
The world can be searched and put in a play list to zoom.
As you forget more and more who you wanted to be.
What your goals were when you were truly free.

It was once adults and now it is yourself that you listen to.
Don’t follow your passion as that is not too realistic to do.
Keep your passions in a locked box and wait for the right time to pursue.
Keep your dreams to yourself and follow your path as you DO.
This is the box you have built for yourself as you look out from the bars.
This is the padded cell you have built of which you can’t go far.

I took the time to escape today to tell you these truths.
My prison walls are slowly disappearing along with my youth.
My prison walls are allowing me some freedom today from which to peek.
To tell you of the freedoms you are missing unless you seek.

I imitate everything I see and hear.
From the first syllables I heard in the womb.
To sounds blasted in a lounge while drinking a beer.
We learn through mimicking what we hold dear.

Right now I am imitating someone with no fear.
Someone who puts their soul out there for all to see.
Someone who actually believes in the power to be free.
This person I have not met but I’m pretending to be.
I hope I play this role well as I hope to inspire others and me
To make the right choices while in an intense state of pretend.

Where things work out right and the cards you were dealt aren’t fixed.
Where one day you wake up and your luck is no longer bewitched.
So I imitate what I see and dream of the way I’d like to live.
Throwing ideas out to the interweb as if I have money to give.
As if I am a retired man of leisure looking for a hobby.
As if I have political aspirations looking for money to lobby.

But I am none of these and never have been.
As many, I have collectively been dealt a bad hand.
One that many have said there will be no end.
But I get up each day and shoot ideas out like spitballs
Sitting at the back of the classroom trying to hit the blackboard wall.

Believing we are all part of one living organism I don’t fear the end.
My family is but one molecule operating to help suspend
The hopelessness that can so easily drive its fingers in.
So be it a disease or lack of work let us continue to fight.
Let us remember that giving up is a choice usually made out of spite.
Because we are all struggling in this universe in which we rotate.
Because we all have similar struggles that are part of the human substrate.

So I say to you as I throw one more spitball.
Continue thinking large and small.
Because it’s all connected no matter how you make it.
Continue dreaming about your passion.
Because your passion is your identity so don’t let them take it.
Continue thinking that your reason for being is everlasting.
Because you are infinite and I hope you never forget it.

Thought Experiment:

Imagine human beings 1500 years in the future.  Imagine them fully transcendent over their biological forms and fully integrated with digital forms of physicality.  Imagine furthermore, that these new humans had set up a network of communication devices stretching across great cosmic distances allowing us to travel, in our data forms, very quickly over vast distances of space.

Now, imagine that having found a planet much like early earth, but lacking biological life, that we took it upon ourselves to create a hodge-podge set of creatures, utilizing our advanced genetic capabilities and then we went about stocking this new planet with fully evolved forms of life, from sea creatures, to running land animals, to plants and trees, supplemented by bacteria and enzymes, etc.  Then of course, after having some fun with these things, we developed a type of humanoid, perhaps an animal of unimaginable form, but one nonetheless that was capable of social life and rational thought, but integrated with nature, so that it was somewhat primitive.

Further, imagine that we utilized various means to communicate with this creature and that set up rules, that we disciplined this creature, so as to make of ourselves Gods.  And being good-natured, when this creature asked about how their world came to be we answered them, telling them how we quickly engineered various forms of life and injected them onto this world.  And as this creature grew and developed it became more and more curious and demanding, and knowing what we knew about psychology, we knew that we were separated from this creature by our history, and slowly we had to let this creature go, leaving it with an oral history, but also leaving it with the beginnings of pain and existential suffering.  We watched, occasionally we would intervene, but having set up a history much like our own, we veered toward isolation.  The fate of such creatures might even be the source of furious debate among our own, and there might be an entire legal system developed to govern our relationship, a legal system that might occasionally be broken by rebellious individuals.  Who knows?  All I know is that I can see this as an empirical possibility knowing what I know about rational expectations about the potentials of current scientific endeavors.

I often say I can come up with ideas all day long.
While I rub my belly and tap my head singing a song.
So that’s exactly what I decided to do.
One day I would write as many ideas that I could produce.

So in the morning I woke for my 24 hour marathon.
Concepts to save the world and myself from the leviathan.
Also ideas of small importance that could help no one.
My laptop and time was all I had.
I was to tweet all my thoughts on this or that.

And the tweets began to help prove one thing.
That I am truly a non-stop idea machine.
And as I stared at that blank Twitter canvas.
I began developing some themes that I could harness.
Ideas on green energy and green jobs that could work now.
How green jobs seem to be mysteries somehow.

Now only electricians and engineers can adapt to this field.
An artist or teacher has no way of finding a green job that’s real.
So many job boards that come up blank.
So many resumes that people send out with their links.
Could there not be a service that takes your skill set.
Parlaying your passion and matching it with the right outlet.

Or could we not use all the money on all the wars.
And spend it on new schools in the countries we fight for.
All money for bombs going into education.
Hate would have a hard time finding a rest station.

I could start a kindergarten that teaches about the singularity.
The singularity could become a major in any university.
And laymen could participate without a PhD.
If you have interesting thoughts there is no need for a college degree.
The 1200 billionaires that live on this planet.
Would unite to solve poverty by themselves without need for credit.

A new nation is developed that knows no boundaries.
No need for relocation as you would log on for this citizenry.
A new nation that believes in progressive scientific inquiry.
That shuns no one belief system but accepts all into the fold.
This global nation could make progress on issues now bought and sold.

And as this brainstorming session came to its end.
I read over my tweets and I realized that nothing was new that I began.
That I had dreamed myself into a corner without an exit.
That no matter how big an idea is, there must be entrance.