This project was very much approached like a musical album. You’ve heard about ‘album mode’ from hip hop artists, and if you watch their interviews you’ll see recurring themes in their conversations during that time. The talking points often coincide with personal things the artist is processing.
HYPERSPEEED was my first attempt at a cohesive project in terms of being vulnerable about my life, presenting it within a thematic visual range, and enriching the context with all at my disposal.
The Background
“Trying to live life at, HYPERSPEEED” is the slogan of this project. At first I believed it to signify the ability to live life ‘consciously’ and at ‘frequency’ unparalleled to subaverage life standards. Through the creation of the album I came to realize even more.
As someone who has spent 20+ years traveling the world - raised in a blue-collar broken home, that worked its tail off to ascend socioeconomic hierarchies - I’ve been fortunate enough to experience a wide range of worldly experiences.
In that blessing are the obstacles that we all face, heartbreak, anxiety, depression, death of loved ones, failure, humiliation, loneliness, etc; as well as some traumatic instances no person should be subject to. Those obstacles led me to a desire for self sovereignty… ie. a life lived at ‘hyperspeeed’.
I was obsessed with the idea of ‘enlightenment’ the moment I came across it. It sounded like freedom in concept form. Having no issue with detaching from things, I left everything to pursue this conceptual freedom in 2014. From 2015 until 2020 I traveled to four continents, multiple third world countries, and a fair share of the ‘blue chip’ cities like Paris, Tokyo, London, etc.
In this education of worldly affairs the only other thing I focused on was ‘consciousness’ (think philosophy, religion, science, spirituality, psychology, etc).
I began to notice patterns in the various substrates of socioeconomic hierarchies. I would see organizations, attitudes, ways of expression, architecture, conflict resolution, technology usage, and even public waste management amongst the corresponding strata. It changed my perspective on the malleable nature of a human, and thus the careless errors & repressed trauma I was weighing myself down with.
When COVID hit I became unemployed and moved in with family for the time being. It was a blessing in disguise, as it provided a ‘training ground’ to field test the personal philosophy I had been honing throughout the previous 5 years.
Two years of trial and error later, plus the discovery of blockchain tech and the broader non-fungible internet, I had a more grounded discipline in what it meant to optimize the various life lessons I picked up on the road.
Moving to the beaches of South Florida at the start of 2022 marked a new chapter in my life; one which would be solely dedicated to my creative career after a successful bull run in 2021.
Ironically enough, a bear market filling the calendar year was not in my plans, and I was presented another opportunity to field test my personal philosophy. Here we have the groundwork for HYPERSPEEED as an art project.
The Art
Some of the core themes I’ve picked up from the album in hindsight
Death
Beauty
Pain
Vision
A tight rope is a good analogy for ‘enlightenment’ in my opinion. I have experienced times where it truly felt like I was hand in hand with the universe, crafting moments to my liking as they came. This is when it felt like the rope was glued to my feet when I needed balance and unobtrusive when time to walk forward.
On the other hand, I have experienced times where it felt more like getting knocked out of the sky, falling into a giant pit, and burning in that pit for what felt like eternity.
Then there are times when it felt like both experiences were happening at the same time. This has happened more than I could ever imagine and is quite challenging to process emotional & intellectually. Thank god for art.
In this analogy, walking on the tight rope would be enlightenment (or living life at hyperspeeed), while falling off of it would represent living life in some sort of unconscious momentum. You are ‘awake’ in both instances, and both could not exist without the other. Yet one feels better.
The individual art works in this album are a colorful conversation about my time on the tight rope, pursuing a hyperspeeed lifestyle. Collectively, the album is a philosophy of sorts.
Pieces like I Made Sacrifices warm you with a sun like intimacy, massaging the eyes with an optimistic feeling of triumph after you’ve ‘crossed the valley’. While pieces like Ego Death pose more questions than answers.
The title piece Hyperspeeed is a representation of the enlightenment tight rope I mentioned earlier, but brings more context to the intensity of my endeavor. Imagine balancing yourself at the speed of light, while traversing a never-ending tight rope through infinity.
On the surface, I am incredibly pleased with the aesthetics of this body of work. Beneath the look of each piece, there is a story about some of the highest and lowest points in that arc of my life.
Pieces like Hellraiser, Aura Leak, and War Torn came from moments in my life that felt inescapable. While pieces like Fading Away, Fear, Belief, Pain, and Conscious Crucifixion play with contradictory themes of beauty and pain - an illustration of moments in my life that two polarities were intermingled.
At the end of this album I have new insight on what ‘enlightenment’ could truly mean to me. A new analogy is necessary for the next chapter, but the 7 years I spent on that cosmic tight rope were very fruitful.
To me, the journey of moving on to whatever is next is also what it means to be “trying to live life at, HYPERSPEEED.”
Experience the album in VR ↓
