Read Transcription

Speaker 01: Welcome, my friend. I know it is late for you, so let's jump into it. I am so excited that you are not at work today because just looking a little bit at Sleepr's information out there, I think you are going to enjoy a conversation with him. So let's get into it. Sleepr, I always like to just allow our artists to do a quick intro on who they are.

Sleepr: Cool. Thanks so much for a kind welcome. I'm Sleepr. I'm an Australian artist and I've been making art for probably the past maybe 20 years or so. It's been a long time, mostly experimental, and I've got an interesting story to tell. My art has been an expression of some really strange experiences that I've had growing up and pushed me to pursue trying to document some things from this place that I call the other side and document these visions. I'm a lecturer in real life. I teach at a university. I teach and run programs in the Bachelor. And I've got my Masters and did my PhD for a few years. So I'm academically well trained. But I'm most curious and most interested actually in the things I'm doing in this space. I think that holds much more potential for interesting and cool outcomes.

Speaker 01: Let's go. I knew as soon as you said that, did that not just pique your interest?

Speaker 02: Absolutely. Because if we're talking about interesting experiences from the other side at a young age, in my upbringing, my grandparents did Santaria. So that other side of reality is very much so. Something that's always piqued my interest just as much as I aspire to one day be a lecturer myself. So it's really interesting to hear how you've been able to bridge that over to art in a very unique and signature way.

Speaker 01: Let's go. I definitely think after SolCity Radio rise before grind show, a SolCity Radio art after dark show will probably be necessary. So, Sleepr, let's hit you with where it all began. You said you've been doing art for 20 plus years. I'm not sure how old you are. Is that about the whole life? Where are you at in that journey? And how did art get started in your life? Tell us about how it got there. You said you use it to explain this thing called “strange experience” on the other side. So let's start just jumping right into that.

Sleepr: I'm 22, so I've been doing it for 20 years.

Speaker 01: Wow.

Sleepr: No, I'm joking, I’m 35, so I was probably 15.

Speaker 01: Got you. I was like, we're talking to a prodigy here. Has a PhD at 22.

Sleepr: I wasn't really artistic at all growing up, and then had some really strange, visionary experiences. I really, at a utilitarian level, wanted to try to talk about and understand. And at one level wanted to understand them, but also at another level was really enamored by them and how beautiful they were. It really exploded a creative potential within me as well. So it just started experimenting and playing with making imagery, not too much physical drawing. I was always a digital artist and playing in 3D software and playing in painting programs and Photoshop and illustrator. And it was one of the things is I've spread across almost every digital medium, programming and projection mapping and laser shows, and well versed across the digital electronic ecosystem. But started maybe 15 and trying to document these strange images I was seeing and also began expressing a part of myself that had opened up. But it was making really shit work, to be honest. It was just really the gap between what I wanted to do and what I was creating was really wide, long gap, and it became very frustrating. So it began a long journey in figuring out what the hell was the problem.

Speaker 01: And what did you find to be the problem?

Sleepr: It’s a million and one things. And I even wrote a post tonight saying, the thing that worked last time won't work this time. So it's one of those infinitely moving beasts to navigate and understand. I then went just to go around the world a little bit. But I did a Bachelor of film. That was my bachelor degree because I was trying to make. And I was like, these were animated experiences. I'm going to make these moving imagery things. So I was doing experimental short films and experimental animations. And then I was like, “Wow, these look so bad. I need to just reduce the problem of complexity down to just a single image.” And that happened after three years of very mediocre work. I just realized the scale and complexity was too much, so just went down. I just want to be able to make one image that looks good and that was the pursuit. And it's still to this day, I'm very nervous of expanding really beyond that. If I'm taking the artwork seriously, because it's infinitely difficult to get just one image right. And art is fun, and art is an expression, and whatever you make, I have an utter respect for all artists who make anything. Even a scribble on a napkin is a beautiful tool. But if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, then you're required to understand everything out there, how people think, the psychology of people, how the world works, how the relationship between the cosmos and us here, and all of those things end up synthesizing back down into a single snapshot or a single moment. And then it wasn't like, “Oh, I needed to learn encyclopedic knowledge of art history and design and color and composition and form.” But then I needed to learn invention and creativity, and then I also needed to work on myself to be the container for the art.

Speaker 01: Let's hit that a little bit. Sounds like you think there might be a three tier level to getting into that zone of creation. So you have to learn the basics training. You have to learn form. As a photographer, you have to learn certain rules and how to use your gear. That's that basic level. And then you mentioned something that was really interesting to me. The next level sounds like is invention creation. You have to learn that. It comes in as something you have to develop over time. And then the third one was learning then to be a vessel kind to express that. Is that you know what I was hearing from you?

Sleepr: You really heard that really well. That was a great summary. The second one is interesting, and I find that it's really relevant even in this space, because it's a skill that everyone can keep working on. But there's few studies on the origins of invention in mind. How do you create something new and understanding that muscle, understanding how creativity operates in the brain? We're seeing it now with the Al bots, that it will be this synthesis of lots of different elements and how you cut and paste things and put them, how you remix things into new things, how you abstract out from one medium or one concept and transfer it into another medium. I can draw a tree, but how do I draw an angry tree? That doesn't really exist. Trees don't have emotions. But what if I was to infuse some other property into another visual property, and then that would suddenly transform it into quite a unique tree and that's a simple level. But then you can do that endlessly complex in infinite ways. So there are some tactics in that you can learn about how to think originally, but then a lot of it's experiential, where when you're practicing doing it, it becomes the sensibility of being able to push it further and how fast and how hard you push it is an easier quality.

Speaker 01: How did you as an artist start to develop this? Sounds like it could be a level that a lot of people maybe take time to develop and create, and maybe also sounds like there could be a lot of different journeys on this level. Learning the basics, probably pretty similar for most people. And not that exciting or sexy, but this level and then transitioning into the next level, how did you start to develop it? Because looking at your art and then just brief read over “About me” page and stuff, and obviously I missed the birth date because it's the first freaking thing and I missed that. You're very established in these two levels, so I'd love to hear how you started to find those.

Sleepr: One of the biggest issues people have is they have a rigidness about what they are perhaps trying to do or what their skill set enables them to do. When you can do a lot of offline work, the imagination doesn't need any software or any drawing skills at all. So it's a lot of mental imagery work, of rolling through limitless combinations in your mind's eye of what you want or could do. And it's about also tearing down your own boundaries and borders of what things are. So having really loose boxes and containers of things. I take photographs of bridges. But what is a bridge, and what is a photograph? And how do I get from a standing still start? How do I wiggle myself out into the infinite unknown? For me, creativity is like walking through a jungle. And most people are like, “We carved a path out. Can you see there's a carved path out?” Did you look under this rock over here? And what's behind this tree? And what if I ran up to the top of that tree and looked at a leaf? It's just so infinitely infinite. It's really hard to wrap your mind around and no one can. That's the definition of infinite. But there are literally infinite options for what you can do for art. And no one knows what's behind the rock. I think they said that in the matrix once, “No matter how many times you drop a rock, one day, maybe it'll just float.” Because I haven't predicted the future. I don't know what's under that. I don't know what's over there. And a part of that is about the vessel, about me and how I'm approaching the work and how I'm approaching life itself. That's what that third layer really means is that they intertwine and infuse together. Because if I'm stuck on becoming a success because I draw really cool gorillas or whatever it is, you could definitely become a success that way. There are infinite options even within guerrillas. And it doesn't even mean just don't do the mainstream way, do an alternative way. Because then people just start bashing themselves over the head with the pots and pans. And that's where you get really strange experimental stuff. Like, people are trying to push those edges. But cleverly, piece by piece, being able to explore infinite options is where the cleverness is in the application of these existential ideas.

Speaker 01: That is beautifully said and it works. Your message is so consistent through everything. I looked at your profile, like I said. And one of the lines that is jumping out to me right now with what you're saying is the part where you say, by turning inward unto himself, Sleepr has tapped into universal elements of the unconscious and expresses these with vigor, excitement and novelty. I feel like that is, as Scotty would say, your power. I read through this and then I see that power statement. And then I go look at your art and I really feel that. And then to hear you talking about going through a jungle of this unconsciousness and your art can be expressed in any way and the only way is by dropping the rock or picking up the rock. You never know what's going to be under it. So let's start to talk about your art just a little bit. And obviously very successful artist here. Congratulations. Let's talk about your Web 3 journey with that art. How did you get started in Web 3? What brought you to doing NFT’s? I know you have work on both ETH and Solana, so where did you start?

Sleepr: I had been making work for a really long time. I had about a thousand artworks and I tried to shuck everyone I could. And they were just these weird abstracted digital things that I thought were really interesting. And I made websites and portfolios of my work and kept posting it everywhere. And literally no one looked or no one even cared about it at all. I had given up multiple times and had stopped work for a number of years, just not made any more work. But I had still had my portfolio set up. And by chance, George, who's one of the forefathers of Boogle, reached out and was like, “I really love your work. I'll buy one if you come over to Sol”. And I thought it was a scam. I didn't know what the fuck he's talking about. And then he sent the money through, and I was like, “Wow, this is insane.” And then it was a really genuine reach out, I think you've got really amazing work. I was like, “Really?” That is insane. I can't believe you really actually liked it.

Speaker 01: I always love when artists talk about their first piece or first something sold. How did that moment feel when somebody reached out to you and was just like, I love your work? I want to buy it. I want to spend the hard earned money I've made and buy your art. How did that feel?

Sleepr: It's really hard to put into words the level of appreciation. It was like a thorn I just lived with for so long. This shame and burden of not being successful and thinking that everyone in the world was looking and hated it or that it was me. You just think everything, every negative thing you can about yourself, not even about the work and my failure and him to be really genuine about it as well. It was a really life changing moment, and it just represented the Pico bottom and the dip up towards new and new. It opened an opportunity for me, and he simply helped then to share the work. And then the work had to fight for itself, which I've been really most proud about as well. It's had to have legs and stand on its own. But that moment, I'll never forget. Very, very appreciative.

Speaker 01: I agree. It feels really amazing. And that is just such an uplifting moment. I love giving that to artists as well. So we're in the story where you've been brought over to Solana. You obviously are in awe. What takes off next? Is it you start putting out more art on Sol? You've found ETH a little bit, what spring boarded the next step? Because you had said the art got to work on its own and fight for itself. Where'd you go after this initial high?

Sleepr: It just released a first collection. I've got three collections that I've done. And the first one was the best 20 out of the 1000. So we just went and pick the top 20 and just drip them out in three or four a week. I think sometimes five auctions a week at the really early days, about a year and a half ago on Holoplex. And then eventually we got to the end of that 20 and did really well. Then a bunch of sales, and some traffic started to pick up. And then I decided to not tap back into that folder of work, but to treat that entire process as a formative and development period. And then I began work on the next series, which was discern, and I made another 20 works a couple of years ago, maybe about a year ago now. So that was really crucial. That was the first time I'd gotten back on the horse. After teaching in the Space and just having done so much development, I was like a bullet gate. I was so ready to and laser focused on the work that I would make, and it still took a little bit of time just to get the swing going again. And this is an interesting space to work with. You've got to feel it out a little bit. But once I'd started making work again and was making some of the best stuff I'd ever seen of my own work.

Speaker 01: That's great. And very happy to hear that you know the success and you've worked hard. I honestly recommend every artist in here to go check out how Sleepr has his stuff presented. Very clean website. It's easy to find. A lot of the things we've seen in tips and tricks here on the Friday shows. I see in your ad, branding, marketing, everything. It's very clean, very sleek. The art obviously pops off the screen, so just great job with that. You're really an example to a lot of artists with how you present yourself online and market this space. I'm curious to how you see yourself doing that. Do you think marketing, branding, building yourself up as something in this space is vital?

Sleepr: That's really interesting. You're probably the first person to really talk about that piece. It's interesting because I work at a design university. Branding is just really ground into us all. So got enough of an idea to just keep things simple and neat and tidy to enable the branding to be fairly invisible. I know consistency is really important, so just trying to be consistent. It doesn't really matter what direction it is. It doesn't matter if I had a rose as my key item or logo or pink in color. It doesn't really matter what the branding is, but consistency is probably the key. I'm trying to build a brand that is like the dark horse of Solana. That's probably the most vulnerable aspect I could say about what I think the brand is. I don't say too much other than the work, I'm rather quiet. I let the work speak for itself more than saying a lot of stuff online. I’m careful with my words, careful in my interviews. Have time for anyone. Some other people have said that you don't really hop on these things that much and you should come hang out more. There's a seriousness that's part of Sleepr as well. This is a pretty serious endeavor and not the Solana thing. That's not the serious business. I'm doing other serious business, and then Solana's coming along for the ride. And that's not a magic, that's not a theater thing, it's not a performance. It's just how the state and situation I'm in. My goals are basically to run a hallucination research institute and to buy property out in the woods and to have hallucination researchers on site and doing very serious work. That's about investigating the other side.

Speaker 01: Interesting. I'm so happy you started to bring this up because that was where I was going to transition into your brand being about this. You have on your about page, you have a research thesis right here. So super happy you brought it up and let's go into it. So your goal, hallucination research, hit us with all the details about that. I think this is going to be super interesting. And this is one of the things you guys could really unpack on the art after dark show. I think he would be super interested in getting deep on this with you as well.

Sleepr: I'd love to. It's a long story, but to keep it simple, it's complex enough. I had a bunch of DMT experiences as a young kid at about 15 and then continued taking DMT all the way up until now. I think DMT holds a lot of opportunities for larger mankind, for larger psychological and cognitive development. But it isn't just a random chemical or molecule. It's an endogenous one that's already within us. It's the key to creativity, and it's the key to imagination. It's the key to memory. It's the key to dreams. It's the key to a lot of normal things, that part of mental imagery. But if you ask anyone what's DMT like? We end up in a very problematic area. So I did my PhD on new scientific methods to visualize DMT complex visual hallucinations, and I found a bottleneck that's happening in psychedelic research. So if you go look up psychedelics, and psychedelics are becoming pretty common now. There's a lot of places that are legalizing it. There is a lot of magic mushroom and ayahuasca retreat centers, and there's a lot of stuff out there. If you look at the research, it's mainly chemistry or psychology or therapy or botanical, but there's very little work on what actually the experience looks like and what actually happens in there. Go look at some psychedelic documentaries online, and people start talking about, “I saw the snake coming out of the ground or wrapping me around these rainbows.” It's like, “Oh, that's pretty weird.” So what does that mean? And just always ends up an unknown. And we really don't even have the tools to begin to analyze those types of things, let alone have accurate documentation of what's happening on this other side. And so then when you go look at, how can we document these things? It's very difficult. There are no tools. We have microscopes to go look down at the small things. We have X-rays to look down into different layers of stuff. We have telescopes. We have cameras and binoculars. There's all sorts of different lenses to view things, but we cannot peer inside into the mental imagery plane. And what happens is you have this experience and then you come back and you're like, “Wow, I saw this snake and the rainbow.” And then you go, “Did you see the same thing?” And maybe with snakes and rainbows it's a little bit easier because they're known elements. But if you have the experience, it's actually much stranger than that. There might be a snake and a rainbow halfway through, but it's a bit of a cliche. What happens is much stranger. There's way more crazy shit that's going on in those spaces, insane geometry and complex structures and really identifiable and clear elements. But language really fails at documenting those things. And so people then are just stuck with it in memory. And what it became clear was actually artists are the only ones who are equipped to be able to document these things. Their whole shtick is seeing something with the mind's eye and then transferring it into short term memory and then documenting it out into the physical world as a real world thing. That takes an enormous amount of complicated cognitive skills and artists have just become quite practiced at doing that. And, for me, it's a great opportunity for art. I think art 2.0 or the next chapter of art is where we're not drawing just apes and dragons and stuff that's fun, that we're using those skills to actually be explorers of this space that we're in. We don't all have to do that.

Speaker 01: I just want to hit that real fast. You talked about using it to your mind's eye to explore and to get that out. Artists are trained to do that, and it's awesome you said that because I've actually been developing that over this year, especially with abstract work like yourself. I've told the story plenty of times. I just recently went and saw dance. I love dance. I never really got into abstract art, but I went and saw this dance and it was abstract dance. And in my mind it just clicked like, if I'm viewing this abstract and creating a picture in my head of what they're doing and the story they're telling, I'm going to apply that to looking at abstract art. I did that and it's really changing the way I look at art. And so I think that's interesting that you talk about that. It's a skill that gets learned and can be developed, and as you do that, you can see more and more in the imagery.

Sleepr: Definitely. You abstract anything out, you can learn so much of the dynamics of a dance and see that in an artwork. I think that's the same through analogy. There's a great book called “Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking.” The only way we think of things is we find the common patterns, this essence underneath of something.

Speaker 01: What was the title of that book again?

Sleepr: It is “Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking.” And it's called “Surfaces and Essence” by Douglas Hofstadter. And it talks about that exact thing, surface and essence. So you're watching a dance on stage. The surface is, most people are just seeing two people run around and dance. But there might be an essence underneath that, and there's many different layers of essence. It might be an emotional essence, or it might be a dynamic tension of an essence. And if you can see and perceive that essence, then you can transfer that to other mediums.

Speaker 01: So how do you do that with your art, and how do you get into that state of mind where you can start creating a piece?

Sleepr: It's actually a great lead on, because I've often struggled with. Some of my works aren't exact replicas of the hallucinations I've had, but I still want to draw and make the things like that. And what it took me a long time to realize was I've had hundreds of high dose psychedelic experiences. And I've got infused inside of me, this essence of that space. I might have lost the details of last Friday night, but what I do have is enough backbone and structure to get there and then to know what is and isn't the umami or the essence of what feels like that space that I was in that very strange, unique DMT world. And so most of the works are in the real world. There are shapes and color in pixels, but what they're trying to do is describe and show a type of morphology, how shapes bend and warp around each other and distort. How I can see things in my periphery. So I might look at a work for a while and suddenly it looks like there's three faces wrapped up inside of each other. And then I look a bit more and it's gone. That's a bit like cloud watching. There's an illusion to the pieces as well. There's a splitting in super flat, so I only make works in super flat because most of the visions I see, how these hyper dimensional, very clean surfaced, three dimensional spaces that don't quite have gradient shadows. But I've got little black books of visions that I've scribbled. They're pretty poor scribbles after I have an experience, but they've got enough. I remember there was this, like this giant dead fucking toy in the middle and I was in this domed room like a fisheye, and there were patterns all over the walls. And then this guy was dangling all of these strange little baroque trinkets in front of me. That might be the memory of the vision I had then I'll try and translate that as the design brief into a work and keep massaging it until it has the essence of that space again.

Speaker 01: Beautiful. I do want to get you to talk about one piece in particular here that I really love. And then we have a couple more minutes here. We're going to start wrapping up, but I want to make sure we get at least one or two community questions in. But let's hit this piece real quick. Of course, I had to pick a Solana piece. The collector is MQQ. The piece is hiding in plain sight. And personally, for me, why I like it the most is because I'm still developing that mind's eye, and this particular piece seems to have some sort of structure to it and actually puts me in a scene a little bit and helps me then dive into the rest of the piece as I'm developing something more abstract, like some of your other pieces. So I'm hoping you could hit a little bit on hiding in plain sight quickly, and then we'll take a couple community questions here.

Sleepr: The balance trying to do that 3D structure with the 2D abstraction as well, it helps gently push you to be able to take the leap into seeing. I love hiding in plain sight. It's a beautiful piece. It's got these arched columns inside a temple. I remember just landing into a strange temple, and a bunch of these critters and creatures were coming around the different columns and moving towards me after they had seen me. So you can see they're peeking and hiding. The idea of the title is hiding in plain sight. But there's a very strange ultra-flat critter in the bottom left. There's a couple of critters flying through the air. In the first column to the left, there's a goofy cartoon, Tasmanian devil critter who's peeking around the corner in the middle. There's just an assortment of characters.

Speaker 01: You've definitely done that. And I can't wait to dive in and then one day be able to look at this a little differently each time I look at it, I think it's a really great piece, and I'm excited to look at more of your work. Let's hit a couple of quick questions. I think DFrag was up here first. DFrag, go ahead.

Questioner: Thank you. Such a cool conversation. GM, everyone. GM, Sleepr. You really tripped me out, especially when you mentioned the rainbow snake, because I literally saw a rainbow snake during one of my first DMT sessions. So that really hit me. I almost wanted to peer up, but I resisted because I'm driving to work. But anyway, I was wondering, Sleepr. Is there such a thing as a breakthrough piece? Because I know that with DMT sessions you may have these breakthrough experiences. And I was wondering if there's such a thing as like a breakthrough or if you would mind talking about a breakthrough experience that you had that might have been in the form of a session or in the form of creating an art piece.

Sleepr: Thanks so much, DFrag. I've seen a rainbow snake too. That's why I said it. And in Australia, one of the most beautiful indigenous stories is about the rainbow serpent. And there's another book called Jeremy Narby “The Cosmic Serpent”, where many cultures around the world all talk about this highly colorful serpent, a rainbow snake, a rainbow dragon, or whatever. And his thesis is that it could be DNA that you're peering at, chemical molecule of your own DNA structure. It’s just a little tangent. I dismissed the indigenous stories of Australia growing of. I don't know, I just never really got it. And it always sounded like they were just making stories up. They're like, “Oh, the rainbow snake was here in the dreamtime and it carved out the rivers in Australia.” I was like, “That's crazy.” Of course, it was the rain and the mountains that did it. And then I was sitting there in a tunnel in high dose DMT and all of a sudden over my shoulder, this huge rainbow serpent, just like a sine wave, just cruised in front of me and down the tunnel as clear and crisp as day. And I had no trigger or prompt of anything like that. I thought, “Wow, that's something. I don't know what it is, but I saw it.” So I really resonate that with you as well. And breakthrough experiences are really important. A lot of people have low dose mushroom experiences where they get wobbling walls and patterns come through a little bit in the floors and on your hands and things look a little bit strange, but really, really high dose DMT. When you have enough, it kicks through into this space that's completely inhabited and they talk to you like these entities literally just start talking to you and you suddenly have these downloads of information. And it is realer than real in terms of visual acuity. So it's so crispy clear. And, honestly, a piece is going up for options. Anyway, it's not really a shill, but the trickster’s room is a piece on exchange art and it looks like that space. It's just like blinding strangeness all around with these little beings that are doing stuff like I wrote in the description. There's a dead spirit in the middle being operated on. They're trying to do these twelve dimensional puns and like pulling jokes out of your spleen. It's just a really high strange space to be in. And if you don't have your wits about you, you can pretty easily lose yourself. So it's important to take it when everything's timed right in your own.

Speaker 01: Let's hit the kid real fast and then send you off so you can get some sleep.

Questioner: GM, Sleepr. Good to hear you. I didn't even know you were going to be on this morning and I saw it and I was like, “Ahh.” So not only are you my favorite visual artist, I've had a lot of conversations with artists. And out of all the people I've conversated with, I refer back to our conversations more than any. I quote you often just from things that I've picked up from you and learned from you in ways that you changed my thinking. So my question to you is, who's your Sleepr? Who inspires you the most or who's the best conversations you've had.

Sleepr: That's so sweet of you. I really appreciate it. There's a few artists who I really look up to. God, I forget their names right now. Jim Woodring is an amazing cartoonist. But there's a more interesting answer. I think I even said this once to George. But, Sleepr, to me is a really important mask and layer of identity in Web 3. And Sleepr to me is the person I needed and wanted when I was 15. It espouses all of the values of charging ahead and into the unknown and dedicated to the mission. Even for me, the person behind Sleepr, even though it's me as well. But for me, Sleepr is the one I'm looking up to. And most of the time I'm channeling. If I get enough out of the way, Sleepr comes through. We've all got a bit of Sleepr, whoever the version of that is. It's the higher self, the more advanced individual from where you're at now. So try and just let that person come through without that being too much of an ego trip. Like, my hero is myself. I didn't quite mean it like that.

Questioner: That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Sleepr, and great to hear you again and congratulations on all your success and I hope your next auction kills it. Much love to you.

Sleepr: Thanks. Much loved it. It's so glad to see you back.

Speaker 01: Take this last one my friend.

Questioner: Sleepr, it's been fascinating listening to you. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of hearing you speak. So it was definitely a great way to start my day. I'm excited. Looking forward to being able to bring you on art after dark, as I think is going to be a truly fascinating conversation for a variety of reasons. So my question for you now, before we get into the DMs about scheduling that, would you say that through your art you're documenting an inter-dimensional connection?

Sleepr: That's exactly it. It's a quality that's persistent beyond this dimension and trying everything I can to crawl back some of those artifacts. But one of the pieces of God is not from here. It's the key line is. The quality in Sleepr that people like and they want is not from here. You're absolutely right. Inter-dimensional is a great word.

Questioner: I love that. I think you're one of those rare individuals that the future is going to look back at you. And thank you because you are pushing us forward in terms of how we understand our relationship to this multidimensional experience we call life that we're barely scratching the surface of.

Sleepr: That's exactly is holding that mission really high, raising that flag.

Speaker 01: Beautiful. I know Hyrino is a booked man because his show is freaking awesome. Brickalicious, I'm going to break the rules just for you. I said one last one, but I know you got something to say. Let's go.

Questioner: Thank you, Mr. Patrick. I really appreciate it. Sleepr, thank you so much for coming into the right before grind. I really appreciate you being here, getting to know your story. I feel like I resonate a lot with you as far as taking psychedelics and trying to understand the waking self from those experiences. Something that I like to do when I'm on them is actually create. I'm a photographer, so I try to capture those artifacts in the real time from my perspective. Have you ever created under the influence? If you have, whether it's DMT or psilocybin or whatever, have you created under the influence? If so, how has it impacted you or your art creation, as well as the ability to bring those artifacts from the other realm to here?

Sleepr: That's a great question. Most people think that's how you can do it. But actually I found that I'm absolutely useless on it. I'm crawling up the walls with my shirt off. Have no ability to worry about Photoshop layers or some fucking technical problem. Timothy Leary wrote a paper in the late 60s called the “Experiential Typewriter”, and it was in real time document the DMT experience where if you converted every character on a keyboard into a really complex emotion, so maybe the letter t is streaming through a tunnel and you train yourself on this crazy typewriter to just tap keys that are complex. That was another way you thought about real time documentation of the thing. I've set up experiments with grids and artworks. And every time there's a really strange feeling of you're missing the point and you're holding on to very real world things here, and we need to depart, and you need to try to secure that memory. And then the real challenge is the problem solving of how do you document it back in whatever medium you're doing in real time later? I'm very jealous of photography in that sense, where you have the ability to capture something in an instant. I'm sure that would be a really beautiful way to capture some of those details.

Speaker 02: Thank you for that Sleepr. I really appreciate it. I got a couple of trips planned for this year, so maybe I'll connect with you and we can talk about a way that we can create an experiment out of it and create some tangible data for you.

Sleepr: I'd love to. Let's have a chat. Let's see what happens. Sounds great.

Speaker 02: We'll connect in the DM’s. Thank you so much. I really, again, appreciate your time, really love your work, and really appreciate and resonate with your story.

Sleepr: Thank you. Everyone's so sweet here. I really appreciate it and just stage to listen and welcome to reach out and have a chat about anything. Thanks so much everyone for listening.

Speaker 01: Thank you, Sleepr, we really appreciate it my friend, and glad we were able to pivot just a bit for you. Also, want to give a shout out to night man, who put me on to you. That is the power of the community. If you have somebody you want to hear, come up and talk. Somebody you're interested doesn't have to be somebody. I just find it could be anybody. So send them to me via DMs. I’m very excited about our interviews for the rest of the year. We've had a lot of great ones on SolCity and they continue to just get deeper and deeper and better and better.