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Life Calling

Preserving our humanity in the Digital Age

THE INITIATIVE

Founded in 2021, The Life Calling Initiative responds to the increasingly eroding boundaries between humanity and technology in the Digital Age. Its fundamental mission is to both raise awareness and to develop educational strategies to help preserve our humanity in light of the encroaching digital landscape. The Life Calling Initiative explores the nexus of smart-technology and human behavior.

Life Calling Initiative functions as a non-profit organization.

As the tick to the flesh, the digital device to the psyche device. The remedy is a matter of Truth.

As the tick to the flesh, the digital device to the psyche device. The remedy is a matter of Truth.

JOHN MACK, 2021

VISION

The Life Calling Initiative aims to foster critical dialogue surrounding the ubiquitous and unmitigated use of smart devices and their algorithmic programs designed to capture our attention. It aims to empower humanity through a dynamic series of activations, campaigns, exhibitions and public programming, to help generate a more balanced, nuanced and thoughtful perspective for us all in the Digital Age.

MISSION

It is the mission of Life Calling to raise awareness, spark dialogue, convene thought leaders and develop critical education strategies to approach the Digital Age with thoughtfulness, balance and awareness.

One of the most pressing conversations of our time is about the threat that the unchecked use of smart-devices poses to our humanity.

One of the most pressing conversations of our time is about the threat that the unchecked use of smart-devices poses to our humanity.

JOHN MACK, 2021

VALUES

The guiding principles of this endeavor include the support for human autonomy and sovereignty over our digital devices and the algorithms designed to divert our awareness. Life Calling’s values are rooted in humanism, health—especially mental health, the right for privacy, physical connectivity, civil discourse, democracy, freedom from coercion, and self-expression.

JOHN MACK FOUNDER

Artist and author John Mack founded Life Calling as part of his years-long exploration of the increasingly slippery boundary between reality and virtuality.

A frequent speaker at conferences and universities on the subjects of technology, awareness and consciousness, Mack’s examination of these topics recently culminated in A Species Between Worlds: Our Nature, Our Screens, an interactive visual art experience in the heart of New York City concerning humanity’s current migration from the natural world to the virtual world. Running the entire month of September 2022, the exhibition drew a wide array of voices and featured diverse programming including talks and presentations, film screenings, and other educational activities.

Mack recently published Notes to Selfie: Bits of Truth in a Phoney World, a volume of thoughts and aphorisms. Mack’s collection of poetry, A Land Between Worlds: The Shifting Poetry of the Great American Landscape, was released in 2022, coinciding with A Species Between Worlds. Mack is a 2022 honoree of The Explorer’s Club 50: Fifty people changing the world who the world needs to know about.

PROJECTS

A Species Between Worlds

our Nature, our Screens

An interactive photography experience and month-long hub for the gathering of some of the most influential voices at the forefront of the battle to defend human awareness in light of the encroaching digital landscape. Premiered in NYC, 2022. (Future dates/locations coming soon.)

A Land Between Worlds

The Shifting Poetry of the Great American Landscape

Covering nearly fifty of the most iconic U.S. National Parks, Mack uses poetry, landscape photography, and an interactive augmented reality app to invite us into a deep conversation about the encroaching digital landscape, our attachments to it, and the uncertain fate of our nature.
Notes to Selfie

Bits of Truth in a Phoney World

A pocket-sized book of thoughts, contemplations, and aphorisms, Notes to Selfie addresses complex issues of human consciousness, asking us to question who we are the Digital Age. Philosophical, witty, concerning, and eye-opening, the truths in Notes to Selfie serve as simple cues to deepen our understanding of our humanity vis-à-vis the relentlessly encroaching digital landscape.
a101 logo

Awareness 101

A Crash Course in Human Consciousness

Awareness 101 is an academic course about the nature and modalities of human consciousness and how they are affected by the dominance of either our integration with the world of nature or with our surrendering to digital technology. The course delves into the varying levels of human consciousness as expressed both through the life of the individual and through the history of mankind as a whole.

COMING SOON

LECTURES

Freedom Matters Podcast

The Tools of Our Mind

Podcast Episode by Freedom Matters. Host and Producer: Georgie Powell

Freedom Matters

live on Apple, Anchor, Spotify.
November 10, 2022

The Slowdown Podcast
John Mack on Why Reality Cannot Actually Be “Augmented”

Podcast Episode sponsored by Grand Seiko

At a Distance / The Slowdown
live on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher
October 24, 2022
Yuval

Leaping off the Timeline . John Mack & Yuval Noah Harari

In Conversation

Awareness 1 on 1

Tel Aviv, Israel

April 20, 2022

iade masterclasses

Charting Paradise

Lecture

GLEX Summit

Azores, Portugal

July 2022

iade masterclasses
A Walk in the Park: Exploring the Truth of our Nature
Presentation
NYC, USA
April 2022
iade masterclasses

The inverse universe / The vertical homonym

Workshop

Lisbon, Portugal
December 2021
Coda Summit

Consciousness merges with the algorithm

Presentation

Scottsdale, AZ

November 2021

PRESS

Time Out New York
September 2022
This new Chelsea gallery show will make you rethink your relationship with your cellphone
Rossilynne Skena Culgan
“Called “A Species Between Worlds: Our Nature, Our Screens,” it’s a free exhibition running through September 30 at Skylight Modern (537 West 27th Street) that explores our relationship with our smart devices. The two-story show features photography and poetry by John Mack presented alongside a month-long forum with high-profile speakers, including Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and Yuval Noah Harari, the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. (…)”
The Observer
September 2022
John Mack Makes Art for a World Online Seven Hours a Day
Rachyl Jones
“When a prison gets bigger, it’s still a prison,” artist John Mack said of the metaverse. His exhibit “A Species Between Worlds” is at the Skylight Modern studio space in New York. (…)
The Slowdown
September 2022
An Exhibition Ponders Technology’s Grip on Human “Reality”
Jack Meyer
“In 2016, a stampede of people flooded the streets of Taipei, stopping garbage trucks and buses in the wake of their single-minded pursuit. What unified so many to disrupt the rhythms of everyday life couldn’t be seen by anyone outside of the crowd (…)”

The Village Voice

August 2022

Artist and author John Mack to debut his immersive exhibition and forum A Species Between Worlds: Our Nature, Our Screens in New York City this September
WRITTEN IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CHARLIE ASHDOWN

“Artist, author, and lecturer John Mack is to present his month-long immersive exhibition and forum A Species Between Worlds: Our Nature, Our Screens in New York City’s Chelsea district during September 2022. (…)”

International Business Times

August 2022

Life Calling: The Illustrious New Movement Tasked With Rescuing Us From The Tyranny Of Tech
IBT UK Contributor
“John Mack is a man on a mission. Having spent the last two decades working as a photographer in Mexico, France and most recently Spain, Mack is now swapping the photography life for an altogether different one. He has become an author, poet and campaigner during the inexorable rise of technology, who wants to wake up the human race before it sleepwalks into total digital enslavement.(…)”
The Explorers Club
2022
The Explorers Club 50
Richard Garriott de Cayeux
50 people changing the world who the world needs to know about (…)

2022 June

Life Calling presents A Species Between Worlds: our Nature, our Screens.

“An immersive exhibition and forum examines the intersection of humanity and technology.

Debuting in September 2022, in New York City

The Work of Artist and Author John Mack, A Species Between Worlds is an Experience Grounded in Technology, Photography and Psychology. (…)”

2021 December

Announcing the Creation of Life Calling Initiative

“The Life Calling Initiative was announced today in New York City.. It responds to our increasing reliance on technology in the Digital Age, and the various challenges this reliance presents to humanity. Our new technological tools may be moving us away from the experience of the natural world. The newly established Life Calling Initiative explores this nexus of new technology and human behavior. Its fundamental mission is to both raise awareness and to develop educational
strategies to best avert these dangers. (…)”

STAY IN TOUCH

To receive information about upcoming projects, please fill in the fields below. For other inquiries, please contact us at info@life-calling.org

    Life Calling is a project of the Giving Back Fund, Tax ID: 04-3367888, a non-profit
    corporation with federal tax-exempt status from the IRS under section 501(c)3.
    NEW YORK ©2022 Life Calling. USA. All rights reserved.

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