Obedient x3 is a lecture-performance on nootropics, psychedelia, artificial intelligence, and lizards, looking closely at Silicon Valley’s connections to Californian counter-culture from the 1960s.

In contrast to a “turn on, tune in, drop out” ethos, taking nootropics has gained popularity in the tech industry as “smart drugs” designed to unlock the mind to labor harder and faster. Nootropics include commercially available “stacks” and microdoses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. The lecture-performance engages a constellation of Californian drug references including Aldous Huxley’s writing on LSD, and the 1960s rock band The Doors fronted by Jim Morrison, nicknamed “the Lizard King.” Obedient x3 proposes AI as generative of a new psychedelic experience for the nootropics age, provoking hallucinations of how to see and control the future, optimize the brain for labor, and live forever.

The Obedient x3 lecture-performance is a companion piece to Blas’s Silicon Traces trilogy, a series of moving image installations that contends with the beliefs, fantasies, and histories influential to Silicon Valley’s visions of the future. This lecture-performance connects to The Doors (2019), part one of Silicon Traces.