We all want to know what’s to come in the future, but for local musician and artist Lucidbeaming and photographer Joshua Curry, the future is now, right here in San Jose. This Friday, the pair team up for a three-hour long public art experience focusing on the psychedelic and intergalactic of the world around us. The free exhibit at Art Ark Gallery will feature holographic collage, video, photography, generative and sound art, and give us all the look toward the year 3001 we’ve been waiting for. A perfect night on the town as we propel ever further through time.

Beacon
Fri, 6pm, Free
Art Ark Gallery, San Jose

San Jose-based landscape photographer QT Luong was born to Vietnamese parents in France and trained as a scientist. Luong was inspired to pick up a camera while rock climbing in Yosemite. His budding passion for photography would ultimately flourish into a 20-year trek through each of the 59 national parks, where he paired his highly specialized expertise with large-format field cameras with his devotion to capturing America’s natural beauty. Luong has compiled some of his best shots in an award-winning book, Treasured Lands. Images from the collection will be on display at Art Ark gallery through June 20.

Treasured Lands
Wed, 7pm, Free
The Art Ark Gallery, San Jose

What would happen if a bunch of freestyle rappers started a jam-band? It might sound impossible, but that’s exactly what happened to San Jose’s Rebelskamp. Four members of this rock, funk, avant-garde, free-form, genre-busting quintet (along with Kung Fu Vampire) were at one time the local freestyle rap crew, LSB.

“With that pressure of freestyle rap, you’re going to stumble, but the key is how quickly you recover from the stumble. We’re basically taking that freestyle rap pressure that we thrive on and we’re freestyling with our instruments,” says drummer Dan Gilardoni.

Their instrumentation is a fairly standard rock set up: drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and cello. The music meanders from slow, mellow, experimental swells to hyper-funky night-club jams, with just about everything else in-between. It is all 100 percent made up on the spot with no planning in advance, not even the lead vocals.

“We realized that we would stumble upon brilliance by not trying. That was the key. That was our formula, to have no formula,” says guitarist and lead singer Gee Willikers.

They may not sound like rap, but they don’t sound like a typical jam band either. First off, there are no solos. The songs are short and concise, unlike the standard 10-15 minute long songs other such bands tend to play. Plus their music takes shape more cohesively than other completely free-form bands. The songs actually sound pre-written, and people often refuse to believe they are making these songs up on the spot. With just about a year and a half under their belt, they’ve made up and recorded over 800 distinct songs, covering a multitude of musical styles, even within a single song.