The Mars College camp on the dry lake bed at dusk: the solar array, the pallet-rack building and the vans parked around it.
A place · 2020 to now

Mars College

An off-grid college in the Southern California desert, built from scratch every winter.

Since
2020
Where
Bombay Beach, California
How long
Three months, every winter
Power
Solar
01Why I keep going back

I see Mars College as a prototype for high-tech, low-cost education, AI applied for human autonomy, and ecosystem thinking.

What I have been most excited about in our current technological transformation is how it can have an impact on our physical world. We use AI to teach ourselves all sorts of physical crafts, by asking as many questions as we wish, then taking pictures of the process and asking more, so we can learn much faster about so many different topics.

We are very far from being a fully sustainable, regenerative system. We depend on the grid for water, food, deliveries. But we could aim in that direction, and eventually some of the Martian camps would get there, and then they could work as references, experimentation hubs, for truly self-reliant communities. Thanks to people like Freeman Murray and Sam Smith, aka Solar Sam, solar power is the main energy source used on Mars. We could use our local clay for many more projects, and I would like to contribute for that to happen.

02Seven years and counting

An off-grid college, built from scratch

A pop-up, off-grid intentional community and educational experiment on a dry lake bed near Bombay Beach, by the Salton Sea. Since 2020, each winter a group of artists, technologists and builders gathers for three months to build a temporary solar-powered village, and takes it down again in the spring.

It runs as a do-ocracy, outside the traditional academic system. There are no degrees and no tuition. Participants — Martians — share skills, run workshops on an open calendar, and learn about living off the grid by doing it.

2020. The Portal, the first structure
2020The Portal, the first structure
2021. The first pallet-rack build on the open lake bed
2021The first pallet-rack build on the open lake bed
2022. The village strung out below the mountains
2022The village strung out below the mountains
2023. Chiba going up, solar with it
2023Chiba going up, solar with it
2024. Spread across the playa
2024Spread across the playa
2025. Chiba and the camp around it
2025Chiba and the camp around it
2026. The muraled hall and the village ring
2026The muraled hall and the village ring

The campus, year by year. Photographs from Mars College’s own record.

03Life on Mars

Everyone teaches, everyone builds

Under the solar array

High-tech, off-grid living

The campus is plywood, metal framing and a large central solar array, with experimental dwellings raised each season alongside the vans and the RVs.

Chiba is the central building: a pallet-rack structure built each January and disassembled each April, rebuilt differently the next year. Since 2021 it has been gradually wired with AI — Discord bots that run the lights and the gallery screens, environmental sensors, generative displays — so the building answers its inhabitants like a living system. Then we take it down and teach it to be alive again next season.

A class at Chiba

Academics & workshops

The curriculum is entirely peer-taught, and covers machine learning, generative AI, creative writing, solar installation and bodywork.

Each season has a public midterm of project presentations and closes with Mars Electronica, a large art show where every Martian is welcome to contribute work to the main gallery at Chiba. Since 2023 an AI film festival has run alongside it.

The Martians

Community

Somewhere between an artist residency, a tech incubator and a commune, with shared meals, high-speed internet and sanitation handled cooperatively.

Over the years it has grown into distinct camps with their own governance: AI Camp, Freeside, Tool Camp, Co-Lab.

04My part in it

What I do on Mars

I have been part of the core team since the first season. Some of it is the unglamorous work a temporary town needs; the rest is this.

I

Little Martians

2020 to now

The Little Martians begin as clay, and much of that clay work happens in the desert. The heads are shaped and glazed by hand, then scanned and handed to generative models, where they learn to speak and move.

At the end of the season they come back as a shrine in the Chiba gallery, lit from inside, for Mars Electronica.

The whole project ⇢Little Martians World ⇢

A head, straight out of the glaze
A head, straight out of the glaze
A season of heads
A season of heads
And where they end up living
And where they end up living
II

Murals & projections

2021 to now

Most of the complex murals on Mars are mine. They go straight onto the plywood of Chiba and the camps, and they are painted knowing the building will be taken apart in April.

At night the same walls stop being walls. I projection-map onto what I painted, so a flat surface opens into the world the characters live in, and the mural and the projection are two states of one image.

The arches, finished
The arches, finished
Painting them
Painting them
The solar building
The solar building
A Little Martian on the mountains
A Little Martian on the mountains
III

Rituals

Since 2021

My signature is the chocolate head eating ceremony, which I started in 2021 and have run every season since. Little Martian heads, cast in chocolate, handed around and eaten by everyone.

IV

The Mars AI Film Festival

Since 2023

I started the film festival in 2023 and it has run every season since. Gene Kogan offers the computing credits and teaches the main AI filmmaking classes.

Every film is made by Martians during the semester — generative video, voice, music and story — and premieres as one reel, outdoors under the desert sky, during Mars Electronica at the Bombay Beach Drive-In.

The festival ⇢Where my own films have travelled ⇢

The screening, Bombay Beach
The screening, Bombay Beach
V

Hosting

2021 to now

Beyond supporting the project overall, I have personally hosted dozens of people in my house in town, Saturn. Bombay Beach is a few minutes from the lake bed, and Saturn is where people land when they arrive, or warm up when the desert gets too much.

A long dinner
A long dinner
The edge of the season
The edge of the season
VI

Art shows at Saturn

Since 2025

Last year I was finally able to focus on organising art shows at Saturn, and I would like to do much more of it. The ambition is outreach: bringing people from outside the desert in, and getting the work made here seen by more than the people who made it.

An installation at Saturn
An installation at Saturn
Between the lake bed and town
Between the lake bed and town

If our technology could one day take humans to live on Mars, how could it help us take better care of Earth?

05Go there

mars.college ⇢The AI film festival ⇢The Mars College Substack ⇢What has been written about it ⇢

All the art ⇢