An off-grid college in the Southern California desert, built from scratch every winter.
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.
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.
The campus, year by year. Photographs from Mars College’s own record.
The campus is plywood, metal framing and a large central solar array, with experimental dwellings raised each season alongside the vans and the RVs.
We call the main structure Chiba every 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.
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.
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: Freeside, Tool Camp, Co-Lab, and the one that was AI Camp until it renamed itself the Mars Institute of Technology, aka MIT. The camps like to change their names.
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.
Living on Mars College inspired me to imagine futures with my hands. That’s where the Little Martians came to life: a sci-fi world based on my own ceramic sculptures, merging ancient craft with every new AI technique I get the chance to learn.
Martian plywood is a great base for murals. Each year we create new ones, then they come down, and the following year we often recombine the pieces into new configurations.
At night the same walls stop being walls. Projection mapping is a Martian tradition, and it turns the paintings into portals.
It started as a fun unpretentious project during our Midterms project presentation back in 2021. I created a series of eatable sculptures. Sofy Yuditskaya, the Mars Midterms original organizer, loved the work and pushed me to serve the chocolate heads the following year as part of her wedding celebration. Since then, it evolved as a Martian annual ritual. Eventually we realized it was a kind of cacao ceremony and it became a moment for expressing gratitude towards the community.
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 and Bombay Beach Biennale.
Bombay Beach, a very curious little town, is a mile away from Mars. Its houses gave us water, kitchens, toilets and a delivery address. Mars was birthed by Venus, the house of our first year. Buying a house in Bombay is closer to a vow than an investment.
Saturn is my house in town, where I have personally hosted dozens of Martians. Together with the other Martian houses we have a growing Solar System: Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Vulcan and Jupiter!
We end each season with a massive art show celebration: Mars Electronica, and right after it the Bombay Beach Biennale. During the biennale, Saturn becomes one of the attractions.
The ambition is to bring people from outside the desert into the world we created together.
If our technology could one day take humans to live on Mars, how could it help us take better care of Earth?
mars.college ⇢The AI film festival ⇢The Mars College Substack ⇢What has been written about it ⇢