05/15/2026
I was the executive producer/owner of the Arise Music Festival from 2013 until its demise in 2022—and I am now in the same position for Wildoria, the upcoming festival.
I wanted to address some of the negative and confused comments we have received on Facebook recently.
--First of all, negative people are, way disproportionately, expressive online than positive people in this context. So thirty negative comments might look bad but, in reality, we have accumulated hundreds of new followers in the past weeks and received thousands of likes.
--Secondly, we are letting people know about Wildoria on the Arise Facebook because if you loved Arise, you might also love Wildoria, perhaps even more. So we are spreading the word. At some point, we will transition the Arise social media over to Wildoria. And we hope you continue to follow us but we understand if its not for you.
--Our logo art is, in fact, not AI but developed by an especially fast and methodical and talented concept artist who I already worked with. We went through maybe five or six iterations of notes and new drafts. He works with digital pens and paintbrushes to draft, and then refines the lines and symmetry in photoshop—a method that has been around for several decades now.
This makes perfect sense to me because:
*I have not seen AI do this level of work before with consistent results.
*This level of drafting is entirely within his skillset and imagination.
*And this person seems consistently honest to me.
*If you run this level of refined work though an AI detector, it wil give you a false positive.
*See the attached screenshot of sketches
He is paid and AI did not displace his job.
We understand people fear AI and for good reason. Its an amazing tool that threatens our livelihoods, our talents and even our purpose in life—and maybe even our existence.
I in part named the festival Wildoria because I feel people need less machine and more wild to deal with increasing onslaught of digital dominance and techno-capitalism in general.
At this point, we do not have a policy about AI, but will consider developing one. But in all cases, we mean to hire real artists who perform in reality—and support them, including live painters, dancers, musicians, speakers, thespians and etc.
Our logo continues to move through various iterations and in my opinion is unique and stunning and powerful in its form and symbology.
--We are sorry to disappoint some with the name of the festival. It makes perfect sense that if you loved Arise, you now feel hurt that we abandoned the name and then even did not use the similar name: Emerge.
We get that.
But at the end of the day, we did choose Wildoria because we love the name and we did not chose the other names because if we did, I, personally, could encounter some serious legal and branding blowback in the coming months or years.
We wanted to hit the frontier with new names, new ideas and live our time in the land of Wildoria without fear of lawyers.
--We hope we can make our social media engaging….so we encourage support, appreciation, feedback, challenges, corrections, debates, humor, questions and even some snarfy and mean comments. But we do not appreciate false comments meant to malign and defame Wildoria or spread false rumours. Sadly, this behavior can cause us damage so we have to control it….so we reserve the right to block and send you a letter in the process.
If you want to scream violation of free speech and censorship, the attached cartoon is my answer to you.
Or said in another way: this space is our community and if you do not have good manners and basic respect for the truth and other people, then we do not want you here.
--What is Wildoria? We have been running a teaser campaign over the past two months, to gradually reveal the identity of the festival. I think it kind of works? Or not? But very soon now, we will reveal nearly all of our identity but I can tell you this for now: I am about collaborating with great artists and engineers to design the total experience of the festival and provide our attendees with diverse and balanced experiences that awaken the mind and body and spirit.
We will provide awesome music from many genres but if you want giant stages all day, and all night long, then you have many other choices out there…..
But we encourage you to come with us to contribute to and explore into this world we are creating….we are looking for the pioneers of Wildoria.
Luke Comer