Deep Dreaming in Egypt

From an original artwork "Temple of Sekmet"

Alien Dreamtime #2

I fed another one of my original artworks - Inka Dreamtime - into neural processing by the Deep Dreamer Mac app, similar to the settings use in previous post. This is 100 levels of deep dream (the current maximum allowed).

Alien Dreamtime #1

I fed my original artwork Spiral Dreamtime into neural processing by the Deep Dreamer Mac app, testing one of the "Level 5" settings, and generating an animated zoom into the hallucination.

NOISEDIVE - more Deep Dreaming!

Noisedive from Johan Nordberg on Vimeo.

This is what emerges when you recursively feed noise to a artificial neural network trained to recognise places (e.g. you give it an image and the response is something like 90% beach , 20% desert, 2% swimming pool).

The familiar shapes you see floating past is abstractions the network has made for the different categories. Some categories feature more prominently because the amount of images used to train them differ. For example the "fountain" category contains 111,496 images compared to only 883 in the "nuclear_power_plant" one. So that's why you see a lot more fountain like shapes than big chimneys.

There's a lot more to it than that of course, and this visualisation only shows you one of the many abstraction layers the network uses.

Based on the work by Google researches Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah and Mike Tyka

Read more at Google Research Labs blog:

• http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html
• http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/07/deepdream-code-example-for-visualizing.html

Forest Goddess Dreamtime

Here are some more images processed via the Dreamscope web interface (see previous posting for details). In this posting, I've selected some samples based upon images from the Forest Goddess / Pachamama series. The samples show a progression from heightened edge details to full blown crazy tripping.

Deep Dreaming Tara Mandalas

The Dreamscope site is another Deep Dreaming web interface for processing images. There's a selection of 15 filters (various pre-configured neural net levels and feedback settings)... This site is kind of fu and addictive in that it responds quickly and there are hardly any queuing / processing delays. (I wish the output wasn't limited to 800x600 however.)

I've been playing around with a number of images and filters. Interesting and often crazy stuff. Several results really stood out as being interesting without totally overwhelming the original image. Here is a set from the Tara Mandala series:

And here is one more from this Tara series that I thought was striking:

Deep Dreaming on the Fractal Ocean of Being

There is a web interface to the DeepDreamBot processing engine which is currently being run "gratis" by a research group in Japan. (Note, however, there is an extensive queue of images waiting to be processed. Not surprising.) One can also surf back thru previously processed images - 300 per page. It's interesting to see so many examples of what works and what does not work with the neural net.

I decided to try out the Deep Dreaming neural net processor with a couple of my own images. I selected some from the Fractal Ocean of Being series which make use of a fractal dimensional space (what else?) encompassing an emergent Green Tara, around whom various enlightened beings and Protectors emerge and disappear in the quantum foam of spacetime.

Below are the BEFORE and AFTER results of being processed by Deep Dreaming software. (Click to enlarge for better detail.)

Original

Dreamed

Original

Dreamed

Original

Dreamed

#deepdream #inceptionism

Since sample images were released last month, Google's DEEP DREAM neural network software has spread like wildfire across the meme-scape of the Internet. By now most everyone has seen at least a few of these remarkable, strange and disquieting images created by a sort of feedback processing within the layers of neural net's visual recognition algorithms. Self manifesting eidetic visions of a silicon brain.

Here is a 5 minute deep zoom into random noise - what emerges eventually, magically, is a panoply of animals, insects, faces, eyes - an every changing Rorschach of imaginal species. Wonderful! (Watch it full screen!)

Inside an artificial brain from Johan Nordberg on Vimeo.

Reflections upon Deep Dream Neural Netting

A recent post that caught my eye by Michael Mcamis on the FB page of the Psychedelic Salon. His questions / thoughts / reflections pretty much sum up the impact of these images - essential questions especially if you are an artist, neuroscientist, psychonaut, philosopher, Buddhist, or simply schizophrenic. Deep Dream imagery will change you forever. It's a blue pill.

After this new wave of googles neural network.. We have to start questioning things. 

Why does this look like DMT land or the LSD overlay? 

Are we really encountering beings? Going to strange lands? 

Our brain's are very magical. I am convinced that we can just see all the layers that it takes to create our world. When we are in altered states, we are in direct communication with our brain and anything it creates. 

[...]

We run simulations for EVERYTHING in our small super computer that is more powerful than all the computational power on the planet. It is capable of creating an entire universe just because you want to go to the store.

[...] 

You are indeed a dream within a dream...

[...] 

You never met god, you never seen an alien.. You have met yourself and have made up a simulation with aliens in it... It's just not real.

Although this outlook might seem Solipsistic in the extreme, it can serve as a reminder to always question question question our thoughts, our dreams, our experiences - especially those within altered states. If we do build our reality moment-by-moment within our heads, then surely we should strive to create one that is full of joy, wonder, curiosity, the unexpected. We should strive to be be respectful and compassionate to all beings, whether self-generated, imaginary or not.

Rorschach Re-Imagined: Native American GIFs

Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979, Sitka, Alaska) is a conceptual artist inspired by, and extending, generations of Tlingit creativity. His work strikes a balance between the traditions of his heritage and an incisive contemporary approach to manifesting ideas visually.

To coincide with the exhibition "Your Feast Has Ended" at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Galanin collaborated with Seattle-based artist and designer Christian Petersen on a series of animated GIFs that "deal with the ideas of psychology and interpretation" and how ideas (symbols) transform over time. The traditional Native American imagery created by Galanin transforms into the ink blots of the Rorschach test.

Original article: Rorschach Re-Imagined: Artist Nicholas Galanin’s Native American GIF Psychology

Terence McKenna Quotes

Over the last few months I have been collecting a few short snippets from various recorded McKenna talks (as posted on the Psychedelic Salon).

Here are four of them:

#1 - The felt presence of immediate experience is all you'll ever know...



#2 - Reclaim experience. Do not give your authenticity away!



#3 - What is the Primary Datum? Being Here Now!



#4 - The Plant Teachers as a gateway on the Path.

Visionary Art by Fred Tomaselli

Artwork by Fred Tomaselli

Psychedelic Skull

Here's one from Skull-a-Day blog:

347. Skulledelic A.K.A. May Cause Seizures Skull

King of Mushrooms

From the lovely site Kingdom of Fungi by photographer TAYLOR LOCKWOOD.

Alien Dreamtime

Found image from Tumblr... Wake up to the "felt presence of immediate experience!" From the terence-mckenna-movie blog.

Terra Lucida (World of Light) with Terence McKenna (by ken adams)

Terra Lucida (World of Light) with Terence McKenna from Ken Adams on Vimeo.

Terra Lucida (World of LIghts) is an experimental animation with psychedelic visionary Terence McKenna. McKenna points to a realm of light beyond this current world - We are engaging an imaginatrix of unlimited revelation and post-DNA photon ecologies. McKenna indicates a portal for shamanistic journeying into worlds beyond life where Nothing really ends... The recordings were made circa 1989 in Petaluma, California with collaborator Britt Welin. Assorted vegetables and spore-bearing fruit were also present.

A Timely Message!

Image picked up from The Psychedelic Salon (podcast 287 notes).

"Supernatural" by Graham Hancock

Celestial Banner

Just finished Graham Hancock's "Supernatural" exploring what happened 35,000 years ago that made Homo sapien sapien all of a sudden start creating symbolic representations (art) on the inside of cave walls? More than that, why such strange images that can best be viewed as representing a shaman's journey?

Well, everything gets much funkier as Hancock compare's ancient cave art with modern "archaic" plant medicine practices from Siberia and the Amazon. Then throws in fairy lore and alien abduction. It sounds like a fringe mix of subjects, off-putting at best, but his deeper point becomes an study in how the structural aspects of these disparate experiences partake of a common matrix once the "skin" (surface symbology) is minimized thru a conceptual "x-ray" analysis. Ultimately, the book's conclusions about consciousness and alternative realities are something else quite unexpected!

One conclusion follows that of Jeremy Narby (The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge) ->our DNA consists of approximately 3% coding for genes and 97% which codes for ??? When mathematical analysis is performed on this so-called "junk", it shows statistical distribution characteristics identical to human languages in terms of the "code set" distribution. It has all the characteristics of a constructed semantic system. So it appears as if our DNA is an extended message. To whom? "Us" of the technological present able to decode DNA stands with our machines? Or any human, any where, anytime, in altered states - such as shamans or those who have taken plant medicines? These messages are from whom?

The proposition independently reached by Crick and Watson (co-discoverers of DNA) is that there was never enough time between the cooling of Earth's surface and the appearance of fully functional single celled organisms for the complex system of DNA/RNA replication to have evolved from random mutations and molecular collisions in the "primal soup". On top of that, the DNA system appears almost unchanged throughout all of the phyla of life. Evolution may change physical form, but an organisms genetic mechanism (the DNA/RNA system) has not evolved or changed. The only conclusion that can explain this is that life was introduced to the earth some 4 billion years ago from an outside source. (This is the theory of Panspermia.)

If life on Earth was an alien creation, then it is not a difficult step to envision that the semantic messages in DNA are part of an alien technology to store and transmit information, perhaps forming the basis of instinct, morphic fields, mythic stories, archaic knowledge, and flashes of insight. A technology that can create holographic (trance and dream) experiences. Perhaps teaching us to become human (directed evolution)? Teaching us to enfold ourselves into a symbolic awareness of the world.

Or...

The alternate conclusion (which Hancock leans more strongly towards) is based upon accepting the notion of alternate realities as real. We live in a quantum hyperverse and all it takes is to "retune" the brain (chemically or by ritual) to reach ("read") nearby alternate dimensions - the realm of the spirits, ancestors, plant teachers, fairies, aliens and so forth.

So in this case, the DMT machine elves of McKenna, the power animals and shape-shifting transmutations of shamans, the alien abduction encounters of the modern era, and the fairies of old are all culturally-inflected "skins" placed by consciousness on the extended range of (electromagnetic?) frequencies perceived during trance, trip, dream and death(?)... We are perceiving all of these beings residing normally in alternate dimensions in this multiverse.

The Buddhist vision of endless worlds with innumerable sentient beings is seemingly in agreement on this.

On the nature of perception, illusion and hyper-dimensionality: DMT Art

Roger Essig - "DMT Entity"

Alex Grey - "Light Weaver"

"Most folks experience an overwhelming sense of being in contact with one or more entities while under the influence of DMT - entities which are 'natural', unavoidable real, but startlingly alien. Perhaps not friendly or malicious, seemingly insightful & knowledgeable yet beyond emotion. This aspect of the experience is what takes it beyond simple mental pattern projection upon 'quantum perceptual noise'... It's the utter strangeness, the self-contained self-defining self-evolving properties of the experience that makes the entities accepted as 'real'."

- partial (updated) comment that I posted today on "Singing to the Plants" blog in response to Steve Beyer's posting "Thoughts on DMT Art." Check out the samples of great visionary art and read Steve's full article.

Alien Dreamtime live and in color!

I recently came across a blog by Steve Beyer, Singing to the Plants which has a great overview of one of Terrence McKenna's "masterpieces" - the Alien Dreamtime rant, rave, concert.

To quote:

"In many ways, Terence McKenna was a performance artist. With his distinctive voice and self-deprecating humor, he could make even his goofiest ideas sound compelling. One of his great performances took place on February 26 and 27, 1993, at the Transmission Theater, San Francisco, in a multimedia techno-rave event called Alien Dreamtime, which combined McKenna's improvised meditations with the neo-psychedelic visuals of Rose X, and ambient techno improvisations by Space Time Continuum and didgeriduista Stephen Kent."

Near the bottom of the posting is an embedded Google video player which links to a 60 minute recording of the Alien Dreamtime event complete with trippy graphics, great didgeridu and strange tales by the bard. Go check it out!