Night Blooming Cactus

And now for something totally different - some GIFs of cactus blooming. Pollinated by bats or moths? Another sort of dreamtime.

Echinopsis enthusiast Greg Krehel has a knack for catching these blooming succulents in the act. Original posting from Colossal. With link to Vimeo movie of "best of" this year's bloom footage.

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.

Tavis Summertime

It's summertime and the fields are full of life - flowers, bees, birds. Insects and animals of all types. And at night, fireflies. To celebrate this refulgence, I selected a few gif animations from Bill Tavis's tumblr site.

The first three are Texas Bluebonnet, a form of native Lupine. Is this what a bee experiences?

This one is some sort of Coreopsis or most likely, Gaillardia. 

And just so everything isn't all soft and fuzzy, below is a wicked thorny rose cane.

Animations from the tumblr site TAVIS.

More TAVIS Animations

To my inner eye, these animations provide a powerful psychedelic visualization of auric energy fields and the quantum 'thought realm' of consciousness.

The first one (above) brings to mind wading (trance dancing) thru different energy states or dimensions. Perhaps it shows a blessing wave?

The second one (below) reminds me of the power of healing touch (such as Reiki).

And this final one (below) is a half-toned variation on the healing hand. The previous version makes me think of Aboriginal Dreamtime or perhaps Navajo "Hand Trembling Way," while this second variant definitely reminds me of "insect vision."

Animations from the tumblr site TAVIS.

The Sap is Rising!

Well, it's finally Spring-like weather in NY and I've just completed my second season of making maple syrup by boiling down the sap from the Grandfather Sugar Maple tree at the top of my property. Thank you to the Sugar Maple tree spirit.

I found this animated gif on a unique tumblr site TAVIS. For me, this anim visualizes the rising of young Spring energy into the awaiting world. A fresh start for the new growing season. What does it remind you of?

Hypervision -- Spirit of Place

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Images from the same spot through one year. Audio captured at the same place.

Time-lapse speed-up of human perception yields a powerful sense of Mother Earth energies unfolding in a yearly cycle.

Consciousness, Indeterminacy, Reality Models, Shamanism, Psychedelic Medicines - oh my!

Terence McKenna at his best? Episode 426 ("Alien Footprints") of the Psychedelic Salon podcast is one of the most succinct raps by Terence McKenna on his favorite topic of hyper-dimensional reality and our highly evolved monkey mind.

“The truth about reality is that nowhere is it writ large that monkeys should be able to elicit the final understanding of it.”

Tara Variations (Dual Portraits)

These most recent Tara variations are created as actual dual portraits in one panel, rather than like the previous post describing side-by-side diptych panels.

Tara Variations

For the new year, I began a series of Tara portraits and variations. Here are a pair with floral offerings.

When output and installed for a show, one of the panels would be reflected (reversed) so that the figures are looking toward one another, like this:

Happy New Year 2015

Here is my New Years card for this new year...

Forest Goddess Variations

My recent Pachamama series got me interested in playing around more with the emergence of a figure from (within) the positive space of a veil of leaves. Here is a selection of Forest Goddess image variations including some calling upon her guise as animal spirit totem.

But a few of the Goddess variations I played with stand out in terms of 'hidden mystery' and embodied forest spirit energy. Check these out:

Offering Mandala for Pachamama

I've been thinking for quite awhile about Navaho healing sand paintings. As part of the ceremonial process, real objects such as stones, herbs, flowers and meaningful "trinkets" are incorporated into the visual symbology of the mandala. These temporary mandalas can often be built-up via layers, reminding me of a Peruvian shaman's medicine bundle offering (despacho).

Cut flowers are as transient as any ceremonial sand mandala when it comes to making "art", so I decided that I'd construct a digital version of a floral offering... using photos of actual blooms from my garden - in this case, Mexican Sage, Rose and Datura.

This is one of the images I came up with based upon what I had been making for the Pachamama series (showing her hidden spirit face emerging through forest leaves.

Pachamama Offering Mandala

Fractal Ocean of Being

OK, so I renamed this series from when I worked on the first image... As originally posted last January (1/30/14), I had been playing around with a new fractal generator (for iPad from Kai of Kai Power Tools fame) and got very intrigued by the idea that the infinite froth of space / edges within a fractal map might be a great visual metaphor for the for the unseen particle froth of the quantum realm. From that, it was a short step to thinking about the infinite expression of Tara throughout space & time as being like the quantum foam.

Below is the original image from this series and a follow-on images using essentially the same elements ('deity particles') but a different space/time foam.

Green Tara Emerging From Ocean of Being #1

Green Tara Emerging From Ocean of Being #2

This image (below) from the fractal series is a "close up" of Tara's energetic self-manifestation and blessings for all beings.

Green Tara Self-Manifestation

Dakini Redux

Early in December I had my 60th birthday. One thought that bothered me concerned what would happen to my artwork when I'm dead and gone? Would anyone really be able to trundle through endless directories of work on my computer to discover everything? True, a lot of stuff is posted on my various websites, but... So, over the holidays I printed out a bunch of my images and organized them into presentation binders.

Well, some older images bothered me greatly and I decided to go back in to rework them. Below is an example of the before and after state of one of my Dakini images. By removing a lot of the background (photo of a golden geometric pattern from a ornamental door) and remixing the figure's layers, I think the newest version is much more dynamic and allows the Dakini figure to be read better.

Dakini "before"

Dakini "after"

Visionaries Group Show at Blue Door Gallery

Several of  my Plant Spirit pieces are in the current show at Blue Door Gallery in Yonkers.

Sept. 6 thru Oct 11, 2014

Blue Door Gallery

13 Riverdale Ave, Yonkers, NY

914.375.5100

www.BlueDoorArtsCenter.org