#the human imagination is powerful; i think. its impossible to separate from perception at points.

[trainingdummyrabbit]

☕️ ohhh goin to send smth i haven’t actually heard u talk a lot about before— the horror genre?

or if u wanna skip, i im putting my hand on ur shoulder… hii… multiverse? 🥺

ooohhh fun topic... i can't say i have much for the horror genre as a topic because well. its an entire genre, with entire subgenres. as well, im an immensely paranoid person and cant interact with it most of the time, so the closest thing ive got is the knowledge of a handful of pokepastas and a secondhand fixation on th magnusarchives.

it definitely has my respect though! it takes a great amount of skill to be able to utilize it well, and when it hits, it hits HARD. very few things can convey a message or emotion as well as certain things in horror. love it when it gets abstract and or psychological-- oh to find comfort in the things you cant explain, to feel Seen in that paranoia you thought was a burden for you alone. to communicate exactly what it is to the best of your ability and convey it across the threshold of human minds despite its abstraction. does that make sense? but i digress. more paragraphs to write.

multiverse is one of the best tools in narrative writing i think i have ever seen. at the very least, it's my favorite. again, difficult to express a concise opinion on because of how Wide and Vague it is, but it's so important to me as someone who joined this damn hellsite because of multiverse aus. if you know you know. something something skeletons. anyway.

it's something about taking familiarity and strangeness and just... mashing them together. about being lost in a world you almost recognize. its about endless possibility and the inescapability of fate-- or even the lack thereof. the overrunning statement of just... oh, isn't it so grand that we're alive? there's so many ways so many things could have collided, and yet here we are. aren't we so lucky to have what we do? what else do you think is out there? it's a celebration of what we have, a celebration of that which we make up. holding hands and pointing at the stars, drawing pictures between the dots. what do you think, what do you think? isn't it grand?

i think, at its core, its human nature at its barest form. to make a story, ask "what if it was different?" make it happier. make it sadder. what if we were different-- what if this person was just like me? here's this character i made to see our own happiness in-- what if they were like me? what if they were like you? let's put them next to each other. they can be friends. the intrinsic inseparability of multiverse and fiction, of the spontaneous human nature. what if, what if. let's make it so.

[goodbyenorthernlights]

some thoughts on white magic

From what I’ve gathered, Slayers, particularly the original light novel continuity, has had a somewhat haphazard approach to worldbuilding, with a fair share of making-things-up-as-you-go and retconning. This isn’t really a big deal imo, but it has led to some confusing bits. In particular, I’m thinking about “white magic.”

So in the Slayers continuity, white magic refers to spells that heal, protect, and can exorcize evil spirits. It is considered distinct from shamanistic magic (which is basically your standard elemental magic) and black magic, which is destructive and curse magic.

Now, magic in this setting works by calling upon the power of outside sources. Shamanistic magic calls upon the powers of vaguely defined forces of nature, whereas black magic calls upon the powers of the mazoku. From this, one can reasonably assume that white magic calls upon the powers of the gods, or shinzoku, the beings that are the mazoku’s antithesis.

This is not the case; it is holy magic that calls upon the shinzoku. Furthermore, holy magic is unusable in the part of the world Lina and company’s story takes place in, due to the events of the Koma War.

So what the hell is white magic? According to Hajime Kanzaka, the author of the light novels, it’s just another branch of shamanistic magic. This tends to throw some people off because in canon it’s still treated as something separate from shamanistic magic. So here’s my personal take on the relationship between holy magic and white magic. 

First, I imagine that, in-universe, the classification of white magic is still a source of confusion. White magic is mostly known for healing spells but also for things like exorcism, and I think there are a lot of arguments at the Sorcerer’s Guild about if this white magic spell or that white magic spell should actually be classified as astral magic or water magic or this or that, and that there may be some people in favor of eliminating white magic as a classification entirely.

In real life, after all, the taxonomy of natural things like animals, plants, planets, etc. often turns complicated and vague if you look into it. For instance, the term “vegetable” is not actually a real botanical classification. 

There is, however, a cultural perception of white magic as being separate from normal shamanistic magic and the reason for this is because white magic was originally developed specifically as a replacement for holy magic.

Recall the earlier mention of the Koma War: During the war, Shabranigdu’s subordinates specifically went around desecrating the temples of Aqualord Ragradia and killing her priests, as well as isolating the region within an impassible magic barrier. Once Aqualord Ragradia was killed holy magic became impossible to use and very few practitioners of that magic- particularly among humans- and records of that magic would have survived. Not to mention it’s a plot point that, even 1,000 years later, the mazoku Xellos is still going around destroying records of magical knowledge from that time period.

Prior to this destruction the tradition of holy magic likely served a very important cultural purpose both spiritually and practically and its loss would have been a serious wound to the people of the peninsula. There are a lot of ways people respond to a major loss like that and in my headcanon white magic was basically developed as an attempt to rebuild those lost practices and traditions, starting from the framework of what people remembered about holy magic and searching for an alternate power source for their healing and exorcism spells.

Of course, since it’s been a thousand years since the original Koma War, white magic has inevitably evolved from its original role as a specific replacement for holy magic. There are white magic spells that don’t cleanly map onto holy magic spells and there are holy spells that were basically lost forever without a white magic equivalent ever being developed. The average layperson is probably only vaguely-aware-at-most of the difference and connection between holy and white magic.

Still, the cultural perception of white magic as being of the gods has remained, along with it being commonly practiced by devotees of Cepheid and Ragradia. Technically white magic is neutral in nature but in society as a whole it serves the same function as holy magic and the associations that have become built into it (as well as the usual motivations of the priestly casters) are enough to make white magic repulsive to mazoku- creatures easily influenced and defined by thoughts- even if it’s not strictly antithetical to them the way holy magic is and was.

tl;dr “white magic” is holy magic in terms of how it’s perceived but technically shamanistic magic in terms of where it draws power from.

[pumpkin-pi-e]

News reporter who’s thirst for views causes them to get a little too close to the action. All Smite was never one to shy away from the limelight. He broadcasted his dastardly deeds for the world to see. If you wanted a close up, he’d oblige you. He’ll give the good folks at home some real entertainment. The sun might hide the stars, but that doesn’t mean they can’t shine. He’s going to make you into a star. It’s your time to shine.

Your greed made you too big for your britches. You’d flown too close to the sun. All Smite had no choice but to burn you along with this city. As so the idiom goes. Although you’d be burning in something different, you’ll be burning with lust.

“Don’t hide behind heroics and false self-righteousness. Views are what you wanted, aren’t they?” Cerulean pinpricks flick up towards you.

N-no! You were doing this to spread news! The people had a right to know, and you had a duty to deliver on the devastation wrought by this villain.

You remain silent. Those lips curl into a tight smile that’s amused and needlessly cruel, smug.

You’re furthering his belief. There was no such thing as truly good individuals. Even those heroes the masses liked to fawn over fell short. Humans are selfish by nature, and by default no better than he.

You can’t deny traveling closer than the other casters for more ratings, to get a better shot of the damage. However, that doesn’t mean you’re desire to spread awareness was misguided and tainted in something selfish.

“You don’t need those to make you feel better. Not when I’m going to do a better job of it. You don’t have to play pretend.” He purrs, kneeling over your hyperventilating chest. All Smite caressed your quavering thighs, petting you as is if you were but a frightened animal. “I can understand. It makes for better television. People love damsels in distress.” His tone is dripping in derision, concealing a snort. “And perhaps you want to hold on to your reputation.”

Your watery eyes plead up at him, begging him to stop with barely perceptible shakes of your head. His smile sharpens into something sadistic, something that held no sympathy for your plight, only revelry for your horror. His pleasure was your pain. It crinkles his eyes, narrowing them to slits. His signature grin is a rictus, baring his teeth in cruel mockery of everything a smile should represent. Instead of offering warmth, it chills you down to bone—living up to its namesake, striking fear in your overworked heart. “That’s what the people wanna see.”

“Please…”

“Again, there really is no need for the theatrics, but I can see you wanting to put on a show.” Your chin is seized by impossibly large hands, their grip is so firm you’re loath to imagine what his handshake is like. His eyes bore down at you, staring into you. They’re clear blue diamonds, pearls shrouded in darkness. A light in the night, yet this one was deceptive. It lured you in like an angler fish to your demise. So he could eat you alive.

There was no hope at the end of that tunnel, only death and chaos.

“You think-you think I’m pretending?”

“Aren’t you?” His return is casual. It sent you reeling.

He groans, long and deep—purring as his generous bulge presses into you. It’s size put more fear into you than his reputation ever could. “You think I haven’t noticed you?” He braced himself on his palm, sparing you his full of weight and being crushed under pure muscle as he slowly grinds into you. “Wherever I go, you’re always there.” Rough fingers trail along your skin. Bored of the clothes separating you from one another, your top is ripped in two by those very hands. He isn’t a selfish lover. He exposes his midriff, giving you a front row seat to muscles upon muscles and a peak at his buxom pecs; there’s a glint of silver, a hint of a nipple piercing. “You’re chaos’s cheerleader, documenting my handiwork. Tell me, does it intrigue you? Does it offer excitement from your boring nine to five?” All Smite’s powerful hips jut forward, bucking into you harshly. Your gasp is gladly received, paid back with a low growl of tribute.

“Don’t tell me you like the struggle.” Toshi laughs, feigned disbelief with a touch of delight. “I wouldn’t be too surprised. I’ll be your villain.” Lips demand of you, hard and unwilling to compromise. “And you, bunny, you’ll be my queen.” Your white coat will be stained red.

What is the point in all this, you ask? He really thought you’d know better. Everything had a reason. Even chaos has a mission.

“Claiming you. Corrupting you.” He’d do it for all the world to see—tainting that snow white purity you held as red as an apple when he planted his own seed.

Did you think he hadn’t noticed you? He had, although before today, he never turned from his wreckage to acknowledge you. In the sea of cowardly faces, yours stood out, the only one some might call brave, and others foolish enough to venture closer than they should.

He called it gluttony.

[Yandere All Smite films himself taking you, so that everyone can see how perfect his bunny is, he purrs over your cuteness.

All Smite fits that trope of hating everyone and everything except for his s/o.

Alpha! All Smite forcefully cuddling his frightened mate. He drops his full body mass on you, pinning you to the ground. Growling out a soothing purr, he keeps you there. It’s a gentle command to sit still. Toshi grins down at your squirming form, increasing their volume and depth until you’re forced to obey his whims. You want to tell him to stop, but opening your mouth would be like opening a bird cage. All the sounds you want to keep in will come flying out. You’d give him what he wanted.

Your obedience isn’t all he’s after. Deepening his currs to rumbling snarls, he forces the noise you’ve been smothering from your throat. Mortified tears streak down your warmed face as you purr in response to him. Toshi’s rumbles pick up. He knows he takes good care of you, you just seldom let him hear it.

[magpiemorality]

Virgil and Deceit (but mostly Deceit), a ramble by me

I got ideas for days about these boys, lemme tell you.

I already sorta touched on Deceit and Virgil a bit in the last ramble, but the connection between them and their huge difference to the other sides is just too interesting not to talk about further (and yes Remus is also different but for a whole other reason that deserves it’s own post).

So in the last ramble I went over how I think Patton could be responsible in his emotional reaction to his moral conflict for creating Virgil and then Deceit. Deceit either with, through or fuelled by Virgil’s power in some way (the latter I think is less likely as I'm of the strong opinion that a lot of Virgil's anxious existence stems from Patton feeding Thomas's insecurities rather than creating the anxiety himself autonomously and then passing it on to, in this case, Patton).

People in the fandom talk about who the opposites are of each side kinda a lot, creating these diametrically opposed pairs, and while I'm not sure that's entirely accurate and is kind of an oversimplification of each one individually; there is something to be said for certain sides being practically anathema to one another, but that’s the second topic I’ve mentioned now that I’ll get to in it’s own time. The subject itself however, implies that each side is created equal, and that now that we have 6 sides that each one matches up nicely. Which, well, they don’t. For one because there’s almost certainly more sides out there, and for two? Because not all sides are created equal.

Virgil and Deceit, for example, don't necessarily feel like sides of Thomas's personality in the way the others do; so much as a tool that interacts with that personality and is entirely influenced by the other sides, and just so happens to have developed into an entity of their own because of the other sides and Thomas's perception of them as separate parts of his identity (read: Patton’s perception of them as separate parts of Thomas in order to distance himself from them as parts of himself). 

What I mean by sides of the personality and not, is as follows: for Patton for example; emotions and morality (and the difference between those two things makes me wonder curiously if there's a head canon to have about two smaller sides merging at some stage...) are fundamental basics of any person, just like logic (in his base form as essentially education and knowledge) and creativity (essentially being original thought) are. I’d argue it’s almost entirely impossible to have a human that isn’t comprised of those three things. 

Deceit (who should really be named Denial, and my two cents here is that Daniel would make a great name reveal for him but that's neither here nor there) however, is what Patton put into place in order to both hide certain Anxiety-inducing parts of himself and keep Thomas convinced- for what Patton clearly believes is Thomas's own good- that he's a good person because he doesn't have those aspects at all. Lying to yourself isn't a personality trait in and of itself; but something quite different. In the case of the Sanders Sides series I guess we could consider him a lackey for Patton- his 2IC in maintaining Thomas's sense of inherent goodness as a person. I'm surprised Deceit wasn't more miffed by Patton's opposition to his job, and I have my fingers firmly crossed that they'll hash it out at some point. I mean really- even the Are There Healthy Distractions video was full of Deceit's handiwork- it's textbook denial to distract from an issue and take your mind off it. And Logan pointed out exactly how that can be good for you, right...? In fact; Logan in Dealing With Intrusive Thoughts went against Patton’s Patented Moral Compass quite a lot while pointing out what Remus was (just a part of Thomas’s imagination) and why he was only personified as bad because Thomas (and Patton) had decided he was (and no I’m totally not worried for Logan because I think he’s going to be the side to push Patton into dangerous self-reflection and force him to face his actions and consequences and therefore come under fire from Mr. All-Powerful... But that’s also for a different ramble).

Now going back a bit to pre-Deceit (if I was a better writer I'd have done this in order); Virgil/Anxiety was most likely formed early on when Patton started to emotionally react badly to being confronted by those parts of Thomas that morally he doesn't think he should have. He maybe took the place of a much smaller and weaker Fear (fear of the unknown, instinctive fear, survival instinct) that had been around for a long time as Patton distanced himself from his own conflict and brought it to life as Anxiety instead, and was just allowed to really flourish while Patton was fuelling him unconsciously (maybe a little bit consciously). And I'm so convinced it was Patton because why would Roman as ‘original thought’ be at all bothered by his own intrusive side at that stage? Why would Logan be bothered by anything internally when he's generally not that kind of emotive? Only Patton has the motive and profile to instigate Virgil's growth, and it's entirely reasonable to me that as Virgil got a bit out of hand, Patton took it upon himself to sort things out for Thomas. (Even as I'm writing this I'm wondering if its possible that Logan was involved, with his calm and blunt solutions to problems, that at that stage may not be as well researched and healthy as they are now... But I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he would have advised against it for Thomas's sake and must therefore have not known about the situation, especially with his track record of having Thomas face his own truths recently.)

And that's not even going into depth on Remus... Guess that makes Patton a real deadbeat dad, of three poor misunderstood Dark Sides. One a worrying mirror of the worst parts of himself (Virgil); one just trying to work hard to please him (Deceit) and one who literally doesn’t know any better and was given up for adoption away from his picture perfect twin. 

Gosh I hope they address some of this! :D

[dailytechnologynews]

The Coming Age of Imaginative Machines: If you aren't following the rise of synthetic media, the 2020s will hit you like a digital blitzkrieg

The faces on the left were created by a GAN in 2014; on the right are ones made in 2018.

Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues gave the world generative adversarial networks (GANs) five years ago, way back in 2014. They did so with fuzzy and ethereal black & white images of human faces, all generated by computers. This wasn't the start of synthetic media by far, but it did supercharge the field. Ever since, the realm of neural network-powered AI creativity has repeatedly kissed mainstream attention. Yet synthetic media is still largely unknown. Certain memetic-boosted applications such as deepfakes and This Person Does Not Exist notwithstanding, it's safe to assume the average person is unaware that contemporary artificial intelligence is capable of some fleeting level of "imagination."

Media synthesis is an inevitable development in our progress towards artificial general intelligence, the first and truest sign of symbolic understanding in machines (though by far not the thing itself--- rather the organization of proteins and sugars to create the rudimentary structure of what will someday become the cells of AGI). This is due to the rise of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Popular misconceptions presume synthetic media present no new developments we've not had since the 1990s, yet what separates media synthesis from mere manipulation, retouching, and scripts is the modicum of intelligence required to accomplish these tasks. The difference between Photoshop and neural network-based deepfakes is the equivalent to the difference between building a house with power tools and employing a utility robot to use those power tools to build the house for you.

Succinctly, media synthesis is the first tangible sign of automation that most people will experience.

Public perception of synthetic media shall steadily grow and likely degenerate into a nadir of acceptance as more people become aware of the power of these artificial neural networks without being offered realistic debate or solutions as to how to deal with them. They've simply come too quickly for us to prepare for, hence the seemingly hasty reaction of certain groups like OpenAI in regards to releasing new AI models.

Already, we see frightened reactions to the likes of DeepNudes, an app which was made solely to strip women in images down to their bare bodies without their consent. The potential for abuse (especially for pedophilic purposes) is self-evident. We are plunging headlong into a new era so quickly that we are unaware of just what we are getting ourselves into. But just what are we getting into?

Well, I have some thoughts.

I want to start with the field most people are at least somewhat aware of: deepfakes. We all have an idea of what deepfakes can do: the "purest" definition is taking one's face replacing it with another, presumably in a video. The less exact definition is to take some aspect of a person in a video and edit it to be different. There's even deepfakes for audio, such as changing one's voice or putting words in their mouth. Most famously, this was done to Joe Rogan.

I, like most others, first discovered deepfakes in late 2017 around the time I had an "epiphany" on media synthesis as a whole. Just in those two years, the entire field has seen extraordinary progress. I realized then that we were on the cusp of an extreme flourishing of art, except that art would be largely-to-almost entirely machine generated. But along with it would come a flourishing of distrust, fake news, fake reality bubbles, and "ultracultural memes". Ever since, I've felt the need to evangelize media synthesis, whether to tell others of a coming renaissance or to warn them to be wary of what they see.

This is because, over the past two years, I realized that many people's idea of what media synthesis is really stops at deepfakes, or they only view new development through the lens of deepfakes. The reason why I came up with "media" synthesis is because I genuinely couldn't pin down any one creative/data-based field AI wasn't going to affect. It wasn't just faces. It wasn't just bodies. It wasn't just voice. It wasn't just pictures of ethereal swirling dogs. It wasn't just transferring day to night. It wasn't just turning a piano into a harpsichord. It wasn't just generating short stories and fake news. It wasn't just procedurally generated gameplay. It was all of the above and much more. And it's coming so fast that I fear we aren't prepared, both for the tech and the consequences.

Indeed, in many discussions I've seen (and engaged in) since then, there's always several people who have a virulent reaction against the prospect neural networks can do any of this at all, or at least that it'll get better enough to the point it will affect artists, creators, and laborers. Even though we're already seeing the effects in the modeling industry alone.

Look at this gif. Looks like a bunch of models bleeding into and out of each other, right? Actually, no one here is real. They're all neural network-generated people.

Neural networks can generate full human figures, and altering their appearance and clothing is a matter of changing a few parameters or feeding an image into the data set. Changing the clothes of someone in a picture is as easy as clicking on the piece you wish you change and swapping it with any of your choice (or result in the personal wearing no clothes at all). A similar scenario applies for make-up. This is not like an old online dress-up flash game where the models must be meticulously crafted by an art designer or programmer— simply give the ANN something to work with, and it will figure out all the rest. You needn't even show it every angle or every lighting condition, for it will use commonsense to figure these out as well. Such has been possible since at least 2017, though only with recent GPU advancements has it become possible for someone to run such programs in real time.

The unfortunate side effect is that the amateur modeling industry will be vaporized. Extremely little will be left, and the few who do remain are promoted entirely because they are fleshy & real human beings. Professional models will survive for longer, but there will be little new blood joining their ranks. As such, it remains to be seen whether news and blogs speak loudly of the sudden, unexpected automation of what was once seen as a safe and human-centric industry or if this goes ignored and under-reported— after all, the news used to speak of automation in terms of physical, humanoid robots taking the jobs of factory workers, fast-food burger flippers, and truck drivers, occupations that are still in existence en masse due to slower-than-expected roll outs of robotics and a continued lack of general AI.

We needn't have general AI to replace those jobs that can be replicated by disembodied digital agents. And the sudden decline & disappearance of models will be the first widespread sign of this.

Actually, I have an hypothesis for this: media synthesis is one of the first signs that we're making progress towards artificial general intelligence.

Now don't misunderstand me. No neural network that can generate media is AGI or anything close. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that what we can see as being media synthesis is evidence that we've put ourselves on the right track. We never should've thought that we could get to AGI without also developing synthetic media technology.

What do you know about imagination?

As recently as five years ago, the concept of "creative machines" was cast off as impossible— or at the very least, improbable for decades. Indeed, the phrase remains an oxymoron in the minds of most. Perhaps they are right. Creativity implies agency and desire to create. All machines today lack their own agency. Yet we bear witness to the rise of computer programs that imagine and "dream" in ways not dissimilar to humankind.

Though lacking agency, this still meets the definition of imagination.

To reduce it to its most fundamental ingredients: Imagination = experience + abstraction + prediction. To get creativity, you need only add "drive". Presuming that we fail to create artificial general intelligence in the next ten years (an easy thing to assume because it's unlikely we will achieve fully generalized AI even in the next thirty), we still possess computers capable of the former three ingredients.

Someone who lives on a flat island and who has never seen a mountain before can learn to picture what one might be by using what they know of rocks and cumulonimbus clouds, making an abstract guess to cross the two, and then predicting what such a "rock cloud" might look like. This is the root of imagination.

As Descartes noted, even the strongest of imagined sensations is duller than the dullest physical one, so this image in the person's head is only clear to them in a fleeting way. Nevertheless, it's still there. Through great artistic skills, the person can learn to express this mental image through artistic means. In all but the most skilled, it will not be a pure 1-to-1 realization due to the fuzziness of our minds, but in the case of expressive art, it doesn't need to be.

Computers lack this fleeting ethereality of imagination completely. Once one creates something, it can give you the uncorrupted output.

Right now, this makes for wonderful tools and apps that many play around with online and on our phones.

But extrapolating this to the near future results in us coming face to face many heavy questions, and not just of the "can't trust what you see variety."

Because think about it.

If I'm a musical artist and I release an album, what if I accidentally recorded a song that's too close to an AI-generated track (all because AI generated literally every combination of notes?) Or, conversely, what if I have to watch as people take my music and alter it? I may feel strongly about it, but yet the music has its notes changed, its lyrics changed, my own voice changed, until it might as well be an entirely different artist making that music. Many won't mind, but many will.

I trust my mother's voice, as many do. So imagine a phisher managing to steal her voice, running it through a speech synthesis network, and then calling me asking me for my social security number. Or maybe I work at a big corporation, and while we're secure, we still recognize each other's voice, only to learn that someone stole millions of dollars from us because they stole the CEO's voice and used to to wire cash to a pirate's account.

Imagine going online and at least 70% of the "people" you encounter are bots. They're extremely coherent, and they have profile images of what looks to be real people. And who knows, you may even forge an e-friendship with some of them because they seem to share your interests. Then it turns out they're just bundles of code.

Oh, and those bot-people are also infesting social media and forums in the millions, creating and destroying trends and memes without much human input. Even if the mainstream news sites don't latch on at first, bot-created and bot-run news sites will happily kick it off for them. The news is supposed to report on major events, global and local. Even if the news is honest and telling the truth, how can they truly verify something like this, especially when it seems to be gaining so much traction and humans inevitably do get involved? Remember "Bowsette" from last year? Imagine if that was actually pushed entirely by bots until humans saw what looked like a happenin' kind of meme and joined in? That could be every year or perhaps even every month in the 2020s onwards.

Likewise, imagine you're listening to a pop song in one country, but then you go to another country and it's the exact same song but most of the lyrics have changed to be more suitable for their culture. That sort of cultural spread could stop... or it could be supercharged if audiences don't take to it and pirate songs/change them and share them at their own leisure.

Or maybe it's a good time to mention how commissioned artists are screwed? Commission work boards are already a race to the bottom— if a job says it pays three cents per word to write an article, you'd better list your going rate as 2 cents per word, and then inevitably the asking rate in general becomes 2 cents per word, and so on and so forth. That whole business might be over within five to ten years if you aren't already extremely established. Because if machines can mimic any art style or writing style (and then exaggerate & alter it to find some better version people like more), you'd have to really be tech-illiterate or very pro-human to want non-machine commissions.

And to go back to deepfakes and deep nudes, imagine the paratypical creep who takes children and puts them into sexual situations, any sexual situation they desire thanks to AI-generated images and video. It doesn't matter who, and it doesn't have to be real children either. It could even be themselves as a child if they still have the reference or use a de-aging algorithm on their face. It's squicky and disgusting to think about, but it's also inevitable and probably has already happened.

And my god, it just keeps going on and on. I can't do this justice, even with 40,000 characters to work with. The future we're about to enter is so wild, so extreme that I almost feel scared for humanity. It's not some far off date in the 22nd century. It's literally going to start happening within the next five years. We're going to see it emerge before our very eyes on this and other subreddits.

I'll end this post with some more examples.

Nvidia's new AI can turn any primitive sketch into a photorealistic masterpiece. You can even play with this yourself here.

Waifu Synthesis- real time generative anime, because obviously.

Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models | This GAN can animate any face GIF, supercharging deepfakes & media synthesis

Talk to Transformer | Feed a prompt into GPT-2 and receive some text. As of 9/29/2019, this uses the 774M parameter version of GPT-2, which is still weaker than the 1.5B parameter "full" version."

Text samples generated by Nvidia's Megatron-LM (GPT-2-8.3b). Vastly superior to what you see in Talk to Transformer, even if it had the "full" model.

Facebook's AI can convert one singer's voice into another | The team claims that their model was able to learn to convert between singers from just 5-30 minutes of their singing voices, thanks in part to an innovative training scheme and data augmentation technique. as a prototype for shifting vocalists or vocalist genders or anything of that sort.

TimbreTron for changing instrumentation in music. Here, you can see a neural network shift entire instruments and pitches of those new instruments. It might only be a couple more years until you could run The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" through, say, Slayer and get an actual song out of it.

AI generated album covers for when you want to give the result of that change its own album.

Neural Color Transfer Between Images [From 2017], showing how we might alter photographs to create entirely different moods and textures.

Scammer Successfully Deepfaked CEO's Voice To Fool Underling Into Transferring $243,000

"Experts: Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets" [GAN faces for fake LinkedIn profiles]

This Marketing Blog Does Not Exist | This blog written entirely by AI is fully in the uncanny valley.

Chinese Gaming Giant NetEase Leverages AI to Create 3D Game Characters from Selfies | This method has already been used over one million times by Chinese gamers.

"Deep learning based super resolution, without using a GAN" [perceptual loss-based upscaling with transfer learning & progressive scaling], or in other words, "ENHANCE!"

Expert: AI-generated music is a "total legal clusterf*ck" | I've thought about this. Future music generation means that all IPs are open, any new music can be created from any old band no matter what those estates may want, and AI-generated music exists in a legal tesseract of answerless questions

And there's just a ridiculous amount more.

My subreddit, /r/MediaSynthesis, is filled with these sorts of stories going back to January of 2018. I've definitely heard of people come away in shock, dazed and confused, after reading through it. And no wonder.

[firejugglinghobo]

‘Whisper Its Story’ Soundtrack Commentary

“A Stranger in the Night” - Main Titles, Marco Beltrami I felt that piano was the perfect way to introduce the rainy night that Meggie always remembers.  The slight apprehension of the piece gives us an immediate connection to Meggie, while the melancholy shows us a glimpse of the tragedy that has already taken place when she joins the story.  The harmonica in the end gives us a twang of Dustfinger’s theme as he is recognized and invited inside.

“Going South” - Rocket Launch, Bear McCreary I had originally chosen this piece as the theme for “Going Farther South,” but kept coming back to placing it here instead.  There is slight apprehension in the piece, but its instrumentation is homey and hopeful enough to allow Meggie to drift off to sleep in her familiar van with her father, as if they really are only going to see an eccentric aunt about some books.  At this point, the only magic in the story is the scenery.  The mood shifts at the end of the drive when they arrive at Elinor’s austere old house.

“A House Full of Books” - We Shall Go to War, Lorne Balfe and Rupert Gregson-Williams This is Meggie’s first introduction to Elinor, who is typified by staccato and pizzicato strings.  Although her perception of her aunt changes drastically during the course of the book, her first impression is of austerity and severity.  Something dangerous is lurking on the shelves, and there are a great deal many more rules in this house than at home.  Dustfinger joins her in her conspiracy to get ahold of the book, as can be noticed in the dissonance toward the end of the piece.

“Fire and Stars” - The Longing, Patty Gurdy This piece is part diegetic or source music from Dustfinger’s tape player on Elinor’s back lawn and part score depicting his fire show, which is wild and foreign-feeling to Meggie.  I chose to keep Dustfinger’s instrumentation dissonant throughout the soundtrack to emphasize the ways he does not belong in this world, and to tie him back to a place where these kinds of instruments and harmonies are more at home.

“The Lion’s Den” - Streets of New York, Rupert Gregson-Williams The instrumentation in this piece is mostly Dustfinger’s, with fiddles, banjo, and percussive instruments taking the forefront.  The bass undertones warn Meggie of the dangers that Dustfinger is describing in Capricorn’s village and hint that maybe he himself is not to be trusted.

“A Coward” - The Aerie, Andrew Lloyd-Webber This is a purely romantic theme for the book.  In this scene of Dustfinger’s infatuation with and yet fear of it, its power over all of the characters is typified.

“Going Farther South” - Now We Are Free, Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt, and 2CELLOS This is a piece for packing up and driving south to rescue Mo.  I have chosen the cello for Mo’s instrument first and foremost because of its beautiful singing voice, especially known for its similarity to the human voice.  This song is full of sadness and hope, as Meggie misses her father but believes she can get him back with the help of her new friends.

“Capricorn’s Village” - The Punisher Main Titles, Tyler Bates I made a somewhat unconventional choice to use mostly modern rock instruments when dealing with Capricorn and his minions.  I wanted to make a start separation between the instrumentation used for them and the protagonists, specifically Dustfinger.  The modern instruments allow me to give them a more gang-y feeling and exemplify the ways Capricorn has embraced this world for all of the outlets it gives for his darkness.

“A Mission Accomplished” - A New Chapter, Lorne Balfe and Rupert Gregson-Williams The repeated descending line in this piece depicts the sinking feeling Elinor and Meggie experience when they realize they have been betrayed, while soaring, dissonant strings may represent Dustfinger’s guilt.

“Once Upon a Time” - Coming Home, Jeff Russo This piece has an ethereal, misty feeling to it, as a story of long ago is told.  Triumphant, foreboding, and melancholy chords mix as the magic of Mo’s voice brings some uninvited guests into his living room.

“The Betrayer Betrayed” - The Starkiller, John Williams I considered going for an epic suite for this scene, but decided on a more emotional moment as Capricorn’s brutality is displayed for the first time against primarily Dustfinger and secondarily Mo.  The books burning are beautiful, but they are absolutely devastating.

“Treasure Island” - The Prince of Persia, Harry Gregson-Williams No Inkheart soundtrack could be complete without a nod to the Middle East in Farid’s arrival.  This piece, however, can be a companion piece to the entire scene of Mo’s reading.  Strings and choir paint pictures of the island cave treasure in the air just as well as Mo’s voice does, and after a momentary pause, he delves into The Thousand and One Nights and pulls Farid, who is distinguished from the other elements of the story by a solo pipe, out of his book to be examined and led off in the final third of the piece.  This is the first time Meggie has heard her father read aloud, and the first glimpse Farid gets of a brand new world.

“Gloomy Prospects” - Critical Article, Lorne Balfe and Rupert Gregson-Williams This is 100% a sneak song.  Dustfinger breaks the gang out and everybody goes tip-toeing out of the village.  Just when we think they’re safe, they’re spotted and must make a break for it by car!

“Basta” - Panic at the Bistro, Ludwig Goransson More musical telegraphing than an actual, this piece sounds like an erratic heartbeat and a struggle that could easily go either way, as every character is thrust into the fray in a fight for their lives.

“Fenoglio” - Crates of Books, David Arnold and Michael Price Enter Fenoglio, the lovable if a bit bumbling author of Inkheart.  His voice can be heard inside the house, and Meggie’s nervousness builds until he opens the door and reveals that he is quite a kindly old man, and not the intimidating figure Dustfinger’s fears may have led her to imagine.  There is a grandchild in the cupboard and cake on the table and the old writer can barely believe the story Meggie and Mo tell him.

“Shivers Down the Spine and a Foreboding” - The Impossible Planet, Murray Gold This is an other place where I considered a more epic theme but chose to go subtler.  Instead of feeling Dustfinger’s fear here, we experience an outside pity for him.  He feels betrayed and homesick, despite the revelation of what might happen should he ever go home.  This piece most belongs at the end of the chapter.

“Going Home” - Dance of the Knights, Sergei Prokofiev In a macabre, grotesque mockery, Elinor arrives home to find a red rooster hanging in her library and a pile of ash in her back lawn.  As the reader has begun to understand a bit more about Elinor, we realize that she is best identified with classical music.

“Capricorn’s Maid” - Martha’s Theme, Murray Gold I was very intentional to use female vocals for Resa, as her defining feature in Inkheart is voicelessness.  Nevertheless, she gives herself a voice through her kindness and tenacity to reach out and communicate.  The vocals are threaded with cello, as a subtle hint of her identity and a reminder that she is searching for Mo as much as he is searching for her.

“Capricorn’s Secrets” - Window Deduction, David Arnold and Michael Price Fenoglio in Capricorn’s church is the most unlikely of combinations.  He is of course enchanted with the way his characters have sprung off the page as he and Meggie are led through the village.  There is a slight thrill of foreboding when Capricorn himself appears, but Fenoglio couldn’t possibly be actually afraid of his own creation, and gushes despite the threats.

“A Quiet Voice” - Sprouting Potatoes, Harry Gregson-Williams As Meggie becomes more certain of her Silvertongue powers, I chose to have this piece start off with piano, which has linked us to Meggie and the feeling of night since the beginning, and blend into cello, a reminder of Mo and a sign of her growing to become more like him.  There is nighttime magic afoot.

“The Punishment for Traitors” - Burning the Past, Harry Gregson-Williams (Yes, another Gregson-Williams, I’m sorry.  I have a problem...)  In this chapter, Meggie looks up to see Dustfinger slowly emerge from the dark, hanging in a net from the ceiling of the church.  He is represented by the mournful violin, and is replaced by a high choir as Meggie looks past him and sees her mother for the first time.

“The Black Horse of the Night” - Annie, I’m Scared, Ludwig Goransson This chapter is another story of the past, and this time a ghost story.  Long, low, breathy chords punctuated by woodwinds send shivers down the spine as Fenoglio remembers the Shadow.  We can almost feel him coming out of the book with a sudden swell at the end.

“A Dark Place” - The Trial of Loki, Brian Tyler Dustfinger begins this scene as he is lowered from the net and led to the crypt with Resa, with low strings representing fear, evil, and darkness.  Toward the end, there are hints of a choir and even some cello as he tries to avoid Resa’s questions and turns to her for comfort.

“Woken in the Dead of Night” - It is Time, Patrick Doyle Piano and cello weave in and out through this piece as Meggie tests her Silvertongue powers and changes a story for the first time.  She sends the little soldier back into his own story, having changed the ending to a happy one.

“The Magpie” - His Name is Napoleon Solo, Daniel Pemberton Mortola is a character from Inkheart whose reaction to this world is somewhere between Dustfinger’s and Capricorn’s.  She doesn’t try to get home while her son is alive and in power, but when her reason to stay is gone, her main goal is to return home.  Likewise, the instrumentation in this piece is a cross between old, dissonant sounds and modern rock instruments.  The music keeps a rigid tempo, but limps slightly within it, just like Mortola.  She is commanding and terrifying in her subservience to her son.

“Basta’s Pride and Dustfinger’s Cunning” - Meet Oswald Kapelput, David Russo In this piece, Dustfinger’s twangy instrumentation plays lightly and tauntingly over increasingly erratic low strings and brass for Basta as predator becomes prey and tension builds.  In the end, everyone is on edge.  Dustfinger escapes with his own life before Basta’s voice has the chance to catch him, leaving his friends behind.

“No Luck for Elinor” - Danse macabre, Camille Saint-Saëns Again, the macabre infiltrates Elinor’s attempts at normalcy.  She is still represented by staccato and pizzicato strings, but her character has become more fleshed out with real emotion that we feel for her failed attempts to reconnect with a world where she feels safe.  Elinor is most at home in classical music settings not only because of her slightly pretentious taste and somewhat haughty demeanor, but because she is the character who most longs for the established safety of this world, although she would have told you otherwise herself.

“A Fragile Little Thing” - Science the S*** Out of This, Harry Gregson-Williams Dustfinger arrives out of breath at Basta’s house, where he is greeted by Basta’s low strings and the fairy that Meggie brought off the pages of Peter Pan.  He is not safe here, and is plagued by guilt for leaving Meggie and Resa behind and fear of what will happen to them.

“Fire” - Mana One, Harry Gregson-Williams (I literally can’t help myself.)  Farid’s solo pipe weaves in and out among the guitars and synths of the Black Jackets.  This is a high-intensity piece, but not an action drama, as things work out exactly according to plan for the pair of arsonists, despite their worries.

“The Shadow” - Mombasa, Hans Zimmer and 2CELLOS The finale is all Meggie’s nerves.  You can feel her hands shaking in this piece as she fumbles for the sheet of paper.  Mo’s crocodile tick-tick-tick signal plays directly into the rhythmic thrust of the piece.  Her heart beats more and more erratically as the Shadow actually listens to her words and comes out of the book to turn on his master.  Of course, this had to be played on cello, as the representation of the power of the voice of a Silvertongue.

“A Deserted Village” - A World on Fire, John Paesano With her task complete, Meggie is back in her own role as a young girl, the nighttime protagonist represented by the piano.  The ashes of the Shadow seem to drift away on the wind just as the memory of all the evil of the now-deserted village fades.  Well, almost all, as Basta grabs Resa in a last-ditch attempt to escape with his life, and leaves to haunt the fears of the protagonists until the next book.

“Homesickness” - The Aerie, Andrew Lloyd-Webber The theme for the book is back, in a mirror image callback to “Coward” at the beginning of the story.  Dustfinger, now aware of the ending to his own story, sneaks in and sneaks the book from its sleeping guardian.  He is no longer haunted by what it may contain and takes it, on the other side of many betrayals, determined that he will get home somehow, even without the help of Silvertongue.

“Going Home” - New Guinea Match, Lorne Balfe and Rupert Gregson-Williams The mist clears on the foreboding of this story, as Meggie and her family gather up the creatures and bring them home to Elinor’s house, now a much less terrifying and austere sight and much more homey and comfortable.  There are pieces to pick up and a life of love and daily adventure to live.

[dipulb3]

Opinion: One of the most important trials America has ever seen is about to start

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/opinion-one-of-the-most-important-trials-america-has-ever-seen-is-about-to-start/

Opinion: One of the most important trials America has ever seen is about to start

Anybody who tells you they know for sure what any jury will do has never tried a case. Juries are, after all, collections of human beings, and we humans are nothing if not mercurial. The uncertainty becomes even more pronounced in a case involving the police. Multiply it again when the case involves race.

While there is no way to predict how the Chauvin jury ultimately will decide, to this point the pretrial criminal justice process has held up well. Judge Peter Cahill and the parties have done their jobs, setting the stage for the jurors to do theirs.

Most importantly, Judge Cahill wisely denied multiple defense motions to move the case out of Hennepin County (where Minneapolis is located). Chauvin’s defense team first tried this tack before jury selection began, and the judge denied it.

Then, when news broke during jury selection that the city of Minneapolis had reached a civil settlement with Floyd’s family for $27 million, the defense raised the issue again. The judge, again, refused to move the trial.

The defense argued that publicity around the case generally (and then the settlement, specifically) would compromise Chauvin’s right to a fair jury trial in Hennepin County. Judge Cahill sensibly concluded that “I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case.”

A transfer of the case out of Hennepin County would have been disastrous both for the trial itself and for public faith in the trial’s fundamental fairness. Any such transfer would have resulted in the case being tried in a different county than where the charged crime occurred, which in itself would raise questions about fairness.

And, critically, a transfer would ensure a less racially diverse jury pool.

Hennepin County is Minnesota’s most populous county, and also has the highest percentage of African American residents, about 13.6%. Only one other Minnesota county has above 10% African American population, and 47 counties are below 1%. To move the trial would all but ensure a jury comprised of fewer African Americans than in Hennepin County, and a verdict from such a jury could lack legitimacy in the eyes of the general public.

As it turns out, the Chauvin jury is actually substantially more racially diverse than the population of Hennepin County itself. Of the 15 jurors (including three who will serve only as alternates), nine are White, four are Black and two are mixed race, according to the jurors’ self-identifications in court.

The jury’s diversity is a good thing. Imagine the opposite scenario, where the Chauvin jury was substantially less racially diverse than Hennepin County and included only one, or even zero, Black jurors. The public would justifiably question the jury selection process, and an acquittal from such a jury would be difficult to accept as legitimate.

Now that the jury is seated, the prosecution will present its case first and must satisfy its burden to prove the charged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. We’ve likely already seen Exhibit A for the prosecution: the bystander video of Chauvin pinning his body weight through his knee on Floyd’s neck, while Floyd was handcuffed, for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

This video, on its own, should go far toward the prosecution’s ultimate goal: establishing that Chauvin intentionally assaulted Floyd, resulting in his death (to prove the charged second-degree murder), acted with “depraved mind, without regard for human life” (to prove the charged third-degree murder) or acted negligently (to prove second-degree manslaughter). The jury ultimately can choose to convict or acquit Chauvin on all, some or none of these charges.

Expect also to hear from some of the bystander eyewitnesses, and the independent medical examiner hired by Floyd’s family who concluded that Floyd’s death was a homicide caused by “asphyxiation from sustained pressure.” (The Hennepin County medical examiner who conducted the autopsy also found that the cause of death was homicide, but he determined that Floyd died not because of asphyxiation but rather because of, essentially, a heart attack brought on by Chauvin’s actions: “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression”).

We almost certainly will not hear from Chauvin or the other three charged former officers, all of whom can invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination to avoid testifying.

As straightforward as the prosecution’s case might be at first glance — almost a “just hit play on the tape” kind of case, as prosecutors sometimes say — rest assured, Chauvin’s defense will put up a fight.

First, expect the defense to argue that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death. The defense may look to exploit the aforementioned differences in the opinions of medical examiners, though both conclude that Chauvin’s actions contribute to or caused Floyd’s death in some manner.

The defense also may argue that Floyd in fact died of a drug overdose. Toxicology reports show that Floyd had both methamphetamines and fentanyl in his blood at the time of his death. And Judge Cahill has ruled that the defense can offer limited evidence of a 2019 arrest during which Floyd purportedly swallowed drugs during a police encounter; the defense may argue that Floyd did the same when Chauvin encountered him in 2020.

The defense also may claim that Chauvin’s actions were necessary to physically restrain Floyd and take him into custody. Some surveillance video evidence appears to show Floyd at least temporarily struggling with police officers at the scene. This is a risky tack for the defense, however, because the relevant question is not whether Floyd ever struggled with police officers, but whether Chauvin used excessive force when, after he already had Floyd rear-handcuffed and face-down on the ground, he pinned his knee to Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes.

Opening arguments start Monday. Thus far, the jury trial process has worked as designed. The outcome is anything but certain, and the stakes — for the entire country — are enormous.

Now, your questions

Patrick (Oregon): Could federal criminal charges still be filed against the officers involved in the death of George Floyd?

Yes. The Justice Department reportedly has convened a grand jury to investigate Chauvin, and could bring federal charges for deprivation of civil rights under color of law — meaning, essentially, that Chauvin, while exercising his official power, intentionally and knowingly deprived Floyd of life and liberty. In 2019, the US Supreme Court upheld the “separate sovereigns” doctrine, which established that there is no legal bar to both federal and state prosecutors charging the same person for the same conduct.

So the Justice Department can charge Chauvin if it sees fit, even though Chauvin already faces charges from Minnesota state prosecutors. As a practical matter, the Justice Department likely will wait to see the state jury’s verdict in the Chauvin trial before deciding whether to bring separate federal charges.

Hilda (Nevada): Could prosecutors have charged Chauvin with first-degree murder?

As discussed above, Minnesota prosecutors have charged Chauvin with various second- and third-degree murder and manslaughter charges. A first-degree murder charge would have been difficult, though not impossible, for prosecutors to sustain.

Under Minnesota law, first-degree murder must be both intentional and premeditated. Regarding intentionality, Minnesota prosecutors have not alleged in the current second-degree murder charge that Chauvin intentionally killed Floyd, but rather that he intentionally assaulted Floyd, resulting in Floyd’s death.

Obviously, it is easier to prove intent to assault than intent to kill.

Regarding the premeditation element of first-degree murder, the law does not specify any particular time requirement. There’s a common perception that premeditation requires careful planning, well in advance, like a group of mobsters might carefully plot out an orchestrated hit. While that type of plotting certainly would qualify as premeditation, the law does not require such careful or methodical premeditation.

The argument for premeditation is that, at some point during the eight-plus minutes when Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck — during which Floyd stated “I can’t breathe” and “Don’t kill me” — Chauvin had to have become fully aware that he was about to kill Floyd.

Yet Chauvin, knowing what his actions would do, made a decision to continue kneeling on Floyd’s neck. But Minnesota prosecutors have taken a more conservative approach and have not charged a first-degree murder, which is arguably more difficult to prove than a second-degree charge.

[uraneplunia-blog]

NEPTUNE

"My wife was born under the sign of Pisces and their planet Neptune. Extremely sensitive and compassionate, she was confused about the world she lived in. Only after I started practicing astrology I began to understand what I did not understand about her then. She was a Neptune creature-she lived in a world that seemed to have little to do with the reality of the Earth, and whose rudeness often suffered. Probably why he left this world so early. He was 39 years old when he died from his damaged heart. Her Neptune experiences helped me to see both sides of Neptune. On the one hand, how the influence of Neptune's energy can confuse our lives and, on the other, get a deep understanding. Neptune wants understanding, understanding for himself and the world we live in. Neptune tells us - "I am the ocean, you are the drops in the ocean that you create, you can not understand the world unless you understand yourself as the particles that make up this world." Neptune is an emotional planet looking for understanding how emotions can confuse our lives, how under their influence we do not see the truth, how under their influence we can make mistaken decisions. We need Neptune to understand his delusions, illusions, fantasies, and mistakes, and by realizing the truth to achieve a deep understanding of ourselves. It is a planet that inspires poets, artists, musicians and artists for creativity, while others stimulate alcoholism and drug addiction." The Neptune horoscope is where we most need to understand ourselves and the world we are connected with. We associate Neptune with the sign Pisces, the twelfth house and god Poseidon - the ruler of the seas and all the waterways. The astrological element of feeling water acts like Poseidon. When one emerges from the sea, one of these two things happens. In some cases, the waters open majestically and cheerfully. In other cases, his appearance is marked by fierce storms and hurricanes. Similarly, when our feelings come to the surface, they can be abundant and divinely inspired or swept like a tidal wave. Neptune symbolizes both the longing for the dissolution of the boundaries of the personality and the experience of unity with life. Neptune is a fog and a disguise, its location at home will show where we are constantly confused. Pisces are the most mystical sign, we associate them with sensitivity, emotion, compassion, imagination, illusions and delusions. The power of Pisces comes from the ability to change through imagination, mysticism and compassion, and their success is due to the strong sensitivity to the emotional states of others. In the positive manifestations, the Pisces compassionately serve others, seek greater perfection, do not lose faith in difficult situations, can cure others with unconditional love. In their negative manifestations they lose a sense of reality, blur the borders, ignore their personal needs, sacrificing themselves for others, creating illusions for helplessness, going to extremes of indulgence in themselves.

Neptune is the strongest in the 12th home. This is his home, the home where he can show his best or worst qualities. The twelfth home is connected with the closure of a cycle of human experience that can become a new beginning. In this house, things are falling apart so that we can adjust to cosmic harmony. At its most essential level, the 12th House presents the pursuit of dissolution existing in every person. In the Pig Gulf, two fish swim in opposite directions, a symbol of two opposing aspirations of the soul. One - to separate from the source from which it originates and the other - to reunite with it. In other words, our personality does not want to feel isolated, but at the same time he fears not to lose his own self. The blurring of the boundary between an individual and others may confuse our perceptions of where we start and where others end up. The very fabric of Neptune is fluid - just like the water in the ocean. This is why we consider Neptune to be the planet of ambiguity and blurring of borders. People with Neptune in the 12th home can periodically be swallowed up and overcome by emotions, may have a tendency to escape - a desire to retreat from life. Therefore, they must learn to accept the good with the evil, the beautiful with the ugly, the perfect with the imperfect. We come into this world prone to react in a certain way by experiencing and processing events from our past. The way in which we will work our past is determined by the aspects that the planets displayed in the birth chart have. When a planet is in aspect to Neptune, it clouds the clear vision. I will point out with a few examples how Neptune affects the other planets when they are in aspect with him.

💙Aspect Neptune/Moon- makes a person very sensitive to suffering (especially in coincidence), a person has elusive feelings and can be drowned by emotions because both planets are emotional. Moon looks for emotional security, and Neptune - emotional happiness. It is difficult for people in this aspect to get a real break for their own feelings or to understand what the feelings of others are. In this aspect, it gives a strong yearning for a merger, a fusion with the Cosmos, a merger with the Mother, a quest to return to the womb from where we came. One with this aspect often idealizes things. Desperate for a better future often idealizes the past and is difficult to cope with the present.

💙The Venus / Neptune aspect is a combination of bondage. Both planets are related to harmony and love. Venus is a symbol of earthly love, which is practical, and Neptune is a symbol of Divine Love, which is unconditional. Typically, people with a Venera / Neptune aspect dream of a wonderful relationship that is romantic and of heavenly origin. This aspect exists in my horoscope, and as a younger one I did not realize I was not living in the real world and I was looking for an ideal partner to show an idealism about my relationship with women. Often I was blind and I could not see the woman next to me in the real look. As Shakespeare says, "when we are crazy in love, we do not see things clearly." Later, I discovered the true look of my partner and I was disappointed. This was repeated many times in my life until I realized that Neptune misled me. The truth is that sometimes I did not want to see things clearly, my illusion was more pleasant and romantic. People with Venus / Neptune (especially in coincidence) are looking for a mystical experience in their love affinities, something of heavenly origin. That feeling was deep in me. People with Venus / Neptune are inspired not only by love but also by beauty.

Mercury is a planet of mind and communication. Neptune undermines Mercury's rational and objective function.💙The Mercury / Neptune aspect has the gift of giving an extremely fruitful mind with a rich imagination or distorting reality. Often the reason for this distortion is that facts can be seen as God, at the expense of inner reality, of what we feel within. The strong and accurate aspect of Mercury / Neptune makes a person highly sensitive to external influences. It is something like a radio receiver that needs fine tuning to receive and transmit the information clearly. In this aspect the boundary between the thinking of a person and others is very thin. This makes one able to perceive everything that comes from the outside, devour it into itself, and then change it.

Through Venus and Neptune we seek love and enter into relationships with others. In all relationships, we bring together the experience of the past. What we carry from the past can have a confusing impact on our present lives and under Neptune's influence to lose a sense of reality. Obviously, we can not remember what we have experienced in the past, it is a mystic for us. This is why Neptune is considered a mysterious planet. Obviously, in order to reach a true understanding of Neptune in the horoscope, we must go through illusions, delusions and fantasies, suffer the consequences, and then experience, to come to a deep understanding by becoming aware of what and how we have done in the past, about being connected to everything existing in the universe. Neptune's astrological model approaches the needs of the soul as a necessity for a higher understanding of its spiritual nature, as a planet that helps us to realize the Great Reality, which in love holds everything existing in one.

Neptune teaches us how to deal with the hidden pain we carry with us, how to unload our soul from what weighs us. As long as we are in the power of the ego, we are unable to heal our internal wounds caused by our love adventures. We need to become aware of how we have made our connections in the past, how we have been hurt or injured by others. We will heal our wounds by forgiving all past misconduct and failures by purifying ourselves from all painful and desperate experiences at the emotional level. This is the reason for Pisces to replicate healing abilities. Through Neptune we try to get to the Divine - unconditional love. He believes in the manna celestial, the mystical connections, the probability that impossible dreams will become reality. The coloring of relationships and events under Neptune's influence are subjective and unrealistic. Even our attempt to protect ourselves from the awareness of our illusions fails during the unfavorable Neptune transits. However, the mess caused, the final truth is revealed when we realize how in the past we have acted innocently and falsely.

Self-deception is what we sometimes need to distract the mist around us and free ourselves from self-destructive and unhealthy attitudes. Neptune as a planet of superior harmony and unconditional love gives us the ability to bring more beauty and harmony into the world. He can transfer the soul to the subtle levels of awareness and teach us to recover from our spiritual wounds by really deepening our past actions by realizing our past mistakes and misconceptions. At Neptune, our relationship with the partners is heavenly. We sincerely want a loving, carefree and helpful partner who will not leave us. But ironically, if we choose the wrong partner because of fraudulent expectations, we will later have to divide with him. Of course, this is not easy because neptune relationships involve complicated psychological attachments. Expectations of a wonderful and perfect relationship lead to great pain because no one is perfect, no one is God. Disappointments are inevitable when we do not really see things. Neptune's illusions collapse as we open our eyes and see the truth. This is the deep understanding that Neptune wants to tell us through the horoscope

We are constantly subject to delusions. We are deluded by ignorance, lack of understanding, lack of real knowledge. Politicians are deceiving us with unrealistic promises, misleading the media with half-truths and idle advertisements for poor goods, misguided partners with false words and unclean intentions. To protect ourselves from the delusions we need to know the Truth. This truth can be learned from the soul. Neptune is the soul.

Pisces is a sign of healing, understanding heals. By understanding your Neptune in the horoscope you will free yourself from illusions and delusions, understand yourself better and accept the world as it is. You will understand the deep meaning of folk wisdom: "And the Lord can not help you if you can not help yourself.

[eurekakinginc]

"The Coming Age of Imaginative Machines: If you aren't following the rise of synthetic media, the 2020s will hit you like a digital blitzkrieg"- Detail: The faces on the left were created by a GAN in 2014; on the right are ones made in 2018.Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues gave the world generative adversarial networks (GANs) five years ago, way back in 2014. They did so with fuzzy and ethereal black & white images of human faces, all generated by computers. This wasn't the start of synthetic media by far, but it did supercharge the field. Ever since, the realm of neural network-powered AI creativity has repeatedly kissed mainstream attention. Yet synthetic media is still largely unknown. Certain memetic-boosted applications such as deepfakes and This Person Does Not Exist notwithstanding, it's safe to assume the average person is unaware that contemporary artificial intelligence is capable of some fleeting level of "imagination."Media synthesis is an inevitable development in our progress towards artificial general intelligence, the first and truest sign of symbolic understanding in machines (though by far not the thing itself--- rather the organization of proteins and sugars to create the rudimentary structure of what will someday become the cells of AGI). This is due to the rise of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Popular misconceptions presume synthetic media present no new developments we've not had since the 1990s, yet what separates media synthesis from mere manipulation, retouching, and scripts is the modicum of intelligence required to accomplish these tasks. The difference between Photoshop and neural network-based deepfakes is the equivalent to the difference between building a house with power tools and employing a utility robot to use those power tools to build the house for you.Succinctly, media synthesis is the first tangible sign of automation that most people will experience.Public perception of synthetic media shall steadily grow and likely degenerate into a nadir of acceptance as more people become aware of the power of these artificial neural networks without being offered realistic debate or solutions as to how to deal with them. They've simply come too quickly for us to prepare for, hence the seemingly hasty reaction of certain groups like OpenAI in regards to releasing new AI models.Already, we see frightened reactions to the likes of DeepNudes, an app which was made solely to strip women in images down to their bare bodies without their consent. The potential for abuse (especially for pedophilic purposes) is self-evident. We are plunging headlong into a new era so quickly that we are unaware of just what we are getting ourselves into. But just what are we getting into?Well, I have some thoughts.I want to start with the field most people are at least somewhat aware of: deepfakes. We all have an idea of what deepfakes can do: the "purest" definition is taking one's face replacing it with another, presumably in a video. The less exact definition is to take some aspect of a person in a video and edit it to be different. There's even deepfakes for audio, such as changing one's voice or putting words in their mouth. Most famously, this was done to Joe Rogan.I, like most others, first discovered deepfakes in late 2017 around the time I had an "epiphany" on media synthesis as a whole. Just in those two years, the entire field has seen extraordinary progress. I realized then that we were on the cusp of an extreme flourishing of art, except that art would be largely-to-almost entirely machine generated. But along with it would come a flourishing of distrust, fake news, fake reality bubbles, and "ultracultural memes". Ever since, I've felt the need to evangelize media synthesis, whether to tell others of a coming renaissance or to warn them to be wary of what they see.This is because, over the past two years, I realized that many people's idea of what media synthesis is really stops at deepfakes, or they only view new development through the lens of deepfakes. The reason why I came up with "media" synthesis is because I genuinely couldn't pin down any one creative/data-based field AI wasn't going to affect. It wasn't just faces. It wasn't just bodies. It wasn't just voice. It wasn't just pictures of ethereal swirling dogs. It wasn't just transferring day to night. It wasn't just turning a piano into a harpsichord. It wasn't just generating short stories and fake news. It wasn't just procedurally generated gameplay. It was all of the above and much more. And it's coming so fast that I fear we aren't prepared, both for the tech and the consequences.Indeed, in many discussions I've seen (and engaged in) since then, there's always several people who have a virulent reaction against the prospect neural networks can do any of this at all, or at least that it'll get better enough to the point it will affect artists, creators, and laborers. Even though we're already seeing the effects in the modeling industry alone.Look at this gif. Looks like a bunch of models bleeding into and out of each other, right? Actually, no one here is real. They're all neural network-generated people.Neural networks can generate full human figures, and altering their appearance and clothing is a matter of changing a few parameters or feeding an image into the data set. Changing the clothes of someone in a picture is as easy as clicking on the piece you wish you change and swapping it with any of your choice (or result in the personal wearing no clothes at all). A similar scenario applies for make-up. This is not like an old online dress-up flash game where the models must be meticulously crafted by an art designer or programmer— simply give the ANN something to work with, and it will figure out all the rest. You needn't even show it every angle or every lighting condition, for it will use commonsense to figure these out as well. Such has been possible since at least 2017, though only with recent GPU advancements has it become possible for someone to run such programs in real time.The unfortunate side effect is that the amateur modeling industry will be vaporized. Extremely little will be left, and the few who do remain are promoted entirely because they are fleshy & real human beings. Professional models will survive for longer, but there will be little new blood joining their ranks. As such, it remains to be seen whether news and blogs speak loudly of the sudden, unexpected automation of what was once seen as a safe and human-centric industry or if this goes ignored and under-reported— after all, the news used to speak of automation in terms of physical, humanoid robots taking the jobs of factory workers, fast-food burger flippers, and truck drivers, occupations that are still in existence en masse due to slower-than-expected roll outs of robotics and a continued lack of general AI.We needn't have general AI to replace those jobs that can be replicated by disembodied digital agents. And the sudden decline & disappearance of models will be the first widespread sign of this.Actually, I have an hypothesis for this: media synthesis is one of the first signs that we're making progress towards artificial general intelligence.Now don't misunderstand me. No neural network that can generate media is AGI or anything close. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that what we can see as being media synthesis is evidence that we've put ourselves on the right track. We never should've thought that we could get to AGI without also developing synthetic media technology.What do you know about imagination?As recently as five years ago, the concept of "creative machines" was cast off as impossible— or at the very least, improbable for decades. Indeed, the phrase remains an oxymoron in the minds of most. Perhaps they are right. Creativity implies agency and desire to create. All machines today lack their own agency. Yet we bear witness to the rise of computer programs that imagine and "dream" in ways not dissimilar to humankind.Though lacking agency, this still meets the definition of imagination.To reduce it to its most fundamental ingredients: Imagination = experience + abstraction + prediction. To get creativity, you need only add "drive". Presuming that we fail to create artificial general intelligence in the next ten years (an easy thing to assume because it's unlikely we will achieve fully generalized AI even in the next thirty), we still possess computers capable of the former three ingredients.Someone who lives on a flat island and who has never seen a mountain before can learn to picture what one might be by using what they know of rocks and cumulonimbus clouds, making an abstract guess to cross the two, and then predicting what such a "rock cloud" might look like. This is the root of imagination.As Descartes noted, even the strongest of imagined sensations is duller than the dullest physical one, so this image in the person's head is only clear to them in a fleeting way. Nevertheless, it's still there. Through great artistic skills, the person can learn to express this mental image through artistic means. In all but the most skilled, it will not be a pure 1-to-1 realization due to the fuzziness of our minds, but in the case of expressive art, it doesn't need to be.Computers lack this fleeting ethereality of imagination completely. Once one creates something, it can give you the uncorrupted output.Right now, this makes for wonderful tools and apps that many play around with online and on our phones.But extrapolating this to the near future results in us coming face to face many heavy questions, and not just of the "can't trust what you see variety."Because think about it.If I'm a musical artist and I release an album, what if I accidentally recorded a song that's too close to an AI-generated track (all because AI generated literally every combination of notes?) Or, conversely, what if I have to watch as people take my music and alter it? I may feel strongly about it, but yet the music has its notes changed, its lyrics changed, my own voice changed, until it might as well be an entirely different artist making that music. Many won't mind, but many will.I trust my mother's voice, as many do. So imagine a phisher managing to steal her voice, running it through a speech synthesis network, and then calling me asking me for my social security number. Or maybe I work at a big corporation, and while we're secure, we still recognize each other's voice, only to learn that someone stole millions of dollars from us because they stole the CEO's voice and used to to wire cash to a pirate's account.Imagine going online and at least 70% of the "people" you encounter are bots. They're extremely coherent, and they have profile images of what looks to be real people. And who knows, you may even forge an e-friendship with some of them because they seem to share your interests. Then it turns out they're just bundles of code.Oh, and those bot-people are also infesting social media and forums in the millions, creating and destroying trends and memes without much human input. Even if the mainstream news sites don't latch on at first, bot-created and bot-run news sites will happily kick it off for them. The news is supposed to report on major events, global and local. Even if the news is honest and telling the truth, how can they truly verify something like this, especially when it seems to be gaining so much traction and humans inevitably do get involved? Remember "Bowsette" from last year? Imagine if that was actually pushed entirely by bots until humans saw what looked like a happenin' kind of meme and joined in? That could be every year or perhaps even every month in the 2020s onwards.Likewise, imagine you're listening to a pop song in one country, but then you go to another country and it's the exact same song but most of the lyrics have changed to be more suitable for their culture. That sort of cultural spread could stop... or it could be supercharged if audiences don't take to it and pirate songs/change them and share them at their own leisure.Or maybe it's a good time to mention how commissioned artists are screwed? Commission work boards are already a race to the bottom— if a job says it pays three cents per word to write an article, you'd better list your going rate as 2 cents per word, and then inevitably the asking rate in general becomes 2 cents per word, and so on and so forth. That whole business might be over within five to ten years if you aren't already extremely established. Because if machines can mimic any art style or writing style (and then exaggerate & alter it to find some better version people like more), you'd have to really be tech-illiterate or very pro-human to want non-machine commissions.And to go back to deepfakes and deep nudes, imagine the paratypical creep who takes children and puts them into sexual situations, any sexual situation they desire thanks to AI-generated images and video. It doesn't matter who, and it doesn't have to be real children either. It could even be themselves as a child if they still have the reference or use a de-aging algorithm on their face. It's squicky and disgusting to think about, but it's also inevitable and probably has already happened.And my god, it just keeps going on and on. I can't do this justice, even with 40,000 characters to work with. The future we're about to enter is so wild, so extreme that I almost feel scared for humanity. It's not some far off date in the 22nd century. It's literally going to start happening within the next five years. We're going to see it emerge before our very eyes on this and other subreddits.I'll end this post with some more examples.Nvidia's new AI can turn any primitive sketch into a photorealistic masterpiece. You can even play with this yourself here.Waifu Synthesis- real time generative anime, because obviously.Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models | This GAN can animate any face GIF, supercharging deepfakes & media synthesisTalk to Transformer | Feed a prompt into GPT-2 and receive some text. As of 9/29/2019, this uses the 774M parameter version of GPT-2, which is still weaker than the 1.5B parameter "full" version."Text samples generated by Nvidia's Megatron-LM (GPT-2-8.3b). Vastly superior to what you see in Talk to Transformer, even if it had the "full" model.Facebook's AI can convert one singer's voice into another | The team claims that their model was able to learn to convert between singers from just 5-30 minutes of their singing voices, thanks in part to an innovative training scheme and data augmentation technique. as a prototype for shifting vocalists or vocalist genders or anything of that sort.TimbreTron for changing instrumentation in music. Here, you can see a neural network shift entire instruments and pitches of those new instruments. It might only be a couple more years until you could run The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" through, say, Slayer and get an actual song out of it.AI generated album covers for when you want to give the result of that change its own album.Neural Color Transfer Between Images [From 2017], showing how we might alter photographs to create entirely different moods and textures.Scammer Successfully Deepfaked CEO's Voice To Fool Underling Into Transferring $243,000"Experts: Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets" [GAN faces for fake LinkedIn profiles]This Marketing Blog Does Not Exist | This blog written entirely by AI is fully in the uncanny valley.Chinese Gaming Giant NetEase Leverages AI to Create 3D Game Characters from Selfies | This method has already been used over one million times by Chinese gamers."Deep learning based super resolution, without using a GAN" [perceptual loss-based upscaling with transfer learning & progressive scaling], or in other words, "ENHANCE!"Expert: AI-generated music is a "total legal clusterf*ck" | I've thought about this. Future music generation means that all IPs are open, any new music can be created from any old band no matter what those estates may want, and AI-generated music exists in a legal tesseract of answerless questionsAnd there's just a ridiculous amount more.My subreddit, /r/MediaSynthesis, is filled with these sorts of stories going back to January of 2018. I've definitely heard of people come away in shock, dazed and confused, after reading through it. And no wonder.. Title by: Yuli-Ban Posted By: www.eurekaking.com

[syntaxeme]

I had a weird and amazing dream involving Nyarlathotep and some great and terrible similarly-based goddess played by Eva Green. It was incredible. Like wow I love those infinite terrors who refuse to be bound, the ones who are Chaos and Manipulation and Possession (and possessiveness) and. They're just my favorite kind. Which is a problem because we (as mortal human readers) have such a hard time connecting to and understanding and accepting forces like those that are totally beyond our general field of perception and all those rules we've decided are "reality" to pretend we understand something and have some control. Being told that those rules don't apply to someone/-thing is nearly impossible for most of us to believe, especially on such a HUGE scale. But that idea is everything to me. That our "real" (that is, every individual "real" that mortal humans accept) is just that: ours. And not everyone's. It's so much more interesting to imagine that the Universe is infinite and to think of what could happen when that Unendingness that scares us so much decides to impose its reality on ours or merge the two. That's where gods come from, isn't it? That's the label we stick on those outside Forces. Some of us imagine they're Ideals rather than conscious Wills, but I don't think so. I think the ancient Greeks had it right. I think everything has a will. Whatever is outside our control (read: everything) is tied to something else even bigger. Not that it's always a conscious decision. And it can get very difficult to separate one will from another when we think of it like cause-and-effect. But that's the point. You aren't supposed to be able to label and contain it. It rejects that idea. Refuses. Which makes it very difficult to present to people. People want things we can understand. Anything outside that is "god mode" or "OP" or "not believable." Haha. "No one god should have that much power." Haha! Gods have never done what we think they "should." How could they, when we all have such vastly different expectations. Some are All and Nothing at once, I guess. But we don't want to believe that either. Plurality, Multiplicity, Omnipresence, Omnipotence. Those fall outside the "real." Not okay. Silly. Unfair. How could I present that in a way we'll like...? Give it a name and a face. Give it desires and faults. Give it motivation. Give it limits.

[spirit-science-blog]

Avatar! Considered by many to be one of the most groundbreaking movies of our generation, it stands as a testament for how far our technology has come, allowing us to create and bear witness to new worlds as we’ve never seen them before. Yet, under the surface of the technological achievement of this film lies an intense undercurrent of hidden spirituality.

At the highest level of the movie, we see the story play out as a narrative between the dualistic nature of our human consciousness, and our relationship with our planet. You can describe this duality in ways such as Organic vs. Mechanic, the soft vs. The hard, the light vs. The dark, the enlightened vs. The asleep or alien vs. the native.

This dualistic theme is introduced to us by a look at how the human world has evolved, and a reflection of the same consciousness we have today that got us there. People are cold, and the earth has been polluted, there is no sign of things improving. Those in power are using their resources to leech off of another planet to support their dying world.

Jake, the lead protagonist, lands on Pandora with the same conditioning as the rest of the military - Pandora is a hostile land, and the natives are deadly, everything wants to kill you. As the story progresses, we see the transition from one paradigm of consciousness into another - through Jake's discovery that the story he’s been told is not the highest truth.

As we are introduced to the Na’Vi, we are invited to explore a fresh take on Spirituality, which has been designed for this movie based on African, Native American, and other Indigenous cultures of the world. They teach us of Eywa, the deity to whom the Na’ vi praise in reverence, and we are taught that to them, God is feminine, and nature is infused with her divine spirit. Scientifically, we are given explanations of this, through the electro-chemical neural network that exists between all of the plant life on the entire world, connecting experience as if one giant living organism, something the Na’Vi can tap into. Around their sacred tree, we see rocks formed in the shape of an electromagnetic field, further illustrating this symbolism.

What’s impressive here is that this is not exclusive to just Pandora, in that we see this reflected in the whole universe. Scientists today have observed that the Universe itself appears to form much like a neural network, suggesting that everything in existence is a part of a giant interconnected mind. These are foundational teachings of Hermetics, and James Cameron has embedded these ideas deep into the foundational structure of the story.

Further, it may not be coincidental that Eywa sounds similar to “Yahweh,” one of the names for God in the Bible. It’s almost as if through this film, we are shown this connection to the religions that we have in the world today, and how life changes when we look to the feminine side of deity, versus the masculine.

Throughout this movie, we see Jake begin to soften to the experience of the Na’Vi. As this process is happening, we see an apparent juxtaposition between two different states of consciousness.

The first is the perception that you are separate from nature, a mentality embodied by the entire human army, and jake too when he goes on his first mission. He is curious about his environment, but it is separate from him, and this is made very clear once he finds himself alone in the wilderness, struggling to survive. This is deeply relevant to a quote by Albert Einstein, who said the following:

"I think the most critical question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

"For if we decide that a universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is sturdy enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as well in this process.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is mostly ‘playing dice with the universe,’ then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice, and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

"But if we decide that a universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives."

"God does not play dice with the universe,"

For Jake in the forest, we see him light a torch, drowning out the light of the natural beauty around him. This is not dissimilar to how in a city, it is difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to see the lights of the stars above our heads. It’s only when we turn out the light, can we truly see.

Just before Neytiri rescues him, there is a moment where she is going to kill him, but a little bit of nature comes and stops her from firing the arrow. This may very well be one of the most significant scenes in the entire movie because it shows the difference between Na’Vi consciousness and human consciousness. She can listen to nature, she hears what it has to say, and she surrenders to the divine will. Instead of firing anyways, she stays her weapon, and saves the day with sorrow, because the jackals didn’t have to die. She remarks that he is like a baby, making noise not knowing what to do, speaking to his spiritual immaturity. She points out that it’s HIS fault the jackals attacked him because he wasn’t in tune with nature. This speaks to our own ability to take responsibility for what we are creating, even if its unconscious.

Over the following hour or so of the movie, we watch as Jake profoundly connects with the Na’vi and their ways, and in doing so, discovers his spiritual self, and falls in love.

For viewers watching the film, we get to experience the transformation of Jake within us because we are experiencing the movie within our consciousness - and so Jake becomes our avatar, as for those of us who are receptive, we too learn to soften to the more natural ways of life. The film provides a lens for us to ask ourselves, where are we hard, rigid, or otherwise emotionless in our journey through life, and how can we connect deeper with ourselves and the natural world around us?

Curiously, there is a deleted scene from this movie that almost taught us a more in-depth lesson here, but unfortunately, it was cut from the final production. The scene features Jake in his avatar form participating in a sacred ceremony that is not all that dissimilar from an ayahuasca journey. However, this version includes eating a worm and getting bitten by a scorpion - and as a side note - Scorpio is the zodiac sign of the invisible, mysticism, and transformation. Much like Ayahuasca, Jake goes through a rather tumultuous period as his consciousness changes awareness, and then he suddenly activates into his energy body. From here, he leaves his physical form and rises as energy into a world of light and transcendent beauty, where he connects with what is probably the spirit of Eywa through the great tree of life. And honestly, once you’ve seen this scene, watching the full movie just feels like it’s missing this big crescendo right in the middle. It’s such a powerful and transcendent scene, just saying.

While we cannot definitively say that Cameron and his team participated in Ayahuasca ceremonies, the connection here is too striking to suggest that he’s never heard of it either. Some even suggest that it was Cameron's exploration with plant medicine that inspired the movie, to begin with, but that’s all just purely speculation. Nevertheless - James, if you’re watching, I know you probably had some good reasons for taking that scene out, maybe you thought people wouldn’t get it, that society wasn’t ready, or perhaps you had some studio executive going “grumble you can’t show that to a billion people grumble” - whatever the reason, I implore you - please bring it back for Avatar 2!

Moving on, even though we didn’t get our ayahuasca scene, we got some other ceremonies that were just as interesting. As we see on multiple occasions, The Na’vi also participates in a sacred service where they link their consciousness together and connect with Eywa for the divine purpose of soul transference. Through their collective mind and mystic prayer, they can move the soul of one individual into another body.

What’s especially curious about this is that thinking biologically, why would any species need to learn how to do this? Especially for the NaVi, it doesn’t seem like something they’d ever need to use. They probably don’t have tons of empty Na’Vi bodies just lying around for them to switch their souls into whenever they want, right? Therefore, the significance of these scenes is to demonstrate two things. One - to give us an underlying idea that consciousness is not limited to the brain or body, but exists beyond it and through it, and further - that with a connection to the divine, we can accomplish anything.

After this movie came out, some people were depressed, and even a few cases of suicide, because the world of Pandora wasn’t real, and it was just so much more appealing than the world we have now. However, Pandora lives within us, and beyond that, the film provides us lessons on how we can restore life on earth to a natural way of being. Through the proper use of prayer, ceremony, and understanding that we all are connected through our thoughts and feelings, we can amplify our spiritual energy, and accomplish things that may even seem impossible to us today. One hundred years ago, we never could have conceived of technology like a smartphone. Just imagine where we could be in another hundred years?

Finally, the way that many people experienced this film was a narrative about nature. Humans have been incredibly destructive on the face of the planet, and we must change our behavior to thrive in harmony with the natural world. We understand clearly that Economic imperialism is disastrously exploitive, and it’s time we collectively find a better way to express the desire to create and expand in a way that is in harmony with all of life. We can see that the Na’Vi live abundantly; they do not have money; everything is shared. This says to us that we too can have lives like this if we can get to a place consciously where we see each other as connected, and give of ourselves freely to each other to Infinitum.

And, most important, Avatar is a narrative on the relationship between colonists and natives, which we have seen time and time again in the world in different ways, from Frozen 2 and Pocahontas to Dances with Wolves and Ferngully. This is a vital conversation because things in real life didn’t go the way they did in Avatar - civilizations were destroyed and suppressed. Today the are entire cultures that are still living under the heel of the colonialist empire.

Today, films like Avatar help to bring these conversations to light in a way that makes it easy for the collective consciousness to grasp. It’s effortless to take for granted the actions of our ancestors that brought us here today. Still, we must acknowledge our history and learn from it, and right the wrongs in our past if we are going to create collective healing and a better future for all of us.

Now, there’s one final thing I wish to speak on. I didn’t know where to share this, so let’s do it now. While the mentality of humans is observed as the antagonist in this movie, there is one aspect of it that we must recognize as necessary - which is a human technology. You see, the Na’vi live in a different paradigm, they do not need to build spaceships, they do that with their version of ayahuasca, but the humans, on the other hand, have these fantastic spaceship technologies, not to mention cool holographic computers as well. Unfortunately, we see this technology used for such selfish and abusive purposes because the technology itself isn’t evil, but the people are steering it.

Avatar itself was praised for its technological innovation. Through the film, we see a farther potential as to what humanity could create with our computers, and even more significantly - our bio-tech. It is through the technology that the avatar bodies were designed, and that which allowed a conscious neural link between their physical form, and the avatar body. It’s the idea that we are so powerful as a species, we can create anything we want to. If we follow in this thought, we can see that the entire world of pandora is something that we could turn the earth into, if we collectively decided we wanted that. We can learn how to terraform the whole planet into a thriving natural ecosystem, just as much as we can use it to destroy ourselves.

Ultimately, that decision rests in our hands, individually, and together as a species. The only thing that will limit us from some magical future for us all is if we can learn to live from the heart and see each other the way that the Na’vi saw each other. One with everything.

Thank you so much for watching! I know that there’s a lot more than this in the movie, so if you noticed something else that we missed, share it in the comments below, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to give a like and a subscribe.

With that, we’ll see you next week for some more Hidden Spirituality!

[we-future-first]

The Coming Age of Imaginative Machines: If you aren't following the rise of synthetic media, the 2020s will hit you like a digital blitzkrieg

The faces on the left were created by a GAN in 2014; on the right are ones made in 2018.

Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues gave the world generative adversarial networks (GANs) five years ago, way back in 2014. They did so with fuzzy and ethereal black & white images of human faces, all generated by computers. This wasn't the start of synthetic media by far, but it did supercharge the field. Ever since, the realm of neural network-powered AI creativity has repeatedly kissed mainstream attention. Yet synthetic media is still largely unknown. Certain memetic-boosted applications such as deepfakes and This Person Does Not Exist notwithstanding, it's safe to assume the average person is unaware that contemporary artificial intelligence is capable of some fleeting level of "imagination."

Media synthesis is an inevitable development in our progress towards artificial general intelligence, the first and truest sign of symbolic understanding in machines (though by far not the thing itself--- rather the organization of proteins and sugars to create the rudimentary structure of what will someday become the cells of AGI). This is due to the rise of artificial neural networks (ANNs). Popular misconceptions presume synthetic media present no new developments we've not had since the 1990s, yet what separates media synthesis from mere manipulation, retouching, and scripts is the modicum of intelligence required to accomplish these tasks. The difference between Photoshop and neural network-based deepfakes is the equivalent to the difference between building a house with power tools and employing a utility robot to use those power tools to build the house for you.

Succinctly, media synthesis is the first tangible sign of automation that most people will experience.

Public perception of synthetic media shall steadily grow and likely degenerate into a nadir of acceptance as more people become aware of the power of these artificial neural networks without being offered realistic debate or solutions as to how to deal with them. They've simply come too quickly for us to prepare for, hence the seemingly hasty reaction of certain groups like OpenAI in regards to releasing new AI models.

Already, we see frightened reactions to the likes of DeepNudes, an app which was made solely to strip women in images down to their bare bodies without their consent. The potential for abuse (especially for pedophilic purposes) is self-evident. We are plunging headlong into a new era so quickly that we are unaware of just what we are getting ourselves into. But just what are we getting into?

Well, I have some thoughts.

I want to start with the field most people are at least somewhat aware of: deepfakes. We all have an idea of what deepfakes can do: the "purest" definition is taking one's face replacing it with another, presumably in a video. The less exact definition is to take some aspect of a person in a video and edit it to be different. There's even deepfakes for audio, such as changing one's voice or putting words in their mouth. Most famously, this was done to Joe Rogan.

I, like most others, first discovered deepfakes in late 2017 around the time I had an "epiphany" on media synthesis as a whole. Just in those two years, the entire field has seen extraordinary progress. I realized then that we were on the cusp of an extreme flourishing of art, except that art would be largely-to-almost entirely machine generated. But along with it would come a flourishing of distrust, fake news, fake reality bubbles, and "ultracultural memes". Ever since, I've felt the need to evangelize media synthesis, whether to tell others of a coming renaissance or to warn them to be wary of what they see.

This is because, over the past two years, I realized that many people's idea of what media synthesis is really stops at deepfakes, or they only view new development through the lens of deepfakes. The reason why I came up with "media" synthesis is because I genuinely couldn't pin down any one creative/data-based field AI wasn't going to affect. It wasn't just faces. It wasn't just bodies. It wasn't just voice. It wasn't just pictures of ethereal swirling dogs. It wasn't just transferring day to night. It wasn't just turning a piano into a harpsichord. It wasn't just generating short stories and fake news. It wasn't just procedurally generated gameplay. It was all of the above and much more. And it's coming so fast that I fear we aren't prepared, both for the tech and the consequences.

Indeed, in many discussions I've seen (and engaged in) since then, there's always several people who have a virulent reaction against the prospect neural networks can do any of this at all, or at least that it'll get better enough to the point it will affect artists, creators, and laborers. Even though we're already seeing the effects in the modeling industry alone.

Look at this gif. Looks like a bunch of models bleeding into and out of each other, right? Actually, no one here is real. They're all neural network-generated people.

Neural networks can generate full human figures, and altering their appearance and clothing is a matter of changing a few parameters or feeding an image into the data set. Changing the clothes of someone in a picture is as easy as clicking on the piece you wish you change and swapping it with any of your choice (or result in the personal wearing no clothes at all). A similar scenario applies for make-up. This is not like an old online dress-up flash game where the models must be meticulously crafted by an art designer or programmer— simply give the ANN something to work with, and it will figure out all the rest. You needn't even show it every angle or every lighting condition, for it will use commonsense to figure these out as well. Such has been possible since at least 2017, though only with recent GPU advancements has it become possible for someone to run such programs in real time.

The unfortunate side effect is that the amateur modeling industry will be vaporized. Extremely little will be left, and the few who do remain are promoted entirely because they are fleshy & real human beings. Professional models will survive for longer, but there will be little new blood joining their ranks. As such, it remains to be seen whether news and blogs speak loudly of the sudden, unexpected automation of what was once seen as a safe and human-centric industry or if this goes ignored and under-reported— after all, the news used to speak of automation in terms of physical, humanoid robots taking the jobs of factory workers, fast-food burger flippers, and truck drivers, occupations that are still in existence en masse due to slower-than-expected roll outs of robotics and a continued lack of general AI.

We needn't have general AI to replace those jobs that can be replicated by disembodied digital agents. And the sudden decline & disappearance of models will be the first widespread sign of this.

Actually, I have an hypothesis for this: media synthesis is one of the first signs that we're making progress towards artificial general intelligence.

Now don't misunderstand me. No neural network that can generate media is AGI or anything close. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that what we can see as being media synthesis is evidence that we've put ourselves on the right track. We never should've thought that we could get to AGI without also developing synthetic media technology.

What do you know about imagination?

As recently as five years ago, the concept of "creative machines" was cast off as impossible— or at the very least, improbable for decades. Indeed, the phrase remains an oxymoron in the minds of most. Perhaps they are right. Creativity implies agency and desire to create. All machines today lack their own agency. Yet we bear witness to the rise of computer programs that imagine and "dream" in ways not dissimilar to humankind.

Though lacking agency, this still meets the definition of imagination.

To reduce it to its most fundamental ingredients: Imagination = experience + abstraction + prediction. To get creativity, you need only add "drive". Presuming that we fail to create artificial general intelligence in the next ten years (an easy thing to assume because it's unlikely we will achieve fully generalized AI even in the next thirty), we still possess computers capable of the former three ingredients.

Someone who lives on a flat island and who has never seen a mountain before can learn to picture what one might be by using what they know of rocks and cumulonimbus clouds, making an abstract guess to cross the two, and then predicting what such a "rock cloud" might look like. This is the root of imagination.

As Descartes noted, even the strongest of imagined sensations is duller than the dullest physical one, so this image in the person's head is only clear to them in a fleeting way. Nevertheless, it's still there. Through great artistic skills, the person can learn to express this mental image through artistic means. In all but the most skilled, it will not be a pure 1-to-1 realization due to the fuzziness of our minds, but in the case of expressive art, it doesn't need to be.

Computers lack this fleeting ethereality of imagination completely. Once one creates something, it can give you the uncorrupted output.

Right now, this makes for wonderful tools and apps that many play around with online and on our phones.

But extrapolating this to the near future results in us coming face to face many heavy questions, and not just of the "can't trust what you see variety."

Because think about it.

If I'm a musical artist and I release an album, what if I accidentally recorded a song that's too close to an AI-generated track (all because AI generated literally every combination of notes?) Or, conversely, what if I have to watch as people take my music and alter it? I may feel strongly about it, but yet the music has its notes changed, its lyrics changed, my own voice changed, until it might as well be an entirely different artist making that music. Many won't mind, but many will.

I trust my mother's voice, as many do. So imagine a phisher managing to steal her voice, running it through a speech synthesis network, and then calling me asking me for my social security number. Or maybe I work at a big corporation, and while we're secure, we still recognize each other's voice, only to learn that someone stole millions of dollars from us because they stole the CEO's voice and used to to wire cash to a pirate's account.

Imagine going online and at least 70% of the "people" you encounter are bots. They're extremely coherent, and they have profile images of what looks to be real people. And who knows, you may even forge an e-friendship with some of them because they seem to share your interests. Then it turns out they're just bundles of code.

Oh, and those bot-people are also infesting social media and forums in the millions, creating and destroying trends and memes without much human input. Even if the mainstream news sites don't latch on at first, bot-created and bot-run news sites will happily kick it off for them. The news is supposed to report on major events, global and local. Even if the news is honest and telling the truth, how can they truly verify something like this, especially when it seems to be gaining so much traction and humans inevitably do get involved? Remember "Bowsette" from last year? Imagine if that was actually pushed entirely by bots until humans saw what looked like a happenin' kind of meme and joined in? That could be every year or perhaps even every month in the 2020s onwards.

Likewise, imagine you're listening to a pop song in one country, but then you go to another country and it's the exact same song but most of the lyrics have changed to be more suitable for their culture. That sort of cultural spread could stop... or it could be supercharged if audiences don't take to it and pirate songs/change them and share them at their own leisure.

Or maybe it's a good time to mention how commissioned artists are screwed? Commission work boards are already a race to the bottom— if a job says it pays three cents per word to write an article, you'd better list your going rate as 2 cents per word, and then inevitably the asking rate in general becomes 2 cents per word, and so on and so forth. That whole business might be over within five to ten years if you aren't already extremely established. Because if machines can mimic any art style or writing style (and then exaggerate & alter it to find some better version people like more), you'd have to really be tech-illiterate or very pro-human to want non-machine commissions.

And to go back to deepfakes and deep nudes, imagine the paratypical creep who takes children and puts them into sexual situations, any sexual situation they desire thanks to AI-generated images and video. It doesn't matter who, and it doesn't have to be real children either. It could even be themselves as a child if they still have the reference or use a de-aging algorithm on their face. It's squicky and disgusting to think about, but it's also inevitable and probably has already happened.

And my god, it just keeps going on and on. I can't do this justice, even with 40,000 characters to work with. The future we're about to enter is so wild, so extreme that I almost feel scared for humanity. It's not some far off date in the 22nd century. It's literally going to start happening within the next five years. We're going to see it emerge before our very eyes on this and other subreddits.

I'll end this post with some more examples.

Nvidia's new AI can turn any primitive sketch into a photorealistic masterpiece. You can even play with this yourself here.

Waifu Synthesis- real time generative anime, because obviously.

Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models | This GAN can animate any face GIF, supercharging deepfakes & media synthesis

Talk to Transformer | Feed a prompt into GPT-2 and receive some text. As of 9/29/2019, this uses the 774M parameter version of GPT-2, which is still weaker than the 1.5B parameter "full" version."

Text samples generated by Nvidia's Megatron-LM (GPT-2-8.3b). Vastly superior to what you see in Talk to Transformer, even if it had the "full" model.

Facebook's AI can convert one singer's voice into another | The team claims that their model was able to learn to convert between singers from just 5-30 minutes of their singing voices, thanks in part to an innovative training scheme and data augmentation technique. as a prototype for shifting vocalists or vocalist genders or anything of that sort.

TimbreTron for changing instrumentation in music. Here, you can see a neural network shift entire instruments and pitches of those new instruments. It might only be a couple more years until you could run The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" through, say, Slayer and get an actual song out of it.

AI generated album covers for when you want to give the result of that change its own album.

Neural Color Transfer Between Images [From 2017], showing how we might alter photographs to create entirely different moods and textures.

Scammer Successfully Deepfaked CEO's Voice To Fool Underling Into Transferring $243,000

"Experts: Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets" [GAN faces for fake LinkedIn profiles]

This Marketing Blog Does Not Exist | This blog written entirely by AI is fully in the uncanny valley.

Chinese Gaming Giant NetEase Leverages AI to Create 3D Game Characters from Selfies | This method has already been used over one million times by Chinese gamers.

"Deep learning based super resolution, without using a GAN" [perceptual loss-based upscaling with transfer learning & progressive scaling], or in other words, "ENHANCE!"

Expert: AI-generated music is a "total legal clusterf*ck" | I've thought about this. Future music generation means that all IPs are open, any new music can be created from any old band no matter what those estates may want, and AI-generated music exists in a legal tesseract of answerless questions

And there's just a ridiculous amount more.

My subreddit, /r/MediaSynthesis, is filled with these sorts of stories going back to January of 2018. I've definitely heard of people come away in shock, dazed and confused, after reading through it. And no wonder.

submitted by /u/Yuli-Ban [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/daxcpx/the_coming_age_of_imaginative_machines_if_you/

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Draft X - Bloom & Decay

Embracing the passing of time and it’s inherent destructive nature, as now memories and their icons are left to decay and new found freedoms to transform & bloom into the unrecognizable, Post-Opulence aims to reveal the contemporary mimesis of permanence as nothing more than shadowy reflections of a luxurious modern projection of both the sought ideal and iconic state. In practice, it creates deep afflictions and inaccessibility to a conventional aesthetic, through variable acts of destruction toward the art object. Post-Opulence highlights power invested in a sought idealized form, to then create struggle over the former realized art object through its breaking, burning, and decay into revelations of new form. Post-Opulence makes reference to both actions and signals of changed circumstance & time, accepting that all eventually fades again into nothingness. Thus, rejecting the notions of worth and value bestowed by the commodified authority. Chaos, just as with Order, are the described primordial uncarved blocks (FR)* of the multiple realities of the physical, spiritual, and ideological. Taking control, and shaping the narrated lives of both gods and the individual instances of humankind alike, chaos is its own independent force manifested before all others. The poet Paul Eluard states ‘I must not look on reality as being like myself’*, but how is this so? In regard to what starts as an observed object of interest, the reasons in which we look upon it reveals more about our internal selves, as well as the relationships we have with these internal moments that take shape below the surface of the skin. However, initial impressions are arguably narrowed perceptions of a truth born of an impure examination. The Post Opulent are the neo-agents of Chaos, bringing about a lux et voluptas to both the commodified market, and the reinforcement of such worship of commodity through the icons they create. These icons, being the now commercialized art object.

The Icon ‘It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to form a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feel­ing by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a sky­ scraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count (*DeDeath5). ‘

Let me first attempt to define what I consider an Icon to be. By definition, it is an image or idol as representative of something otherworldly. Moreover, an object or image used as an aid to devotion to these otherworldly beings. Secondly, it is defined separately as a representative symbol, or as being worth of veneration (dic)*. Even in this surface definition, there’s a redundancy in that in both cases an icon serves as nothing more than an access point to something we perceive as being greater than ourselves. May it be in a composition, place of worship, or in our pockets, we put our faith in these vehicles of reconciliation of our fluid individual definitions of reality.

In his piece The Denial of Death, the cultural anthropologist Ernst Becker poses that in the face of meditating on the significance of our impending demise, the human mind would be occupied by both anxiety and despair. Moreover, that we as humans need a buffer or antidote to this truth, by ways of adopting a greater urge to heroism and an application of significance to one’s own existence. However, while certain imagined heroisms are inaccessible to most, we also find ways of seeking this notion in our daily routines (i.e. work, religion, politics, and/or relationships). This heroism is short lived, in that its destined for failure due to the fact that the cosmic significance of the individual person is nonexistent. Additionally, that because of this we subscribe to what is ultimately the illusion of permanent meaning. As religion, the once prominent means of establishing this illusion of greater individual significance, began to lose its hold as modernity began to supplement this ‘need’ by creating a cultural heroism that is defined by its respective culture. It’s in the latter that we begin to see the rise of cultural heroes (or icons), and the creation of the heroic machine, in that the average individual can only hope to fold into the illusion of being a part of the greater heroic movement. Again, this machine being represented and directed by the culture in which it grows, through better or worse. It is also the belief that this cultural heroism, was the most actualized form of heroism that an individual could hope to achieve. There are rare instances, however, that Becked coined as being called Genuine heroism. In that there is a small population of people that do not require any form of heroism illusion to live, and can face the impossible situation of living that we find ourselves in. ‘I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever [humanity] does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise, it is false (DD_EB)*’

Applying such a context once again to this idea of icon, the Post-Opulent aim is to play the role of the institutional Anti-hero. In that while one accepts that we are indeed subject to the individual limitations of the unconscious drives to cultural heroism, the objects and images in which we produce in this world, are rather made as fleeting offerings to the two facts of our current temporal finitude: existing life and existing death. Moreover, it is the thought that by redirecting the productions  of oneself, away from satiating the cultural beast in favor of starving it, can produce an aesthetic/Institutional practice of something similar to that of genuine heroism.

The Broken Screen: Anti-Heroism & Reverence of the Non-Opulent

While Opulence often has (understandably) more association with physical tokens of wealth, this can be arguably more abstracted in that Opulence is the way in which we manifest, cast out, and assert our productions of grandeur into a system that demands it in exchange for the false promise of value (heroism) in the greater and perversed commodified machine. Post-Opulence then is a theory aimed at dismantling by way of reversing the deconstruction/reconstruction process. When an individual is in need of order in a chaotic system, to Schumaker, the solution requires the individual to establish and maintain an unjustified or artificial order. He goes onto assert that this develops into a second system of operation that begins to eliminate competing data from the individual consciousness. Thus, the ordered institution becomes dependent on a social body of individual dissociation(CR.34). The example Schumaker provides in regard to the way in which the artificial reality takes hold, is the institution of religion. Much like hypnosis, such institutions produce a state of complatancy by way of deconstruction of the individual scope via dissociation, and supplementing through a reconstructive process of suggestion (CR.81). Object and Icon begin to then form as waypoints, or rather as gaslights along a darkened street, leading the collective consciousness down a path laid down by unknown entities that claim safe passage. ‘Some worthwhile examples come to mind that would reveal the bridge between “hypnotic” and religious behavior. Consider the recently publicized miracle that took place when a figure of Christ on the cross began to shed tears. The cross was situated high against the front wall of the chrch, too high in fact for anyone actually to see the drops of water firsthand. Yet a great percentage of people who visited the church were convinced wholeheartedly that tears were being shed by the figure. At a later point, zoom cameras were able to show that there were no changes to the figure’s eyes, even while people reported seeing the tears. // They stared at the eyes for long periods of time, which had a trance-inducing effect due to the visual monotony*. At the same time, the staring caused eye fatigue and some inevitable perceptual variations // These effects were then interpreted in relation to believers’ original suggestion, namely, that Christ’s eyes would water (CR.81).’

Here is one example of iconic object, fulfilling the role as a vessel of prescribed imaginative illusion and suggested magnificence, or rather Opulence.

The Reality of Decay   Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. We would perhaps grow frantic at the sight of this ebbing away of our short span of time were we not secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we tan for ever draw new life and renewed time (*VE).

In his essay, On the Vanity of Existence, Arthur Schopenhauer describes our existence as a fruitless struggle amidst a life dictated by instability and confusion. In that the living body is a dedicated mechanism to strife, in the pursuit of a recognized sustainable present of satisfaction. However, this journey will inevitably end in vain as that which was meant to embody a lasting existence, would not have non-being as its preordained goal(*VE). Arguably, the objective reality is that at one moment life is, and eventually it is not. Moreover, it’s in our subjective reality during the process of life, that such definitions become skewed and distorted through culture and institution. It is through such domineering vessels of that even our basic realities are taken from us, being supplemented by false promises of eternal life, hollow examples of transcendence, and vacant reward for allowing our individual realities to be managed by forces no better nor worse than ourselves. In this, the made environment shapes the way in which we define and find value in our own individual definitions of what our realities are.

However, Post-Opulence is interested in both the exploration and eventual disentombing of this turn from humanity's rebellion and false dominance of a commodified society.

(corruption of reality?) ---

It is important to note the way in which visual communication has evolved since the birth of the image, and how visual communication and culture were key in terms of survival and production of both community and culture since the Paleolithic. In that the development of the neocortex and reasoning power, led to ritual practices and reverence for the animals early hunting societies preyed on. However, how have we progressed in regard to the way in which we in a neo-gilded culture, invest in the ideals of the ideal, consume art, and adorn creation as a half-realized concept; keeping in mind that no product of creation can or will exist in its most opulent or idealized form forever. Additionally, within a culture that both appropriates and consumes the aesthetic and moral principles of it’s would be counter. Mass media, as an example, serves us daily reminders of the realities of our modern day capacity for destruction, disruption, and decay. Through it, catastrophe and their sediments are made both palatable and distant, creating a cognitive distance as a kind of means of not looking, alienation, and disassociation. The question as to whether or not art object can both accurately describe reality and catalyze redemption, is one I put before Post-Opulence to answer, through the reclamation of destruction within the infrathin moments between a completely destructive process and its inherent aesthetic manifestation following. The contemporary ways of viewing of this progression/interaction with the perceived and ‘finalized’ art object, mirrors Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, in which reality itself is formed from an endless reproduction of the real. Moreover, Developing into a relationship of equivalence, indifference, to then the extinction of the original*. In short, the way in which mass production has shaped our way of viewing, has destroyed and altered the relationships we have with our own experienced reality. Additionally, it has created a perceived hierarchy of these two visual forms of completion and degradation into two opposing icons of status.

In the western cannon, following the end of World War II, iconoclasm via the abstract form (i.e. Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism) became the predominant means of cultural expression within a mass episode of cultural forgetting within the western world, in that there were no means of both accurately confronting and aestheticizing the horrors of the post-war world that remained grounded in both it’s reality and truth. In the destruction of recognizable imagery, In favor of the abstract form, reality was even further removed and that unpleasantness successfully buried. This brings to question the role of the Icon in relationship to our visual memory, and how the representation of our realities are chosen, with history and its sediments being presented to us as abstract entities that reject the creation of concrete memory and experience. As the physical presence of Icons manifest, transform, and are replaced over time, truth and origin destroyed as they are given new rendering and context.

Take for example some earlier burial practices of Mayan idol sculpture, and the way in which people would continue to engage with sculptures after they were both unmade and broken by foreign forces. As attackers would destroy them as a means of attacking the ideology, the communities would then go on to salvage and reclaim what remained to use as building material for new offerings, structures, or other sculptures.

This being said, the visual experience should not be reinforced to seek the supplementation of images and icons, but rather embrace the decay of them as concrete evidences of what was. In addition, carry the sediments of said decay into new forms of transformed narrative. While representation is inherently untruthful as an imitation of reality, Modernist ideology called for the delusion of it and is thus much more dangerous. Where the physicality of the made form is a manifestation of tangible truth, paintings manipulate the texture of the mind. To quote Harold Rosenberg, “Art as action rests on the enormous assumption that the artist accepts as real only that which he is in the process of creating”. In what could’ve been unknowingly hinted by him at the time, was the potential for narcissism in self-referential types of art that creates a volatile iconization of itself in the form of artistic commodity.

Chapter I

Post Opulence, Auto Destructive Art, and the DIAS

Metzger viewed people as being vessels of the unresolved and suppressed aggressions against ourselves and the greater society. Moreover, That our predisposition toward destruction served as a threat to the continuation of the illusion of balance and control. It is for this reason that he rationalized that due to this conflicting unconscious allure, that art celebrating this pleasure would be quickly rejected*(GMB).

Auto-Destructive Art found manifestation (or lack thereof) not only in the physical practice of destroying works, but also by means of the manifesto/lecture format. Much like Post-Opulence, acting somewhat beyond a means of a self-authoritative artistic practice, Auto-Destructive Art worked as a synthesis of the aesthetic values of destruction, and the performative aspects of public/collective engagement. Specifically to Post-Opulence, the lecture/manifesto takes form in events which have come to be called ‘burnings’, in which art is taken, completely burned, and the remains both distributed and left to their next incarnation. The burnings have manifested as a social form of catharsis and community building, with the focal point being this intention and draw to a chaotic process of destruction. Here, Post-Opulence begins to integrate the art and social practice, into a celebration of the post-apocalyptic and aestheticization of the decaying form.

Where Auto-Destructive Art and Post-Opulence split, is the intention in the embodiment of a specific set of ethical and political ideals. Where the theory of Auto-Destructive Art was an attack on the capitalist art market through an art lacking material form, Post-Opulence is rather a rejection of the idealized state of material form, as well as an attack on the notions of  iconization through similarly problematic traditional gallery systems. Additionally, there are three key notions within the manifestos of auto-destructive art that I recognize as being problematic. First, aside from acknowledged relationships to Dada, Auto-Destructive Art lacked being a complete theory to the extent that reproduction of the first manifesto in the second edition was needed as a ploy in which to validate the movement. In contrast, Post-Opulence takes into account the conceptual history of the destructive process/destruction of object outside of the narrowed scope of any particular contemporary practice of the western canon. Secondly, in the second manifesto it is the stated intention of Auto-Destructive Art to reflect the power ‘man’ has over natures being. Within Post-Opulence, the relationship between maker and these natural and chaotic forces is innately symbiotic. Lastly, the work of Auto-Destructive Art began to be defined by its political motivation, and thus created icon and symbolic metaphor. These, being the conceptual and ideological frameworks that Post-Opulence aims to destroy & transcend.

In writing on the Destruction of Art Symposium, which was a month-long symposium focused on the exhibition of destructive and destroyed works that took place in 1966 London, Art historian Kristine Stiles describes Destruction in art as not being the same as destruction of art. Moreover, she went on to write that the destruction in art addresses the negative aspects of both social and political institutions, and manifests as an attack on the traditional identity of the visual arts themselves. While these artists were responding to their individual overarching philosophies of destruction in the form of ephemeral art object and performance based works, there was never an established movement nor manifesto solidifying the practice. While the symposium itself was formulated by the artist Gustav Metzger, who coined the term ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ seven years prior, it would seem final meditations of both destruction and decay as separate from any particular cannon following the month-long event would end there. (Death Drive) Chapter II

On the Destruction of Ideology to Contemporary Practice: Post-Opulence and Iconoclasm

If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. - (PF/GB)

Icon and sacred object have always served as powerful means of instilling pillars of power. While we may think of the word icon in solely western terms, such as digital representation of files or in relationship to objects of Christianity, this use of object or image as vessel to areas beyond our conceptual understanding is a cross cultural phenomenon that has spanned throughout time. From the objects of polytheism and pagan era deity worship, to contemporary vessels such as photographs that capture and represent memory, all can fall within the theoretical principle of the ‘Mimesis’. This, being the concept that all artistic expression and creation are nothing more than a re-representation and imitation of nature. In this sense, the destroyer and iconoclast, inadvertently has a specific aesthetic sensibility and potential to create an even greater work that nearly captures our truer reality than the object that was set out to be destroyed. Aesthetically and socially speaking, we now exist in a time where iconoclasm thus can be argued to present itself as an evidence of progressive victory over historically problematic institutions.

Repeatedly in the essay of Aesthetics, Hegel describes the making process as both equally destructive, as well as simultaneously creative - In the example of the melting pot and the witches brew. The latter being:

‘A forge in which “everything murky, natural, impure, foreign, and exorbitant” is consumed in the purifying fire of the “deeper spirit.” The fire strips away what is “formless, symbolic, unbeautiful, and misshapen”—the nocturnal phantasmagoria of the animal, the irrational, [ ], the pre-human, the nonhuman—just as it draws into relief [her- ausheben] the spiritual identity of human and divine. “congealed light” is both the residue and the exemplary manifestation of this fire (the product presents the perfect image of its own process of production) —an anticipatory image of enlightenment caught in frozen stone.’

The instances of iconoclasm are best known and defined by the Byzantine and Protestant Reformation periods. Finding its strongest cultural association as being solely socio-religious in nature as being a polemic, rooted in the Greek word for ‘war’ polemos. Iconoclasts not only culturally transformed the previous idea that the universe consisted of many deities, but even as time transformed these newly installed institutions of monotheism, these powers would likewise find themselves a target of others against their icons. In this way, iconoclasm would better be described as a neutral conceptual construct that has evolved in relationship to the culture that creates the environment that breeds it. Reframing the negative associations of the destruction of Icon based on Byzantine era victors and influences, iconoclasm serves as both aesthetic strategy and political tool.

The legitimacy of the destruction of the icon has found both evolution and intersection within whole practices of sociopolitical life and contemporary aesthetics. The French Revolution, being one way that iconoclasm found its most drastic shifts in narrative. Following the period in which it was defined by a religious targets, French revolutionaries destroyed artworks and portraits of the wealthy, as these symbolized the luxury, vanity, and opulence of the aristocracy. However, as the social valuation of art itself began to grow, these revolutionaries evolved once more this concept of iconoclasm, and created new techniques to destroy and transform symbolic meaning. This being done by means of renaming, rededication, and removals from sites where display and interpretation can be institutionally controlled. Hugo Ball, a key theorist and practitioner of the Dadaists in Zurich, took this concept of reframing in the realm of iconoclasm by motivating the movement though complex thinking on language, philosophy, theology, mysticism, history, and politics. Not only did the views of Dada contradict Christian mysticism, but makes the case of the Church as an ‘Outdated, hierarchical repository of power. Dada was at an intersection between iconoclasm, anarchism, and aesthetic experience. Moreover, viewed the iconoclastic movements as being a singular mold of both religious and secular, although its participants would claim one or the other. While the use of the term iconoclasm in Balls essays were in relationship to a historical ‘Bildersturm’, it was treated as an important means of force in political conflicts that continued to resonate into the twentieth century.

‘Because man is unable to escape the concrete, all abstraction, as an attempt to manage without the image, leads only to an impoverishment, a dilution of, a surrogate for the linguistic process. Abstraction breeds arrogance; it makes men appear the same as or similar to God (even if only in illusion). De facto, it weakens his closeness to God, his na ̈ıvete ́, his faith; that clinging, grasping force that is a prerequisite for all receptivity and all devotion. It is hard to see how abstraction and culture can be reconciled.’

However, following the two World Wars, in response to the treatment of architecture and what was deemed ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazi party, physical destruction of art for political reasons became socially impermissible. While Art has found itself better protected and culturally valued, the aesthetic use of the destroyed image and reclamation of meaning has once more found its way at the dawn of modernism.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, modernism provided the western world with a means of dealing with the traumas of war and its disasters. Anselm Kiefers work, as an example, conceptualized at as not only a means of exhuming memory, but as a means of confronting it and its emotional resonance as well. Despite the recreations of iconic and monumental forms to serve as allegory reconciling his personal lineage, having been born in 1945 germany as the country was attempting to reform their previous identity, Kiefers work is conceptually materialized with the aim of reconciliation in a period of dismantlement between both Living and Prosthetic Memory in postwar Germany. The first being memory linked to the lived experience of an individual, and the second being memories that are circulated in the public, yet experienced with one’s own body forming an experiential relationship.

In the same period, Gustav Metzger began coining the term Auto-Destructive Art in 1959. Auto-Destructive Art as being acutely being concerned with the problems of the aggressions of the individual, as well as those within the greater society. It was against a system that was viewed by Metzger as being the maker of its own destruction (In response to WWII, Industrialization of war and increased nuclear armament). In three separate manifestos, he goes on to criticize privileged institutions and their dominion of Natures both physical and in relationship to the society.  

Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto Pamphlet, Gustav Metzger cir.1960

Eventually Clement Greenberg, a prominent art critic of the mid-twentieth century and during so championed abstract expressionism, also adopted a new iconoclastic ideology. Where his rejection to representation was not due to a personal dislike of the narrative image, but rather out of necessity as aesthetic progress called for it. Here, iconoclasm has found itself transforming into a tool of progress and creation of a linear narrative, rather than solely as a tool of regression and destruction. The concepts and aesthetics of the artistic field grew in relationship with the post war period which today are still taught as fundamental knowledge. However, Abstract Expressionism removed a necessary conflict between ‘Advanced Art’ and the dominant culture, in that it kept alive the social and political norms of the west, and thus became an icon in both its material reality and lack of image.

Modernism left open the questions surrounding whom truly carries the authority over the conventions of art, and its institutional value. However, in the failure of challenging the dominant American culture at the time, it would seem the case that those contemporary institutional powers (Which were problematic and white-male dominant) would in fact be the answer. To that point, and the institutionalization of Art itself in the development of higher conceptual frameworks belonging to those who can access it, has transformed Art into a vessel of a flawed social order. In recent years however, we have seen a progression toward the dismantling of this resonant flawed modernity in both iconoclastic aesthetics and social interventions. As an example, following the events of Charlottesville, there was a wave of stated illegal and legal instances of iconoclasm of Confederate monuments in Durham, North Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland. While the subject is still one between proposed heritage and social progress, iconoclasm now manifests as an aesthetic tool that still makes the propositions of progress, however through actual physical instances and evidences of destruction.

During the same year as this Iconoclastic wave, Contemporary Artists Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson) came out with their two-person exhibition White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), opening at Pioneer Works in 2017:

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

‘Pioneer Works is pleased to present White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), a two-person exhibition by Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), from November 10 – December 17, 2017. WMOAP questions a prevailing western history that uses white-male-heteronormativity as its persistent model.

Both artists approach WMOAP from an individual practice that is responsive to their experiences as black women operating in a system of white male supremacy. At a time when removing Confederate statues—literally white men on pedestals—are cultural flashpoints of whiteness and class, Garner and (Robinson) play with the size, texture, and scale of white monumentality itself, referencing both real and imagined figureheads of historical exclusion’

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017 Iconoclasm has thus served as a subtle force of change, beyond the conventional ideas surrounding it as simple brutality. The questions remain open in the aesthetic exploration of the destruction in art, vs. the destruction of art. Moreover, aesthetic iconoclasm being a matter of politics, art, and navigated areas of intersection in relationship to the greater social body.

Chapter III Post Opulence & Its Functions Related to Practices of Destruction

The question of space begets a number of alternative intention and action in relationship to Post-Opulence. In terms of the art object, having been manifested in the studio, typically falls prey to the very goal in which it is institutionally groomed to aspire to. The first rejection Post-Opulence makes of the traditional space, is of the neutral walls innate foreshadowing of the morbid display of the stinted and mummified.   There’s something interesting about the ways in which both new (or rather transformed) object and form, inadvertently manifest from the object left to the mercy of both time and the space. Looking at city streets and various attempts at a particular idealized design or structural outcome, Metzger would argue that we are currently existing in a space created of our own filth. Subtle vibrations that erode and split concrete, progressions fated to obsoletion, Institutions that conform us to a deformed and self-destroying society of development, are all things present in the more open minds of the day (GMB*). However, working through the rot, there are moments in which de/composition inherently manifest foundational aesthetic principles, though perceived as negative moments of degradation & incompletion. It’s in these moments of viewing through the scope of Post-Opulence, where viewed sites of decay, bloom into new sites of aesthetic reclamation.

In these moments, seemingly about nothing, are sediments of our own daily rituals over time. Moreover, are an example of the ways in which we engage with what is left. Post-Opulence meditates on comprehensive aesthetic systems, and refers back to the fundamentals of both the physical and metaphysical in acknowledgement of absolute reality that all things are in a state of decay, and made to eventually become nothing. Moreover, through that nothingness there can be found revelations of the infinite potential for new and transformed aesthetic experience of the real. As we view decay as being dark, morbid, spoiled, or fleeting, it is an equal element in an interlocked relationship to the perception of bloom as being lighter and louder in terms of having the idealized texture of vitality. The latter, being an allegory for the treatment of the art object, space, and contemporary icon, as we operate in a means in which to preserve longevity and a holding onto the opulent form.

Conclusion and Assertion An Intention in the Contemporary

The ironic nature of Post-Opulence, is that its success lies in its failure. The practice is not meant to be a how- to in terms of a specific practice, but rather as a greater reminder that all will fade. In other words, the consuming fire or broken glass are not representations of destruction, rather they are destruction itself.

[fifthimageart]

Bloom & Decay Draft IX

It's funny how specific moments, memories of situation and context, eventually become nothing more than abstract and confused fleeting moments. Looking back, memories announce themselves as degrading reels of film, playing over and over, with subtle variations depending on how forcefully we try to change the moments long since experienced. However, even in the best imagined outcomes, reality molds the mind back to the inevitable result of the things that have already come to pass. So much of our early lives, simple joys, and ignorant based bliss, lost into the void of the mind and it's need to distinguish our pasts, presents, and futures.

Embracing the passing of time and it’s inherent destructive nature, as now memories and their icons are left to decay and new found freedoms to transform & bloom into the unrecognizable, Post-Opulence aims to reveal the contemporary mimesis of permanence as nothing more than shadowy reflections of a luxurious modern projection of both the sought ideal and iconic state. In practice, it creates deep afflictions and inaccessibility to a conventional aesthetic, through variable acts of destruction toward the art object. Post-Opulence highlights power invested in a sought idealized form, to then create struggle over the former realized art object through its breaking, burning, and decay into revelations of new form. Post-Opulence makes reference to both actions and signals of changed circumstance & time, accepting that all eventually fades again into nothingness. Thus, rejecting the notions of worth and value bestowed by the commodified authority. Chaos, just as with Order, are the described primordial uncarved blocks (FR)* of the multiple realities of the physical, spiritual, and ideological. Taking control, and shaping the narrated lives of both gods and the individual instances of humankind alike, chaos is its own independent force manifested before all others. The poet Paul Eluard states ‘I must not look on reality as being like myself’*, but how is this so? In regard to what starts as an observed object of interest, the reasons in which we look upon it reveals more about our internal selves, as well as the relationships we have with these internal moments that take shape below the surface of the skin. However, initial impressions are arguably narrowed perceptions of a truth born of an impure examination. The Post Opulent are the neo-agents of Chaos, bringing about a lux et voluptas to both the commodified market, and the reinforcement of such worship of commodity through the icons they create. These icons, being the now commercialized art object.

The Icon ‘It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to form a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feel­ing by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a sky­ scraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count (*DeDeath5). ‘

Let me first attempt to define what I consider an Icon to be. By definition, is it an image or idol as representative of something otherworldly. Moreover, an object or image used as an aid to devotion to these otherworldly beings. Secondly, it is defined separately as a representative symbol, or as being worth of veneration (dic)*. Even in this surface definition, there’s a redundancy in that in both cases an icon serves as nothing more than an access point to something we perceive as being greater than ourselves. May it be in a composition, place of worship, or in our pockets, we put our faith in these vehicles of reconciliation of our fluid individual definitions of reality.

In his piece The Denial of Death, the cultural anthropologist Ernst Becker poses that in the face of meditating on the significance of our impending demise, the human mind would be occupied by both anxiety and despair. Moreover, that we as humans need a buffer or antidote to this truth, by ways of adopting a greater urge to heroism and an application of significance to one’s own existence. However, while certain imagined heroisms are inaccessible to most, we also find ways of seeking this notion in our daily routines (i.e. work, religion, politics, and/or relationships). This heroism is short lived, in that its destined for failure due to the fact that the cosmic significance of the individual person is nonexistent. Additionally, that because of this we subscribe to what is ultimately the illusion of permanent meaning. As religion, the once prominent means of establishing this illusion of greater individual significance, began to lose its hold as modernity began to supplement this ‘need’ by creating a cultural heroism that is defined by its respective culture. It’s in the latter that we begin to see the rise of cultural heroes (or icons), and the creation of the heroic machine, in that the average individual can only hope to fold into the illusion of being a part of the greater heroic movement. Again, this machine being represented and directed by the culture in which it grows, through better or worse. It is also the belief that this cultural heroism, was the most actualized form of heroism that an individual could hope to achieve. There are rare instances, however, that Becked coined as being called Genuine heroism. In that there is a small population of people that do not require any form of heroism illusion to live, and can face the impossible situation of living that we find ourselves in.

‘I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever [humanity] does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise, it is false (DD_EB)*’

Applying such a context once again to this idea of icon, the Post-Opulent aim is to play the role of the institutional Anti-hero. In that while one accepts that we are indeed subject to the individual limitations of the unconscious drives to cultural heroism, the objects and images in which we produce in this world, are rather made as fleeting offerings to the two facts of our current temporal finitude: existing life and existing death. Moreover, it is the thought that by redirecting the productions  of oneself, away from satiating the cultural beast in favor of starving it, can produce an aesthetic/Institutional practice of something similar to that of genuine heroism.

The Broken Screen: Anti-Heroism & Reverence of the lost WIP

The Reality of Decay   Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. We would perhaps grow frantic at the sight of this ebbing away of our short span of time were we not secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we tan for ever draw new life and renewed time (*VE).

In his essay, On the Vanity of Existence, Arthur Schopenhauer describes our existence as a fruitless struggle amidst a life dictated by instability and confusion. In that the living body is a dedicated mechanism to strife, in the pursuit of a recognized sustainable present of satisfaction. However, this journey will inevitably end in vain as that which was meant to embody a lasting existence, would not have non-being as its preordained goal(*VE). Arguably, the objective reality is that at one moment life is, and eventually it is not. Moreover, it’s in our subjective reality during the process of life, that such definitions become skewed and distorted through culture and institution. It is through such domineering vessels of that even our basic realities are taken from us, being supplemented by false promises of eternal life, hollow examples of transcendence, and vacant reward for allowing our individual realities to be managed by forces no better nor worse than ourselves. In this, the made environment shapes the way in which we define and find value in our own individual definitions of what our realities are.

However, Post-Opulence is interested in both the exploration and eventual disentombing of this turn from humanity's rebellion and false dominance of a commodified society.

(corruption of reality?) ---

It is important to note the way in which visual communication has evolved since the birth of the image, and how visual communication and culture were key in terms of survival and production of both community and culture since the Upper Paleolithic (FofB). However, how have we progressed in regard to the way in which we in a neo-gilded culture, invest in the ideals of the ideal, consume art, and adorn creation as a half-realized concept; keeping in mind that no product of creation can or will exist in its most opulent or idealized form forever. Additionally, within a culture that both appropriates and consumes the aesthetic and moral principles of it’s would be counter. Mass media, as an example, serves us daily reminders of the realities of our modern day capacity for destruction, disruption, and decay. Through it, catastrophe and their sediments are made both palatable and distant, creating a cognitive distance as a kind of means of not looking, alienation, and disassociation. The question as to whether or not art object can both accurately describe reality and catalyze redemption, is one I put before Post-Opulence to answer, through the reclamation of destruction within the infrathin moments between a completely destructive process and its inherent aesthetic manifestation following. The contemporary ways of viewing of this progression/interaction with the perceived and ‘finalized’ art object, mirrors Jean Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality, in which reality itself is formed from an endless reproduction of the real. Moreover, Developing into a relationship of equivalence, indifference, to then the extinction of the original*. In short, the way in which mass production has shaped our way of viewing, has destroyed and altered the relationships we have with our own experienced reality. Additionally, it has created a perceived hierarchy of these two visual forms of completion and degradation into two opposing icons of status.

In the western cannon, following the end of World War II, iconoclasm via the abstract form (i.e. Tachisme and Abstract Expressionism) became the predominant means of cultural expression within a mass episode of cultural forgetting within the western world, in that there were no means of both accurately confronting and aestheticizing the horrors of the post-war world that remained grounded in both it’s reality and truth. In the destruction of recognizable imagery, In favor of the abstract form, reality was even further removed and that unpleasantness successfully buried. This brings to question the role of the Icon in relationship to our visual memory, and how the representation of our realities are chosen, with history and its sediments being presented to us as abstract entities that reject the creation of concrete memory and experience. As the physical presence of Icons manifest, transform, and are replaced over time, truth and origin destroyed as they are given new rendering and context.

Take for example some earlier burial practices of Mayan idol sculpture, and the way in which people would continue to engage with sculptures after they were both unmade and broken by foreign forces. As attackers would destroy them as a means of attacking the ideology, the communities would then go on to salvage and reclaim what remained to use as building material for new offerings, structures, or other sculptures.

This being said, the visual experience should not be reinforced to seek the supplementation of images and icons, but rather embrace the decay of them as concrete evidences of what was. In addition, carry the sediments of said decay into new forms of transformed narrative. While representation is inherently untruthful as an imitation of reality, Modernist ideology called for the delusion of it and is thus much more dangerous. Where the physicality of the made form is a manifestation of tangible truth, paintings manipulate the texture of the mind. To quote Harold Rosenberg, “Art as action rests on the enormous assumption that the artist accepts as real only that which he is in the process of creating”. In what could’ve been unknowingly hinted by him at the time, was the potential for narcissism in self-referential types of art that creates a volatile iconization of itself in the form of artistic commodity. Chapter I

Post Opulence, Auto Destructive Art, and the DIAS

Metzger viewed people as being vessels of the unresolved and suppressed aggressions against ourselves and the greater society. Moreover, That our predisposition toward destruction served as a threat to the continuation of the illusion of balance and control. It is for this reason that he rationalized that due to this conflicting unconscious allure, that art celebrating this pleasure would be quickly rejected*(GMB).

Auto-Destructive Art found manifestation (or lack thereof) not only in the physical practice of destroying works, but also by means of the manifesto/lecture format. Much like Post-Opulence, acting somewhat beyond a means of a self-authoritative artistic practice, Auto-Destructive Art worked as a synthesis of the aesthetic values of destruction, and the performative aspects of public/collective engagement. Specifically to Post-Opulence, the lecture/manifesto takes form in events which have come to be called ‘burnings’, in which art is taken, completely burned, and the remains both distributed and left to their next incarnation. The burnings have manifested as a social form of catharsis and community building, with the focal point being this intention and draw to a chaotic process of destruction. Here, Post-Opulence begins to integrate the art and social practice, into a celebration of the post-apocalyptic and aestheticization of the decaying form.

Where Auto-Destructive Art and Post-Opulence split, is the intention in the embodiment of a specific set of ethical and political ideals. Where the theory of Auto-Destructive Art was an attack on the capitalist art market through an art lacking material form, Post-Opulence is rather a rejection of the idealized state of material form, as well as an attack on the notions of  iconization through similarly problematic traditional gallery systems. Additionally, there are three key notions within the manifestos of auto-destructive art that I recognize as being problematic. First, aside from acknowledged relationships to Dada, Auto-Destructive Art lacked being a complete theory to the extent that reproduction of the first manifesto in the second edition was needed as a ploy in which to validate the movement. In contrast, Post-Opulence takes into account the conceptual history of the destructive process/destruction of object outside of the narrowed scope of any particular contemporary practice of the western canon. Secondly, in the second manifesto it is the stated intention of Auto-Destructive Art to reflect the power ‘man’ has over natures being. Within Post-Opulence, the relationship between maker and these natural and chaotic forces is innately symbiotic. Lastly, the work of Auto-Destructive Art began to be defined by its political motivation, and thus created icon and symbolic metaphor. These, being the conceptual and ideological frameworks that Post-Opulence aims to destroy & transcend.

In writing on the Destruction of Art Symposium, which was a month-long symposium focused on the exhibition of destructive and destroyed works that took place in 1966 London, Art historian Kristine Stiles describes Destruction in art as not being the same as destruction of art. Moreover, she went on to write that the destruction in art addresses the negative aspects of both social and political institutions, and manifests as an attack on the traditional identity of the visual arts themselves. While these artists were responding to their individual overarching philosophies of destruction in the form of ephemeral art object and performance based works, there was never an established movement nor manifesto solidifying the practice. While the symposium itself was formulated by the artist Gustav Metzger, who coined the term ‘Auto-Destructive Art’ seven years prior, it would seem final meditations of both destruction and decay as separate from any particular cannon following the month-long event would end there. (Death Drive) Chapter II

On the Destruction of Ideology to Contemporary Practice: Post-Opulence and Iconoclasm

If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. - (PF/GB)

Icon and sacred object have always served as powerful means of instilling pillars of power. While we may think of the word icon in solely western terms, such as digital representation of files or in relationship to objects of Christianity, this use of object or image as vessel to areas beyond our conceptual understanding is a cross cultural phenomenon that has spanned throughout time. From the objects of polytheism and pagan era deity worship, to contemporary vessels such as photographs that capture and represent memory, all can fall within the theoretical principle of the ‘Mimesis’. This, being the concept that all artistic expression and creation are nothing more than a re-representation and imitation of nature. In this sense, the destroyer and iconoclast, inadvertently has a specific aesthetic sensibility and potential to create an even greater work that nearly captures our truer reality than the object that was set out to be destroyed. Aesthetically and socially speaking, we now exist in a time where iconoclasm thus can be argued to present itself as an evidence of progressive victory over historically problematic institutions.

Repeatedly in the essay of Aesthetics, Hegel describes the making process as both equally destructive, as well as simultaneously creative - In the example of the melting pot and the witches brew. The latter being:

‘A forge in which “everything murky, natural, impure, foreign, and exorbitant” is consumed in the purifying fire of the “deeper spirit.” The fire strips away what is “formless, symbolic, unbeautiful, and misshapen”—the nocturnal phantasmagoria of the animal, the irrational, [ ], the pre-human, the nonhuman—just as it draws into relief [her- ausheben] the spiritual identity of human and divine. “congealed light” is both the residue and the exemplary manifestation of this fire (the product presents the perfect image of its own process of production) —an anticipatory image of enlightenment caught in frozen stone.’

The instances of iconoclasm are best known and defined by the Byzantine and Protestant Reformation periods. Finding its strongest cultural association as being solely socio-religious in nature as being a polemic, rooted in the Greek word for ‘war’ polemos. Iconoclasts not only culturally transformed the previous idea that the universe consisted of many deities, but even as time transformed these newly installed institutions of monotheism, these powers would likewise find themselves a target of others against their icons. In this way, iconoclasm would better be described as a neutral conceptual construct that has evolved in relationship to the culture that creates the environment that breeds it. Reframing the negative associations of the destruction of Icon based on Byzantine era victors and influences, iconoclasm serves as both aesthetic strategy and political tool.

The legitimacy of the destruction of the icon has found both evolution and intersection within whole practices of sociopolitical life and contemporary aesthetics. The French Revolution, being one way that iconoclasm found its most drastic shifts in narrative. Following the period in which it was defined by a religious targets, French revolutionaries destroyed artworks and portraits of the wealthy, as these symbolized the luxury, vanity, and opulence of the aristocracy. However, as the social valuation of art itself began to grow, these revolutionaries evolved once more this concept of iconoclasm, and created new techniques to destroy and transform symbolic meaning. This being done by means of renaming, rededication, and removals from sites where display and interpretation can be institutionally controlled. Hugo Ball, a key theorist and practitioner of the Dadaists in Zurich, took this concept of reframing in the realm of iconoclasm by motivating the movement though complex thinking on language, philosophy, theology, mysticism, history, and politics. Not only did the views of Dada contradict Christian mysticism, but makes the case of the Church as an ‘Outdated, hierarchical repository of power. Dada was at an intersection between iconoclasm, anarchism, and aesthetic experience. Moreover, viewed the iconoclastic movements as being a singular mold of both religious and secular, although its participants would claim one or the other. While the use of the term iconoclasm in Balls essays were in relationship to a historical ‘Bildersturm’, it was treated as an important means of force in political conflicts that continued to resonate into the twentieth century.

‘Because man is unable to escape the concrete, all abstraction, as an attempt to manage without the image, leads only to an impoverishment, a dilution of, a surrogate for the linguistic process. Abstraction breeds arrogance; it makes men appear the same as or similar to God (even if only in illusion). De facto, it weakens his closeness to God, his na ̈ıvete ́, his faith; that clinging, grasping force that is a prerequisite for all receptivity and all devotion. It is hard to see how abstraction and culture can be reconciled.’

However, following the two World Wars, in response to the treatment of architecture and what was deemed ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazi party, physical destruction of art for political reasons became socially impermissible. While Art has found itself better protected and culturally valued, the aesthetic use of the destroyed image and reclamation of meaning has once more found its way at the dawn of modernism.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, modernism provided the western world with a means of dealing with the traumas of war and its disasters. Anselm Kiefers work, as an example, conceptualized at as not only a means of exhuming memory, but as a means of confronting it and its emotional resonance as well. Despite the recreations of iconic and monumental forms to serve as allegory reconciling his personal lineage, having been born in 1945 germany as the country was attempting to reform their previous identity, Kiefers work is conceptually materialized with the aim of reconciliation in a period of dismantlement between both Living and Prosthetic Memory in postwar Germany. The first being memory linked to the lived experience of an individual, and the second being memories that are circulated in the public, yet experienced with one’s own body forming an experiential relationship.

In the same period, Gustav Metzger began coining the term Auto-Destructive Art in 1959. Auto-Destructive Art as being acutely being concerned with the problems of the aggressions of the individual, as well as those within the greater society. It was against a system that was viewed by Metzger as being the maker of its own destruction (In response to WWII, Industrialization of war and increased nuclear armament). In three separate manifestos, he goes on to criticize privileged institutions and their dominion of Natures both physical and in relationship to the society.  

Auto-Destructive Art Manifesto Pamphlet, Gustav Metzger cir.1960

Eventually Clement Greenberg, a prominent art critic of the mid-twentieth century and during so championed abstract expressionism, also adopted a new iconoclastic ideology. Where his rejection to representation was not due to a personal dislike of the narrative image, but rather out of necessity as aesthetic progress called for it. Here, iconoclasm has found itself transforming into a tool of progress and creation of a linear narrative, rather than solely as a tool of regression and destruction. The concepts and aesthetics of the artistic field grew in relationship with the post war period which today are still taught as fundamental knowledge. However, Abstract Expressionism removed a necessary conflict between ‘Advanced Art’ and the dominant culture, in that it kept alive the social and political norms of the west, and thus became an icon in both its material reality and lack of image.

Modernism left open the questions surrounding whom truly carries the authority over the conventions of art, and its institutional value. However, in the failure of challenging the dominant American culture at the time, it would seem the case that those contemporary institutional powers (Which were problematic and white-male dominant) would in fact be the answer. To that point, and the institutionalization of Art itself in the development of higher conceptual frameworks belonging to those who can access it, has transformed Art into a vessel of a flawed social order. In recent years however, we have seen a progression toward the dismantling of this resonant flawed modernity in both iconoclastic aesthetics and social interventions. As an example, following the events of Charlottesville, there was a wave of stated illegal and legal instances of iconoclasm of Confederate monuments in Durham, North Carolina, and Baltimore, Maryland. While the subject is still one between proposed heritage and social progress, iconoclasm now manifests as an aesthetic tool that still makes the propositions of progress, however through actual physical instances and evidences of destruction.

During the same year as this Iconoclastic wave, Contemporary Artists Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson) came out with their two-person exhibition White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), opening at Pioneer Works in 2017:

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017

‘Pioneer Works is pleased to present White Man On A Pedestal (WMOAP), a two-person exhibition by Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson), from November 10 – December 17, 2017. WMOAP questions a prevailing western history that uses white-male-heteronormativity as its persistent model.

Both artists approach WMOAP from an individual practice that is responsive to their experiences as black women operating in a system of white male supremacy. At a time when removing Confederate statues—literally white men on pedestals—are cultural flashpoints of whiteness and class, Garner and (Robinson) play with the size, texture, and scale of white monumentality itself, referencing both real and imagined figureheads of historical exclusion’

Installation view of ‘White Man On A Pedestal’ at Pioneer Works, 2017 Iconoclasm has thus served as a subtle force of change, beyond the conventional ideas surrounding it as simple brutality. The questions remain open in the aesthetic exploration of the destruction in art, vs. the destruction of art. Moreover, aesthetic iconoclasm being a matter of politics, art, and navigated areas of intersection in relationship to the greater social body.

Chapter III Post Opulence & Its Functions Related to Practices of Destruction

The question of space begets a number of alternative intention and action in relationship to Post-Opulence. In terms of the art object, having been manifested in the studio, typically falls prey to the very goal in which it is institutionally groomed to aspire to. The first rejection Post-Opulence makes of the traditional space, is of the neutral walls innate foreshadowing of the morbid display of the stinted and mummified.   There’s something interesting about the ways in which both new (or rather transformed) object and form, inadvertently manifest from the object left to the mercy of both time and the space. Looking at city streets and various attempts at a particular idealized design or structural outcome, Metzger would argue that we are currently existing in a space created of our own filth. Subtle vibrations that erode and split concrete, progressions fated to obsoletion, Institutions that conform us to a deformed and self-destroying society of development, are all things present in the more open minds of the day (GMB*). However, working through the rot, there are moments in which de/composition inherently manifest foundational aesthetic principles, though perceived as negative moments of degradation & incompletion. It’s in these moments of viewing through the scope of Post-Opulence, where viewed sites of decay, bloom into new sites of aesthetic reclamation.

In these moments, seemingly about nothing, are sediments of our own daily rituals over time. Moreover, are an example of the ways in which we engage with what is left. Post-Opulence meditates on comprehensive aesthetic systems, and refers back to the fundamentals of both the physical and metaphysical in acknowledgement of absolute reality that all things are in a state of decay, and made to eventually become nothing. Moreover, through that nothingness there can be found revelations of the infinite potential for new and transformed aesthetic experience of the real. As we view decay as being dark, morbid, spoiled, or fleeting, it is an equal element in an interlocked relationship to the perception of bloom as being lighter and louder in terms of having the idealized texture of vitality. The latter, being an allegory for the treatment of the art object, space, and contemporary icon, as we operate in a means in which to preserve longevity and a holding onto the opulent form.

Conclusion and Assertion An Intention in the Contemporary

The ironic nature of Post-Opulence, is that its success lies in its failure. The practice is not meant to be a how- to in terms of a specific practice, but rather as a greater reminder that all will fade. In other words, the consuming fire or broken glass are not representations of destruction, rather they are destruction itself.