A Lost History Retrieved

Artificial Life Form #5 (with a phi shell). 2024 - GDS - DS.

Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice

"I am not yet born; O hear me.

Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.

I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me

With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me

For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, my life when they murder by means of my hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me

In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white waves call me to folly and the desert calls me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,

Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me

With strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.

Otherwise kill me."

- An intensely powerful poem discovered today, written by the Irish  poet, Louis MacNeice (1907-1963). For more of his poetry see here and/or here, where Prayer Before Birth can also be found.

In regards to the link embedded, it leads to a Saturday Night Live skit featuring an impersonation of snake-oil salesman, Donald Trump, hawking politically "enhanced" bibles; the latest in the true-life series of Don the Wan's ludicrous escapades.*

I think Mac would've related to the sentiments expressed.

As for the digital image introducing this post; it is all that remains of a group of (virtual) artificial life forms first mentioned in this post. It had a full page illustration - in the form of a preliminary digital sketch: a view from a window of a strangely ochre-lit ocean, and a window ledge upon which sat a damaged glass container filled with water... a weird image which still haunts me.

So much history is lost... both real and fictional, when an artist loses large portions of their work. However, for a reason I can't remember, ALF #5's image found its way to my present digital image file.  I gave it a phi shell... and liked it so much, I decided to mentally retrieve its unwritten story. It appears below (and after the jump-break) 

***

The Lost History of Artificial Life Form # Five

(condensed)

"I'm the next act

Waiting in the wings

I'm an animal

Trapped in your hot car

I am all the days

That you choose to ignore

You are all I need

You're all I need

I'm in the middle of your picture

Lying in the reeds"

- Lyrics from the song, All I Need, 2007, Radiohead

*

The artificial life form known only as "Model Five" - or "Five" - was the most successful and advanced of the miniature cyborg life forms produced by Project 15: a coalition formed by the collaboration of several (anonymous) cyborg artists, and a rogue - "Rainbow" - biotech industrial facility (also anonymous) in the early to mid-21st century.

For the most part, Five resembled a small embryonic, aquatic animal whose body was suspended in a transparent, fluid-filled sac. In reality, the animal and the sac were one glutinous unit which could rapidly ambulate in water, a feat aided by the cluster of tiny spheres located at its flexible base. The spheres served a number of purposes. Essentially, water was the only substance necessary for Five's survival; the smaller spheres absorbed and transformed this simple liquid into a type of fuel and/or nourishment.

The larger spheres were databases, however, which were, in turn, wirelessly in communication with a central database. These tiny devices were not merely programmed to monitor Five's location and overall physical state, but, allegedly their owner's physical state as well. Some speculated that Five might monitor a great deal more, but surveillance had ceased being an issue by this time; civilization had been conditioned to accept it and, with albeit a little trepidation, overlook it.

Unlike earlier attempts regarding miniature cyborgs, Five was the first "living" Bluetooth-like device which might "warm the heart" of its owner. It had character. It possessed creature-like eyes; optical lenses interfaced with a "brain," a biotechnical marvel which its makers claimed approached the complexity of its organic rivals. Moreover, this "brain" was designed and programmed to communicate with actual organic brains provided one owned the dedicated interface app, a password and a small device implanted in ones brain via a simple injection.

There were those, of course, who imagined Five might technically be conscious, or even, perhaps, sentient. Certainly, it gave the illusion it might be "aware" of it's surroundings. However, in the last analysis, it's unlikely even its creators knew the exact nature of its cognitive abilities - let alone what its cyber-golem might be thinking - anymore than they could ascertain the full content of any living creature's mind - or, conversely, the secret life of a wristwatch. As the line began to blur between the "living" and the "not living"; "life" became a relative term.

(continued after the jump-break...)

Le Portail des Papillons

Le Portail des Papillons (The Portal of Butterflies) - digital - 2018, DS.

(Click to enlarge.)

(Note: Sorry for the delay; this post is now complete.)


"Part of me likes the idea that I somehow persist after biological death; it might even be possible, albeit in ways currently antithetical to materialistic science. Empirical science (as currently practiced) may be missing something crucial; if consciousness exists after the demise of its neurological substrate, then it's likely our current definition of consciousness is simply wrong-headed. Maybe brains are more akin to receivers than computers and we're all tuned to the same channel, or at least the same spectrum."

- Mac Tonnies from this September, 2004 Posthuman Blues post.

"Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says black holes, the mysterious massive vortexes formed from collapsed stars, do not destroy everything they consume but instead eventually fire out matter and energy 'in a mangled form.'"

The bad part about this is that, according to Hawking, black holes can't be used as portals to parallel universes; I'd hoped that some black holes might function as "emergency exits" when the universe begins to die (whether through runaway expansion or the reverse pyrotechnics of the "Big Crunch").

I still haven't quite given up; I leave the task of migrating to other universes to posthuman ingenuity."

- Mac Tonnies from this July, 2004 Posthuman Blues post. The artist's interpretation of a black hole (inset right) was found via this article.

"The problem of “translating the untranslatable” was addressed by the 16th century alchemist Gerhard Dorn, with the notion of what he called the spiracle – in Latin, the Spiraculum Eternitatis, the window or breathing hole into eternity, which Jung writes about extensively as the conjunction of opposites in Mysterium Coniunctionis. The spiracle is described as a hole or passageway in the field of consciousness that allows the “autonomous dynamism of the collective unconscious” to break through into the realm of the personal unconscious. In this joining, it can, to some degree, be worked and translated into living, material reality, whether through word, image, other expressive means, or through lived life itself.  (von Franz, 1980)...

Dorn conceived of the spiracle as a window to eternity, a mysterious center pre-existent in us, linking us to the cosmos, while opening up and bridging the different levels of body, soul and spirit. Through the spiracle one may journey across the threshold in between the above and below, and bring traces of one world into the other and back again – a kind of conception and cross-fertilization between inconsonant realms. The spiracle links and joins these different levels, rendering it possible to reconcile incommensurable opposites through finding a third – a new space or medium which is neither one nor the other, but both."

- Excerpt from an intriguing online Arras article (.pdf): The Spiracle in Alchemy and Art by Diane Fremont (2017). Inset left is the title page from Gerhard Dorn's alchemical text Chymisticum artificium.

***

In a matter of days the subtitle of Post-Mac Blues will change... from an "8 Year Post-Mac Time Capsule" to a 9 year one. Yes, it's been close to a decade since Mac has been gone and this memorial was initially created. That the two anniversaries should fall mid-autumn on and around the "Day of the Dead" is one of life's little ironies.

This post was slated to appear October 18th, the anniversary of the actual day of Mac's passing... but, as things generally go, neither my muse (nor my more practical self) were quite prepared. In effect, I drew a blank. What could I possibly have to say after nine years that hasn't been said many times in the past? The only plan which came to me was to draw attention to the fact that the number 9 is, theoretically and esoterically, the number of completion...  a rite of passage and the end of a cycle. But, during the course of blogging, I probably mentioned that before, too.

As it happened, it was a dream - specifically the end of a dream - which inadvertently set my little grey cells in motion. The dream featured butterflies (like the Tiger Swallowtail inset left)... and that's about all I'm willing to divulge, but, I had reason to believe that it was, in part, a message from Mac. Okay, not a lengthy report... just a little news flash, as in "Hi again, I'm okay; just passing through..."

But, no, it doesn't really matter if anyone - including myself - believes the dream truly held a message... nor if all those presently reading these paragraphs assume I'm deluded. I often am. The bottom line is that, when I awoke, I felt quite refreshed and almost happy. As this is a rare occurrence, I must conclude that something extraordinary happened.

For those of you who have no knowledge of this sort of thing, that is: the sudden, unwarranted appearance of butterflies (or dragonflies, cicadas, hummingbirds and the like) before, at the time, or just after a loved one's death, the fact is, it's actually a commonplace occurrence in the realm of mediumistic phenomena. Formally referred to as "After Death Communications" (ADCs), it seems many bereaved people are visited by these same, small creatures (mentioned above) in odd ways... encounters which produce an unusually strong emotional response. Most often, the events reported occur in the waking state. But, regarding dreams, well, if there is any ideal "medium" for mediumistic phenomena, the lucid dream would have to be a major contender. And, why is this? Dreams, meta-communications - and even artistic endeavors - rely (heavily) upon symbols, archetypes, interpretations and enigmatic synchronistic events. Like cryptic notes from a shadowy underground, they are all ambiguous. But, then again, when dealing with loss, sometimes they're all we have...

3D Fiction

Some awesome fractal animation by Serder Camilca at 3D Fiction.

Found Object #5

"Back in October, author/researcher Greg Bishop took my picture in The Triangle, a restaurant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I was delighted to see my serving of steamed mussels arrive in a flying saucer-ish package.

Intrigued by the possibility that I may have unknowingly made contact with extraterrestrials, I had the image analyzed by an independent laboratory. By extracting data from between the pixels, analysts were able to produce previously unnoted detail.

Here is the startling result:

Believe me, I'm as freaked out as you are.

(Image by ELAN Laboratories. Used with permission.)"

- Mac Tonnies from a PHB post dated February 3, 2007