What Androids Dream No. 171
Visual Music Entry 7
Marsupial Madness the lead critic for Fleecebook was charfing with some of the top brass about the Mugwump’s show. Everyone was gangled by the performance and snarffed merkle in excitement.
Mumbles Mackelroy the octopus brained snumpfabumpf was the main topic of conversation. Thousands of offers for copies of her brain and nervous system poured in. The potential uses of her rapid morphing skills were endless.
The snarflegumpers were pumpfed about the possibilities. Their number one project, the gangolpopenfloozer would especially benefit. The intricacies of its snumpflegifter facades would wax popfminger with the increased speed.
Mumbles couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have so many copies of herself running around? Which one would be the real her? It sounded confusing and painful and hurt Mumbles brain right to the tip of her virtual tentacles.
In the end, she decided to remain unique and devote herself to making collaborative art with the Mugwumps,
Afterwords
This series is a visualization of the not-so-distant future when the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence give mankind complete control of matter. What then? Perhaps art will be our sole occupation.
Notes:
Formatted for 8K UHD screens, the What Androids Dream series was created by collaborating with the artificial intelligence at the heart of the DeepDream project. I input some of my completely abstract images to the software to see what patterns the AI would find in them. The results are the series that I call What Androids Dream. A sort of homage to Philip K Dick, the series anticipates the coming Singularity when even artists may be superseded by machine superintelligence.
Just as photography inspired the cubists and abstract expressionists, what will art generating, super intelligent machines inspire? Perhaps a collaboration between man and machine to find that perfect image?
I find the alien creatures that the AI “finds” to be strangely endearing, like the “hopeful monsters” of the Cambrian explosion — perhaps even an electric sheep or two for Philip K Dick’s android’s private amusement. For me, the images create a mental atmosphere of sci-fi, psychedelic surrealism filled with strange, dreamlike stories.
There seem to be many stories going on in each image — stories that are private and unique to each viewer, stories that are unique to each viewing.
