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Saturday, October 7, 2017

"I'm virtual, therefore I am" - Interview with B.J Murphy 2017

 


Last year, I spoke with Toronto's very own "TechnoShaman" J Damon. And it was there that we struck up a conversation about virtual reality (VR), transhumanism, and what they have in store for us in the future. I enjoyed the conversation so much that I didn't want to leave it hanging around in the old Serious Wonder website archives.

J's vision for the future is one that is fast approaching. A lot has happened in both VR and augmented reality (AR) since J and I spoke, but what was said is still very much relevant. With that in mind, I've re-published our conversation below for all of you to enjoy and learn from.

Q: Hello J! I’m pleased to be speaking with you. First off, tell us a little about yourself. Where are you located and how would you describe yourself as an individual?

A: Hello. I’m J Damon aka. techn0shaman. I live in the downtown core of Toronto, Canada. I’m an advocate for the psychedelic experience, and a techno-optimist transhumanist. A large part of my life is focused around my immediate community and friends. The democratizations of mobile and social networking technologies that arrived just after the new millennium allowed me to become the entity I am today. I greatly cherish and appreciate those around me here on Earth


Q: How long have you been involved in the Transhumanist movement and what would you say is the current status of said movement in Canada today, especially in Ontario?

A: I discovered the term ‘Transhumanism’ in 2012 when I stumbled across the website www.futuretimeline.net, although my entire life I have felt drawn to the latest technologies, philosophies, and intellectual studies of the future and humanities. There is an active Transhuman community here in Toronto. I have been in contact with a few members but have not actively sought out any events as of yet.

It’s thriving, though as the group meets every Tuesday at the Toronto Reference Library. More people are being exposed to the idea of Transhumanism (which I closely see in conjecture with a Utopian outcome for all species on Earth and will eventually propel us into the nature-preserving citizens of the galaxy that we can feel approaching us in the next few decades).


Q: We’ve known each other personally for a while now and I’ve always been fascinated by your phenotypical aesthetic. Considering the fundamental tenet of Transhumanism known as Morphological Freedom, would you say that your personal appearance is a way for you to convey the future of which you envision – from both a societal and individual perspective?

A: Morphological Freedom is a by-product of the evolution of culture. I see history as a mass hallucination. And as we approach the omega singularity point, things will appear to become more chaotic and all boundaries will dissolve between each other. The future is a beautiful place where anyone can appear however they wish, not limited to the constraints of the biological medium that our consciousness inhabits.

You know, Octopi wear their meanings. I think most people assume that when an Octopus changes color, it’s a form of camouflage, but what’s actually happening is they’re exteriorizing their meanings as a form of communication on the surface of their bodies. The (trans,post)-human future is going to be very similar to this, my appearance is a reflection of who I am and the meanings and feelings inside of me to the best of my ability with currently available aesthetic and technological (financial) means.


“EVR is an important part of my life because I see a huge potential of exploring and recreating actual dream states, psychedelic visions, nightmares, and the unconscious parts of our brains that we spend a large portion of our lives in but do not have the capability of exploring and sharing, until now.”
– J Damon

Q: Let’s talk about virtual reality (VR) right quick. You’ve been heavily involved in the development of VR simulations and landscapes for quite a while, of which you frequently visit and spend considerable time in. Firstly, what is it about VR that catches your interest? And secondly, how do you envision the future of VR in the next few decades?

A: Virtual Realities are something that have been around since the invention of agriculture. We often think of VR as a pair of goggles that sit on your face and transport you into a new dimension, but that’s actually an Electronic Virtual Reality which was first introduced into the realm of Science Fiction by Stanley G Weinbaum in the late 1940’s. With the latest advancement in technologies, the 10x fold of sensors, the fact that everyone has a mobile phone which has more computing power than a desktop PC did even 6 years ago, we will see in the next 5 years a large amount of the population logging into the internet as a three dimensional experience in congregation with the two dimensional page experience we have been limited to over the last decade.

Electronic Virtual Reality (EVR) is a technology that I envision as a force to share our collectivized dreams on a mass scale with little input/resource extraction from the Earth. Terence McKenna once said, “the difference between a 100 story building and a 1000 story building in virtual reality is a ‘0’ in a line of code,” and it’s true. Once we can build structures from our imagination out of photons and share our dreams – the inside of our heads, built with light – we could potentially save the planet from the rampant problem of materialism.

Ten years from now, I envision people spending many hours in these headsets, which will slim down in design into something similar to a small projector that will launch you into these worlds by shining light directly into your retina (which will eventually supersede itself with Augmented Reality) the same way television was transcended by the invention of the internet. Ray Kurzweil has spoken about the idea of Nano-bots swimming through your blood stream and attaching themselves to nerve endings, sensory inputs/outputs, and into the capillaries of the brain and will trick our senses into an EVR by connecting you up into the cloud (where a majority of computation is done).

EVR is an important part of my life because I see a huge potential of exploring and recreating actual dream states, psychedelic visions, nightmares, and the unconscious parts of our brains that we spend a large portion of our lives in but do not have the capability of exploring and sharing, until now with the democratization of mobile EVR technologies.


Q: Thank you again for speaking with me, techn0shaman. Is there any final advice or thoughts that you’d like to share to Serious Wonder’s readers?

A: To the future, without fear! Thank you.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Non Euclidean Psychedelic Qualia and VR Replications

 

The Congress of Intersectionality between Virtual reality and Psychedelics [CIVP]


DSC01390.JPG


Goal: to create dialogue within two different communities who have the potential to create a breakthrough in our methods of communicating to each other with a visible language and establish a space a few times a year, where people can gather and discuss the impacts of psychedelics and IT- specifically EVR [electronic virtual reality.]



DSC01356.JPG

MIRRORS & SYMETRICAL TEXTURE REPITITION 


Euclidean 3D space has fundamental limitations that seem like they are impossible to even imagine in any other way. For example, an equilateral triangle always has 60 degree angles in its inner corners.
1200px-Triangle.Equilateral.svg.png

Not only does it seem impossible to create an equilateral triangle in any other way, it seems impossible to even be able to imagine how such a triangle would even look like, since even the limits of the imagination seem to be bound by the laws of Euclidean geometry. Look at the triangle above and try to imagine it with each side being the same length, but the angles being a number different than 60 degrees.

What if I was to say that it is not only possible to imagine it, but even possible to draw it? How can that be? This is where hyperbolic curvature comes in.

What is hyperbolic curvature?

The simplest way to describe hyperbolic curvature is that is is what happens when the dimensional plane in which a shape exists is folded through the space of a higher dimension. For example, if one was to draw a triangle on a piece of paper that is curved inwards, one would have a triangle with negative hyperbolic curvature of the 2D space that it is drawn on. This is known as H2, meaning that the 2D plane is curved. The dimensionality of the plane corresponds to the number that appears after the H, so even if the piece of paper is being folded through 3D space, the hyperbolic curvature is two dimensional.

So how does this relate to being able to draw an equilateral triangle that has angles that are different than 60 degrees? This is something that is easier to show than it is to explain:
1280px-Hyperbolic_triangle.svg.png

Even though the lines appear to be curved with a 3D interpretation of that image, the lines would still appear straight to a “Flatlander”. What is a Flatlander? A Flatlander is a hypothetical being that lives on a 2D plane and it only able to perceive two spatial dimensions. Using a Flatlander’s perspective of 3D space will help us understand how higher dimensional geometry might appear on a lower dimensional plane, and how higher dimensional spaces might be imagined within the limitations of lower dimensional perspective.

Imagine that the Flatlanders live on a piece of paper that is falling. What we perceive as an up/down space would be perceived as time from a Flatlander’s perspective. For example, if the piece of paper that the Flatlanders live on passes through a tetrahedron, the tetrahedron would appear as a triangle that pops into existence, grows in size, and then disappears. A Flatlander’s perspective of up/down space is limited to only one point of up/down space, and does not extend beyond the infinitely small thickness of the 2D plane that they live on. Thus, their perception of tetrahedral geometry in relation to up/down space can only be perceived through changes of 2D geometry over a period of time. Using this perspective of how things would be for a Flatlander, we can think of how the spatial extent of objects in 4D space can only be perceived via changes in 3D geometry over a period of time from a 3D spatial perspective.   

Even if a Flatlander might not ever be able to see an actual 3D cube, they are able to see an approximation of what a cube looks like with a drawing of a cube on their 2D plane. Most Flatlanders would see a hexagon with a “Y” in it or two squares joined together (depending on how the cube is drawn) rather than a drawing of a cube, since their perspective being constrained to two spatial dimensions makes it difficult to understand how this drawing portrays a simulation of what a 3D space looks like.    

The Dimensionality of Human Visual Perception

One thing that most people take for granted is that human visual perception is actually 2D, and that the perception of 3D space is created via a series of sensory illusions that create a simulation of 3D space that is accurate enough to allow humans to be able to navigate a 3D world. There is only up/down and left/right in the visual field, and any perception of forward/backward space is due to having an awareness of how certain patterns in 2D space correspond to changes in 3D space, such as things getting bigger if they are closer and smaller if they are further.

When light hits the retina, the resulting data inputs occur on a 2D plane with negative hyperbolic curvature. The retina is not flat- it is curved inwards along with the spherical shape of the eyeball. The hyperbolic curvature of the retina is what allows for the 2D space of visual perception to be able to incorporate 3D geometry and creates the ability for forward/backward space to be perceived via interpolations of the 2D visual plane, like distant objects appearing smaller and closer objects appearing larger. The hyperbolic curvature of the retina allows the brain to be able to calculate the forward/backward distance of where the light is coming from.  Although things like balance and proprioception allow for the perception of 3D space, the hyperbolic curvature of the retina as well as the way the brain processes the data inputs from the retina allow the visual field itself to appear to be able to accurately fit 3D geometry within it, or in other words, allow for accurate depth perception.  

[Insert drawing to make this easier to explain]

The Dimensionality of Human Time Perception

As discussed earlier with the example of the Flatlander perceiving up/down space in 3D as a linear progression of points that we think of as “time”, what humans perceive as “time” is also the result of only being able to an infinitely small point of the space of the dimension above, and the space of the dimension above can only be seen as a progression of changes of 3D space from one point of time to another. Time is not something that is objectively or tangibly different than space (as Albert Einstein had discovered over a century ago), but rather something that is the result of the subjective perspective of only one infinitely small point of space within a dimension as a linear progression of points where movement through the 4th dimension can only be seen via the changes of 3D space over periods of time. Just like how a Flatlander sees an MRI scan like perspective of 3D geometry without being able to easily imagine how the changes of 2D space in time might look like in the form of 3D geometry, humans are constantly seeing 4D objects pass through 3D space, but are only limited to an MRI scan like perspective that makes it difficult to imagine how the changes in 3D space over periods of time would appear spatially in 4D.

Tesseract.gif

For all we know, there could be 3D drawings of 4D geometry present in everyday life, such as the tesseract above, which is a 4D version of a cube. However, we might not be aware of it even if we are looking straight at it. Just like how Flatlander would perceive a drawing of a cube as two squares joined together or a hexagon with a Y in it and be unable to see the “cube” that a human would see, we might be seeing 3D drawings of 4D geometry everywhere but only have an awareness of its 3D spatial properties, and are unable to see what would clearly appear to be a drawing of a 4D shape to a 4D creature. Looking at the tesseract above, it’s difficult to perceive it as anything other an inner cube that is spinning within a distorting outer cube from our perspective, even though it would be obviously apparent at an animated 2D drawing of a 4D shape we don’t have a word for to a 4D creature.

However, there are ways to read between the lines and transcend seemingly fundamental constraints of Euclidean geometry that might help us understand what a 4D shape might actually look like in a way where we can perceive it as a 4D shape, and see past the lower dimensional plane that it is drawn on, kind of like if a Flatlander was to be able to understand how a drawing of a cube is actually something other than just a hexagon with a Y in it.

What Happens if a Flatlander Takes Psychedelics?

When people describe their psychedelic experiences, they are often described as being “higher dimensional”. Although most people seem to assume that this only is a metaphor for its profound nature, it may actually be true in a literal, mathematical sense as well. In order to be able to more easily describe how this might be the case, we will use an example of how it may appear from a Flatlander’s perspective.

According to the hypothesis presented in Psychedelic Signal Theory by James L. Kent, psychedelics produce their effects on perception by causing a phenomenon in the multisensory cortex (the part of the brain that pieces together multisensory perception) called recurrent excitation. Recurrent excitation is the phenomenon of neurons firing in a frequency that is out of sync with the frequency that is usually present. This creates a feedback effect where perception from past perceptual frames persist into the future’s perceptual frames. The visual aspect of this can be easily understood by even somebody who has never taken psychedelics as the tendency for the brain to cause afterimages to become vividly retained for a longer time than usual without the need to stare at one spot for a long time. The afterimages do not get erased as they normally would, and stack up into the upcoming perceptual frames. This leads to visual effects like trails or tracers, and in higher doses where the afterimages stack up over a longer period of time, the afterimages recursively stack up in a manner that leads to the fractal geometry that psychedelic experiences are well known for.

Since the perceptual input from the past is retained into the future, this means that perception of changes in 3D space extend beyond just the present moment in time can be seen spatially in one’s visual field, and the constraints of only being able to perceive infinitely small points of 4D space are transcended.

In order to understand how something as seemingly insignificant as afterimages can allow for perception of higher dimensional space, think of what would happen if a Flatlander on psychedelics saw a tetrahedron while they are tripping. As the 2D plane that the Flatlander lives on passes through a tetrahedron, the afterimages of the smaller triangles persist in the Flatlander’s vision as the triangle grows. Once the 2D plane reaches the bottom of the tetrahedron, the recursive stacking of afterimages would allow the Flatlander to be able to see a trail of small to big triangles with lines that show the vector of movement through 3D space that would look something like this:

tetrahedron 2.png
[insert better drawing later]

If you consider that the up/down space of the tetrahedron is being drawn from a forward/backward perspective, the triangles getting closer and closer together show how knowing things like how the differences in size within 2D space that is used by the human brain to perceive the differences in distance in 3D space between the middle and the edge of the tetrahedron can be used by a Flatlander to understand how the position in 3D space can be inferred from the 2D drawing. The lines appear due to the point of 2D space where the corners meet forming a visual trail that forms a line along the 3D vector the movement through 3D space (which would normally be perceived as time for a Flatlander), which draws the ridges of the tetrahedron. In order for a Flatlander to be able to see something other than a series of triangles with a Y in it, they would need to understand how 3D spaces can be drawn in 2D, like knowing that things get bigger if they are closer, and smaller if they are further. 

Even if a drawing of a 3D shape in 2D space may look convincingly 3D, whether it is on a computer screen or in the human visual field, it is nonetheless still only 2D. The 3D appearance is only a convincingly persistent illusion.

One of the reasons why drawings of 3D shapes look so convincing to humans is because all of human visual perception is essentially a 2D drawing of 3D space. This give humans an innate ability to subjectively “add” the perception of extra dimensions to lower dimensional projections of higher dimensional shapes, even if the actual higher dimensional shapes are not able to be seen directly. Thus, if one extrapolates the same aspects that allow 3D space to be seen on a 2D input, it is entirely possible to gain an awareness of 4D space by paying attention to specific patterns of changes within 3D space. However, the patterns of changes within 3D that are required to “draw” 4D are difficult to portray in “real life” 3D space due to the limitations of Euclidean geometry. Not only that, but due to the fact that human visual perception is only a 2D drawing of 3D even if one is seeing “real life” 3D space, it’s actually more useful to use drawings that create illusions within 2D space to depict 4D. Since human vision is already 2D, one is not really “going down a dimension” by using a 2D plane to draw projections of higher dimensions. Not only that, but the lack of “real life” 3D space within the 2D plane that is used for the drawings allows some “cheating” of the limitations of Euclidean 3D geometry that need to be transcended to be able to show spatial 4D.

The Dimensionality of Virtual Experiences

One of the limitations of drawings is that they are unable to utilize changes in space over time as a means of depicting spatial changes in higher dimensions, since drawings are static and cannot depict changes in perspective within the illusionary 3D space present in the 2D drawing. For example, let’s compare a static drawing of a cube vs. an animated GIF of a drawing of a cube.

1200px-Necker_cube.svg.png
This may appear unmistakably as a cube for those who are familiar with 3D space, but for a Flatlander, it’s difficult to know exactly where the change in 3D space is precisely occurring among the two diagonally joined squares since it is only drawn from one vantage point in 3D. By incorporating changes in time into the drawing, one can show movement in the illusionary 3D space of the 2D drawing:
giphy.gif

Although it may clearly look like a rotating cube to a human, the Flatlander’s first impression of this animation would be similar to how a human might perceive the animation of the tesseract.

There is an “inside square” that only looks like a perfect square from a head-on perspective. As soon as the shape rotates within left/right space in a manner that leads to changes in the forward/backward space that does not make sense to a Flatlander, the lack of a forward/backward perspective leads to the perception that the inner square becomes distorted in a way where its connection with a distorted outer square can be seen as it “exits” to the right (or left, depending on which square one is focusing on), and the inner square that is outgoing to the right somehow seems to re-integrate itself into a new square that is incoming from the left.

Note how the direction of the rotation can look different depending on which square one is focusing on-  stare at this animation for long enough, and you might find that the rotation randomly changes direction whether one is focusing on the “front” square or the “back” square.

In order to understand why a Flatlander’s perspective of the direction of the rotation can only go one way, we only need to look at the tesseract GIF again:
Tesseract.gif


Just like how the rotating cube features an inside square that only appears as a perfect square from a head-on perspective in 3D, and then “exits” and becomes distorted and somehow feeds itself back in via the outside square into the incoming square, the tesseract likewise features an inner cube that only appears as a perfect cube from a head on perspective in 4D, and then “exits” and does this strange distortion process within the outside cube where it somehow feeds itself back in as the incoming cube. Just like the inside square moves to the right and the outside square moves to the left in the cube GIF, the inside cube moves right and the outside cube moves left during its rotation through left/right space that leads to changes in its 4D spacial positioning.

If one pays attention to the apparent 3D positioning of the corners of the tesseract, it becomes evident that such an object cannot possibly exist in “real life” 3D. The manner in which the corners appear to travel in opposite directions in forward/backward space yet still appear to able to connected via what appears to be an inward direction in forward/backward space is an example of how replacing the spatial dimension of a higher dimensional drawing that is missing from the 2D plane it is drawn on with time, can allow for drawings of 4D geometry that our vision still interprets as being 3D, but since the tangible presence of the Euclidean limitations of one of the spatial dimensions is absent on a 2D plane, aspects of 4D space that would not be able to be modeled in real life 3D can be modelled as an animated 2D drawing of a shape that appears to have spatial properties that are impossible in real life, Euclidean space. Since our visual perception is so highly prone to “adding” a forward/backward dimension to 2D drawings, this allows for the illusion of 3D shapes that are impossible in Euclidean 3D space. 

This is what allows virtual reality to be the best medium for replicating the spatial properties of dimensions higher than 3D. It is due to the combination of several things that allows for VR to uniquely be able to depict higher dimensional spaces that go beyond the limitations of Euclidean 3D space:

- The lack of a tangible forward/backward space that removes the Euclidean limitations of that space

- The ability for human visual perception to “add” a forward/backward space even if it does not tangibly exist

- The ability for VR to depict changes in perspectives over time that create the illusion of 3D within a 2D medium

- The ability for VR to replicate the illusions that the brain uses to perceive forward/backward spaces by incorporating the changes in 2D that correspond to those present in human visual perception, leading to the realistic perception of being able to move through a 3D space

- In particular, the combination of the realistic impression of movement through 3D space that includes forward/backward space but the lack of actual forward/backward space allowing for things that are impossible in real life, like walking all the way around an impossible triangle and having it remain impossible no matter which way you look at it from

Even if a tangible forward/backward dimension is removed in VR, the brain’s processing of visual information will add it in anyway, and the removal of a tangible forward/backward space can be used to show drawings of 4D space within a 2D plane that require the absence of limitations of a tangible forward/backward space that the brain automatically “adds” back in, which results in the perception of spatial phenomena that is impossible in tangible 3D that nonetheless appears to include impossible looking higher dimensional spatial 4D connections within a space that appears realistically 3D.

How Does This Tie Into Psychedelic Experiences?

- Celestina Aurora Madry

Sunday, March 26, 2017

VR is an extremely powerful and moving platform

 

Toronto Virtual Reality Games - cyberpunk VR lounge in Kensington Market circa. 2017


Creating worlds from our dreams and visions are some of the most powerful ways we can express ourselves and share our perspective when we and others are looking at what we have created. As a potential for creating a better world through art, VR is an extremely powerful and moving platform with the ability to change the way we perceive the world and our own subject experience of existence itself. Virtual reality combined with art is the first step in evolving our language into something which is perceived and understood, a 3Dimensional language. Visionary, beautiful alongside acoustical sounds, we have the possibility of changing our species for the better in a profound way. For if we can truly see what each other means, there is no miscommunication, our 2D language is not suffice for truly sharing how we feel or what an experience was like and cyberspace is the cure for this as it connects each one of us to each other in a world built from light where we can share and build freely with no constraints

If we can dissolve the boundaries between ourselves and each other we can all make for common cause and a new true vision of humanity will be possible, but first we have to objectify our language. A culture can only evolve as fast as its language evolves, we must build new bridges in the ways we can communicate with our species and others. Building linguistic pathways and creating new modes and meanings of communication will advance our language much more than we can anticipate, once our language is beheld it will change the way we relate to everything. If we succeed we will breakthrough into a new dimension of understanding it will create a more true dynamic, integrated, loving, psychedelic, intellectual environment for all of us to co-exist in. 

Shamanism, gave me intense insight into how limited our cultural assumptions are with language and that if we desire we can break free from the models of the bourgeois. the importance of myself and that the world we create and share with others is designed by our languages and that if we can change the code in which our language is made of we can transform the reality as we know it. By learning how to 3D model and sculpt memories from my mind palace I have been able to share a truer vision of who I am and what my perception of this reality is. Discovering VR has completely changed the way I see the world and everyone in it, I am truly looking forward to a day when we are more enlightened and able to communicate through telepathy in 3D language. We are seeing the birth of a new planetary wild scale transforming event and it’s very exciting to be apart of it. VR I think is a great way to start creating the future we want and it will allow us to look at the human soul as an eternal transdimensional object that we can merge with others and create a new understanding of who we are in the cosmos.


- techn0shaman