Algorithmic Visions: Weighing the Benefits and Costs of Psychedelic AI Art

Psychedelic AI art is everywhere – or at least, I’m seeing it everywhere (because many accounts/people I follow on social media are focused on psychedelics). I see psychedelicised AI art used as images for social media posts, blog posts, event listings, websites, and podcasts – in all kinds of online content, really. I mentioned one…

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The Horror of Eternal Isolation: Apeirophobia in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ (2001)

Pulse (Kairo) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After having watched Kurosawa’s 1997 psychological thriller Cure (Kyua), widely regarded as a masterpiece, I was keen to check out more of his work. (Cure was inspired by David Fincher’s crime film Se7en; it likewise follows a series of gruesome murders and detectives…

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Hamptonese: The Asemic Writing of James Hampton

James Hampton (1909–1964) was an American outsider artist. He worked as a janitor, and in his spare time, in secrecy, he built a large assemblage of religious art, made from scavenged materials: cardboard, plastic, glue, pins, tape, old furniture, jelly jars, aluminum and gold foil, shards of mirror, desk blotters held together with tacks, and…

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How Do Psychedelics Affect Musical Ability?

Listening to certain music while on psychedelics can be a highly memorable and therapeutic experience. Since the 1950s, the presence of a carefully curated playlist has been treated as an essential part of psychedelic-assisted therapy; so much so that psychedelic researchers have referred to music as ‘the hidden therapist’. (However, more recently, researchers have also…

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Fear of the Void: Cosmic Anxiety in ‘Aniara’ (2018)

Aniara (2018) is a Swedish sci-fi film written and directed by Hugo Lilja and Pella Kågerman. It is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson. It depicts a dystopian, distant future in which extreme climate change, war, famine, disease, social collapse, pollution, and lawlessness force humans to…

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