I have always battled with the idea that our projected future will be a desolate landscape tessellated with computer cables and sentient junk. That head, beat heart (ironic phrasing) and that we once and for all, severed our umbilical link to our souls.
When prompted to create a digital remnant this semester for uni, I chose to create a psychedelic centric podcast with an audience in mind, that had not been privy to this movements not so subtle ground swell of late. Its intention was to offer micro doses of information to the listener on what exactly these substances were, how they could have positive mental health gains and the legal limbo of this area at present.
Here we are at the eleventh hour. I have come to the conclusion that without Hermione’s time warping device, I am burdened by the definitive walls of a semester and that my progress is far from my desired position. If we view this through a liquid labour lens, than she made me no money, nor did I attempt to monetise this, the cost of living had me chasing dollars, ‘another sazerac sir?’ Jokes aside, liquid labour is an interesting arena, I utilised music from tribeofsound(source) for sound enhancement in my podcast, its free, so someone created those tracks out of love or potentially monetised them elsewhere idk but reflexively, I’ve noticed that the efficiency of creation in this date stamp of the here and now is optionally infinite. If you can conjure up enough synchronistic thought (not get distracted by the doom scroll) then you can point and shoot with a relatively high level of professional presentation. But it keeps the noodle rocking at all hours and we have again plunged ourselves as a species into human doings, rather than beings.
Whilst I may have made only a scintilla of content, I am truly indebted to #midjourneyart. Before I began this semester and fell into the delightful rabbit hole of #makingnicethings in my comms and media class, I had no idea that such delights existed. Forgive me, I literally lived in the forest with sketchy internet for years. So to emerge from a world I wanted to forget and find that AI could indeed be used for creative empowerment was an invigorating awakening. To analyse this portion of my work through a cyber balkanisation of the splinter net lens, leads me to muse over whether or not, we know our online world is fractured. Or if we only see the fruiting body of this mycelia structure and in fact it is AI that is fertilising our minds. Cue the AI generated psychedelic art conversation that ensued when I posted on Twitter. Who is the real visionary and creatrix in this scenario, us or the hive mind? This element of work is something unexpected in the design phase indeed.
There is an immovable beast in the room of my mind, not so subtly implying that I have no business being trying to talk about this topic so I chose to hide in the shadows of the internet and b barely made my work visible. I had some killer interviews lined up which I thought and know will make incredible content including a friends month spent in the depths of the Amazon, drinking Age’ and seeking and answering the interminable question of what are we doing in this embodiment.
Let’s take a moment to dissect some project moments through a cyber punk lens. Firstly, this concept toes the line in the sense that I sought to educate people about substances that technically are prohibited. That felt pretty anti-establishment, eat my psychedelic shorts man. It took lengthy consideration and research to decide how to best engage an audience in a meaningful and productive manner. I took my cues from those already engaged & successful in this area and modelled my thought process around education and facts. I modelled my idea’s people such as Tim Ferris and the link below.
and….
I created two prototypes, one including an interview with a someone who works for Quantified citizen and one (pod) that was research centred terminology and understanding. I enjoy the medium of podcasts and the faceless voice experience. They feel almost like the post human ideation of a library, an aural transfer of information as we humans move away from the tactile. As Robert Foreman says, ‘Consciousness itself is a, or perhaps the only, non-pluralistic feature of what it is to be human.’
I was really hoping I could glean this sentiment a little more by connecting with some folks had been in psychedelic trails or experienced psychedelic therapy but in my eyes this project is in its utter infancy and worth pursuing, note the replies on the below tweet. As a psychologist from Wollongong said in an interview I did this year, we know nothing about the brain, ‘It is a baby science’.
My third project insight is offered through the lens of 5th generation warfare. The psychological pull of simply existing in todays society is omnipresent in the sense that our overcrowded mental space, via technology armed with attention grabbing tendrils, is being harvested. ‘Military, advertising, and political strategists are beginning to think
about how they can leverage over a hundred years of teachings in psychological warfare and combine this knowledge with data-driven, psychological feedback loops to influence behaviour.‘ I counter this lens by suggesting that we can break the dopamine loop by connecting to the parts of our brains that this battleground has sereptiously numbed. Cue this podcast and my grand sweeping assertions.
I took this subject at university, titled Future Networks with the subliminal idea that psychedelic research, technology and implementation is in and of itself a branch of this subject. I wanted to inject and assert that my digital creation pertains to the concepts of emergent future networks in the rudimentary sense that mycelium is the network and (to stretch this metaphor out), our minds are the fruiting body of this internet esq interconnection. Furthermore that psychedelics are the conduit and lens of participating in our future in a more rooted and thus positive fashion. To heal ourselves with lead to healing the earth. But in the end, and I am grateful to have been presented with the ideology this semester of who’s story wins. I somewhat happily positioned myself in a self-imposed splinter net of only sharing my work on Soundcloud and secretly loving the bot likes and re-shares.
I have been conceptualising this project for longer than I care to share and we do not know what our endeavours will entail until we take that first tentative step forward. It is far scarier to begin something that holds so much personal gravity, knowing that there is some kind of number value assigned to your progress at the end, when you have no idea why your intuition is driving you to do it. But I have grounded myself in the potentiality of this podcast beyond this semester. Now, lets go stare at some clouds.
Jane BAMBI Drew 
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