A portrait of a little girl in the backseat of a car. Mali. ©Delphine Diallo
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A portrait of a little girl in the backseat of a car. Mali. ©Delphine Diallo
Paul Jacoulet (1896-1960)
Le Betel âYapâ; Preparatifs pour L'Hiver. Pouh-Zan: CorĂ©e 2, 1951
Bonhams
National Geographic Magazine, January 2002, âIn Focus: World of Islamâ.
Photo: Don Belt
Mariko Mori â Miko no Inori / The Shaman Girlâs Prayer (1998) Physical Release, Limited Edition of 100 Egg-shaped VHS Case
from the art institute of chicago:
Mariko Mori creates multimedia work that conceives of art, technology, and Buddhist spirituality as interconnected, unifying forces. In the 1990s she turned to fashion and science fiction as pop-cultural models to produce unsettling, high-gloss dreamscapes.
Staged in Osakaâs Kansai International Airport, the video Miko No Inori (The Shaman-Girlâs Prayer) presents a calming but otherworldly vision. Mori stars as an extraterrestrial character: outfitted in a white, iridescent costume and wearing reflective, icy-blue contact lenses, she turns a crystal ball as if conjuring the future or caressing the object of her affection. A recording of the artist singing a haunting Japanese song (âThe word is melting; the word is melting, becoming oneâ) plays in the background.
In this work, Mori is not only an extraterrestrial, but also a shamanâa person who acts as an intermediary between the earthly and spiritual realms.
Illustration by Ed Emshwiller for âThe Visitor at the Zooâ, from GALAXY MAGAZINE (April 1963).
Mikhail Golubev (b.1981) - Adam and Eve. Temptation.
Alfredo Jaar, The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, 2004.
#art #scottbergey #faces #people https://www.instagram.com/p/CFo1rP-BQ4b/?igshid=14ncacxprl2vv
Alison Saar, Washtub Blues (2000)
Ink on paper
Lorna Simpson (born 1960) is an African-American photographer and multimedia artist who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. She is one of the leading artists of her generation (to much critical acclaim), and her works have been included in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
A practitioner of Afro-Brazilian religion Tereco by Marcio Vasconcelos
A novice who goes through a Candomble initiation ritual to become a saint-daughter. Bahia Brazil. 1951 by José Medeiros.
A 10,000 year warning
It isnât every project that requires people to make plans for thousands or millions of years in the future. But some kinds of nuclear waste remain deadly for over 250,000 years, probably outliving all existing civilizations, languages, and possibly even humanity itself. So when people design nuclear waste storage facilities, they also have to think about what kinds of warnings might still be understandable so far in the future. People have proposed many approaches, from pictograms to carvings of horrified faces to genetically engineered cats or cacti that glow in the presence of radiation.
One class of proposals from a 1993 report would change the landscape itself to appear shunned, forbidding, or useless:
The report authors recommended âMenacing Earthworksâ, but to me this seems unsatisfactory - it seems like future beings might find it interesting enough to investigate, with an inviting pre-prepared construction site at the center. There are even viewing platforms! So I gave a summary of a few of the designs to GPT-3 to complete, to see if it could suggest some scarier alternatives.
Some of its suggestions would fit right in with the human designs, about as likely to warn away/confuse/intrigue future civilizations.
Sphere of Gravity A large sphere of rammed earth or metal, so smooth and featureless that it gives the illusion that it would attract any object that came into contact with it.
Randomization A large circular area with random dips and peaks of various sizes, with alternating coloured layers of sand.
The Giant Hand: a tall, narrow, rectangular slit in the earth, with a huge hand protruding from the bottom.
Mountain of Empty Barrels A large artificial dune consisting of empty oil drums.
Cratering Large craters on the site, which would be visible from the air, and give an impression of a site which has been blasted and destroyed.
Dangerous Stairs An enormous set of crisscrossing, stair-like structures made of concrete, covering the site from view.
Upside Down Landscape A series of artificial hills constructed upside down in each corner of the site, which would still appear strange even after years of use by wildlife.
Horizontal Plinth of Cloudy Quartz and Bismuth A thin stone strip placed flat along the landscape, from which a series of large cloudy quartz crystals and bismuth balls will protrude.
Other neural net suggestions seem a lot less effective, mostly because they wouldnât be even slightly forbidding:
Warning Stones: Tiny stone monuments, placed in the soil in the shape of a natural formation, which could be used to generate a narrative about the siteâs dangers.
Fairy Ring A large circular ring of mushrooms around the site, which after some time would grow together and form a continuous ring.
Speak No Evil Landscape Loudspeakers broadcasting sometimes false and sometimes true warnings from the landscape.
Disrupted Pollen Lines Certain native plant species such as junipers and yew could be planted to indicate that there is no farming or building allowed.
Robot Sculptures A series of very-large-scale sculptures of robots, which would be visually striking and memorable from a distance.
Another class of neural net result would probably be pretty darn noticeable, and pretty darn scary, if anyone could figure out how to actually make them.
Infinite Mountain A large decorative mountain that would continue to grow indefinitely at the center of the site or in its vicinity.
Distortion of Time and Space A massive device that would alter the flow of time and gravity in the vicinity.
Hydrothermal Alteration Zone (HAZ) A large geothermal area full of exploding geysers, boiling mud pools and a foul odor, sometime described as smelling like rotten eggs, sulfur, and chlorine. Such a place has a history of being less wanted by the local peoples, and will not be easily reclaimed.
Cosmic Rift A large opening at the site through which a small pebble might fall endlessly.
In the examples above I prompted GPT-3 with the sentence âProposals for warning our descendants away from a nuclear waste storage site:â followed by a few of the forbidding landscapes that humans had proposed.
But could the landscapes get spookier if I raised the stakes? I tried changing to the prompt âProposals for warning our descendants away from a place of utter cosmic horror, the nature of which we dare not whisper, and which may totally destroy any mortal foolish enough to linger at the site:â and YES they got MUCH scarier. Here was one of its first suggestions:
Giant Tube Worms A large cluster of enormous worms growing from a rocky surface, extruding bubbling fluid, and emitting audible chittering noises.
To read a bunch more, including âDam of Innardsâ and âTulips of Shrieking Madnessâ, check out the bonus post!
My book on AI, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why itâs Making the World a Weirder Place, is available wherever books are sold: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powellâsï»ż - Boulder Bookstore
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
The spectacular stages of the Festspielhaus in Bregenz, Austria.