Can you identify
One object in this photo? You might be able to get hints of things
You've seen before, and some areas might have a striking similarity to some vague thing deep in your memory,
But I bet you can't name with absolute certainty a single object in this photo. Why is that? There has been much speculation
About who or what made this image, and what it was designed to do, if it was designed at all.
People have guessed it was made to simulate the experience of a stroke, nausea, anxiety, or to simply frustrate your brain.
Unfortunately, these ideas have very little evidence behind them, and the evidence that is there is anecdotal. As for the origin of this mysterious
Image, I did a bit of searching for myself.
This image went semi-viral a few months ago on places like Twitter and Reddit. On Reddit, a user by the name
MCSABAS posted the image with this caption. This picture is designed to give the viewer the simulated experience of having a stroke,
Particularly in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex where visual perception occurs. Everything looks hauntingly familiar,
But you just can't quite recognize anything. Ooh,
mysterious,
Science-y. But I wasn't going to just accept that on its own, of course,
So I messaged MBAS and asked him about its origin, which led me to an earlier post. Now, to be fair to MBAS,
He didn't just make up this caption. It was actually made up by another person.
Specifically, a commenter underneath the earlier post, and MBAS did ask for a source for this claim,
But unfortunately, no one answered, and later the commenter admitted
He made it up. MBAS also gave me an Instagram post that dates back to March 10th of last year,
Which is several weeks earlier than any of the other viral posts. The user busyrotting is responsible for this image--
So they claim--and how do they make it?
Well, by using a website called Ganbreeder, now named to Artbreeder, a neural network that mixes multiple photos together to create
images very similar to our viral pseudo-stroke-simulation friend.
Even though the origin of this image is less cool than
Viral claims made it out to be, I still think there's something to analyze here, even if it wasn't really designed for anything.
What makes this image so frustrating to look at is the combination of similar textures, a lack of detail, and of course the low resolution.
Unlike other abstract works of art, this image seems to obey how a real photo would look. Yes,
It's very flatly lit,
But there's clearly a light source, appropriate shadows and shading to accompany that light source, and the forms seem to somewhat follow linear perspective.
It's like a grotesque picture of a hoarder's bedroom, but everything is distorted ever so slightly so that nothing is recognizable.
But unlike many other pictures in Artbreeder's arsenal, at first glance, it may look like an actual photo.
It's in this weird middle ground between completely abstract and representational objects.
The forms themselves are organic and random, but in the context of the scenery,
It just looks like regular
Trash instead of an alien fungus. One user even attempted to reverse engineer what the image might have originally looked like without the AI
Distortion. Even though this image wasn't created in some kind of high-tech lab,
You can't deny the anxious and frustrating effects that a lot of people seem to be sharing online when they view this image.
It went viral for a reason. While most other AI images are quite easy to see as just complete nonsense,
This image has this rare, accidental quality, that it seems so close to normal,
But it's just slightly too foreign to recognize a single thing.
I think this vine sauce clip describes the effect quite well.
"Such a weird sensation to almost recognize what something is, but to-... I would imagine this is what
Looking at human things would look like to an alien. I want you to picture yourself:
You're an alien, you visit Earth, and this is what objects look like to you.
You can almost recognize it, but you just- you just get stopped, your brain puts together a couple things
But it's just not right. And that's why I think this is so fuckin' disturbing."
It also reminds me of the work of Ivan Seal and Leyland Kirby.
[Music] The work of Ivan Seal cannot be discussed without the work of Leland Kirby, and vice versa. To put it simply,
Ivan Seal is the artist behind the album covers for Kirby's music. In 2011,
He had a gallery exhibition in Zurich, Switzerland,
Titled "The Object Hurts the Space," which showcased many of his simple yet baffling paintings.
But they are put into a whole new perspective
when paired with the music of the caretaker.
If you don't know about The Caretaker and his music,
Then, uh, be cautious in how you approach it, because his albums are probably one of the most depressing works of art I have ever
experienced. "The Caretaker" is a project by musician Leland Kirby who took up the moniker as late as
1999, and finished just recently with his six-and-a-half hour collection of albums titled "Everywhere at the End of Time." The
Caretaker albums consist of old dance and ballroom records released anywhere between the 1920s and 1940s that have been slowed down,
distorted, reverberated, and just screwed with in general, to produce an experience that explores memory and its
Deterioration. The average listener may view them as unpleasant and repetitive, and at many levels
that's the point. These albums specifically are not something that is exactly supposed to be enjoyed as regular music, but more like an
Experience, and even that experience is, of course, not going to be pleasant.
And before you dismiss this as some lazy, inverted, nightcore nonsense,
I want to quickly make the case for it, and how--when paired with the album art--creates quite a profound artwork.
First of all, it's not just hours and hours of nonsense...
well, not at first, at least. The way these old tracks and effects were brought together by this musician is very
Strategic, and is all meant to promote this sense of nostalgia and memory degeneration.
The Caretaker's most famous, and probably most
Approachable albums, is "An Empty Bliss Beyond this World," with many tracks that are actually pleasant to listen to, and less
Distortion than other albums comparatively. But even in this album,
There was an exploration of memory. At one point, the track "Mental Caverns Without Sunshine" appears twice,
With a brief track in between, as if Kirby is trying to give the listener a sense of déjà vu. In fact, the entire album
Was inspired by a study about how music can help Alzheimer's patients in remembering new information.
This brings me back to the six-hour project "Everywhere at the End of Time."
The project is comprised of six stages, each roughly 40 to 90
Minutes, that explore dementia, its advancement, and its totality. The stages are described in detail
In the
Descriptions of the video, but to summarize quickly, it starts off with slowed down dance records like "An Empty Bliss," but eventually each stage
Gets more and more distorted, more and more
Unrecognizable, and eventually, in stage six, it sounds like it ends, well... how dementia usually ends.
Now, it would be unreasonable for me to ask
Someone to sit through six hours of depressing music, which for about half the time, just sounds like this:
[Music]
But in order to really understand it, going from start to finish with no skipping is really the only way to properly
Experience it. And don't worry, it has its payoffs. There's a certain part in the last five minutes that... Christ,
It's just one of those things you can't describe, but once you hit it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
This project would also never be complete without the album art the works of Ivan Seal
Remind me especially about the kind of Artbreeder images I talked about earlier.
They are objects with form and shadow, often resting in gradient voids, and some are more recognizable than others;
But they all have this quality of being almost something
Representational, but are just alien enough to keep you confused; like you're trying to remember something, but it just isn't clear enough.
I don't think there's ever been art work that fits the tone, message, and overall point of the music better
Then Ivan Seal's work with The Caretaker. Name a more iconic duo,
I'll wait. And this would make sense, since
Leyland Kirby and Ivan Seal are longtime friends, and their visions probably overlapped significantly.
I don't like to be one of those people that are like, 'oh if you don't appreciate artsy fartsy stuff,
You just don't get it.'
And I'm sure that albums outside of "An Empty Bliss Beyond this World" will be difficult for people to enjoy beyond a purely musical
Experience, and that's fine. But I have to make an argument that there's more going on here besides slowing down cheap 1930s records.
There's a collection of multiple elements, and an immersion and atmosphere to things like this six-hour project, that have to be
Appreciated as a whole. It's a challenge, honestly, listening to six hours straight of haunting music in a day,
Experiencing the decay and eventual death of a person in audio form, is not something I'd like to go through again.
But once you go through it,
you're a changed person. This idea that art has the capacity to simulate different mental issues that normally people would not be able to
Experience, without all the long-term effects, is something that has caught my attention recently.
I think there could be something of an intersection between AI,
Human mental experiences, and how future art could simulate those experiences in a much more profound way than before,
Perhaps with AI assistants.
Artificial intelligence has made some progress throughout the years, and the capacity to form new and interesting art has expanded, including some machine learning
Projects such as Google's Magenta and Deep Dream, and the more accessible Nvidia project which can create some convincing
Landscapes in seconds. It may come as a temporary comfort to human artists that so far, Most AI art is kind of...
Unpleasant to look at. But I don't think that comfort will last for long. Contrary to popular belief,
Drawing and painting has rules and fundamentals.
If you are trying to create a faithful recreation of reality, and, to some extent, a stylistic version of reality.
There's objective science to lighting and form. You can measure perspective using grids and mathematics,
You can determine whether something looks like it can exist in a 3D space, or whether it can't. The purely technical realm of art is
Just as much a skill as constructing a structurally stable building.
Or a plant, you can only paint void. You don't have anything to reference. Without anything to call back to,
We can't make anything; certainly not anything new.
We are our memories. And that brings me back to Ivan Seal and The Caretaker. What this project makes you realize is how
Important memories are, and how devastating losing them will be.
I don't think I've ever heard a more accurate depiction of death in audio form than the last five minutes of
"Everywhere at the End of Time," but I'm just guessing. Even Leyand Kirby is guessing.
I won't be able to know if that's how dementia sounds, if that makes any sense, until I'm actually
Experiencing it.
But I think the incredible emotional resonance it has on people should count for something,
Especially for those on the outside looking in, so to speak. I've showed you two examples of art that seems to simulate
Mental disorders. One made is an accident using AI, and one made with deep intention.
This brings me to this question: can art be used in a practical way to help people with mental disorders?
Not only with a more profound understanding of those disorders,
But also,
Like in the 2010 study, as a way to improve those disorders.
Of course, art has been used for hundreds of years to give greater understanding to
Concepts that written language could have a much more difficult time explaining.
You can't describe the color red in words very effectively, but projects like "The Caretaker,"
I feel, are getting closer and closer to creating immersive,
Detailed
Experiences that cannot be achieved by a singular painting. That six-hour runtime is not something that could be achieved easily
Without the internet.
I doubt many people are going to sit around at a physical place, without any pausing or breaks, to get the same experience.
But that runtime is absolutely necessary to give detail and realism to the gradual decline
One may go through during dementia and memory loss. Deep meditation is harder to achieve without a lot of time.
Visual and audio art could give insights into the
Experiences of other people without the long-term effects of those
Specific mental states, and, I think, the more detailed, the more immersive that art gets, the closer we can get to
Understanding each other in a more profound way. A lot of conflict stems from
Miscommunication, and if we can bridge those gaps with tools like art, we might also be able to improve our world significantly.
I am really young to be thinking about the kinds of things the caretaker project presents,
But it's messages are devastating, and there's one message that stands out to me very clearly:
We are all running out of time.
[Music]