Ram Dass was a leading figure of the spiritual and countercultural revolution of the 1960s, guiding the youth through their disillusionment with traditional narrative structures, values and norms. A shamanistic figure, Ram Dass combined the use of psychedelics with Eastern religious practices. He shared his Zen and Transcendental Buddhist influences with the West by writing the book, ‘Be Here Now,’ in 1971, exploring the Buddhist belief that suffering is derived from attachment to an ephemeral, illusory world, and is eased through reducing attachment to the Ego. Ram Dass utilized psychedelics to chemically induce Ego-death, temporarily disintegrating the neural pathways that construct the sense of “self.” Hippies, disillusioned with society’s narrative structures, internally dissolved their own neural networks, destroying subjective narrative to cope with modernity. Psychedelic revelations produced by LSD reinforce the Buddhist concept of Anatta (non-self, substanceless) by demonstrating how identity is a product of biological wiring that can be manipulated.
Mixed Media: Acrylic Pour, Oil Paint, Gold Leaf
Augmented Reality Painting - Image was scanned throughout painting, isolated those layers in Photoshop, animated in After Effects, Artivive for the AR effects
AR demo below, compressed by screen capture
Steve Jobs was influenced by Ram Dass and ‘Be Here Now’ to integrate Buddhist and countercultural philosophy directly into his product designs. One of Job’s first products, the Blue Box, was a device that made free long distance calls by commandeering routing signals through established telephone lines. Mirroring the biological function of LSD, the Blue Box hacked a hardwired network and temporarily disintegrated it’s wired pathways to form new connections, foreshadowing the structure of the Internet. Historically, telecommunications networks constrained the flow of information, acting as narrative forming structures; the internet decentralized these pathways, granting access to wireless transcendent knowledge. Technology successfully scaled the philosophical goals of the hippie movement by reducing society’s attachment to ephemeral and illusory narrative structures.
Mixed Media: Acrylic Pour, Oil Paint, Gold Leaf
Augmented Reality Painting - Image was scanned throughout painting, isolated those layers in Photoshop, animated in After Effects, Artivive for the AR effects
AR demo below, compressed by screen capture
Upon returning from psychedelic-induced Ego death, Hippies now viewed subjectivity as an illusion. In the struggle for collective consciousness, the Hippies were immobilized by the confines of individualism, paralyzed by this cognitive dissonance. Technology has granted everyone access to Ego death with the transcendent knowledge of the internet. As with the Hippies, this access has further perforated individual and societal narratives with disillusionment, leaving today’s society with only the option to worship at the altar of group narrative, or to embrace nihilistic meaninglessness.
Mixed Media: Acrylic Pour, Oil Paint, Gold Leaf
Augmented Reality Painting - Image was scanned throughout painting, isolated those layers in Photoshop, animated in After Effects, Artivive for the AR effects
AR demo below, compressed by screen capture
