Magick Computers
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EVP, reverse speech.
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@Vlad said
"EVP, reverse speech."
The artists are Paul Woodrow and Alan Dunning.
This is a link to something about their work:
escholarship.org/uc/item/7hm6h6q2#page-1Specifically, look at something called Ghost in the Machine and Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP. It's very artsy and technical...
I don't think it proves anything other than that we are very good at creating order in, and through, our perceptions—this doesn't mean that order is really out there, whatever 'out there' is. Still, it's very suggestive and may rock someones boat.
Love and Will
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@RobertAllen said
"Still, it's very suggestive and may rock someones boat.
Love and Will"
Got that rightJust record your own voice and listen to it backwards, do it a few times. If nothing else, it's funny.
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@RobertAllen said
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I'm blanking on the names of the artists, but I heard them talk at a panel at UCI last year. They use sophisticated filtering software to search for patterns in white noise and visual snow. These patterns resolve themselves into audible words or recognizable images."Wow. Do you remember the name of the UCI talk? Lon Duquette touches on this subject in his Book of Ordinary Oracles. Tim Leary said 30 years ago that the Mouse = Fire, Display = Water, CPU = Air, and Hard Drive = Earth.
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@Middleman said
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@RobertAllen said
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I'm blanking on the names of the artists, but I heard them talk at a panel at UCI last year. They use sophisticated filtering software to search for patterns in white noise and visual snow. These patterns resolve themselves into audible words or recognizable images."Wow. Do you remember the name of the UCI talk? Lon Duquette touches on this subject in his Book of Ordinary Oracles. Tim Leary said 30 years ago that the Mouse = Fire, Display = Water, CPU = Air, and Hard Drive = Earth."
It was annual DAC conference: Digital Arts and Culture. And it was actually in 2009, not 2010. There were a lot of speakers, but only the two artists I mentioned spoke on the subject cited in my quote within your quote, above. I doubt you would find most of the other papers of much interest.
But the link I provided, several posts back, is to the DAC archive. The link links directly to the paper delivered by Woodrow, and Dunning. Here it is again:
escholarship.org/uc/item/7hm6h6q2#page-1Love and Will
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@Frater Aster Lux said
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Quite simply, I was wondering if any one had ever thought to use a computer (any kind of computer) in an aspect of their magick... Also, how they have thought to do this?"
My interest in computers was born of the possibility of using them to calculate gematria at a time when there was almost no software available of any sort, so I had to learn to program, and I still do. I have written countless programs for analyzing the text of the Book of the Law in unusual ways. The current gematria program I use is quite remarkable in what it shows from any number of perspectives. The most significant thing I have done, and one of the simplest, is write a program that counts the occurrences of letters in the Book of the Law, which I currently using as the basis for an English gematria system.
I also started writing I-Ching programs many years ago, and recently wrote one that I use for divination. I am of the opinion that pressing a key on a computer to generate a hexagram is essentially the same as tossing coins or sticks to generate one. The program will also generate hexagrams at random, a function that I use in a 'hands-off' approach by concentrating on the question until a new hexagram is generated.
" Is it possible to channel magic/psychic energies into a computer? Could computers be used somehow to scry, or communicate with "spirits", like a crystal ball? Maybe new computer programs could be developed for this reason. I'm sure there may be other applications, but stuff like this should give an example of what I mean.
"I can think of several applications that might be developed. Imagine a program that creates high resolution images similar to fractal art that utilizes specific numeric patterns and colors to generate images on a large monitor screen; it could work similar to dark mirror techniques for skrying.
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It tickles me to be reminded of Isaac Bonewits illustration on page 29 of "Real Magic."
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@Heru-pa-kraath said
"I can think of several applications that might be developed. Imagine a program that creates high resolution images similar to fractal art that utilizes specific numeric patterns and colors to generate images on a large monitor screen; it could work similar to dark mirror techniques for skrying."
Suppose an honest attempt were made to use magickal theory and custom to realize something along these lines, what sympathies make sense, which god would be behind the operation?
Example: the oracle of Zeus at Dodona was actuated by listening to the sound of the leaves of an oak tree in the wind. The oak is sacred to Zeus, so the connection is obvious and consistent with sound magickal practice.
I can think of several possibilities. The rational, mathematical side of the computations would suggest Apollo; the networked, communications side of it would suggest Hermes; the 'rich' abstract, colorful life of fractal art suggests Hades, or possibly Hephaestus...
Love and Will
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Devil's advocate.
@Frater Aster Lux said
"It's true that we project those ideas onto our most cherished items (and pets)... but what makes our perception of ourselves (or people we know) any more real?"
Nevertheless, you are talking magick, and there are rules and considerations in that mindset. So stay on topic and stay on task. If you want to make a creative departure from a given system, be clear about that—the why and the how. As of now there is some vague fantasy about the possibilities and very little definition.
@Frater Aster Lux said
" RobertAllen wrote:1. The soul of technology—basically it's place on the Tree and the God ultimately behind it, Thoth-Hermes-Mercury...
I think it would be on the bottom, with all material things."
All things are in Malkuth, after a fashion, but I was referring to something else—the spiritual, or magickal underpinnings of the manifested reality. In other words, if a god were responsible for the invention called computer, who would it be? Which deity is most flattered by such a thing? I'm talking planets, elements, zodiac signs, anything that would definitely place it in one camp or another.
@Frater Aster Lux said
"Maybe someone with an Iphone could use an app to draw one, consecrate it, carry it around, and let us know? I think it would be interesting to consider whether or not a computer could create sigils, or other "random" glyphs or things (strings of words, numbers, etc) while in the presence of "magical" energy."
Okay, so what are the very practical, very magickal considerations to this proposal? If we are honest with ourselves we will be on guard to spot those gestures born out of laziness and reject that motivation—go back to the old candle, book, and bell. But suppose we are just curious, a valid reason for any experiment, we should ask ourselves what an Iphone is really made of, will it easily take the charge of the given element or planet we are working with, or not at all? Does it matter? If not, why?
@Frater Aster Lux said
"Do our tarot cards work because a native spirit possesses them? Many people in the occult community are torn on this issue, and most people say it doesn't matter how you look at it. "
This sentiment begins to undo the rationale, motivation and all, of why a computer would be a plausible magickal agent. Because, if you can do all of what you propose and imagine with simple tarot cards, yarrow stalks, pendulums, or whatever, why bother with the computer?
Love and Will
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@Alrah said
"I'm fascinated by the idea of quantum computers, which seem to come from a much more organic root - a range of quantum states rather than an on/off gate. And the idea keeps intiguing me because what will it's diagnostics see if there's a spike down the line or the computer isn't limited by a one in 7 choice but can choose various combinations of the 7? Will it develop a basic conciousness by that method? Start theorising about God perhaps in a primal sort of way?"
It's curious that quantum computers are promoted as simply more complex than regular computers. This might be an over simplification on my part, but it is what I understand from the articles I have read. When and if they succeed in building one it will be interesting to see what this exponential jump in computing power will mean, and what philosophical problems it might unleash. Maybe there is a threshold level of complexity, once breached, opens some kind of rift in a systems ability to understand.
In the news these last few days was the super computer Watson that recently beat two previous human champions on the trivia game show, Jeopardy. (Watson in not a quantum computer, they don't exist yet.) NPR had some discussion about the implications of the event, and on one such show the experts were at pains to denounce the computers achievements in light of the fact that, despite the impressive showing in terms of voice recognition and apparent understanding of the questions, really did not understand!
This thread begins to move in another direction with this notion introduced by Alrah. Deep waters.
I have two thoughts and references here: The analogy given by James A. Eshelman in one of the introductory chapters of Visions and Voices; and the speculative 'scientific' mysticism of the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard De Chardin.
In Visions and Voices Eshelman compares humans and computers, asserting a similarity between us, at least as far up the tree as Binah. At this point the comparison ends—we have Chokmah and Kether, the machine does not. My apologies if I mangle the analogy by taking it out of context, but I found the assertion that a computer also had Binah something a puzzle. I might not get exactly what Jim was implying by his attribution, but my best understand was that the computer actually had some sort of understanding (Binah), which is a soul quality—the capacity for depth, imho. I can only disagree with this attribution as I understand it, because like the experts on the NPR talk shows, I don't think the computer has any depth of understanding—the quality and beauty of its soul does not accrue as it experiences the struggles, disappointments, losses, and deaths that make up life. I also have difficulty imaging a computer, no matter how sophisticated functioning intuitively. In this I see one of the great hurdles, yet to be overcome in the quest for true AI, the capacity for real understanding—a genuine appreciation bordering on an intuitive grasp of the significance of its knowledge—not just surface facts, but depth of feeling and appreciation for those facts.
Chardin's thesis suggests a way out perhaps. Again, I apologize for not fully understanding the implications of his thought or the original intent of his terms and writings. I have only read him in translation and then only a few articles, and only one book. But as I understand it his concept runs something like this: Consciousness does not derive from a threshold moment—there never was a magic moment when systems were so complex they magically achieved the ability to be self-aware. By contrast, according to Chardin, matter is inherently conscious already—the smallest, most illusive particle is aware of itself, as is everything that is of the cosmos. If this is true, then even the stuff of computers partakes of this cosmic-consciousness. It simply lacks the ability to think for itself, and also to put one moment of cosmic consciousness together with the next moment to produce the conscious memory of the continuity of it's persistence in time and space. In other words, despite the technical presence of computer memory, it still doesn't really remember that it was, just a brief moment before. It forgets because this experience has no means of making a sensible impression on the organism.
But enter the quantum computer. It is significant that one of the biggest problems that will have to be overcome for this to happen is the problem of shielding. Being an operation at the quantum level, the risk of interaction with other quantum phenomenon is all but probable, which means any operation will be corrupted by these other influences. Does this suggest an interconnected, conscious reality that might be given some sort of heightened existential experience of itself if isolated from its otherwise promiscuous relationship with the rest of reality—maybe something of a Chokmah/Kether moment?
I'm going to stop here because I have no idea where I'm going with this. I can only be suggestive in fields in which I am not expert. I do this a lot, but in this instance the gap between what I'm saying and what I know is exponentially greater than it usually is.
Mea Culpa, I'm about to hit the 'submit' button.
Love and Will