Manna - complete psilocybin mushroom documentary

http://www.thepsilocybinsolution.com

Wow, a treasured download reuploaded after many years!! : D
Thank you Simon. G. Powell for your deep introspection and vital works.

Love With Gaia coming up...

Text

When you have a thought, never forget its leash. Let it sniff around, explore and familiarize its ever evolving self with the winding conduits of your mind and other oh-so-brilliant thought processes and finally, let it urinate all over you until your consumed by the tenacious stench of this idea.

Then, when you've had enough of this vulgar repetition, bite your carcinogen tongue, close your nicotine eyes and let it go.
Yes, set it free. Disown it, for it will never be yours to keep.

Release from yourself, you see. Freedom in silence.

Or you could just take a photograph...:)

Goa Inspiration 2011

And lastly - Help Japan!!

'Yage Residue' - 'Gallery Finistere' - Pont Aven, France

Mandala at the 'Impermanence' Group Show - Bois d'Amour, Pont Aven

Dense Cities - Multiple printing on Watercolour Paper

'Dense Cities I'

'Dense Cities II'

'Dense Cities III'

'Dense Cities IV'

'Dense Cities V'

Dense Cities

Sound During Meditation

55 inches x 45 inches (4.5x3.75 ft)- Pencil, Pen, Feltpen, Markers on Drawing Paper

Urban Nature

Rethink. Revise. Repeat

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate"

- Victor Lebow, 1955

Memory and Speech

I’m most at ease when surrounded by nature. When alone in natural surroundings with my camera I feel more at peace than anywhere else. I find the memories of my experience are stained, dulled out and sometimes lost when I try to describe them using speech as a medium. I’ve used a Zen Koan (‘The moment you speak about a thing you miss the mark’) that has stayed with me for over ten years to visually convey this feeling. I’ve bypassed the limitations of singular printed images by using handwritten text and ink in this piece.

Mans's Environment Powertrip

Speech over Memory (Sketch Video)

Video: Stop Motion Documentation

Duration: 2hours condenced to 1.42 minutes.

Medium: Print Collage and Text

'The moment you speak about a thing you miss the mark'

Film Project 2 - Untitled

Untitled
Medium: Video - 32 secs.

I have often found my body gestures and movements to defy the pace of my thoughts. I’m fascinated and surprised when my body expresses itself independently in these instances. I’ve observed my actions to be faster than my words can express and my body often seems to have a mind of it’s own.

In this particular video I’ve accentuated the gestures of my body in juxtaposition with its momentum. I’m interested in the situations when the body follows the mind and the reverse process. I’ve deliberately kept this video silent to suggest the sound through movement.

(Disclaimer: A song, Intro of Bonobo's Animal Magic, has been added at the moment to the project to increase entertainment value. ;)

Film Project - Last Sound Before Sleep

I’ve been practicing photography and meditation simultaneously for the past few years. On arriving in Pont Aven from the congested metropolitan city of Mumbai I found myself being unable to sleep at night due to an accentuated soundscape from within my body. I was overwhelmed by the beating of my own heart and magnified breath. I was surprised by the simplicity of this primal act that is elemental to the human life force but is only noticed in moments of silence. A soundscape I was only able to pay attention to while in meditation, when silence is deliberately sought out.  
While meditation has been an inward self-exploration, my photographic practice has always included the external, the human form. I wanted to unite both these past explorations with my self-reflective observations in Pont-Aven, via a new medium. For this particular project I’ve stepped away from my photographic practice and opted for video in order to bypass the limitations of still images.

Final Proposal - Peut Etre

For my initial project I looked everywhere for the sound of silence in my surroundings but failed miserably. At any given moment, where I thought my surroundings were completely silent, I was followed by the sound of my breath and beating heart. It prompted me to reflect upon the essence and symbol of our life-force, the breath. It also made me contemplate about the last sound one might hear before going into unconscious states like sleep or death. With an initial experimental sound video of breathing skin, I wanted to recreate the last sounds I hear every night before I fall into deep sleep. These sounds are unusual to me as I've been born and brought up in Mumbai, a heavily populated metropolitan city in India that has forgotten the quiet of the night. These sounds to me are the last rung on the ladder before silence. It is a soundscape that I notice everyday here in Pont Aven but quite rarely these past 25 years.

I've been practicing meditation for about a year and am quite fascinated by the various personalities/avtaars my breath displays which are usually reactionary. With the most common style of breathing being from the chest, I find that in diaphragmatic breathing, (breathing from the abdomen, where the abdomen rises and falls with each breath) I'm the most calm and relaxed. To correspond with the inhalation and exhalation of the breath, I've used the contraction and expansion of an ambiguous piece of flesh to represent the process of diaphragmatic breathing in the soundscape.

On further and continuous observation, I’ve noticed 4 recurring independent sounds that can be heard from within me in moments one would normally describe as ‘piercing silence’.

1. Breath

2. Heartbeat

3. Flatline Extreme High Frequency ear-ringing

4. Stomach rumbles.

I may or may not include all these sounds in my Final Project. I plan to continue with the movement of flesh to accompany the ones I choose like explained in the first one.

For the presentation, I’m torn between blending them into one video with a dynamic mixed soundscape and as separate pieces. I will have to try them both and think about this further and am facing editing difficulties and clear sound editing issues. I might create a box to fit my laptop. If possible a big box to house a person?

This subject of this project is quite personal (with the use of my body sounds and skin) but I hope to touch on sounds that relate to all viewers.

Processs Response

At age 10 I was listening to Pulse (PinkFloyd) to sleep at 12 I thought distortion was too noisey and couldn't comprehend how anyone would want to make music that 'sounded like death' at 13 I discovered the 'Black Album' and at 15 some hardcore metal and at 16 I attended several gigs with moshpits and sweaty black t shirts. At 17 I hated Radiohead and thought they were musically challanged at 18 I listened to their discography for 3 years straight and went for my friend's private jam sessions and listened to beatles, jefferson airplane, nina simone and suchlikes. At the time I was repelled by Trance, Techno and psychedelic music where I felt uncomfortable with a continuous beat and almost spontaneous surprises. At 21 I was gifted the Merzbow - Music for Bondage performance cd2 and I hated it though I did like Skinny Puppy but don't anymore. At 23 I discovered Psilocybe Cubensis and suddenly I was drawn to every genre and sound. Being able to absorb any kind of music with an open mind. (Okay maybe not pop and country, but I can handle anything;p) What is this? What does this mean?
I thought Noise in terms of music wasn't an old concept so 'The Art of Noise' letters were an eye opener. With these details of my sonic growth I would like to stress that noise that is perceived as music and music that is digested noise is a topic that can be called up for discussion anytime anywhere and will go nowhere. Matilda (Artist in residence in Pont Aven) said she knew 2 people who hated music. Not just ambivalent but honestly hated it.
I truely believe music (Whether it be monotonous machinery or dark psychedelic or patting the table) is globally uniting and intensely individualistic to a point where I feel all discussions disappear into a vortex of meaningless blabber.
Just let it evolve and exist and listen closer. :)

The Last Sound before Sleep

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1014604020855&ref=nf

Chris Cunningham - 09'

New Chris Cunningham stuff from 09! Yet another inspirational video:

Inspirational advertisement...

'Sukere l'Autompne'

(Sweet Autumn - October 09')

105 x 75 cm

The fallen leaves are

collecting on my eyelashes and

Rolling down on lips that crave

A sweet ensemble of orgiastic polysaccharides.

Medium:

Chocolate

Raspberry

Grenadine

Tomato

(Panels - Painted on Wednesday 7thth October )

(Canvas - Painted 6days later on Tuesday 13th October)

Time Lapse Video of the Process of Painting over a span of 5 hours

Depleting Energy Circle - Updated

Medium: Marron Seeds, Creeper Stems and Cardboard

After collecting about a 100 Marron Seeds (Non Edible Chestnuts) and over 100 red stems from a creeper, I decided to arrange them in a circle that might represent energy waves entering or leaving. I left this piece out and it was exposed to the dark, sunlight, cold and heat over the course of 3 days. This piece is meant to reflect on the depletion of energy over time. We can observe that the red stems have lost a little colour and look a little thinner. I suppose they will be completely brown just like the Marron seeds after a month...

(Fresh - Close up)

(After 3 days - Close up)

(Fresh - Wide Angle)

(After 3 days - Wide Angle)

(Untouched after 3 weeks)

Par Speculum by Adrian Paci

Par Speculum – 2006 at the Lyon Biennale

A Film Intallation by Adrian Paci

After being bombarded with a refreshing array of art from around the world at the Biennale Art Festival in Venice, we stopped for a few hours at the Biennale in Lyon to completely saturate the unused space in our frontal lobes that could potentially alter artistic perspective. For me, the last phase of synaptic fires occurred on the second floor of the exhibit. Behind a screen that stretched from floor to ceiling there was a small room that held the work of Albanian artist, Adrian Paci. The placement of the room in the building was as elusive and impalpable as the meaning behind the piece itself. I was to later find out that the minimalist feel of the atmosphere which contained 2 black rectangular boxes for seating, white walls and cold concrete flooring was a contrast to the emotions that Paci’s film brought about within me that were rather overwhelming. The dark and secretive space, accompanied by monotonous audio from the projector instantly turned into an almost meditative chamber where I could leave the world behind and drown in the visuals that seductively led the mind far beyond the physical representation.

My initial attraction to this piece was not the film but the sound of the whirring projector; a faint echo that emanated from a rectangular hole in the wall. My preconceived notions about the dark generated an initial reaction of being uncomfortable but the monotonous whirring almost took control and drove my feet to travel through the portal that Paci had to offer.

‘Par Speculum’ literally meaning “Like Mirror” in Latin was made in 2006 and was shot using local children at Northampton shire. The opening scene of the countryside was a peaceful canvas to begin with. It gave space and time to let me breathe in my surroundings with an open mind. The scene with its untarnished natural environment and clear sky let me willingly succumb to an opinion-less mindscape in preparation for a new wave of thought.

Abruptly moving from close-ups of various anonymous faces of young children with diverse expressions, we are led to a mirror stuck in the mud that holds their reflection as they stand in a group. They seem contemplative and not particularly cheerful. Some seem mischievous while the others wistful and immediately, I thought about their past and what their childhood had been like. After a few moments, one of the boys shoots the mirror with a catty and the frame lingers on the broken mirror, at once destroying their unity and dividing them into individual ‘broken’ characters of a bigger whole. Like the first scar on the film plane I was led to think of lost innocence and shocking moments that break the clarity of childhood. I also thought about shattered relationships and trust. The disintegration friendship as one grows older.

The next scene is children, running in the field and then we see each stills of individual child reflecting the sun off shards from the broken mirror while seated on various branches of a tree. We then see a wide-angle shot of the entire tree with sparkles of flares from the sun as the children play with the mirrors they're holding. The film stagnates in and around this shot of flickering sunspots like stars shining from the dark tree-scape and leaves the viewer with an inconclusive end to reflect upon the emotions that moved through the mind like the icon of quivering light-bulbs that go on and off when ideas are formed at random and disappear almost instantly.

I also thought the mirrors reflecting the sun resembled SOS symbols were used in earlier times to indicate that help is urgently required. Perhaps begging to viewer to think about connecting earth and sky. A naive longing to arrest the duality of light and dark; prepubescence and maturity.

The tree itself reminded me of the tree of knowledge and I thought about growth of a childlike mind into adulthood. How experiences of childhood influence the adult and how each child is in desperate need to be guided well on the road to maturity. There were instances where I felt like these children from the countryside were indicating they were a part of the eternal and precious macrocosmic tree of knowledge. Pieces of a puzzle on a journey, like individual branches, together, being immortal components that complete the ensemble of mans upward evolution. Or perhaps, glimmering fireworks to celebrate a hopeful future for humankind.

I'm glad I found this ambiguous piece that aroused contemplation while allowing me to ruminate and meander through the dark unexplored realms of my own thought processes.

Rain down, rain down, cmon rain down on me, from a great height, from a great height.

It's enough to let your complexities hang. A stillbirth. The unshared anticipation that blooms and begs to be disposed off like a bloodied tampon. And when you let them hide in their paperthin folds and sweatlaced crevices, all the world transforms into a spiral. An endless conundrum. A complex mathematical equation.

I long for dark reverbrations in the cerulean firmament. Swift zephyrs and a lack of seasparkled noonsun heatwaves. It is then that I will ease my way back home again to subliminal slumbers and festering nothingnesses.

Verbal fornication and calloused caresses seem to have left caffine bitter scars upon my skin that love sprinkled anticeptics cannot heal.

I will find my clickety clacking cliche within plastic keys. And in time, an endless slumbered freefall with liquid angels dressed in song by my side.

Hah. You can almost hear the rain coming.

The Almost Music Video

Le Chat Triute Pour le Citron Jellie %

When asking for advice on using 'sound for video' Barry made me aware of something important. In not so many words, he stressed upon how delicate the choice of sound is and how it's really easy for videos to look like they've been made for the music instead of viceverse. In this Almost Music Video, I used mon chat, Oscar, to make visuals for an awesome song by Lemon Jelly - SpaceWalk. I suppose the next step is seeing how things work the other way around.. At the moment my status is PensePensePense before I create sound for my nonexistent upcoming video.

7 Days and 7 Scapes

Candid photos of Scapes taken from the 20th to the 27th of September 09'

*All photos with "br" (busride) were taken on a moving bus while on the way and back from Pont Aven to Venice

Coffee Stop by the Alps (br)

Aurora (br)

Contemporary Clouds using a Volcanic Dust Avataar (br)

Misty Morning Melancholic Mindscape Manifestion (br)

The Gloaming (br)

3 Ways to spend your afternoon - Suggestions

1. Stare at Water

2. Get Nekked

3. Contemplate on bridging the impossible gap between Inifinity and Borders

Silver Lining Surprises (br)

5 People Moments

Candid People Moments in the Week of 20-27th September

Challenging Perspective - Paris Museum

Untitled

Silence at Dawn

Death of Conciousness

Crossing Visual Borders on a ThoughtMobile

Thought: Map of Conscious Formations and Photo-Synthesized Scapes

Photography on Leaves - A Meditative Mobile.

Like plants, that require sunlight to synthesize food, by capturing light reflected off moments, I've created a map of thoughts in the form of a mobile with photography on leaves. Thus I am able to record the influential imprints that circle the winding conduits of my mind at random; but even as light is frozen and moments are stilled, the emotions and personal meaning remains liquid, ever evolving and subjective. Regardless, the core of my 'self' remains an opinionless stagnant seed. A place I can center my mind at when the intracacies of life rock the boat too hard and silently take in the the visual and emotive stimulation by adopting the role of a silent observer. With extremely personal visuals in an intimate surrounding, continually flickering, hiding and in motion, (percieved as vital attributes of most human thought landscapes), I hope for every individual viewer to feel the sense of an inviting meditative calm while seated beneath the installation.

Phat Bird: Anti Sleep Surrealism

Fake Fat Bird (Do Not Eat)

Original Fat Bird (Yum)

While Deriving on Sunday 13th Sept

Nature Vortex!

Web V

Nightstuff and Time Lapse Inspiration

I made a sorry attempt at taking photos of the sky at 3am 2 nights ago. It required alot of patience and the cold in my bones was just no fun. I didn't have a tripod but managed to balance the cam on a stone which i place on a thin ledge. It didnt really work out. *Sigh* The trials and tribulations one must face when the cosmic dance overhead is just too beautiful to ignore. ;)

On the other hand, this video is an example of a very successful photo shoot in the form of a time lapse video of the night sky. *gasp* It really is something along the likes of stuff I aspire to do at some point. First I must Zen out on patience...

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman.

Rawscape

Being in Pont Aven, emersed in a fairly alien cultural environment with diverse personalities from all over the globe, with almost surreal experiences and extremely dynamic weather conditions, (all of which illicit extreme positive and negative emotions and responses in my mind), I find that the 'self' within me seems to be an unflinching comfort space that remains a constant.

With these consistently evolving emotions that are sometimes overwhelming, there is a pillar within me that I can fall back on at the end of the day. A space of solidity and silence.

The recognition of this subtle truth within me has been my prime motivation for these unedited photos entitled 'Rawscape'.

Psychogeography, Derive and Flaneur – Process and Evidence

During the Situationist movement, Guy Dubord, intensively studied people and influences in regard to their external environment rather than their own personal motivations, individual characteristics and primal nature. He played a significant role as one of the founders of ‘Situationist International’, before and during he hypothesized and defined the concepts of Psychogeography (1955) and Derive(1958)

My understanding of Psychogeography, Derive and Flaneur is fairly optimistic. It seems to be a kind of mental Elysium and that destroys boundaries between tangible artistically limited urban spaces and a subjective, almost surrealistic open-mindedness towards ones environment. It has a hopeful outlook that tries to rise beyond the banalities of a thought system that has been festering within the linear and restrictive modern development of our age.

It is extremely amusing to know that Dubord and Jorn associated psychogeography with the female body, insinuating that the thrill of using psychogeography, perhaps via deriving or maps, is as pleasurable and exciting as sex. In addition to this, being aware that the term ‘psychogeography’, which one might speak in with a fairly scholarly and poker-faced way, was conceived of during a night of drunkenness, adds to my favourable attitude towards these concepts.

I’m disappointed to know that the term ‘flaneur’ has been bastardized with a negative intimation in French Canada which almost seems like they missed they point.

It makes me reflect upon conventional understanding, societal stains of the past and a sticky microcosmic cognition within and a vast world of suprising potentialities.

As an aspiring photographer and enthusiastic traveler, the situationist response towards new urbanism where they hoped to merge the linear urban landscape with elements that were aesthetically pleasing to all aspects of ones mind and senses, open doors to limitless possibilities for exciting direct experiences within my mind. Although I have been playing my part as a local flaneur in India during frequent spontaneous photo walks and unconsciously deriving over the years, I’m subtly elated to know that these theories solidified by Dubord have survived half a century later and are expressed in performance, literature, architecture, film, comics, poetry and other art forms today. Being an ardent fan of Poe and Alan Moore I’m tickled pink to know they play an preeminent roles within this thought landscape. All due credit must be given to the Brits for the ‘London Psychogeographical Association’ : D

I find these terms extremely relevant and consequential to an artist, observer and the general public (that more often than not seems unsatisfied with their societal nuances and unfulfilled inner expression) as I believe it will open up new avenues for mental stimulation and a positive evolving expansion of the frontal lobe ;)

On the way to PASCA (opposite the public toilets)

There is no failure until as we continue to make an effort.

On the way and back from the Moulin Tuesday-8th.

Av.a.tar: noun; chiefly Hinduism

* a manifestion of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth; an incarnate divine teacher.

*computing: a movable icon representing a person in cyberspace or virtual reality graphics

*embodiment of a person or idea

ORIGIN: from Sanskrit, avatara 'decent' from ava 'down' + tar 'to cross'