art
Incredibly Trippy Portraits of Famous Psychonauts by Nicolás Rosenfeld
Nicolás Rosenfeld has produced an incredible series of portraits of famous psychonauts, from Carlos Castañeda and John C Lilly to Syd Barrett and Nick Sand. His artworks are intricate, intensely colored, and overflowing with peyote buttons, ether vapors, and cubensis stalks. Check them out below, and see even more at his website! Carlos Castañeda became famous as the author of a series of books, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, supposedly relating his training in shamanism by a Yaqui sorcerer. The books include experiences with several drugs, including peyote, jimsonweed, and mushrooms. Though they were considered true-to-life anthropological...
This Cube of Infinite Mirrors Expands, Contracts, and Blows Your Mind
This light sculpture by Numen/For Use bends reality to a new level. It’s a large cube of one-way mirrors lined with bright lights along the edges. Three of the cube’s six surfaces are made of flexible membrane, which bend as air is pumped into the cube by a huge compressor on one side. The other three surfaces are semi-transparent mirrors, so you can see into the cube’s infinite dimensions without leaving a reflection. In other words, you get to peek into the Escher-esque abyss as it changes shape: “By inflating or deflating the air tank, the membrane turns convex or concave,...
Moksha Medicine: Powerful Excerpts from Huxley’s “Island”
One of my favorite books is Island by Aldous Huxley, a book often prized by psychonauts and others who enjoy looking at society from the outside in. In Island, Huxley lays out the structure for an ideal society while making piercing criticisms of modern Western culture. As the title indicates, Huxley’s utopia is set on a small island, far removed from modern technology and divisive global politics. Some have criticized the book’s characterization and plot, but in Island these are secondary. This book’s main strength is in elaborating a great thinker’s vision of a truly civilized society. I want to share a couple excerpts...
“Room 8” — The Ending of this Short Film is Mind-Blowing
This 7-minute film blew me away. At first the stark tone and lighting drew me in. Then things started getting trippy in Room 8 and I couldn’t look away. It’s a fantastic film with echoes of Escher, Borges, Christopher Nolan, and Richard Kelly. (You probably know M.C. Escher and Christopher Nolan, but Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian writer whose incredible stories often featured mirrors, mazes, and infinity. Richard Kelly is the director of Donnie Darko and The Box, two very trippy movies.) Definitely hit full screen and pay attention for this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RGYdbLSizI Incredible as it may be, I...
Word Clouds Show What It’s Like to Be on Drugs
What does the language of drug experience look like? What words do we turn to again and again to describe an LSD trip or a cannabis high? Rehabs.com has created some slick graphics to answer these questions (although they are not the first). They performed “extensive linguistic analysis on thousands of written user experiences” drawn from the Erowid database. The graphics cover eight popular drugs, including LSD, DMT, MDMA, and mushrooms. The words shown are the ones most unique to each particular drug, and the size of each word indicates its frequency in user reports. One major problem with an...
DMT-Nexus Publishes First Issue of New e-Zine: ‘The Nexian’
Check out The Nexian, the first ever e-zine produced by members of DMT-Nexus. It’s a free PDF download with 56 pages of trip reports, horticultural advice, interviews, and DMT-inspired artworks by members of the Nexus community. One feature that stands out to me is Jungle Stewing: An Interview with Antrocles. Antrocles is Antony Galvan, a DMT enthusiast who runs a healing retreat inspired by his work with the Secoya tribe of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He talks about the relationship between language and the psychedelic experience: If there’s one thing I’ve really gleaned from these tribes is that if...
Jason Silva video: Psychedelics are “Technologies of Ecstasy”
Jason Silva does it again. The latest episode in his “Shots of Awe” series considers psychedelics as “technologies of ecstasy.” In the short clip, he blows your mind while elaborating on the thoughts of Mircea Eliade, Erik Davis, and others: [Psychedelics are] mankind’s cognitive toolkit, agents of psychic transformation we’ve been engaging in for tens of thousands of years to transform the perceptions of the bodymind, hacking our awareness and our perceptions, that evanescent flux of sensation and perception that is, in a way, all we have and all we are. He goes on to describe the importance...
Bungee Jumping Into the Godhead An Interview with Writer, Filmmaker, and Psychonaut Rak Razam
The vine has spread her tendrils across the world and a genuine archaic revival was underway. My bags were packed, South America beckoned, and the ancient mysteries of the rainforest awaited. I wanted in on it… —Rak Razam I sat down with Rak Razam, the writer, producer, and main subject of the new film Aya: Awakenings, for a 45-minute interview covering everything from the legacy of Terence McKenna to the intense 5-MeO-DMT trip that occurs at the climax of the film. The documentary, an adaptation of the book of the same name, covers the ayahuasca tourism phenomenon through...
Broken Billboard Makes for a Very Trippy Commute
Commuters and tourists were treated to a very trippy display when a billboard broke down in New York City. And it’s animated, as you can see in the video below. So what is it, a communication from hyper-dimensional beings? According to a Reddit commenter, the truth is more prosaic — this sequence is played when a technician needs to check if the separate sections of the billboard are properly calibrated. Damn, that is one groovy diagnostic test! I hope at least one person saw this billboard mid-trip and stared at it for several minutes. Is anyone else seeing this? My God, how...
Photographer captures incredible images of recreational drugs
German photographer Sarah Schönfeld captured these images by dripping drugs directly onto exposed film. According to her website: She then enlarged these negatives including the chemical reaction of the particular drug, to sizes of up to 160 x 200 cm. All of the substances behaved very differently: the shapes and colors that appeared showed unique characteristics and revealed unique internal universes. Schönfeld explores the possibilities of photography at the frontiers of what can be visually portrayed– the interface between representation and reality. For more images, including cocaine, opium, and endogenous chemicals like dopamine and melatonin, check out Sarah’s...
Endtrip, a Sublime and Disturbing Take on Death
This video will take you on one freaky journey. Some parts will remind you of Enter the Void, the DMT-dusted death journey from Gaspar Noé, but other parts are completely original. From the Vimeo descripton: Endtrip is an animation short film in which we experience a breathtaking trip through the bizarre and fantastical unconsciousness of a drug overdosed girl. This visually stunning journey offers a glimpse into the extraordinary and strange workings of the mind. Check it out (full-screen mode recommended): Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed to get much more! Or enter your email address for weekly updates: Share this:
Steve & Steve, a brilliant web comic about an acid trip
Steve & Steve, an online graphic novel by Patrick Farley, follows fictionalized versions of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as they embark on an LSD trip in Silicon Valley, 1975. Together they discuss lost love, the Cold War, the history of human evolution, and much more. The second “issue” was just released, and it’s just as incredible as the first. Patrick Farley is also the creative force behind electricsheepcomix.com, perhaps best known for bringing Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape” theory to life in the form of an animated comic called The First Word. Check it out, it’s just as trippy as...