PANSPERMIA
panspermia.life NFT art site
^{#still #NFT}

An NFT art project about cosmic life origin.

"Pan": "all", "Sperma": "seed".

The project is a visual exploration of the concept of panspermia, which is the hypothesis that life on Earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space. The project comprises a series of digital artworks depicting alien life forms and their environments. The artworks are created using a combination of generative art techniques and hand-crafted elements. The project is intended to spark conversations about the origin of life and the possibility of life existing beyond Earth. It is a journey of discovery, a journey of understanding, and a journey of imagination.

Cosmic life origin is one of the hardest questions that demands persistent attention. Often when star gazing, one’s imagination zooms into the “future” while we look back into billions of years old light phenomena. Future-looking visions, fiction, fantasies, and even dreams are always based on contemplation, and reprocesses of the past, especially a metaphysical past. Mahayana Buddhism has illustrated a unique and broad view of life phenomenon as a whole and its working mechanism. The panspermia art project is fusing Buddhist metaphysical views and scientific hypotheses together, creating a fantastical world of cosmic life forms, hinting at some consensus between two seemingly vast different views.

These life forms are generated with self-trained machine learning models - StyleGAN2. by working with the machine’s “mind” - “the latent space” - a multi-dimensional mathematical space where semantic vectors of what’s “learned” are registered and stored. - for lack of a better metaphor, it’s like deep diving into the cosmos’ primordial soup, where an abundance of life forms are found with constant startlements.

The endless variations of something “likeness”, something“could be”, something “bizarre and freaky”, something “completely unrecognizable” are all tucked away in nooks and cranks of the machines’ sub-consciousness, like millions of neurons that are in constant fluctuation and waiting for some clearer emergencies. After experimenting with it I find the vast riches of probabilities and possibilities easily overload human perceptive faculties and collapse our categorical way of thinking. I wonder: does the universe “creates” in a similar way? Or does the universe “thinks" in this way? Or do androids “dream” in this way?

What I encountered in “latent space walk” has showered me how mother nature has always shown me: the strangest life form spurs, emerges, crossbreeds, evolves, mutates, and trespasses “domain”, “kingdom”, “phylum”, “class”, “order”, “family”, “genus”, species boundaries in constant motion as if they following strange “selfless”, “non-differentiated” “collaborative” code or protocol at a very fundamental level at beginning of genesis. what's regarded as "alien", "xeno", "astrobiologial" only reflects our anthropocentric limitation of sense-making.

No matter how exotic, bizarre, eccentric, or even appear so deformed that un-recognizable to the common eyes, in Buddha’s gaze all life forms are inherited with illuminating seeds within, which are sentient resonances of the whole.