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TRANSIENT & SENTIENT: “ALIEN NATION”
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NFT links coming soon.

“Legends say Cintamani spheres are will-fullling fabulous jewels which came from the inside of brains of Makaras / NagaRaja - amphibious sea monsters with animal heads and aquatic body. Cintamanis manifest whatever the beholders desire. In Tibetan Buddhism two compassionate bodhisattvas hold Cintamanis for grand prayers of blessing all life forms to thrive across all cosmoses. They may seem exotic, bizzar, queer and kinked, even appear so deformed that un-recognizable to the common eyes, but nonetheless in Buddha’s gaze they are all sentient and each bears a precious Buddha seed within - a secrete key for transcending sufferings and endless cycles of reincarnation in the ocean of Samsara.”

Through the lens of Cintamanis, new kind of life forms appears, emerges, crossbreeds, evolves, mutates and trespasses all 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 very fundamental level at beginning of genesis.

Often when star gazing these days, one also gaze into the “future”, a future Space X has envisioned for our earthlings - human habitat on Mars, or eventually becoming multi-planetary civilization. One can not help wondering what astro/cosmic life form could be when one day we are really out there “seeing”, “encountering”, “meeting”, and perhaps“co-living” with. Often visual fragments of aliens depictions from Sci-fi films come in our minds to help with imaginative creative process, but what’s been stitched together often can hardly be “coherent”, and “understandable”. And even if we ever encounter such life forms “face to face”, are we able to recognize it? Specially when their levels of existences beyond phenomenon realm? Does it mean SETI’s efforts of searching for aliens life which perhaps are non-terrestrial? In panic I began to look back into Buddhism text, legends, creation myths, and ancient mythologies in searching for some answers, something to make sense with, some lesson to be learnt, or perhaps to certain extend some adequate referential frame works to lean on at least…

These series of works are generated using self trained StyleGAN2 machine learning models by exploring “latent space”. “Latent space” is an intriguing feature of machine learning - a multi dimensional mathematical space where semantic vectors of what’s “learnt” are registered and stored. One must be both mentally and psychically fit to take a “latent space walk”, which is an exhausting experience often cause “qualia slippage” and ended in total “cognition meltdown”. 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 who are in constant fluctuation and waiting for some clearer emergences. After experimenting with it I find the vast riches of probabilities and possibilities easily overload human perception faculties and collapse our categorical way of thinking. I wonder: does universe “creates” in the similar way? Or does universe “thinks" in this way? Or do androids “dream” in this way? Or indeed does our minds work in this way too?