One of Disney’s weirdest films, an a adaption to the surreal classic “Alice in Wonderland”, was set to the Beatles’ psychedelic music . I love the result.
Tag Archives: disney
inside a computer’s mind
16 Oct
Trying to imagine an artificial intelligence’s consciousness calls for psychedelic imagery. like psychedelic substances, computers and networks are technologies designed to expand our mind. As a technological artifact computers are perfectly logical and coherent, as user interfaces they try to be as accessible as possible; and yet the computer as a conscious being is completely alien to us. This otherness of an artificial mind is the subject of these two videos.
The Rez games are all about a hacker shooting around inside a super intelligent network, trying to protect it. the above video is a trailer for the game The Child Of Eden – the recent addition to the series. I don’t know if the touch screen is really an optional interface, but if it really is, this game is a real trip with it’s cross-consciousness theme and synesthetic approach to soundtrack design.
And here’s another view inside a computer, and a trip down memory lane: The 1980′s classic Tron!
The story is somewhat similar (a hacker fighting his way through a computer…) and the difference in the visual treatment in comparison to Rez should give you some ideas about how dramatically our view of AI has changed.
(Rez link: Corey. Thank you!)
Disney’s Fantasia
25 JulAnother psychedelic classic by Disney. In 1940 Fantasia introduced shimmering abstract figuration morphing to the pulse of music as a subject of public viewing. Synaethetics for the masses.
Dali meets Disney
22 Jun
Dali meets Disney in “Destino” (2003) a beautiful and surreal short film based on a collaboration between the two artist.
Dumbo the psychedelic elephant
1 JunThis famous excerpt from Disney’s Dumbo (1941) is arguably one of the first psychedelic scenes ever.
The relations between Disney and psychedelics are not clear. According to Peter Stafford’s “Psychedelic Encyclopedia” the chief visualist for Disney’s Fantasia (1940) participated in the mescaline experiments conducted in Germany by Kurt Beringer in the 1920′s. Artist Paul Laffoley claims that Disney himself experimented with Mescaline “On a regular basis” during his stay in Germany in the 1930′s. Many other theories regarding the relations between Disney and psychedelics exist, and you can find out about some of them here in this fascinating article.
In this particular scene, Dumbo drinks from a bucket and slowly begins hallucinating. He sees pink elephants which appear before him out of thin air, and start dancing and singing (This sequence starts around the 3rd minute). By the fifth minute Dumbo’s fantasy world becomes increasingly psychedelic as the pink elephants change shape and colors. It seems the bucket has been spiked.
