What Androids Dream Number 106

Imagine a scene in the not so distant future when the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology and artificial intelligence blossom into a technological singularity.

Imagine that instead of large scale construction and manufacturing, thanks to the convergence of bio, nano and AI, everything is manufactured locally with information downloaded from the cloud — perhaps grown rather than manufactured.

Just think: no more ugly Bauhaus inspired architecture, no sharp angles, no form-follows-function rules, no phallic architecture molesting the sky.

Imagine instead: soft, round, organic shapes that complement the natural environment. Strange, android creatures that perform construction and maintenance duties — maybe even act as avatars for the amusement of the community’s citizens who live on large server farms and the cloud.

What would such a scene look like? Perhaps it would look like the tableau in What Androids Dream Number 106.

Formatted for 8K UHD screens, yes that’s right 8K — 8000 pixels by 4500 pixels — in anticipation of Samsung’s 85” Q900 Series 8K QLED Smart TV, this first offering of the 15 edition set is priced at only 0.05 Eth. Each subsequent offering will be increased by 10% over the previous edition in order to assist in boosting the value of your investment.

What Androids Dream Series

This series was created by collaborating with the artificial intelligence at the heart of the DeepDream project. I input some of my completely abstract images to the software to see what patterns the AI would find in them. The results are the series that I call What Androids Dream. A sort of homage to Philip K Dick, the series anticipates the coming Singularity when even artists may be superseded by machine superintelligence.

I find the alien creatures that the AI “finds” to be strangely endearing, like the “hopeful monsters” of the Cambrian explosion — perhaps even an electric sheep or two for Philip K Dick’s android’s private amusement. For me, the images create a mental atmosphere of sci-fi, psychedelic surrealism filled with strange, dreamlike stories.

There seem to be many stories going on in each image — stories that are private and unique to each viewer, stories that are unique to each viewing.