MachinimUWA V: "Fwd: Evolution"

My MachinimUWA V film entry, "Fwd: Evolution".

Best viewed in 720HD Expanded mode on YouTube but embedded here for convenience.

Credits and a transcript of the text can be found below the embedded video.

Enjoy!

Entry for the University of Western Australia's "MachinimUWA V - Seeking Wisdom" competition.

A Cybernetic Shamen and Cybernetic Dancer travel through space, time and the inner dimensions in the search for wisdom...

Credits:

Filmed in Second Life and Inworldz.

Wisdom was located at...

Abel Dreamscape - Morphe Inc Morphe Northwinds

Adec Alexandria & Debbie Trilling - Rainbow Horizon

Arrehn Oberlander - The Inspiring Orientation, LEA 26

Artee Despres - Huxley, Orwell & Ivory Towers, LEA 22

Betty Tureaud - Araman Galleries, Araman

Blackmamba Sands - The Offworld Colonies, Bladerunner City 2

Cherry Manga - Pirat's Art Space, LEA 28

Claudia222 Jewel - Uglyness & Beauty, UWA Winthrop

Djehan Kidd - Technopunk Deconstructions, Hangers Liquides

Dr. Shane Fairlock - Fairlock Industries Nightclub, Sensual Fantasy

Draco Avium - Wysteria Lane, Isle of Wysteria Lane

Enchantress Sao - Clear Bear Ridge, Gaia Rising

Enchantress Sao - The Astral Plane, Gaia Rising Mysticsea

Lar Jun - Castle Marlar, The Land of Lar ('InWorldz')

Lillith Morgwain - Mysterious Dream, Moodlight Sim

Lupeminith - Natualist Island, Magic Forest

Marcus Inkpen - The Returning, LEA 17

Midare Iwashi & Sojuka Bradley - Mad Ninjaz

Nish Mip - The Last Ocean, UWA Winthrop

Pol Jarvinen - Passages, LEA 25

Rich Greenberg - Trance House, Dance Island

Roya Congrejo - AWK Schrammelburg, XCESS Adventure

Sea Mizin - Symbiont Host, LEA 27

Tranguloid Trefoil - Atoms & Bonds, WASP Land

Yooma Mayo - Dreaming Machine, LEA 15

YuYu Flores - (*^-^*)HPMD, Happy Mood

Further wisdom was provided by...

Adec Alexandria

Debbie Trilling

Ferdy Straff

Iono Allen

Lar Jun

Marcy Palmer-Baxton

Nasty Puddlegum

Paddledog Oh

and Tutsy Navarathna

Cybernauts:

The Cybernetic Shaman - Tutsy Navarathna

The Cybernetic Dancer - Pixie Rain

Resources:

Screen insert newsclips & UWA campus footage - YouTube (Standard Licences)

Additional sound effects: soundjay.com (in accordence ToS)

Soundtrack:

'Re: Evolution' by The Shamen (1992) administered copyright to nemeton.com

Voiceover is an edited sample of Terence Kemp McKenna (1946 - 2000), Cybernetic Philosopher, to whom this machinima is dedicated

Transcript of McKenna's lecture (courtesy of http://www.erowid.org):

If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.

Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organization that preceded it, that it must be the response to a kind of attractor or dwell point that lies ahead in the temporal dimension.

Persistently Western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world, and I think that a lot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition. I mean, it isn't going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of Omega Point of Transcendence, is confirmed.

It's almost as though this object in Hyperspace, glittering in Hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into the past, illuminating this Mystic, inspiring that Saint or Visionary and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of eternity we can build a kind of map, of not only the past of the Universe and the evolutionary egression into Novelty, but a kind of map of the future. This is what shamanism is always been about.

A Shaman is someone who has been to the end. It's someone who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world really works means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary space, time, and casuistry and actually seen the wiring under the board; stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned and embedded language into the domain of what Wittgenstein called "The Unspeakable" - the transcendental presence of the other, which can be unsanctioned in various ways to yield systems of knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the community.

So in the context of ninety percent of human culture the shaman has been the Agent of Evolution because the shaman learns the techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas. This higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet ordinarily occluded by cultural convention out of fear of the Mystery, I believe.

And what shamans are, I believe, are people who have been able to de-condition themselves from the community's instinctual distrust of the Mystery, and to go into it, to go into this bewildering higher dimension, and gain knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time, to save souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on.

Shamanism is not a religion - it's a set of techniques, and the principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries and in the presence of dissolved boundaries one cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged dominator culture based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female and so forth and so on. So, what shamans have to do is act as Exemplars by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian ideas and then bringing them back in the form of Art to t struggle to save the world.

The planet has a kind of intelligence that it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is "transform your language" through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination; a synergy between dance and idea; a synergy between understanding and intuition and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you - to become part of this Gaian Supermind.

I mean, I think it's fairly profound, it's fairly apocalyptic. History is ending. I mean, we are to be the generation that witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is the shock wave of the Eschaton. History is the shock wave of eschatology. And what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into Hyperspace is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of compressed change probably since the birth of the Universe.

The twentieth century is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of time over which our species and the destiny of this planet is about to be swept.

We're going to arrive in the third millennium in the middle of an archaic revival, which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new Art, a new social vision, a new relationship to Nature, to feminism, to ego.

All of these things are taking hold, and not a moment too soon.