2007-01-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

Transmudream

Welcome ... You've come this far despite the trepidation one feels entering a subject as strange as this. Your face is unknown to me, a glowing screen separates us, and yet you remain, tenaciously raking this white glow with warm eyeballs, curiously. My congratulations are in order ...

This blog has been set up to provide you with information, excerpts, samples, and a place for discourse on my work, which is available in hardcopy on www.transmudream.com www.studiosfo.com and www.amazon.com . It is also available through ordering at your local bookstore.

The book currently sold on the sites above is called Deeply Privileged: New Work for the Mortal Empire. To give you some idea of what it's about, please read this excerpt of a recent interview below.

This book seems to be a combination of elements--sci-fi, occult, psychological adventure. Wayne, what inspired you to write Deeply Privileged?

I have always considered it necessary to record and to reflect on the development of the faculties in humanity that we, out of convenience, call our soul ... What we describe with this term. Both in the individual and collective cases. Since contemporary literature ignores itself, I find the field pretty wide open. My concern isn’t very strange, it is almost opposite to anything metaphysical, and it is the purpose and prerogative of certain people in any event.

In 1996 a late night conversation with an old friend about Virtual Reality led to the realization that, when this technology becomes completely pervasive and constant, a breed of humans would emerge who could survive in the spastic manifestations of a multitude of programmers. What would it be like? What would they be like?

In this situation, for instance, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference between actual persons and designed avatars, extras, AI figures, Non-player Characters or whatever else is generated by imagination. In fact, there would eventually be a good deal of inter-breeding, naturally enough, between dream and reality. Consider the content of so much unceasing desire freed at last and manifest to the senses! New nations of the mind are founded, abandoned, left to develop on their own in mutable continents … This is one example of its effects on us.

The next step was accepting that real resources were used to manufacture these ever increasing fantasies. And more sensation, more immediate stimulation is always demanded by those who get everything they want. Eventually similar particles of matter are used and manipulated into fantasy, displaced from their original course. This was the ability and effect of TransmuDream Technology which I write a lot about, and it’s widespread use had severe consequences. So much matter was displaced so violently that nature could not support its own structure. Huge sections of our universe imploded.

Cosmic Rangers, what I called the beings I imagined, they have the best chance of surviving this.

That sounds like a lot of ground to cover …

Deeply Privileged is concerned with operations by the Cosmic Rangers to establish re-contact with the worlds and/or individuals lost during the TransmuDream frenzy and the resultant implosion. One of those worlds is our own Earth, or what’s left of it. In many cases there are obstacles distorting or even preventing contact. Mutant worlds evolve in pathological isolation.

This is part of a larger work then?

Deeply Privileged is the fourth episode in the history of TransmuDream Technology and the development of the Cosmic Rangers. Other episodes may be made available; there are many more, illustrating various periods and perspectives of the events and personalities necessarily involved in that development.

What connections can you draw between the tech in your work and what is currently happening now with IT, Virtual Reality, and designing landscapes such as Second Life?

To me, the connections are explicit. It is only a matter of time before modern life becomes computerized to the point where any extant community will be found in a graphically designed universe. We have already reached the stage where a huge percentage of city dwellers have little use for traditional relations. The solution to our human needs increasingly comes from such technology. Not merely are people working from home, they are loving and dreaming from home. A conversation, a romantic encounter, an exhibition, a holiday, a business deal can all be accomplished through biologically interfaced avatars on a virtual world.

I see it as inevitable that eventually there is no difference between real and unreal. Whether through a sophisticated system of stimulating electrodes on your body or through an actual manipulation and reorganization of like particles into tangible realms (such as TransmuDream does), we will be forced into solipsism. We will encounter humanity unchained, a menagerie of gargantuan instincts coupling with an indulgent imagination. Crushingly immense private appetites, desensitization to constantly repeated pleasures, extreme stimulants at a whim—this is the future of our freedom. The question will be how to endure, survive, and utilize those raw naked resources suddenly at our fingertips. If we don’t have the discipline and courage to progress at that level, then we will regress in severe stages to the livelihood of some other savage animal.

Thank you for your time and your vision, Wayne.

It is my privilege!

Transmudream

Announcement: For those of you already participating in the present-day technological manifestation most resembling TransmuDream, there will be a book presentation held on a virtual reality site called Second Life, which apparently is getting very popular in portions of the industrialized world as we still know it. It will be held on December 2nd 10.30am (Thailand time, GMT+7, where I am) or December 1st 7.30pm (PST). That would be at this site:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/bolinas/227/195/69/?title=Acedia%27s%20Super%20Deck%21

The subject of Deeply Privileged is closely related to virtual reality, or more precisely, with the appetites, temptations and crises unleashed in and after such a technology. This subject has been a constant fascination to me, as mentioned above, and moreso since I became more traveled in cultures with values quite alien to those I grew up with, and began to explore the secret and lost literature and art of our prehistoric species. One seeks for definition among one's own attempts …

A central premise is that our fantasies are expanded upon in TransmuDream to the eventual psychological point where essential human instincts arise and consume our most superficial whims, as in dream. It is a question as to how prepared we are for such phenomenae. Can we identify archetypical images and behavior when it is standing, living and seething before us? Can we make choices in the swell of erotic sensation that erupts from a body whose every urge is now manifest in a sliding wet landscape all around it, mingling with it? And so on.

The story of Deeply Privileged follows the adventures of a member of a super-terrestrial order, the Cosmic Rangers, who have learned to survive in such conditions. At the time of this book it is their primary duty is to monitor developments on Earth after the results of the technology described above. Eventually, due to an unknown obstacle to their observation, he is sent to investigate more closely the species he once descended from … through being born as one of them.

On this blog I will keep you updated on new developments in the TransmuDream history, offering further information and samples on the characters and aspects of our imminent future.

Enjoy.

Transmudream

The presentation was a success, despite the system difficulties and overloads, which in turn reminded everyone present of the delicate relation of a human system and the unbounded ambition we thrust through it pell-mell … We have already become familiar with the extreme limits of appetite turned decadently inward to avariciousness. But that is in the cycle of natural growth and survival.

In fact the presentation also inspired a continuing series of live presentations using yet another creative hybridism of digital machinery, called the O Show (from studiosfo.com), which brings these interviews into a real-time audial and visual format through the medium of controlled speaking moving avatars. Yes, we are on our way, aren’t we?

Taking advantage of the entrepreneur atmosphere of this explosion of inventiveness, I was represented in that technological universe by a character called Prince Kazakov, who was kind enough to do me this kindness. He is after all the subject of the next and current work of these series. You should hear more about him eventually …