DEPTHS ≈
The Underwater Issue
Dream #1
CONTENT THE DOLPHIN MANIFESTO WET DREAMS PAST FUTURES VIRTUAL MATTERS MIRROR FLOWS BLACK HOLES PSYCHIC KALEIDOSCOPES SEA WEEDS DIAMOND REEFS DEEP BLUES DELPHIC ELIXIRS 1-666-CUM-CULT UPCOMING ISSUES
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‘I had a dream eight months ago in which I was saving stranded dolphins. After pushing them back into the sea, watching them flip through the waves, I realized that I was stranded too. So I jumped in.’
THE DOLPHIN MANIFESTO 1. Laugh 2. Play 3. Sing 4. Help 5. Enjoy eating what you need 6. Sex yes; gender fluid 7. Reproduce at your leisure 8. Love all calves and let them know how much 9. Preserve and protect the pod 10. Stay wet 11. Swim good 12. Swim far 13. Swim free 14. Captivity kills 15. Remember to breathe 16. Treading water is drowning slowly 17. The ocean has no borders, only species (and all species are equal) 18. Dark is deep, deep is dark 19. Water sustains all life 20. All life is sacred
21. Keep the water clean 22. Love is liquid healing 23. Feel the ultraviolet, telepathic, holographic beams 24. Beam them back 25. Make the leap 26. Worship nothing 27. Own nothing 28. Own no one 29. Let go 30. Please 31. Please yourself (first) 32. Please others, too 33. Please yourself to please another 34. Please another to please yourself 35. The jealous jilt themselves 36. Together, go your own way 37. Hierarchy hurts us all 38. Structure is for survival, not the other way around 39. Punishment is only pain 40. Keep moving - even in your sleep
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WET DREAMS This past year, imagery of dolphins, psychedelic seaworlds and blue-dyed hair sprayed over the internet like tropical confetti. The teal-washed meme caught a lot of heat from both self-serious and self-ironizing corners as an empty, vapid trend; proof of the degradation of our social fabric, evidence of an endless descent into a fractured ocean of meaninglessness. Silly though they may seem, dolphins are images of freedom. If they seem childlike, it’s because child minds are free, too. This underwater exploration is dedicated to the freedom of imagination. Most dismiss the Final Fantasy games as outdated, pixelated children’s entertainment. In reality, they’re highly subversive; a super-sophisticated series of commentaries about societies with advanced technology that have forgotten how to use magic, and neglect the spiritual value of their planet. We want to revive our sense that we and the world can be magical, both in dark and bright ways. That these symbols fuel mass consumer culture trends doesn’t mean they’re insignificant. It’s actually why they’re significant. Just like The Dolphin Manifesto, we believe it’s possible to take those ubiquitous symbols and invest them with new meaning. Humans need new dream worlds, so we can have a new world to dream.
So often the sad binary in our world is between frighteningly grim and cowardly flippant. Dolphin culture is about searching for an antidote to that. That’s exactly what we’re aiming at with this demonstration of respect for internet youth culture, and the new possibilities it explores and offers tirelessly: the expansion of digital realms. Virtual spaces are physical places, too. It was John C. Lilly, the first marine biologist to study dolphin-human communication, late-career LSD psychonaut who did acid with his dolphin friends, creator of the floatation tank, and a huge inspiration to us, who coined the term Solid State Intelligence: the mass of wires that best describes the Google server farm. Lilly believed in new possibilities where others saw only fantasy. Many mocked the yoga hippy who thought he could speak with dolphins. Today, researchers are using iPads and holographic projections to confirm Lilly’s pioneering hypothesis. We may speak two different languages, but translation required us only to dream. Lilly worried that the resonance of Solid State Intelligence would stop our liquid flow with a kind of static vibration. We think its wires are vessels of vaporized neon; heated, electric fluid flowing in snakes of slow-dripping glass. This issue’s talisman is a holographic dolphin postcard. We like the idea that there exists a virtual world for people to swim through, and also an imaginary object that you could hold on to. Recognizing the value of the digital isn’t about ignoring the physical world, it’s about breaking down the boundary between the two, merging inter and outer realities, IRL+URL, to challenge the idea that one is more real or has anymore importance than the other. We want to bring the vibrancy of the web to the rest of our lives, and lift our heavy bodies out in to cyberspace. Giving weight to the weightless, we can touch the intangible. Dreams become physical.
PAST FUTURES ‘This is not just nostalgic aesthetics or kitsch, this is real and it makes sense,’ a girl commented on Facebook, debating the merits of virtual dolphin culture. And she's right. Glittery dolphins were a symbol of the 80's and they’re a symbol for today. Visual culture loops aesthetically from the pool of signs we’ve decided on in this world. We reinterpret our pasts using new refined tools for dissection. The future will continue as a looped cycle, but it mutates. Spiraling forward, like a marble on a curly timeline. The curl could be closing in, time becoming one-time, a fixed loop, and the Mayans were right after all. So much else is curved in the universe, why not time? The difference between then and now is that the dolphin no longer is a figment on a bedroom wall poster. It has become an avatar and it is speaking with other dolphin avatars. The similarity is that the world seemed doomed in the 80's and it seems doomed today. Dark times call for dolphins.
VIRTUAL MATTERS Eager technology is notorious for equally inducing fantasies and nightmares, ecstasies and anxieties. But the desire for unity, wholeness and identity prescribes an odd thingified nostalgia that will give you bad dreams when you're not sleeping. Whatever it was, whatever it used to be, if it ever was at all, it's not here anymore. Focus on affinity. Multiplicity and non-substance can and should be rendered real. But touch is nice, too. Skin. Wet, fusiform bodies in particular. The tangible and the virtual add to each other and create beautiful mutual mutations. We're still tactile. The nice thing about physicality is that it engages your senses differently than the virtual, simply because its built in a different way. Online you get the benefits of animation and interactivity, offline you get texture and topography. We don't think there's anything necessarily nostalgic about the re-appropriation of antiquated imagery and technology in the digital age. Like the current cassette tape craze. It's just a curious consequence
of virtual digitization that tangible, touchable stuff takes on a special sense of value the more we interact with the ephemeral and ethereal. It’s no coincidence that the emergence of iTunes, SoundCloud and the music blogosphere have explosively reinvigorated interest in vinyl, just like images of sex stimulate real bodily arousal. Digital dreams can spawn lovely touchable offspring. We saw this documentary on a guy from LA who makes techno dance music. They described his sounds as ‘human’. ‘Dance music that actually feels human.’ It's a curious statement. Cause nothing is more human than dancing. Nothing more corporeal than the bass that makes it impossible not to. The human concept of nature is a worldwide neurosis. Matter matters. But it doesn't matter. If we exist in a world where the physical is transgressed, we also exist in a world of infinite form and endless possibilities. Your mind sculpts your own reality. Imagination is more than ever of the essence. Discard the dualisms of real and unreal, natural and unnatural. Lose yourself to come back saner. Practice elastic thinking.
MIRROR FLOWS We've entered a weird portal where our thoughts hit the internet with or without our permission. Perhaps even reading our minds and us reading its. Simultaneity. Feedback loops. A rift in the fabric of digital space-time. Cyberspace is a wobbly fishnet that captures and reflects our collective thoughts. Hegel was really onto something with that whole zeitgeist business. The mirroring hallways give back. But then we freak out at our own reflection because we don’t realize it's a mirror. We somehow still think of technology and the internet as autonomous organisms doing something, perhaps even to us. We're in need of a reverse separation phase; realizing maker and I are one. Yet some of the mirror-lels are eerier than others. Wombs are slippery. We're really deep in the hall of mirrors and decidedly into tracing back the beams of light to their origin points. Through the looking glass. The deeper into the heart of the zeitgeist you get, the harder you focus on the
edge of infinity, the more improbable all the simultaneous coincidences start to seem. That uncanny feeling you get when you see a GIF that looks exactly like the unreleased video you made almost a year ago, or you read #nipslips in a private message the second you see some Facebook page post it in public. Sparkly images of dolphins lead to sounds you've dreamed and phrases you've longed to hear. Suddenly, you’re at the heart of a superpod all singing the same amplified sonar tune. In the hall of mirrors, sometimes you catch a glimpse of a vanishing point between self and other where you don't know whether you're causing it or it’s causing you. That sublime feeling of astonishment leads to all these questions, and more questions beyond the questions. Like that scene in The Matrix: ‘A black cat went passed us, and then another that looked just like it.’ Déjà vu is a glitch in the simulation, or glitches in our memory process. The cat was absorbed by your pre-memory, creating an inner split-image the moment it arrives in your consciousness, being both past and present. Is it more telepathic than that? Deeper parts of our brain detecting what goes on in places our cognizant selves can't see. Or is everybody just actually thinking about nipslips all the time? And when we start using that weird, telepathic antenna to pre-remember the zeitgeist, do we focus it and amplify it or even influence it? Does that count as a special power? Can it get extra focused in a particular social or personal dynamic? Of course, the only thing we know for sure is that everyone is thinking about nipslips all the time. Ride the telepathic mirror flows.
BLACK HOLES Do some people have more active telepathic antennae than others? Absolutely. Some people experience the distortions and ripples more often than others; some people don't experience them at all. Acceleration seems to have a lot to do with it. The state of exponentially augmented brain activity increases the occurrence of glitches. When your brain is running at very high speed, its receiving more signals from more channels at once. Dial-up modem brains versus broadband wi-fi brains. Slippage occurs at high speed and high volume. Like trying to remember the name of the friend who wrote that thesis on Janet's Super Bowl nipslip, how it ended her career while Justin came out clean as ever because he is white and male. Trying hard to come up with the name, for a full week, but it's not there, and the friend doesn't use social media, so you can't even be sure he exists. Things evaporate from the hard drive. A different kind of memory glitch. This one perhaps due to a lot of physical travel, leaving lost data scattered in trains and planes like discarded USB keys. Channels of sensation on frenetic overload, resulting in random black memory holes: street names, song titles, data, old acquaintances. Constantly looking up your own phone number on Facebook.
It’s a kind of hyper-focus where you can do more at once faster. Things seem slower to you than everyone else. Again, Matrix-y. Sometimes when you get that amplification paired up it causes a more powerful feedback effect from the telepathic overload. The psychic horizon moves so fast earth time gets so slow it can't keep up. Zeitgeist time travel. But we remember about Janet. That seemed meaningful at the time. Janet's nipslip in the context of gender taps into something important: Drake and nipslip related areas of the brain. That inerasable image of a sun shaped bangle-piercing gleaming in the stage light. And maybe black holes are a good thing. Not only for sex. But leaving space for something more useful or necessary, an intensified state: Wormhole transcendence. Sporadic short-term consciousness could have a lot to do with number 29 and 31 in The Dolphin Manifesto. At one point, we remembered everything. Then we let go. That felt good. Messy routine disrupter girl won't remember your birthday, but she'll dance with you on deserted playgrounds while the sun rises. Forgetting can save your life. Dolphins heal themselves.
PSYCHIC KALEIDOSCOPES Sands vaporize beneath your feet, illuminating endless black sea. The more you throw into the psychic heart of the feedback warp, the more gets thrown back to you. A silvery boomerang; exactly like the dolphin. Smooth too. Which is why people who throw nothing in end up fearing technology, feeling alienated: technology as 'it', thingified, attacking 'reality'. We think we should be less afraid of technology and mate with it instead. Channel the collective magic. But go your own way. Adjust to a perverted, utopian double-vision. Multi-vision even. Like a fly, only less annoying. No buzzing sounds allowed. But you'll notice a distinct buzz and hum if you stop your brain from filtering it out as white noise. Like unmuting anime porn.
But enjoy the freaky Tumblr deep dives. Paradoxically, it requires a submission to the overload that allows such beautifully obscure oceans to get into the mirror flow. That's how you learn to swim. Submission is kin to letting go. We need to break with anthropocentrism in all regards concerning everything. Biochauvinism too. Letting go in order to ride the current. The ocean is the oracle.
SEA WEEDS Seapunkers dance on the ruins of western civilization’s breakdown. They ornament themselves frothily with spiritual pop symbols from decades of grotesque and beautiful waves of human culture. A bricolage of churning chum, surf and scum. It's a parade of mourning. Celebration too. It's the death and resurrection of a culture in flux. Forever no more. The loop is acknowledged. The irony is dead serious. Mysticism is tomorrow's science dreamed today. Dream machine on full power. A realm reborn. Every end marks a new beginning. We've found ourselves lingering on a lot of Tumblr anime porn GIFs lately, scattered alongside suggestive images of flossing gums. Hopefully an interest in tooth porn is not to follow. Accept all except tooth porn. Internet kidz is fukked Y/N?
Our guess it that anyone who puts their Facebook profile on their amputee tooth porn blog will probably answer an anonymous question about black bag forest ghost people, so we can get to the bottom of the eerie simultaneity glitch. Fingers crossed.
DIAMOND REEFS Dolphins are intelligent With brains larger and more complex than ours, dolphins are among the most intelligent animals. As if we would know. We're not smart enough to know how smart dolphins are. Dolphins listen Underwater. Through tiny ear holes and their entire lower jaw. Dolphins sense With teeth as cascades of antennae. They echolocate, receiving incoming sound and movement from other creatures. Dolphins heal themselves Even from extreme injuries. Deep wounds won't cause lethal hemorrhage or death, instead they heal themselves in such a way that their body shape is fully restored. Dolphins are sensitive With free nerve endings densely packed in the skin, especially around the rostrum and the genitals, dolphin's ultrasense. Dolphins foreplay ‘Dolphin copulation happens belly to belly.’
A very humanlike observation for something so magical. They engage in lengthy foreplay. Dolphins enjoy all kinds of sex with all kinds of dolphins Like emotional bonding and homoerotic behavior. Dolphins get creative They woo each other with bunches of weeds and sexual acrobatics. Dolphins are friendly to other dolphins Establishing strong social bonds, they live in pods of up to a dozen individuals. Pods can merge temporarily, forming superpods exceeding thousands of dolphins. But they let go and stay free Membership in pods is not rigid. Interchange is common. Dolphins communicate Using a variety of clicks, squeaks and other vocalizations. The highpitched frequencies are thought to be radio waves, carrying holographic images. Dolphins help Dolphins will stay with injured, ill individuals, bringing them to the surface when they need to breathe. Not just their own kind, but stranded whales and humans, too. Dolphins are cultured The older dolphins teach the young dolphins to get food, use tools, protect themselves and play. Dolphins play They blow bubble rings and ride waves for simple amusement. Dolphins are always conscious
Resting with only one brain hemisphere in slow-wave sleep at a time, dolphins are always moving, even in their sleep. ‘Dolphins can see things that can’t be seen.’ ‘If dolphin sonar seem sophisticated, it’s because the animals have had 20 million years to adapt and perfect it.’ We think it's some pretty sophisticated shit. We think humans should act more like dolphins. We say fuck personality, get a dolphinality.
DEEP BLUES In 1985, four Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins (Mavis, Maria, Gary, and Howard) were captured in Charlotte Harbor, Florida and dumped into a tank in the middle of the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada – a landlocked city. With a gross area of over six million square feet, almost four million square feet of retail space, 23,000 employees and over 20,000 parking spaces in the world’s largest parking lot, West Edmonton Mall is the largest mall in North America, receiving 28 million visitors a year and between 60,000 – 150,000 shoppers daily. It was the largest mall in the world from its construction in 1984 until 2004. West Edmonton Mall contains over 800 stores and services, including: The World Waterpark: the world’s second largest indoor waterpark with the world's largest indoor wavepool and the world's largest permanent indoor bungee tower Galaxyland (name changed from Fantasyland in 1995 due to threat of legal action from Disney): the world’s largest indoor amusement park with 24 rides including the Mindbender - the world's largest indoor triple loop roller coaster, which killed three people in 1986 when upside down cars fell from the track. The Ice Palace: a scaled down version of a National Hockey League ice rink.
A 3D IMAX movie theatre with an animatronic fire breathing dragon in the lobby. The Fantasyland Hotel. Wild West Shooting Centre: an indoor shooting range. A 24-hour Gold's Gym. Two large nightclubs: country themed Whisky Jack’s and The Empire Ballroom (formerly Rum Jungle). Palace Casino. An inter-denominational chapel. Bourbon Street: featuring clubs and restaurants in a New Orleans -themed setting, including Hooters. Europa Boulevard: eclectic shops in an area designed to look like a European streetscape. Chinatown. Sea Life Caverns: the world's largest indoor lake - an underground aquarium that formerly featured functional submarines and is home to more than 100 species of fish, sharks, sea turtles, penguins, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, and an exact replica of the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus' flagship from his first Atlantic voyage in 1492. Sea Lions Rock (formerly Dolphin Lagoon): adjunct to Sea Life Caverns, a tank smaller than the average California home swimming pool with ampitheatre seating and visible from elevated shopping floors, since 2004 the home to three sea lions who perform daily and
are available for private personal sea lion encounters; prior to 2004, home to West Edmonton Mall’s dolphins. From 1984 to 2004, five dolphin calves were born in the lagoon, all stillbirths. In 2000, Maria died from complications related to ingesting foreign objects. She was 19 years old. Maria swallowed hundreds of coins that visitors threw into the pool, and they were inside of her for years. Gary died of a blood disease in 2001. In 2003, hundreds of shoppers watched as Mavis and Howard’s calf floated in the pool, Mavis gently nudging it every so often. Afterward, Mavis stopped eating and passed away at 23 years of age. Veterinary autopsy found no medical reason for her death. After his partner Mavis’ death, Howard’s health became unstable and he displayed depressed behavior, swimming in circles constantly. Howard was still forced to perform twice a day, seven days a week and engage in oneon-one dolphin encounters. On May 25, 2004, Howard was relocated overnight in secret from the lagoon to a basement pool, put on a stretcher, loaded into a custom box and driven to the City Centre Airport's Shell Aerocentre escorted by the Edmonton city police. Howard was not tranquilized. He was put on a Falcon 20 private jet and accompanied by a veterinarian to Theater of the Sea, an open-ocean saltwater lagoon in Islamorada, Florida. Howard died in 2005 at age 26. In the ocean, dolphins can live 50 years old beyond. = The tank is always half empty.
DELPHIC ELIXIRS Water Cetacean intelligence Sonar conversation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTXG105QrWI Underwater ruins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPCq3yo4SLc (everything we've written about here pretty much gets covered in the user comment field). YouTube user comments Seahorses A Psilocybin Diet: Here We All Are, Be Here Now, a 3-LP set recorded live by Baba Ram Dass in 1969: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMUUBepzHH0 ‘Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, so I can have a word with him?’ The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, audio excerpts from a
lecture by Terence McKenna recorded live in 1993: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz1uRTUvjDs ‘We’re living in a world where rational thinking gives us the illusion of knowledge, and on the other hand, religion is unable to give us spiritual maturity. We are trapped in our half-truths, and we accept it as it is. The answers are in us. If we explore ourselves.’ The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence published in 1969, pioneering research into dolphin intellect and the possibility of human-dolphin communication by futurist LSD psychonaut, floatation tank inventor and alien-seeker, Dr. John C. Lilly. The Illuminatus! Trilogy from 1979: a dolphin named Howard fights the evil illuminati. www.treehugger.com www.gothsuptrees.net A girl and a dolphin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccn0GJqMaNo Somersaults Molly Soda x Diamonds x ∞ = *brainwash* ♡ Quantum Physicz
Into the Deep from 1995: a horror fantasy written partly from a dolphin POV on an optimistic future as a result of collaboration between humans and dolphins. The Day of the Dolphin - ‘Unwittingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.’ Recently, reports surfaced of attack dolphins with head mounted machine guns loose in the Black Sea,
charges subsequently denied by the Ukrainian military. Whatever the murky truth, various militaries have engaged in whale and dolphin training programs since at least 1973 - more psychic predictions of Dr. John C. Lilly, as depicted in this film (very) loosely based on his life. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/update -ukrainian-military-dolphins-not-actually-on-the-loose/273943/ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series from 1984, wherein dolphins run a campaign to save the humans. Dolphins Into The Future Luc Besson’s Le Grand Bleu from 1988. Tonz of wet bodies. - What does it feel like when you dive? - It’s the feeling of slipping without falling. Wreck Beach Cults: cascades of third eyes: you know it's strictly 4 da freakz. Weird creep shemaleitis: whoa! So green. So wavy. http://weirdcreep.tumblr.com/post/45069376779 Sparkly ovaries: My name is Ariel. I run this transparent shit. www.drakebay.info www.dolphinwhisperer.org Touch Screen Tech Skin Albino Pink Dolphin Club Spiritual deep throating: We cum in peaze. Lucidly. Other times we cum like the mermaidz: singing.
1-666-CUM-CULT Genre: Documentary IMDb synopsis: Two sardonic yet fantastically imaginative and dreamily optimistic drifters journey to California to escape the constraints of dry modern civilization and professional responsibility. Seeking to join a superpod of 100,000 Drake rapping dolphins (‘started from the bottom, now the whole team here’), the pair is instead taken in by Hare Krishnas. Rather than falling under the sect's spell, the young travelers convert the wayward worshippers to digital libertinism and psychedelic ritual, opening an occult sex chat line in the temple. Drugs, R. Kelly and anime porn ensue. Release: TBA
N E U R O B E A M S + S P L A S H E S O F L O V E,
Third Eye Girl & Rainbow Dash friendship is magic
UPCOMING ISSUES Dream #2: RITUALS The Hustle Issue spiritual animal: Drizzy on zombies and cityscapes: sex, money, borders, power regarding latex scenes in holy motors *you'll hear no disagreement from 1-666-FUK-VIBEZ about 90's tits and goth chicks* ~ Dream #3: ALIENS The Magic Issue on identity, juju and shamanism *severe catharsis* the mental muscle theme incl. notes on the Drake equation, channeling wonky frequencies re: seeking the spiritual algorithm ~ Dream #4: WOODS The Meaningless Issue *a facebook discourse* on melancholy and the infinite chaotic
overwhelming digital native mess sadness: oceanic blues tunes, a misty case study re-posing the question: Internet kidz is fukked Y/N? and discussing further the non-ironic nihilist nipslips through meditating on the return of the hip *the multiple dislike orgasm edition* ~ Dream #5: FEELINGS The Occult Issue on what we're gonna do about the worldwide asshole dad syndrome? isis force spell genesis rebuilding ruins a case study in marvel characters and one trick ponies ~ Dream #6: VISIONS The Final Fantasy Issue about the all-thing ode to kismet, a black mass (who wouldn't want to read about perverted multivisions, psychic boomerangs, and dolphin goth porn?)
SINK OR SWIM
Dreams was formed on 12.12.12 because we believe in new beginnings