I have been working with a production team to develop a social experiment that was designed to see how well an average person can read someone.  The experiment offers participants to watch videos of me telling two stories.  One true, one false.  It has been a great project to work on, and I hope you enjoy participating. The results as well as the correct answer will be announced very soon.

Test out your skills by clicking HERE. Good luck!

Cheers

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The people who know me best know that I am a workaholic.  The anatomy of my private time is spent reading, writing, working, or practicing.  However, I find myself with the need to take a break from any one subject over which I have been obsessing.  Usually, that subject is magic.  And recently, I have been delving so deeply into a performance project that I needed a break from performing completely.  So, I turn to painting in these times of need.  Specifically large acrylic paintings. 

The Work Itself

Most of my paintings are abstract in nature, but this time around I wanted to try something different.  I wanted to pick a simple subject, and do something complex with it.  I began with an acrylic medium transfer of the image of a large skull (3’x4′). Then I began to recreate the lights and shadows with acrylic paint and pencil.  But, instead of using the standard tones that might be associated with the image of a skull on parchment, I decided to use as many colors as I could. Overall, I am pleased with the results.  The untitled work currently hangs in my living room above the television.

The Results

This is the finished work

Untitled Anatomy Painting

Cheers,

Christopher Rose

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For those of you who are unaware, for the past two years I have been officially working on a production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that was re-written and adapted by Teller (of Penn & Teller) and Aaron Posner into a shipwrecked magic show.  The project was one of the most artistically fulfilling experiences of my life and recently won me a Las Angeles Drama Critic Circle Award for my work on the illusions and magic in the show.  Since August 2014, the show has been on a year long hiatus… but no longer.  The Chicago Shakespeare Theater has taken up the mantel of making this gigantic, incredible show happen.

You can read about my previous work on The Tempest Here, Here, and Here. 

My services have once again been called upon to serve as the production’s Assistant Magic Designer (working with both Johnny Thompson and Teller).  In addition, I am also an actor in the show playing a Bird-Headed Minion, the on-site magic expert, and the understudy to Ariel.  

As you can imagine, these projects are typically shrouded with mystery and secrecy. However… I am now in a position to give some details as to what is going on. Firstly, I’m very excited to announce that we have an entirely new cast which includes Larry Yando as Prospero. Larry has many credits and is just a delight to work with. From BroadwayWorld.com, I found an article that I will quote below:

Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) announces the full casting and creative team for Shakespeare’s spectacular tale of revenge and romance-The Tempest, staged by award-winning directors Aaron Posner and Teller, of the magic duo Penn & Teller. This inventive reimagining features the music of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, as well as choreography from the pioneering dance troupe Pilobolus led by Associate Artistic Director Matt Kent.

One of the final works in Shakespeare’s canon, the play transports audiences to an enchanted island where nothing is quite as it seems. Heralding the celebration of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year legacy in 2016, The Tempest inaugurates Chicago Shakespeare’s 2015/16 season in the Courtyard Theater, September 8-November 8, 2015.

For the interested parties, the entire article can be found here.

I wish I could explain to everyone just how exciting it is to be back on this project, but I will get more chances to do so in the upcoming weeks.  Stay tuned for updates, but in the meantime questions can be asked in the comments below.

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     Last night I started playing with rhyme scheme patterns in writing poetry. In doing so, I was lead to ask myself a question about the harmonious nature of rhyme patterns themselves. Such examples could be A, A, B, A for a quatrain or even simply A, A, A, A. Each of these patterns have a feeling of completeness when said aloud by the reader, and I wonder if that has a beneficial effect on the rhythm of the poem itself.

     In other words, is a person more likely to like a poem if it has a harmonious rhyme scheme as opposed to an inharmonious one? To play a little with this idea I set up a series of flawed rhyme schemes and decided to make a few poems to go along with them. My focus, obviously, is in the words used themselves rather than in the rhythm of the poem and I wonder if this takes away from the effectiveness of the poem itself.

     What follows is the best result of my venture in the sense that when one is reading it, one will notice an inherent difficulty to get into a particular rhythm of the poem simply because the rhyme scheme is made in such a way to prevent said discourse.

Mental Technique

Changing up till it’s the ground

Views the world with change profound

In your mind there is the door

To switch all things around

To seek the feeling more than before

In bewilderment, I’ve drowned

Drifting farther than the shore

Enlightenment I have found

Though to others I make no sound

Like viruses, they spore

About the mysteries they swore

To speak not of the door

Our conversational war

Around me they surround

Words spoken are unbound

My forgiveness they implore

To me they bespeak

To them I critique

Nothing new is found

It’s the process of mental technique

For those of you keeping track, the rhyme scheme of this poem is as follows: A, A, B, A, A, B, A, A, A, B, B, B, B, A, A, B, C, C, A, C.  Written all out like that, it seems as though I have compiled a jumbled mess of word salad.  But, if you were to break the whole thing down into 4-line stanzas as the poem is meant to be seen, a pattern (if somewhat a chaotic one) begins to emerge.  This pattern was chosen entirely for its mathematical value and not at all for its aesthetic value.  In fact, I spent time writing the rhyme scheme before I composed a single line of the poem itself.  They do say that limitations force creativity…

All of that being said, I am unsure if my experiment was successful or not.  After reading the poem to myself several times, I definitely find it difficult to unite the words with rhythm.  I do not, however, think that this has taken away from the general message of the poem itself.  To me, it seems to read like a disjointed conversation rather than a poem, even though it satisfies the necessary conditions to be considered a poem in the technical sense.

Several people have suggested further resources to me regarding where I can find more information about the effects of a rhyme scheme on peoples’ minds. Including, but not limited to Stephen Fry’s book ‘The Ode Less Traveled.’  A book that I recommend to anyone reading this that doesn’t think they can write poetry.  Suffice it to say, you can. 

To close this post out, I’d like to give you all a more entertaining poem that follows the classic scheme of a Limerick (A, A, B, B, A), a type of poem generally meant to be humorous and fun.  This one came to me late at night while taking a shower:

There once was a bee in a hive,

who wondered why he was alive,

so he sat and he sat,

getting terribly fat,

’till he died at age ninety-five. 

Happy writing, everyone… 

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A View of Haiku

About five years ago, I posted a small story on my old blog (which has since been closed) about an encounter with a friend of mine that inspired me to write some poetry in the form of Haikus.  At the time, I was a student at UNLV.  Like most things that I posted on the Internet five years ago, I assumed that this story had been lost to me as well as the poetry that I had written.  Lucky for me, Blogger had saved them in my account.  Given that I think the story and the poems are both (at least somewhat) entertaining and humorous, I have decided that this is a good place to reproduce these items.  I hope that those of you who will be reading this, will enjoy doing so… 

This afternoon I was having lunch with a friend and he and I set out the intention to head to Barns and Noble a little later in the day. To my dismay, we looked out the window as we arrived at the Student Union (we were there to grab some lunch before embarking on our journey) it began to rain in a most profuse manner. The way you might think of sand pouring from the bottom of a sieve. This experience was not a total loss, as I decided to send a text message to another friend to let him know of our change of plans and thought it would be interesting to write the message as a Haiku rather than an average textual meandering. The following is what I sent:

The rain is pouring.
We go not to the bookstore.
Maybe a new day? 

Being the person I am, getting started with writing a single Haiku lead me to compose a few more in an effort to distract myself from the disappointment of not going to a bookstore (You see, I had planned on purchasing Derren Brown’s newest book “Tricks of the Mind” in hardcover to show my support). The poems that follow are the result of boredom and an incessant need to count things.

I drink from my glass.
Yet the bottle runs empty.
I am still thirsty.

 

The monkey climbs trees,
he climbs far up to the top,
and thinks himself tall.

 

Cell phones are ringing,
I never cared for the noise,
please answer your phone.

 

Film students make way,
I get pushed with the camera,
Now people see me.

 

I felt my phone move,
Maybe I received a text,
No, I’m just crazy.

 

This last one has given me doubt regarding its originality, but it was nonetheless independently conceived. A friend once told me of a person who wrote a similar poem which purposely did not follow the pattern of a Haiku in an effort to make a very clever joke. I did not try to make that joke, but instead wrote the poem in a way that is self-referential. In closing:

A Haiku follows
The strict syllabic pattern
of five seven five.

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Recently, posts of some strange pictures have been showing up on my Facebook and Twitter feed. The images seem to be from the drunken mind of Salvador Dali…

Sadly, they are not, but it turns out they are just as interesting.

After some research, it turns out that these images come from an artificial intelligence program invented  by Google called “Deep Dream.”  To put it bluntly, Google’s Deep Dream is probably one of the trippiest computer programs you’re likely to see.  All you have to do is upload an image, tell the program to look for patterns, and wait as Google reveals exactly what your picture looks like to it. The pattern recognition employed here is not unlike what the human mind creates using its own pattern recognition faculties. 

The whole Deep Dream program started when Google decided to train an artificial neural network by showing it millions of training examples and gradually adjusting network parameters until the network gave the classifications it wanted.  In this case, Google aimed to create a program that could search for images.  Needless to say, the results turned out to be both more interesting and more complex. 

Yet one of the challenges of neural networks is understanding what exactly goes on at each layers of the artificial neurons. Each image is fed into the input layer, when then talks to the next layer until the “output” layer is reached.  What’s fascinating, though, is that this program can actually show researchers what it’s “thinking” and “seeing.”  These terms, of course, are defined loosely and only in the context of what data a computer program is outputting. 

As an example, I decided to submit my headshot to Deep Dream and see what would happen.  Below is the result: 

The Deep Dream Program relies on the idea that the program recognizes shapes and patterns and then generates images on the picture.  It essentially works to recognize objects within a picture and then overlays the objects on the picture. 

Why do the pictures look so trippy? That’s because Deep Dream actually undergoes something similar to what humans experience during hallucinations. It’s been given free rein to follow the impulse of any recognizable imagery and exaggerate it in a self-referencing loop.  Again, not unlike what the human mind experiences while dreaming or under the influence of hallucinogens such as Tryptamine. 

Google has actually open sourced the code that they used to generate the strange-looking image. In fact, you can download it all for yourself here.

With that said, there are also several websites that have popped up where you can use this code. Just upload your image and wait for the time it takes to process.  This time has been a few days for me, but others report it can take up to a week.  If you do upload a photo, I recommend keeping the file size as small as possible without losing the detail of the image itself (about 5mb in my experience).

In my own experiments, I have submitted several different photos.  Most recently, I was delighted at the result when I decided to post a photo of a painting I completed a few weeks ago that currently hangs in my dining room.  The painting, entitled “The Dance of Dragons,” can be seen here below in its completely unaltered form:

Unaltered Photo of “The Dance of Dragons”

When I put this photo into the Deep Dream program, the results were pretty staggering, as I believe some of you may agree.  See below for the results (You can click on either image to zoom in):

“The Dance of Dragons” after a trip through Google Deep Dream

Projects such as this one give me great hope for the future.  I believe that with continued research, we will soon begin to fully understand the nature of the most powerful tool Nature has given us.  Our minds. 

In the mean time, I’m happy to find ways to manipulate thoughts in the context of entertainment, and in the meantime look at some pretty trippy images from one of the most interesting artificial intelligence programs I have seen.  If anyone that’s reading this decides to submit an image and gets some really interesting results, please post them below and I would be happy to feature them on the site. 

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Imagine for a moment that you have the genuinely magical power to vanish at will. You can simply disappear from sight without a trace or an explanation. Imagine further the possible uses of this ability; leaving a room, a conversation, a confrontation, or just spending time alone. Sounds interesting, does it not?

Allow me to now set up a situation for you. Pretend that there is someone chasing you at a slow pace and you are attempting to avoid him (assuming the person is male). After a brief bout of taking unusual turns to avoid capture, you realize that you paths, though previously asunder, are compounding into a single strip of walkway. In other words, he is walking directly behind you. Now is the time to use your special ability, you walk behind a nearby building column (so as to not arouse suspicion) and vanish. You are gone, and your potential capture has been skewed. How would that make you feel? Would you imagine that you had accomplished anything? Would you feel that you had a reason to be satisfied with yourself? Or would you simple forget about it later in the week, as such a situation was merely the norm for you?

In terms of human interaction, I will take the perspective of game theory in that the people interacting are doing all that is possible to make the situation favorable for themselves and only themselves. In this particular interaction, that assumption is easily made considering only two people are involved in the first place. Bear that in mind while I detail a separate example to help explain my position. Which of the following would make you feel more accomplished: Studying a Chess Grandmaster’s strategy and learning for weeks how to legitimately beat her, and succeeding? or studying a Chess Grandmaster’s strategy for weeks and devising a way to cheat the game as to beat her? I imagine that the majority of you will say the first option to be the most desirable. What is the principal difference?

I would say that the difference in the Chess example is not the idea of winning, or losing, or even fairness as each of those things is philosophically debatable. I, instead, think that the difference is the fact that in the first situation, the person in question has genuinely gained something and beaten the other person at her own game.Whereas in the second situation, the person in question has meagerly used the skills he already possessed to find a way around a serious obstacle rather than working through it. In gaming vernacular, the person cheated.

To return to the game of captor and avoider, consider this: if someone had magical powers, specifically the power to disappear, using it in this situation is cheating. Rather than gaining new knowledge and experience by studying the person chasing you, you simply used cognitive tools that you possessed already. Would is not be more fascinating to beat the person at his game? Or do you prefer to change the rules in your favor? Just a thought.

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The Audience Attention Algorithm

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Before your excursion to intentionally lose yourself, you received a bit of advice from a friend about which set of directions you should take in order to free yourself from the closed bounds of the potential prison. Imagine further that you are able to, before entering the maze itself, catch a bird’s eye view of the entirety of the maze. In so doing, you realize something important. All of the twisting and turning and potential pathways are inefficient, and a single, not described to you on the outset of your journey, pathway emerges to you like the last cupcake in a batch. After your epiphany, you simply walk around the maze and take your prize at the exit. The puzzle has been solved in your own way.

Rather than binding yourself to the rules of a system, that is to say the rules of a maze, the problem was solved in your mind with an intrinsic knowledge and insight that lead to a more elegant solution. Much of developing one’s intelligence involves finding new ways to solve problems that have long since existed. In the spirit of this theme, I offer a candle in the dark. Go out and purchase a children’s playbook, and be sure that it contains as many “Connect the Dots” puzzles as possible. Upon looking at one of these puzzles, your mind will immediately recognize their simplicity from the obviousness of the intended image to the fact that the dots are typically numbers in an arithmetic sequence for one to follow. To combat this, your first step will be to remove the numbers as effectively as possible. A black magic marker works well, if you are running low on monkey blood. Next, try to shut off the Gestalt reasoning that is occurring naturally. See the dots for what they are, and not what the artist intended. In other words, look beyond the image and try to see something new. Finally, connect the dots in a new, artistically unintended, way to make your own image. Do not worry about using all of the dots, or the beauty of the picture as this exercise is about consciously manipulating a subconscious process and your success will occur in the mind, and not necessarily on paper.

My only warning is this, be careful with the books you buy as a paper cut from that recycled paper they use to make children’s activity books these days stings like you’re admitting you’re wrong.

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Let me know how you feel about it.

The Art of Seduction

A die has been cast,

And the stage has been set,

For a journey of past-life regression,

Packing bags just a few,

Of the lies we both knew,

Using you as the fuel of obsession.

My poisonous lips,

Drain a puddle of faith,

My symphony not lacking all but a sound,

Moving straight through the flesh,

My words caress and undress,

When no virus by you has been found.

Infecting your touch,

And ensnaring the senses,

We take the next step of our devilish dance,

Through the darkness of night,

I’ve clouded your sight,

Our minds lost in the maze of a trance.

My exotic desire,

And entangled ecstasy,

Could not have been more perfectly timed,

For in your realm of need,

Your happiness I did falsely feed,

Our lives not torturously intertwined.

The fantastical joy,

And imagined wonder,

Disguising itself as a brand new beginning,

So much I did not know,

As the monster did grow,

Realization of my blasphemous sinning.

Slowly it’s given,

Your heart furiously beating,

A relic swollen of untouched unclean hands,

For my election of lovers,

And your rejections of others,

Meets perfectly with my sadistic demands.

Slowly-ashes to ashes,

I crumble away,

No single true thought or word or statement,

For your thoughts are not true,

Some are broken and askew,

As I perform this spiritual heart replacement.

Suddenly the tables have turned,

The truth seen deeply in your eyes,

No knowledge of the fact- you’re too late,

An epiphany of perception,

The fruit of my complex deception,

Through you I’ve altered the hand of fate.

Banishing deeply in darkness,

Far removed from the light,

I am added to an unknown collection,

Suffering greatly from your loss,

Misunderstanding the magnitude of the cost,

Your love was my lethal injection.

Torn apart and ripped away,

The shattered mirror of your reflection,

Diminishes deeply in my mind via separation,

And the stages of grief,

Each passed through once- none were brief,

Spawn painfully a cognitive indication.

To restart the demon,

Beginning fresh and anew,

The genesis of the endpoint transformed to the beginning,

The alpha-omega of reason,

Commits to me a personal treason,

As I begin again my cycle of trust-winning.

No near yet so distant,

Our connection remaining,

Spreading confusion near which false angels flew,

Willfully designing entrapment,

You become my disposable encampment

Awakening pleasures for which my dark interests grew.

Consumed by decay,

Young wounds old changed to new,

Persuade you into silent animation,

Grasping so faintly to the truth,

You proceed; ignorant and aloof,

Seeking fiendishly a reminder of that loving sensation.

Entangled once again,

In my most sacred web,

Vainly praying the slavery to release you,

Though all things grow to ending,

There exists not a method of heart-mending,

In reality the guilt of my pleasure diseased you.

Opening your eyes ever slowly,

You change from object to person,

Becoming more conscious now enlightened,

I pushed patiently with persistence,

Unable to siege your educated resistance,

No longer loved; now of me you are frightened.

The intensity of your words,

Like silver bullets of hate,

Turned on the master in a labyrinth of directions,

Feeling love/hate for myself,

Vulnerability displaying openly like that on a shelf,

Comes the paradox of my life now missing its best sections.

I can hear it so clearly,

Like the shriek of someone in pain,

My desires to me whisper depressions,

I try to silence all voices,

But in my listening I had no choices,

They visit hauntingly, in routinely daily sessions.

I cried my body to a corpse,

Scattering ashes to the winds,

Each grain evidence of psychological manipulation,

You completed me, and I used you,

But your ignorance abused you,

No despair echoes deeper in the imagination.

The fluid of time, passing,

Making ripples so smoothly,

No day gone by without of her a thought or a mention,

Pleading for closure the words I used I meant,

As I rearranged the letters in the word “Listen” to spell the word “Silent”,

My goal, finding peace, remained my intention.

But our Preternatural love was too strong,

To have been founded on lies,

Thinking of you became my violent meditation,

You pierced holes in my seams,

Until peace was revealed in my dreams,

Saying death is not an act of creation.

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