Hand drawn Ipsissimus

Just like in the last post, I decided to add another digital collage, Ipsissimus, to The Picture of Everything. Since everything in TPOE is drawn by hand, this piece had to be as well. Here's the result:

Here's the separate layers of drawings I made to compose the final piece:

Hand-Drawn Meme Mandala

When I completed the Meme Mandala Digital Collage in April, I thought it would be a great addition to The Picture of Everything. Unfortunately, everything in TPOE needs to be hand drawn, which is why I ended up drawing the 198 memes, as seen in a previous post. That was only part of the story. I then had to draw and modify the background elements and arrange them in Photoshop.

Here's the Mandala level:

 

Here's the various frames for each of the memes:

 

Borders and border elements:

 

Background: A fiery sun!

 

And finally... The completed image!

Meme illustrations

The Picture of Everything 2012 Detail

A scan of the work so far

The Picture of Everything 2012

Polybius!

I had heard about the Polybius urban legend for years: The video game that caused you to go insane if you played it and was some sort of government mind control experiment in the early 80's. (Here's the Snopes dismissal of the game as a hoax, and pretty good summations of the conspiracy theory surrounding the thing via Cracked.com and Know Your Meme)  It was even referenced on an episode of The Simpsons.

Well, there's some amazing (and consistent) hoax(?) emulations of Polybius that have surfaced on You Tube within the last few years:

The first one I encountered takes you through all the levels of gameplay in about 9 minutes. The next one slows down all the subliminal messages so you can clearly see them. I watched them both and this is my opinion:

If it is a hoax, obvious love and care was attached with making it seem as realistic (and trippy) as possible. (DON'T WATCH THESE THINGS IF YOU'RE EPILEPTIC!)

The other fascinating videos I found are ones that take you through the "Higher Functions Option" menus of the game! (Here's another one and Another one)

By entering code 35, 34, 31, 54, 12, 24, 45, 43, you get to see the various series of hypnotic suggestions that could be put into the minds of anyone who played the game and modified accordingly. Here's some samples:

Great stuff!

Update

Going through a temporary internet blackout at the moment. More blog postings to come in the future.

Thoughts

In 1994 I had a nightmare in Paris, France.

I was in a hallway with one-way glass mirrors as walls on either side. I could see two rooms on either side of me through these glass mirrors and each was filled with people in a line. Some of the people were lining up to go on an up escalator, and some of the people were lining up to go on a down escalator.

Then I realized all of them were dead.

A hooded figure with glowing eyes was next to me. It said:
"Life is dangerous. Life is swell. Life is good if you fit it well."

Then I woke up.

Thoughts

Can't remember any of my dreams after I wake up. Been that way for the last few months. Is that bad?

Thoughts

I was thinking that my ideal job would be to work on The Picture of Everything professionally for the rest of my life. Just expand it year by year until I go blind, can't draw, or die. The trick would be to find someone out there to hire me to do that with a good salary, health benefits, and paid vacation time.