Is psychedelic art vastly misrepresenting visuals?

[distioat]

Looks pretty cool but I've never witnessed something that colorful in any of my trip.
I had ego dissolution, merging with spaceships, communicating with extra-terrestrial beings, synesthesia, transformed into a fish then discover out-of-water existence...
But never ever I've seen visuals that are as realistic as the normal sober vision.

All the visuals I ever had on psyches, including dmt, 2c-e, lsd... always seemed "distant", dream-like...
So I'm a bit confused when I see crazy psychedelic arts like these.

Am I just not a very visual person?
Am I not taking enough?
Are other people getting more visuals because they over-rely on it? Sometime their trip reports is all about visuals and not much else.
Or are other people exaggerating their trip reports ?

 

[Tripolation]

I think it's difficult to capture movement. I also think that some of the hallucinations are impossible to replicate in any way on this 3D plane. Need more dimensions. I think that much of psychedelic art is simply inspirations from their use.

I am currently working on becoming a better artist. I have been wanting to paint some psychedelic art myself. I started with sacred geometry so far and plan to expand from there. My thought process so far is to combine sacred geometry with patterns like you would see on Andean or Peruvian shaman hats, clothing and bracelets. Many South American shamans have some pretty trippy garb with interesting DMTish patterns that seem to suggest movement. I plan to incorporate these ideas and attempt to paint in the style of Van Gogh. I think he shows movement in his paintings very well, 'Starry Night' is a great example of this.

There are some really good psychedelic art out there that triggers that 'I have seen that before' feeling. More than happy to drum some up here and show some examples if you like. Some of that may be very subjective. What triggers me, may not trigger you.

 

[northape]

I agree that all this art is more like a representation. Then, people differ by their visual capacity.

Some 10 years ago, I had a ceremony where spirits did some pranayamas through me. For the next 3 months, my mind's eye opened to a wider reality. Finally, I could see what art was about. My perception changed dramatically. That period came and went, but the appreciation and knowing of the possibility remains.

See the works of Pablo Amaringo. I never saw anything close to it in all my ceremonies. However, he lived in the Amazon, drank fresh plants, and dieted a bunch of them too. With the right know-how, lots of time and dedication, pure mind, body, and spirit, these visions are possible. Still, medicine is not about the visions, but the lessons learned - cultivating wisdom and presence.

Peace

 

[Tripolation]

Pablo Amaringo

Never heard of him until now. I just got done perusing through some of his art and I really like it. Many of his pieces are like a dream collage. I would imagine that with each piece, there is a story attached to them.

 

[ABe©eDarian]

I have a brother who used to think any time LSD he took wasn't a feel-good and visual experience as opposed to 'too mental' that like the chemists made it wrong and that his experience was always specific to the success of his experience being what he wanted it to be and I most always disagreed. Potential to visually flow and express within one's mind's eye versus underlying mental issues being exposed psychedelically. I think it would tend to be that whether or not one paints or draws that visionary potential plays a large part in making one's visuals or how they'd look in someone's experience. Also, like when good artists steal and great artists borrow, the influential nature of what one has seen plays a part.

 

[Here&Now]

Those images aren't too far off from what I experience when using DMT. For me, the visuals are a prominent aspect, and it's more like I'm seeing them with my mind rather than my eyes, if there is such a distinction to be made there. So yeah, for some people, visuals on that level are possible. Whether or not that's the case for others probably comes down to individual differences in biology or whatever else.

I've always found this image to be really accurate in capturing the vibe.

 

[Tripolation]

Those images aren't too far off from what I experience when using DMT. For me, the visuals are a prominent aspect, and it's more like I'm seeing them with my mind rather than my eyes, if there is such a distinction to be made there.

I agree. I think that is an important distinction. It is visual in a sense, but that visual information is never processed by the eyeballs.

Salvia Droid is awesome BTW.

Incedigris is one artist that I think captures DMT pretty good. Void and I were chatting about this on another thread some time back. We both had different artists that 'triggered' us.



P.S. So with this picture.. it is the crispness of it, it's the fine lines and it just feels like something I have seen before. I can easily imagine this painting moving in my mind. Stare at it and allow eyes to go out of focus.

 

[Here&Now]

Incedigris is one artist that I think captures DMT pretty good. Void and I were chatting about this on another thread some time back. We both had different artists that 'triggered' us.

Totally. I'm not naturally artistic, and many of the details from my experience slip away as I return from an expanded state. But when I see someone's art that expresses the essence of the DMT trip, I can't help but be reminded in a deeper part of myself. It's a mysterious phenomenon.

 

[blig-blug]

With oral DMT+harmalas I have seen often Alex Grey style visuals, but I get very different looking visuals from one experience to the next, including almost no visuals. I have also often gotten visuals that resemble the artist that painted user @gibran2 's profile picture (I can't remember the name). In general, when visuals are present, they tend to be either bluish or very very colorful, with intense, saturated colors.

 

[fink]

I have never seen any art that represents my visual trips. But oh boy... I see indescribable stuff. Light dose OEVs are closer to some of the art I suppose. High dose CEVs are extremely personal for me, nothing on paper has even come close to it.

 

[northape]

Never heard of him until now. I just got done perusing through some of his art and I really like it. Many of his pieces are like a dream collage. I would imagine that with each piece, there is a story attached to them.

I highly recommend this book. It was the first one I bought about Ayahuasca, and it's been with me many years.

His art is a visual representation of Icaros. One is supposed to cover his original pieces for most of the time to build up energy.
Occasionally, you can open and contemplate it. That way, the same healing energy as with Icaros will go into you.

I consider the guy to be an Amazonian saint

 

[dithyramb]

About the paintings of Pablo Amaringo, a single painting does not represent a single vision. He was actually fitting in many different visions into one painting. It seems to be like each painting is a sequence of visions from the same experience.

Even if probably that much narration cannot be extracted from a single snapshot of the visual field, that much vastness and detail does get generated when salvia is added to Ayahuasca.

 

[northape]

About the paintings of Pablo Amaringo, a single painting does not represent a single vision. He was actually fitting in many different visions into one painting. It seems to be like each painting is a sequence of visions from the same experience.

Thank you for the clarification

Yeah, it corresponds to descriptions of the paintings. Each painting has a certain theme, but there is a whole story in it.
There are a few of them that I connect with the most. I like to sit and watch his art from time to time. There are lots of small details, and it brings some peace to mind.

 

[Varallo]

For me, visuals are mostly very colorful and highly saturated, especially at higher doses. At lower doses the first thing that seems to fade is the color saturation, then more gray tones start to come through, or more whites. But normally, when I take a good dose especially with DMT, they are extremely colorful. Often there are also many layers of transparency, and colors like the ones you see in plastic toys.

So maybe you should increase your dosage with certain substances to see if that gives you more saturation. With open-eye visuals, I also find they can be very colorful depending on the substance I take. With phenethylamines, that’s much less the case than with tryptamines. And especially with tryptamines like metocin or miprocin, my visuals are colorful, from changing the whole color of the light, like an pair of colored sunglasses, to colorful auras and bright colors flashing from objects.


Up the dose and see if that works.

 

[dithyramb]

About psychedelic art, I think the general thing to keep in mind is that they are art inspired by psychedelic experiences, and not literal representations of psychedelic visions, unless stated to be so. There are also certain trends in psychedelic art, like symmetry, which as far as I know only comes when 5-MeO-DMT is mixed with DMT (and very rare individuals have had these experiences), so do not originate from psychedelics at all.

 

[Here&Now]

There are also certain trends in psychedelic art, like symmetry, which as far as I know only comes when 5-MeO-DMT is mixed with DMT

Sounds interesting. Could you expand on this? Is it a combo you've tried?

 

[dithyramb]

@Here&Now, I've experienced it with grasses that have both tryptamines. İf you dig enough you can find information on the combo.

 

[Jamie01]

I have had visuals with colour like that but it requires combinations. Especially LSD with MDMA and DMT…mescaline with MDMA and DMT…mescaline plus mushrooms DMT and MDMA etc… ketamine can shift the entire dimensions of the visual space as can adding salvia.

Also the visions of 2cb can be extremely saturated with color and I had one extremely profound visionary experience combining it with ketamine recently.

Of course artists are going add stuff and who knows what combos really inspire people.

 

[CosmicRiver]

Well i think that Salviadroid's art like the one you and Here&Now posted is pretty accurate (even if they're 2D depictions of a 3D depiction of a ?D image) for Ayahuasca visuals.
In my opinion Pablo Amaringo's art is Caapi-inspired. Maybe it's just an hypothesis of mine but during the first part of my Ayahuasca journey i had realworld-like visions, kind of like a dream, that i associate to Caapi, and Pablo's art sends me right there.

I never found accurate vaporized DMT visuals but i think that moving "mandelbrot" fractal landscapes videos get the feel at least of the first part of the experience, but they're still far from the real thing. Maybe a mix of those and Salviadroid's art with the smoking guy.

Alex Grey's little lightning-weblike pattern is literally what i saw every time on LSD. If you remove the xray vision and add breathing/dripping in Alex Grey's art to me it would look like LSD.

2C-B, Mushrooms and San Pedro haven't been much visual for me so i can't really say. 2C-B was like cartoonish LSD. Mushrooms were almost nonvisual. With San Pedro i experienced a lot of symmetry honestly, and even with DMT

 

[dithyramb]

@CosmicRiver did you experience perfect mandala like symmetry with DMT alone? I had the impression that it is 5-MeO-DMT that causes that kind of energetic structure. Even if symmetry is possible with DMT alone, it cannot be a defining feature of it in my experience and understanding. I don't recall symmetric visuals from cactus. For me it was like a cobweb or electric grid.