Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Lyra Romanas’ “A Slow Decay” is a far too beautiful image to represent actual decay, but it’s more accurate than “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”
It did get me thinking about human composting, a more ecologically sound alternative to traditional burial. It’s legal here in Oregon and in five other states. Of course there is an industry developing around terramation, the dreadful portmanteau created to describe the process in a more brochure-friendly way than composting. It’s not cheap, running about $5000, five times the price of cremation. Of course, you could do like my parents and my sister have and donate your body to a medical school.
Of course, she could have been thinking of slow decay in a more metaphysical sense, like the decay of our illusions or the representation of moral decay such as in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” The picture could mean so many things. As Ansel Adams said, “‘A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.’
For more of Romanas’ thought-provoking pics, click here:
“Threads of Life” is another gorgeous picture. I was entranced by it. It made me think of neural networks and Artificial Intelligence and a complaint someone made about AI being created for creative arts rather than to replace mundane tasks.
I don’t get it. Why not focus on getting AI to perform more mundane tasks that don’t require creativity and nuance? Use it to free up time for actual human beings to focus more on the things they love? Pushing for it to write novels, make music, and create art is weird as hell.
— Kalynn Bayron (@KalynnBayron) January 3, 2023
Of course, computers have been doing mundane tasks for half a century. They still do mundane tasks, think of all the hours of mundane calculations done by distributed computing to advance medical research with the World Community Grid or Seti@Home. I think AI is being advanced through the arts because that is the most human thing to try to do.
“Hanging by a Thread” is another visually stunning picture. She seems to be appearing and disappearing at the same time, I guess depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. The rainbow of colors always strikes me as optimistic, which would mean she is appearing, though the title suggests some travail, being at the end of her tether. But perhaps that, too, is optimistic, the thread holding her back and once released, she is free. I don’t know and that is what is so wonderful about this.
Lyra Romanas’ photostream is exciting. I love to see something new and fresh. So many pictures make me think beyond “that’s pretty” and wonder what might be her underlying idea. I especially love pictures that are open to multiple interpretations. Go check out her stream, she offers a lot to enjoy and think about.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.
All images copyright Lyra Romanas
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