The Luxury of Protest

The Luxury of Protest¹ is a research platform focussed on computational history, archaeo-informatics, and generative visualisation. Employing spatial and temporal archaeological data analysis, projects² examine history through knowledge discovery, machine learning, and computational statistical approaches. Data quantified objects are used to discover and elucidate patterns, trends and relationships between events and material phenomena³ across hidden and heterogeneous axes.

Peter Crnokrak is a Berlin computation artist, designer and researcher. Peter holds a doctorate in computational science and has lectured at a number of international institutions including the Royal College of Art, London College of Communication and Sint-Lukas School of Design. In 2010, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in acknowledgment of internationally <a href="url">recognised</a> expertise in design and data visualisation. Currently he is <a href="url">professor</a> and programme director of the Visual & Experience Design, and Generative Design & AI master's at UE Germany.
Peter Crnokrak's <a href="url">publications</a> include over 125 books, journals and magazines. He has won a number of international <a href="url">competitions</a> including The Webbys, AIGA 365, German Design Award, International Society of Typographic Designers, and the European Design Awards. His work has been <a href="url">exhibited</a> internationally including Tokyo, Paris, New York, London and Los Angeles. Peter holds two <a href="url">patents</a> in systems design for object-oriented data visualisation.
Focussing on the extremes of societal behaviour as a means by which to characterise the human condition, the practice is an experimental platform that utilises computational methodologies to communicate meaning in complex systems with work integrating research, data mining and statistical analysis.

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Twilight Sleep explores the intimate relationship between chemistry and creativity in 19th and 20th century literature. The project maps mass spectrum chemical signatures of various narcotic, entheogenic and psychedelic drugs to qualitative characterisations of literary output¹ to elucidate potential patterns of causation.

Mass spectrum analysis reveals the elemental or isotopic signature of compounds and is sensitive enough to elucidate the chemical structure of molecules. The complexity of a drug as well as its isotope distribution is revealed as a distinct fragmentation pattern of banding in the visualisations; white bands indicate isotopic peaks, while rotational smears indicate the duration of effect. The chemical signatures in turn determine the characteristic effects that a drug has on the mind and body.

The pattern of banding in the visualisation allows one to see the commonality between different drugs (especially the opioid narcotics and psychedelics), but also allows one to correlate the drug’s molecular composition to the tone of writing used by the author. In general, utopian² and dystopian³ authors share little with regard to their predilections toward certain drugs.

An intriguing question remains : to what degree does the distinct chemical signature of a drug and its subsequent unique effect on the brain, determine the philosophical composition of literature?

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J. Radenkova-Saeva (2008) Recreational Drugs and its Impact on Music Literature and Art, Biotechnology & Biotechnological Equipment, 22:2, 656-659, DOI: 10.1080/13102818.2008.10817530
Mescaline _ Aldous Huxley, Island 1962 : “As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence.... In the final stage of egolessness there is an 'obscure knowledge' that All is in all—that All is actually each.”
Ether _ Aleister Crowley, Clouds Without Water 1909 : “Invaluable for mental analysis; also to discover one's own final judgment on any matter. Gives the power to appreciate the elements of which sensation is made up.”
Nitrous oxide _ Theodore Dreiser, Laughing Gas 1914 : “...the clearest most concise expression of the cosmic balance of conflicting forces believed to determine life.”
Morphine _ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Essay on Mind, with Other Poems 1826 : “I have been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir—because the tranquilizing power has been wonderful.”
LSD _ J.G. Ballard, High-Rise 1975 : “I had such a negative trip, a real paranoid journey of despair. It was over in a day, but little vents of hell went on opening for years afterward, as I gather they do.”
Semoxydrine _ Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968 : “My major preoccupation is the question, 'What is reality?' Many of my stories and novels deal with psychotic states or drug-induced states by which I can present the concept of a multiverse rather than a universe.”
Oxycodone _ William S. Burroughs, Nova Express 1964 : “I tried it as a matter of curiosity.”
Cocaine _ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1886 : “That an invalid in my husband's condition of health should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words on paper in six days, seems almost incredible.”
Thujone _ Arthur Rimbaud, Illuminations 1886 : “A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed--and the Supreme Scientist!”

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Apocalypses re-Visioned is a study of literature, catastrophe culture, and the psychopathology of nihilism fetish. The analysis examines the incidence of the use of the word “apocalypse” in 20th century fiction and non-fiction literature as it relates to cataclysm events to determine what factors fuel the cultural predilection to fantasise the end of the world. The piece elaborates the statistical narrative of the analysis through typography; both as a connection to the nature of the source data, and as a reflection of the design of scientific publications.

Although one would expect that cataclysmic events such as armed conflict would drive the incidence of “apocalypse” in literature, no such correlation exists.¹ So much so, that during the 20th century’s two most destructive wars, the use of the word was at its lowest in non-fiction literature.

A strong positive and statistically significant correlation exists between non-fiction and fiction incidences of “apocalypse”.² Though the relationship between fiction/non-fiction is positive in nature, the incidence of “apocalypse” is staggered in magnitude between the two – a pronounced peak in fiction literature occurs 27 years before an proportionately equivalent one in non-fiction. The analysis suggests that fictional representations of the end of the world drive socially relevant narratives much more than cataclysms experienced in real life.³

Apocalypses re-Visioned is an data-historical analysis of the cataclysm myth – a longing to confront a patently meaningless universe through the creative triumph of imagining an end of the world where humanity’s destruction means something.

We escape from a present too difficult to bear through a perverse and clichéd eschatological nostalgia presaged on an apocalyptic future. Humanity needs new catastrophe narratives to focus an engagement with more probable dystopias to come.

Spearman's Rho Correlation analysis between non-fiction literature references to “apocalypse” and the frequency of armed conflict (number of wars per year) : N = 101, T= 2.4128, r² = 0.05554, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient = 0.2357. P-value = 2 * Min(p, 1 - p) = 2 * Min(0.9912, 0.008835) = 0.9912. The result is not significant at p < .01.
Pearson Correlation Coefficient analysis between fiction and non-fiction literature corpora : N = 101, X values mean = 3.1666734e-5, Y values mean = 1.9394667e-5, r = 30593.257 / √((69847.168)(21280.158)) r = 0.7935. P-Value is < .00001. The result is significant at p < .01.
Fiction corpus references to “apocalypse” peak in 1972 – 27 years before an equivalent peak in references to “apocalypse” in non-fiction literature. The magnitude difference between fiction and non-fiction corpora references to “apocalypse” in 1972 was 3.2 fold : 9.85991e-5% / 3.10295e-5%, fiction / non-fiction respectively.

TWILIGHT SLEEP
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APOCALYPSES
RE-
VISIONED

OBJECTS OF
WAR MCMI–MM
Nº 2

TWILIGHT SLEEP Nº 2

APOCALYPSES RE- VISIONED

OBJECTS OF WAR MCMI–MM Nº 2

TWILIGHT SLEEP
Nº 2

APOCALYPSES
RE-
VISIONED

OBJECTS OF
WAR MCMI–MM
Nº 2