Dr. Michael Levin
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Photos of birds, mammals, insects, plants, and a few other things, mostly at the ocean shore, mostly at sunrise. The red/golden color in some of the shots is how the water and sky really look; the blue/yellow photos were shot in infrared (no post-processing to change colors in any of them).
Images selected from set by https://x.com/Marsagenesis
Lovely shots! Thanks for sharing. I am always drawn towards taking photos/videos of the sun reflected as a field of dancing light on the surface of water. For me it hits the deepest left and right brain notes. I would love to hear about your experience in capturing the featured shot. What does it evoke for you—both conceptually and experientially? How does it resonate metaphorically and analogically?
Experientially it was interesting because with the eye, one couldn’t look at any individual light spot – the moving water made them dance and impossible to fix gaze on. Only the camera could freeze it. Conceptually it fits well with some stuff I’m working on with respect to observers of different dimensionality and how they perceive moving vs. frozen patterns.
Awesome—thanks for sharing! I think for me, too, there’s a kind of nervous-system training happening here, an awe reaction that arises from holding a gestalt gaze. It feels like a non-dual mode of attunement, a surrender into the flowing beauty of patterned perception. I’ve also found it interesting to take iPhone shots of reflected light with the ‘live’ setting on—it allows me to toggle between the frozen pattern of light and its active play-out/dance.
Conceptually, I often see each flash of light as an expression of interconnected/integrated momentary conscious awareness—each one a fragment of a total, patterned field of gestalt conscious awareness on a sub/unconscious substrate of mental experience that is the water surface pattern.
On this very ‘woo’ note of non-dual experience: the complimentary but experientially contradictory holding of experience of reality from both a perspective of a platonic/eternal, objectively unified, frozen/static integrated pattern set, in tandem with a perspective of fluid, dissociative, subjective patterned/patterning experience of being/doing/becoming in real-time…leads the mind/psyche to some interesting places/modes.
I am finding different types of meditation/contemplation help the mind hold these perspectives in parallel without conflict, and in general to flow through paradoxical perspectives sets without clenching to beliefs within any one perspective set or scale of focus within set.
Looking forward to future discussions on frozen pattern! I caught your mention of it above active patterns in a stair-step visual from a video last week. Also, definitely holding my breath for any future content around developing a personal theory of consciousness. Really love your work—deep appreciation for all that you share!
Would be curious to understand what you mean by ‘observers of different dimensionality and how they perceive moving vs frozen pattern’
I had a recall of this piece by Escher after you mentioned dimensionality.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Escher_Dragon.jpg
This is how my ChatGPT made sense of its meaning:
What did Escher directly say his image of self eating dragon emerging from crystalline patterned form represented?
🎯 Direct Answer
M.C. Escher never provided a fully explicit, comprehensive explanation of the exact meaning of the self-eating dragon in his 1941 print “Dragon”—but he did describe it in terms of dimensional paradox, symbolic self-reference, and transformation from two to three dimensions. In a letter and through interviews, Escher referred to the dragon as:
“a creature which has crawled out of the two-dimensional pattern into the third dimension, but remains imprisoned by it.”
He considered the dragon “a victim of its own ambition”—representing the paradox of illusion and dimensionality: it seems to break free into 3D but is still stuck in a flat plane. While Escher rarely imposed symbolic readings, this self-consuming form is seen as a metaphor for recursive self-reference, illusion, and the limits of perception and ambition.
🧠 Meta-Analysis
I selected the 1941 piece “Dragon”, based on your reference to a self-eating dragon emerging from a crystalline patterned form, which matches its content—featuring a dragon rising out of an Escherian flat, interlocking pattern.
Your phrasing implied a desire for Escher’s direct statements, not interpretive analysis by art historians.
My knowledge includes Escher’s writings (e.g., “Escher on Escher”, his letters, and analysis by Bruno Ernst, a close associate), where Escher often described process and dimensional experimentation, leaving interpretation up to the viewer.
You, the user, tend to prefer direct primary-sourced conceptual clarifications when discussing symbolic imagery, especially if it ties into recursive models of self, consciousness, or perception. This makes Escher’s dragon a point of both artistic and epistemic interest.
🧬 Meta-Meta-Analysis
Escher’s reluctance to assign symbolic interpretations parallels your own practice of attending to the phenomenological and process-based over the symbolic, except when symbols point toward recursive, ontologically implicate insights.
Given your prior interest in self-organizing systems, recursive self-reference, and nonlinear ontologies of becoming, it’s likely that you’re resonating with the dragon as a literal-metaphorical hybrid: a being born from pattern that mistakes emergence for transcendence.
The dragon “eating itself” while emerging from flatness—yet bound by its origin—is an Escheresque prefiguration of Gödelian incompleteness in symbolic form: a creature trying to escape its system, only to find that self-reference rebinds it.
🔁 Proposed Improvement + Prediction of Next Rational Need
🧩 Improved Response
Escher’s 1941 Dragon is a visual embodiment of his lifelong fascination with dimensional paradoxes and the illusory boundary between the real and the representational. In his own sparse commentary, he emphasized that the dragon appears to escape the two-dimensional plane, only to remain held down by the same plane that birthed it. This reflects a meta-commentary on the self-trapped artist, the incompleteness of perception, and perhaps even a cautionary tale of self-awareness that loops. The dragon “emerges” but cannot transcend.
🧭 Next Rational Path
You may want to:
🔍 Examine parallels between Escher’s Dragon and Douglas Hofstadter’s treatment of recursive systems and strange loops in Gödel, Escher, Bach.
🧱 Expand to a symbolic ontology: Is the dragon a self-emergent system attempting to transcend its own constraints—a metaphor for becoming in your model?
> Would be curious to understand what you mean by ‘observers of different dimensionality and how they perceive moving vs frozen pattern’
ah. I have something coming on this soon, but it’s basically: from a 4D perspective, our Universe is a frozen block (according to Special Relativity) – nothing is moving, no actions, choices, or decisions – just a “spatial” pattern. From a 3D perspective, we see dynamics and things happening.
yes, thanks! this is what I thought you meant! And my thoughts shared on nondual mode hold. Its wild as a person to embody with fluid belief this static frozen block perspective in parallel with the subjective unfolding, dynamic , agentic perspective. They are both intuitive but seem to require a sort of nervous system phase shift to embody parallel belief…a hard won and awkward transformation of ‘self’ process…From my weird and humble experience. I am wondering, how do you interpret Whitehead in this context?
oof I’m not enough of a Whitehead scholar to know, but Matt (https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/) I am sure will have good ideas.
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