[imagesource:neepix]

This might be the most bizarre ‘competition’ to come along since dwarf-tossing became a thing.

A recently launched “Psychedelic Cryptography” competition awards cash prizes to artists who make videos encoded with hidden messages that can only be deciphered by someone tripping on psychedelic substances, such as LSD, ayahuasca, or psilocybin mushrooms.

Kind of like a ‘Where’s Wally?’, but with Molly.

The brainchild of Qualia Research Institute (QRI), a California-based nonprofit group that researches consciousness with backing from tech investors and experts, announced the winners of its Psychedelic Cryptography (PsyCrypto) contest last week.

But don’t worry, it’s all for the science.

The goal of the exercise was to create encodings of sensory information that are only meaningful when experienced on psychedelics in order to show the specific information-processing advantages of those states.

First and second place went to artist Raimonds Jermaks whose videos entitled “Can You See Us?” and “We Are Here. Let’s Talk” blew the judges away. The third prize went to Rūdolfs Balcers for the video “The Key.”

The judges were all members of QRI’s international phenomenologist network and evaluated the videos based on their effectiveness, specificity, and aesthetic value.

The winning videos play on the common psychedelic experience of seeing radiant “tracers,” which are trails of colors and afterimages that linger in the visual field. The winning artists used this effect to write out tracer-based messages that are incomprehensible to a sober person, but that can be understood while tripping.

It would stand to reason that these judges must have been tripping balls to effectively be able to judge this competition. Sounds a bit like America’s Got Talent but with Charlie Sheen and Hunter S. Thompson as judges.

According to the competition press release, “The judges tried really, really hard to find messages in every submission while on mushrooms and ayahuasca (at places where these substances are perfectly legal) and none of the other submissions had anything worth commenting on (sorry!).”

The completion is set to be even bigger next year.

Gómez-Emilsson first started thinking about the concept of PsyCrypto a decade ago while pursuing a graduate degree in psychology at Stanford University. The idea came to him while throwing glowsticks in the air and wondering if psychedelics would allow him to trace their lighted movement better.

In particular, he was interested in whether these types of sensory experiences could shed light on the hypothesis that consciousness has inherent information-processing advantages. Sounds like one hell of a ‘deep’ moment at a festival.

“I immediately coded up some experiments to hide letters using that idea and gave the code to some friends, who then reported some mild but noticeable improved ability to read them while on LSD.”

Some of the judges who read the messages on psychedelics reported that they could still see them once they were sober, though at least two people on the panel said they were unable to reinterpret the messages after the effects of mushrooms or ayahuasca wore off.

It wasn’t all just shrooms and deep bass, there were some surprising scientific results as well.

“I believe this will set the trajectory of the history of consciousness in very unexpected ways,” he concluded. “Indeed, superintelligence won’t be achieved with AI, but with consciousness engineering.”

Sounds like fun. Check out the video below, and if you see some cryptic messages appear, please don’t operate heavy machinery today.

[source:vice]