Akeloo is the reflection of our animality, wild men and wild women as mirrors of the primal instincts that lie just beneath the surface of our existences, waiting to be unleashed.
In the shadows of the Wild man
The Akeloo’s Tribe comes alive again
New wild men and wild women, they do arise
With primal urges and animality in their eyes
The tales of Achelous fuel the flame
Of transformation and multiplicity, never the same
Shape-shifting in a primal dance
The Akeloo’s Tribe, living out their chance
Through the digital realm, they roam
A new breed of Wild Men, their new home
A fusion of ancient legends and tech so new
A dystopian imagination, born anew
Untethered from society’s grip
Akeloo’s tribe, complex and rich
Reflect the breadth of human story
Nature’s call, their endless glory
Men and Women, in convoluted horns
Pagan beliefs and masquerades, their norm
But the Akeloo’s Tribe, they embody it all
The untamed aspect of our nature is their call
Notes
By exploring transformation and multiplicity, and pondering the transformative power of AI, I felt very much inspired by the literary landscape of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the ancient myth of Achelous loomed large in my mind.
Achelous, a river god who was able to change his form to win the heart of a mortal woman, his shape-shifting embodying the fundamental themes of transformation and multiplicity, has fueled my imagination to fashion a tribe of new wild men and wild women, who embody the primal urges and animality that lurk beneath our veneer of civilization: the Akeloo’s Tribe, they call themselves, a proud offspring of Achelous.
The Achelous myth is also cited in my early work, an experimental text refined with artificial intelligence, that can be found here:
This new breed of Wild Men is not bound by the physical world, they exist in the digital realm where they can be infinitely transformed and reimagined, reflecting the complexity and contradictions of the human experience. They are both dystopian and imaginative, embodying the primal urges that exist within us all, even as they grapple with the disorienting effects of the technological age.
In my mind’s eye, I see the Akeloo’s Tribe roaming the earth in search of their true selves, unencumbered by the constraints of everyday life.
They represent the untamed aspect of the human psyche, often repressed, but that still lurks in our subconscious, waiting to be unleashed.
Imperfections and artifacts
As Brian Eno famously said, “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
Through the Akeloo’s Tribe #1, we hope to capture this sense of excitement and to create a unique and meaningful artwork that reflects the imperfections and limitations of both AI and human creativity.
