Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on Modern Approaches in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2025
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Hallucinations? Exploring the Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization of Psychedelic Perception through DeepDream
Lingyun Yue
ABSTRACT:
With the rise of artificial intelligence, the perceptual and creative capacities of machines are being re-evaluated. Google’s DeepDream, through backpropagation, amplifies image features into surreal, psychedelic visuals, ordinary objects morph into eyes, animals, and architecture, challenging human-centric perception (Gkotzos, 2015; Abiodun & Nickel, 2024). This paper analyzes how such algorithmic perception reshapes our understanding of technology and vision. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, the study first examines how DeepDream disrupts traditional cognitive frameworks through psychedelic imagery (Chatonsky, 2016). Then, it explores how neural networks reassemble image elements via computational logic, creating new perceptual orders. Integrating “rhizome theory” and the “machinic unconscious” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004; Guattari, 2010), the paper argues that machines express distinct perceptual logics shaped by data structures and algorithmic operations. Within new materialism and posthumanist ethics, it reflects on the vitality of machines as agentic material entities (Bennett, 2020), continuously interacting with humans and environments. DeepDream’s visuals thus become more than outputs, they are expressions of machinic agency. This paper views them as collaborative perception acts between humans and machines, destabilizing anthropocentric values and reframing our ecological position (Davis, 2015). Ultimately, it calls for recognizing technological perception as a unique, co-creative force beyond mere instrumentality.
Keywords: deterritorialization, machinic unconscious, new materialism, posthumanism, rhizome