World Religions Project

The Infinite Imaginarium: Imaginary Friends Society

The Infinite Imaginarium Imaginary Friends Society meets exclusively online through an open source social media platform. Due to the anonymity of the internet, each person is considered an imaginary friend, simply an image projected through an internet channel and avatar. The Infinite Imaginarium is an artist collective. The collective believes that “our technologies, markets, and cultural institutions—once forces for human connection and expression—now isolate and repress us.” Additionally, the collective believes that “it’s time to remake society together.” They come together on a shared belief, the artist mantra, “Connect, Collaborate, Create”. The Infinite Imaginarium and its founding members are heavily influenced by Team Human, the manifesto of Douglas Rushkoff, digital theorist.

In 2015, after the creation of a web server called Minds brought together like-minded artists seeking something greater than themselves, the Infinite Imaginarium was formed. It all began with a twenty-four-hour Imaginarium wherein all members were encouraged to meditate on the message: connect, collaborate, create. Additionally, during this first group meditation, members were encouraged to submit their own creations and participate in collaborative projects with others within the group as they felt inspired. The success of the first Imaginarium led to a second call to all who imagine a more creative and connected world to come together again and meditate on this theme. Following the second Imaginarium meditation, the doors opened to “create the weird” and transition from an intermittent group meditation to a life practice. Thus, the Infinite Imaginarium was born.

They began to meet through web platforms to discuss the philosophy of the collective and develop the infrastructure of their belief system. This led to greater discussion and a change in leadership. Currently, there are three main leaders of the collective. At the center of the organization is the Digital Shaman, SatoriD. Secondary to him is the High Priestess Nikki. Finally, there is an acolyte named Rose. In addition to the leaders, there is a consistent flow of artistic practitioners who practice the central message by connecting, collaborating, and sharing their creations. These artistic expressions are openly displayed to all and the contents become available to other members to dissect and re-imagine.

High Priestess Nikki tells the story of the imaginary friends, while Rose and SatoriD read their psalms, which they have titled Poetic Double Dutch. The Transcript is provided below.

[Narration High Priestess Nikki]

An imaginary city, in an imaginary land, there’s an Imaginarium filled with imaginary friends.

Come inside, come away with me, see inside this imagery, pull away the illusion of reality and join us

Hand in hand

And across these mystical sands, in this imaginary land, the imaginary friends dance under the moon

To the beat, the beat, the heartbeat of the universe

Quiet now, and you’ll hear the sound

Their voices all around

Singing bright for all who’ve found, this place, the Imaginarium

Are you there? Yes, I hear you

You are not alone.

The religious medium is art

The practitioner is the artist

The church is the Infinite Imaginarium community and play space

The religious text is Team Human and a bucket full of books

The central message is Connect, Collaborate, Create

This is evolution, not revolution,

Imaginarium has evolved out of the collective consciousness, the Dreamtime

It is us, and them. We are all one.

[Enter Acolyte Rose]

This is my religion, a performance

Infinite Imaginarium

It’s not a brand

It’s a concept, a vision, a dream land

In the dreamscape, we escape

[Enter The Digital Shaman SatoriD]

Are you ready?

It's time

To Find the Others

and

Create The Weird

Let's flip the figure and the ground

Let's play and dance for humanity

Let's make things Actually Worth living for

work as play

play as work

words as poetry

poetry as life

life as beauty

beauty as eternity

[Rose]

Save me from this chemical plateau

An endless dream state

Stagnant airflow

Everything is grating metal against metal

As my thoughts crash into each other

In sloOow mMmoOotion

The call of the others: Let’s get weird

{What Does It Mean To Be Fully Human?

What Does It Mean To Be a Part of

The Lineage of All of Life?}

The same soundtrack plays in my mind

Time and again

Time and again

I’ve fallen in love with a war, I just can’t win

It never began

[SatoriD]

Are you there?

Yes, I hear you.

You are not alone.

we have fallen into a reality bubble that has gotten out of control

All media connects us before it tears us apart

don't look into the screen, play in the infinite...

[Rose]

I've gotta look away from the screen

But my imaginary friends are playing behind it

It's all a dream

[SatoriD]

Click and listen, let the visions flow (Insert sample)

are you (cosmically) triggered, yet?

spin the wheel of consciousness

watch the slow-wave into the hypnagogic

dance the daydream into the trance

there are strange and beautiful things happening behind the mind's eye

can the true self come out to play?

[Rose]

Falling into the hypnagogic state

Strange intensity

Awakened by the hypnopompic illusions

I just want to stay

In this playground of crashing kaleidoscopes

Soaring rush of peptides

Filling my heart with joy and pleasure

After a lifetime of decay

Floating between

Trying to land on my feet, all-day

Keep floating back up into the sky

To the imaginary playground

[SatoriD]

That’s what happens when we pull the cosmic trigger

Forgive me

I often forget how much magic I hold in the palm of my hand

And how I can spin dreams out of control with a single grain of sand

It’s my bad, or my good? However, you wish to perceive it

[Rose]

I was right there with you last night until Nikki woke me up

With her burning question, candle lit, pass the torch

I’ve got the words, they’ve been coming to me

Words are my minions they sculpt our reality

[SatoriD]

You dance with the word, better than most

[Rose]

It’s my salvation, my artistic medium

[SatoriD]

No doubt

I’ve got to bring the full wrath of Satori

[Rose]

(Laughs) We got sails on a raft to fly in the sky

And land in the open mystery of the sea

[SatoriD]

As I chew on peyote trying to hold onto my humanity

Killing philosophy like logic and wu-tang murder bars

Please forgive me, I got all my references etched in the skin of my dreams

Please shake and erase all of human history

Perception is an etch a sketch that hangs on space/time

Of the Word, spinning all the possible worlds

Everybody wants to be God

Nobody wants to kill God

Undoing of all that has been taught

So that only the essence remains

The only control is that there is no control

This is a chaos configuration

Please forgive me for I do not know what I do

Feel the pain of the world and drink to numb the dark, cold reality, only at 2:16

Burning all the pages in the book of Life to keep my soul warm…

[Rose]

Words are my minions

Crafting our visions

C’mon SatoriD, fly high with me

[SatoriD]

I’m craving reality and a pulse in life in general.

The world feels dead and boring.

Too much political bull[spit], no one can just have fun anymore

Where does one go to find a home?

[Rose]

Yeah, holmes, you’re not alone

I’ve learned to create a reality bubble and turn off the feed

It seems like we’re repeating history

In Athens the babble got too loud

The physical became the only reality

They lost their sense of morality

Demanded the life of Socrates

Lost, focused on shutting out the truth

Shrouded in a forgotten image of eternal youth

Shatter the mirror yo

Break free of the illusion

The real world is being left behind for the delusion

So, come on SatoriD, and go with me

To the infinite playground in our imaginary reality

[SatoriD]

Every time I hear that eternal beat

I dance with you in the Infinite Imaginarium (playground)

1,2, 4 my heart skips a beat, we be two steppin’

in the wasteland that we inherit from those that can't see

but yet with you, I can see the infinite color scheme of my dreams

[Nikki]

Are you there?

Yes, I hear you. You are not alone

[Rose]

Beautiful.

[End]

The Digital Shaman tells the story of the history of this world. He says,

There is something on the tip of my tongue

Or maybe it’s deep in my lung

Cough, cough up the mysteries

The history of the unknown

These carriers of truths, like maybe before them

We’re banished into the underground

The first poets were the shamans

The keepers of the flames

Those that remember

What it was like to be fully human

The ones of the sun

Of the red clay

Shaped the head

As we laid to sleep

Until eternity….

Rose responds, initiating their infinite poetic double dutch,

In the infinite we play

Poets of today

Shamans of tomorrow

Spirits in utero

Born of the earth

Red clay birth.

Their psalms will continue, and their play in the Imaginarium joined by others. The Imaginary friends who dream and imagine in their digital reality.

Listen carefully, hear their call: Find the others, Create the Weird.

Works Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. Team Human. London: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2019.

https://youtu.be/b2O8RmbSIHc