Ever since reading Isaac Asimov’s short story collection I, Robot at a young age, I have been fascinated with robots and artificial intelligence. Over time, my interest has moved away from the physical aspects of mechanical humans to more philosophical questions around consciousness and sentience. What makes humans perceive that they are conscious? Can machines be conscious?
My musings took shape as a short story, but I never seemed to be done with it. After the LaMBDA incident earlier this year I felt that I had to finish the story, so I finally did. It’s free for all to read online:
For the modest price of 1000 SEK (approximately 115 USD), an interested comic art connoisseur can buy a copy of a 1360 × 1973 pixel digital file that is a facsimile of my one-page comic Originalserie (Original Comic). The comic has been published in issue number 2 of the Swedish digital comics anthology babian.se.
The focus of the comic is the absurdity of seeking to own original comic art, when comics is the ultimate artform for mass production. This obsession with property and ownership is praticularly relevant in these days of NFT hysteria. Because of this, I am very happy to be able to sell it in a highly fungible form.
I have no objections to artists getting a new source of income, and I assume they laugh all the way to the cryptobank when rich people buy non fungible tokens in order to ”own” art that is supposedly unique. The problem is the massive negative environmental effects caused by blockchain technology such as NTF. The climate crisis is too grave to allow wealthy art collectors and speculators to indulge in these vanity projects.
Jag kunde inte hålla mig från att göra ett till omslag till min novell Rasmus Carlssons redogörelse. Det tredje omslaget är inspirerat av pocketböcker från 1960- och 1970-talen, kanske främst W & W-serien.
Många av de snyggaste av de omslagen är illustrerade av Per Åhlin, men jag försökte mig inte på att emulera hans teckningsstil. Det hade inte slutat bra. Den som vill se många exempel på Åhlins omslag kan titta på den här fina samlingen.
Alla tre versionerna av Rasmus Carlssons redogörelse går att ladda ner gratis.
The self portrait I have been using on this site and elsewhere online was getting old. The original line drawing is from the comic Abstraction that was published in Wonderful Comics #10 in 2008.
Since then, I have changed my hair style and I started wearing glasses more often. More importantly, I have aged quite a bit since I made the first version.
In short it was time for an update. Below you can see a few of the steps in the process.
I designed this t-shirt print as a birthday present to my old friend Fredrik. It’s Cthulhu surfing near the sunken island of R’lyeh – an Elder God spoof of the Old Guys Rule brand.
Now you can buy your own Lovecraftian surf wear at Redbubble.