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THE OLD STONE BUTTER CHURCH

*Note* I originally wrote this piece for the 2018 CBC Short Story Contest.

It called to me—the Old Stone Butter Church. It’ll call to you, too… if you’re ready.

The Old Stone Butter Church called from a rise, where it stands on Comiaken Hill keeping forlorn watch over Canada’s Cowichan River estuary and traditional lands of the Khowutzun First Nations People on British Columbia’s southern Vancouver Island. It’s stood fifteen decades—the Old Stone Butter Church—and it’s built to withstand fifteen more.

They handcrafted the Old Stone Butter Church with local basalt and sandstone—they being Khowutzun workers and Christian settlers paid with churned butter from the priest’s dairy herd. A half-pound of butter for a day’s laying stone. Fair trade, you could say, for those confirmed in Catholic faith and those cautiously caring their indigenous values.

It called to me on a November day when Quamichan winds blew plate-sized, golden maple leaves from soaking-wet branches, and browned evergreen needles fell from hulking firs mixed with over-protective cedars. I parked at the hill’s base along Tzouhalem Road. Step by slippery step over leaf-covered moss, I ascended the flagstone pathway, unsurely gripping the iron pipe handrail and passing a gauntlet of tree-bark faces independently judging my passage.

The Old Stone Butter Church loomed above, silhouetting what’s left of its classic cruciform architecture—masonry walls with embedded buttresses and a high-pitch, split-shake roof matching the backdrop of a gray fall sky. Its tired facade of vacant gothic window frames and a long-gone wooden front door gave a sad look compared to what was a once-thriving, nineteenth-century pretense happily beckoning parishioners within.

Outside, overgrowth of green salal and red salmonberry elbowed the church’s rock structure, inviting that sacred place back within the fold of nature’s harmony. Beyond the church, in a grassy field, a lone concrete cross marked the resting space of an elder in eternity, amid a grazing flock of wet, woolly sheep. And overhead, a ruling osprey screeched, outshouting the mass of raven and crow disciples perched below.

I stopped at the open doorway. It still called—the Old Stone Butter Church. Now louder… and longer… with its clear and definite message.

Shifting foot to foot, I surveyed the open vestibule and peered through cold, lonely dampness beyond the rotting jack arch that once welcomed worshipers to the warmth within. What is it? A move forth. What does the church want of me? With short and calculated steps, I crossed the narthex threshold and passed between the light and the dark.

I shivered, yet sweated. My sixty-year-old eyes adjusted to the dim, and they scanned the nave where bench rows once sat a gathered assembly under the pious approval of a scissor-vault ceiling. The floor—it was solid—like some form of mixed concrete pressed from the earth and emitting a gaseous odor not like old eggs but more as old soul.

Daylight shafted through openings that stained glass once filled and an oak door once barred. In ethereal twilight, I saw how a generation of vandals desecrated the old church making mockery of its teachings through graffiti sprayed in yellow and blue and red and black-upon-white with two offensive letters acting as parentheses enclosing the hallowed entrance—one a block-lettered “S” topped with a circular halo, the other a “B” crowned by devil horns.

I turned, facing the crossing leading to the apse and the altar. More graffiti defaced this sanctuary and some brute force had ripped rocks from the transcept, callously throwing them about with no regard for the past and what this sacristy symbolized.

I hear it shut—the vestibule door. It wasn’t a shove. Certainly not a slam. It was a solid and securing sound coinciding with a reassuring temperature change where the chill subsided as the light manifested from dismal dim to calming clarity. I looked back, and I watched as the circular window space above the now-present, paneled oak door turned from a clearing sky to a marvelous consecrational cross consumed with an enlightened rose-colored glow.

To my right and to my left, the gothic arches morphed into leaded stained glass windows of sun-filtered images showing Christian stories from Testaments new and old. Around me, the pews transformed, becoming clear-grained fir boards waxed to a shine with their backs holding leather-bound books filled with good words. Below, the gritty floor transpired into turquoise and lavender and emerald mosaics telling their version of millennia’s history.

And ahead, a crucifix appeared beyond the crossing, before the chancel, mounted on the east wall above the now-formed, maple-wood pulpit draped in a ruby cloth with virginal white braids. Radiant light illuminated the old rugged cross from the cedar-paneled barrel vault—the full-sized cross supporting an exquisite supernatural figure cruelly spiked through the wrists and ankles—His face a balanced chastity of agony and ecstasy, perfectly representing the sins of the incarnate here on earth and the resurrected world of salvation far beyond our prison of mortal comprehension.

“Friend, it’s good to see you. It’s nice to know you care.”

The voice was around me. Not over, not under, not behind, nor ahead. It was everywhere within and without me. It was not male. It was not female. The best I can describe—a neutral voice with the feminine intelligence and majestic confidence of Meryl Streep and the beautiful baritone authority of Morgan Freeman. It was the voice of the Old Stone Butter Church.

 

“You… you called…” Humbly, I responded. I wasn’t scared nor alarmed. Not surprised or astounded. It felt natural to accept and submit, realizing some profound life change was occurring—I was entering an epiphany—and I was duty-bound to listen. “Why? Why have you called?”

“Because you are ready.” The voice was matter-of-fact. Straight-to-the-point. Kind of like Spock.

“Ready for… what? I… I don’t understand.” Perplexity stifled my speech.

“When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.” The church’s voice confidently quoted a proverb. “You are ready to accomplish a task for me. I’ve called to instruct you.”

It was instinct to find the mouth—to look at the lips—that uttered my calling. I looked aside, viewing a black cast iron stove now convecting heat waves with the sensual smell of burning coal. Candle flickers accented gas lamps, allowing an ideal taste of comfort with glory. Only a parish remained to assemble, and this virtual reality of a bygone era would be consciously complete.

“How can… What can… I possibly do?”

“I need your help spreading a message.” The church was clear and concise, but firm. “To connect with people like yourself who are ready to receive the message. Several messages, actually, wrapped into one.”

“I… I… I’ll do what I can.”

An apprehensive urge overwhelmed me. I’m not Catholic, not baptized or raised in the faith. And I’m not a practicing Christian, but I had an instant respect for this church’s voice. There was something here I’d missed in my life. Now, coming into a period of retirement and retrospection, it was time. Time to listen. Unconsciously, I knelt at the crossing—genuflecting, I’m told they call it—and I opened my mind.

“I’ll outline my message…” The church paused, as if reflecting upon itself. “First, a bit of my background… how I came to present the physical state you walked to… how I lost tangible dignity but retained the inner strength and self-respect you see now.”

I stood, turning about and taking in a marvelous blend of tradition, order and décor. How something, someone, of such splendor could be so maliciously neglected seemed incomprehensible. And, how a bastion of civilization like a carefully crafted church could miraculously survive, despite infernal attempts to destroy it. Clearly, there was an answer in the message I was about to pass on.

“I had ten years of good run.” The church mused. “My builders were mixed. Local native people and immigrant Europeans. It’s much like how the country, the continent, was civilized… if you choose to use that term. But, like all organizations, there has to be mutual respect for every culture, faith, and belief involved. That’s a grounded principle in every society, regardless if Christian based, traditional native, or any type of religion based on history, doctrine and decent human principles. That didn’t happen with me, now called the Old Stone Butter Church.”

I detected emotion. The voice reminisced as if struggling to resolve the past and conform to, yet help shape the present and future. I listened.

“My decline began with a culture clash. Mistrust and suspicion. As you saw, my crafters had considerable skills and built my structure soundly with what they had. Rock. Wood. Mortar. They appointed me with handsome glass and hand-wrought iron. They built me as they saw fit, according to one-sided specifications. That was the Christian spectral view. Not the vision of spirituality from the Khowutzun people who have their own teachings to be respected.”

“What happened?” I was enthralled. “How did you fall into such shamble?”

“After ten years, the division between Caucasian settlers and indigenous landowners became unbearably stressed. Intolerance, by some in my Christian congregation, of native beliefs and values… not all by any means… forced my aboriginal followers to evict the parish from their lands. Oh, there were falsehoods spread of me being haunted and possessed by dark forces, but the reason… the truth… remains as often is… cultures are ignorantly disrespectful of each other despite a clear interconnectedness, and universal value, of all humanity.”

“And?”

“They stripped me of possessions… leaving me to stand bare… a witness to the world of religious strife and the resilience to represent truth for those wishing to find it. They… the Christian parishioners… took my stained glass windows, my oak doors, my pews, my altar, and my beloved crucifix away to a new location on non-native land and erected a new church to represent their clique. I remained empty… the Old Stone Butter Church… a vulnerable victim to vandals.”

“This is a shameful story.” I felt a throat lump, a sense of pity, yet profound curiosity. What do you want me to do?

“But, they didn’t take my spirit…

“…no…”

“… and you’re wondering what I want you to do. I need to confide before revealing my message. There is nothing holy about me. I’m just a human-built old rubble block, but I’m symbolic of a timeless truth. You don’t need me as a physical building to worship in or pray to. You can do that anywhere, and that’s what today’s masses are discovering… what they’re seeking. But most haven’t received the message, yet they’re ready. Many describe themselves as ‘Nones’. That being they don’t subscribe to any set religion.”

“Yes.”

“These are the ones I want to reach. It’s not that they’re atheist or agnostic, and they’re not so indoctrinated in religious dogma that they can’t be reached. No. Most Nones are too busy with life’s concerns to stop and reflect on what’s really important… what the core truth is in mortal existence and how I… an old relic… can help them ground.”

“I follow your past. And think I understand where you’re going.” I stayed fast, waiting for revelation. “But why call on me?”

“Because you are one of the most powerful people in society. Your kind has always been the most influential. The most persuasive force.”

“What? How am I powerful? I’m not an emperor, a politician… business tycoon. And I’m by no means an entertainment or religious icon.”

“Remind me of what you do for a living.”

“I’m… I’m a writer. I write books. Articles. Web pages. Do op-eds for the HuffPost. Like, whatever pays the bills.”

“Precisely. You’re a scribe. Scribes have always been the most powerful force in humanity. Emperors? Politicians? Tycoons? And religious icons and pop-entertainers? They come and they go and they’re at the mercy of scribes. They beg scribes for exposure… favorable, if they can get it. Otherwise, they fall at the scribes’ peril. Not at a foe’s sword but at a scribe’s quill.”

“You want me to write for you?” I wasn’t sure. “I am… honored… privileged… what is your message… how do you want my approach?”

“Getting my word out has never been easier. But…” The church calculated. “Telling it properly is the challenge. Today, you, the scribe, have unlimited access to the masses. You have your blog and website. You have social media platforms. You have connections with mainstream media you’ve built through years of credibility as a respected scribe. People will listen to you. If you present my message in a way they understand, it will help them function in the world as productive and contributing society members. And they will spread it through word of mouth… rather, today, word of mouse.“

“Word-of-mouse…”

“It starts with something being in it for them… especially the vulnerable Nones who have limited grounding or conviction in conventional spiritual health and worship-prescribed happiness.”

“What should I tell them?”

“Start my message by reassuring people that no religion has a monopoly on truth. But, most of the world’s religions have universal core concepts in their doctrine. Your human nature… it’s the cyclical nature of the universe… like the Khowutzen people knew and taught. You move forward from birth to death, after which you go back where you came from. It’s what you do unto, with, and for others during your earthly life now that matters. Not stocking-up self-important spirituality for some later event. As a side note, the concepts of heaven and hell are what you make for yourself while you exist here in human form.”

I nodded. There was no need for note taking.

“There is no limit to your human potential, but there is a limit to the time you have in your ethereal lifespan. It’s incumbent for you to use your precious time as wisely as you can. That means enlightening… knowing… your internal world of health and welfare so you can help others to help themselves. That’s my core message… it’s your purpose. Know yourself and be healthy in yourself. Then help others to help themselves. Build your placid world not with vain material assets… ultimately, build your internal peace with placid external relationships. Doing so… you make yourself and others… happy. And you don’t need a church for that.”

The church said no more. I heard what was in it for the Nones and the Scribes. It was now time to go.

Its candles and lamps extinguished. Its coal stove went out. Its stained glass turned back to open sky, and its oak front door released. Its pews were gone as was its crucifix holding the representation of human divinity. And its smell… the smell of old soul… returned.

I left the Old Stone Butter Church with a purpose—a purpose I suppose was there all along. I’ve new-found happiness and reinvigorated spiritual health. My mission is sharing the message with those receptive to hearing timeless truth. Now, I’m at my keyboard with the power of the internet—billions of interconnected souls potentially at my reach—and I start by scribing these words:

It called to me—the Old Stone Butter Church. It’ll call to you, too… if you’re ready.

BRINGING LIFE TO THE DEAD WITH CGI TECHNOLOGY

Once upon a time, when a person died… they stayed dead. Sure, they were remembered through paintings, etchings, busts and even death masks, but their long-gone images remained distorted likenesses of how they truly appeared in life. That’s no longer the case, as modern Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has the uncanny ability to eerily bring the dead back to life.

Images created with CGI technology are so good that it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s real and what’s invented inside a computer. Today, computer generated images are commonplace. You see them everywhere around you. From blockbuster movies like Toy Story and Iron Man to still-framed Amazon ads that capture your buying attention, you’re constantly bombarded with CGI impressions.

But, all CGI technological projects aren’t aimed at entertaining you or exploiting your bank account. The forensic world slowly endorsed computer generated imagery since its inception. CGI technology was a perfect fit for reconstructing faces on skulls found with decomposed human remains.

Once forensic anthropologists teamed with computer scientists specializing in CGI technology, the field expanded. It wasn’t long before specialized companies like Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University developed cutting-edge techniques to move beyond realistically recreating facial recognition from bare bones to analyzing historical works depicting famous people.

Recently, the team at Face Lab released stunningly-real images of Cleopatra, King Tut, Nefertiti, Shakespeare, Bach, George Washington, Mary Queen of Scots, Saint Nicholas and many other high-profile historical people. Yes, even the real Santa Claus has been brought back to life with CGI technology. Here’s a look at how Face Lab does it and some samples of their deadly depictions.

Technology Behind Computer Generated Imagery

You’d think computer generated imaging is a recent forensic and technological breakthrough. Not so. CGI first hit the public domain via the movie business with Westworld in 1973, Star Wars in 1977, Jurassic Park in 1993 and then in 1995 when Toy Story made Woody and Buzz come alive. Now, two decades into the 21st century, it’s fair to say that virtually every TV and big screen production uses CGI for special effects. Forensic science took awhile to adopt the digital techniques.

Albrecht Durer

Would it surprise you to know the basic principle behind computer generated imagery showed up in the 16th century? It’s called ray tracing. A brilliant German painter/printer by the name of Albrecht Durer discovered an artistic technique of following light rays from the human eye back to the object rather than the normal method of human perception where the eye captures a light ray blast. Durer didn’t have a computer, but his revolutionary technique was so successful that it influenced Renaissance Masters like da Vinci and Raphael.

In computer graphic terms, ray tracing is a rendering technique for generating images by tracking a light ray’s path from the viewer’s vantage point back through a pixel and onto a virtual object. The CGI designer works with shape, color, texture and light levels on the object to give it life-like realism once the image is transferred back to the eye. In a sense, it’s fooling the brain to see non-real objects as real.

This sounds simple, but it’s incredibly complicated. Ray tracing to build computer generated images is also exhaustively time-consuming. Images built through ray tracing also require mathematical expertise in using trigonometry to build algorithms that account for light ray effects. Computers are the key to managing huge information packages and pull the entire CGI process together.

Ray tracing produces believably-good images, but it comes with a cost. A skilled CGI technologist can spend a full day developing one frame of a movie. That transpires to thousands of person-hours building one movie scene which has to pay back through box-office sales.

Gamers can’t afford the time and money spent on developing picture-perfect imagery that movie-goers demand. Because video games are more real-time experiences, the gamer technologists use a CGI technique called rasterization. It works on manipulating light through tiny polygons rather than pixels and produces “raster” images. The results aren’t as real, but it’s hundreds of times faster and far cheaper than ray tracing.

Face Lab and Their Fantastic Faces of Forgotten Folk

Face Lab is an interdisciplinary research group attached to the Institute of Art and Technology at Liverpool John Moores University. It’s headed by Professor Caroline Wilkinson who is a world-renown leader in craniofacial analysis, facial depiction and forensic art. With her group at Face Lab, Prof. Wilkinson specializes in facial reconstruction through computer generated imagery as well as building portraitures of population demographics.

Besides contributing to forensic facial identification cases with law enforcement agencies like Scotland Yard, Interpol, the FBI and the RCMP, Face Lab finds time to have a little fun. They work with world-class museums to reconstruct realistic portraits from exhibit material. Using actual skulls of historical figures as well as authentic images, the Face Lab team applies highly-technical processes like 3D scanning, modeling and animating to known likenesses.

Recently, Face Lab took on a side project where they brought long-dead celebrities back to life with CGI technology. Their convincing result lets you look guys like Julius Caesar and Nero in the face. Here’s a peek at some fantastic faces of forgotten folk.

King Tutankhamun is the world’s most famous mummy. When his Egyptian tomb was opened in 1922, King Tut had been sealed away for over 3,200 years and the vault contained 5,000 dazzling artifacts. Some, like Tut’s gold funeral mask, are considered among the world’s most valuable antiquities.

King Tut was an unusual Pharaoh. He ascended the throne in 1342 BC as an 11-year-old boy. Tut died in 1324 BC from suspicious circumstances which some scholars believe involved foul play. Whatever the death mechanism was, Tut was never well. All depictions of him show Tut seated including his hunting and archery activities.

Recreating Tutankhamun was a classic case for Face Lab. They had his intact skull with preserved flesh to work with. The CGI technologists used 3D scans to build a life-like image and they used historical data from tomb paintings to get details like his skin and eye color bang-on.

Nefertiti was Tutankhamun’s stepmother. She was Queen to Pharaoh Akhenaten and lived between 1370 and 1330 BC. This royal pair was ahead of their time in religious views where they recognized monotheism or worshiping only one god.

Historians differ their view on whether Nefertiti carried on in power after Akhenaten’s death and before Tutankhamun took over. They also debate whether Nefertiti’s remains have been conclusively found. Some feel she’s still out there, and others attribute a mummy called “The Younger Lady” as being the long-dead queen.

What all agree on is that a bust of Nefertiti is authentic. It’s a limestone/stucco artwork found in 1912 and depicts a beautiful woman that matches other known images of her. From the bust and related works, a marvelous CGI portrait of a life-like Nefertiti emerged.

Cleopatra is perhaps the most famous woman in ancient history. That’s because of the mystique of her sexual power and masterful manipulation of men. It’s also because Cleopatra VII Philopator of the Ptolemy dynasty was beautifully portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her acting career.

Cleopatra was the last ruler of Egypt’s Ptolemaic Kingdom. She lived between 69 and 30 BC and took the royal throne at the age of 18. Cleopatra was love-linked to Mark Antony and Julius Caesar although her relationships may have been more political than romantic.

There’s no doubt Cleopatra was a bright and shrewd lady. She spoke numerous languages and her survival strategy was one of keeping friends close with enemies even closer. Forces caught up with Cleopatra, and she was rumored to have committed suicide by taking poison. It’s popularly believed she was intentionally bitten by an asp.

Julius Caesar, by anyone’s standards, was a powerhouse in the old world. He was a Roman general/dictator responsible for the empire’s expansion ranging from England to Egypt. Julius Caesar lived from 100 to 44 BC and made major changes to Roman societal structure which didn’t sit well with some senior senators.

Many military historians consider Julius Caesar to be one of the world’s great strategists and tacticians. His military and political philosophy is entrenched as “Caesarism” and still used as a study model on how to, and how not to, over-extend. One of Caesar’s conquests was Cleopatra and their union produced a son.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar’s relationship ended when he brought another woman to their Egyptian party. Caesar returned to Rome where he was assassinated by a conspiracy between rivals, one of which was Brutus (“et tu, Brute”). Today’s CGI techs were fortunate to have a host of Julius Caesar likenesses to work from.

Saint Anthony of Padua might not be a household name to some. To others, he’s known as the patron saint of lost things. Anthony was a Portuguese Catholic priest famous for wise preaching and teaching during his short lifespan that spanned 1195 to 1231 AD.

Saint Anthony was a masterful orator with an uncanny ability to heal the sick. He was intricately familiar with scriptures and explained bible quotations so the commoner could understand. Anthony’s frugal living and simplistic style related to people from peasants to the Pope.

Some strange things happened when Saint Anthony died. Legend has it that all the children cried as all the bells suddenly rang. The mystery goes deeper when his remains were exhumed 30 years after death. He’d turned into dust except for his tongue. Today, Saint Anthony’s preserved tongue is on public display in a Padua basilica.

Maximilien Robespierre was a prominent force in the French Revolution of 1789. He was a lawyer and political activist with an outspoken voice for commoners. His criticism of church and state led to profound violence and the French monarchy overthrow.

Although Robespierre was effective, he wasn’t a nice guy. His taste for power went beyond the public good, and he turned into a typical tyrant. Robespierre is now best known for his role in the “Reign of Terror” that took place between 1790 and 1794.

Maximilien Robespierre sent thousands of people to the guillotine. His turn came on July 28, 1794, when the tide turned and resistance fighters seized Robespierre, tortured him and cut off his head with the same system he used on so many. Today, Robespierre’s head is digitally reproduced through CGI technology.

Mary, Queen of Scots, was the ruling monarch of Scotland from 1542 to 1567. She was six days old when her father, King James V, suddenly died and she acceded to the throne. Mary ruled by title rather than in person for her formative years and grew up in France where she married Francis, the Dauphin of France.

Mary returned to Scotland in 1561after her husband’s death and married her half-cousin to which they had a son. Mary was never accepted by Scotland’s real rulers, the regents, and she was imprisoned in 1567. She was forced to abdicate and her son, James VI took over the title as King.

History generally views Mary, Queen of Scots as a decent woman who didn’t stand a chance of exercising power. In 1587, she was convicted of a trumped-up plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England. Mary was beheaded for the “crime” and now is convincingly recreated in a 21st-Century image.

William Shakespeare may be the greatest writer the English language has ever known. The “Bard” invented or contrived over 1,700 unique words, phrases, cliques and sayings. Some are simple and familiar nouns like critic, bandit and lonely. Some are creative verbs like elbow, dwindle and swagger.

From Shakespeare’s birth in 1564 to his death in 1616, he produced 39 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems and uncountable verses. He’s the mind behind Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. And Shakespeare wrote Othello, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Truly, William Shakespeare was a timeless talent.

However, some scholars doubt that Shakespeare produced all his attributed material. They also question what he really looked like as few Bard images exist. An engraving by Martin Droeshout is considered the most accurate Shakespeare portrait and it’s this piece that supports Face Lab’s CGI rendition.

Nero was the last Roman Emperor of the Judio-Claudian dynasty. He lived from 37 to 68 AD and died by suicide at the age of 31. Nero was a “Momma’s Boy” for his early years of rein, but turn-coated and had her murdered.

Tales of Emperor Nero’s instability abound. He seized Christians as slaves and had them burned more for cruel personal pleasure than serving public justice. Stories of Nero’s extravagance and tyranny finally caught up with the disturbed leader. The Romans revolted and rallied for Nero’s death.

During the Great Fire of Rome, Nero went to a rooftop and sang rather than pitching in with putting it out. Probably no one was more despised by nobles and commoners than Nero who took his own life. He left behind excellent sculptures and engravings that preserved his unquestionable likeness for eternity.

Meritamen means “beloved of the god Amun” in ancient Egyptian. She was the biological daughter and then wife of Ramesses the Great who ruled as Pharaoh from 1277 to 1213 BC. Meritamen was highly-influential in Ramesses II’s court, and many different depictions describe her appearance.

Egyptologists have identified Meritamen’s tomb and sarcophagus with inscriptions worshiping her. She’s also portrayed on numerous statues and drawn in detail on papyrus tributes. However, the only physical evidence of Meritamen is her skull and the remainder of her mummy is missing.

There is enough of Meritamen’s cranium and mandible to tell she had a sweet tooth. Her teeth showed advanced decay for her age. There was also enough information on  Meritamen from her skull, statues and drawings to generate a computer image of what was once apparently-attractive woman with exotically-braided hair.

King Henry IV was a nice guy as far as medieval kings go. Known as “Good King Henry” and “Henry the Great”, he reined England from 1399 to 1413 AD. Henry was 19 when he took over from his grandfather, King Edward III, after having his cousin King Richard II deposed.

Not everyone liked Henry, though. Cousin Richard came back to bite him through successive assassination attempts. History records 12 attempts to dethrone King Henry IV. After Richard died of starvation in jail, rebellions against Henry increased to the point where he fled to France.

Henry IV died under somewhat suspicious circumstances after clandestinely returning to England in 1413. He was well embalmed and was in good shape when exhumed in 1832 to verify his identity. Today, King Henry IV’s image is brought to life through computer generation.

Nicholas Copernicus was way ahead of his time in scientific disciplines. He lived from 1473 until 1543 during a time when most scholars thought the world was flat. Copernicus proved them wrong, but he didn’t have an easy go of it.

Nicholas Copernicus was a true Renaissance man who thought outside the box. In fact, Copernicus thought out the universe and first described the true nature of our sun-centered solar system. Today, we know Copernican Heliocentricism as a universal model from which our current understanding of the cosmos rests on.

Sadly, Copernicus and the Catholic Church didn’t see eye-to-eye. The papal institute made him renounce his blasphemous betrayal, and he publicly went along with it to save his skin. Nicholas Copernicus is now a role model of brilliance, but no one ever complimented his looks.

Johan Sebastian Bach was a German musical composer living between 1685 and 1750 AD. He’s best known for instrumental masterpieces like the Art of Fugue and vocal perfections such as the St. Matthew Passion. The 19th-century Bach Revival period recognizes the greatest western musical canon ever to live.

Bach was a child prodigy. He was born into a musical family and, by 11-years-old, Bach arranged Latin organ compositions for the church that set musical standards of today. He’s considered the epitome of mastering counterpoint and harmonic organization as well as larger vocal works like four-part chorales.

Johan Sebastian Bach died from eye surgery complications when he was 65. He was buried into obscurity but accidentally rediscovered during a church renovation. Bach’s skull, along with an authentic bust, gave the Face Lab crew strong support for generating his image in their computer.

George Washington was the first American president and a founding father of the United States. Washington lived between 1732 and 1799 during the time of colonial revolt and the Revolutionary War. He served as a general of the continental army and a patriot leader.

Following U.S. independence from the British crown, George Washington turned from military life and took up politics. He helped in drafting the constitution and implementing a strong government with fiscal responsibility set as a high priority. Legislators today could take lessons from George Washington.

George Washington is one of America’s most recognized faces. He’s on money, hung up in schools and used as a marketing symbol for integrity and independence. Here, Washington is recreated through computer generated imagery with details so clear that you can see the whites of his eyes and his five o’clock shadow.

The Lady of Cao might not be as famous as George Washington, but she’s definitely fascinating. This lady was once a Peruvian aristocrat. Now, she’s a perfectly preserved mummy with a brilliant new image thanks to computer generation.

Archaeologists unearthed the Lady of Cao in 2005 when they excavated ruins in Peru’s El Brujo region. She’s estimated to have died around 400 to 450 AD and was buried with artifacts suggesting she came from the upper class. She was also interred with a lower-class woman who researchers suggest may be a human slave sacrifice to help her in the afterlife.

The Lady of Cao was so well-intact that there’s little left for guesswork. Her physical appearance was recreated by the Face Lab team with help from computerized tomography (CT) scans. The Lady’s image is that of a remarkable woman adorned in a regal headdress who was probably in her twenties when she passed.

Saint Nicholas of Myra was a Christian bishop from the Greek maritime city in Asia Minor. His lifespan stretched from 270 to 342 AD during which time he was known for generousness, especially towards children. He’s also renowned for miracles which explains his other title as “Nicholas the Wonderworker”.

Besides being the patron saint for sailors and merchants, Saint Nicholas is also the prime patron of children. Nicholas is attributed to his legendary habit of leaving secret gifts for kids which led to the modern-day “Sinterklass” practice.

Saint Nicholas has been called by different names at different times. He evolved into Saint Nick and then Santa Claus. We best know the jolly old elf’s description from the western world’s Coca Cola commercial. Professor Wilkinson and her Face Lab people took a different view of the fat old man in the red suit, and they brought life to the dead by computer generating this image from an ancient fresco of the child-loving man called Saint Nicholas.

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HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN CONSCIOUSNESS?

What is consciousness? What’s in you—a conscious and thinking entity—perceiving and processing information from a myriad of sources to form intelligent images in your mind? You’re consciously reading this piece, which I consciously put together to explore an area of existence that current science really doesn’t know much about, and I think you’re wondering—has anyone explained what being conscious really is?

Scientists seem to understand macro laws explaining the origin of the universe and greater physical parameters governing the cosmos. Recent science advancements into quantum mechanics shed better light on micro laws ruling sub-atomic behavior. But nowhere has anyone seemed to clearly explain what consciousness truly is and why we—as conscious beings—observe all this.

The question of consciousness intrigues me. So much so, that I’ve read, thought and watched a lot on the subject. From what I’ve picked up, one of today’s leading thinkers about consciousness is Dr. David Chalmers. He’s a likable guy with a curious mind and he’s a Professor of Philosophy at New York University. Dr. Chalmers did a fascinating TED Talk called How Do You Explain Consciousness? Here’s the transcript and link to his thought-evoking talk.

Note to readers: It’s worthwhile to listen to Dr. Chalmers TED Talk while reading this transcript.

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_chalmers_how_do_you_explain_consciousness?language=en

Right now, you have a movie playing inside your head. It’s an amazing multi-track movie. It has 3D vision and surround-sound for what you’re seeing and hearing right now, but that’s just the start of it. Your movie has smell and taste and touch. It has a sense of your body, pain, hunger and orgasms. It has emotions, anger and happiness. It has memories like scenes from your childhood playing before you.

And, it has this constant voiceover narrative in your stream of conscious thinking. At the heart of this movie is you. You’re experiencing all this directly. This movie is your stream of consciousness—the subject of experience of the mind and the world.

Consciousness is one of the fundamental facts of human existence. Each of us is conscious. We all have our own inner movie. That’s you and you and you. There’s nothing we know about more directly. At least, I know about my consciousness directly. I can’t be certain that you guys are conscious.

Consciousness also is what makes life worth living. If we weren’t conscious, nothing in our lives would have meaning or value. But at the same time, it’s the most mysterious phenomenon in the universe. 

Why are we conscious? Why do we have these inner movies? Why aren’t we just robots who process all this input, produce all that output, without experiencing the inner movie at all? Right now, nobody knows the answers to those questions. I’m going to suggest that to integrate consciousness into science then some radical ideas may be needed.

Some people say a science of consciousness is impossible. Science, by its nature, is objective. Consciousness, by its nature, is subjective. So there can never be a science of consciousness.

For much of the 20th century, that view held sway. Psychologists studied behavior objectively. Neuroscientists studied the brain objectively. And nobody even mentioned consciousness. Even 30 years ago, when TED got started, there was very little scientific work on consciousness.

Now, about 20 years ago, all that began to change. Neuroscientists like Francis Crick and physicists like Roger Penrose said, “Now is the time for science to attack consciousness.” And since then, there’s been a real explosion, a flowering of scientific work on consciousness.

All this work has been wonderful. It’s been great. But it also has some fundamental limitations so far. The centerpiece of the science of consciousness in recent years has been the search for correlations—correlations between certain areas of the brain and certain states of consciousness.

We saw some of this kind of work from Nancy Kanwisher and the wonderful work she presented just a few minutes ago. Now we understand much better, for example, the kinds of brain areas that go along with the conscious experience of seeing faces or of feeling pain or of feeling happy.

But this is still a science of correlations. It’s not a science of explanations. We know that these brain areas go along with certain kinds of conscious experience, but we don’t know why they do. I like to put this by saying that this kind of work from neuroscience is answering some of the questions we want answered about consciousness, the questions about what certain brain areas do and what they correlate with.

But, in a certain sense, those are the easy problems. No knock on the neuroscientists. There are no truly easy problems with consciousness. But it doesn’t address the real mystery at the core of this subject. Why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Why is there this inner subjective movie? Right now, we don’t really have a bead on that.

And you might say, let’s just give neuroscience a few years. It’ll turn out to be another emergent phenomenon like traffic jams, like hurricanes, like life, and we’ll figure it out. The classical cases of emergence are all cases of emergent behavior, how a traffic jam behaves, how a hurricane functions, how a living organism reproduces and adapts and metabolizes, all questions about objective functioning.

You could apply that to the human brain in explaining some of the behaviors and the functions of the human brain as emergent phenomena. How we walk. How we talk. How we play chess—all these questions about behavior.

But when it comes to consciousness, questions about behavior are among the easy problems. When it comes to the hard problem, that’s the question of why is it that all this behavior is accompanied by subjective experience? And here, the standard paradigm of emergence—even the standard paradigms of neuroscience—don’t really, so far, have that much to say.

Now, I’m a scientific materialist at heart. I want a scientific theory of consciousness that works, and for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn’t work for systematic reasons.

It’s a long story, but the core idea is just that what you get from purely reductionist explanations in physical terms, in brain-based terms, is stories about the functioning of a system, its structure, its dynamics, the behavior it produces, great for solving the easy problems—how we behave, how we function but when it comes to subjective experience—why does all this feel like something from the inside?

That’s something fundamentally new, and it’s always a further question. So I think we’re at a kind of impasse here. We’ve got this wonderful great chain of explanation that we’re used to it—where physics explains chemistry, chemistry explains biology, biology explains parts of psychology. But consciousness doesn’t seem to fit into this picture.

On the one hand, it’s a datum that we’re conscious. On the other hand, we don’t know how to accommodate it into our scientific view of the world. So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don’t yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically.

Now, there are a few candidates for what those crazy ideas might be. My friend Dan Dennett has one. His crazy idea is that there is no hard problem of consciousness. The whole idea of the inner subjective movie involves a kind of illusion or confusion.

Actually, all we’ve got to do is explain the objective functions, the behaviors of the brain, and then we’ve explained everything that needs to be explained. Well, I say, more power to him. That’s the kind of radical idea that we need to explore if you want to have a purely reductionist brain-based theory of consciousness.

At the same time, for me and for many other people, that view is a bit too close to simply denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfactory. So I go in a different direction. In the time remaining, I want to explore two crazy ideas that I think may have some promise.

The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental. Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics. These fundamental properties and laws aren’t explained in terms of anything more basic. Rather, they’re taken as primitive, and you build up the world from there.

Now sometimes, the list of fundamentals expands. In the 19th century, Maxwell figured out that you can’t explain electromagnetic phenomena in terms of the existing fundamentals—space, time, mass, Newton’s laws—so he postulated fundamental laws of electromagnetism and postulated electric charge as a fundamental element that those laws govern. I think that’s the situation we’re in with consciousness.

If you can’t explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals— space, time, mass, charge—then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature. This doesn’t mean you suddenly can’t do science with it. This opens up the way for you to do science with it.

What we then need is to study the fundamental laws governing consciousness, the laws that connect consciousness to other fundamentals: space, time, mass, physical processes. Physicists sometimes say that we want fundamental laws so simple that we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. Well, I think something like that is the situation we’re in with consciousness. We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don’t know what those laws are yet, but that’s what we’re after.

The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. Every system might have some degree of consciousness. This view is sometimes called panpsychism—pan for all, psych for mind. The view holds that every system is conscious, not just humans, dogs, mice, flies, but even Rob Knight’s microbes, elementary particles. Even a photon has some degree of consciousness.

The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. It’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, “Aww, I’m always buzzing around near the speed of light. I never get to slow down and smell the roses.” No, it’s not like that. But the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness.

This may sound a bit kooky to you. I mean, why would anyone think such a crazy thing? Some motivation comes from the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental. If it’s fundamental, like space and time and mass, it’s natural to suppose that it might be universal too, the way they are. It’s also worth noting that although the idea seems counterintuitive to us, it’s much less counterintuitive to people from different cultures, where the human mind is seen as much more continuous with nature.

A deeper motivation comes from the idea that perhaps the most simple and powerful way to find fundamental laws connecting consciousness to physical processing is to link consciousness to information. Wherever there’s information processing, there’s consciousness. Complex information processing, like in a human, takes complex consciousness. Simple information processing takes simple consciousness.

A really exciting thing is in recent years a neuroscientist, Giulio Tononi, has taken this kind of theory and developed it rigorously with a mathematical theory. He has a mathematical measure of information integration which he calls phi, measuring the amount of information integrated in a system. And he supposes that phi goes along with consciousness.

So in a human brain with an incredibly large amount of information integration it requires a high degree of phi—a whole lot of consciousness. In a mouse with a medium degree of information integration, it still requires a pretty significant, pretty serious amount of consciousness. But as you go down to worms, microbes, particles, the amount of phi falls off. The amount of information integration falls off, but it’s still non-zero.

On Tononi’s theory, there’s still going to be a non-zero degree of consciousness. In effect, he’s proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don’t know if this theory is right, but it’s actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness, and it’s been used to integrate a whole range of scientific data. It does have a nice property that it is, in fact, simple enough that you can write it on the front of a tee-shirt.

Another final motivation is that panpsychism might help us to integrate consciousness into the physical world. Physicists and philosophers have often observed that physics is curiously abstract. It describes the structure of reality using a bunch of equations, but it doesn’t tell us about the reality that underlies it. As Stephen Hawking put it, what puts the fire into the equations?

Well, on the panpsychist view, you can leave the equations of physics as they are, but you can take them to be describing the flux of consciousness. That’s what physics really is ultimately doing—describing the flux of consciousness. On this view, it’s consciousness that puts the fire into the equations. On that view, consciousness doesn’t dangle outside the physical world as some kind of extra. It’s there right at its heart.

I think the panpsychist view has the potential to transfigure our relationship to nature, and it may have some pretty serious social and ethical consequences. Some of these may be counterintuitive. I used to think I shouldn’t eat anything which is conscious, so therefore I should be vegetarian. Now, if you’re a panpsychist and you take that view, you’re going to go very hungry. So I think when you think about it, this tends to transfigure your views, whereas what matters for ethical purposes and moral considerations—not so much the fact of consciousness—but the degree and the complexity of consciousness.

It’s also natural to ask about consciousness in other systems, like computers. What about the artificially intelligent system in the movie Her, Samantha? Is she conscious? Well, if you take the informational, panpsychist view, she certainly has complicated information processing and integration, so the answer is very likely yes, she is conscious. If that’s right, it raises pretty serious ethical issues about both the ethics of developing intelligent computer systems and the ethics of turning them off.

Finally, you might ask about the consciousness of whole groups, the planet. Does Canada have its own consciousness? Or at a more local level, does an integrated group like the audience at a TED conference—are we right now having a collective TED consciousness, an inner movie for this collective TED group which is distinct from the inner movies of each of our parts? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I think it’s at least one worth taking seriously.

Okay, so this panpsychist vision, it is a radical one, and I don’t know that it’s correct. I’m actually more confident about the first crazy idea—that consciousness is fundamental—than about the second one—that it’s universal. I mean, the view raises any number of questions and has any number of challenges, like how do those little bits of consciousness add up to the kind of complex consciousness we know and love.

If we can answer those questions, then I think we’re going to be well on our way to a serious theory of consciousness. If not, well, this is the hardest problem perhaps in science and philosophy. We can’t expect to solve it overnight. But I do think we’re going to figure it out eventually. Understanding consciousness is a real key, I think, both to understanding the universe and to understanding ourselves.

It may just take the right crazy idea.