The interview invites you to dive deeper into the concepts and collaboration process behind their interactive web-based work Deciphering Extraterrestrial Language through DMT-Induced States of Consciousness.

For this project, writer Luís Carlos Barragán and artist Herdimas Anggara have created a series of web-based interventions that compose a story in which extraterrestrial beings infect both humans and online platforms.

In the story, a group of scientists working in the Amazon discovered extraterrestrial beings using DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine), a psychedelic drug that can also be found on Ayahuasca. The trip allowed them to decipher the alien language, giving them the tools to build the Nexial Gate, a machine that later brings the extraterrestrials to Earth. Following terrorism and wars, the aliens and a human eco-terrorist group end up ruling the world under an ideology, which challenges the idea of Western progress, living under a form of ecstasy they call Presentism.

The project proposes a futurism based on indigenous technologies, where progress is communal, independent of industrial production and based on collective ecstasy. The story unfolds in different formats: in the footnotes of a scientific paper, found in news clippings, hovering over the images of LAS website, or in the comments section on Instagram. Deciphering Extraterrestrial Language through DMT confronts preconceived uses of online platforms through random toggles, malfunctioning slide bars, and broken links to challenge readability and deconstruct the narrative to make it non-linear.