Translating an Altered State
Exploring Consciousness with DMXE and Zeus Tipado
Let me start with a small disclaimer:
This isn’t for everyone.
And that’s completely fine. If you’re not drawn to the world of psychedelics, feel free to skip this one. But if you are curious, about how altered states can influence art, perception, or memory, then I hope you’ll read on with an open mind. You can read a summary of the experience here in the newsletter. Are you interested in reading more?
You can read the full article here:
https://www.bastiaanwoudt.com/news/exploring-consciousness-with-dmxe-and-zeus-tipado
You can read the full article by PsyDao here:
Two years ago, during Paris Photo, I met Zeus Tipado, a neuroscientist at Maastricht University researching psychedelic substances like DMT, ketamine, and a lesser-known compound: DMXE. We spoke about consciousness, perception, and how sound and memory behave differently when the mind is temporarily rewired.
That conversation stayed with me. And earlier this month, we finally reconnected for a guided session with DMXE—a short-acting synthetic psychedelic—designed not for escapism, but for inquiry.
I approached it as an artist. My goal was simple but ambitious:
Could I turn an internal, psychedelic experience into visual work? Not to exhibit. Not to sell. But to see if something so intangible, emotional topography, memory distortion, weightless space, could become image.
The setting Zeus had created was soft and minimal. I lay in a nest of pillows, with a single vanilla scent in the air and a blindfold over my eyes. From the first tones of the music he’d curated, I felt myself sinking—not physically, but perceptually—into something dreamlike.
This was not a trip full of visuals like psilocybin or LSD. Instead, DMXE seemed to reactivate memory, pulling me into spaces I had already imagined or created. At one point, I was walking through an image I had generated months earlier: a rainy, AI-constructed street in Paris. I remember thinking: Is this still memory? Or am I inside something I made?
My hands began to move on their own. I was convinced I could see them, even though I was blindfolded. I smelled five or six distinct things, though the scent in the room never changed. The experience wasn’t about hallucination—it was about internal logic. As if my brain was working with its own archive of textures and translating them in real time.
The landscapes I moved through were vast, abstract, and largely empty of people. They felt like emotional sculptures: cotton valleys, vibrating strings, infinite darkness.
The next day, I went to the studio. I didn’t try to replicate the experience, but I did try to trace its residue. The result was a series of quiet, meditative studies—glimpses of something I still don’t fully understand, but that I wanted to make visible, if only partially.
The experience was supported by PsyDAO, a decentralized collective funding psychedelic research and art. They’re an ambitious initiative—combining blockchain with open science, and helping fund projects like Zeus’s DMXE research through tokenized models. If you’re interested, I write more about their mission in the full piece.
Again, this is not an invitation or encouragement to experiment with these substances. But it is a reflection—one I wanted to share honestly for those who, like me, are drawn to what happens just outside the frame.
What a beautiful and brave descent into the folds of perception.
Thank you for sharing this journey—so intimate, so ungraspable, yet rendered with such clarity. It lingers like scent on skin, like a dream you almost remember. The idea of tracing residue rather than recreating experience feels deeply true. Some things aren’t meant to be replicated, only listened to as they echo back in new form.
If memory is a map, who is the cartographer—yourself, your chemistry, or the sound of something yet to come?