4th
International CAiiA-STAR Research Conference
CONSCIOUSNESS REFRAMED 2002
non-local, non-linear, non-ordinary
Now consider a reliable feature of the human environment, such as the sea of words. This linguistic surround envelopes us from birth. Under such conditions, the plastic human brain will surely come to treat such structures as a reliable resource to be factored into the shaping of on-board cognitive routines. Where the fish flaps its tail to set up the eddies and vortices it subsequently exploits, we intervene in multiple linguistic media, creating local structures and disturbances whose reliable presence drives our ongoing internal processes. Words and external symbols are thus paramount among the cognitive vortices which help constitute human thought.
Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers. 1998. The Extended Mind. Analysis. 58(1):7-19 [1]
Tchicaya was grateful for anything that took them beyond the current, artificial view of definite laws spread across the border, but it was sobering to realise how much stranger things became as the price of that advance
Greg Egan. 2002. Schilds Ladder. New York: HarperCollins [2]
Those who lose dreaming are lost.
Aboriginal proverb.
Whatever
the merits of the many models of mind and their relationship to art and
technology presented at this Conference, no one can doubt the importance
of our immersion in the sea of words, signs and images in sustaining our
imagination as we contemplate the great mystery of consciousness. Texts
and visualisations from
all corners of the post-modern mind - from science, metaphysics, literature,
film, anthropology and especially the computer-mediated arts - all play
their part in forming the field of knowledge and speculation on which we
can draw.
Grappling with an understanding of the ontological implications of interactive media, and the emergent epistemology of telematic connectivity, we artists of the new millennium have at our disposal a deep ocean of ideas and models - to float on or dive into as we will. We are challenged and inspired by the many tides and cross currents created by a break up of reductionism, and the limits of linear causality. But whether we choose to pursue the empirical route or to walk about in dreamtime, we find ourselves having to enter new modes of consciousness, and a more holistic sensibility to the web of life. [3]
At the same time we recognise how action and embodiment, both human and technological, are necessary conditions for the subjectivity of mental and spiritual life. As artists living in what John Brockman describes as the Third Culture [4] we are confronted by the demonstrable, the speculative, and the visionary, whether we follow the trails leading towards a science of consciousness [5] or less trodden path of esoteric metaphysics, always heeding the aboriginal injunction: Traveller, there are no paths. Paths are made by walking. And what Brockman has to say about new physics applies equally to our researches in art, technology and consciousness: the end of the reductionist program. . . may well be an epistemological demise, in which the ultimate question is neither asked nor answered but instead the terms of the inquiry are transformed.
An ambition of our conference is to transform the terms of inquiry, to give subjectivity a valued place in research, to align ancient modes of knowing with post quantum intimations of reality. This is the fourth international conference exploring art, technology and consciousness[6]. This year we have applied the rubric non ordinary, non linear and non local to stimulate debate around new paradigms of art and science, culture and consciousness. These three terms resonate across a wide bandwidth of research and experience: physics, cosmology, molecular biology, ethnobotany, cultural theory, computer science, esotericism, and the whole spectrum of interactive arts practice.
It is our hope that the conference will offer challenging perceptions that will generate discursive trajectories reaching beyond the lecture hall, across tables, into the street, and take root in many minds, hopefully to affect many disciplines. Our goal is to generate a transdisciplinary mode of discourse, to skry the future from a multi-faceted crystal screen.
This is the first time that the CAiiA-STAR research conference has taken place outside of the UK, and we are conscious of the double honour of being guests of Curtin University and being able to participate directly with an Australian audience. An important aim of the conference has always been to strengthen the networking of ideas between people of different cultures and intellectual persuasions, and this present occasion provides us with a unique opportunity to cross boundaries and experience new insights and perspectives.
We owe special thanks to Paul Thomas, whose visionary enthusiasm and energy instigated this relocation, and to Professor Ted Snell for his intellectual hospitality and generous institutional mediation.
Roy Ascott, June 2002
Webnotes:
[1]www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/extended.html
[2]www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/SCHILD/SCHILD.html
[3]www.california.com/~rpcman/WOL.HTM
[4]www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
[5]www.consciousness.arizona.edu/tucson2000/#desc
[6]www.intellectbooks.com/authors/ascott/refram.htm