Re: [-empyre-] Artists as internal mental sense organs

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

hi Nancy, jack and William,
great to have you a guest and thanks for the great discussions  so far.

yesterday i got together to with a few artists in Sydney,,., after a yummy
lunch and some Moscow mules, our conversation turned to  possible  reasons
why we  are continually  limited and conservative in our representations of
ourselves online in gaming and 3d worlds, and wandered from quantum
computing, string theory and pre cognition as possible answers..

someone from this list commented, and they are probably out of email range
now, so ill offer up his thoughts... that until our physical means of
computing changes from a sort of "cause and effect" model, to a "being"
model, the way in which we interact and present  ourselves virtually  can't
possibly  change..

so im interested in how you can communicate/translate sensorial and
non-standard perceptions when we don't have a flexible technological basis
to do that , nor even -  as an audience - minds flexible enough to accept
information  from outside that pre-recognised data

.did that make sense..?
 melinda



William Tremblay wrote

> The mechanisms of perception and comprehension, ostensibly tasked with
> keeping us more or less in sync with our surroundings, were not
> "designed". They grew reactively, coevolving with the viability of the
> species' animal survival. Human brains have many functions that are
> evolutionarily old. Consequently they are overwhelmingly complex and
> (currently) inscrutable, and surely built by chance upon the unlikely
> interrelation of disparate phenomena. It is a system with great
> redundancy and obscure cross-linkages. It is also a system with enormous
> potential for multiple simultaneous and often non-communicating
> perceptions, with heavy emphasis on pattern recognition and immediate,
> non-reasoned apprehension.

 Art is therefore a means of enabling the parts of our
> minds that know, but can not speak, to participate in conscious life.
> Often, the only means of accessing that part involves the cultivation of
> non-standard cognitive pathways and mappings. To assume the profession
> of artist is to become a surrogate sensor and (mis-)translator of the
> internally perceivable to the external world.