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

[Barrie <barriec@optusnet.com.au>]

Cheers, Barrie, on 26.12.04 10:34 PM, Melinda Rackham at melinda@subtle.net
wrote:

> 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

I'm not quite sure what you mean Melinda, but two things popped into my mind
when I read what you said. Integration and Immersion.
Integration in the sense of mental integration of disparate thought to
produce mental equilibrium.
Immersion in the sense of immersive technology.

Anyway, does what you are asking have something to do with wetware to
hardware interfacing? Maybe a kind of full sensory integration between two
or more people or AI over the net?

I'm groping here but as an artist I tend to grope a lot. You talk about a
'being' model, do you mean 'being in the present moment'? Immediacy?

If what you are asking is what I'm trying to put words around, then perhaps
we are looking at a state of being that requires much greater intimacy than
we are perhaps capable of experiencing at this time. Perhaps we need greater
cultural maturity?

I like the idea of greater intimacy and as William wrote of being a
translator/mistranslator of our inner worlds. Bit scary, but also exciting.

But surely this has been going on in literature for some time now, stream of
consciousness writing etc. Lucid dreaming?

Barrie
> 
> 
> 
> 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.