R: [-empyre-] Raquel Paricio opening statement

["Luigi Pagliarini" <luigi@artificialia.com>]

Hi Raquel!! 

> The first point of our research is to facilitate the 
> development of attention, i.e., to be conscious of our 
> attention or of our perceptions (that is what Leibniz termed 
> "apperception"). In my opinion this is the previous step to 
> acquire new levels of consciousness.

I do agree with that! 
Indeed, I've always thought of attention like an "inputs selection" process
which is necessary to the brain to cope with the complexity of the
environment related to its computational power limitations.
Therefore, in my opinion, exploiting the attentional processes means to
enlarge the inputs correlation analysis, and therefore increasing our
consciousness of the world and ourselves.
But, pardon me, this (in my opinion, of course) represents only one way we
can acquire new levels of consciousness.
Oppositely, the other one consists in relaxing attentional processes by
neglecting the multiplicity of stimuli and try to perceive reality as thing,
as a whole (and, as far as I understand this practice is in use for most of
the meditation disciplines).
Can it be? 

> We are living in a historical moment in constant change and 
> acceleration.
> Social structures more and more require from us more complex 
> and faster adaptation abilities. How can the field of art and 
> science evolve on this context? How can we help to evolve 
> human consciousness?

Well I must confess I do really like the question! : )
I think that art and science could, to start with, help by selecting the
number and the right inputs to focus at.
Further, I'm pretty sure that the two disciplines can help evolving
consciousness by inventing (or trying to) new ways of represents incoming
data relations with an acceleration similar to that of the technological
growth.


Ciao!
	Luigi