Jill Orr: Photograph by Malcolm Cross (2010) SPECTACLE OF THE MIND
Mind body dualism has been hotly debated since seventeenth century philosopher René Descartes’ suggested the human body was a machine controlled by a mind or spirit and ‘…the soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body’. Although Cartesian dualism maintained mind is a non-physical substance separate from the body, modern philosophers believe mind emerges from the brain but is not divergent and mind states will eventually be explained by physiological conditions.
Friedrich Nietzsche maintained ‘there is no ‘being’ behind the doing, acting, becoming’, in other words we cannot separate mind from body, thought from action. The pre-eminent philosopher Daniel C. Dennett concurs, for he ‘…identifies conscious experiences with information-bearing events in the brain…’ and the ‘self’ rather than a ‘ghost in the machine’ is a convenient word deployed to create a boundary between our body and the world. For Professor of Cognitive Science, Douglas Hofstadter ‘Mind is a pattern perceived by a mind…’ a strange loop that folds back on itself in reflection and paradox.
However, even as we hold onto the notion of self as an amalgamation of our individual thoughts, experiences and memories, the brain’s plasticity – like computer ‘software’, enables it to change and adapt through new experiences responding to stimuli to form new neural pathways, thus modifying and transforming self. Indeed the concept of self, as distinctly different from another, may be perceived as being continuously eroded by our interconnectedness to other minds with our on-line electronic communications.
In our culture of ubiquitous technology, uber-realistic virtual images generated on micro and macro screens - mobile phone, IPod, television and computer, we forget the unseen world of radio waves, magnetic fields and brain-waves that surround and permeate our existence. It is these invisible energies that allow us to communicate, share information and connect to each other in previously unforeseen ways. Undeniably, the hidden world of human cognition and self (albeit imaginary or hallucinatory) are visually depicted as avatars in virtual sites such as Second Life, Active Worlds and Cybertown. These avatars, a projection of the embodiment of the computer user, resurrect the notion that the human body is inhabited by a concealed force, a soul or spirit that can be brought forth, constructed, embellished and extended in virtual space.
Karen Casey’s Global Mind Project continues a tradition begun in the eighteenth century with ‘phantasmagoria’ and ‘magic lanterns’, Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon (a multi-media, early attempt at virtual reality) and Jaquet-Droz’s Spectacle Mecanique (three doll automata representing an illustrator, writer and musician). By collaborating with artists Jill Orr, Stelarc and Domenico de Clario, who will perform unique creative interactions and connectivity with state of the art neuro-headsets and purposely designed video effects software, Casey draws us into the realm of science fantasy and neuroscience, as well as real world applications of EEG technology, extending to her three invited artists her work and opportunity for them to engage in a dynamic that will ultimately be an amalgamation of minds. Drawn together in a coalescence of self and technology, the artists connected to the EEG headsets are presented as both automata - self-operating machines and intentional, self-activating beings, that have the ability to affect and be affected by the on-screen imagery generated.
Casey’s interest in the mind stems from a deep desire to understand the unseen forces that affect our very being. Rather than being concerned with the notion of mind as individualized - residing in the body or brain of a subject, she alludes to an energy field that is multi-dimensional and holographic, permeating reality at a quantum level. As such, she neither adheres to the Cartesian model of mind/body dualism, nor to the notion of consciousness, cognition and memory solely residing in or emanating from the human body. Rather than being merely a unique storage system in which information is processed, the brain functions as both receiver and transmitter in a field of intensity that saturates reality. Consciousness, as animating force, passes through physical and non-physical bodies as an affecting, generating oscillation, and although the mind may be perceived as carrier, its magnitude and direction extend beyond the limits of our perception. Casey’s Global Mind Project seeks to reveal how mind extension, enabled by technology, floods the receptive field and generates an inter-textual dialogue of fluidity, continuity and reciprocity that unites us all and displaces the boundary between artists and audience, mind and world.
Creating connections between self and other, audience and machine, Jill Orr continues the practice of using her body as a vector for provocative imagery, raising questions as to how the body is written in the technological terrain. This body, as in the work of Casey, is delicately connected to land and space, substance and immateriality, and is fluid and multiple in its various manifestations. By secreting herself in a trunk, hidden but communicative through the EEG interface, she engages with the notion of the Cartesian disembodied mind, one that is provided with sensory information from a vast computer matrix. Her performance evokes telepathy - transference of ideas between time and space performed by ‘mentalists’, or the illusion created by Harry Houdini a century ago in his Metamorphosis performance, where he was handcuffed and locked into a large trunk from which he escaped. In Orr’s performance the trunk is a veil or mask, which conceals body as self, whilst simultaneously revealing self as mind extended through technology and audience observation. In the narrative that informs her performance Orr charts an imaginary journey that begins eons ago to a more recent past in which a trunk, a traveler’s chest, floating upon a vast ocean, is remnant of gift and journey, host and place. This sarcophagus, a lone body on the open sea, is splintered by immense electrical energy, releasing one single water molecule that infiltrates and permeates other life forms on a voyage that traverses various manifestations of liquid, solid and gas. As an essential element of life, water imagery reveals connectivity between all living things and is a metaphor of essential spirit, spark or consciousness.
Initiating a link between spirituality and technology, by entering a trance-like or sublime state of being whilst wearing the EEG headset, Domenico de Clario will blindfold his eyes, limiting his ability to see or be distracted by the exterior visible world - simultaneously facilitating and opening a portal to the invisible and inaudible world within him, that will be manifest in sounds and screen visuals as he elicits notes from a piano keyboard through pure thought or brain-wave transference. These aural resonances - singular and unique, will echo into the universe leaving imperceptible and fragile traces. Utilizing Buddhist meditation, breath and concentration techniques to alter his brain-wave events, de Clario’s performance, inhabits the magical realm between the dark void of night and phosphorescence of day, evoking the complex, shadowy space of unseen human consciousness. His work resonates strongly with Casey’s, which opens up fields of intensity between the timeless and boundless quality of inner space and the temporal, restrictive aspects of the now.
Stelarc’s observation of his own screen phantom, which lacks qualia and conscious experience, morphs here into self projected as a being, becoming, affecting, in an animated dance of diverse facial contours and expressions. The divided screen represents the split-body evident in some of Stelarc’s earlier performances and reveals an encounter between actual and virtual, voluntary and involuntary, physical and non-physical states, image and self. Since the Prosthetic Head mirrors its human counterpart in looks, speech and facial expressions, it highlights how identity and language become fragmented, transformed, dispersed, multiple, hybrid and distorted in communications culture. Stelarc’s performance raises the very question of where mind and consciousness are located, since there is proximity and distance between his actual body and the on-screen image. Mind, perceived to be located in one body is actually dispersed into the (albeit virtual) body of another, echoing numerous encounters and interactions that we have over the Internet. Given that the Prosthetic Head has no brain but verifies evidence of mind through language, expression and behavior, we are left wondering how this reflects mind and self, since the self encountered is a mask or screen on which identity is projected.
In all, the boundary between the artists’ body and its images, the seen and unseen, the actor and actant are challenged, providing opportunities for each to evolve into something else through synchronous resonances. Through both the human body and its technological counterpart, the project provides a nexus between magic, which made no distinctions between living and non-living things, and contemporary science and technology, which more often than not challenges and erodes that binary and brings us new experiences of the body and its projections. The live screen media at Federation Square, generated from the brainwaves of these artists as they perform and manipulate Casey’s imagery, return us to the extensive eighteenth century Shows of London which ‘brought the classes together...’ but were also ‘the scene of the perennial conflict between the claims of amusement and those of earnest instruction’ – and indeed one of the central concerns of the Global Mind Project is to reveal the transient and transformative aspects of the nature of mind.
Julie Clarke 2009 ©
Dr Julie Clarke is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She has published extensively in Australia and internationally.
Mind body dualism has been hotly debated since seventeenth century philosopher René Descartes’ suggested the human body was a machine controlled by a mind or spirit and ‘…the soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body’. Although Cartesian dualism maintained mind is a non-physical substance separate from the body, modern philosophers believe mind emerges from the brain but is not divergent and mind states will eventually be explained by physiological conditions.
Friedrich Nietzsche maintained ‘there is no ‘being’ behind the doing, acting, becoming’, in other words we cannot separate mind from body, thought from action. The pre-eminent philosopher Daniel C. Dennett concurs, for he ‘…identifies conscious experiences with information-bearing events in the brain…’ and the ‘self’ rather than a ‘ghost in the machine’ is a convenient word deployed to create a boundary between our body and the world. For Professor of Cognitive Science, Douglas Hofstadter ‘Mind is a pattern perceived by a mind…’ a strange loop that folds back on itself in reflection and paradox.
However, even as we hold onto the notion of self as an amalgamation of our individual thoughts, experiences and memories, the brain’s plasticity – like computer ‘software’, enables it to change and adapt through new experiences responding to stimuli to form new neural pathways, thus modifying and transforming self. Indeed the concept of self, as distinctly different from another, may be perceived as being continuously eroded by our interconnectedness to other minds with our on-line electronic communications.
In our culture of ubiquitous technology, uber-realistic virtual images generated on micro and macro screens - mobile phone, IPod, television and computer, we forget the unseen world of radio waves, magnetic fields and brain-waves that surround and permeate our existence. It is these invisible energies that allow us to communicate, share information and connect to each other in previously unforeseen ways. Undeniably, the hidden world of human cognition and self (albeit imaginary or hallucinatory) are visually depicted as avatars in virtual sites such as Second Life, Active Worlds and Cybertown. These avatars, a projection of the embodiment of the computer user, resurrect the notion that the human body is inhabited by a concealed force, a soul or spirit that can be brought forth, constructed, embellished and extended in virtual space.
Karen Casey’s Global Mind Project continues a tradition begun in the eighteenth century with ‘phantasmagoria’ and ‘magic lanterns’, Philip James de Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon (a multi-media, early attempt at virtual reality) and Jaquet-Droz’s Spectacle Mecanique (three doll automata representing an illustrator, writer and musician). By collaborating with artists Jill Orr, Stelarc and Domenico de Clario, who will perform unique creative interactions and connectivity with state of the art neuro-headsets and purposely designed video effects software, Casey draws us into the realm of science fantasy and neuroscience, as well as real world applications of EEG technology, extending to her three invited artists her work and opportunity for them to engage in a dynamic that will ultimately be an amalgamation of minds. Drawn together in a coalescence of self and technology, the artists connected to the EEG headsets are presented as both automata - self-operating machines and intentional, self-activating beings, that have the ability to affect and be affected by the on-screen imagery generated.
Casey’s interest in the mind stems from a deep desire to understand the unseen forces that affect our very being. Rather than being concerned with the notion of mind as individualized - residing in the body or brain of a subject, she alludes to an energy field that is multi-dimensional and holographic, permeating reality at a quantum level. As such, she neither adheres to the Cartesian model of mind/body dualism, nor to the notion of consciousness, cognition and memory solely residing in or emanating from the human body. Rather than being merely a unique storage system in which information is processed, the brain functions as both receiver and transmitter in a field of intensity that saturates reality. Consciousness, as animating force, passes through physical and non-physical bodies as an affecting, generating oscillation, and although the mind may be perceived as carrier, its magnitude and direction extend beyond the limits of our perception. Casey’s Global Mind Project seeks to reveal how mind extension, enabled by technology, floods the receptive field and generates an inter-textual dialogue of fluidity, continuity and reciprocity that unites us all and displaces the boundary between artists and audience, mind and world.
Creating connections between self and other, audience and machine, Jill Orr continues the practice of using her body as a vector for provocative imagery, raising questions as to how the body is written in the technological terrain. This body, as in the work of Casey, is delicately connected to land and space, substance and immateriality, and is fluid and multiple in its various manifestations. By secreting herself in a trunk, hidden but communicative through the EEG interface, she engages with the notion of the Cartesian disembodied mind, one that is provided with sensory information from a vast computer matrix. Her performance evokes telepathy - transference of ideas between time and space performed by ‘mentalists’, or the illusion created by Harry Houdini a century ago in his Metamorphosis performance, where he was handcuffed and locked into a large trunk from which he escaped. In Orr’s performance the trunk is a veil or mask, which conceals body as self, whilst simultaneously revealing self as mind extended through technology and audience observation. In the narrative that informs her performance Orr charts an imaginary journey that begins eons ago to a more recent past in which a trunk, a traveler’s chest, floating upon a vast ocean, is remnant of gift and journey, host and place. This sarcophagus, a lone body on the open sea, is splintered by immense electrical energy, releasing one single water molecule that infiltrates and permeates other life forms on a voyage that traverses various manifestations of liquid, solid and gas. As an essential element of life, water imagery reveals connectivity between all living things and is a metaphor of essential spirit, spark or consciousness.
Initiating a link between spirituality and technology, by entering a trance-like or sublime state of being whilst wearing the EEG headset, Domenico de Clario will blindfold his eyes, limiting his ability to see or be distracted by the exterior visible world - simultaneously facilitating and opening a portal to the invisible and inaudible world within him, that will be manifest in sounds and screen visuals as he elicits notes from a piano keyboard through pure thought or brain-wave transference. These aural resonances - singular and unique, will echo into the universe leaving imperceptible and fragile traces. Utilizing Buddhist meditation, breath and concentration techniques to alter his brain-wave events, de Clario’s performance, inhabits the magical realm between the dark void of night and phosphorescence of day, evoking the complex, shadowy space of unseen human consciousness. His work resonates strongly with Casey’s, which opens up fields of intensity between the timeless and boundless quality of inner space and the temporal, restrictive aspects of the now.
Stelarc’s observation of his own screen phantom, which lacks qualia and conscious experience, morphs here into self projected as a being, becoming, affecting, in an animated dance of diverse facial contours and expressions. The divided screen represents the split-body evident in some of Stelarc’s earlier performances and reveals an encounter between actual and virtual, voluntary and involuntary, physical and non-physical states, image and self. Since the Prosthetic Head mirrors its human counterpart in looks, speech and facial expressions, it highlights how identity and language become fragmented, transformed, dispersed, multiple, hybrid and distorted in communications culture. Stelarc’s performance raises the very question of where mind and consciousness are located, since there is proximity and distance between his actual body and the on-screen image. Mind, perceived to be located in one body is actually dispersed into the (albeit virtual) body of another, echoing numerous encounters and interactions that we have over the Internet. Given that the Prosthetic Head has no brain but verifies evidence of mind through language, expression and behavior, we are left wondering how this reflects mind and self, since the self encountered is a mask or screen on which identity is projected.
In all, the boundary between the artists’ body and its images, the seen and unseen, the actor and actant are challenged, providing opportunities for each to evolve into something else through synchronous resonances. Through both the human body and its technological counterpart, the project provides a nexus between magic, which made no distinctions between living and non-living things, and contemporary science and technology, which more often than not challenges and erodes that binary and brings us new experiences of the body and its projections. The live screen media at Federation Square, generated from the brainwaves of these artists as they perform and manipulate Casey’s imagery, return us to the extensive eighteenth century Shows of London which ‘brought the classes together...’ but were also ‘the scene of the perennial conflict between the claims of amusement and those of earnest instruction’ – and indeed one of the central concerns of the Global Mind Project is to reveal the transient and transformative aspects of the nature of mind.
Julie Clarke 2009 ©
Dr Julie Clarke is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. She has published extensively in Australia and internationally.
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Daniel C. Dennett (1991). Consciousness Explained, Boston, Toronto, London: Little, Brown and Company, p.459.
René Descartes (1641). Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences.Douglas Hofstadter (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid, New York: Basic Books.
Friederich Nietzsche (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic.
EEG – electroencephalograph records electrical activity from the subject’s brain through electrodes attached to their scalp.
Richard D. Altick (1978). The Shows of London, Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard Press, p. 3.
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Global Mind Project:
http://www.globalmindproject.com/
http://www.globalmindproject.com/
Live stream of 'Spectacle of the Mind' performances by Jill Orr, Stelarc and Domenico de Clario with Karen Casey images at Federation Square, Friday, 15 January, 2010 from 8.30pm to 12.10 am 16 January.
The understanding of Soul, Body and Mind and then add Time, Space and Dimensions and you begin to understand the complexity of our Spiritual connection.
ReplyDeleteMost believe our mind is in our brain, yet our brain is just the most important part of the physical processing and thought creation.
The main storage and spiritual connection is within our Energy Structures that are with us throughout our total existences, not just here in this physical manifestation.
We manifest or exist in many times, spaces and dimensions many simultaneously although this is somewhat complex, so to see people using this non Cartesian dimension of our Spirituality to create is just the beginning of our awakening.
With Love
Ian Stone – Metaphysician & Founder of HEART Energy Healing System,
Human Energy Assessment Release Treatments
Heal Yourself Instantly DIY Automatic Program to Heal Your Human Life Energy Fields
Metaphysical Institute
I do like the idea of 'manifesting or existing in many times, spaces and dimensions', indeed I feel that throughout my lifetime I've had glimpses into those other 'realities'. Thank you for your valuable response.
ReplyDelete