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> Roy ASCOTT
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Roy ASCOTT Just as the computer is
more than the sum of its parts, and constitutes an environment which demands
the faculty of cyberception[i]
for its apprehension, so the hypercortex is more than the sum of minds
interacting in the Net, becoming a field of consciousness that requires new
psychic and spiritual vehicles for its navigation. Within the term
“consciousness” I include all that lies outside our learned and rationalised
perception of the world, the psychic and intuitional, the numinous and
invisible; within ”science” I include all that constitutes hermetic, esoteric,
hidden knowledge. By "art" I include everything lying outside
official culture which has the capacity to bring change to the viewer’s state
of being. Consciousness research brings forth new awareness, and is both
ontologically and epistemologically challenging. Gregory Bateson famously
asserted that mind was immanent in whole systems rather than being the property
of finite things and, in the context of technology, saw mind as brain plus
computer plus environment [ii].
The hypercortex [iii] is
precisely a whole system, although essentially open-ended and emergent. The
term hypercortex is intended to bring together body, cortex and telematic
environment into one indissoluble whole. Before looking into the
future, I would like to re visit an early project of mine which dealt with how
minds might interact, through a process of “dispersed authorship”, and how a
field of consciousness might emerge in the creation of a non-linear narrative.
This was La Plissure du Texte : a planetary fairytale which took place
here in Paris between December 1983 and February 1984, at the Musée d’art
moderne as part of Electra[iv],
organised by Frank Popper. I would like to describe
the background to La Plissure du Texte. During my tenure as Dean
of the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s word got round that I consulted
the tarot and threw the I Ching on a
regular basis. I was approached by Dr Brendan O’Regan, Research Director at the
Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, to contribute to a serious TV
documentary of new developments in “psychic
science”. I had been studying
psychic systems since the early 1960s in ways which led me a decade later to
ideas of distributed mind and “distributed authorship” embedded in La
Plissure du Texte. I followed both the left-hand and the right-hand
path in pursuit of my esoteric interests - I’m thinking here of Robert
Ornstein’s thesis the concerning left and right hemispheres of the brain in
determining linguistic and cultural norms[v],
as well as his readings drawn from anthropology, psychology, philosophy,
mystical religion, and physiology, including ideas of William James, the Sufism
of Idries Shah, Jung’s synchronicity and Charles Tart’s Psi studies [vi].
It was in these areas that I
encountered J B Rhine’s work on
parapsychology[vii] and JW
Dunne’s theory of time and memory [viii] and such writers as Ouspensky[ix],
Papus[x]
, and John Michell’s A View over Atlantis[xi]. For the documentary, I
interviewed the Brazilian psychic Gasparetto, in front of what seemed to be the
whole of the community of parapsychologists, therapists, and transpersonal
psychologists of Northern California who were assembled to watch and discuss
the demonstration. Thus I was inducted into the Bay Area world of the
paranormal. This led me to Jacques Vallee[xii],
popularly known as a French UFO expert on whom the character played by Francois
Truffaut in the Stephen Spielberg’s 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was based. But, fascinated as I
was in this world, Vallee interested me more in his work with computer
conferencing. His company Infomedia provided the PLANET network[xiii],
giving international access to huge databases and widespread computer conferencing. This was all new to me,
and particularly exciting was the fact that the portable terminal, with
acoustic couplers to a telephone handset, could be jacked into the network from
just about anywhere. Just as earlier, in 1964, I awoke to the value of
cybernetics in art practice[xiv],
I saw in computer networking the possibility for a new connective medium for my
art. The National Endowment for the Arts in Washington funded my first project
(dubbed Terminal Art by the press) in which I mailed portable Texas
Instrument 765 terminals to Douglas Davis, Jim Pomeroy, Don Burgy, Eleanor
Antin, in the US, and Keith Arnatt in the UK, and we set about exploring the
potential of the medium. As the project got
underway, I was in Europe where I learned of the French government initiative
to create a national Programme
Télématique. The term télématique had been coined by Minc and Nora in their
then recent 1978 report to the French President [xv] .My reading in this new field fused with the
lines of thought I had been developing throughout the 1960s and 70s which
followed a path through Saussure , Levi-Straus ,
to Foucault and on to a more poetic reading of Derrida and full blown
post-structuralism. In 1978 for the CAA
panel devoted to “post-modernism” convened by Douglas Davis in New York, my
presentation drew in part on the second order cybernetics of Heinz von Foerster[xvi]
- which included the observer in the system, relating it to my own theory of
interactivity. Bateson’s concept of “mind at large”
in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind
was also potent (the term had originally be coined by Aldous Huxley whose Proper Studies[xvii]
I had studied as a school boy. At that time also Roland
Barthes was important to me in emphasising how meaning can be elicited from the
most trivial or disregarded objects or actions. Not withstanding the excellence
of Eco’s magisterial A Theory of
Semiotics [xviii], or the
pioneering work of Charles Sanders Peirce[xix],
it was Mythologies[xx],
which first captured my imagination ... And it was Charles Fourier’s “universal
theory of passionate attraction" [xxi]
which inspired my utopianism, which I transposed to the telematics of utopia -
the freedom to give/receive narrative pleasure in the open systems context of
non-linear (asynchronic) time and
boundless (non-locational) space – to be both here and elsewhere at one and the
same time, where time and the finality of meaning could both be deferred. I was
ready for Derrida’s différance,
seeing difference functioning as an aporia: difference in neither time nor
space but making both possible [xxii]. My interest in signs,
semiotics, and especially in myths was also aided by Vladimir Propp's study[xxiii]
of narrative structure, and the morphology of the fairy tale. Unlike the structuralists' search for the underlying
structure of myths, Propp’s investigation of folktales sought a number of basic
elements at the very surface of the narrative. I was especially
attracted to the idea that each mythic character actually represented a centre
of action more than a simple persona. In 1982 Frank Popper’s
invitation to contribute to Electra
gave me the opportunity to create a
telematic event, which somehow might combine the many strands of ideas I have
mentioned. Cybernetics, esoterica, interactivity, connected minds, fields of
consciousness, narrative centres of action, myth, fairy tales, and a commitment
to telematics as my working medium. These issues, amongst others less easily
defined, led me inexorably to find my subject. As a painter and dreamer,
associative thought had always been more productive to my creative process than
strict rationality. All this added to the valued that Barthe’s notion of
“juissance” gave to “le plaisir du texte”. Given the defining nature of the
telematic process as that of non-linear weaving of texts and images, the title
of my project was quick to form in my mind: the pleating of the texte, or in
homage to Barthes, La Plissure du Texte. The process started by
assigning fairy tale roles (centres of action) to eleven cities.
This was to be a project involving multiple associative pathways
for a narrative that would unroll in time according to the centres of action
that determined its development. The process of pleating the text would be
asynchronic, multi-layered, and non-linear in all its bifurcations. Bob Adrian agreed to manage ARTEX as the
organising instrument of the communications infrastructure for my project.
ARTEX was an electronic mail program for artists on the I.P. Sharp Associates
(IPSA) timesharing network.. There was a core of about 10 artists using it
regularly and around 30 to 40 others at any one time during its 10 years of
operation. Throughout the project, I was developing the idea of a telematic art, where the artist would create context rather than
content, providing a field of operations in which viewers could themselves
create meaning and shape experience . The second part of this
paper looks at issues of “The Body, Cortex and Networks” from a
futures-oriented perspective. I am aware that the
future is not a given, but is to be created, to be diverted from any
pre-determination, and that the place of the artist in this process can be
significant. Science does its best to construct an understanding of the world
that we can build on but its strict rationality excludes much that is a part of
human consciousness. We are beginning to see how contemporary scientists (in
quantum physics as a popular example) are prepared to consider the implications
of their research for ideas about consciousness. The conference Towards a Science of Consciousness [xxiv]
convened at the University of Arizona sees over 800 scientists from every kind
of discipline meeting in Tucson every two years to discuss the issues: what is
consciousness? where is consciousness? and
even, why is consciousness? Some delegates look beyond the boundaries of
their academic field in search of answers, challenging orthodoxies and seeking
new perspectives. In parallel, my research centre, CAiiA-STAR[xxv]
has convened annually Consciousness
Reframed: art and consciousness in the post-biological era, where the object of the conference is less an attempt to
explain consciousness and more an investigation of how it might be navigated.
For the many artists involved in dealing with this mysterium, consciousness is at the ultimate frontier of
their research. Here we can go back to
Ouspensky: “. . .an art which does not reveal mysteries, which does not lead to
the unknown, does not yield new knowledge, is a parody of art, and still more
often is not even a parody, but simply a commerce or an industry”. He
writes in 1931 about the search for a
more subtle means of creation, “The ideas of the “fourth dimension”, of “many
dimensional space”, show the way by which we may arrive at the broadening of
our conception of the world” [xxvi].
Here, in 2002, we are working in the many dimensional space of telematics. And
just as in the classic example of the two dimensional being perceiving an
object of the third dimension as a passage in time, so to we may change our
conception of time to fit the new dimensionality of networks. In this way the
body can be seen as a three dimensional aspect of a fourth dimensional whole.
It is the hypercortex – mind in the hyperdimensional space of telematic
connectivity which will give us the freedom to roam in the fourth dimension. I cite Ouspensky because
I am looking for roots, and it was only through correspondence with Linda
Henderson that I realised I was far from alone in the 1960s in valuing ideas of
the fourth dimension. She will show in the introduction to her new edition of Fourth Dimension & Non-Euclidean
Geometry in Modern Art [xxvii] what these ideas meant to Robert Smithson,
as they had done to such figures as Moholy-Nagy and, especially, Buckminster
Fuller. For these visionaries “time itself was not the fourth dimension but
rather an inadequately perceived experience of a higher dimensional space”. “More influential . . . was the other legacy
of hyperspace philosophy: the connection of the fourth dimension to expanded
consciousness or mystical “cosmic consciousness,” which had been developed by
[. . .] Ouspensky[xxviii]. This is what I believe
the telematic hypercortex can apprehend if it is brought into conjunction with
much older science of mind, such as yoga on the one hand, and that of
ethnobotany and shamanic pharmacology on the other[xxix].
This re-organisation of the mind will be necessary if we are to attain the
multi-layered complexity of cognition
and perception that the evolving planetary networks demand. Cyberception is a
faculty which is emerging in any case but instruments to enrich its realisation
are worth pursuing. At the same time research into the plant technologies of
archaic cultures, still in use amongst numerous indigenous groups in South
America for example, is a prerequisite if our knowledge of consciousness is to
advance[xxx].
My investigations in this regard have taken me to the Kuikuru tribe in the
Xingu River region of the Mato Grosso in 1998. The object was to share with their
shamans the experience of navigating cyberspace and discussing it in relation
to their journeys into psychic space[xxxi].
In subsequent years I have sought out
ceremonies of the Santo Daime[xxxii]
and the Uniao do Vegetal[xxxiii]
in which the ingestion of the brew ayahuasca[xxxiv]
is at the centre of the practice. These practices are ancient beyond
history and as both Eduardo Luna and Terence McKenna have shown once extended
to almost every culture on the planet. At the same time Jeremy Narby in The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of
knowledge[xxxv] shows
how, as a product of ingesting the
ayahuasca, the shamans reading of DNA - his own and of other species -
may account for the visions he experiences. He shows for example the similarity
between the entwined snakes, at the base of all shamanic imagery, and the
double helix. In Europe a cosmic consciousness
and knowledge of the hidden world was sought through alchemy and aspects of
Gnosticism, practices of inquiry that led in England to the forming of the
Royal Society in 1662. Back of this was a scholarly society in Oxford called
the ‘invisible college’. A “college for the promoting of physico-mathematical
experimental learning". John Wilkins, deeply involved in alchemy,
freemasonry and the Rosicrucian order, had set this up. Borges, who made a special study of Wilkins’
ideas, says that “His
main interests were theology, music, the manufacture of transparent hives for
the observation of bees, the construction of spaceships for a regular service
to the moon and the creation of a universal language”[xxxvi].
This melange of
disparate interests, both physical and metaphysical is quite typical of the mid
17th century mind. Wilkins’universal language, were it to have
emerged, would be in the best sense transdisciplinary, although it must be said
that Borges found it somewhat unsatisfactory : "These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall
those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.
On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into: (a) those
that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d)
suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that
are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were
mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush,
(l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that
resemble flies from a distance"[xxxvii]. To bring esoteric
knowledge of what constitutes the mind into conjunction with advanced ideas in
science, with the full instrumentality of technology ; integrating knowledge
and experience at a new level of consciousness, creation at the edge of
imagination, these are the things that drive my current research. Virtual Reality interactive digital technology telematic, immersive Validated Reality reactive mechanical technology prosaic, Newtonian. Vegetal Reality psychoactive plant technology entheogenic, spiritual. One project deriving
from this enquiry is the Planetary
Collegium, a rubric intended, within its cyberspacial implication, to echo
the Invisible College of Wilkins. I first presented the
idea of the Planetary Collegium in 1994 at ISEA Helsinki[xxxviii].
At the same time as I had set up the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the
Interactive Arts (CAiiA) in the University of Wales, Newport focussing on
research into art technology and consciousness. Later I established STAR, the
Science Technology and Arts Research, at Plymouth University. CAiiA-STAR an
integrated research platform, signalled the possibility of a new paradigm of
inquiry. More recently the University of Technology in Sydney Australia has
adopted the CAiiA-STAR model, and institutions in Zurich and in the North West
of Brazil are moving in this direction. With each centre as a node of a larger
network, an important aim of the
Planetary Collegium is achieved. There are other models
of transdisciplinary inquiry I admire:
At the
other extreme, I refer briefly to Vale do Amanhecer (the Valley of the Dawn) in
Brazil. Here, within its idiosyncratic eccentricity, a small township has evolved
dedicated to the syncretic assimilation of psychic and spiritual practices.
Syncretism is the hallmark of culture in Brazil and the Valley of the Dawn is a
microcosm of a larger spiritual enterprise. Given
such diversity of interests, what then is the Planetary Collegium? Is it
education or is it art? Does it seek to grasp new scientific ideas or simply
ancient esoteric knowledge? Is it seeking to re-integrate the old plant
technology /pharmacology into our models of consciousness, or is it looking at
the leading edge of bio and nano research? In terms of planet earth, is its
interest in geomatics or geomantics? The answer is, it aspires to incorporate
all of these things. It is where synergy and syncretism meet, and connectivity
rules! The space of the Collegium is a hybrid space both physical (local) and
telematic (non-local). Connectivity is fundamental to its structure as well as
its intellectual, artistic and social aspirations. The
Planetary Collegium calls for a hybrid architecture that can bring together the
laboratory, the academy, and the museum into a new kind of synthesis. It
is intended that each node of this networked Collegium will have a significant
architectural presence. I have involved the architect Peter Anders in the
design of the first node which it is hoped will be located in the North East of
Brazil. Notes
[i]
Ascott, R.1995. The Architecture of Cyberception.
In: M. TOY, ed. Architects in Cyberspace. London:
Academy Editions, [ii]
Bateson, G.1972. Steps
to an Ecology of Mind. San Francisco: Chandler [iii]
Ascott,R. 1997. Cultivando o Hipercórtex.(trans. Flavia Saretta) In: D.DOMINGUES (ed). A Arte no Século XXI: a humanização das
technologias. Sao Paulo: University of Sao Paulo. Pp 336-344 [iv]
Ascott, R. 1983. La Plissure du Texte. In: F. POPPER,
ed. Electra. Paris: Musée d’Art
Moderne, pp. 398-399 [v]
Ornstein, R.E. 1972. The Psychology of
Consciousness. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. [vi]
Ornstein, R.E.1973.The Nature of Human
Consciousness. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman [viii]
Dunne, J.W. 1927 An Experiment with Time.
London: Faber & Faber [x]
http://www.chez.com/crp/marti/papus.htm
Papus.
1958. The Tarot of the Bohemians
(trans. A. P. Morton). New York: Samuel Weiser. [xi]
Michell, J. 1969. A View over Atlantis.
London: Sago Press [xiv]
Ascott, R.1967. "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision". Cybernetica, Journal of the International
Association for Cybernetics (Namur),
9, pp. 247-264, and 10, pp.
25-56 [xv]
Nora, S & Minc, A. 1978. L’Informatisation
de la société. Paris: La Documentation Française [xvi]
Foerster, H von.1981. Observing Systems.
New York: Intersystems. [xvii]
Huxley, A. 1949. Proper Studies.
London: Chatto & Windus. [xviii]
Eco.U. 1979. A Theory of Semiotics.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press [xx]
Barthes, R. Mythologies.
Paris: Seuil, 1957 [xxi]
Fourier, C.1971.The
Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier; selected texts on work, love, and passionate attraction. (Trans.
Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. London: Beacon Press. [xxii]
Derrida, J. 1978. Writing and Difference.
(trans. Alan Bass). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [xxiii]
Propp, V. 1985. Theory and History of
Folklore (ed. Anatoly Liberman). Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. [xxvi]
Ouspensky, P.D. 1931. New Model of the
Universe. New York: Knopf. [xxvii]
Henderson,L. D.1983. The Fourth Dimension
and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. Princeton University Press. [xxviii]
Henderson, op cit. [xxix]
McKenna, Terence K., McKenna, Dennis J., Stevens,
Jay.1993. The invisible landscape : mind,
hallucinogens, and the I Ching. San Francisco: Harper. [xxx]
Schultes, R. & Raffauf, R. 1992.Vine of the Soul. New York: Synergetic
Press. (Richard
Evans Schultes, Director of the Botanical Museum (Emeritus), Harvard University
and Robert Raffauf, Professor of Pharmacognosy & Medicinal Chemistry
(Emeritus), Northeastern University). [xxxi]
Ascott, R. 1999. “Seeing Double: art and the technology of transcendence”. In:
Ascott, R. ed.. Reframing Consciousness.:
art, mind and technology. Exeter:
Intellect. [xxxv]
Narby, J. 1998. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA
and the origins of knowledge.New York: Tarcher [xxxvi]
Borges, J. L. "The Analytical Language of John
Wilkins." In: La Nación, 8
February 1942. [xxxvii]
Borges, J.L. 1964. Other Inquisitions
1937 –1952.( trans:Sims, R..L.C Austin: University of Texas Press, Austin. [xxxviii]
Ascott, R.1994. "The Planetary Collegium". ISEA ‘94, Catalogue and proceedings of the
symposium. Helsinki: UIAH.
© Roy ASCOTT & Leonardo/Olats, février 2003 |