As above so below. This aphorism from the ancient Hermetica seems particularly pertinent today in defining the parallelism of ignorance in our understanding of what constitutes 99% of the matter of the universe and 99% of the structure of human consciousness. Indeed, the term individual consciousness may be an oxymoron. Individual self-awareness is certainly a prerequisite of a fully functioning human being, but the extended richness of consciousness is more likely to be the attribute of a field than of an individual organism, however complex that organism's brain. The material body seen as an epiphenomenon of the mindfield is a proposition worthy of some consideration. This way, evolution can be considered as the pathway towards greater and greater access to consciousness, where survival might be measured on a spiritual level, and the fittest are seen as those most able to adapt their self- awareness to the larger whole. Both telematic and pharmacological technologies have a place in this scheme of things, in so far as they serve the transformation of the self and the connectivity of minds. Technoetic research into states of immateriality and processes of materialisation will redefine our ideas of identity and presence. While the science of dark matter cannot be equated with the arts of the occult, associative links between the two domains may yield new initiatives for the artistic imagination. As the quantum coherence of biophotonic networks defines living systems, so planetary consciousness may be illuminated by the coherence of telematic interactivity.
Author Bio
Roy Ascott, Founding Director of the Planetary Collegium, is Professor of Technoetics in the University of Plymouth, England and Adjunct Professor in Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. Amongst many senior academic and advisory appointments he has been Founding Director of CAiiA-STAR (University of Wales College Newport and Plymouth University) from which base the Collegium has evolved; Vice-President and Dean of the San Francisco Art Institute; Professor of Communications Theory, University of Applied Arts, Vienna; Professor and Chair of Fine Art, Minneaplois College of Art & Design; and President of the Ontario College of Art. He is on the Art and Media Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Board in the UK, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.
Roy Ascott is an artist and theorist who has shown, inter alia, at the Venice Biennale, Electra Paris, Ars Electronica Linz, V2 Holland, Milan Triennale, Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil, European Media Festival, and gr2000az at Graz, Austria. His research is in art and the technology of consciousness. He is the founding editor of Technoetic Arts: a journal of speculative research , and he serves on the editorial boards of Leonardo. LEA, Convergence, Digital Creativity, and the Chinese journal Tom.Com. He has advised new media centres and festivals in the UK, North and South America, Europe, and the Far East, as well as the CEC and UNESCO, and convenes the annual international Consciousness Reframed conferences.
His publications are translated into many languages and include the books: Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art Technology and Consciousness.2003 http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8867.html. Technoetic Arts . (Korean trans. & ed. Won-Kon Yi). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press, 2002 Art Technology Consciousness. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2000. Reframing Consciousness. Exeter: Intellect Books.1999. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. & ed. E. Fujihara). Tokyo: NTT Publishing.1998