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Art, Technology, Consciousness: Mind @ Large

ed. Roy Ascott
Intellect Books, Bristol & Portland, 2000.
204 pp., illus. Trade, $ 79,02; paper, $ 39.95.
ISBN: 1841500410; ISBN: 1841500739.

Reviewed by Fred Andersson
Department of Art History and Musicology, Lund University, Box 117, 221 00
Lund, Sweden
Email: konstfred@hotmail.com

Robots and computers might function as models of the human brain. Constructing them and studying their performance might give us some insight into the nature of intelligence, in a broad sense. And it is no doubt that computers have had a great share in changing our thinking about thinking. But consciousness always seem to lurk somewhere behind, or inside, the receptive structure of the brain. In other words it appears to be impossible to study the very same thinking which performs the thinking. Technologies might function as models of thinking and as tools for art, but consciousness appears to be somewhere else, somewhere on "the edge" of thinking. When, on the other hand, biological structures are technologically manipulated, biology might be turned into art. These are some of the various challenging and complicated issues referred to by the title of this book.

It is a report from the conference Consciousness Reframed at UWCN (University of Wales College, Newport) in August 2000. In his introduction, Roy Ascott writes about "Life @ the edge of the net", "moistmedia", and "moist mind". He states that "moist mind" is, among other things, "technoetic multiconsciousness", "tele-biotic, neuro-constructive, nano-robotic", "digitally dry, biologically wet, and spiritually numinous", situated "where dry pixels and wet molecules converge" and "on the edge of the net". In this particular context, I am not in favor of this kind of rhetoric metaphors and neologisms, which I consider to be more mystifying than revealing. The "moist" terms seem to cover almost everything that escapes definition, including the "psi-bernetic" and the "spiritually numinous". It is interesting that Ascott’s statements expose the close affinity between pure idealism and pure materialism. I also think that this might be more generally true of the marriage between New Age, technology and various current globalisms, utopianisms and futurisms. The case is quite simple: Both in pure materialism and in pure idealism it issupposed that Reality is one and united. In that case, wet molecules and dry pixels would actually converge, and it would actually be possible to explain consciousness and spiritual phenomena in purely physical terms. The New Age and the New Man would be close at hand.

Such utopianism is more appropriate in an artist’s writings than it would be in the writings of a critical scholar, and it must certainly be natural for someone like Ascott, well known and rightly celebrated for his contribution to a great change in global communication. But I still think that some additional elements of critical distance would make his present argument more trustworthy. On the other hand, most of the 39 short papers collected in the book are written in a surprisingly sound and matter-of-fact manner. There are a lot of references to quantum physics and biotechnology, but I see neither a lot of moist, nor any compounds of molecules or pixels. What I see is a number of brief introductions into interesting and challenging ways of modelling or mapping such concepts as Place, Body, Emotion, Mind, Consciousness. I think this is fully satisfying. Maybe I’m just wearing bad glasses!

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