Consciousness Reframed 2003: Art and
Consciousness in the Post-biological Era
The Fifth CAiiA International Research
Conference
UWCN, Caerleon Campus, Wales UK
July 3-5, 2003
Convenor: Roy Ascott
Reviewed by Pia Tikka
Elomedia research school
University of Art and Design
Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 Helsinki, Finland
pia.tikka@uiah.fi
Consciousness Reframed 2003 returned to Caerleon where the conference
was first convened in 1997, as the multidiciplinary arena for issues
of art, technology and consciousness. Combining both theory and practice,
it offered an extremely broad range of presentations. The issues varied
from purely philosophical approaches to consciousness allowing a glance
on the hotspot dialogue between virtual reality and our everyday reality,
to practice-based analysis and the exploration of embodied mind and
its possible applications in negotiating the boundaries between arts
and sciences. Many perspectives seemed to involve the post-biological
condition of art, put to practical use in the symbiosis of technology
and consciousness, or, the technoetic as defined by Roy Ascott. [1
] Many apparent differences between various approaches on the conceptual
level may only be matter of perspective. As Eril Baily put it at the
Newport train sation: "We all know, what we are talking about, but
we do not know, what it is".
When attending the presentations, it seemed to me that philosophers,
on one hand, artists on the other, understand and discuss consciousness
very differently. This is, why, as a preface to my review for Consciousness
Reframed, I would like to briefly sketch my vision of convergence
between conventionally distinct disciplines like, let‘s say,
cognitive materialism, represented by Daniel Dennett [2], and conceptual
idealism [3] adopted for example in the theories of telematic art
by Roy Ascott. Transgressing the preset conceptual borders of these
distinct domains enables us to scrutinize their structure from outside.
This method of stepping outside is traditionally used by artists,
trying to view phenomena from unconventional perspectives, e.g. upside-down,
or, as a collage of conflicting perspectives. The inside and outside
are interdependent entities, evolving in a continuous interaction
and transformation. This interaction is emergent and productive as
such, but viewed in the scientific context, it needs to be, if not
explained, but somehow conceptualized, or described.
Neuroscientists and consciousness researchers may or may not accept
a view of the global neuronal workspace model as a conceptual metaphor
for consciousness, but in this review I reflect it as a plausible
one. The workspace model, according to Dennett [4] , suggests a non-hierarcial,
collateral, co-operative, even competitive, modular system, which
allows a multidimensional global accessibility. I claim that the metaphor
of consciousness as a global workspace attributed above, characterizes
perfectly well the assertion of phenomena both on the neuro-biological
and techno-social levels of observation. This is why I am tempted
to suggest a broadscale conceptual isomorphism ranging in-between
the microscale structure of consciousness to the macroscale structure
of the planetary consciousness. I dare to put forward this idea, because
I am convinced that the fundamental structure of human conceptual
system is relatively independent of the differences in languages and
cultural inheritance, but intrinsically dependent on the embodied
orientation to the environment. I also assume that the way we speak
about very different issues is based on the repetition and recycling
of same, assumably limited and slowly changing embodied inference
structures, such as the body-based orientational metaphors of George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson. [5] And this allows us to conclude that at
least artists and other visionaries can freely use the method of intrusion,
transgression and analogizing when exploring the conceptual resources
of other disciplines. For an artist the tools of broadscale conceptual
isomorphism, and, the metaphor of multidimensional global workspace
enable an access to the infinite domain of conceptual evolution –
from private/neuro-biological to public/cultural dimensions of consciousness.
Through my understanding, this no-one’s land is where the micro
and macro-environments of consciousness research intertwine, and where
a holistic dynamic organism-like ontology about consciousness as a
subject-environment interaction emerges.
Consciousness seems to be easier to explain in conceptual form than
to grasp in material form (e.g. neurobiological, electrochemical).
It reveals itself, not in products, but in processes, like the behavior
or interaction of a Subject within his or her environment. For a journey
to an unfamiliar and exotic environment as consciousness is, between
the mystical and rational, Michael Punt suggested adapting the phenomenal
aspects of nineteenth century science. Observing and experimenting
with the actual processes, as they appear, might expose something
to our scrutiny that is conventionally, scientifically, or even intuitively,
not presupposed to appear.
Consciousness Reframed, literally, puts out the question whether we
can study consciousness only from outside, inside, or outskirts. The
sovereignty that inhabits peripheral fields of consciousness is Art,
or, more widely, imagination plus conceptual structures mediated by
metaphors. These are the tools that enable an access to consciousness,
which becomes both Subject and Object of research. For observing the
phenomena of world-embedded self-consciousness, for example, Robert
Pepperell introduced the metaphoric tool of video feedback, a loop
of infinite regression. I am tempted to suggest that innovation of
this kind of experiment supports the idea of the broad-scale conceptual
isomorphism outlined above. According to Pepperell, the video feedback’s
actual self-reference in interaction with the dynamics of its environment
visualizes the system's awareness of its audience, and its own awareness
of this awareness – it becomes the conscious artwork.
Many participants of the conference worked on sketching the "Big Picture".
But how big can the picture be? And, what there is to frame? Artists,
while exploring how to couple the separate environments of virtual
and real (e.g. "Matrix"), seemed to concentrate in the human mind/body
experience, either conscious, and/ or subconscious, or preconscious,
depending from the perspective. Roger Malina pointed out to the other
direction: most of our environment, the universe, is inaccessible
to human senses. It is virtual in the deep sense, Malina affirms.
The universe as a virtual environment is described only by augmented
and amplified senses of simulations and visualizations, and with the
help of machines and non-human scale techniques. Of course, we also
can claim that these tools are extensions of human imaginative consciousness.
Seen from either the material or phenomenological point of view, even
if we did not know anything about the existence of universe, we would
still inhabit it.
The functions (thoughts, behaviours, material products) of conscious
mind can be seen as reflecting the evolutive (biological) state of
that proper individual mind, and, simultaneously, the evolutive (cultural)
state of the global techno-social consciousness. In some aspect, conciousness
with its imaginative power, is virtual in as deep sense as Malina’s
universe. When added that augmented digital technologies enable human
mind to escape its bio-physical stone-age prison, the matrix of a
‘reality’. Eril Baily suggested that every-day-reality can
be considered a sub-set of the virtual. According to her "the authentic
locus of consciousness [is located] within the virtual out of which
realities are fabricated and substantiated".
While cosmologists continue working with the macro-scale mysteries
of the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy, which are assumed
to compose 70% of the universe, the same mysterious 70% must also
somehow penetrate and define the micro-scale environment of human
bio-physical body. This is relevant question in the perspective of
the broad-scale conceptual isomorphism. Could human body and its sensitivity
for embodied emergent phenomena work as another kind of experiment
field for observing these phenomena normally related to cosmology?
What is the material cause for private experiences like emotions or
the feelings of what happens? In his presentation Jim Laukes proposed
that interactive art could provide the toolkit for verifying identical,
shared subjective experience, such as empathy.
A remarkably large number of presenters’ curriculum vitae included
active participation in creating interactive immersive art. Many cases
were practice-based, functioning as a starting point for combining
artwork and theory. Char Davies presented her view on immersive virtual
reality experienced in a real cave environment – a perception
of a shared "expanded" consciousness. The sensual dimension of aesthetic
experience, built around bio-spherical metaphors, also guided Stahl
Stenslie’s multi-sensory experiments. According to Stenslie,
the dynamic indirect, tacit and body-based processes are a fundamental
modus operandi to the consciousness. Yacov Sharir had created a control
tool for an interactive dance performance, where his disembodied dancer/self
is re-embodied in cyber-performers. The domain that rarely is approached
or defined from the preconceptual, which is its most natural and sovereign
field, is the body. Kjell Petersen claimed that advanced formal body
language is the primary knowledge base in investigating "how the technological
augmenting of our access to the world can be understood from the perspective
of the body".
How to tell difference between fictive, or virtual reality and the
normality? In Karin Søndergaard’s work the fictive reality
of actors gets intertwined with the every-day-environment of the normal-others,
who will never know that they participated in a scripted trans-normal
situation. On the one hand, fiction is fiction. On the other hand,
once emerged in human mind, imaginative ideas tend to turn out factual.
Only literature can deal with the blurred line between cognitive science
and science fiction, says Armando Montilla. I would like to ask how
soon will the future entertainment transform external body media (e.g.
audio-visual books, film) into internal, being directly "printed"
into the individual’s brains, as anticipated in the science fiction
by Montilla.
According to Adriana de Souza e Silva, the cell phone environment
is creating a hybridization of physical space, with a novel generation
of cyberspace nomads always connected, navigating in the digital/virtual
environments. In order to interact more deeply with complex virtual
(mind and environment) spaces, Lucia Leão suggests that the
orientation of the ancient maps and labyrinths could help us to better
understand phenomenon of expanded consciousness. Also the sense of
atmosphere could be described as virtual environment, or consciousness.
As Ioanna Spanou and Dimitris Charitos associate atmosphere "not only
with the interface between perception and cognition, but also with
the interface between perception and feeling". Shaun Murray’s
three architectural experiments with the life-like organic-dynamic
metaphors Breeding, Feeding, and Leeching, are produced in order to
observe an object interacting with the environment, resulting a set
of most interactive and astonishing 2D still images I have experienced
in a while.
Consciousness Reframed 2003 juxtaposed many apparently different discourses
of art and science, characterized by dicothomy between theory and
practice, private and social, biology and technology, virtual and
real. It seemed to allow interrelated, competitive, and cooperative
human activities emerge in a mutually accessible global workspace.
The reason may be found in Ascott‘s words: "To artists (…)
it is less a matter of seeking to explain consciousness and more a
matter of exploring how [consciousness] might be navigated, altered,
or extended; in short, reframed." [6]
The facts of reality forced me to leave out more profound scrutiny
of many interesting presentations. We look forward to the forthcoming
publications of the collected texts which will do justice to those,
whom I was not able to include, and open the debates to a wider constiuency.
Consciouness Reframed 2003 fullfilled my expectations as a planetary
platform, or workspace, and, as returning to Finland to my own solitary
research chamber, I knew that many enthustiatic artists and researchers
were out there to reconnect.
Abstracts are found in http://www.caiia-star.net/production/conref-03/abstracts.html
[1 ] R. Ascott (ed.), Reframing Consciousness (Exeter: Intellect Books,
1999) p.1.
[2] D. Dennett, Tietoisuuden selitys (Consciousness Explained), Finnish
edition, translator Tiina Kartano (Helsinki: Art House, 1999)
[3] See the introduction by E. A. Shanken (ed.) Telematic Embrace:
A Love Story? Roy Ascott's Theories of Telematic Art. "Peter Russell,
writing in 1982, built on Teilhard’s notion of noosphere in his
thesis on the ‘global brain.’ Such an idea appealed to Ascott,
who in 1966-67 had theorized that ‘A highly interactive CAM network
on an international level might form the embryonic structure of a
world brain.’ [See R. Ascott, "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic
Vision", Cybernetica: Review of the International Association for
Cybernetics, Vol. X, No. 1, 1967, 25-56 pp.37.]" Reference in http://telematic.walkerart.org/timeline/timeline_shanken.html
[4] D. Dennett, "Are we Explaining Consciousness Yet?" , Final draft
[cognition.fin] for Cognition, (August 27, 2000) http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/cognition.fin.html
[5] G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied
Mind and it’s Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books,
1999).
[6] R. Ascott (ed.), Reframing Consciousness (Exeter: Intellect Books,
1999) p.2.
