Technoetic Arts - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2012

In the immersion process the border between the canvas and the spectator or between screen and user dissolves, and the distance or physical separation between virtual and physical space is no longer given. The self can expand into the virtual, to test its own boundaries by abandoning the materiality of the limited corpus (Ostermann and Wenzel 2011). This phenomenon can also be understood as a dialogue, an important exchange, which can be itself an illuminating experience for the self and the mind. If the subject is an individual in an auditorium and the object is changing between the physical space of a digital theatre surrounded by a 360° canvas and the virtual world on the canvas, how can the encounter or the immersion process be described and even more important: how can it be induced?

The history of ‘virtual’ museums is linked in the museological model of fruition to the history of the traditional museum, from the musas to the Louvre, from the wunderkammer to the intangible heritage museums, passing by Science Centers and Museums of Modern Art, from websites to augmented reality, from audioguides to video games, passing by QR Code. This history is traced by the visitor experience, from a free observation/browsing, to the guided observation, studying the types of interaction that the visitor engages in, to the object ‘information’ that he or she acquires or handles in the visit, and also considering the essence of the museum as a ‘sacred place’. Do the most advanced models of virtual museums offer the same innovation in the fruition of the information?

As Malinowsky states, myth is closely related to rite, presenting the social and moral values that rite asserts in each cyclical repetition. Rite marks the threshold between the sacred and profane, allowing access to myth as an art form, as a narrative expression both of the sacred – in the extension of meaning Emile Durkheim introduced with the term ‘collective consciousness’ – and of the ‘collective unconscious’ as Jung defined it. If it is true that the rite of passage to the adult world, the initiation rite, is one of the most archaic rites in aiming to protect society against the risk of cultural innovation inherent in the younger generations, then it is legitimate to ask what our new myths are regarding education. When technology accelerates the mechanisms eroding collective memory, which rites renew educational myths in everyday practice? When technology dematerializes the devices on which rite and its inherent techniques of control are based, what new forms does mythological narration assume? What roles do new media play in creating a direct channel between the collective consciousness and individual experience, between the nervous system and our environment, enveloping individuals in the telematic embrace Roy Ascott described in 2003, and which not only explains the concept of the Global Village that Marshall McLuhan introduced in 1966, but also delineates the space – time of students in contemporary learning processes? Reading the contemporary educational system through the lens of myth and rite, where new technologies play a central role, allows us to follow a path that traces the progressive impact of media on cognitive processes from the initial emergence of the concept ‘collective consciousness’ onwards, and that offers one of the most interesting interpretations of the ‘open school’ experience in Derrick de Kerkhove’s concept of ‘connective intelligence’ (analysed in my Ph.D. thesis). But myth also allows us to observe those cracks, breaks and discontinuities that mark the places in which contemporary knowledge is created, which is why we find Nietzsche (who dedicated much of his work to myth), Michel Foucault and Ivan Illich at the centre of International Debate on Education for the last decade due to their critical approach to institutions.

This article takes Afrofuturism as a model for addressing the concerns for digital and technology arts practice in Africa. The focus is on a mechanism for decentralization of a centralized western worldview. Cyberfeminist notions from Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’; propositions for an African Science Fiction; and Bouriaud’s ‘Radicant’ are additionally taken into account to reflect similar mechanism in addressing the mechanisms of decentralization. All these act as speculative methods, which are applied to thinking about the concerns that come with contemporary Globalization. The aim is to rethink these issues in globalisaton, particularly with regard to creative and cultural practice with communication technologies emanating from Africa.

The project ‘Te Kore Rongo Hungaora’/‘Uncontainable Second Nature’ is predicated on a bridge between Māori and European cultures. Based on this view, works from art and science were re-contextualized as cultural texts symbolic of belief systems. The project was conceived and curated for exhibitions in Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro. Discipline was not viewed as fixed, but fluid in a transformational environment. Five themes were selected from within European and Māori world-views: cosmological context, all is energy, life emerged from water, anthropic principle and integrated systems. The selected works addressed more than one of these thematic regions. While aspects of thinking might be shared across a cultural boundary, the agreement is only at the level of summary of view, rather than at the level of detail. This distinction is important in moving human thinking forward to an integrated condition particularly where negotiating hybridity is concerned. Certainly knowledge is advanced in a sense, and cultural bridging can be observed in practice at several New Zealand organizations such as the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and the Department of Conservation which all employ staff whose position entails observance and care of Māori perspectives on subjects under investigation and study. The connection between the work of Kaumatua (elder) Dr Te Huirangi Waikerepuru and Zoologist Mike Paulin in the exhibitions was semantic rather than computational. Here the function of metaphor in uniting what were previously considered divergent world-views becomes apparent. Myth is often reported as distinctive to a specific culture, however, considering interconnections ignites a more expansive view of culture and consciousness.

The objective of this article is to investigate the perceptual experience of a mediated temporality as it pertains to the structure and iteration of the narrative matrix. It examines the construction of the internal narrative assembled from disparate points of media production and distribution fictionalized into codified sequences through the operational stages of figuration and the subsequent iteration. The article will consider the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic within the narrative matrix of the Arab Spring, and the subsequent breakdown of the chronological and mimetic activity.

[…] time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal experience.

This article discusses the role of myth in Persian literature and poetry, and how it has affected Sufism and the evolution of its mysticism. Sufism developed in the seventh (3 AH) century solely within the confines of Islamic orthodoxy. The Sufi path began as a protest movement against Islam and the Caliphs, and progressively enriched its many dimensions until the tenth century, when the majority of artists, calligraphers and poets were Sufi. The article will investigate Sufism as an activism movement related to politics, religion and social circumstances, and its collaboration with new media in finding a new, contemporary method of protest in today’s Iran.

This article will contribute to a synthetic understanding of the factors that influence the subject’s experience with digital data, in the presence of a new kind of ‘materiality’ that is formed in the confluence of physical matter and Information and Communication Technologies that I call Material-ict. The aim is to offer society a critical and creative way to deal with the process in which the electronic and physical dimensions of reality merge and enhance the awareness of the paradigm change that the Internet of Things is bringing to our experience. The article can contribute to the development of a new cognitive paradigm to challenge the current view that objects and environments are inanimate, and the shaping of a framework from which to reconsider interactions between people, social processes, things and environments in the society of knowledge. This framework offers insights into educative, technological developments and cultural programmes to integrate actants (actor–network theory) and citizens in the hybrid experience in which Internet, social processes and matter merge. The objective is to construct the first steps of an analysis framework to understand a few of the most important features that support the emergent model of representation that is impacting the subject’s experience with digital data. In order to construct this framework, this research is grounded in the intersection of art, media and experience. The main dimensions analysed in the article are (1) the merging of digital and analogue forms of experience; (2) new actors and forms of interaction; (3) forms of heterogeneous knowledge construction; (4) lively interfaces and animated environments; and (5) biotechnological convergence. The article will show how the outcome of this confluence is taking shape in different forms of (1) indexation, (2) simulation, (3) translation of matter into data and (4) ubiquitous hybrid networks (social+matter/nature).

In today’s world, there are more than 5000 languages and dialects in use, of which only 100 may be considered of major importance. As Dreyfuss (1972) states, inter-communication amongst them has proved not just difficult but impossible. Because a universal language would be the solution to this problem, over 800 attempts have in fact been made in the last 1000 years to develop an official second language that in time could be adopted by all major countries. Some of the most recognized examples are Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido and Volapuk. However, all of them combine elements of existing languages and rely on the Roman alphabet, which reduces their applicability to certain regions of the world. The aim of this project is to explore the world of pictographic communication and develop an effective system for conveying information/knowledge on a universal scale. This would potentially bridge linguistic and cultural gaps, transcending boundaries, and thereby creating a broader vision of multiculturalism. In this sense, we find useful the notion of ‘semantography’, from the Greek word semanticos, significant meaning, and graphin, to write. The term was coined by Charles K. Bliss in 1947 to define his development of a non-alphabetical symbol writing system, based on the principles of ideographic writing and chemical symbolism. Semantography was the name of Charles K. Bliss’ proposed book for the Blissymbolic communication system.

This article proposes a form of visual narrative that fuses authoring and data within a unified paradigm called the ‘visual image data field’. A structure with multidimensional connections in a fluid environment that self-reflexively responds to its own usage supports the future language of visual sources. The intuitive gestures and curiosity that drive visual knowledge similarly drive development of this organic architecture. Diffusing iconic images that are shorthand for conveying historical trends makes this type of unambiguous expository reading obsolete as images are embedded within the rich image fields native to digital media. A topsy-turvy game of images upsets the dominance of iconic images most frequently reproduced in text-based media and redistributes meaning across a pictorial array. Meaning not only changes according to the juxtaposition of images, but also emerges from the cracks between similar scenes. Images in relationship to other images acquire a granularity that deepens meaning by adding different qualities – less narrative and quantifiable – of understanding. If images become the ‘narremes’ or grammatical elements in a visual narratology, then meaning emerges from their sequencing and re-sequencing.

The main assumption of this presentation is that networking can be conceived in terms of an effect of apparatuses. It is characterized by hierarchical observations, normalizing judgements, examinations. From this point of view, networking is not an inter-disciplinary system or – even – a-disciplinary, but it is in fact a discipline. Then, given that one of the main aspects of networking is that we are completely merged with it, it is quite difficult to consider it as a discipline with a critical eye; and we can perceive its consequences mainly within the educational system. The aim of this presentation is, first, to describe networking as a contemporary practice, coextensive with a specific disciplinary system. In this case, I would like to demonstrate how networking (specifically its most massive and less ingenuous branch, social networking) is one of the most powerful apparatus for contemporary subjectivation processes. Following Deleuze, it will be pointed out how networking is based on a peculiar regime of signs that reduces drastically the processes of subjectivation it determines, to the scarce possibilities offered by the apparatus. Second, some exit strategies from the (social) networking apparatus are suggested, built on three keywords: anomie, anonymity and untimeliness. They are based on the assumption that – against a continual push towards the presence or the telepresence – the absence can be a concrete contemporary kind of process of subjectivation.

Day to day, we are used to living in a world of beings with well-defined edges. This world is ruled by dialectical modes of engagement that reinforce the individual being in the context of other beings. Concepts like the Freudian Other serve to confirm the place and the boundaries of a subject. Congruently, reaching beyond the reality, myths negotiate the relationship of the individual with the sublime. The dialectically conceived world does not provide a sufficiently complex conceptualization of our existence today. In searching for an alternative ontology, I am looking at structures that place human and informational multiplicity at their core. The type of individuation arising from a complex system does not form a subject, but instead crystallizes as an entity akin to a demon. In order to interact with such forces, one turns to sorcerous methodologies, which facilitate the transgression into many. In exchanging the vertically conceived subject for a horizontally defined multiplicity, one enters into a pact with the demon. I am interested in artistic expressions of such alliance and the role of a network user as a sorcerer dealing with the demon.

The way information is perceived and defined today is no longer an accurate portrayal of the interactions occurring among user–information–interface. We are so accustomed to the traditional models of human–machine interactions that we often overlook the fact that first- and second-order cybernetics definitions are now antiquated and one-dimensional when used to describe user–information–interface interactions. Within this new era of user–information–interface relationship, the introduction of the concept of Meta-Environment reflects a more accurate representation of the processes of information gathering and sharing and their interactions. Meta-Environments break the mold of traditional thinking and refocus attention not on the user, information or interface alone, but on the relationships and processes as a whole. It expands cybernetics to its fourth order while focusing on the relationship among user-information-interface as a Complex Adaptive System.

Archival art has been discussed so far in spatial terms, as archival installation, emphasizing stability of content and narrativity. Performative archiving is introduced here as intervention practice producing empowered public spheres in the context of a generalized network archival culture. These archiving practices do not produce content, but dispositives that enable the recension of archival data in distributed processes, not unlike oral forms and rituals of transmission of knowledge. Synchronicity of performance, in distant or person-to-person encounters, creates the possibility of contesting co-utterances. Such works experiment on new forms of participation and collective writing, determining the roles and responsibility of subjects during the development of archival time, regulating different levels of interaction among persons, social groups, institutions, practices, thematic areas, media, physical and virtual spaces. They are centrifugal processes that resist the thematization of the archive and its confinement within the discourse of art. Their intervention aims at a different mode of instituting in the world of art, which problematizes the local conditions of social spaces and cultural institutions. They shift our interest away from archival accumulation and preservation, away from the ‘ideology of the trace’, and towards the moment of speech and act that bears the ‘capacity to aspire’. While they are triggered by an intention to actively institute, to organize tactics of action, they insist on the political performance of ‘act and speech’ at the moment when they occur.

This article is a reflection of the project ‘Welcome Aboard’, which I collaborated on in 2011, with two scientists Nicola Armaroli (Ist. ISOF/CNR, Bologna and Molecular Photoscience Group, Bologna) and Vincenzo Balzani (Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician, University of Bologna). The video establishes a dialogue based on Buckminster Fuller’s ‘World Game’ where they offer possible scenarios for our planet running under renewable energy sources. Ultimately, a democratic system of energy sharing, between consumers and suppliers, was proposed to be put at the forefront. The article begins with David Bohm’s focus on how a collective thought process can have drastic affects on our society. He proposes that we recognize the ‘whole’ in which we live to avoid becoming a society of fragmented incoherency. Similarly, as an engineer Buckminster Fuller has devoted himself to finding an effective action to change the world through a global approach, which he calls a whole-system perspective. The technology of the Smart Grid, proposed in the dialogue between the two scientists of ‘Welcome Aboard’ in which every individual produces, shares and consumes energy (electricity), seems to be a new tool that could be combined with other technologies to provide a connectivity between human beings.

Significance appears as an alignment of stimuli, from a sea of randomly and methodically inputted or stored content into what we might call patterns in the mind. What Klaus Conrad refers to as apophenia, Micheal Shermer as patternicity and Jung as synchronicity, significance serves as synaptic moments recognizing formal elements of a thought, in many cases as individualized personal and possibly ethnocentric experience packets in the mind that have some significance to us. Finding significance in something, or associative significance between things, can lead to some interesting and poetic creative forms of expression, for authors such as August Strindberg or Peter Watts. New ideas form in the mind from some origin. Apophenia, patternicity and synchronicity pose some interesting models for how the mind might process information not originating through the senses alone. Integrating the terms apophenia and ‘noetics’, this article will seek to define apophenoetics as the process and study of the way that patterns form and are processed and decoded in the mind from the sea of random content, virtual imagery and history (past/present/future), without the immediate influence of external stimuli, and could serve as a model for creativity, spiritual transcendence and connecting emotionally with others.

This article deals with a critical examination of the philosophical underpinnings in regard to the development of technology in general, and biotechnology in particular. The text also focuses on the political and economic spectrum reflecting the socio-political consequences of the biotech revolution, and in that context also looks into the connections between the organization of biopolitics and biopower, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles, presenting biotech culture through a wide array of experiences and influences. This text looks at how biotechnology is used for biopolitical purposes, in the sense of a political spectrum that reflects positions towards the social, economic and cultural consequences of the biotech revolution.