Technoetic Arts - Volume 2, Issue 3, 2004

This paper introduces seven principles for the design of mixed reality compositions. Despite the novelty of this technology, we have derived the principles from the basic human needs served by traditional architecture as well as those that have arisen since the introduction of information technologies. These principles draw also from research in cognitive science and the recognition of the multivalent, psychosomatic nature of space.

It is suggested how one can imaginatively use a design strategy utilizing performers as tools in the creation of augmented, performative artwork. In order to establish meaningful constructions of performative and augmentative technology, one can use the formal methodologies of advanced formal body language as a tool in the creation process, and thereby have ‘the actual experience’ present in the process as a monitor and a constructive tool. To use a human being as a design tool is a method that uses the skilled performer as a ‘super-’ or ‘extra-’ human tool to investigate through action and analysis. It is a way to test how realities occur under fluid and dynamic conditions within a controlled environment of time and space. This ‘technical’ use of the body as an extra-human behavioural entity, involves the total complex spectrum of intellect, emotions, desires, memory, actions, etc. as a formalized ‘machine’.

The aim of this article is to construct an analogy between the synaptic gap and mediated experience. In the brain sciences, the synaptic gap is defined as the space between neurons, a divide across which the activity of the brain is conducted. Research findings suggest that the network of synaptic gaps in the brain best describes the locus of the mind. Mediated experience denotes a perceptual experience made possible by technology, in which a phenomenon is perceived through a representation that has been transmitted as information across a network. The transmission of representational information across a divide is the crux of the analogy between mediated experience and the synaptic gap. Cybernetics, media theory, information theory and postmodern theory have all explored various inferences that follow from the structural resemblance between neural networks and communications media networks. In the arts, theorists have described a networked global brain and posited the emergence of a collective consciousness. In general, these theories are not widely accepted. This article concludes that these theories might be reframed in the light of a recent distinction provided by cognitive science between consciousness and mind. While it is unlikely that networked mediated experience gives rise to a collective consciousness, it may well constitute aspects of an externalization of a collective mind.

‘Thinking liquid thoughts’ is an essay aiming at the aggregation of ideas and concepts which emerge and float when enquiring if there are characteristics related with the research of fields that artists could explore as new poetic venues for further works. Nanosciences and nanotechnologies will affect almost all features of everybody’s lives in the near future. What are the issues, either desirable or undesirable, we should try to point to considering the specific view related with art, architecture and design. We also have to ask, which are the skills and tools that artists, architects and designers will need for developing research and creating work in these new fields. Opening with the idea of thinking liquid thoughts the essay also speculates about the possibility of creating interactive responsive works of art, extremely sensitive, exploring poetic possibilities for the creation of material products aiming a bi-univocal relationship between the computer simulation and the material realm. There is also research related with educational games and the programming of poetic journeys using virtual reality technologies, pointing to the convergence of silicon with carbon, which will bring about deep implications in the mode of production of things, thoughts ands processes.modelling, animation and VRML, Java Script and Java 3D languages.

Art and Fear, Paul Virilio, (trans. Julie Rose), (2003) London and New York: Continuum, pp.112. Hardback, ISBN 0-8264-6080-1, $16.95.

Avatar Bodies: A Tantra for Posthumanism, Ann Weinstone, (2004) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 227 pp. Hardback, ISBN 0-8166-4146-3, $53.95. Paperback, ISBN 0-8166-4147-1, $17.95.

This page shows a reference list of all the articles that have appeared in this volume of the journal.