2013
For the first time, somewhere between the definitions of the brain and mind, electrical signals based on specific cognitive operations can be identified and measured with applied Electroencephalography on a consumer level.
This apparatus, and the adjoining software, establish an interface into various spheres of existence thereby bridging the neuro kinetic and virtual with perceived notions of reality. In mediating the post-human aesthetics of digital necromancy, this system has been called to serve as a means for contemplation of the reciprocal nature of semiology directed towards the relationship of cognition and projection of the self.
The practice works something like this: As I think “Focus” the bonnet reads this specific electrical signal unique to the thought. This is then rendered as a key command through cognitive recognition software on the laptop to an open serial port that relays a command in real time to an open source micro-controller programmed to drive a servo mounted to the focus ring on the lens of the projector.
As I think focus, the projector focuses the text “FOCUS” into focus allowing the word to be read and re-read in repetitions providing the textual object to maintain itself based on its own nature. This simple exercise allows the objects of technology to reach an interconnected form of ontology, where no separate part serves to break the focus of the philosophical regimen.
As Sloterdjik puts it in the Art of Philosophy as the defining characteristic of anthropotechnology, “The topic is science as practice, or alternatively, science as anthropotechnology, although the latter term only features here to the extent that it means people using practice to develop themselves. In giving the topic this specific title, we are already expressing the idea that practicing a profession dedicated to theory has to be seen somehow as asceticism and, moreover, as a process that helps the agents of scholarship as such to get fit. In this context, scholarship means more than the sum of its results; it is also the embodiment of the mental or logical procedures that help its pupils to make the transition from everyday to theoretical behavior.” Pg. 11
The thinking that takes place within this practice of epoché is not a thing that finds a pure form within the arts, or any other practice. It is, as Niklas Luhmann would have it, as an “unobservable observation.” It is a practice that takes place when thoughts reflex back onto themselves thereby transporting the thinker into a separate space to find some clarification within the linguistic system that is available (and spoken) when we address something that may carry the hope of truth.
As McEvilley puts it, “The self is seen as a constantly changing stream of impressions and thoughts with no apparent unifying principle. Even the body is not acknowledged as a ground of uniformity, because what we experience directly is not a body, but mental impressions that may or may not be interpreted as evidence of a body.” He continues, “Structuralism and semiology have brought about an apotheosis of language into a kind of transpersonal mind that renders the individual self trivial.” (152)
He continues in citing Barthes, wherein “the necessity to substitute language itself for the person. It is the language which speaks, not the author” Language, as the ultimate speaker, both transcends and voids the self: “I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a grammatical ‘subject,’ not a ‘person’”
For David Hume, our experience is a stream of ever changing “point-instant events” with nothing that may be regarded as a unifying principle. Seen in this way, the self is not a perceived object, but a mental object, created by an organizing operation performed on a stream of impressions which in themselves lack such organization. Hume goes on to say, “What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions.” From this heap of random images a sense of personal identity is constructed.
In contrast, an Eastern philosophical disposition is based to a large extent on the Buddhist idea of not-self, or soullessness. Being derived out of the Abidharma texts, this concept finds significance in the relationship between the human (self) to robotization (other). In a learning of the self through this system, the mechanical means of being can be taken apart and put back together again at will with no sacrifice of the spirit.
Ramakrishna, eliminated the words “I” and “Mine” from his vocabulary, referring only to himself as “this”. Ramana Maharshi, constantly kept the question of “what am I?” before the mind. Wittgenstein, also changing “I” to “this” also eliminated “I think” replacing it with “there is a thought”. Ryle with his “systematic elusiveness of the concept of “I” continues the work, among others.
The jargon of these computer technologies stands to, as once again McEvilley puts it, “… to bleach the metaphorical color out of language.” It is now cleaned up and freed form anthropomorphism. Human feelings likewise are reduced to a neutralizing status of “information” in the terminology of information processing-data, input and output storage and retrieval. Like Ramakrishna, Maharshi, and the others previously mentioned, Computer talk, with its distancing of claims and metaphors, may itself lend some utility towards absolving the soul from our speech.
In the continuing process of “mindfully” orchestrated technological mediations, I hope to build upon a practice where by the facets of philosophy and to some extent critical theory are rendered into a systemized document of the limitations of humanity and the usefulness of time in suspension.
This apparatus, and the adjoining software, establish an interface into various spheres of existence thereby bridging the neuro kinetic and virtual with perceived notions of reality. In mediating the post-human aesthetics of digital necromancy, this system has been called to serve as a means for contemplation of the reciprocal nature of semiology directed towards the relationship of cognition and projection of the self.
The practice works something like this: As I think “Focus” the bonnet reads this specific electrical signal unique to the thought. This is then rendered as a key command through cognitive recognition software on the laptop to an open serial port that relays a command in real time to an open source micro-controller programmed to drive a servo mounted to the focus ring on the lens of the projector.
As I think focus, the projector focuses the text “FOCUS” into focus allowing the word to be read and re-read in repetitions providing the textual object to maintain itself based on its own nature. This simple exercise allows the objects of technology to reach an interconnected form of ontology, where no separate part serves to break the focus of the philosophical regimen.
As Sloterdjik puts it in the Art of Philosophy as the defining characteristic of anthropotechnology, “The topic is science as practice, or alternatively, science as anthropotechnology, although the latter term only features here to the extent that it means people using practice to develop themselves. In giving the topic this specific title, we are already expressing the idea that practicing a profession dedicated to theory has to be seen somehow as asceticism and, moreover, as a process that helps the agents of scholarship as such to get fit. In this context, scholarship means more than the sum of its results; it is also the embodiment of the mental or logical procedures that help its pupils to make the transition from everyday to theoretical behavior.” Pg. 11
The thinking that takes place within this practice of epoché is not a thing that finds a pure form within the arts, or any other practice. It is, as Niklas Luhmann would have it, as an “unobservable observation.” It is a practice that takes place when thoughts reflex back onto themselves thereby transporting the thinker into a separate space to find some clarification within the linguistic system that is available (and spoken) when we address something that may carry the hope of truth.
As McEvilley puts it, “The self is seen as a constantly changing stream of impressions and thoughts with no apparent unifying principle. Even the body is not acknowledged as a ground of uniformity, because what we experience directly is not a body, but mental impressions that may or may not be interpreted as evidence of a body.” He continues, “Structuralism and semiology have brought about an apotheosis of language into a kind of transpersonal mind that renders the individual self trivial.” (152)
He continues in citing Barthes, wherein “the necessity to substitute language itself for the person. It is the language which speaks, not the author” Language, as the ultimate speaker, both transcends and voids the self: “I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a grammatical ‘subject,’ not a ‘person’”
For David Hume, our experience is a stream of ever changing “point-instant events” with nothing that may be regarded as a unifying principle. Seen in this way, the self is not a perceived object, but a mental object, created by an organizing operation performed on a stream of impressions which in themselves lack such organization. Hume goes on to say, “What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions.” From this heap of random images a sense of personal identity is constructed.
In contrast, an Eastern philosophical disposition is based to a large extent on the Buddhist idea of not-self, or soullessness. Being derived out of the Abidharma texts, this concept finds significance in the relationship between the human (self) to robotization (other). In a learning of the self through this system, the mechanical means of being can be taken apart and put back together again at will with no sacrifice of the spirit.
Ramakrishna, eliminated the words “I” and “Mine” from his vocabulary, referring only to himself as “this”. Ramana Maharshi, constantly kept the question of “what am I?” before the mind. Wittgenstein, also changing “I” to “this” also eliminated “I think” replacing it with “there is a thought”. Ryle with his “systematic elusiveness of the concept of “I” continues the work, among others.
The jargon of these computer technologies stands to, as once again McEvilley puts it, “… to bleach the metaphorical color out of language.” It is now cleaned up and freed form anthropomorphism. Human feelings likewise are reduced to a neutralizing status of “information” in the terminology of information processing-data, input and output storage and retrieval. Like Ramakrishna, Maharshi, and the others previously mentioned, Computer talk, with its distancing of claims and metaphors, may itself lend some utility towards absolving the soul from our speech.
In the continuing process of “mindfully” orchestrated technological mediations, I hope to build upon a practice where by the facets of philosophy and to some extent critical theory are rendered into a systemized document of the limitations of humanity and the usefulness of time in suspension.
