Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Roy Ascott
www.planetary-collegium.net
syncretic
reality
•in this more flexible causal framework, inanimate and animate nature
is not to be considered as fundamentally different, but as different order
structures of the same immaterial entity.
DRY WET
wet
telematic biological
systems processes
media
POST-BIOLOGICAL CULTURE
© roy ascott 2006
MOIST MANIFESTO
Synthetically luminescent
life forms share their
environment with a biobot,
a robot whose actions are
GFP mice
controlled by a colony of
amoeba acting as its brain.
SymbioticA:
Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory,
University of Western Australia
YASMIN and bio art
To post: yasmin@estia.media.uoa.gr
Singing and Screaming in the Nanofield
• James Gimzewski and Andrew Pelling at the UCLA Department of Chemistry made the
discovery (in 2002) that yeast cells oscillate at audible frequencies.
! The tool with which the cell sounds are extracted – the atomic force microscope (AFM) –
can be regarded as a new type of musical instrument.
! The AFM touches a cell with its small tip, comparable to a record needle feeling the
bumps in a groove on a record. With this interface, the AFM feels oscillations taking place
at the membrane of a cell which can then be amplified.
! Manipulating the cell with chemicals will result in a change of oscillation. Isopropanol
(rubbing alcohol) for example, will change a singing cell into a screaming cell.
! Artists Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling have put together the first composition to
utilise cell sonics: The Dark Side of the Cell
NANO 2003
Victoria Vesna/
Jim Gimzewski
Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
david mcconville
ELUMENATI
OMNIFOCUS
PROJECTION
SYSTEM
Diana Slattery
Nineteen psychedelics have each been screened
against over one hundred receptors, transporters
and ion channels , providing the first
comprehensive view of how these compounds
interact with the human receptome.
Each individual psychedelic causes a unique
spectrum of subjective effects. DIPT causes
auditory distortion. 5MeO-DIPT enhances orgasm
in males but not females. MDMA provokes
empathy. TMA provokes anger. Mescaline
TOM RAY provokes an appreciation of beauty. 2C-B causes
tactile, gustatory and sexual enhancement. 2C-E
provokes rich fantasy and introspection
Tierra
The project aims to understand the mechanisms
A-life underlying the qualitative diversity of actions of
psychedelics, by locating each drug in an abstract
Synthetic organisms have been "receptor space", a coordinate system with one
created based on a computer axis for each receptor.
metaphor of organic life in which The state of the brain is constantly on the move,
CPU time is the “energy” resource regardless of medication. We can think of it as a
and memory is the “material'’ complex dynamical system, in which the
resource. Memory is organized trajectory follows high-dimensional orbits, and
into informational patterns that switches among many "attractors", where the
attractors represent the major emotional states
exploit CPU time for self-
and moods, and whatever mental phenomena the
replication. Mutation generates
chemical systems are mediating.
new forms, and evolution proceeds In this dynamic reference frame, drugs will
by natural selection as different create a perturbation along the binding vector,
genotypes compete for cpu time thereby pushing the system into a new attractor.
and memory space. We want to get to know the pharmacology of the
attractors. . . .to begin to map the chemical
organization of the human mind.
roy ascott 2006
• For the artist at the leading edge of inquiry, the digital moment
seems to be passing, with the computer now totally absorbed
into our culture
©©roy
roy ascott
ascott 2006
2005
Banisteriopsis caapi + Psychotria viridis
Santo Daime
Pablo Amaringo
Five questions
• Evolutionary purpose
• The “dark matter” of the mind has been treated as occult, and
banned from polite academic and religious discussion for over
three hundred years.
ars technoetica
creativity
nanospace
cyberspace vibrational
telepresence presence
© roy ascott 2006
Strategies
Prioritise:
amplifying thought
concept development
sharing consciousness
collaborative processes
seeding structures
self-organising systems
making metaphors
Knowledge navigation
constructing identities
self-creation
material
self
consciousness
P-Node
Z-Node
School of Software
Hochschule für Gestaltung
Peking University
und Kunst Zürich
PLANETARY Director
Director
Dr. Kenneth Fields
Professor Jill Scott COLLEGIUM
President
Professor Roy Ascott
M-Node
Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano
Director:
Professor Francesco Monico
Director of Studies:
Professor Antonio Caronia
Planetary Collegium [7 nodes]
Design: Peter Anders
Planetary Collegium Node
Architect: Peter Anders
INTENTION
www.planetary-collegium.net