I would like to introduce myself to this list and put some questions
on this topic of synaesthesia, mainly motivated by the article of
Sergio Basbaum (commented on this discussion).
My name is Guto Nóbrega. I am Brazilian artist, researcher and teacher
doing Ph.D. at the Planetary Collegium program/ University of Plymouth
– UK. My studies are pretty much focused on the interrelation of the
observer, artist and the artwork (in a form of a technical object),
which I consider as being a interconnection of organic nature.
In the course of my research I have developed the artwork
"Breathing", which involves a simple robotic system connected to a
plant via electrodes. The title "Breathing" came after the observation
that the best way of dialogue (more significant from the point of view
of the experience) with the whole system was through the act of
breathing (a video of "Breathing" can be watched online at http://web.me.com/gutonobrega/Portifolio/Breathing.html)
.
I bring this artwork for the discussion for some reasons, one of
which is that my research concern resonates with that of Basbaum, as
he describes at the end of his article ("Consciousness and Perception:
The Point of Experience and the Meaning of the World We Inhabit"); "(
) what I've been looking to understand is the kind of perception that
is being shaped in our present technologically saturated environment".
In my specific case I try to investigate this kind of perception
through the creation and experience of technological beings (creatures).
The point I would like to make is that, in principle, "Breathing"
seems to lead to a break with the hegemony of the eye as mediation of
reality, as it leads the observer to other sensorial experiences,
predominantly the one that informs our sense of being alive, as it
involves an essential feature of human beings, namely, the act of
breath.
However, the phenomenon experienced is, in Flusser's terms, that of
a "technical apparatus". In the case of "Breathing" it is a hybrid of
an artificial and natural organism. For Flusser all technical
apparatuses are "black boxes that simulate thinking in the sense of a
combinatory game", they are already system of programmed/ programmable
scientific concepts.
In that sense I would like to ask: would the technical apparatus
always impose its embedded logic and make impossible any attempt to
perceive the world it takes part of beyond its own programmed
concepts? Is that possible that a shift from the hegemony of the eyes
to a more holistic embodied form of perception would offer ways to
overcome the limits of a recursive logic present in all technological
structures and the possibility to see creatively, beyond the black
box? Would be this "in between" Basbaum (as you have commented in your
last msg), a necessary position (no too close, not too distant) to
experience the phenomena emergent from a world mediated by technologies?
I look forward to people's ideas and comments.
All my best,
Guto Nóbrega.
www.gutonobrega.co.uk
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