I would say for conciousness its kind of the same thing, a collection of self reffering tools from language to vision and smell provide the kind of modular loop that then worked over time and repeating multple avalanches of microloops ends up piling, as a kind of point de fugue in a drwaing into the one word that makes us so happy and proud.
Another point concerning the invention of self that i think is interesting to explore is the way the inmune system by avalanches of recognition and reproduction events produces a sense of self and other.
in both cases there are multiple lineages and processes over many temporal scales that converge into one frame of reference, a transient living organisms that integrates signals locally and responds producing other signals, such as antibodies, hormones, sounds or books. One could argue that the imagination thing is what happens between perception and response when the later is the result of the integration of multiple longrange connexions.
be well
r
--- On Sat, 3/28/09, roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> From: roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>
> Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] Invention as a nexus of the real and the imaginary
> To: "YASMIN DISCUSSIONS" <Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009, 9:09 AM
> Derek
>
> I very much like your phrase:
>
> " invention as a nexus of the real and the imaginary "
>
> Tied to the question of invention as fiction.
>
> When we did the Leonardo 4Oth anniversary in Prague
> we had a one day discussion on what the burning issues
> were in the art science technology field, and Roy Ascott
> true to
> form put " the nature of consciousness' on the list.
>
> It really is a wonderful process, consciousness. We are
> are
> a complicated collection of cells and neural connections,
> and
> somehow we spend our time constructing stories about
> ouselves
> and about the world around us. It seems to me that both
> artist
> and scientists are indeed in the story construction
> business, and as
> you put it " inventions are the nextus of the real and the
> imaginary"
>
> In the exhibition were numerous instruments designed to
> measure angles between
> stars, and other instruments and positions of stars.
> Generations of
> scientists invented
> instruments to do this. Part of a story about the sky and
> our
> relationships to it. Now we
> have GPS satellites, and astrometry satellites and there
> are very few
> astronomers
> in the angle measuring business. And the instruments look
> pretty ridiculous now.
>
> Looking at the artefacts in the exhibition one had to
> wonder how they
> were used and
> what kind of 'story telling' the inventors told them selves
> to develop
> such complicated
> devices.
>
> Later last night I was doing some web browsing and
> read Ricardo Nascimento self
> introduction to yasmin and happened on his "Suffering
> Machine"
> http://www.popkalab.com/suffering.html, a machine
> designed
>
> "When the piece falls and tries to stand up again is the
> strong moment
> of its existence and somehow it always finds a way to
> reconstruct
> itself.
>
> Another behavior of this machine is when someone gets
> closer, in order
> to touch or suppose help the machine, it kills himself as
> a
> contradictory behavior."
>
> Maybe 400 years now we will see in an exhibition both the
> astromers
> astrometry machines
> and the 'suffering maching"
>
> Today the complicated machines developed by astronomers to
> do
> astrometry are useless=they
> are in collections of artefacts of part of the story of
> invention of
> machines that led us to have
> an understanding of the sky. The Suffering Machine is
> already useless
> except as part of
> a cultural construction of our relationship to machines and
> their
> place in our lives.
>
> Inventions have a very short period where they have
> meaning in
> science.They are quickly
> superceded by other inventions.
>
> So coming back to Roy Ascotts burning issue on what is the
> nature of
> consciouness. It seems
> to me that the " invention as fiction" line of
> reasoning can identify
> machines as "fictions' or
> "artefacts" that we create outside our bodies to help us
> connect and
> interact with the world
> outside our bodies, that help us create in our minds
> "stories" or
> "Mental Models" or "scientific theories"
> that we can then "test" through their use.
>
> its been an interesting month of chat !! I encourage
> you to read
> Artists as Inventors-Inventors as Artists (Paperback)
> by Dieter Daniels (Editor), Barbara U. Schmidt (Editor)
>
>
> Roger
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