The Syncretic Imperative: Towards the Spiritual in Discovery

8/14/2019 The Syncretic Imperative: Towards the Spiritual in Discovery

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TheThe SSyncretic Imperative:yncretic Imperative:towards the spiritual in discovery

Roy Ascottwww.planetary-collegium.net

The Spirit of DiscoveryFACTO Trancoso Portugal 18-21 May 2006

The ambition to work without boundaries, beyond categories of learning;to build new realities, new language, and new practices, defines the work

of the artist and gives those practices relevance in the social context


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HEALTH WARNING

REDUCTIONIST ALERT!

The artist is prepared to look anywhere, into any discipline, scientific or

spiritual, any view of the world - however esoteric or arcane - any

culture, immediate or distant in space or time, in order to find ideas or

processes which might engender creativity.

There is no meta-language or meta-system that places one disciplineor world-view automatically above all others.

This liberated trans-disciplinarity can inform artistic research at all

levels. This is why we look in all directions for inspiration and

understanding: to the East as well as the West; the left hand path as

well as the right; working with both reason and intuition, sense and

nonsense, subtlety and sensibility.

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our media is moistour mind is technoeticour body is transformable

our planet is telematicour reality is syncretic

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Virtual Reality

interactive digital technology

telematic, immersive

Validated Reality

reactive mechanical technology

prosaic, Newtonian

Vegetal RealityVegetal Reality

psychoactive plant technology

entheogenic, spiritual

syncretic

reality

extendedfield consciousness

emergent

cybermorphology

ego boundariesdiffused

Why syncretic?

The threeThe three VRsVRs

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Syncretic

bringing together disparate entities- material and non-material -and their philosophic, religious, and cultural customs and codes.

emergent bodies of knowledge plus the wisdom of older cultures,often embracing what is unfamiliar, alien, or proscribed

syncret ic thinking is associative and non-linearthe etymology of syncretic is from sun-kretismos derived from

the coming together of the ancient Cretans to face a common

enemy

in different historical and religious contexts the common enemyhas been military, religious, political

In present day cultural terms the enemy is habit the uncriticalrepetition of behaviours, opinions, perceptions and values - the

enshrining of metaphors and verities that have passed their sell-

by date.

F.A.Q

Syncretic?

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Unders tanding contemporary reality as SYNCRETIC will leadto significant changes in the way we regard our identity, ourrelationship to others, and the phenomenology of time andspace.

SYNCRETISM not only destabilises orthodoxies and changeslanguage, it may also result in the release of the self from theconstraints of overweening rationality and totalising dogma.

In religious or spiritual contexts, SYNCRETISM meanscombining rituals, psychic instruments, the assimilation ofplants and herbs, into new forms of sacred communion.

A parallel process of the bringing together of disparatetechnologies (interactive and digital, reactive and mechanical,psychoactive and chemical), and new rituals ofcommunication (mobile, online), and forms of community (the

Net), is seen in our society, and remains open to theincorporation of the older arcana.

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I n the past, religious syncretism has suffered at the hands oforthodoxy. Think of the Gnostics, Neo-Platonists andHermeticists of the late renaissance, the eradication of theCathars, the wholesale burning of witches, and the assault onRosicrucianism.

All these bodies of knowledge and belief have been syncretic intheir formation, always bringing together the unfamiliar,proscribed, alien, non-linear structures of thought.

T he early 20th century saw the emergence of spiritual and psychicsyncretism in Brazil, as exemplified by Umbanda, Candomble,Santo Daime, Uniao do Vegetal, Barquinha, Kardecism(spiritism).

A study of these practices involves pharmacology, neuroscience,shamanism, spiritual healing, ethnobotany, art, dance, andarchitecture .

T he study of these practices is meaningless without profoundsubjective experience and immersion in them .

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It was perhaps Hans Bonnet who first characterized syncretism as therealization of the idea ofone god "inhabiting" another rather then twogods being fused, equated or identified.

Using the example of Amun-Re, Bonnet argues that:"The formulaAmun-Re does not signify that Amun is subsumed in Re or Re in Amun.Nor does it establish that they are identical; Amun does not equal Re. Itobserves that Re is in Amun in such a way that he is not lost in Amun,but remains himself just as much as Amun does, so that both gods can

again be manifest separately or in other combination

The Syncretism of Egyptian Gods. Jefferson Monet


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Domestic syncretism: Bangalore, 2000 Photo: Clare Arni


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Photo: Ascott 2001Valle do Amadhecer


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NAME FIGURE SYMBOL HEAVENLY BODY SPHERE

OXAL CHRIST CROSS SUN SPACELEMANJ HOLY VIRGIN ANCHOR MOON SEA

OGM SAINT GEOR SWORD MARS VARIOUS

OXOSSI SAINT SEBASTIAN ARC AND ARROW MERCURY FORESTS

XANG SAINT JEROME MACHETE JUPITER STONES AND STARSOXUM IMMACULATE

CONCEPTION HEART VENUS RIVERS AND FOUNTAINS

OMUL SAINT ROCK AND

SAINT BLASE CRUCIFIX SATURN CEMETERIES


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The Brazilian ceremonies ofCandomble and Umbandaconstitute a complex

syncretism in their codes

and protocols

Photo: Ascott 2001

Syncretic ritualSyncretic ritual


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shamanicpossession

SeoulPhoto: Ascott 2001


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Every fibre, every node, every server on the Net is apart of me.

Its a phase space Im in, a sort of tele-potentiality.

As I interact with the Net, I reconfigure myself.

My net-extent defines me, just as my body defined mein the old biological culture.

I am weightless and dimensionless in any exact sense.

I am the reach of my connectivity .

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PLANETARY CONSCIOUSNESS

Remembering the Martin Amis commentary on 9/11, where, in recent

Western thought, did the notion of species consciousness and

planetary consciousness arise? Certainly Marx invoked species

consciousness in Private Property and Communism back in1844, and

more recently its currency has been renewed by New Age writers of

varying complexion, from the so-called info-mystics to more

orthodox scientists such as the Pittsburgh physicist Oliver Reiser

with his Psi-fieldof 1966. Peter Russell in The Awakening Earth

1982 made the case for its emergence out of our telecommunications

complexity. We have seen other terms appear in this context. Pierre

Levy in 1994 published L'Intelligence Collective, and Derrick de

Kerckhove, a tireless advocate ofMcLuhans global village,

published Connected Intelligence in 1997. Aldous Huxley talked of

Mind-at-large In the Doors of Perception, 1954, as did Gregory

Bateson, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind(1972) . De Chardins

Noosphere provided a more fully spiritual dimension. And of course no

one can forget the planetary vision ofBuckminster Fuller.

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Radical Connectivism

Telematics is about the connectivity of minds. The potentialityof being distributed beyond the constraints of space and time,in asynchronic communication. It means a kind ofentanglement at the social level. Central to this is the Webshyperlink: a kind of semiotic black hole that instantly bringsone into other universes of discourse, other worlds, otherconstructions of reality. Just as wormholes are described astunneling in quantum foam, connecting widely separated

locations in the galaxy, we tunnel through data foam fromhyperlink to hyperlink across our planetary Web.

This is telematic mind, collective intelligence reaching a levelof complexity which suggests the emergence of a kind ofhypercortex, now at the core of our reality engine.

Heinz von Forsters On constructing a realityconcluded withthe simple formula: reality = community. Our community is

telematic community, set in a many-worlds, hybridizedreality.

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Donna Haraway

Before her well known assertion I would rather be a Cyborg, than a

Goddess

she celebrated Field Theory in her book

Crystals, fabrics, and fields. Metaphors of organicism in 20th centurydevelopmental biology. (1976)

in which she recognises Alexander Gurwitsch as the first to use theterm field in biology (in 1922).

Gurwitsch is at the root of the renaissance of contemporary field theoryin biology. His ideas have been central to the development of the workofFritz-Albert Popp .


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Fritz-Albert Popp

Biophoton emission is a general phenomenon of living systems. It

concerns low luminescence from a few up to some hundred photons

per second, per square centimeter surface area, at least within thespectral region from 200 to 800nm. The experimental results indicate

that biophotons originate from a coherent (or/and squeezed) photon

field within the living organism, its function being intra and

intercellular regulation and communication.

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Below: a living system emitting biophotons

International Institute ofBiophysics, Neuss, Germany

Photon: a quantum of visible

light or other form of electro-

magnetic radiation demonstrating

both particle and wave properties

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Biophotons and Mixed Reality technology

Mixed Reality and bio-telematics may become entangled withthe quantum states of coherence, leading to the emergence ofuniversal connectivity and non-linear relationships that existbeyond the classical constraints of space and time.

Biophotons orchestrate the quantum coherence of the livingbeing, and may lead us to ideas in some pixel/particleexchange of establishing the quantum coherence of virtualstates.

At the material level, Mixed Realitytechnology provides uswith another skin, another layer of energy to the body, addingto the complexity of its field.

In stead of populating Mixed Reality space with (virtual)objects we could consider it as a medium for the creation of(virtual) fields, or as an extension of the biofield itself.

Just as DNA is the main source of biophoton activity, so mightMixed Reality be the field in which new possibilities for living

systems could be rehearsed.

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An organisms information network of photons emitted

by DNA molecules is paralleled technologically by the

constant flows of electrons and photons across the

body of the planet through telematic networks.

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Whose epiphenomenon are we anyway?

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technoetics

Technoetic inquiry in the field of art, technology and consciousnessconstitutes a new field of practice. Both post-biological research and

the investigation of psychic states are involved, from the leading edgeof scientific thought to the spiritual centre of ancient cultures.Telematic connectivity is at the heart of this creative process.

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The hypercortex may inform and be informed by the structuralcoupling of each individual within the network, and thereby affect thestatus of human identity, leading in evolutionary terms to theemergence of the subtle being.

The Self becomes more negotiable, transactional, impermanent,transformative in its definition.

The Self is an ongoing creation, open to differentiation, distribution anddissemination through telepresence, with a kind of non- linear identityin which fixed patterns of behaviour, conditioning, and enforcedprotocol become the exception rather than the rule.

This subtlety of being will call for a subtle art, which will embodyinterstitial practice, art located at the intersections of e.g. cognitivescience, bio engineering, and metaphysics.

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It is through our eventual understanding of that subatomicdomain that we may discover the source of consciousness.

We should be prepared to discover that individualconsciousness is no more than an oxymoron.

While individual self-awareness is a prerequisite of livingbeings, consciousness is more likely to be the attribute of a

field than of the individual organism.

A strong advocate for this point of view is Hans-Peter Durr,of the Max-Plank-Institut fr Physic, Munich

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Immaterial Connectedness - the physical basis of life.Hans-Peter Durr

Max-Plank-Institut fuer Physic, Munich

quantum physics reveals that matter is not composed of matter, butreality is merely potentiality.

the world has a holistic structure, based on fundamental relations andnot material objects, admitting more open, indeterministicdevelopments.

in this more flexible causal framework, inanimate and animate natureis not to be considered as fundamentally different, but as different orderstructures of the same immaterial entity.

in a stable configuration effectively all the uncertainties arestatistically averaged out, thus exhibiting the unique and deterministicbehaviour of ordinary inanimate matter

in the case of statistically unstable but dynamically stable

configurations, the lively features of the underlying quantum structurehave a chance to surface to the macroscopic level and be connectedwith what we observe as the phenomenon of life.


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DRY

emergent mind emergent form

wetWET

RE-MATERIALISATIONDE-MATERIALISATION

POST-BIOLOGICAL CULTURE

biological

processes

telematic

systems

media

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MOIST MANIFESTO

moist space is where dry pixels and wet molecules converge

moist art is digitally dry, biologically wet, spiritually numinous

moist reality combines virtual reality with vegetal reality

moist media comprises bits, atoms, neurons, and genes.

moist architecture thinks, feels and returns our gaze

moist life embraces digital identity and biological being

moist mind is technoetic multiconsciousness

moistware internalises hardware

moist manufacture is neuro-constructive, and nano-robotic

moist engineering embraces ontology

moist design is bottom-up, seeded and emergent

moist communications is bio-telematic and psi-bernetic

Ascott, R. 2000. The Moist Manifesto.In: H. Conrad and R.

Kriesche, eds. Comm.gr2000az: Kunst Wissenschaft

Kommunikation. New York: Springer. pp. 44-49

gr2000azgr2000az


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Georgia Tech Researchers Use Lab Cultures to Control RoboticDevice The Hybrot, a small robot that moves about using the brain signalsof a rat, is the first robotic device whose movements are controlled by anetwork of cultured neuron cells.

Steve Potter and his research team in the Laboratory forNeuroengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology are studyingthe basics of learning, memory, and information processing using

neural networks in vitro. Their goal is to create computing systems thatperform more like the human brain.

Potter is connecting laboratory cultures containing living neurons tocomputers in order to create a simulated animal, which he describes asa neurally-controlled animat.

"We call it the Hybrot because it is a hybrid of living and roboticcomponents, he said

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MEART - "The semi living artist"

SymbioticA Research Group in collaborationwith The Steve Potter Lab

MEART - The Semi Living Artist is a geographicallydetached, bio-cybernetic project. Meart takes the basic

components of the brain (isolated neurons) attaches them

to a mechanical body through the mediation of a digital

processing engine to attempt and create an entity that will

seemingly evolve, learn and become conditioned to express

its growth experiences through "art activity".

MEART's brain - the living neural cultures was set up in

Steve Potter's lab. A multi channel neural recording from

MEART's brain was performed. The data sets, extracted

from the living neurons, was processed in two locations -

Atlanta & in the Eyebeam Gallery. The outcome was used

to control the drawing arm and to stimulate the neurons as

feedback.

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MARTA DE MENEZES

Nature? A butterfly with modified wings

developed at Leiden University (NL).'My main aim was to create works of art

in which art and life are simultaneouslypresent by using the possibilities of biology

as a new medium for artistic creation.

JOE DAVIES"Artistic work constructed from syntheticmolecules of DNA. The first of these artistic molecules,Microvenus, contains a coded visual icon representing theexternal female genitalia and by coincidence, an ancientGermanic rune representing the female Earth.

[The] work was carried out with molecular geneticistDana Boyd at Jon Beckwith's laboratory at Harvard MedicalSchool and at Hatch Echol's laboratory at University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. Ars Electronica:

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By growing Victimless Leather, the Tissue Culture & Art Project ifurther problematising the concept of garment by making it Semi-Living.

The Victimless Leather is grown out of immortalised cell lineswhich cultured and form a living layer of tissue supported by abiodegradable polymer matrix in a form of miniature stich-lesscoat like shape.

The Victimless Leather project concerns with growing livingtissue into a leather like material.

This artistic grown garment will confront people with themoral implications of wearing parts of dead animals forprotective and aesthetic reasons and will further confrontnotions of relationships with living systems manipulated orotherwise.

An actualized possibility of wearing leather' without killing ananimal is offered as a starting point for cultural discussion.

We see our role as artists as one in which we are providingtangible example of possible futures, and research thepotential affects of these new forms on our culturalperceptions of life.

growing Victimless Leather

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SymbioticA:Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory,University of Western Australia

Oron Catts & Ionat ZurTissue Culture Art


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YASMIN and bio artYASMIN and bio art

To become a member & Yasmin list archive:http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/

To post: [email protected]


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Singing and Screaming in the Nanofield

James Gimzewski and Andrew Pelling at the UCLA Department of Chemistry made thediscovery (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 thebumps 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 toutilise cell sonics: The Dark Side of the Cell

Gimzewski: all is vibrationGimzewski: all is vibration

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NANO 2003

Victoria Vesna/

Jim Gimzewski

Los Angeles

County Museum of Art

A single carbon-60 molecule,named a "buckyball" for

Buckminster Fuller.


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david mcconville

ELUMENATIOMNIFOCUSOMNIFOCUS

PROJECTIONPROJECTION

SYSTEMSYSTEM


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Diana SlatteryDiana Slattery

Nineteen psychedelics have each been screened

i h d d


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against over one hundred receptors, transportersand ion channels , providing the first

comprehensive view of how these compoundsinteract with the human receptome.Each individual psychedelic causes a unique

spectrum of subjective effects. DIPT causes

auditory distortion. 5MeO-DIPT enhances orgasmin males but not females. MDMA provokesempathy. TMA provokes anger. Mescalineprovokes an appreciation of beauty. 2C-B causes

tactile, gustatory and sexual enhancement. 2C-Eprovokes rich fantasy and introspection

The project aims to understand the mechanismsunderlying the qualitative diversity of actions ofpsychedelics, by locating each drug in an abstract

"receptor space", a coordinate system with one

axis for each receptor.The state of the brain is constantly on the move,

regardless of medication. We can think of it as acomplex dynamical system, in which the

trajectory follows high-dimensional orbits, andswitches among many "attractors", where theattractors represent the major emotional states

and moods, and whatever mental phenomena thechemical systems are mediating.

In this dynamic reference frame, drugs willcreate a perturbation along the binding vector,

thereby pushing the system into a new attractor.

We want to get to know the pharmacology of theattractors. . . .to begin to map the chemical

organization of the human mind.

TierraA-life

Synthetic organisms have been

created based on a computermetaphor of organic life in whichCPU time is the energy resourceand memory is the material'resource. Memory is organizedinto informational patterns thatexploit CPU time for self-replication. Mutation generatesnew forms, and evolution proceeds

by natural selection as differentgenotypes compete for cpu timeand memory space.

TOM RAYTOM RAY

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For the artist at the leading edge of inquiry, the digital momentseems to be passing, with the computer now totally absorbed

into our culture

The pharmacological moment is upon us, both withincognitive science and beyond its current borders, and only

legislation, caution, and political expediency, backed by the

credo of extreme materialism, will prevents us from exploring

new worlds, and participating in new realities.

The separation of advanced technologies of the Valley(Silicon) from the ancient technologies of the Forest (Gabon,

Amazonia) for example, may become increasingly irrelevant,

as we look to a kind of technological co-evolution ofconsciousness-changing agencies.

.

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Vegetal RealityVegetal Reality

psychoactive plant technology

entheogenic, spiritual

Vegetal technology

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Santo Daime

Banisteriopsis caapi + Psychotria viridis

Brewing the ayahuasca


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Pablo Amaringo


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Five questions

Is our drive to created wider and deeper and faster networks anevolutionary impulse to engage more fully with universal mind?

Does the telematic field of cyberception attempt to mirror oreven augment our awareness of the field of consciousness?

How aware are we of our own teleological promptings, thepurposive impulse of our own DNA?

Is our interest in the hybridization of forms and materials relatedto the hybridization of space?

Are we developing a syncretic reality that merges mixed realitytechnology, vegetal reality, and the realities governed bymetaphors of biology and quantum physics, language and socialhabit?

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Five unknowns

Dark matter and dark energyThe location of mindThe nature of qualiaEvolutionary purposeThe influence of energy fields

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My fellow citizens of the world,My fellow citizens of the world,

ask not whatask not whatscience canscience cando for artdo for art

but what art can do for sciencebut what art can do for science


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Scientists do not know what makes up 96% of the Universe. Welive in the midst of unknown dark matter and dark energy

As above so below. We also know next to nothing aboutconsciousness where it is located, how it arises, when it is

shared, why it persists.

The dark matter of the mind has been treated as occult, andbanned from polite academic and religious discussion for over

three hundred years.

Artists have the freedom to absorb both orthodox and forbiddenknowledge and a duty to attempt to bring the unknown to light.

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Dark side of the Moon

For John Whiteside Parsons - the early pioneer of rocketscience -"rocketry postulated that we should no longer see

ourselves as creatures chained to the earth but as beingscapable of exploring the universe. Similarly, magic suggestedthere were unseen metaphysical worlds that existed and couldbe explored with the right knowledge ... [In] striving for onechallenge [Parsons] could not help but strive for the other."George Pendle. 2005.Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons. New York:Harcourt.

While Parsons, (along with Ed Forman and Frank Malina founder of Leonardo journal) formed the country's firstgovernmental rocket group, he also experimented extensivelywith the occult, becoming a key figure Aleister CrowleysOrdo Templi Orientis, in Los Angeles in the 1930s.

Contrary to those those who saw magic and science asinherently contradictory Parsons saw them as complementary,two sides of the same coin.

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The space of physicsThe space of physics The space of psychicsThe space of psychicsroy ascott 2006


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The power of metaphor both in art and science is hugelypersuasive.

The war of interpretation in quantum physics was won withmetaphor by Neils Bohr and his Copenhagen School .

The data driven visualisations of the cosmos or of our ownmicroscopic texture are coded conventions at best andideological instruments at worst.

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Conclusion

A syncretic process could hold together the current ferment ofideas, images and models of reality that communities and

cultures across the planet are generating.

To recite the story of media art in its syncretic mode is not toadvance its development, nor is it sufficient simply to outlinethe syncretic reality that is emerging.

Strategies to strengthen this emergence are needed

Cultural habit to be viewed as the enemy.

Need to identify new knowledge fields and developtransdisciplinary discourse.

Need to create syncretic, many stranded organisms ofexploration, inquiry, learning and creativity.

demands a syncretic schedule of artistic, computational,psychic, biophysical and nanotechnological projects in orderto bring about new conditions for life and art.

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Field theories offer useful models in charting the relationshipof consciousness to the material body.

T he (human) organisms internal information system seems tobe closely connected to the biophotonic activity of its DNAmolecules.

Scrutiny of the nano-field may lead to an understanding ofideas about the immaterial connectedness espoused by both

quantum physics and Eastern metaphysics.

More ancient cultures that retain a place on the margins oftechnological society have also something to tell us, both

directly and metaphorically, about the perception of the

numinous and our construction of reality.

As it outgrows dialectical sociology, narration andrepresentation, new media art may play its part in the

navigation of mind that will take us to new spaces and states

of consciousness, while enhancing the technology of our

connectedness.

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psychic space


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field consciousnessspiritual coherence

connectivitycultural coherence

world buildingquantum coherence

hybrid spacehybrid spaceemergenceemergence

materialitymaterialityAgencyAgency

ars technoeticaars technoetica

creativitycreativity

syncreticsyncretic

realityreality

psychic spaceapparitionalpresence

cyberspacetelepresence

tech-tech-noeticsnoetics

moistmoistmediamedia

ecospacephysicalpresence

nanospacevibrationalpresence

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Strategies

To identify new knowledge fields and developtransdisciplinary discourse and practice.

Prioritise:

subject before objectProcess before systembehaviour before formin tu ition before reasonmind before matter

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th t di i li ll i


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amplifying thoughtconcept development

sharing consciousness

collaborative processes

seeding structures

self-organising systems

making metaphors

Knowledge navigation

constructing identities

self-creation

the transdisciplinary collegium

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societyociety


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consciousness

self

material

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CAiiA-HubCentre for Advanced Inquiry in the Integrative Arts

University of Plymou th Director

Professor Roy Ascott

Z-NodeHochschule fr Gestaltung

und Kunst Zrich

Director

Professor Jill Scott

M-Node

Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano

Director:Professor Francesco Monico

Director of Studies:Professor Antonio Caronia

P-NodeSchool of SoftwarePeking University

Director

Dr. Kenneth Fields PLANETARYCOLLEGIUM

President

Professor Roy Ascott

Planetary Collegium [7 nodes]Design: Peter Anders


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g


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Planetary CollegiumPlanetary Collegium NodeNodeArchitect:Architect: Peter AndersPeter Anders


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INTENTION

The Planetary Collegium was created in response to thefollowing needs:

to identify and theorise emergent fields of artpractice

to develop transdisciplinary discourseto advance the integration of art, science, technology,and consciousness research within a post-biological

culture

to facilitate worldwide collaboration and networkingto achieve academic recognition of high level

research in new media arts practice

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How might new technologies and the metaphors of science

be employed in the education of the artist?key


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p y How might the insights of the artist contribute to the

advancement of knowledge in science and to technologicaldevelopment?

How can the accrued wisdom of exotic or ancient culturesbe allied to the search for meaning and values in a post-biological society?

How might new technologies serve to support and sustain

cultures that lie beyond the Western paradigm? How might the Net serve the needs of interactive, non-

linear, transdisciplinary learning, and engender creativethought and constructive action? How might new discourses be initiated which will bring

critical, aesthetic and moral perspectives to bear onemergent fields of practice?

While stretching to the full the constructive and expressive

potential of electronic, telematic, and interactive digital

media, how might the Collegium pursue developments inpost-biological research, molecular engineering, neuroscience, and nanotechnology, while identifying artistic andspiritual strategies that optimise human capabilities, andseed new visions of a planetary society.

key

questions

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www.planetary-collegium.net

[email protected]

The Syncretic Imperative: Towards the Spiritual in Discovery

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