Thoughts on DVD Art...

A form of video art in which video and audio are presented in a randomised manner (using scripts to manipulate GPRM Registers in the DVD player) such that the work presents a unique experience on each play, rendering the experience of the work effectively endless.

· DVD-based, a portable medium
· The authoring side is technical, however the end user requires only a modern DVD player plus a method of display (projector, TV, etc).
· No technical setup required on end user’s part.
· Effectively infinite (randomised) in length.
· Each play is aimed to be a unique experience for the end user.
· Accessible because DVD format is familiar and affordable to majority of audience – can be enjoyed in the home or office, for example.
· The DVD does not function as a record of the art, or an art event, but as the artistic work itself. It therefore can be considered as a type of multiple

Precedents - To my knowledge, no one has used randomised GPRM registers to create video art previously, however there are precedents of previous work

· Tom Ellard, Carillon, 2003: an infinite ambient DVD which interrogates player registers for random performance. Ellard is the creator of the underlying technical process behind this technique.
· Jem Finer, Long Player, 2008: a 1000 year performance of music in Halberstadt Germany – may utilize the techniques described
· Tom Ellard, Album 10542304 (DVD Section), 2008: an adaptation of Carillon as the DVD part of his production thesis Album 10542304, University of Technology Sydney Australia 2008

Research Avenues
FACT, Liverpool – gallery showing only time-based and video art
Video installation and Site
Jem Finer, Long Player – Not actually based on DVD Technology…

On Minoans And Warfare...

It is well-documented, through archaeological findings (or, as is relevant in this case, the lack thereof) and fresco images that the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation of Crete was:

i) Multi-ethnic, in that native Cretans, Greeks and other Aegean peoples, Anatolians, Levantines and Libyans were present on the island, and
ii) Civilised in the ‘High’ sense of the word, in that the Minoans lived in large cities with architecturally-accomplished palaces, avenues, plazas for ritual processions and public dances, drainage systems, writing systems and large storehouses with a system of distribution of goods, and with accomplished and skilful arts and crafts tradition (public and private), including improvements on previous and contemporary methods, particularly the faience ceramics, and
iii) Not predisposed to warfare, in that there is no evidence to suggest that the aforementioned Cretan cities possessed any kind of walled structures for defence, in stark contrast to all other contemporaneous civilisations, and that such weapons as have been found appear to have been used primarily ritually (judging by fresco images) or are completely absent.

Here, then, we have a unique society, which in the first two points, mirrors every other civilisation on Earth, including our own, but in the final point appears to be wholly idiosyncratic. The question remains: how was it that they did not require weapons and warfare for the continuation of their society? What fundamental drive of theirs differed from our own with respect towards violence, and why did they, in contrast to everyone else, not valorise or glorify it? How, unlike all their contemporaries in the Bronze Age, able to enter a collective culture in which internecine battles and the domination of one's enemies was an undesirable irrelevance?

Indeed, perhaps the question should be re-framed (since I believe the Minoans to have been saner than us in this and many other respects) – why do we feel the need to valorise and glorify war, and why do we feel the need to constantly seek to destroy ourselves and our perceived enemies through it? Why is war still relevant?

hyper-distr-active : an image of myself

hyper-distr-active : an image of myself

there are
so many of me
i cannot list them all…

the hyperactive kid distracted,
the knowing old man,
and artist and husband,
and human and dying god…

a lover, a fighter,
a bleeding heart and razor mind,
lower than the grave
and walker on the lightning mountain…

the only question
each morning is
which one to play today…

(truth is,
i’ve been so
hyperdistractive recently
i can’t even answer…)

Rational Meaning

1. We must proceed carefully: humans are everywhere addicted to belief, and the projection of one’s own internal experiences and patterns onto the cosmos is a characteristic of our behaviour. Thus, if one should hear the Holy Voice Of God, then logically, God must exist and be talking presently, to me, here, now. This God must exist etc etc. We have addressed the faultiness of this conclusion above. Dawkins considers that humans would be happier deriving their moral and intellectual wellbeing from philosophical ideas and scientific principles. But such things are mutable, and often meaningless to humans.

2. Two million light years away, the Andromeda Galaxy is slowly cannibalising several dwarf galaxies on its periphery, the stars that they constitute slowly being absorbed into the much larger spiral galaxy’s structure. Whatever this means to me, whether I believe it to be true or not, it is still happening. Evolution does not require belief in order to still be occurring, it does not require my meaning to be projected onto it. It simply is. Fine, let it be. The physical laws of the universe are elegant and beautiful, and the wonder of it all can be deeply meaningful. But honestly, I do not care if I am made from atoms or porridge, if I am seeking meaning and experience, scientific principles cannot satisfy every part of me.

3. Dawkins’ proposition assumes that humans are rational creatures. Any artist can tell you that we are not purely so: we are polyvalently so, which is to say we are partly rational, some of us are more rational than others, and there are huge vistas of human experience which are clearly not rational. Dreams are a generally-agreed example of such irrationality, and much has been gained from both rational (Freudian) and experiential (Jungian) studies of dreams.

4. It seems inappropriate, then, to insist that we humans derive happiness from rationality. This would only be partially satisfying to all, and in varying degrees to many. The key is whether Dawkins means it as advice: as something to strive for, or whether he means it proscriptively. Religion is always proscriptive: there is one correct path through life, and there can be no debate on that. Does Dawkins mean to proscribe all irrational modes of thought, experience and meaning by his advice, or does he promote it as one way – his favoured way – among other possibilities?

5. I do not know the answer to that, but I can say that I have always preferred descriptive methods of observing human behaviour and striving for meaning, experience and wellbeing. To accept the diversity of human (ir)rationality and perception seems a most appropriate way forward to formulate a system of experience, whilst being careful of the traps and pitfalls of belief...

Some New And Interesting Ways To Explore The Inner And Outer Sacred

These are the questionable ideas of Some New And Interesting Ways To Explore The Inner And Outer Sacred, the experience of God that lacks belief. Read them, interrogate them well and do not believe for one moment their rational or irrational import, nor consider their sacredness as anything other than what may be within you; nonetheless sense them and consider the experience implied by them. Each statement is a development from the last – the whole constitutes a changing journey that ends up in a different place from where we started.

1. God does not exist, nor is great; He did not create this world, nor the Universe in which this world exists, nor the complexity therein, nor did He cause biological speciation or any other phenomenon commonly thought to have its origin in Him.

2. These things exist and proceed not by result of Evolution, but merely as a stage in the long process of evolution: what is seen now in the structure of the Universe and the various species of the earth can be considered as a still image from a much longer film. The film will continue, thus what is seen today is temporary, and not a final result.

3. Can we say, then, that God is a Delusion? We cannot, for in view of the above two statements, we must also observe that belief in, and experience of, God currently is present in human culture, perception and sociality (where one million years ago our hominid ancestors lacked such notions), and we must therefore come to the conclusion that ‘God’ has evolved. Thus it is not advisable to label as delusional an evolved set of behaviours and experiences, with presumably certain selective pressures which have acted – and still act – upon our sociality, cultural expressions, neurology and internal perceptions to provide maximal fitness for us as a species.

4. We must therefore ask what those benefits and fitnesses are, what the selective pressures were, and where in our neurology can the circuitries and cortices that generate such experiences and beliefs be found. These are the thoughts of a scientist: to ask questions, not to pre-judge the discussion which such loaded terms as ‘delusion’.

5. If one were to report, for example, an experience of hearing the Most Holy Voice Of God to a priest, the priest may interrogate one, but ultimately come to the conclusion that ‘It was the Most Holy Voice Of God. Now shut up, get upon thy knees, and pray damn hard!’ If one were to report the same to a Dawkinsian atheist, one would surely hear words along the lines of ‘It was a delusion, now shut up.’ The debate as to the nature – and subjective meaning – of this experience is thus closed in both cases.

6. I have come to the (tentative and liable-to-change) conclusion that God does ‘exist’, for a given value of ‘exist’, and must realise that bivalent IS/NOT thinking must here be abandoned in favour of polyvalent IS/MAYBE/OTHER/NOT considerations in which the notion of a deity is considered valid for a given domain but not others, and in some domains might only be ‘maybe’ partially valid, for whatever reason.

7. A domain where God is not valid is Cosmology, another is Biology. But in evolutionary psychology, and the realm of the subjective experience, God ‘exists’ as a suite of evolved behaviours and perceptions. This idea generates, not final answers closed to further debate, but questions, open to debate, and a polyvalent view of any of the proposed answers means there is a range of definiteness we can ascribe to them.

8. Interestingly, Professor Dawkins is noted for his antipathy to polyvalency: God either exists or he does not. It goes without saying that so is Pope Benedict XVI. But such thinking is not sufficient to consider even historical scientific problems such as the electron. It is known that the electron exists: it has measurable effects, it has been observed in particle colliders, and it submits to quantum mechanical predictions. But in considering where a given electron might be at a given moment in time, how fast it might be moving or the amount of energy it might be carrying, we are reduced to considering probabilities. We might also consider chaos theory and emergent order in this regard. Crucially, neither Dawkinsian atheism nor religious dogmatism is sufficiently valent to consider some of the most important scientific questions of our day. How, then, can either system be trusted to provide an objective or scientific view of this universe?

9. The Christians often say ‘God is Love’. In a way, this might be viewed as a valid supposition, although not in the way Christians intend it. The notion of ‘God’ is indeed analogous to the notion of ‘Love’, and we may substitute ‘experience’ for ‘notion’ here and still maintain its validity.

10. Love is a suite of evolved experiences which have specific social, cultural and perceptive effects which aid in human procreation, kinship, sense of wellbeing and sociality. There is also an attendant mythology in our culture: Venus, Cupid, Romeo and Juliet, and so on, but while we are attached to the images, we do not literally believe them. We do not pray to Cupid for an arrow if we desire to be in love.

11. In the domain of Love, we are happy to accept both systems as valid, but in different domains. Evolution is how Love came to manifest, but Cupid’s arrow is the meaning and indeed an appropriate description of the experience. Love is polyvalent: it exists but it does not exist.

12. God does not have a Cupid’s arrow, nor does He emerge as an evolved set of behaviours. His evolution is denied by both the religious and the atheistic. Attempts to confer Love-like polyvalency onto His Sanctity causes controversy on every side: it challenges religions, naturally, but it also challenges our current conceptions of what science is. It leaves us unsettled: God should either exist and be judging us Upon High, Verily, or he should be wholly absent and utterly ignored in all discussion and debate. The alternative is too difficult to think about.

13. As humans we are thus asked to believe. Religions each offer a minimal experience of God by following the one approved Avatar, but at the cost of having to literally believe in something that is patently not objectively existent in order to sacredly inform one’s intellectual, moral and spiritual life. Atheism offers the freedom of belief, and the freedom of the construction of one’s one moral and intellectual sphere, but at the cost of any notions of spiritual experience, and also by selling science short through insisting that some questions may not be asked, that some experiences may not be considered as sane or as having validity. Note also that sanity is statistical.

14. There is no hope for religion. But there is hope for science and experience. Those who wish to experience subjective meaning are encouraged to explore this notion of God and report it through narrative, art, poetry and the like. Any results should be submitted to evolutionary psychologists who can use it to examine the selective pressures that caused God to emerge, while neurologists can continue to explore the promising lines of enquiry into where sacred sensations (God in other words) might be founded within the neurological structure of the brain. Preliminary experiments have suggested the pre-frontal cortex, but there is much else to explore.

15. I am an artist. It is part of my role in society to ask questions. It is part of a scientist’s role in society also to ask questions. No form of dogma or literal belief, whether religiously-inspired, politically-driven or atheistically-formulated, should be permitted be to prevent such questions being asked.

16. In consideration of the world’s sciences in regard to the question of God, it appears that neurotheology may be a significant advance in coming to provide possible answers, and, hopefully, further questions. Neurotheology is the study of correlations of neurological phenomena with subjective experiences of the sacred and hypotheses to explain these phenomena, and holds that sensations such as trance, enlightenment, ‘spirituality’, altered consciousness states, and indeed belief or non-belief in God, may be neurologically-founded. Initial experiments suggest the pre-frontal cortex of the human brain as an area of significance for further research. This has led to a significant question already: is there a ‘God gene’ that predisposes one to believe in an omnipresent deity?

17. In a consideration of the world’s sacred traditions, it appears that Vodoun religion of Benin and Haiti is the most advanced morally, intellectually, spiritually and scientifically. Whilst it literally believes in an eternal and distant God, and various lwa who intercede between this figure and humanity, it places a primacy upon experience, not faith. The primary goal of Vodoun is to invite through dancing, prayer and ceremony, one of the lwa to enter one’s body and manifest behaviour. The human becomes the lwa, though a true Vodoun practitioner probably wouldn’t put it that way.

18. A casual glance through the list of the major lwa of Vodoun reveals a remarkable similarity between them and psychological archetypes, both Jungian and non-Jungian. But whereas archetypes are to be considered intellectually, lwa are to be transformed into: living, animate archetypality.

19. The experiential focus of Vodoun also leads to a disarming frankness about human diversity. Homosexuality, for example, is not merely tolerated but joyfully included as another aspect of human nature, and there are lwa that are patrons of gay and lesbian people, of transgender people, and of people of other diverse lifestyles not generally accepted in the majority of the religious-morality-driven world. All praise, whilst we’re on the subject, to Erzulie Freda Dahomey, bel mamzel, fanm d’chans. Long may she continue to animate my gay soul.

20. Parallel traditions to Vodoun also are found in the Orisha of Nigeria and the Candomble of Brazil and Angola, but they are not as content about the naturalness of the diversity of human natures and behaviours. Some of these parallel traditions are openly homophobic.

21. What, then, might an experientially-focussed Vodoun divorced from the aspects of its literal belief in an omnipotent deity look like, and how would that be useful for the greater understanding of this cultural, neurological, social, evolved phenomenon that is called ‘God’? How would playing, experiencing, exploring this system, divorced from the hierarchy of Gods and lwa, and perhaps with a free-wheeling nature more akin to hunter-gatherer ritual idiosyncracy, positively contribute to the future of humanity?

22. Again, I am an artist: I leave it to the neurotheologists, quantum physicists, biologists and evolutionary psychologists to come up with the science. Another aspect of my job is to provide something that can be experienced. Thus I offer here the idea of a system of sacred experience, for the purposes of neurological play, subjective exploration of meaning, and for self- and cosmos-questioning, in a rational, irrational, scientific, subjective manner. This idea is wholly divorced from belief, and may be more adequately couched in the notion of metaphor of play.

23. This can be amusingly titled Some New And Interesting Ways To Explore The Inner And Outer Sacred. It is polyvalent, non-literal, experiential. It denies the existence of God whilst inviting that silent archetype into the soul. It guards against belief. It asks questions. It seeks meaning, and reports back to science with its findings. It seeks for humanity to understand this evolved suite of behaviours more clearly. Most importantly, it seeks. It damns all final, closed answers...

The Future Is Network

1. 'In entering a non-patriarchal, non-hierarchical world, we realise that the images to explore and define that era have not yet been made' – Taylor van Horne, Instituto Sacatar - a challenge to every living artist if ever there was one!

2. Society is complex, so the future is likely to be complex, and shouldn’t be based upon one single ideology. Preferably not any ideology at all, as much of history since 1500 has consisted of elites imposing their ideologies on others (often less powerful) and then spending the next hundred years in damage control until their power fails. Recent examples: Afghanistan (1870s, 1930s, now), Iraq (1930s, 1990s, now), Communism (1917-1980s), neoliberalism (1980s-now)...

3. People who speak of ‘The New Religion’ (whether New Ager, 2012 adherent or even fellow visionary artists) make me tremble as much as those who speak of ‘scientific morality’ – ‘the’ as a singular, monolithic entity, and lig- in religion referring to binding, ligature. Such ideas are in the past, subcultures are multiplying, and multiplicity and relativity are the main ideal now. The new religion is just another ideology which its adherents hope to be able to confer on others: I await the damage control.

4. Facebook, Wikipedia, blogger these are networked – businesses are already talking about networked markets. And since business has already bought into this idea and seen it as the most promising method for making profit and economic growth, its emergence is virtually inevitable. Such business methods encourage creativity and information generation, which are the new commodities. But note, Facebook and Google are profit-making companies, so ultimately not altruistic. Wikipedia is non-profit and has a coordinating centre, and consensus proceeds by networking and peer-review (in theory) - at present it seems the best model upon which to base a system of societies-coodination

5. On the local level the network is primarily partnership-based: non-hierarchical, akin to a Neolithic village

6. On the larger level, a similar non-hierarchical nature pervades the network between communities and localities.

7. The end of the nation-state is inevitable, whether founded upon ethnic heritage (Europe) or ideology (China) or upon ideals as enshrined in a constitution (USA). The resurgence of local, sustainable communities coordinated by the UN/EU-style non-hierarchical networks is favoured.

8. Governments become ‘Coordinating Councils’ to aid society rather than govern. This is the future of networked society, and is a kind of positive liberty in which people and communities are encouraged to grow and evolve. Note that this system of ‘coordination’ lacks both the overt coercion of most positive libertarian societies (including those economically driven societies in which advertising rather than political ideology functions as the primary coercive force), and the meaninglessness of negative libertarian societies where coercion is anathema. A decentralised, networked/partnership society cannot be coerced since it is down to the individual/community to decide in which direction it should grow: the ‘state’, such as it remains, does not seek to monitor that growth.

9. As for the sacred, it becomes personal again, it becomes a transcendent sensation again, rather than a Law handed down from Heaven. Any society which uses laws – ideological, political or religious – to uphold the failing morals of a patriarchal society is already living in the past and deserves to be consigned to history. Any religion which seeks to convert or dominate monolithically the whole world is already on the wane: cf: Catholicism in Europe…

10. The model of sacred experience of the hunter-gatherer - idiosyncratic, creative, explorative, experiential - becomes favoured: we should not be speaking of 'The New Religion' (capital letters intended) but of something far less monolithic and binding: Some New And Interesting Ways To Explore The Inner And Outer Sacred. The language one uses here is important. Granted, it's not catchy as a phrase, but it has several advantages: i) it sits upon the soul easily and effortlessly using simple words without the technical jargon of new religious movements which sound more like indoctrination than exploration, ii) it is plural and positive about that plurality, iii) it does not profess to be The Truth or The Future Of Humanity, but simply an avenue of exploration, iv) it uses the words 'interesting' and 'and' - it is therefore attractive and additive, not damning and exclusive, and v) it does not seek to define what the sacred is, or where the sacred might be located: within or without the human being.

11. Practitioners of Some New And Interesting Ways To Explore The Inner And Outer Sacred (or explorers, or experiencers or even players, if you will) are not required to buy into the idea that the sacred is exclusively invested in some external deity, or that it is some kind of delusion in an atheistic universe. One may simply explore, and then network those explorations in whatever form may be seen fit to the wider communities and societies for aid in coordination, evolution and growth.

12. Only when the sacred is personal again will human addiction to Control really be cured. The State must die, but the community, large and small, coordinated, networked, must not die with it. This is not a system of anarchy, but of equarchy...

13. Participation in the Coordinating Councils should be, on the large scale, like jury duty: something one is randomly selected for, rather than some office that one runs for. This helps to ease the negative effects of Control-addicted politicians in power. Particpation in community councils should be democratically-elected, and bullshit can be happily kept to a minimum in most councils as they are local enough that everyone knows personally or socially the character of those seeking to be elected.

On Migraines and the Emergence of Symbolism

Some thoughts on E. Loder's remarkable article What Is The Evolutionary Advantage Of Migraine? (Cephalalgia 2002 (Oct); 22(8): 624-32)

If, as per E. Loder’s article, migraines confer the following advantages on the sufferer:

1. Elevated sensitivity to change (social, environmental, other), and
2. Lowered susceptibility to environmental habituation, and
3. Heightened sense of caution in new situations,

this would be an adaptive benefit particularly to human females in hunter gather societies, sicne the incidence of mgiraine among humans is higher among females than males (2-3x). One can envisage group behaviours evolutionarily emerging of deferring to the decision of the migraineur upon arriving at a new locale, or indeed consulting the migraineur as to whether to move locales – the migraineur would naturally be a voice for caution, but such in-built advantages as above may also provide the potential of elevated status for the migraineur – the adaptive benefits of elevated status need hardly be stated.

Males, as hunters in societies in which there is a gendered division of labour, would need to be less inclined to display such caution: hunting requires spontaneous movement into new locales in which there may often be concealed dangers and elevated levels of caution do not make for a successful hunter necessarily. However, among females, who in gender-divided societies often choose the habitation site and have children in tow during foraging missions, such elevated cautionary perceptions would be adaptive.

While I’m not suggesting that migraineurs are the source of symbolism, it is to be noted that once symbolic behaviour begins, migraineurs are especially well-placed to take advantage of this innovation, for two reasons:

1. Ritualistic modes of behaviour means that those individuals whose advice is commonly sought for changes of locale and potential dangers-in-the-moment upon arrival in a new locale would now be consulted ritualistically during other times when the abstract notion of ‘change’ is beginning to be considered.
2. Since the earliest symbolic expressions appear to have an entoptic character – geometric lines, dots etc – migraineurs, particularly migraineurs who experience the aura phenomenon, are well-placed to become makers of such artefacts, coming as they do with a much greater experience of entoptic imagery, of such strength during or immediately preceding a migraine attack that it often obscures vision during even daylight. Such experiences could be turned to an individual’s advantage in an emerging symbolic culture in which entoptically-marked artefacts aid in mediating social interaction within and across groups.

Thus migraineurs in the Middle Palaeolithic during which formative symbolic behaviours emerge among humans become adept at the new socially-mediated symbolic discourse as consultants on life change and as manufacturers of symbolic objects.