DESMA 9:Art, Science and Technology

Consciousness / Memory

"The upheaval of our world and the upheaval of our consciouness are one and the same."

"The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man" ) C.G Jung

con·scious·ness (kŏn'shəs-nĭs) n.

The state or condition of being conscious.A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.

Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public's consciousness of social injustice.

In psychoanalysis, the conscious.

Electric Brain

mem·o·ry

[mem-uh-ree]–noun, plural -ries. 1.the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, 2.impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences. this faculty as possessed by a particular individual: to have a good memory. 3. the act or fact of retaining and recalling impressions, facts, etc.; remembrance; recollection: to draw from memory. 4. the length of time over which recollection extends: a time within the memory of living persons. 5. a mental impression retained; a recollection: one's earliest memories. 6. the reputation of a person or thing, especially after death; fame: a ruler of beloved memory.

7. the state or fact of being remembered.

8. a person, thing, event, fact, etc., remembered.

9. commemorative remembrance; commemoration: a monument in memory of Columbus.

10. the ability of certain materials to return to an original shape after deformation.

11. Also called computer memory, storage. Computers . a. the capacity of a Computer to store information subject to recall. b. the components of the computer in which such information is stored.

12. Rhetoric . the step in the classical preparation of a speech in which the wording is memorized.

13. Cards . Concentration.

Dream [dreem] noun, verb, dreamed or dreamt, dream·ing, adjective–noun

1.a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep.

2. the sleeping state in which this occurs.

3.an object seen in a dream.

4. an involuntary vision occurring to a person when awake.

5. a vision voluntarily indulged in while awake; daydream; reverie.

6. an aspiration; goal; aim: A trip to europe is his dream.

7. a wild or vain fancy.

8. something of an unreal beauty, charm, or excellence.–verb (used without object)

9. to have a dream.

10. to indulge in daydreams or reveries: He dreamed about vacation plans when he should have been working.

11. to think or conceive of something in a very remote way (usually followed by of ): I wouldn't dream of asking them. –verb (used with object)

12. to see or imagine in sleep or in a vision.

13. to imagine as if in a dream; fancy; suppose.

14. to pass or spend (time) in dreaming (often followed by away ): to dream away the afternoon.

Miss Atomic Bomb, 1957

Roy LichtensteinAtom Burst, 1966Acrylic on masonite24 x 24 inches (60.9 x 60.9 cm)

1969

DAVID BOHM

EAST meets WEST: science

Quantum Mechanics or Theory:

Coined by Max Bohr in 1924

is a physical science dealing with the behaviour of matter and energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles / waves. QM also forms the basis for the contemporary understanding of how very large objects such as Stars and galaxies, and cosmological events such as the Big Bang, can be analyzed and explained.

MIND EXPANDING DRUG EXPERIMENTS

East meets West: pop culture

Gregory Bateson

"I have taught various branches of behavioral biology and cultural anthropology to American students ranging from college freshmen to psychiatric residents, in various schools and teaching hospitals, and I have encountered a very strange gap in their thinking that springs from a lack of certain tools of thought. This lack is rather equally distributed at all levels of education, among students of both sexes and among humanists as well as scientists. Specifically, it is a lack of knowledge of the presuppositions not only of science but of everyday life." (Gregory Bateson in Mind and Nature, p. 23)

MEME

Coined by biologist Richard Dawkins, a "unit of cultural information" which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information). 1976

Cover painting byDesmond Morris, zoologist &Surrealist painter

ResearchDreams, art, mythology,World religion, philosophy,Alchemy, astrology

Psychology archetypes,Collective unconscious,Theory of synchronicity

RHIZOME

In botany, a rhizome is a usually underground, horizontal stem of a plant that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes, though a number of species of plants have above ground rhizomes or rhizomes that sit at the soil surface including some Iris species. Rhizomes may also be referred to as creeping rootstalks, or rootstocks.

rhizome has been used by Carl Jung as a metaphor, and by Gilles Deleuze as a concept

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. (Prologue from "Memories, Dreams, Reflections")

Francisco Varela

Autopoiesis literally means "auto (self)-creation" (from the Greek: auto - αυτό for self- and poiesis - ποίησις for creation or production) and expresses a fundamental dialect between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in 1973

Emergent Self

NOOSPHERE

The noosphere can be seen as the "sphere of human thought" being derived from the Greek νους ("nous") meaning "mind" in the style of "atmosphere" and "biosphere". In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere(inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere.

The word is also sometimes used to refer to a transhuman consciousnessemerging from the interactions of human minds. This is the view proposed by the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who added that the noosphere is evolving towards an ever greater integration, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the ultimate goal of history.

Fragility of memory: distortions & illusions

Camillo’s memory theater

Phantom Limbs