Nim Goede

In PUK* verwezenlijkt Rijksakademie alumnus Floris Schönfeld een experimenteel model voor een posthumane samenleving waarin de rol van alternatieve intelligenties wordt gerevalueerd en de nadruk lijkt te verschuiven van het rationele naar het schizofrene. Hieronder volgt een Deleuziaanse schizoanalyse van PUK*, een oefening in het denken-met-het-kunstwerk, waarbij nieuwe verbindingen in het leven worden geroepen.

Invisible Dimension

Although we aren’t always aware of it, everything is interconnected. This is the message Mariko Mori wants to share with the world. To convey this message she employs the latest in scientific and technological developments. For her most recent work, that was recently shown at the Invisible Dimension exhibition in Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, she was inspired by quantum mechanics and astrophysics.

Onzichtbare Dimensie

Al zijn we ons er niet altijd van bewust, alles staat met elkaar in verband. Dit is de boodschap die Mariko Mori met de wereld wil delen. In haar artistieke praktijk maakt zij hiervoor gebruik van de meest recente technologische en wetenschappelijke ontwikkelingen. Voor haar nieuwste serie, die onlangs te zien was in de tentoonstelling Invisible Dimension in de Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, liet zij zich inspireren door de kwantummechanica en de astrofysica.

What underlies our feeling of " being on the same wavelength " with someone? This is the central question in Suzanne Dikker and Matthias Oostrik's interactive installation Mutual Wave Machine (2013). In this part interactive artwork, part crowd-sourced neuroscientific experiment two participants engage in a mutual gaze while their brainwaves are being monitored through a novel neuro-imaging method called hyperscanning. This novel technique allows for the simultaneous scanning of multiple subjects and therefore provides a unique perspective on the spatiotemporal neural dynamics subserving social interaction. The hypothesis put forth in Mutual Wave Machine is that " being on the same wavelength " involves an actual interpersonal synchronization of brainwaves. What is more, this installation examines whether providing participants with real-time visual feedback about their levels of interpersonal brainwave sync can serve to facilitate their interaction. This paper starts out by situating this installation in both its art historical and scientific context and ensues by providing a visual analysis. Taking the installation itself as a starting point, Mutual Wave Machine presents an image of a dynamic, trans-individual and technology mediated hyperbrain in which neural sync serves as a biomarker for social interaction. And although alluding to the mirror neuron hypothesis, this installation posits a more temporally-oriented model of social interaction, a model that is not merely concerned with the implicit imitation of the actions of others, but with a constant and dynamic temporal attunement between interacting agents, mediated by predictive processing.

Between 1964 and 1965 the American artist Robert Morris (1931- ) created a range of lead reliefs that have as of yet received little scholarly interest. This paper provides a historical and iconographical analysis of these works and argues that by capitalizing on lead’s material properties, i.e. its malleability and electrical conductivity, Morris found in lead a suitable material metaphor through which to think about the neurophysiological basis of memory. These lead reliefs are subsequently discussed as situated in a history of metaphors used for memory which dates as far back as antiquity. Consequently, Morris’s lead reliefs are read as modern-day renditions of Aristotle’s wax tablet metaphor which now take into account contemporary neurophysiological accounts of memory. But in an ironic twist, something which Morris is notorious for, these lead reliefs can alternatively be interpreted as acting out a critique of these very same accounts. By invoking an image of a tabletop, these works can be read as referencing a critique of neurophysiological accounts of memory put forth by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception (1945/62), a book which had thus far only been linked to Morris’s minimalist sculptures which he made during that same period. This critique amounts to the argument that just like traces left on the surface of a table do not in-themselves refer to the past, traces left in the brain do so neither; they require a conscious subject to read them as such. In other words, neurophysiological accounts of memory end up presupposing the very thing they attempt to explain. As a result of this reading the viewer of Morris’s lead reliefs comes to assume the role of a homunculus, thus conveying the idea that meaning is not contained within the work itself, but is generated in the viewer’s interaction with the work in the present moment, an objective similar to the one Morris pursued in his minimalist sculptures.