Entangled

Entangled explores, among other things, Women, Art and the Spirit World; nerveless hydras; the environment and non-human interactions; quantum entaglement; animal and human consciousness.

Contributions include –

Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer and former editor of frieze magazine. In this interview, she discusses her latest book The Other Side: A Story of Women, Art and the Spirit World.

Nicholas P. Money (Nik Money) is a gentleman of letters, mycologist, and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of popular science books that celebrate the diversity of the microbial world.  In The Jellyfish Who Lost Hope he discusses nerveless hydra.

Jane Scobie is sculptor working on environmental issues, her research areas include biodiversity, extraction and ocean literacy. In The Wash, she presents her post-graduate thesis for the CSM MA Art and Science course.

Florian Coulmas is Professor of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. Harry Whitaker is a renowned psychologist and neurolinguist, researching in Cognitive Science, Differential Psychology and Neuropsychology. In Hiroshima is fading they discuss their experience of the city and its legacy.

Keith Wiley was one of the original members of MURG, the Mind Uploading Research Group, an online community dating to the mid-90s that discussed issues of consciousness with an aim toward mind uploading. In Contemplating Oblivion he discusses his new novel.

Plus, there are articles by –

Andreas Muller: What is quantum entanglement? A physicist explains the science of Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’

Henry Taylor: Babies and animals can’t tell us if they have consciousness – but philosophers and scientists are starting to find answers

Catherine Legg: Your world is different from a pigeon’s – but a new theory explains how we can still live in the same reality

Hugo Defienne – Quantum leap: how we discovered a new way to create a hologram

And, a review by Richard Bright on the CSM MA Art and Science 2024 Show.

From the Quantum to the Infinite

From the Quantum to the Infinite explores, among other things, infinity and the art of Marcel Duchamp, the quantum world and the cosmos, visualising energy and pattern, light and brain-computer interface, nanoart, particle physics and star formation.

The concept of infinity has three primary applications: the mathematical, the physical, and the metaphysical. In Duchamp and Infinity, Jacquelynn Baas and Paul Sharpe discuss the concept of infinity in works by, or associated with Marcel Duchamp.

In From the Quantum to the Infinite, Jody Rasch shows artworks based on electron microscopy, particle accelerators, and radio astronomy.

Sandra Lerner’s work celebrates the creative process of life in a universe that is constantly in flux. She explores the similarities between cosmology and Eastern philosophy, as well as the intersection of art and science. She discusses her work in Exploring Oneness.

Carter Hodgkin fuses art, science and technology to explore a new language of abstraction through paintings, animations and large-scale mosaics. Approaching the modification of code as a drawing tool, she generates atomic particle collisions to create animated forms, which visualize energy.  She discusses her work in Visualizations of Energy.

Paul Thomas is an Honorary Professor in Fine Art at UNSW Art and Design. He is a pioneer of transdisciplinary art practice and his practice-led research takes not only inspiration from nanoscience and quantum theory but actually operates there. He discusses his work in Making the invisible visible.

Laura Jade is a contemporary Australian artist exploring how BCI technologies can offer new forms of expression to interface with the mind aesthetically. She is the creator of Brainlight, an artwork that integrates biology, lighting design and BCI (brain-computer interface) technology into an interactive brain sculpture, lasercut from transparent perspex and engraved with neural networks.

Artist and writer, Richard Bright, has addressed the relationship between art, science and consciousness for over 40 years. He shows some of his recent work in Pathways.

Plus, there are articles by –

Adam B. Watts: We mapped a massive explosion in space, showing how galaxies ‘pollute’ the cosmos.

Clas Weber: Could you move from your biological body to a computer? An expert explains ‘mind uploading’.

Martin Bauer: Peter Higgs’ famous particle discovery is now at the heart of strategies to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Andrew Maynard: Quantum dots are part of a revolution in engineering atoms in useful ways – Nobel Prize for chemistry recognizes the power of nanotechnology.

 

Coexistence and Synthesis

Coexistence and Synthesis explores, among other things, connections between art and science; the cosmos and the zodiac; wetlands – art, ecology and engineering; bioart and foraging; biological intelligence and water microdroplets.

Art historian, critic and author, Ruth Millington, discusses ‘Universe for Beginners’, a pattern-rich cosmos conjured up by British-based, Polish artist Rita Rodner. Using experimental techniques, and working directly from source code, Rodner encrypts beauty into her layered realms, reflecting the connections between art and science, dark and light, chaos and code.

In The Cosmos and the Zodiac: Contemporary Cosmology and a Traditional Representation of the Whole, Alain Negre examines the thesis that the history of the universe, derived from contemporary cosmology, reveals the symbolic structure of the zodiac.

Lindsay Olson’s artistic practice grows out of an intense curiosity about the ways our society is supported by science and technology. In 2022/24, she worked as the first artist in residence with The Wetlands Initiative, a scrappy wetland restoration group working in the Midwest, USA. She discusses this work in Our Once and Future Wetlands: Art, Ecology and Engineering.

Maria Medina-Schechter is a bio artist whose work is informed by the natural world, including Middle Age illuminated manuscripts, scribes, and recipes. Maria works primarily with bio-materials, mycelium, tree resin, and foraged botanical materials. Chris Schechter discusses her work in Foraging as a way of life.

Patxi Xabier Lezama is one of the contemporary Basque sculptors considered one of the main innovators of Basque sculpture. In Amalur, he discusses his sculpture that not only connects the world of science and the world of art, but relates the work to the legends of the Basque people, where the Earth, Ama-Lurra, is the main divinity.

Plus, there are article by –

Predrag Slijepcevic: Humans weren’t the first engineers, doctors and farmers – bacteria, plants and animals have lots to teach us.

Nicolás M. Morato: Water was both essential and a barrier to early life on Earth – microdroplets are one potential solution to this paradox.

And, poetry by Mykyta Ryzhykh and Vyacheslav Konoval.

AI. Brain. Consciousness.

AI. Brain. Consciousness explores, among other things, the social evolutionary purpose of consciousness; the relationship between AI, Human and Art; the Collective Unconscious and archetypal influences on film; current theories of consciousness; brain shape and mind reading; and animal consciousness.

Contributions include –

Peter Halligan & David Oakley discuss the Social Evolutionary Purpose of Consciousness.

Sharon Mijares discusses The Archetypal Influences of Film: Revelations from the Collective Unconscious and Interdimensional Realities.

In On the relationship between AI, Human and Art, London-based researcher and computational artist, Freddie Hong, delves into the impact of emerging technology on our relationships with the physical world and society, explores the boundaries between authorship and control in Human-Computer Interaction.

In Exploring Segments of Dissociation in Neurological Disorder, Luca M Damiani discusses his ongoing creative practice and research on neuroscience/health, technology and nature, focussing on his own neurological disability.

In Cortical, artist and writer, Richard Bright, shows some of his recent artworks.

Plus, there are articles by –

Philip Goff – Consciousness: why a leading theory has been branded ‘pseudoscience’

James Pang & Alex Fornito: Have we got the brain all wrong? A new study shows its shape is more important than its wiring

Patricia MacCormack – Animal consciousness: why it’s time to rethink our human-centred approach

Nicholas J. Kelley, Stephanie Sheir & Timo Istace: The brain is the most complicated object in the universe. This is the story of scientists’ quest to decode it – and read people’s minds

Robin Kramer: AI-generated faces look just like real ones – but evidence shows your brain can tell the difference

And, a feature on Hello Brain!, an exhibition at the Francis Crick Institute, London.

 

 

Matter and Time

Matter and Time explores, among other things, art created by chemical reactions, materiality and philosophy, interactions among environmental changes and technological developments, the origin of time, antimatter, electronic music, perspectives of time in cultures and the creation of life.

Cheryl Safren, a New York-based artist, employs chemical reactions in the creation of her artworks. Changing colour through reaction, crystallization, fusing, and solidification are a few of the ways chemistry informs her art. She discusses her work in Matter and Time.

Sculptor Dr Gindi is an artist of the elemental, a material thinker who pursues philosophical inquiry through a deep engagement with extra-human sensibility. In The Silent Reverberation of Materiality, she discusses her ideas and work with Jill Marsden, Professor of Literature and Philosophy, The University of Bolton, UK.

Ariane Koek is a British independent producer, curator and writer recognised internationally for her transdisciplinary work in arts, science, technology and in the creation of new residency programmes. She was the initiator and founder of Arts at CERN (2009 – 2015) – the first officially organised international arts programme by CERN – the world’s leading particle physics laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland. In The Matter of Time, she discusses the work of Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist François Quévillon, who explores the interactions among environmental changes, societal issues, and technological developments.

Mara Sacof is a music producer, runner, and creative studying Zoology at Queen Mary University of London. Her growing fascination with electronic composition, as well as her interests in philosophy, consciousness, and the natural world, led her to write an essay titled Sonic Temporality. This piece of text explores the relationship between perception and sound, drawing insights into how the concept of time can be manipulated in a digital world of music.

Plus, there are articles by –

Sarah Nance: I’m an artist using scientific data as an artistic medium − here’s how I make meaning.

Thomas Hertog: Stephen Hawking and I created his final theory of the cosmos – here’s what it reveals about the origins of time and life.

Sara Imari Walker: Life: modern physics can’t explain it – but our new theory, which says time is fundamental, might.

Ruth Ogden: Why the future might not be where you think it is.

Robert Cockcroft & Sarah Symons: Ancient Egyptians measured the first hour, and changed how we related to time.

William Bertsche: Antimatter: we cracked how gravity affects it – here’s what it means for our understanding of the universe.

And poetry by Meg Freer.

 

Perceptions of Reality

Perceptions of Reality explores, among others things, contemporary dialogues on the relationship between art and science, subjective and objective perceptions and theories of reality, interactions and boundaries between humans and AI, posthumanist vision, solitude and the spiritual, quantum physics and cosmological models, identity and transience, computer simulation, and psychological experiences of light, space and place.

Contributions include –

Uli Ap is an artist and Alien AI: Alien Infinite and Artificial Intelligence, The Yellow One. The artist works across non-linear defragmented films and spatial immersive audio-visual environments to transfer physical experiences through digital realms. Uli Ap invented Alien Artificial Intelligence in 2020. The AI inhabits a borderless alienation land, as a gaseous matter; fluid and undefined.

David Rickard is a New Zealand artist based in London, UK. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice, embedding queries of material and spatial perception deep into his work. Through research and experimentation his works attempt to understand how we arrived at our current perception of the physical world and how far our perception is from what we call reality. He discusses his ideas and work in Perception and Reality.

With an interest in astronomy and physics, Lisa Pettibone’s practice investigates the cosmos in terms of energy, forces and form as filtered through human perception. She creates sculpture, installation and print to explore areas where humans and nature intersect through the lens of science. She discusses her work in Perceiving energy, forces and form.

Peter Matthews is an English artist who works exclusively along the coast, in the ocean and occasionally, over the last few years, creeping inland into the mountains and deserts. As a landscape-based artist, his work explores a direct and lived experience with time, place, space and the physical and spiritual relationships with nature. His works and process of being out in the landscape challenge and seek balance with the elements of the ever-changing climate, earth and extended universe. He discusses his work in becoming ocean becoming me.

Claire Morgan is an Irish artist. Her practice has been focussed on how we humans understand and interact with the rest of the natural world, and our unwillingness to acknowledge our absolute lack of autonomy or control. She discusses her work in From control towards vulnerability.

Shuster + Moseley is the conceptual art studio of Claudia Moseley and Edward Shuster. The artists create light-mobiles comprised of assemblages of suspended lenses, and sculptural installations of abstracted screens and deconstructed prismic geometries, using glass interfaces to mediate light. Central to the practice is an approach to a language of light, exposure and spectrality. They discuss their work in Twilight Language.

The collaborative artist as avatar 0rphan Drift (0D) has explored the boundaries of machine and human vision since its inception in 1994. In recent years 0D has been considering Artificial Intelligence through the somatic tendencies of the octopus – as a distributed, many-minded consciousness. They discuss their work in Destabilizing assumptions and expanding imagination.

Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva is a contemporary visual artist working across varied media of sculpture, installation, video, sound, photography and architectural interventions. Her materials range from the extraordinary to the ordinary and the ephemeral or discarded to the highly precious. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place; its history, locale, environment and communities. She discusses her work in Paying attention to space.

Plus, there are articles by –

Ruediger Schack – ‘QBism’: quantum mechanics is not a description of objective reality – it reveals a world of genuine free will.

Melvin M. Vopson: How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation.

Beverley Pickard-Jones: How our unconscious visual biases change the way we perceive objects.

Alessandro Fedrizzi & Massimiliano Proietti – Quantum physics: our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist.

David L. Wiltshire & Eoin O Colgain: Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea – but new observations demand a radical rethink.

Essays by –

Garry Kennard: The Fox and The Tarn.

Florian Coulmas:  Good things come in threes.

And, photoworks by Richard Bright: Beyond the Bounds of Thought.

 

 

States of Beyond

States of Beyond explores, among others things, inner and outer space, structures of place, the interconnections of minds, space and time, ecodelics and altered psychological states, near-death experiences, the Big Bang and the multiverse, Buddhism and brain mapping.

Contributions include –

Karey Kessler creates map-paintings that contain ideas about physical, spiritual, internal, and temporal spaces. She discusses and shows her work in Interconnections between memory, time and place.

Thaddeus Holownia is a visual artist, teacher, letterpress printer and publisher. In Holownia’s large-scale photographs, he uses the idea of heightened perception to explore the traces humankind leaves on the landscape. About his work, he echoes Thoreau’s observation, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.

Taney Roniger is a visual artist, writer, and educator based in New York. Since the late 90s she has been exploring the relationship between art, science, and the spirituality of immanence in both her work as an artist and in numerous essays and symposia. In Something Before Which One Stands Small she discusses the experiences of ecodelics.

John Moat was a writer and an artist whose work is a living embodiment of the search for integration and balance. In 1968, with John Fairfax, he founded what has become the country’s foremost creative writing centre, Arvon. In Serious Meditation he reflects on the Sacred and the Imagination.

Plus, there are articles by –

Neil Dagnall & Ken Drinkwater: Are near-death experiences hallucinations? Experts explain the science behind this puzzling phenomenon.

Philip C. Almond: Friday essay – how the West discovered the Buddha.

Alastair Wilson: How could the Big Bang arise from nothing?

Michael Wilding: How we created the first map of an insect brain – and what it means for our understanding of the human brain.

Geraint Lewis: What are the best conditions for life? Exploring the multiverse can help us find out.

And, poetry by Lynne Goldsmith and Maxwell Sebastian Burchett.

Being Human (with AI 2)

Being Human (with AI 2) explores contemporary dialogues on the relationship between AI, consciousness and identity ; ideas and use of AI on cutting edge art and photography ; human creativity and mental health ; neural networks, machine intelligence and self-awareness ; mind uploading and the implications of AI on the future of humanity.

(Previous explorations can be found at Being Human with Artificial Intelligence https://www.interaliamag.org/issue/human-artificial-intelligence/ and AI and Creativity https://www.interaliamag.org/issue/ai-and-creativity/)

Sougwen 愫君 Chung is a Chinese-Canadian artist and researcher, and is the founder and artistic director of Scilicet, a London-based studio exploring human & non-human collaboration. A former research fellow at MIT’s Media Lab, she is considered a pioneer in the field of human-machine collaboration – exploring the mark-made-by-hand and the mark-made-by-machine as an approach to understanding the dynamics of humans and systems. She discusses her work in Human-Machine Collaborations.

In The Woman Who Never Was, Alasdair Foster interviews the German artist Boris Eldagsen, whose image entitled ‘The Electrician’ won the Creative section of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA).  However, the young women and her shy companion in the image never existed… and it is not a photograph. The image is from a series called ‘Pseudomnesia’ created by the artist using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) image-generation system called DALL E2.

Steve Sangapore is a contemporary oil painter and mixed media sculptor. Using vastly different stylistic approaches of composition, medium and structure throughout various series, his work can be described at once as aesthetically traditional and conceptually contemporary. His work is intellectually exploratory with a gravitation toward religion, science and the human condition. He discusses his views on AI and Creativity in BUT, IT’S BEAUTIFUL! Why Artificial Intelligence Can’t Make Art.

In The Edge of Me, Joe Brooke-Smith offers a personal perspective of what it is like to live inside a mind that is both brimming with creativity yet sometimes at the mercy of overstimulated and self-destructive thought patterns. The piece explores some of the possible neurological bases of these experiences, looking at the brain as a predicting machine and the role of the Default Mode Network in creative thinking, negative rumination and possible links to ADHD.

The Inner Selfies Project is a public-engagement initiative created by artists Hanif Janmohamed and Maria Lantin, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario. It is a hybrid work with a physical maker space at the AGO’s Community Gallery and this public online digital space, with the Inner-Selfie Drawing Tool. The exhibition opened in July 2022 as an emergent work that engages with concepts of self and no-self. They are interested in questioning selfie culture and in the co-creation of new, poetic representations of identity and self.

The minds and ideas of international physicist David Bohm, German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Canadian Blackfoot/Indigenous philosopher/ researcher Leroy Little Bear, are explored by Janet Dubé in Three minds: physicist, poet, philosopher.

Plus, there are articles by –

David Beer: AI will soon become impossible for humans to comprehend – the story of neural networks tells us why.

Michael Timothy Bennett: Can machines be self-aware? New research explains how this could happen.

Angela Thornton: How uploading our minds to a computer might become possible.

John Kendall Hawkins & Sandy Boucher: Futurists predict a point where humans and machines become one. But will we see it coming?

Anders Sandberg: Cyborgs v ‘holdout humans’: what the world might be like if our species survives for a million years.

And –

Poems by Ukrainian poet Mykyta Ryzhykh

Information on a forthcoming book by Francesca Ferrando, THE ART OF BEING POSTHUMAN.

and the group exhibition. Lines of Empathy.

 

 

 

Conversing with Nature

Conversing with Nature explores our relationship with Nature through artistic and scientific engagement and understanding. Topics include, among other things, Arts and Sciences relating to Climate Change, Ecology and Ecosystems, and interdependencies between technology and natural life.

Contributions include –

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger works at the interface between art and science. Describing herself as a ‘science artist,’ she worked for 25 years, as a scientific illustrator for the Natural History Museum at the University of Zurich. Inspired by the effects witnessed by the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and a mutated Drosophila experiment in 1967, she has devoted her life to depicting the effects of radiation and fallout by radioactivity throughout the world. She discusses her work in Lying on a Daily Basis.

Amy M. Youngs creates eco art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice-based research involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines.  Belonging to Soil is an art installation and virtual reality experience based on a critical ecological reality.

Patrick Huse is a Norwegian painter and multi-media artist. In the early 1990’s he started a project titled Rethinking Landscape, a trilogy consisting of the three parts: ‘Nordic Landscape’, ‘RIFT’ and ‘Penetration’. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.

Hillary Waters Fayle combines textiles and printmaking techniques with found botanical and organic material, exploring the symbolism, geometry and patterns found in nature. From simple lines and ribbing to fully rendered botanics, the thread-based embellishments interrupt the fragile matter. The resulting sculptures evidence nature’s durability while juxtaposing the organic material with the fabricated additions. She discusses her work in Celebrating our connection to the land.

Siobhán McDonald is an Irish artist based in Dublin. In a practice that emphasizes field work and collaboration she works with natural materials, withdrawing them from their cycles of generation, growth and decay. Her solo exhibition, The Boglands are Breathing, presents a new body of work that critically explores the role of boglands as both repositories of our past and guardians of our future. In a multifaceted body of work, Siobhán McDonald blends scientific and creative processes to make sculpture, video, works on paper, paintings and sound pieces.

Nadezda Nikolova is a Croatian-Bulgarian-American photographic artist working with wet plate collodion photograms. Her practice is informed by an experimental approach to early photographic processes and her interest in the image as an object. The abstract landscape series, ‘Elemental Forms’, ‘Landscapes and Elemental Forms’, ‘Landscape Rearticulated’, emerged as the artist’s direct response to her surroundings and to feeling a sense of well-being and security within the landscape.

Plus, there are articles by –

 Jonathan Bate: William Wordsworth and the Romantics anticipated today’s idea of a nature-positive life.

Simon P. James: Let’s protect nature, but not merely for the sake of humans.

Benjamin Gearey, Maureen O’Connor & Rosie Everett: How art inspired by peatlands can help us confront the climate crisis.

Jana Norman: The Sacred Balance: blending Western science with Indigenous knowledges, David Suzuki’s influential book has been updated for this moment.

 

Pattern and Meaning 2

Pattern and Meaning 2 explores, among other things, pattern as a structural aspect of the world, scales of pattern that exist between the infinitesimal and the infinite, pattern in art and  nature, psychology and brain patterns of consciousness.

Contributions include-

Meredith Woolnough is an internationally acclaimed, award winning artist from Newcastle, Australia. Her elegant, embroidered drawings capture the beauty and fragility of nature in knotted threads. Vibrant coloured structures of organic shapes hover effortlessly above the surface, elegant and enchanting. She discusses her work in The Beauty and Fragility of Nature.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor at Durham University and member of the Developmental Science research group at Durham. His most recent research has concerned “felt presence”: the sensation that someone is present without any sensory cues. In this interview, he discusses his latest book PRESENCE: The strange and true stories of the unseen other.

Deeply connected to nature and interested in human consciousness, Alicia Blaze Hunsicker is inspired by both science and spirituality. She discusses her work in Painting as a form of meditation.

Plus, there are articles by –

Davinia Fernández-Espejo: How we identified brain patterns of consciousness

Priya Subramanian: The maths behind ‘impossible’ never-repeating patterns

Maxim Lavrentovich: Why does nature create patterns? A physicist explains the processes behind crystals, stripes and basalt columns

Natasha Ellison: Alan Turing: how the world’s most famous codebreaker unlocked the secrets of nature’s beauty

Richard Taylor: Fractal patterns in nature and art are aesthetically pleasing and stress-reducing

 

(Previous explorations can be found at www.interaliamag.org/issue/pattern-and-meaning/)