Mindscapes: Exploring Your Imaginary World
Venue: Gabriel Fine Art
Cottage 2, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, London, SE1 7LG.
Date: 9th and 10th October 2014, 13:00 to 16:30.
I'm running a free workshop in automatic drawing in October as part of The Big Draw. Come on either day to blot some ink and explore an imaginary landscape.
In wide domains I rise and rise.
I burn the plains to enflame my eyes.
The seat of the soul, and the mind inside,
that crystal heart where I reside.
A lattice cage, a cube unbroken.
A mind of numbers ever unspoken.
My information cannot flee;
it lives in imperfect symmetry.
There are two forces, philosophical standpoints. Biolism sides with nature and the biological capacity to store information and attenuate its loss, in other words, to survive. Technolism uses non-biological means to achieve the same ends. In the future, the conflict between these forces will grow stronger because it appears that technological ways of storing information are superior to biological ways, and I believe that this slight preference will, through evolution, cause technology to supplant biology.
Okay, so what are these concepts? Well, many functions of biology, of people and animals and plants have been replaced by functions of machines. We use cars for transport, rather than horses (or even motorised chairs, rather than legs). We use machines to plough fields, rather than oxen. We still use dogs to herd sheep, although technological solutions are in development. We use animals for food, although artificial meat has been developed. These explain the two forces, one natural, the other artificial.
These could be seen as political forces, and in politics these forces do surface.
Biolists would stand for living "in harmony" with nature; eating organic food, food produced without chemicals or machinery. As a political example, biolists would support fox hunting with hounds, rather than controlling populations with guns or poisons, or perhaps not supporting population control at all, although hunting for pleasure itself could be seen as a natural drive and therefore fitting within a biolist view.
Technolists would support the replacement of all animals and animal functions with machines, using artificial meat for food; robot companions for pets; replacing and extending human memory with computers and mobile phones; and the creation of artificial intelligences to assist human intelligences, and the gradual transformation of the environment from a biological to a technological one.
The extreme biolist view would support the eradication of technology, and the extreme technolists view would support the eradication of biological life. It is obvious that the world is moving from a pure biolist to a pure technolist environment.
