The Conscious and the Unconscious Mind

This is an edited extract from my book 21st Century Surrealism, a book which examines lots of areas of creativity, from the problems artists can face to things relating to surrealism such as the unconscious and the philosophy of mind.

When thinking, we are only aware of a tiny fragment of thought at once; one thing, like a word on a page in a sentence. We have a memory of the sentence so far, and so can discern something about the information flow of our minds, and we might be preparing on some level for the up-and-coming words. In another part of our heads we have a sense of free thought, a feeling that we can dart to a new sentence if desired.

In a busy day we have several mental books to hand, several books of thoughts within reach, at our mental fingertips. We can grab these books at will, and turn our thinking towards them.

Most of the writing, filing, and sorting of the books in our minds happens beyond our conscious awareness, as though an invisible librarian is constantly ordering the vast catalogue of our knowledge. If you consider that you can read one word of one sentence each day; this fleeting thing we call conscious thinking, and then consider all of what you actually know, then it becomes obvious that the great majority of the ordering process; to write, to file, and store that vast library of our knowledge, must happen in the shadowed background of our minds.

This filing process takes place constantly; well, perhaps it does, it is beyond our awareness, so by definition we cannot ever tell. At the very least, every memory must be recorded, that's what memory means. Every recollection of a memory is recorded too; we don't remember what we don't recall. Do unrecalled memories exist? Yes, but only if and when we recall them. We can't say that they certainly exist when we don't recall them; in that circumstance they are identical to not being there at all. This principle of bringing into existence by observation seems to reflect a quantum-mechanical principle that something exists to the extent it is perceived.

It is clear that our experience of being conscious involves a sense of our own thoughts and memories, not just the sensory experiences of the outside world.

Consider every sense you have; sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, and how active each sense is at each minute of the day, and how many memories of each sense must be created. It is only then that you can consider the enormity of the work that the human brain must complete, and all without your tiny fragment of experience of the now that we call consciousness.

The word 'unconscious' has been used over and over again, and even in today's English it can refer to people who look asleep, or are sedated, as well as thoughts that we are not aware of. Here, I define it as those thoughts, those automatic and indirectable actions of the invisible librarian.

If unconscious thoughts are indirectable and not subject to our control, are they creative? Isn't creativity the ability to assess and choose something consciously?

There are degrees of awareness and freedom to control. Is control necessary for creativity? Perhaps one of the main benefits of unconscious creation is that is it not directly controlled, although we can't tell if unconscious thoughts are controlled or not, because, well, they are unconscious, and beyond the gaze of our mental senses. Can we have free will without awareness of it?

No. Free will is the sensation and feeling of being in control, and little else. The river of our thoughts flows. If we are unable to see the river and have no awareness of any control over its direction, then the point seems moot. The path of our unconscious thoughts surely flows in some direction, but if we are not aware of that direction, then any secret ways in which we are changing its path are, perhaps, unimportant; but only perhaps. We might have some influence over an unseen process, but merely be unable to predict or determine any outcome. This might be like a blind man prodding the driver of a coach and horses. He might be able to influence the journey, but know little else about it.

Control or intelligence aren't always useful for creativity, and perhaps the element of chance, or the very lack of willpower, is what is beneficial to the artist. A machine can be creative in this way, even an object with no intelligence at all. Drop a glass cup; its fragments form a pattern. Some curatorial control is necessary to filter what is a meaningful pattern, and what is not, but the cup itself constituted an important new source of information.

Apart from its capacity for a spontaneity untrammelled by will, the unconscious can be more inventive than our conscious minds because it has access to a vast panoply of source information, far larger than the surface pages that our daily minds flick though. There are levels to our thoughts, with immediate thoughts and memories occupying our immediate times, those things which skim lightly over the hot surface of our boiling star minds. Then there are slightly more distant thoughts that take slightly longer to reach, then more distant thoughts and memories, and more, deeper and deeper. The deep thoughts are too far away for us to think with fast enough to be of daily use.

Perhaps what we know as conscious awareness and control is simply a matter of access speed. If so, then those with more agile brains would literally be more conscious; they would have direct, fast access to more knowledge.

Being

In the absence of others, we must talk to different parts of our self to exist. Existence is dependent on detection, communication. An object isolated from the universe cannot exist, who could detect it? Only component entities can exist independently. Perhaps, when alone, this self communication spirals down, losing integrity, security, accuracy, and so over time we fade into nothingness.

Art Swarm

Well, my new video show went live last week, ArtSwarm, which is the logical continuation of the ArtsLab radio show I've been doing at RedShift Radio for past few years (as regular blog readers would have noticed!)

Producing a radio show for the past two years has been a really interesting experience, and great fun. The key skill for working on the radio is probably multi-tasking. I never really assumed that anyone was listening. The figures were small, typically under 10. I remain amazed at how my radio peers acted as though they were broadcasting to the nation or the world, rather than to a small room of (mostly) people that they knew anyway, or often broadcasting to nobody at all. Most listeners listened later, streaming the show at their leisure, which is the current trend in media. There is something to be said for live broadcasting, it certainly is more edgy and exciting than pre-recording, where things can be edited. The training of presenting a live show is very good for confidence because of this; it stops you worrying about making mistakes, and gives you the freedom to just do it. This is why successful presenters of all sorts often start in radio; it's the paragon of media training.

As most people listen later, I thought it would be good to aim for that, and to boost inclusivity wanted to make something that would allow people to share things, so the format for the second year of ArtsLab was to simply broadcast things that people have made. It became a sort of tutorial on how to create things in a hurry. Lots of the results were bizarre, often rough and ready, but, wow, often inventive and inspiring and pushing boundaries. The things I've heard on ArtsLab have certainly crept into my music, and my last album Cycles & Shadows, which was largely piano with spoken word, is so different from my former music due to this. The album I'm working on now will continue this trend into avant-garde pop, and a further step away from the Jarre and computer-game sound that dominated my earlier years.

All good things come from contrast and opposites and my rejection of the automated for the human is a great source of creative energy for me; my painting itself was a rejection of computer graphics.

Anyway, ArtSwarm, conversely, embraces video. It seems a logical step up to create an inclusive video show; a show where people make things to a theme each fortnight, then we all see what everyone has done. When I started painting, this very format made me paint. It was great training, and I'm sure that many good and exciting videos will get made due to ArtSwarm, the combination of pressure due to time, the guidance of a theme, but also, freedom without censorship (well, no quality judgements, it merely has to be YouTube legal).

I had hoped that ArtSwarm would be less work than ArtsLab to produce, which was about 2 days per week. Being fortnightly, it should be (and I'll save the 4 mile walk there and back - but that was as much a health benefit as a chore).

Ramble over. Onward to great things! Show number two is coming soooon.

Thoughts on Superdeterminism

A bit of a ramble for my own interest, but I thought I'd blog it.

The only component necessary for free will is ignorance of the future. Is it possible to have a superdeterministic universe and have retain this?

Knowledge of the future seems to be a spiral that could lead to eternal knowledge, but knowledge of what and by whom? To know something is to duplicate its information, yet an exact duplicate, perhaps half of the universe duplicated by the other half, would perhaps not contain knowledge. Instead, it seems that one half chases the other, attempting duplication, racing toward symmetry, yet never attaining it because perfect symmetry contains nothing new. Information is contained within the differences between things; the more powerful the information, the greater the contrast. Errors create drama. The greater the error, the greater the drama and the most stark the difference between what is known and what is unknown. Ignorance is perhaps a vital part of existence, and if so, the most profound truths in science must be unknowable.

At what speed is information gained? At light speed, or a finite speed of maximum limit, at least. Instant knowledge cannot be permitted because a degree of ignorance and inaccuracy are necessary. Perhaps the early universe strove for perfect accuracy, but once the size became impossible to traverse 'instantly' due to distance, errors became inevitable, resulting in asymmetry and thus information.

Can information exist as a duo of perfect symmetry? Not between them. They might contain form, but what third party could observe this? A third party that attempts knowledge, which is therefore partial duplication of form.

If a system should evolve into this perfect symmetry, could it escape? No, and so it is probably not possible that a system could evolve into perfect symmetry. Was the instant of the start of the universe a period of perfect symmetry? If so, that infinite point would not be attainable, so no. Even on the tiniest possible scales, there must be inherent imperfection.

Structures for 3D Audio

I've looked again at upgrading my sound software Prometheus to support surround sound, or 5.1 which is the prevalent option for multi-channel audio, replacing the quadrophonic experiments of the 1970s. The whole situation about this sort of sound is still in flux and not well designed, despite digital technology largely resolving many of the technical problems that made analogue quadrophonic difficult. 5.1 was developed for a cinema and has proven to be popular primarily because of its native support on DVD. This uses 4 audio speakers plus 1 central speaker for dialogue, and a sub-woofer (which is the 'point 1' in the name).

This might suit a cinema, but is a poor choice for music. The sound remains two dimensional, being on one plane. Also, why have one speaker for dialogue, why not more? Or combine the dialogue with the music? Most song music has an inherent mix of speech and music, the balancing between vocals and music is part of the art. For music, a more universal standard would be useful, so I've explored some options to integrate into software.

Current music audio is stereo, left and right. Quadrophonic sound is (or was) normally made from four speakers placed at the corners of the sound area, but this seems irrational given that most conventional music is stereo already, and so front and rear sound would instantly interfere with left and right. It would make the most logical sense to divide the space axially; left and right (LR), front and back (FB), up and down (UD) with six speakers placed in those locations.

It is notably rare for speakers to feature below the listener, under the floor. The Microsoft WAV specification for multichannel audio, at a pinch, includes options in its WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE structure for a front speaker (SPEAKER_FRONT_CENTER), left and right (SPEAKER_SIDE_LEFT and RIGHT), rear (SPEAKER_BACK_CENTER), and up (SPEAKER_TOP_CENTER), but nothing for speakers below the listener. The structure seems to have been developed based on current audio usage rather than have any rational structure. There is, for example, support for back top left and front top left speakers, yet not plain top left or top right. There is no support for speakers below the listener, odd allocations such as a "FRONT_LEFT_OF_CENTER" option, and a single low frequency channel somewhere in the middle of the structure. Bass sounds are harder to locate spatially, so presumably these are assumed to be spatially ubiquitous, or unimportant.

It would be more logical to store data in 6 tracks for 3 dimensions: Left L, Right R, Front F, Back B, Up U, Down D. Sound could be recalculated for different speaker arrangements, such as 50% left, 50% front for a traditional quadrophonic placement speaker, or differently for the 'recommended' placement for a 5.1 music system.

Perhaps dialogue or additional layers would be desirable; in cinema or television, for example, where a separate volume control for background music, dialogue, and sound effects could be an option. These could be stored in a different dimension; a new 6-track layer, so for a 3 layer system we might include speech, music, and sound effects, creating 18 audio tracks.

It's interesting to note that, according to Wikipedia, the SACD format supports 6 channels, which would suit a 3D spatial format. A 7.1 sound card could play the audio back with current technology. Monitoring the audio would require six speakers and a specially designed studio, with a speaker in the floor and ceiling. Headphones could be used with contemporary virtual reality technology to detect the exact orientation of the listener's head.

With the growth of virtual reality and immersive environments, new ways of storing multi-dimensional audio will be needed. The current 2D structures are simply not adequate for a 3D environment, and the most efficient system is to use 3 axis for 3 dimensions, and thus 6 channel audio.

Conclusions

I propose an audio data structure that interleaves 6 channels as such; left, right, front, back, top, bottom.
For additional dimensions, a specifier would be needed on the content type; music, dialogue, sound effects, and others (ambient sound, other additional dimensions).
New virtual reality audio systems should be designed for 6 channels, with detection of the correct head orientation of the listener.

Only Four More ArtsLabs

For anyone reading this blog, you might notice that it's become a vast archive of my weekly ArtsLab programmes for RedShift Radio. In four weeks I'll be leaving RedShift, and so this will become more of a normal blog, that is lots of rare and random notes on things.

My show will continue, but on YouTube as a video show called ArtSwarm. I think video is the best mass medium for the Internet at the moment, and the new show will be the same format, a mix of any new art; audio, poems, videos, images, anything that artists anywhere/everywhere create and send me each episode to include in the programme.

I'm creating a second separate blog just for ArtSwarm, which will archive those episodes (it's so useful to have that record) and mention other things related to it. If you are interested in it, then do follow that blog, which is at artswarmtv.blogspot.co.uk.

The show will go out live on a new channel on YouTube each Friday at 8pm London time. You can subscribe to the channel here.

Debunking Parallel Universes

There is an idea in contemporary physics that the universe is one of an infinite number of parallel universes. I do not believe this to be correct, but the idea has grains of truth in it.

Firstly let us dispose of infinity, for one infinity anywhere will inevitably lead to infinity everywhere. There is no instance in the real universe of infinity, although reality can often move as close to it as possible. Mathematics creates models of infinity (infinity doesn't exist in mathematics, as such, we could never count forever) but its models of infinity and a perfect universe work to describe ours. We can say that space is infinite, in that there is no limit to the nothing that particles can move into, but the size of the universe can still be finitely specified as the range between the particles at its most extreme; this is, and will always be, finite. One may say that the expansion of the universe will continue forever, but as forever is infinite, this cannot be the case. I am aware that this is logical fallacy and so state this jokingly; I am doubtful of the existence of forever, as, like infinite space, time can be measured as the difference between the start and end of the universe in its dimension. If time were infinite, such a measurement would be impossible. Would time exist in those circumstances? No. Remember that time is relative, and indeed, so is existence itself, which brings me on to the crux of this argument.

Some simple logic will conclude that multiple universes exist, but not that the observable universe is one of an infinite number of possibilities. Instead we have one each; there is necessarily one universe per observer.

Each of us has a unique viewpoint of the universe; you have a different view than I. This also applies to every particle and atom. Because of this, we each build up a unique picture of what the universe looks like. Our views may overlap; we might agree that the moon is over there, that the sky is blue etc. but our views can never be identical, there will always be an instance of knowledge that one of us knows that another doesn't. This means that the knowledge about the universe that we each have is unique to us.

This might sound obvious and lacking in serious implications, but actually its implications are extraordinary. I might not know anything about the dark side of Jupiter, but that doesn't affect whether it exists or not, does it? Actually, it does. The existence of the dark side of Jupiter, or of anything at all, depends on our observation and knowledge of it. That is a crucial fact in philosophy, and quantum mechanics. Our knowledge of the universe actually defines reality. Only what we know exists for us. Essentially, existence is relative to us, not absolute.

Of course, we can learn by communication and thus gain knowledge. Light particles communicate the existence of distant stars to our eyes, but at the same time, it is our unique knowledge that defines the reality of our universe.

So, there are multiple universes, but we are each in our own unique one. These are not infinite in number, but dependent on the number of particles and therefore viewpoints in the universe. Particles can combine; I myself, like you, are a summation of particles, so do I have a unique viewpoint, different from any of the particles or groups of particles that constitute me? Perhaps. If so then the number of viewpoints in the universe is the total of any combination of all of the particles in the universe; a gigantic number, but not infinite.

We will always have a unique perspective, and thus exist in a unique universe of our own. Perhaps, as a result of this perspective there is an aspect of it which cannot be shared, and perhaps this is what we call consciousness. It seems that consciousness cannot be defined in absolute terms, only relative, and then only experienced by ourselves and not proven to exist elsewhere. If consciousness is the result of our unique perspective in our universe, then all things, even atoms and sub-atomic particles, experience what we perceive as consciousness; a perspective, which is separate from thought.

What we call the objective universe is an overlap of a vast number of others; a common, but not definitive or perfect, reality.

Grey Technology Dream

I had a dream about a Lego space probe, heading for Mars as part of a school science project. It was dependent on all of its systems, and if one should fail (I imagined the failure of one of the axis aligned gyros) the whole probe would fail. I named this effect as black redundancy, a slight fault incapacitating the rest of the object when most of it was functional, and related it to computer programming where a tiny error or mutation in the machine code would be fatal to the integrity of the program.

I spoke to a dream character that biology was different, analogue in this respect, that it never truly breaks or is truly fully functional. I termed this white redundancy. I envisaged grey technology; machines with semi-redundancy, where the working parts of a machine would keep working when the broken parts were broken, that breakages would be detected and worked around automatically.

Essentially this was machinery that was much more tolerant of errors, particularly relating this to digital ones in computer code that might cause a crash. That the machines would behave biologically, and the wounded probe would do its best using the working functions. I called this grey technology and defined it as semi-redundancy of independent systems. I rushed home to publish this online.

In the dream I could not share the idea, prevented from working by children in my room, then a larger bullying child who I eventually threw out of the room, but he returned with a gang, and vicious animals to hammer down at my door and prevent me from typing. I felt that the dream was about the prevention of achievement of good work and good ideas by social commitments, or trivial things, but whatever that meant, at least now, I can publish the grey technology concept.