Pete Gorman 21/04/2008

The Artist asTechnoshaman

The upsurge of interest in shamanism in recent decades has lead to the notion of neo-shamanism (Lindquist, 1997) The notion of artist as a kind of shaman is not new… they see themselves as, to borrow Joyce’s phrase, “priests of the eternal imagination.” (Bynum, 1994) It would seem in these times where there is a growing lack of the potent symbolism that was a part of most cultures in the form of god, spirits or animism, and with the lack of formal initiates or shaman, that the onus is upon the artist to take that role. “For now it is the artist that must lift his audience from their impoverished lives in space and time. The old eastern mystic is gone.” (Bynum, 1994) Although neo-shamanism offers very valid experience for the neo-pagan, it has a tendency to look back in time to recapture past archetypes (Lindquist, 1997). In the increasingly urban and technological environment of our contemporary milieu, in a constant barrage of media, there is a potential for integration with an ever increasing information sphere. “…computer applications employed in industry and science – simulation, visualization, databases – are the new cultural forms of information society. The challenge before us is to figure out how to employ these tools to create new art” (Manovich, 2001)

 The shaman is one who visits alternative realities in order to bring back wisdom that will benefit others and the world as a whole. A shaman changes his or her consciousness at will in order to travel to another reality to obtain power and knowledge. There is another ‘alternative’ reality, inhabited by living forms or energies sometimes seen as ‘spirits’. (Lindquist, 1997) “The shaman journeys home to use this power and knowledge to help either himself or others.” (Lindquist, 1997)  The technoshaman then is one who performs the same function with the use of technology. “Technoshamanism is the integration of futuristic technology with ancient pathways of the past. It implies access to full-immersion experiences, virtual realities which have consequences in the real world.” (Miller, 2001)

 The re-embodiment and contextualization achieved in an effective virtual reality scenario perhaps has more in common with alternate realities than visual media. When I talk about VR I am also including possible future technologies such as direct neural interfacing that may replace our current eye based technology. In Char Davies’ well realised virtual reality installation Osmose (1995) immersants reported a variety of trance like states;“The suggestive presence in a totality of images gives rise to a mental – in Osmose, meditative absorption.” (Grau, 2003) Char Davies herself states; “as embodied consciousness in an enveloping space where boundaries between inner/outer, and mind/body dissolve.” (Grau, 2003)  “To me, Osmose looks at immersive space as a place where we can explore what it means to be embodied conscious beings.” (Hansen, 2006) “…an experience of embodiment that is specifically engineered to breathe life into the immaterial.” (Hansen, 2006) This profound alternate state of consciousness was achieved in 1995 with a static and relatively low resolution VR environment. Today, VR has been developed to a higher technological realisation and many of the problems associated with immersion have been minimalised such as the severe tendency towards motion sickness, the bulky and heavy headset, and it seems likely that VR is poised to make a comeback (Rush, 2006) indicating the possibility of enhancing and making the technology more accessible, enabling more advanced artistic realisations and transcendental trance states. VR as it exist today, however still consists of the immersant viewing the virtual world on some type of display with the eyes of their body. This represents a significant barrier to the direct experience of the VR environment. Direct neural interfacing with the optic nerve may offer a more immediate and immersive experience in the future but this type of technology may only appeal to an extreme minority especially those interested in purified artistic access or technoshamanic gestalt and divination.

 In the future an artist or technoshaman may use VR in conjunction with sensory deprivation and neurochemical enhancement to interpret a holistic information metaverse. This metaverse could be a data construct with information feeds coming from many sources; from media such as the web and broadcast media, news, sports, science, medicine, politics, religion, weather, as well as real time info-feeds from astronomy, solar activity, plate tectonics, volcanism, animal behaviour, electromagnetic, cosmic radiation, micro and radio waves all capable of various informatic reinterpretation depending on the bio-physical and emotional state of the immersant. A fractal based heuristic informatic may lead to an autopoiesis representation that can be witnessed in (or out of) a shamanic state of altered consciousness. “…the mindbody is experienced as an emergent phenomenon created in dynamic interaction with the ungraspable flux from which also emerge the cognitive agents we call intelligent machines.” (Hayles) Hayles’s third wave postulates this self organising principle of informatics: “The third wave wants to impart an upward tension to the recursive loops of self organising processes so that, like a spring compressed and suddenly released, the processes break out of the pattern of circular self-organisation and leap outwards into the new.” (Hayles, p222) These heuristic principles have been demonstrated in self evolving artificial life constructs, usually software based.
 
The artist would then use these visions and the psychic changes engendered to inform their work and thereby reach the perceiver releasing potentised memes that communicate distillations of the metaverse . Immersion in true VR may be seen as not so much a disembodiment but rather an ontological re-embodiment in an alternate reality (Hansen, 2006) If when we change our place we change our nature (Bacheland, 1958), then how much greater will be this change in the fuller expression of the techno-enhanced VR metaverse.

 Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses specific magnetic fields to influence the firing of the brain’s neurons, although used in medicine as a therapeutic tool, others have noted profound trancendental experiences under its influence “By stimulating specific areas in the right hemisphere of the brain, he is able to induce mystical states of consciousness, giving some subjects the experience of encountering God.” (Balfour, 2002) Some have argued, on the basis of Persinger's work, that religion itself could be electromagnetic in origin - and the transcendent experiences like those recounted by saints and mystics can be recreated with electromagnetic pulses in his laboratory (Balfour, 2002) It is not difficult then to see how this technology could enhance the perception and realisation of art, and for the technoshaman the apprehension of metaversal divinations.

Sensory deprivation is usually encountered with the floatation tank experience where the immersant is suspended in a temperature regulated environment where external stimuli are kept to an absolute minimum. This alone has been responsible for immersants having transcendental and even shamanic initiation experiences especially when combined with psychotropic chemicals (Lilly, 1973) “After the float it seemed that the world exploded with fine details, birds flying in the distance, the wind blowing through the trees and various other sensations that I totally forgot I had” (Stefaans, 2006) The absence of distraction experienced in sensory deprivation makes the apprehension of the more subtle realities much more possible and so is an ideal adjunct to technoshamanic divination. Psychotropic plants have been used by the shaman since ancient times to achieve states of consciousness and transcendental awareness not normally accessible. This is also often true of the artist who a long association with experiments in altered consciousness. Advances in technology have lead and will continue to discover and refine new neurochemicals, thus opening up the possibility of harm reduction in drug use and well tailored chemical enhancement. This will further open the doors to perception of our metaversal distillations. Of course current politics view the use of such chemicals with much suspicion; hopefully this will not always be the case in experimentally controlled conditions.

 Virtual reality may represent one of the most powerful tools yet devised for the engendering of alternate realities but future innovations my take this much further. Direct neural interfacing, advanced brain stimulation, gene switching, complex protein or neurotransmitter cascades are just some possibilities. Although our ability to access alternate realities will become greater, will we4 take this direction? If we take the path predicted by futurist Ray Kurzweil in his essay; “The Law of Accelerating Returns” (Kurzweil, 2001) then all these ideas may rapidly become archaic anachronisms as we realise the techno-utopia or singularity; “Nanobot technology will provide fully immersive, totally convincing virtual reality in the following way. The nanobots take up positions in close physical proximity to every interneuronal connection coming from all of our senses.” (Kurzweil, 2001) If we combine this total interfacing with a benign artificial intelligence as suggested in Rudy Rucker’s Wetware where this artificial intelligence actually turns out to have the desire to nurture and support human beings, joining with them in a life enhancing extension of the body (Rucker, 1988); a posthuman re-embodiment may become the norm. How rapidly humans adapt to this type of radical paradigm shift or which humans choose to adapt remains to be seen. The first to access this type of interfacing may well be the technoshaman/artist. The human being is innately adaptable and has thus far adapted to new technologies with surprising rapidity. It is not difficult then to imagine even these extreme technologies one day becoming acceptable although abhorrent to many contemporaries.

 The technoshamanic initiation experience of ego dissolution, death and rebirth, has many parallels with the near death experience; “The classic text of re-creational surrender or sacrifice of self is THE BARDO THODOL, or THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD.  It is explicitly for the living, who undertake the death-like regression into the unconscious.” (Miller, 2001) going deep into the consciousness journey and emerging transformed, is a form of death/rebirth, a powerful archetypal theme which is initiatory in character. (Miller, 2001) Those who have undergone such experiences have reported significant life changes often centred on a shift in orientation from self seeking hedonism towards service to their community.

 The access to the unconscious using the technologies under discussion may allow much more thorough and immediate shamanic initiation and therefore begin to close the separation between the ‘spirit’ world and the consensus reality; “When its boundaries melt, ego-consciousness dissolves into deep consciousness.” (Miller, 2001) The value of this shamanic initiation is subtle but important; “Exposure to the infinitely broader worldview of a shamanic personality will automatically move a "smaller" personality into solutio, dissolution.  This rapport or participation mystique is an unconscious, automatic process--a positive sort of psychic contagion.” (Miller, 2001) Access to these alternative states of consciousness will no doubt remain the domain of the artist and technoshaman.

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