PSI OPS TEAM
Beaten out by X-Files, 1992
PSI OPS TEAM loses battle of the network screenwriters to X-Files
Truth is Stranger than Fiction Dept.
Truth is Stranger than Fiction Dept.
In early 1992, our literary agent, Bernard Shir-Cliff of Warner's approached Rick and I because his buddies at FOX Network wanted to produce a show about the occult. Based on our own personal experience at SPOOK CENTRAL (MRU) we wrote a treatment of a psychic Mission Impossible Team, which had NOT been done at the time (prior to Dan Akroyd's show). Only the names have been changed to protect the usual suspects. Of course, we came in 2nd of their solicitations to a little show called the X-Files, which I hear did pretty well ;) Years later, I was surprised to see the star of our first episode, Trinity Church, turn up as the reveal in NATIONAL TREASURE I.
Ah well, great minds think alike!
For our real life PsiOps Team from the 1970's see: http://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/
MANKIND RESEARCH UNLIMITED Frontier Science: In over 30 years of borderland explorations many unique individuals came through the doors of MRU to share their knowledge, gifts, and experiments in the pioneering days of parapsychology, consciousness studies and complementary or integrative medicine.
Here is the original treatment proposal file:
THE PSI OPS TEAM
c1992
by Richard & Iona Miller, Burt Webb
Concept:
Occult entities and energies from other dimensions are creating a real crisis on earth, jeopardizing the Ionosphere which screens earth from ultraviolet radiation death. A psychic "Mission Impossible" team is created to clean up the equivalent of psychic and spiritual toxic waste. The twist is that it all takes place against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of international, political and corporate intrigue. This one has it all: secret societies, dirty politics, Wall Street sharks, the Third World, ecological crisis, cloak & dagger, the occult, UFOs, cyberpunk brain interfacing, lunatic fringe, psychotronic weapons, and a global playing field whose prime time is running out.
Background:
The basic idea is that a wealthy industrialist has a change of heart about the impact of development on the world. He decides to dedicate his company to ecologically responsible projects, especially in the Third World. He runs up against a very powerful group of businessmen who have their own plans for exploiting the people and resources of the Third World. Strange things begin to happen to his projects. Poltergeists, ghosts that scare native workers, and other magical things. As he investigates, he finds that these are not hoaxes. He assembles a team including an occult scholar, a Russian biophysicist, and a parapsychological tinkerer with his EVP Ghostbox.
They begin to discover and explore a complex environment of other planes and dimensions which coexist with the earth. These planes have life forms which are intelligent and can sometimes communicate and even visit the earth. They are responsible for UFOs, ghosts, and other occult phenomena. There are different types with different power-bases and homes. There are groups with strong leaders, renegade individuals, etc., and they have complex and conflictive motivations.
One group feeds on death energy, while another feeds on birth energy. A third group consumes negative emotions and a fourth positive emotions. Some are acting out of ideological intent, others are feeding, still others are just playing jokes. There are objects and places on earth which have been "energized" by interactions with these other dimensions and their inhabitants. There are also occult rituals and drugs which can breach the barrier. The inventor in the Psi Ops group discovers a way to use complex microwave holograms to stimulate certain areas of the brain to access these realms.
Because of the increase in human population and the acceleration of social interactions and cultural change, more and more of these entities are interfering with human affairs. They exploit objects, places and people. The leader of the Psi Ops group decides to use his money and power to neutralize objects, places and people who are a conduit for these forces. This places him in direct opposition to the leader of the other group, who is a powerful wizard with his own agenda.
First known as the Entity, he plans to cause a major interpenetration of these other planes with the earth, so that magic becomes the normal state of affairs, with him as the ultimate power. He has powerful allies on the other planes. The Psi Ops Team must use their technology and make allies to oppose him. The adventures have to do with specific objects, sites or people, but the whole world is a game board, with them winning and loosing battles in a war with the Entity, who is trying to bring about a sort of unharmonic convergence.
CAST
Blake Martel - The Industrialist
Age: 55
Background: Inherited an international contracting firm from his father. Divorced with two sons, one deceased.
Personality: Authoritarian, not much humor, lots of honor, workaholic.
Abilities: Shrewd businessman, charismatic leader by virtue of
natural intensity and deep resonant voice.
Appearance: Medium height, medium build, brown hair and intense
brown eyes.
Karen Thorson - Executive assistant to Martel
Age: 40
Background: Came up through ranks to run her own corporation which
Martel bought, had affair but now only friends, interest in occult.
Personality: Pleasant but only opens up around her close friends.
Abilities: Highly intelligent, hard worker, great with details.
Appearance: Slender figure, red hair and freckles, cute face.
Iron Claw - Pilot for Martel
Age: 32
Background: Native American, Hopi.
Personality: Quiet and efficient but reserved.
Abilities: Excellent pilot and mechanic.
Appearance: Tall, good build, handsome, black hair and eyes, dark skin.
Stan Carter - Head of security for Martel
Age: 40
Background: Ex Army Intelligence (Eastern Europe), P.I.
Personality: Usually easy going but has a nasty temper when crossed.
Abilities: Intelligent and observant, weapons, explosives, martial arts.
Appearance: Black, medium height, stock build, rugged features.
Svetlana Mishkin - Russian biophysicist
Age: 29
Background: Emigrated to United States during Gorbachev years.
Personality: Friendly and trusting, passionate.
Abilities: Brilliant theoretical scientist in a variety of disciplines.
Appearance: Big, full figured woman, features a little too strong to be
beautiful, but attractive.
Chet Billings - Parapsychological tinkerer
Age: 25
Background: College drop-out, estranged from family.
Personality: Withdrawn, almost antisocial but lonely.
Abilities: Computers, electronics, chemistry, great in lab.
Appearance: Short, thin, long scraggily blond hair, poor dresser.
Moshe Ben Gurion - Occult Scholar
Age: 65
Background: Survivor of holocaust as a child, emigrated to US to escape
conflict in Middle East.
Personality: Old World Gentleman.
Abilities: Encyclopedic knowledge of the occult and mythology.
Appearance: Tall, slender, silver hair, big nose, dresses formally.
Fernando Castille - The Entity (Head of Opposition)
Age: 45
Background: From noble Spanish Aristocracy.
Personality: Arrogant and demanding, charismatic.
Abilities: Shrewd businessman and powerful occultist.
Appearance: Tall and dashing, impeccable dresser.
STORIES
Obviously the first story needs to be a two hour, made for TV movie which sets up the premise. Opens with Stan Carter witnessing a spontaneous human combustion of a native who had been helping him learn why workers are deserting a project in the interior of Brazil. (Turns out to be some hydroelectric project which will flood an ancient ruin which is a power site that Castillo wants to exploit).
He reports back to Martel who puts Karen to work assembling a team to investigate the paranormal nature of the problems. She goes to University to talk to Moshe who teaches courses. He introduces her to two of his ex-students, Sventlana and Chet.
There follows the usual stuff with personality conflicts, slowly tracking down the opposition group and its leader, Chet building the brain interface, Martel fending off the financial attacks, Stan dealing with the occasional car chase and gun fight. Moshe handling an occult confrontation or two and a grand finale in the jungle of Brazil with the aid of an old shaman where both conventional and occult weapons and combatants duke it out. The bad guys are beaten, but escape to fight another day. Show ends with decision to act as a sort of Metaphysical Protection Agency (MPA) to clean up toxic sites and objects by somehow "valving" off the esoteric energy charge.
EPISODE I:
THE MANHATTAN CONSPIRACY
Basic Story Line:
A high ranking member of a Secret Lodge is inducted into an inner circle and finds out he cannot accept some of the past actions of the Order. Among other things, he finds out about the theft of Manhattan (Manhattan Conspiracy). He decides to bail out and takes the deed, among other things, for insurance. The Lodge put the heat on him and he contacts (Tom Little). This man remembers family legends about the deal and agrees to meet the Lodge, but is killed before he can keep his appointment. Now a race is on to find the deed. The main character enlists the aid of detective. The detective hires a hacker to crack the Lodge files. There are the usual car chases, threats, gun fights and narrow escapes. The main character eventually recovers the deed and some real nasty dirt on Lodge activities. Now he has to decide what to do. Will anyone believe him? If he is believed and what he knows is made public, will the Lodge retaliate? If he says and does nothing, will he suddenly disappear?
(3 Acts, 2 subplots)
Act I: The Set Up
Opening Scene - Begins with Ben Gurion's initiation into the inner echelon of The Lodge, and the revelation of its various manipulative activities, both financial and psychological. Martel's team has attempted an infiltration for months, so this is their chance. Upon closer inspection, Ben Gurion realizes he is dealing with very "dark forces." He quickly formulates a plan to steal key evidence of the plot, including the deed to prime Manhattan property, allegedly under the control of an orthodox church (actually a front for The Lodge activities).
Chase scene around Manhattan ensues, showing landmarks and back alleys. Ben Gurion winds up at the occult shop of an acquaintance, where he is shuttled into a strange contraption which allows him to slip into another dimension for escape. He is now a fugitive from The Lodge (through the remaining shows). This mystery character has many enemies from around the world because of his activism, and has lived as an "underground" person for many years. He is a master of disguise, and hypnotic manipulation, (sort of like "Yoda").
Scene 2 - Opens in the Psi Ops lab in Seattle, Washington, a couple of days after his escape. Ben Gurion awakens from a hypnotic trance. He has just undergone a regression to determine what really happened during his escape, and to recall helpful details and specifics about his pursuers. His description of the Manhattan Conspiracy for the benefit of the Psi Ops team fills in the viewer through dialog and interrogation by the other characters present. Martel is present, but shown only from behind. He remains a mystery man for several episodes. Thorsen and Carter are also present, helping plan security and recourse.
Scene 3 - Ben Gurion calls for his former students Svetlana and Chet to join the team in planning their strategy. Flashbacks describe the sexual tension between these two. Even though he is four years younger, Chet harbors a crush on Svetlana, because he worships her brilliant intellect. They had previously worked together on developing an interdimensional brain interface. She is a biophysicist, he has background with biochips.
Though it is really unrequited love, there was a time or two in the past when Svetlana succumbed to his advances in a moment of weakness. This old fuel keeps his fire burning, and he pursues her relentlessly, even though he is not (and never will be) her "type." He is a great programmer, but hopelessly immature, emotionally.
The sexual undercurrent is a continuing theme throughout the series, which never consummates or resolves. They are virtually forced to work together due to circumstance, though it is painful for them both for different reasons.
Act II: The Confrontation
Scene 1 - Through their vast network of informants and "dark forces," The Lodge manages to locate Ben Gurion in Seattle. They descent like a plague of locusts, attempt, and are successful at retrieving their documents. They take them back to The Vault which, though in another dimension, is accessible only from the catacombs underlying the old Trinity church property in Manhattan. They now perceive the entire team as their enemy, and plot to eliminate them all for their highly proprietary knowledge.
Scene 2 - Back in the Lab again, a discussion of how to retrieve documents from the timeless/spaceless alternative dimension ensues. Using the brain interface, how to break into the Vault from a remote location is explained, and Carter can now go in and get the job done. The problem is that in the process, he is observed by The Entity (unknown to the team), and he mobilizes even more of his vast resources. There is the implication that he is "otherworldly." Yet, his world-wide financial grip gives him tremendous political clout.
Scene 3 - In the course of a seemingly unrelated government business activity (IRS audit), Thorson is lured and captured by the minions of Castille. Because of her attempt to protect Ben Gurion, Karen Thorson is captured and held for ransom, only to lure the other players within reach. She is the easiest mark. The subplot of tension between Svetlana and Chet continues. Though the heavy "baggage" of their past interaction is very apparent, they must now put that aside, and focus on their respective specialties.
Act III: The Resolution
Scene 1 - Back at the Lab, hacking their way into top level computers, the team gets a better idea of who the Entity is, his world-wide network of influence, and his alternative dimensional resources. Hints of his past manipulations of world economy, psychology, and culture to gain an economic stranglehold, and dupe the world into enslavement for his own glory - almost an Anti-Christ figure with his behind-the-scenes machinations.
Scene 2 - Lots of action now ensues, depending on the close coordination of the entire Psi Ops team. Karen is rescued, plus the documents, plus dirt on The Lodge. The team can now threaten or blackmail The Lodge to leave them alone, but of course they are undaunted, since they are prepared to sacrifice their dark souls for their "cause." Each minion has their own idea of what their reward will be, predicated on their personal psychology (lust, money, fame, power, etc.). Again, Castille almost prevails.
Scene 3 - Though temporarily thwarted, Castille tucks his tail and musters his forces for another day. Perhaps he retreats to his compound in Spain, with its underground hi-tech/occult training ground. With his "generals" around him, he feels secure for the moment to live to fight another day.
The ill-defined group of researchers and intelligence operatives become more cohesive in rallying around Ben Gurion. Even beyond his protection, they now have a common mission to "save the world" from immanent social/political/financial collapse.
Martel provides the necessary funds as patron and world-wise director. But we still aren't exactly sure just who he is on the world stage. He is still shown from the back only to preserve the mystery. A future show will disclose in more detail the context of his life and involvement. Personal conflicts in the group remain evident, but bonding experiences moderate these as time goes on.
The documents provide the basis for a legal battle to usurp The Lodge's power spot in downtown Manhattan. The Trinity Church, which has been the dupe of Castille, musters its financial and political power against the team for another episode.
04-09-92
PSIBER CULTURE with Iona Miller
PSIONICS * PARAPSYCHOLOGY * PARAPHYSICS * NEUROTHEOLOGY
Self-Regulation is the antidote to corporate & political mind control.
PSI HAPPENS. The Supernatural, the Paranormal, the Unknown. Mankind has always been fascinated with dreams, intuitions, imagination, inspiration, charisma, otherworldly experiences, spirituality, psychoenergetic phenomena, extraordinary abilities, and the Transpersonal. The first rituals related to great cycles -- seasonal celebrations, healing, birth, death, rebirth. Beliefs are contagious (memes). But psi can affect us unconsciously, whether we "believe" in it or not. Few will deny that mind is mystifying.
Psi culture is not a subculture, but something we all inhabit unconsciously and notice at certain points in our lives when the uncanny or numinous intrudes on our everyday world. Jung (1961) said, "To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly; all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse."
There are several subcultures who's worldviews embrace psi phenomena as Reality, or react as if they do from governments to tribal people to new agers and neo-pagans to leading-edge researchers. Even the most skeptical scientist can be superstitious sometimes. But psi may prove to be more than just an artifact of primitive belief.
The distinction between "true believers" and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, attributions of the source of events or perceptions, whether one's model is psibernetics, "magical thinking", external agents, holistic mysticism, or physicalism. A theist will tend to attribute positive expectations to God, a pagan to nature, a humanist to self, and an atheist to complex dynamics, or randomness.
HARNESSING REALITY
The fashionable term for mind/matter interaction is now "intentionality", as if that explains anything. You may as well call it free will, or True Will, like the magicians do. Yet to name it intentionality doesn't make it so. It is a fantasy of intentionality, a subjective hypothesis that human intervention at the subtle level perturbs outcomes PHYSICALLLY in some desirable manner. Which is not to ignore psychosocial effects or mobilization of immune function.
People often mystify their experiences unnecessarily when they don't have a more plausible explanation. The notion that the all-knowing nonlocal field identity exerts some influence over environment and personality may simply be mythopoiesis. The real question is why do all cultures engage in mythopoeisis? Identification with the field body may just be another way of being attached to a belief to explain the Unknowable.
ITS NO SECRET
The notion "we create our own reality" is a relative truth with origins in the existential philosophers of the 19th Century. It can also be motivated by control issues - as a control fantasy rather than a proper characterization of lived reality. From a Jungian point of view, any "intentionality" we could exert would be subject to the competing agendas of autonomous archetypal forces and dynamics that don't give a fig about your personality needs. Whether we think we are changing reality through a focused act of will or even by "broad-beam" self-transformation the whole scenario may be a self-delusion cast in pseudo-scientific terms.
If it bothers or offends you to think otherwise, this is more likely true. There is emotional attachment there, not clarity. If you think you can do it by "aligning" yourself rather than manifestation, why are you harboring fantasies of misalignment? It makes little sense that the particle "intends" and the field "corresponds"; in Nature, the reverse leads to manifestion. Is this notion harboring a God-complex, a control fantasy in an otherwise uncontrollable world?
EMERGENCE
Intentions may or may not exert a nonlocal organizing effect. They do when they mobilize effective action not just wishful thinking. Often the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is invoked for pumping holistic mental effects up to macro- proportions. But chaos theory doesn't organize through intentionality; but just the opposite, by criticality and emergent process.
Correlation is not identity. We are both particle and field, and they are both complex, and may be analogous or metaphorically connected to the hypothesis of intentionality - but that doesn't make it real: it makes it a belief, an operational worldview. If you think it works for you, that is an interpretation, an arbitrary allocation of a cause to a perceived effect, which may be largely unrelated.
Once the narrative is "set", that becomes the story and the person zealously sticks to it, right or wrong. This is human nature and the nature of emotional investment. It may be the eternal human yen to create order from the fear and chaos of our lives and cleave to faith in the Great Beyond, whatever one thinks resides there.
PsiCoSomatics
A myriad of "brandable" new age technologies are based on non-scientific interpretations and confabulations of scientific theory. Though having its own organic root in metaphysics, new age tech has hijacked and romanticized the philosophical territory of psi research with its own prosaic interpretations and self-promotional agenda. Because it makes a romantically appealing metaphor doesn't mean it matches up with naked Reality. Often incompatible physics theories are confounded together for the so-called explanations. For example, the Many-Worlds Theory (MWI) doesn't require 'nonlocality' at all.
Psi researchers must be careful to see these explanatory buzzwords like 'resonance', 'alignment' and 'intentionality' for what they are, smoke and mirrors explaining nothing, not what some say they are. Like the next new buzzword, "extradimensionality", it is just a displacement into the Unknown of a process that may be something entirely other than what the experiencer thinks it is.
Rather than extradimensional participation in some subtle physics process, it may just be another trick of the mind - in the end, nothing more than a concept that doesn't match up with nor describe Reality. Oh sure, it may be existant in some nonfungable parallel universe, or that could be just another mentally attractive perennial fantasy. If there are memes in our culture, there are strange attractors in our thought patterns, that can harden into fixed beliefs. The fact is we don't know, and anyone who charges you and says they do is a either a fraud or self-deluded, or both.
SpyCoSomatics
There are many aspects of psi, some more credible and testable than others, ESP (information transfer) being the most plausble, psychokinesis (mind over matter) most problematical. Serious researchers are beyond parlour tricks such as seances, regressions, or ghostbusting. Still, there is no scientific or spiritual consensus about the mechanics of physics or consciousness, much less mind/matter interaction. But Mystery doesn't need to be metaphysical, mystical, nor dismissed as "noetic nonsense". It simply isn't limited by any of our concepts nor scientific blindspots. We can just admit we stand in the Mystery.
Psi Phenomena include telepathy, remote viewing, intentionality, distance healing, pk, synchronicity, hypnosis, altered states, mind control, and more. There are spiritual and subversive technologies for altering our conscious and unconscious perceptions. The antidote to having your mind controlled externally is to learn to control it internally with self-regulation techniques, such as self-hypnosis, meditation, binaural beat brain tech, and biofeedback. Seek the truth that underlies each cherished belief.
Fields Within Fields
The key to controlling your own mind is controlling your body and vice versa. Mostly, we live in a cluster of programmed trance states. Controlling your psychophysical state with Conscious Alchemy is fundamental. For more on this see http://mindcontrolfordummies.50megs.com
and http://photonichuman.com
Psiberculture was largely introduced to the general public through spiritualism (supernatural), Theosophy (psychic), the East (mystic) and mentalism (technologist). It is exploited constantly by the media, confounding the boundaries of reality and the imaginal realms. In many ways the brain cannot distinguish the psychophysical effects of reality and imagination. This is particularly true in certain trance states.
Approaches to psi include the skeptical physicalists, supernaturalists, esoterics, and psionics or the research orientation. Pioneers like Carl Jung and J.B Rhine paved the way for new disciplines, such as parapsychology and paraphysics in the 1960s. Stanley Krippner (Dream Telepathy), John Curtis Gowan (Trance, Art and Creativity), and Hiroshi Motoyama (Theories of the Chakras) devised experiments which showed promising indications of nonlocal mindbody interaction, consciousness, and unexplained phenomena. We still don't understand the nature of reality, but we are that. Jeffrey Mishlove's ROOTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS is a good introduction to the field.
PHYSICISTS, MYSTICS, and HEALERS, OH MY!!!
Come follow me down the rabbit hole into PSIBERIA on my once and future psi adventures with allies, mentors, visonaries, colleagues, cybergeeks and phreaks. Let's do the mindwarp again. PSIBER KULT, the New PKPSIONICS: Weblife or CYBERSPACE has caused us to develop new ways of sensing in the Virtuality.
PSIBER-VISION, the ability to picture and imagine experiences at a distance, facilitates development of Remote Viewing. Online we can live more of our quantum wave aspects, being smeared across several timezones at once, rather than confined to a point-particle meatbody. Mankind is only beginning to realize vast new psychophysical potentials. Maybe the original 'remote viewer' was the Observer Self, independent of the body, space, time and ego.
PSIBER MANIFESTO
Like it or not we have become CYBORGS, part human, part machine. There is no turning back, but rather than just romping in our "chip bodies", we seriously need to focus on human survival technologies, for we may not BE human much longer.
Currently, we access computers manually; when we move to BCI, brain/computer interfacing EVERYTHING will change, and we will change with it. Neural impulses will be used to control electronics. Nanotech will reinvent our bodies. Cortical plasticity will result in new areas of cultural engineering...not all user-friendly.
We need to stay in touch with the Anthropomorphic Physical not be swallowed by the Android Meme. Paradoxically, the unlikely solution may lie in the unholy pact with the Machine in psychotronics or yogatronics. Ironically, it may require fighting fire with electronic fire to prevent our neurocircuits from being hijacked by electronic smog and lockdown media mind control. Let's hope our wisdom keeps pace with our technology.
The approach of many of self-serving, so-called experts is very old Aeon - fine for Boomers; no good for the younger generations, and their info-absorption style. Their wisdom comes with a price-tag. So much of what people say is a consolidating re-hash of the past or traditional wisdom without much foresight for our future-shocked planet. Challenges are rapidly changing. Even if the apps are killer they may soon be obsolete or superseded by more streamlined technique. Ancient-Future fusion will take many forms we can't even imagine yet. Become your own Reality Pilot.
WELCOME TO PSIBERIA
My whole life I've been a Strange Attractor of interesting people and information. Somehow in my chaotic science-art journey synchrony happens, magic happens, and it happens a lot.
Artists are the chaotic attractors of the social field. While conventional artists may enjoy great favor, the ‘strange attractors,' including leading edge and extreme artists have a special role as catalysts in contemporary life. Artists have always drawn others beyond the limits of their ordinary awareness, confronting them with another reality, initiating them into a world of profound meaning without conventional boundaries.
The beginning of the history of modern man traces back to primordial art, such as that found in the Paleolithic caves of Lascaux. From the beginning, art spoke of magic, of the supernatural, of imagination, fantastic and disturbing. Always strong in content and aesthetic sophistication, it grew, hand in glove, with the emergence of technological skills.
The emergence of art was and continues to be an unparalleled innovation, confronting our psyches with a giant leap in human evolution whose transformative influence continues opening and exploring brave new worlds to this day. Art has been a driving force and living thread woven into the fabric of society since modern man emerged.
‘Homo Negentrop'
Originally, artists were shamans, healers, and magicians. Their art revealed the compelling dreamscape of primal man, his beliefs about himself, this world, life and death, and hope for an afterlife. We might poetically call them the first negentropic humans, Homo Negentrop . Some might argue ironically that artists are a ‘species' of their own. Unarguably, they created order and meaning from the chaos of existential life.
Throughout history the insightful vision of artists expressing in symbolic form the ‘as-yet-unknown' (Jung) has been at the cutting edge of social change. It preceded rational and intellectual social ordering. Artists intuitively extract the gold of their unique vision from creative chaos and manifest it for others to see. Their mediums vary from graphic and print modes, to performance art, ritual, body art, film, and even more arcane forms.
Chaos theory has its ‘strange attractors' that never settle down into any normal rhythm. The strange attractor dances to the innovative beat of a different drummer. Artists, particularly edge artists, function much like these chaotic attractors whose boundaries are deterministic yet unpredictable. They draw from beyond the personality, from transpersonal resources, and the wellspring of the collective human unconscious.
One doesn't have a Muse; one serves one's Muse. She comes and goes. In a sense, the artist is ‘ridden' by the creative daemon that possesses him or her. That daemon , according to Socrates is one's genius, a compelling force urging us to create.
Passion (drive) and pathos are reflected in the fact that if this daemon isn't served, the artist can even become physically ill. Images, ideas and inspirations cry out to become manifested. Order or form yearns to be born from chaos; and those very acts of creation breed destruction of old systems.
The artistic life is a chaotic arc of inspiration upon inspiration, following the Muse. Artists walk what for others is ‘the road not taken' (chaos theory's bifurcation or forking), sometimes going ‘where angels fear to tread.' Their charismatic influence pulls others into their orbits, and the small effect of one personality potentially spreads its influence over the world (butterfly effect), sometimes over history. The history of art is one of the richest threads of our cultural heritage.
Artists wriggle among many possibilities before settling into a project. We might take poetic license calling artists ‘beautiful attractors' (Wildman, 2004). The notion of a beautiful attractor draws on the dynamics of synergy. The power distribution of the artistic community is aimed at mutual aid and learning, much like the healing community. Sometimes artists even engage in deliberate public psychotherapy, impacting their immediate communities.
Artists magnetically draw the attention of others to their creations, to their vision, into the imagination, into the collective future. We might think of them as the ‘indicator species' of the social ecology, the evolving cultural landscape. Orbiting far from the norm, they provide a negentropic counter-balance, an evolutionary burst, social innovation -- to conservative forms and institutions, which tend to ossify leading to stasis and decay.
Often catalytic artists are the heralds for diversity, for future society, ‘poly-‘ or ‘pantopia.' They can be consciously aware of this function, such as when extreme artist, Genesis P-Orridge (influential innovator in body art, performance art, rave and Goth culture, and magick) calls himself a “cultural engineer.” He is considered the ‘godfather' of megastar Marilyn Manson.
The infectious influence of radical artists such as these, though seemingly small gets pumped up to societal proportions through an effect analogous to, if not literally, what is known as ‘the butterfly effect' in chaos theory. The flapping of a butterfly's wings can influence global weather through minute perturbations that get pumped up in proportion.
The same pervasive influence which can be claimed for music is true of the avant garde and transgressive film genres, as well. These cult films, including the perennial favorite ‘ Rocky Horror Picture Show ,' have transformed the dreamscape of the entertainment industry over the years. What was once outrageous becomes almost banal.
A small-scale pattern takes on global proportions. Viable attractors function as building blocks for higher level structures, including social structures. They organize weaker interactions ‘enslaving' subordinate structures. In this way the catalytic artist functions as what Jung called a ‘mana' personality, having similar charismatic qualities to shamans.
Mana is personal power, also known as chi, prana, animal magnetism, or kundalini. Mana initiates the transformative process in individuals and society. Many artists have magnetic personalities. Exhibiting sensitivity to a certain kind of universal guidance, their influence emanates from their sphere of potentiality through synchronicity and serendipity, stimulating catharsis or breakthrough in others.
The effect is moreso when a movement or school of artistic expression is involved (complex feedback loops) as the reality morphing effect increases exponentially. Artists reflect and influence one another. Arguably, artists demonstrate where society may be heading. They haunt the psychic and perceptual frontiers, drawing the future into the now. How many cultural revolutions have begun in artists' communities?
Art changes the way people perceive reality, how they see life and their place in it. These negentropic innovations become embedded in social structure. Realizations, insight, empathy are implicit. They show us windows of prescient emotions and impulses, their unframed works rending the veil of the human unconscious.
The Artistic Field of Influence
‘We expect artists as well as scientists to be forward-looking, to fly in the face of what is established, and to create not what is acceptable but what will become acceptable . . . a theory is the creation of unity in what is diverse by the discovery of unexpected likenesses. In all of them innovation is pictured as an act of imagination, a seeing of what others do not see . . . “creative observation.” (Bronowski, 1958).
Artists, along with the other innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs, constitute only 1% of the population. We can imagine them at the top of a pyramid of influence, which trickles down to the most solidified or familial and industrial levels of society (see Appendix; Wildman, Table 1). This is clearly less true for the representational artist whose work is without symbolic value, and rather than progressive or transgressive is merely decorative or aesthetic.
Today, science and art aren't as polarized in their aims as we might think. They are perennial venues for the emergence of discovery, invention, and creation. The argument is that although science and art are social phenomena, an innovation in either field occurs only when a single mind perceives in disorder a deep new unity . Like art, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from the inside.
“Scientists search for a ‘real' and hidden, internal visibility (invisible to the naked eye) which will confirm the limits of identity. . .This is an act of limitation which inverts its own criteria by relying on a ‘depth' model of identity, which is invisible, but gives visibility through microscopic magnification. Yet this search for an invisible core of identity remains open to a visible transgression via artists who are constantly exposing these new certainties as constructs .” (Sargeant, 1999).
The objective and subjective mode are not divorced from one another, anymore than the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Science adapted the artist's sense that the detail of nature is significant. Like yin and yang, they rely on one another in a dynamic meld that lies beyond the dialectic in the tension of opposites.
Thus, the metaphors of science have gained increasing relevance in the artworld. Art and science begin as imaginative speculation that guesses at a unity or gestalt. Metaphors reflect universal or holistic references and processes, connecting concepts across disciplines.
Gregory Bateson calls metaphor Nature's language. There is aesthetic pleasure in finding likenesses between things once thought unalike. It gives a sense of richness and understanding. The creative mind looks for unexpected likenesses, through engagement of the whole person.
We can draw from the organic metaphors of quantum physics, field theory, and chaos theory to illuminate the state of the arts. Physics describes the interrelationship of chaos and order as field relationships, while chaos theory describes nature's own methods of creation and self-assembly. Entropy is the tendency for any closed part of the universe to expand at the expense of order. It is a measure of randomness and disorder -- chaos.
Negentropy is the generative force of the universe. Negentropy (emergent order from chaos) is a nonlinear higher order system, a dynamically creative ordering information. Thinking, science, and art are therefore negentropic.
Negentropy, like art, is ‘in-form-ative.' It is related to mutual information exchange. Information is embodied in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols, which compress the informational content of the whole. Creativity is an emergent phenomenon patterned by strange attractors, which govern the complexity of information in dynamic flow.
Negentropy is implicated in the successful development of science, economics, technology, infoscience, and art. Negentropy is the degree of order, or function of a state. It relates to the organization of societies, including subcultures such as the artworld, determining the quantity and quality of creative work
That which was formerly unmanifest comes into being. Negentropy governs the spontaneous transmission and direction of flow of information among systems. The qualities of that information are timeless. It is synergistic in that what was formerly unconnected becomes so, creating something wholly optimal and new or futuristic. In the 1920s, Hungarian scientist, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi coined the term syntropy for ‘negative entropy.'
In cybernetics, a meaningful interpretation of negentropy is a measurement of the complexity of a physical structure in which quantities of energy are invested, e.g., buildings, works, technical devices, and organisms which become more complex by feeding not on energy but on negentropy. Art facilitates negentropy by expanding our general field of experience. Negentropy facilitates artistic realization by creating something from nothing.
The creative act is one of uniting the unmanifest with the manifest world in a meaningful, often symbolic, way. Such conception is relevant to consciousness, organization, structure, faith, subconsciousness, emotion, even spirituality. Above all, creativity means trusting the process. Investigation of the negentropic criterion helps us move toward a truly transdisciplinary doctrine for the artistic field of influence.
The two worlds of science and art have married in the digital revolution. Art has from the beginning required a certain amount of technical expertise, the ability to create and use technology in its execution. Only the means and their complexity have changed, evolving over the years, culminating now in a revolution based on ‘ars electronica': the electronic arts.
Psychotronics: the Electronic Revolution
Rather than merely the atavistic/entropic art of the unconscious, the cutting edge artist also reveals a glimpse of the future, in both mediums and content, such as the hypermedia of the electronic revolution: hypertext, digital ‘faux-tos', digital films, multimedia, interactive media and other electronic forms, including those still to be defined since they haven't emerged.
The electronic artist still explores the relation of awareness, sensitivity, and expression. All are linked to the telos of manifestation, either in artwork or in society. The future pulls them forward perhaps more strongly than most. In this way, creativity is linked to the evolutionary dynamics of self-organization. We have discovered a new way of being, a hyperrealism. In some instances the body itself becomes indistinguishable from art.
Today's digital artist, no matter what his or her electronic media, spends a good portion of time in the ‘chip body' (coined by media guru, Bob Dobbs), a virtual field -- as opposed to the physical body. This chip body is a vortex of quantum bits of information swirling chaotically in the hyperspaces of digital media, including the worldwide web. It has made a virtual reality of what was once called the astral body, an alternate vehicle for conscious exploration of alternate states and realms.
Similar to the whirling polarized energies of yin and yang, all probabilities and potentials are contained within this vortex or imaginal field body. The nature of this Tao can be seen as a void or a plenum, either a ground state from which all images emerge, or a ripe fullness from which they are plucked out of the aether. Each quantum is a conscious entity aware of all others. This creative source is inexhaustible.
The void of the vortex sets up a resonance carrying the potential for manifesting the force and form of consciousness. Today's artist must willingly enter this Abyss as it smiles back at him. Images condense as memories, or knots of energy, in the physical or perceptual world.
At certain wavelengths, this imagery resonates back up the vortex or condensing field. Before condensation, perception is multifaceted because all potential is observed. After condensation, the strength of the wave or memory resonates as a single image or flow of imagery.
In quantum physics, wave packets collapses under observation to create manifest reality. They represent the sum of the polarity charges, we can call yin and yang. Collapse is a change in the substance of consciousness, or a change in the state of the vortex created by the introduction of resonance.
If Von Neumann is correct that consciousness plays a part in state vector collapse, then consciousness/reality is a closed loop control system, each feeding the other. Our mind is a reality filter within our brain's reality processor.
In the artistic process, collapse is consistent with focus; focus is consistent with selection; selection is consistent with the resonance or stimulus. The stimulus is consistent with the physical reality and reality is consistent with collapse. In quantum chaos, this collapse is a cascade leading to an entirely new organization, to emergent creativity.
The whole process is a flow or condensation of potential of consciousness. The gauge is the perspective of consciousness or imagination. We are free to choose our perspective, and with electronic media have a way of manifesting a mind-boggling variety of variations at lightning speeds.
The essence of our time-bound experience is receptivity to experience, to flow within the vortex. When we experience our timeless nature, our unbound self -- there is no flow, only resonance. We have the freedom to choose our point of focus or resonance. We can be stimulated by probability or chance, by the chaotic creative process underlying all reality itself.
We cannot predict what will come of it, what will emerge from entering that creative vortex, nor should we even try. All we can do is let go and open ourselves to the morphing power of the transcendent imagination, to bring our awareness into resonance with it. As we transcend the vortex we narrow our freedom to select our perceptual view of the physical world.
"A common observation of European visitors to America is that life here is more collectivized and stereotyped than communists have ever aimed to achieve. It was always the central theme of Marx that direct political action was unnecessary. The machine was the revolutionary solvent of bourgeois society. Allow the dynamic logic of the machine full play in any kind of society and it will, said Marx, become communist automatically." - Marshall McLuhan, REVOLUTIONARY CONSERVATISM, 1953, p.1
"In a sense, artists are creators of counter-environments. They provide society with analogical models which enable them to escape from their unconscious immersion in their environment. So also with critics. They are the last frontiersmen." - Eugene McNamara, Editor's Introduction to The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943-1962, p.182
IONATOPIA 2006
PSIONICS * PARAPSYCHOLOGY * PARAPHYSICS * NEUROTHEOLOGY
Self-Regulation is the antidote to corporate & political mind control.
PSI HAPPENS. The Supernatural, the Paranormal, the Unknown. Mankind has always been fascinated with dreams, intuitions, imagination, inspiration, charisma, otherworldly experiences, spirituality, psychoenergetic phenomena, extraordinary abilities, and the Transpersonal. The first rituals related to great cycles -- seasonal celebrations, healing, birth, death, rebirth. Beliefs are contagious (memes). But psi can affect us unconsciously, whether we "believe" in it or not. Few will deny that mind is mystifying.
Psi culture is not a subculture, but something we all inhabit unconsciously and notice at certain points in our lives when the uncanny or numinous intrudes on our everyday world. Jung (1961) said, "To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly; all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse."
There are several subcultures who's worldviews embrace psi phenomena as Reality, or react as if they do from governments to tribal people to new agers and neo-pagans to leading-edge researchers. Even the most skeptical scientist can be superstitious sometimes. But psi may prove to be more than just an artifact of primitive belief.
The distinction between "true believers" and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, attributions of the source of events or perceptions, whether one's model is psibernetics, "magical thinking", external agents, holistic mysticism, or physicalism. A theist will tend to attribute positive expectations to God, a pagan to nature, a humanist to self, and an atheist to complex dynamics, or randomness.
HARNESSING REALITY
The fashionable term for mind/matter interaction is now "intentionality", as if that explains anything. You may as well call it free will, or True Will, like the magicians do. Yet to name it intentionality doesn't make it so. It is a fantasy of intentionality, a subjective hypothesis that human intervention at the subtle level perturbs outcomes PHYSICALLLY in some desirable manner. Which is not to ignore psychosocial effects or mobilization of immune function.
People often mystify their experiences unnecessarily when they don't have a more plausible explanation. The notion that the all-knowing nonlocal field identity exerts some influence over environment and personality may simply be mythopoiesis. The real question is why do all cultures engage in mythopoeisis? Identification with the field body may just be another way of being attached to a belief to explain the Unknowable.
ITS NO SECRET
The notion "we create our own reality" is a relative truth with origins in the existential philosophers of the 19th Century. It can also be motivated by control issues - as a control fantasy rather than a proper characterization of lived reality. From a Jungian point of view, any "intentionality" we could exert would be subject to the competing agendas of autonomous archetypal forces and dynamics that don't give a fig about your personality needs. Whether we think we are changing reality through a focused act of will or even by "broad-beam" self-transformation the whole scenario may be a self-delusion cast in pseudo-scientific terms.
If it bothers or offends you to think otherwise, this is more likely true. There is emotional attachment there, not clarity. If you think you can do it by "aligning" yourself rather than manifestation, why are you harboring fantasies of misalignment? It makes little sense that the particle "intends" and the field "corresponds"; in Nature, the reverse leads to manifestion. Is this notion harboring a God-complex, a control fantasy in an otherwise uncontrollable world?
EMERGENCE
Intentions may or may not exert a nonlocal organizing effect. They do when they mobilize effective action not just wishful thinking. Often the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is invoked for pumping holistic mental effects up to macro- proportions. But chaos theory doesn't organize through intentionality; but just the opposite, by criticality and emergent process.
Correlation is not identity. We are both particle and field, and they are both complex, and may be analogous or metaphorically connected to the hypothesis of intentionality - but that doesn't make it real: it makes it a belief, an operational worldview. If you think it works for you, that is an interpretation, an arbitrary allocation of a cause to a perceived effect, which may be largely unrelated.
Once the narrative is "set", that becomes the story and the person zealously sticks to it, right or wrong. This is human nature and the nature of emotional investment. It may be the eternal human yen to create order from the fear and chaos of our lives and cleave to faith in the Great Beyond, whatever one thinks resides there.
PsiCoSomatics
A myriad of "brandable" new age technologies are based on non-scientific interpretations and confabulations of scientific theory. Though having its own organic root in metaphysics, new age tech has hijacked and romanticized the philosophical territory of psi research with its own prosaic interpretations and self-promotional agenda. Because it makes a romantically appealing metaphor doesn't mean it matches up with naked Reality. Often incompatible physics theories are confounded together for the so-called explanations. For example, the Many-Worlds Theory (MWI) doesn't require 'nonlocality' at all.
Psi researchers must be careful to see these explanatory buzzwords like 'resonance', 'alignment' and 'intentionality' for what they are, smoke and mirrors explaining nothing, not what some say they are. Like the next new buzzword, "extradimensionality", it is just a displacement into the Unknown of a process that may be something entirely other than what the experiencer thinks it is.
Rather than extradimensional participation in some subtle physics process, it may just be another trick of the mind - in the end, nothing more than a concept that doesn't match up with nor describe Reality. Oh sure, it may be existant in some nonfungable parallel universe, or that could be just another mentally attractive perennial fantasy. If there are memes in our culture, there are strange attractors in our thought patterns, that can harden into fixed beliefs. The fact is we don't know, and anyone who charges you and says they do is a either a fraud or self-deluded, or both.
SpyCoSomatics
There are many aspects of psi, some more credible and testable than others, ESP (information transfer) being the most plausble, psychokinesis (mind over matter) most problematical. Serious researchers are beyond parlour tricks such as seances, regressions, or ghostbusting. Still, there is no scientific or spiritual consensus about the mechanics of physics or consciousness, much less mind/matter interaction. But Mystery doesn't need to be metaphysical, mystical, nor dismissed as "noetic nonsense". It simply isn't limited by any of our concepts nor scientific blindspots. We can just admit we stand in the Mystery.
Psi Phenomena include telepathy, remote viewing, intentionality, distance healing, pk, synchronicity, hypnosis, altered states, mind control, and more. There are spiritual and subversive technologies for altering our conscious and unconscious perceptions. The antidote to having your mind controlled externally is to learn to control it internally with self-regulation techniques, such as self-hypnosis, meditation, binaural beat brain tech, and biofeedback. Seek the truth that underlies each cherished belief.
Fields Within Fields
The key to controlling your own mind is controlling your body and vice versa. Mostly, we live in a cluster of programmed trance states. Controlling your psychophysical state with Conscious Alchemy is fundamental. For more on this see http://mindcontrolfordummies.50megs.com
and http://photonichuman.com
Psiberculture was largely introduced to the general public through spiritualism (supernatural), Theosophy (psychic), the East (mystic) and mentalism (technologist). It is exploited constantly by the media, confounding the boundaries of reality and the imaginal realms. In many ways the brain cannot distinguish the psychophysical effects of reality and imagination. This is particularly true in certain trance states.
Approaches to psi include the skeptical physicalists, supernaturalists, esoterics, and psionics or the research orientation. Pioneers like Carl Jung and J.B Rhine paved the way for new disciplines, such as parapsychology and paraphysics in the 1960s. Stanley Krippner (Dream Telepathy), John Curtis Gowan (Trance, Art and Creativity), and Hiroshi Motoyama (Theories of the Chakras) devised experiments which showed promising indications of nonlocal mindbody interaction, consciousness, and unexplained phenomena. We still don't understand the nature of reality, but we are that. Jeffrey Mishlove's ROOTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS is a good introduction to the field.
PHYSICISTS, MYSTICS, and HEALERS, OH MY!!!
Come follow me down the rabbit hole into PSIBERIA on my once and future psi adventures with allies, mentors, visonaries, colleagues, cybergeeks and phreaks. Let's do the mindwarp again. PSIBER KULT, the New PKPSIONICS: Weblife or CYBERSPACE has caused us to develop new ways of sensing in the Virtuality.
PSIBER-VISION, the ability to picture and imagine experiences at a distance, facilitates development of Remote Viewing. Online we can live more of our quantum wave aspects, being smeared across several timezones at once, rather than confined to a point-particle meatbody. Mankind is only beginning to realize vast new psychophysical potentials. Maybe the original 'remote viewer' was the Observer Self, independent of the body, space, time and ego.
PSIBER MANIFESTO
Like it or not we have become CYBORGS, part human, part machine. There is no turning back, but rather than just romping in our "chip bodies", we seriously need to focus on human survival technologies, for we may not BE human much longer.
Currently, we access computers manually; when we move to BCI, brain/computer interfacing EVERYTHING will change, and we will change with it. Neural impulses will be used to control electronics. Nanotech will reinvent our bodies. Cortical plasticity will result in new areas of cultural engineering...not all user-friendly.
We need to stay in touch with the Anthropomorphic Physical not be swallowed by the Android Meme. Paradoxically, the unlikely solution may lie in the unholy pact with the Machine in psychotronics or yogatronics. Ironically, it may require fighting fire with electronic fire to prevent our neurocircuits from being hijacked by electronic smog and lockdown media mind control. Let's hope our wisdom keeps pace with our technology.
The approach of many of self-serving, so-called experts is very old Aeon - fine for Boomers; no good for the younger generations, and their info-absorption style. Their wisdom comes with a price-tag. So much of what people say is a consolidating re-hash of the past or traditional wisdom without much foresight for our future-shocked planet. Challenges are rapidly changing. Even if the apps are killer they may soon be obsolete or superseded by more streamlined technique. Ancient-Future fusion will take many forms we can't even imagine yet. Become your own Reality Pilot.
WELCOME TO PSIBERIA
My whole life I've been a Strange Attractor of interesting people and information. Somehow in my chaotic science-art journey synchrony happens, magic happens, and it happens a lot.
Artists are the chaotic attractors of the social field. While conventional artists may enjoy great favor, the ‘strange attractors,' including leading edge and extreme artists have a special role as catalysts in contemporary life. Artists have always drawn others beyond the limits of their ordinary awareness, confronting them with another reality, initiating them into a world of profound meaning without conventional boundaries.
The beginning of the history of modern man traces back to primordial art, such as that found in the Paleolithic caves of Lascaux. From the beginning, art spoke of magic, of the supernatural, of imagination, fantastic and disturbing. Always strong in content and aesthetic sophistication, it grew, hand in glove, with the emergence of technological skills.
The emergence of art was and continues to be an unparalleled innovation, confronting our psyches with a giant leap in human evolution whose transformative influence continues opening and exploring brave new worlds to this day. Art has been a driving force and living thread woven into the fabric of society since modern man emerged.
‘Homo Negentrop'
Originally, artists were shamans, healers, and magicians. Their art revealed the compelling dreamscape of primal man, his beliefs about himself, this world, life and death, and hope for an afterlife. We might poetically call them the first negentropic humans, Homo Negentrop . Some might argue ironically that artists are a ‘species' of their own. Unarguably, they created order and meaning from the chaos of existential life.
Throughout history the insightful vision of artists expressing in symbolic form the ‘as-yet-unknown' (Jung) has been at the cutting edge of social change. It preceded rational and intellectual social ordering. Artists intuitively extract the gold of their unique vision from creative chaos and manifest it for others to see. Their mediums vary from graphic and print modes, to performance art, ritual, body art, film, and even more arcane forms.
Chaos theory has its ‘strange attractors' that never settle down into any normal rhythm. The strange attractor dances to the innovative beat of a different drummer. Artists, particularly edge artists, function much like these chaotic attractors whose boundaries are deterministic yet unpredictable. They draw from beyond the personality, from transpersonal resources, and the wellspring of the collective human unconscious.
One doesn't have a Muse; one serves one's Muse. She comes and goes. In a sense, the artist is ‘ridden' by the creative daemon that possesses him or her. That daemon , according to Socrates is one's genius, a compelling force urging us to create.
Passion (drive) and pathos are reflected in the fact that if this daemon isn't served, the artist can even become physically ill. Images, ideas and inspirations cry out to become manifested. Order or form yearns to be born from chaos; and those very acts of creation breed destruction of old systems.
The artistic life is a chaotic arc of inspiration upon inspiration, following the Muse. Artists walk what for others is ‘the road not taken' (chaos theory's bifurcation or forking), sometimes going ‘where angels fear to tread.' Their charismatic influence pulls others into their orbits, and the small effect of one personality potentially spreads its influence over the world (butterfly effect), sometimes over history. The history of art is one of the richest threads of our cultural heritage.
Artists wriggle among many possibilities before settling into a project. We might take poetic license calling artists ‘beautiful attractors' (Wildman, 2004). The notion of a beautiful attractor draws on the dynamics of synergy. The power distribution of the artistic community is aimed at mutual aid and learning, much like the healing community. Sometimes artists even engage in deliberate public psychotherapy, impacting their immediate communities.
Artists magnetically draw the attention of others to their creations, to their vision, into the imagination, into the collective future. We might think of them as the ‘indicator species' of the social ecology, the evolving cultural landscape. Orbiting far from the norm, they provide a negentropic counter-balance, an evolutionary burst, social innovation -- to conservative forms and institutions, which tend to ossify leading to stasis and decay.
Often catalytic artists are the heralds for diversity, for future society, ‘poly-‘ or ‘pantopia.' They can be consciously aware of this function, such as when extreme artist, Genesis P-Orridge (influential innovator in body art, performance art, rave and Goth culture, and magick) calls himself a “cultural engineer.” He is considered the ‘godfather' of megastar Marilyn Manson.
The infectious influence of radical artists such as these, though seemingly small gets pumped up to societal proportions through an effect analogous to, if not literally, what is known as ‘the butterfly effect' in chaos theory. The flapping of a butterfly's wings can influence global weather through minute perturbations that get pumped up in proportion.
The same pervasive influence which can be claimed for music is true of the avant garde and transgressive film genres, as well. These cult films, including the perennial favorite ‘ Rocky Horror Picture Show ,' have transformed the dreamscape of the entertainment industry over the years. What was once outrageous becomes almost banal.
A small-scale pattern takes on global proportions. Viable attractors function as building blocks for higher level structures, including social structures. They organize weaker interactions ‘enslaving' subordinate structures. In this way the catalytic artist functions as what Jung called a ‘mana' personality, having similar charismatic qualities to shamans.
Mana is personal power, also known as chi, prana, animal magnetism, or kundalini. Mana initiates the transformative process in individuals and society. Many artists have magnetic personalities. Exhibiting sensitivity to a certain kind of universal guidance, their influence emanates from their sphere of potentiality through synchronicity and serendipity, stimulating catharsis or breakthrough in others.
The effect is moreso when a movement or school of artistic expression is involved (complex feedback loops) as the reality morphing effect increases exponentially. Artists reflect and influence one another. Arguably, artists demonstrate where society may be heading. They haunt the psychic and perceptual frontiers, drawing the future into the now. How many cultural revolutions have begun in artists' communities?
Art changes the way people perceive reality, how they see life and their place in it. These negentropic innovations become embedded in social structure. Realizations, insight, empathy are implicit. They show us windows of prescient emotions and impulses, their unframed works rending the veil of the human unconscious.
The Artistic Field of Influence
‘We expect artists as well as scientists to be forward-looking, to fly in the face of what is established, and to create not what is acceptable but what will become acceptable . . . a theory is the creation of unity in what is diverse by the discovery of unexpected likenesses. In all of them innovation is pictured as an act of imagination, a seeing of what others do not see . . . “creative observation.” (Bronowski, 1958).
Artists, along with the other innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs, constitute only 1% of the population. We can imagine them at the top of a pyramid of influence, which trickles down to the most solidified or familial and industrial levels of society (see Appendix; Wildman, Table 1). This is clearly less true for the representational artist whose work is without symbolic value, and rather than progressive or transgressive is merely decorative or aesthetic.
Today, science and art aren't as polarized in their aims as we might think. They are perennial venues for the emergence of discovery, invention, and creation. The argument is that although science and art are social phenomena, an innovation in either field occurs only when a single mind perceives in disorder a deep new unity . Like art, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from the inside.
“Scientists search for a ‘real' and hidden, internal visibility (invisible to the naked eye) which will confirm the limits of identity. . .This is an act of limitation which inverts its own criteria by relying on a ‘depth' model of identity, which is invisible, but gives visibility through microscopic magnification. Yet this search for an invisible core of identity remains open to a visible transgression via artists who are constantly exposing these new certainties as constructs .” (Sargeant, 1999).
The objective and subjective mode are not divorced from one another, anymore than the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Science adapted the artist's sense that the detail of nature is significant. Like yin and yang, they rely on one another in a dynamic meld that lies beyond the dialectic in the tension of opposites.
Thus, the metaphors of science have gained increasing relevance in the artworld. Art and science begin as imaginative speculation that guesses at a unity or gestalt. Metaphors reflect universal or holistic references and processes, connecting concepts across disciplines.
Gregory Bateson calls metaphor Nature's language. There is aesthetic pleasure in finding likenesses between things once thought unalike. It gives a sense of richness and understanding. The creative mind looks for unexpected likenesses, through engagement of the whole person.
We can draw from the organic metaphors of quantum physics, field theory, and chaos theory to illuminate the state of the arts. Physics describes the interrelationship of chaos and order as field relationships, while chaos theory describes nature's own methods of creation and self-assembly. Entropy is the tendency for any closed part of the universe to expand at the expense of order. It is a measure of randomness and disorder -- chaos.
Negentropy is the generative force of the universe. Negentropy (emergent order from chaos) is a nonlinear higher order system, a dynamically creative ordering information. Thinking, science, and art are therefore negentropic.
Negentropy, like art, is ‘in-form-ative.' It is related to mutual information exchange. Information is embodied in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols, which compress the informational content of the whole. Creativity is an emergent phenomenon patterned by strange attractors, which govern the complexity of information in dynamic flow.
Negentropy is implicated in the successful development of science, economics, technology, infoscience, and art. Negentropy is the degree of order, or function of a state. It relates to the organization of societies, including subcultures such as the artworld, determining the quantity and quality of creative work
That which was formerly unmanifest comes into being. Negentropy governs the spontaneous transmission and direction of flow of information among systems. The qualities of that information are timeless. It is synergistic in that what was formerly unconnected becomes so, creating something wholly optimal and new or futuristic. In the 1920s, Hungarian scientist, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi coined the term syntropy for ‘negative entropy.'
In cybernetics, a meaningful interpretation of negentropy is a measurement of the complexity of a physical structure in which quantities of energy are invested, e.g., buildings, works, technical devices, and organisms which become more complex by feeding not on energy but on negentropy. Art facilitates negentropy by expanding our general field of experience. Negentropy facilitates artistic realization by creating something from nothing.
The creative act is one of uniting the unmanifest with the manifest world in a meaningful, often symbolic, way. Such conception is relevant to consciousness, organization, structure, faith, subconsciousness, emotion, even spirituality. Above all, creativity means trusting the process. Investigation of the negentropic criterion helps us move toward a truly transdisciplinary doctrine for the artistic field of influence.
The two worlds of science and art have married in the digital revolution. Art has from the beginning required a certain amount of technical expertise, the ability to create and use technology in its execution. Only the means and their complexity have changed, evolving over the years, culminating now in a revolution based on ‘ars electronica': the electronic arts.
Psychotronics: the Electronic Revolution
Rather than merely the atavistic/entropic art of the unconscious, the cutting edge artist also reveals a glimpse of the future, in both mediums and content, such as the hypermedia of the electronic revolution: hypertext, digital ‘faux-tos', digital films, multimedia, interactive media and other electronic forms, including those still to be defined since they haven't emerged.
The electronic artist still explores the relation of awareness, sensitivity, and expression. All are linked to the telos of manifestation, either in artwork or in society. The future pulls them forward perhaps more strongly than most. In this way, creativity is linked to the evolutionary dynamics of self-organization. We have discovered a new way of being, a hyperrealism. In some instances the body itself becomes indistinguishable from art.
Today's digital artist, no matter what his or her electronic media, spends a good portion of time in the ‘chip body' (coined by media guru, Bob Dobbs), a virtual field -- as opposed to the physical body. This chip body is a vortex of quantum bits of information swirling chaotically in the hyperspaces of digital media, including the worldwide web. It has made a virtual reality of what was once called the astral body, an alternate vehicle for conscious exploration of alternate states and realms.
Similar to the whirling polarized energies of yin and yang, all probabilities and potentials are contained within this vortex or imaginal field body. The nature of this Tao can be seen as a void or a plenum, either a ground state from which all images emerge, or a ripe fullness from which they are plucked out of the aether. Each quantum is a conscious entity aware of all others. This creative source is inexhaustible.
The void of the vortex sets up a resonance carrying the potential for manifesting the force and form of consciousness. Today's artist must willingly enter this Abyss as it smiles back at him. Images condense as memories, or knots of energy, in the physical or perceptual world.
At certain wavelengths, this imagery resonates back up the vortex or condensing field. Before condensation, perception is multifaceted because all potential is observed. After condensation, the strength of the wave or memory resonates as a single image or flow of imagery.
In quantum physics, wave packets collapses under observation to create manifest reality. They represent the sum of the polarity charges, we can call yin and yang. Collapse is a change in the substance of consciousness, or a change in the state of the vortex created by the introduction of resonance.
If Von Neumann is correct that consciousness plays a part in state vector collapse, then consciousness/reality is a closed loop control system, each feeding the other. Our mind is a reality filter within our brain's reality processor.
In the artistic process, collapse is consistent with focus; focus is consistent with selection; selection is consistent with the resonance or stimulus. The stimulus is consistent with the physical reality and reality is consistent with collapse. In quantum chaos, this collapse is a cascade leading to an entirely new organization, to emergent creativity.
The whole process is a flow or condensation of potential of consciousness. The gauge is the perspective of consciousness or imagination. We are free to choose our perspective, and with electronic media have a way of manifesting a mind-boggling variety of variations at lightning speeds.
The essence of our time-bound experience is receptivity to experience, to flow within the vortex. When we experience our timeless nature, our unbound self -- there is no flow, only resonance. We have the freedom to choose our point of focus or resonance. We can be stimulated by probability or chance, by the chaotic creative process underlying all reality itself.
We cannot predict what will come of it, what will emerge from entering that creative vortex, nor should we even try. All we can do is let go and open ourselves to the morphing power of the transcendent imagination, to bring our awareness into resonance with it. As we transcend the vortex we narrow our freedom to select our perceptual view of the physical world.
"A common observation of European visitors to America is that life here is more collectivized and stereotyped than communists have ever aimed to achieve. It was always the central theme of Marx that direct political action was unnecessary. The machine was the revolutionary solvent of bourgeois society. Allow the dynamic logic of the machine full play in any kind of society and it will, said Marx, become communist automatically." - Marshall McLuhan, REVOLUTIONARY CONSERVATISM, 1953, p.1
"In a sense, artists are creators of counter-environments. They provide society with analogical models which enable them to escape from their unconscious immersion in their environment. So also with critics. They are the last frontiersmen." - Eugene McNamara, Editor's Introduction to The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943-1962, p.182
IONATOPIA 2006