Anna Nazo

My research looks at two interrelated questions. How does supra-sensuousness enable different forms of intelligence and liveness that straddle analogue and digital worlds? And how is live digital-physical performance (brainwaves CGI, AI poetry, drones performance) the corporeal expression of quantum ghosting and supra-sensuousness?

Within live digital-physical performance this research introduces and develops an understanding around quantum ghosting and the problem of the supra-sensuousness. In doing so, it aims to extend and complicate ways of understanding intelligence and liveness. The method of this research is using the paradigm of a radical matter (Golding: 2010, 2013) that is thinking through dimensionalities of curved time which leads into questions of superpositionality and non-locality. It brings in a way of thinking of time as dimension of time, and understanding of speed, duration and the moment of performance in relation to wavefunction. That method enables radically rethink a logic of sense (Deleuze: 1990 [1969]) from the perspective of the wave function and quantum entanglement (Born: 1954 [1926], Schrodinger: 2014 [1926]). It brings in consciousness as feedback loops and as a corporeal trace (Spinoza: 2002 [1677], Deleuze: 1988 [1970], Kaku: 2014, Mandelbrot: 1983 [1982], 2004) that operates as quantum system (Penrose: 1994) that is undecidable (Godel: 1992 [1931]). It enables to argue around multiplicity of specific forms of consciousness, and that argument brings in synthetic biology and biotechnologies coiled with distributed ecology of intelligence (Shanahan: 2015). That move enables to enter the domain of a quantum logic of sense, which is happening in the moment of a particular form of consciousness. This form of consciousness is enabled by the entanglement of wave fields at the moment of performance, and goes beyond human perceptive abilities. And that is what this research begins to name the supra-sensuousness. This brings in a philosophy of artificial or ana-radical intelligence and liveness, and enables to engage with live digital-physical performance, which is both and simultaneously expressing the ana-radical matter, and it is also producing it. In order to make the argument, the research requires the move that brings in works on the wild sciences (Golding: 2017; Barad: 2007, 2015, Stengers: 1997, 2008, Mandelbrot: 1983 [1982], 2004, Penrose: 1994; Godel: 1992 [1931]) and unbounded sensibilities (Derrida: 1994 [1993], Deleuze: 1987 [1980], 1988 [1970], 1990 [1969], Bataille: 2001 [1973-1988], Lyotard: 1998 [1984], 2011 [1971], 2012 [1987]). It brings in Haraway’s sympoietic and a necessity of multiplicity of fields and areas intertwined in a way that art operates in the contemporary technological setting, and it brings in a radical, a sideways approach to art making as sympoietics (Haraway: 2016).

The practical work is operating on the queer relationships with the digital, the eerie platform of the artificial, the real, and the embodied. It operates on a spoken word/poetics that is co-written with the AI [HumInt-AI psychological-sensuous feedback loops], drone performance, and brainwave performance. The latter experiments with live transmission of brainwave data (EEG) into computer generated sound and imagery as a response to the co-created with AI poetry, which is being recited to the drone, the drone performance and [and in] the moment of performance. It operates in a way that is bending time and space, and shapeshifting a brainwave into the body and the other way around, in the way that the brainwave itself becomes a viscous, nonlocal, undulated body; which performs as a peculiar evocative portrayal of hyperobjectivity (Morton: 2013) of the contemporary world. It goes beyond the human sensuous, and gets into the dimensions of supra-sensuous. It brings in the performance of brain waves, the brainwave frequencies, the drone cognition that is fleshed with its sensuous patterns and frequencies, and the radical otherness of its liveness and intelligence. All these entangled in a sense of the beyond as the embodied and transmitted into the four-dimensional limited by the human perception of the “real”. It manifests and solidifies the themes of quantum consciousness and the notion of a shadow in relation to it (Penrose: 1994) and new ways of parrhesiastic [truth-telling with ethicality aspect to it] embodiment in the contemporary technological setting (Foucault: 2011 [1983-1984]; Golding: 2018; Hayles: 1999, 2017).

While it follows Penrose’s passage of thinking of consciousness through quantum field dynamics, the brain wave function, wave interference patterns and their collapse as the processes that create consciousness, it also brings in the brain waves and the drone’s sensuous frequencies into the dimension of [human] actual-perceived. That creates an entirely different sense of matter and ecology in the performance work (Stelarc: 1991 [1980], 1998, 2015, 2018 [2017]; Imhof: 2016, 2017, 2019; Anderson: 1982, 1986), and contemporary art (Ikeda: 2012, 2014, 2015, 2018; Huyghe: 2018-2019; Atkins: 2017; Jarman: 2007 [1993]) and reality itself. It enables to engage with a radically different ecology of performance, a differently poetic (Heidegger: 2001 [1971]) form of performance, the live digital-physical performance that embodies the technological, the carnal, the sonic, the spoken, and the computer-generated (imagery, sound, text), and brings in the understanding of time, duration and the moment of performance in relation to wavefunction. That poetic form of performance operates through creating a certain type of a neuronal network, a distributed intelligence networking architecture that involves pluralized sensuous feedback-loops that are happening in the wave fields. These feedback-loops enable ghosting as a form of overlayed poetics, and as a form of multidimensionality.

This move not only reflects on the importance of understanding relationship of complex neuronal networks and brain waves as a way into future understanding of the brain (Das: 2017), but also exposes different forms of intelligence and liveness. There are sympoietic (Haraway: 2016) relationships, which operate as a certain type of distributed intelligence net, or like a multiple helix between what happens when philosophy is being installed into the work and when performances happen. While the performances themselves are living-dying-grasping virtual-carnal installations of poetics, they also are the multidimensional [supra-]sensuous encounters of multi reality and ecology of selves (Kohn: 2013) that enable quantum ghosting. The research aims to provide an original contribution to the field of performance art in the contemporary digital age context with respect to quantum ghosting, supra-sensuousness and liveness.

Keywords: wave fields, wavefunction, brainwaves, undecidability, multiplicity, entanglement, live digital-physical performance, ecology of performance, ana-radical matter, intelligence, liveness, quantum ghosting, quantum consciousness, nonconscious cognition, supra-sensuousness, drone cognition, poetics, AI poetry, sympoietics, drone soundscape, brainwaves CGI, AR, VR, blue, reset.