Panel Statement

Keywords: Emergence-based theories of consciousness, Duchamp’s conceptualization of the creative act, Roy Ascott’s cyberperception, Cybersemiotics, Technoetic, Transdisciplinary creative practices and theories, Gesture, Engagement, Elementary entities level communication, hosted microbiome, native cells communication

Taking emergence as the basis of a theory of cross-scale communication interactions – from subatomic particles, molecules and cells to verbal and gestural communication strategies integrating animals, artificial systems and nature to generate a planetary consciousness, we propose navigating conceptual problems related to emergence-based theories of consciousness considering the “[…] primacy of consciousness as both the context and content of art, and the object and subject of study, but that the very provenance of art in the twentieth century leads, through its psychic, spiritual, and conceptual aspirations, towards this technoetic condition.” (Ascott, 2003, p.357) Considering the specificity and subtitles of each contributor approach, the panel waves poetics and reflections such as the emergence of transdisciplinary creative practices and theories of a group of African American visual and performing artists, writers, and public intellectuals actively collaborating in Chicago during the closing years of the US Great Depression (Richard Courage); following Duchamp’s conceptualization of the creative act and Ascott’s notion of cyberperception, the syncretic entanglement between humans and machines has afforded the emergence of new understandings in a semiotic dance promoting a technoetic construction of meaning (Claudia Jacques); strategies for gestures engagement with relational objects suggesting a field of technoetic experience that allows for structuring and restructuring of consciousness (Liz Lessner); consciousness as an emergence from elementary entities level communication processes between human body native cells and hosted microbiome (Clarissa Ribeiro).

• Liz Lessner, Director, Sensory Engagement Lab, Yes We Cannibal, Southeastern Louisiana University, Baton Rouge, USA. Liz Lessner is a sculptor whose work combines traditional fabrication techniques and emerging technologies to create novel sensory experiences. These often interactive objects stage encounters that reframe common occurrences and routine happenings. She was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the University of Fortaleza in Ceará, Brazil. Lessner has had solo shows at Honfleur Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Big Orbit, a Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts Project Space in Buffalo, NY; and an upcoming show at VisArts in Rockville, MD. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico, A.I.R. gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and Everard Read’s Circa Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Her research into embedded electronics’ ability to create novel sensory experiences has been supported by grants like the Mark Diamond Research Fund, fellowships like the Eyeo Artists Fellowship, and awards like a Fulbright Research Award. lizlessner.com
• Claudia Jacques de Moraes Cardoso (Claudia Jacques) MFA, PhD, is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and researcher. Intersecting art, technology and science, she researches perceptions and processes in the user-information-interface relationship through the lens of Cybersemiotics. She photographs and designs interactive hybrid art and information environments that aim to construct experiences in consciousness to promote the expansion of human knowledge. She collaborates with many artists exhibiting and presenting both in the US and abroad. She has published in Leonardo, TEKs, Art & Engine, etc., and serves as Art+Web Editor for Cybernetics and Human Knowing journal. She has been collaborating with UCLA’s ArtSci Center since 2011 as an Information and Instructional Designer and is the founder and creative director of Knowledge Art studio. Jacques teaches studio, digital and communication arts, at CUNY and SUNY community colleges and her studio is in Ossining, NY.
• Clarissa Ribeiro · OI.SE.AU Office for Sentient Architecture. University of Fortaleza / CrossLAB, Fortaleza, Brazil. Ph.D. in Arts (ECA USP – University of Sao Paulo, Brazil/Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK), Former Fulbright Post-Doctoral Scholar in Arts (UCLA, Art|Sci Center and Lab/James Gimzewski Lab, Los Angeles), M.Arch. (IA USP – University of Sao Paulo), B.Arch, member of the UCLA Art|Sci Collective, chair of the first Leonardo/ISAST LASER talks to be hosted in Brazil/Latin America, directs the CrossLab research group and art collective and the LIP – Lab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza. As an independent artist, working in collaboration with artists, scientists, research groups and art collectives in her home country and abroad, she has been producing and exhibiting internationally experimental interactive installations exploring cross-scale information and communication dynamics. In a broader spectrum, her artistic and re-search interests converge in the exploration of consciousness and the self, creativity, and affection as an emergence from local and non-local communication phenomena in macro, micro, molecular and subatomic scales. oiseau.space