Abstract

Full Paper. Session: Humans and NonHumans / Rituals, Consciousness and Technology

The organ of the Helvetic Circle’ church in Genoa was recorded, sampled and reworked with its resonances in the architectural space and leading to a sonic moiré, a polyphony of spaces. Also, an experimental laboratory work in cognitive sciences is combined with the concert in the performance space.

We here explore the potential of rituals in order to more fully comprehend the subjective mechanisms of listening, leading to a broader understanding of phenomenal consciousness (why and how do I know that I am experiencing something?). The originality of the project resides in the blending of phenomenology, cognitive science, the sonic arts, and rituals studies. Rituals are explored in the context of a practice-led methodology between an artist and a cognitive scientist in order to decompartmentalize and possibly decolonize knowledge, namely shifting away from a purely Western techno-scientific perspective in order to embrace a plural vision involving indigenous epistemology. In this project, the sonic arts include music and sound in the arts, and focus specifically on the very act of listening. Rituals constitute structures for the lives of communities and societies, which we address more deeply from the perspective of sonic and cognitive research, so as to understand their roles and the epistemology emerging from them.

• Luca Forcucci (CH/IT), artist, scholar and guest professor, observes perceptive properties of the first person experience through large scale installations, compositions, video, photography and writing. The research investigates mental imagery of sonic architectures. The works were held at Ars Electronica Linz, Biennale del Mediterraneo Palermo, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Centro Hélio Oiticica Rio de Janeiro, The Lab San Francisco, Rockbund Museum Shanghai, MAXXI Rome, or Akademie der Künste Berlin. His platform UBQTLAB.ORG develops art and science encounters. https://linktr.ee/Lucaforcucci.
• Bruno Herbelin is senior researcher in virtual reality and cognitive neuroscience in the laboratory of Prof. O. Blanke at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He was deputy director of the EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics (2012-2019), and Assistant Professor at the Medialogy Department of Aalborg University, Denmark (2005-2009). He obtained his PhD at EPFL School of Computer and Communications in 2005 for his research work on virtual reality exposure therapy. https://brunoherbelin.github.io/vimix