I am in a sesshin, a two-and-a-half-day short form of intensive Zen meditation. Thoughts and images keep coming to me about the artificial general intelligence (AGI) we are currently creating. More and more people from the humanities, psychology, or team organization are expressing admiration, surprise, and fear at the capabilities of AGI. It seems that the Turing test was passed some time ago, and that we are now watching an intelligence develop that appears to be superior to us. This…
This text is about art theory in classical antiquity, particularly the concepts of Mimesis and Aisthesis and their significance for the representation of works of art. The relationships between subject, object, and language are also discussed.
Exhibition “Roots From the Sky” by Cedric Bregnard at Centre d’Art, Auroville March 2023 Cedric Bregnard is Artist in Residence at the Centre d’Art in Auroville. Over the next 2 months, he will take a photograph of the banyan tree in the Matrimandir garden. This photograph will then be scaled to the size of a wall (approximately 3x7m) in the gallery. Residents of Auroville are invited to trace light and shadow on the bark, the leaves, the roots, in ink…
They were four magical days. The Auroville Film Institute organized a residency with Ustad Bahauddin Dagar from November 7 to 10, 2022. It took place in Bhumika Hall, Bharat Nivas Auroville. Dhrupad – the film (1983) Ustad Bahauddin Dagar is a Rudraveena player. His family has played the instrument for 20 generations! His father and uncle (Zia Mohiyuddin Dagar and Fariduddin Dagar) were true masters. There is a wonderful film about this, Dhrupad, by the Indian director Mani Kaul. Among…
Curry! Every morning there are wonderful, mildly spiced Indian dishes. They are light and complex; there seem to be 1,001 spices in them. At midday, Solarkitchen, the community canteen: simple, vegetarian, good. The principle is healthy food for everyone; everyone can afford it. In the evening, these wonderful dishes again. What there is not: alcohol, meat or fish, sugar. Eggs are a luxury. In Germany I ate a lot of chocolate; now it is much too sweet for me. I…
Yesterday, after many years, I finally went into the village center of Roubion. Vilém Flusser lived here for many years. I quoted his books often in my seminars and used them as a basis for discussion. Especially his philosophy of photography. Flusser is a wild theorist. He wrote much about images, media, language, technology, signs, history… It seems to me he kept thinking about how thinking works. How do words and images arise in our heads, and how much does…
Our brain is not the seat of our mind, but the medium through which we can reach the spiritual. When I first heard this many years ago at a conference on media theory, I was astonished. Did they really mean this seriously? Is it crazy or brilliant? There is this beautiful old-fashioned word, ‘subtle matter.’ Our body is a medium through which we can reach this. Our media theories generally have in common that they are conceived technically. There is…
