ARThappeningHERE 001

ARThappeningHERE events are created and curated by Roger Bays

EVENT 001 - An exploration of consciousness and causality

 

 

Time: Friday 4th November 2016 at 6pm (New Zealand Time).

Weather dependent: This event is rain and wind dependent, it needs dry ground and not too much wind.

Is it on? Yes.

Forecast: partly cloudy

General Location: New Brighton, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Exact Spot (announced 2 hrs before the event): Corner of Wairoa St, and Orari St (just off Pages Road beside the Avon River). Plenty of parking. Roadworks prevent travel east on some sections of Pages Road. However, it is open in both directions east of highway 74, which is handy.

If you keep this page loaded on your phone you can also use the handy site guide (below) when you get to the event, though paper copies will be available.

Site guide: Use the guide below to read about the works and find your way around the three locations (all less than 200 metres of the car park).

 

 

 

 

GUIDE
EVENT 001 An exploration of consciousness and causality
Roger Bays


These works explore philosophical theories of mind and the nature of causality. Do we have an homunculus inside our heads? Is there a cartesian theatre of consciousness? Do we control reality, or does reality control us? If reality controls us does this mean the universe likes to draw and paint? Is the present influenced by the future?

WORKS

Location 1: at the pump house

DIRECTIONS: from the barricade walk southeast along the riverbank for 120m until you reach the large black pipes. On the pump house wall above the pipes you will see a photograph, and on the side wall a drawing.

What the Homunculi saw

What the Homunculi saw - photograph on 20”x30”

This work uses photography to explore the infinite regress issues surrounding the homunculus argument, which is a theory of vision. The homunculus argument supposes that inside our heads there is a Cartesian theatre, a kind of cinematic like display. The argument further suggests that there is also an observer, an homunculus, who is looking at the display. If this is so, then the obvious question is, how does the homunculus see the display? Would it not need a similar mechanism inside its head? This line of thinking leads to an infinite regress, an infinite number of Cartesian theatres and homunculi looking at them. The solution is fallacious because it reincorporates the never answered problem into the solution. But should we throw the baby (the theatre) out with the bathwater (the homunculus). Surely the infinite regress comes with the advent of an hypothesis of an homunculus, not the theatre. But this is a troubling proposition because an absence of an observer suggests an absence of a self! This photographic work does not answer these philosophical conundrums. But visually enables the art viewer to have a pseudo fly on the wall experience of what the hypothesized homunculi might see. This is achieved by superimposing a series of ever smaller replica photographs within a photograph, thus giving a regress. The photograph, taped to the pump house wall, is of the pump house. This enables the art viewer to stand at the location the photograph was taken and witness a transition from their own conscious experience of the pump house, to the photograph of the pump house, to a smaller image within the photograph of the pump house. . . etc.

 

The Banished Homunculus
The Banished Homunculus - graphite and coloured pencil on paper.

This work suggests that the homunculus, though disgruntled, has been banished from the mind.

 

Location 2: at the brown fence

DIRECTIONS: from the pump house, go through the iron gate, walk back along the road towards the car parking area, just before the car park turn left towards the portaloo, walk past the loo and head for the brown fence. Some drawings are on the fence and others are hanging in the trees.

Stream of consciousness drawings

Stream of consciousness drawings - graphite and coloured pencil on paper.

These works were all created by sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper with no particular plan on what to draw, and then following whatever instructions came to mind – draw a line here, use this pencil, start mark here, stop mark here, now draw line . . . We tend to believe that we are in control of our thoughts and are thereby responsible for them and any subsequent actions that might follow e.g. the movement of a pencil. However, the elephant in the room is the question, where do these thoughts come from? If we reflect on our thoughts, must we not concede that they just arrive in our conscious arena, one after the other, unbeknownst to us till the point of occurrence, conscious impact? Are we not in the situation where we are unaware of their origin and oblivious to mechanisms that cause their arrival? If this is the case, are we not at the mercy of what is delivered, and thereby victims of fate? If this is so, then surely we must forfeit any notion that we control reality, and succumb to the opposing, and maybe frightening, proposition that reality controls us. If reality/the universe is in charge, then why does it draw and paint?

 

Location 3: in the trees

DIRECTIONS: duck through the fence and wander amongst the trees until you find a laptop displaying an animation of a bobcat. The laptop will probably be on the ground.

Mammalian Experiences with Retrocausality

 

Mammalian Experiences with Retrocausality - digital animation.

This work utilises an animation to explore retrocausality. Retro causality is the controversial idea that the future can and does influence the present. Retrocausality, whether true or false, cannot easily be explored in a work without some form of device/sleight of hand. This work displays photographs in a shuffled order, giving the art viewer a sense of chronological mayhem, making it difficult to ascertain what preceded what. It is hoped that this temporal confusion makes the art viewer have doubts about causality, did (a) cause (b), or did (b) cause (a). Animated is a selection of six photographs of a bobcat –lynx rufus – in motion. These photographs were taken near Tucson, Arizona, USA, in May 2016.


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