Marfa Carpenter / MCSq2
A useful text for my students is Johan Huizinga’s theory of Homo ludens, humans as the animal who plays. For the history, you can go all the way back to the thaumatrope and praxinscope, stereoscope, Sensorama, motion capture, VR and AR, the goggles and gloves, first-generation Y, wearable intelligence—Yes, people have been attempting reality creation for a very long time. And our human experience of reality is already malleable, and not just technologically. Think of cultural vision quests, religious beliefs, pharmacology—To understand created reality you have to understand reality first.
“Meat reality,” I would define that as not only human life but the totality of corporeal existence. Although many of my students believe it’s become a dead end—Because of climate, yes, and serial pandemics, energy terrorism, societal drift, any number of disasters—Max Caspar? Max was a student of mine. We’re no longer in contact. Ari Regon, yes, to some of my students he’s a hero, unfortunately—Because they see him as a green light for some very troubling ambitions, for an entirely new branch of reality creation that—Because they’re simultaneously sawing at their own branch! Physicalism is a reductive philosophy, but if persistent perceptual dissociation follows the use of a reality experience, then what happens to our trust in perception itself? Or even our ongoing ability to accurately perceive reality? That is cognitively dangerous, it’s neurologically dangerous. And any user experience created by a permanently dissociated brain could only further that dissociation. Using created reality can already effect changes in certain susceptible individuals, Liew and Craig were pioneers in that research, but Liew and Craig are the foothills. This is the mountain now.
-Dr. Adam Kaiser, professor of reality creation studies, Kunstfarm
