The first international CAiiA (Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the
Interactive Arts) research conference, titled Consciousness Reframed:
art and consciousness in the post-biological era, lived up to the rather
large realm that it's rubric, as well as almost a hundred presentations,
set up. What constitutes interactive art and what it should direct
itself towards are really the first questions that come up when
interactivity in art is discussed. This conference concentrated upon
the latter by focusing on what content might best be addressed by the
interactive arts. Specifically, Roy Ascott, the conference convenor
sees the key to interactivity to be consciousness. After the last
couple of decades has yielded an exploration of digital art, the base of
recent interactive art, that has been predominantly "a kind of Arts and
Crafts movement not unlike that of the 19th century," according to
Ascott, most qua 'interactive art' has been mesmerized with technique
rather than the use of it toward increasing human awareness, any true
artist's assumed goal. This conference succeeded in highlighting
explorations that use technology as a means rather than just an end in
itself as has so often been the case in the past. Technology, as well
as the vast memes in surrounding artistic and scientific fields, has
increasingly taken on characteristics that are models of the human mind
rather than its extensions. We no longer probe reality but construct
realities in our image which often go on to reveal more about ourselves
than the external world.

In this context, a consciousness much reframed is a seminal issue.
Technology as a model of ourselves and the way we interact with it is
almost a mirror by which to not only explore what our consciousness is,
but also its deepest manifestations such as is in our historical
development, myths, mysticism, ritual, philosophy, physics, psychology
and even parasychology. Technological interactivity is a reflection of
our consciousness but as Ascott argues it's also becoming a part of us
by pushing us into a post-biological era where the evolution of our
consciousness is as much dependent on that of the technology with which
we intermingle and the networks, such as the Internet, to which we're
connected as it is on biological development. In fact, biology is
becoming subsumed by technology so that future ideas of what constitutes
nature and reality will focus on a world molded by the possibilities of
genetic manipulation like cloning, nanotechnology, and such things as
the integration of prosthetics into our being, making us literally
cyborgs as if our interdependence with computers, telematics and
cyberspace weren't enough. On this note Ascott convened speakers that
addressed everything from the grounded perspective of differing
interpretations of warehoused data, phenomenological analysis of
consciousness and brain research to shamanism, quantum mechanics and
numerous art projects.

Even though the conference's concentration was on the interactive arts
and how consciousness is intrinsic to interactivity as well as serving
as compatible content, the question of simply what is consciousness and
how it works was addressed by several speakers. One, Brian Massumi,
sought to phenomenologically determine at what point a person truly
experiences consciousness. He stated that this point is in effect
unconscious because it snynesthetically takes place within something
being done rather than an awareness of it. That is to say that if you
think about the coin before you grab it, you might miss. The mind is
always one step behind the body as with a great athlete. According to
Massumi, what we normally perceive as consciousness is more like
perception running backwards.

Ranulph Glanville's presentation also spoke of a certain masking of what
we conventionally think of as consciousness. Addressing the fact that
we basically experience the world through one degree of interface or
another, namely the black box theory – the relation of input to output
where there's no evidence of how that relation is achieved, Glanville
brought up an aspect that touches on vital notions of technology all the
way to quantum physics. Just as one person can never truly know
another, due to basic experiential differences that exist between them,
theories and interfaces comprise our consciousness and also mediate most
technology whether it be a thermostat for heating or computer software .
Roger Malina gave an example of how dependent man has become on
interfaces in order to see. He described how when satellites with
astronomical sensors were sent up in the sixties and pointed out to the
universe, there was alot less to be seen than astronomers expected. Many
years later the warehoused data from those oberservations was entered
into redesigned software that was configured to take into account
aspects of the data that the old software ignored. As a result stars
and galaxies that were previously invisible appeared, and instead of
relative emptiness there was a packed universe.

[…]

Ultimately, the presentations that summed up this conference were the
artists and their work. Art's nature is to be interactive and most
important art engages some type of dialogue. […] Most of the artists
presented work that ranged in interactivity from a mouse click to
somatic registration to synesthetic immersion in Virtual Reality.
"Osmose", a piece presented by Char Davies, requires that one wear a VR
headset combining stereo optical screens, acoustic electronics and a
belt that measures respiration as well as forward and backward movement.
The participant vividly passes from one contemplative world to another
based on movement and respiration which causes vertical travel like in
scuba diving.

This first CAiiA conference was unequivocally a success and all the
participants seemed eager to make sure that it would happen again.
Instead of seeking to define the realm of interactive arts, this
conference seemed to indicate how expansive they could be. Reframed
Consciousness was truly an appropriate title because upon emerging from
these two days one could realize that technology is going to enable us
to at last explore not only the external world but our internal selves.