Darwinian Spaces

2014

Interactive installation for Interactivos?'14: Rethinking collective behavior and action at
Medialab Prado, Spain.

The interactor enters the installation space and wears an EEG device. The presence of the interactor lights up the wired LED screens. The LED screens are visually representing the major sentiment activation points of the human brain. The screens then start to display momentary representation of dreams and texts taken from the social media. The EEG device activates various sounds depending on the brain electrical activity of the interactor. It also affects the dream representation being displayed - if the interactor is anxious, the machine will give him collective dream types with a negative sentiment as displayed on the screens, and if he relaxes, this will lead to calm dreams and sounds.

The result is constant rewiring of the interrelationship between the individual`s inner consciousness and the collective consciousness. As all humans and artefacts get more and more closely connected through the Internet, it's becoming more obvious to think that everything on earth is rewiring into some kind of a global brain. The enquiry towards "Technology versus Us" has brought me to this installation – to demonstrate our evolving connectedness, the Darwinian Spaces.

Concept Overview

Ants are collectively more intelligent and effective when they collaborate as a colony than the individual ants themselves. Each individual ant is responding to signals of another ant and has the spontaneous ability to adapt its performance for the good of the colony.There`s also a collective consciousness with ants – although we assume that individual ants have particular roles and are only automatically functioning based on such, in reality, they have awareness of the entire structure of the colony and begin to function as one entity. Unfortunately unlike ants, it seems that we have developed a mechanism against our awareness of the collective which we are part of. This raises a question of what we humans really are as collectives, not just as individuals.

What if our reality is in fact a collective consciousness, acting in an unconscious world as in a dream, and we are mere characters in other people’s dreams?

When viewing at reality of our world as a shared dream – our thoughts are the universe`s thoughts. Our collective dreams are narrating us something symbolically. The events and circumstances unfolding in the dream world and in the physical reality can be viewed as a collective representation of our inner state of being. Similarly, events can be translated to an individual level to reflect a person`s inner state, the collective level, just as Darwinian Spaces maps a collective dream visualisation on the participant`s brain space representing the collective map of people`s dreams and consciousness functioning as one entity.

Looking at Science and Technology, many scholars are claiming that we are in the age of information overload and our brains are rewiring as a result. Internet is accelerating connections among individuals and groups. As all humans and artefacts get more and more closely connected, it's becoming more obvious to think that everything on earth is rewiring into some kind of a global brain.