Mind Over Matter

Mind over Matter is the title of the virtual residency under the banner of the bangaloREsidency-Expanded that took place in 2020 in collaboration with C. Rockefeller Center for Contemporary Arts in Dresden, Germany and Walkin Studios in Bangalore.

© Anisha Baid

The outcome of the residency is on display at the Exhibition currently running at the Technical Collections, Dresden, Germany. Explore the multi-media installations from Anisha Baid, The Collective and Tara Kelton  and other artists online here: matter.crockefeller.org/wille-berg/entrance/

© Shafali Jain, Sidharthan, Neel Koradia

Mind over Matter, an English phrase that can be compared to the German folk wisdom Der Wille versetzt Berge, is also used in parapsychology to describe paranormal phenomena such as psychokinesis.

© Tara Kelton

The exhibition focuses on questions of consciousness research, machine learning, and the structure of the self and self-awareness. Since time immemorial, these questions have been projected into future settings in the context of science fiction literature, recent film series such as the Matrix or Westworld, which use advanced technology to try to solve the question of how mind and consciousness phenomena can evolve and manifest within complex assemblages of matter assembled from minute, atomic components.

The question of the nature of our consciousness, and how it is possible for it to exist in and experience our universe, is arguably the most fascinating puzzle we face. The research field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was launched in no small measure to find an answer to this. Since its beginnings, media art has referred to explorations of the relationship between humans, technology and consciousness, with the aid of technological and artistic models and technical tools. In the attempt to realise on computers the cognitive processes of humans, we develop a testable understanding and concepts of how elementary information processing processes lead to complex experience, it is no less than the attempt of a Theory of Everything, by means of mirroring and transferring it into a machine-abstract information processing system, but modelled after human information processing.

The Technical Collections Museum is particularly well suited as an exhibition venue for explorations, since physical and technical research on this complex of topics is also pursued here in other formats, attracting a very mixed audience of young and experienced visitors with an interest in technology.