Program and suggested readings: đThe Ecognosis Seminars
DMNinishment: The Default Mode Network & âYouâ (Tune in),
February 21, 2024, 11:00am-12:00pm, GLAS 311
...all mean egoity vanishes...
Donât trust the science, test it. In this 55 minute session, participants will walk through the contemporary neuroscientific literature on the Default Mode Network, the first person experience of âI, me, Mineâ as correlated by neuroscience and birthed by the language of information from molecular biology and its legacies. Practices for observing the emergence and diminishment of this ânetworkâ will be enacted and explored.
Suggested Readings: Judson Brewer et. al ; Maurice Blanchot: Who? ; Maharshi, Who Am I?
Shut Up and Chant (Turn on)
February 21, 2024, 1:00pm-2:00pm, GLAS 311 ... I become a transparent eye-ball...
When Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon famously noted that âWhat information consumes is obvious: it consumes the attention of the recipientâ, he pointed to the seldom noted sacrificial quality of attention economies based on the exchange of âinformation.â Thinking beyond ego is a sacrificial event - the I is abandoned in favor of a larger scale apprehension. Each attentional event - being informed - represents an opportunity cost for some other attentional event. When information is âconsumedâ, attention is sacrificed. In the case of digital attention, each apprehension of attention involves the sacrifice of ecosystemic attention: Every captcha you complete is a bit of sky not glimpsed. This 55 minute workshop will provide exigence for this epidemic of information and attentional sacrifice and insurgent tactics for responding to it with chanting into thriving and healing.
Suggested Reading: Shut Up and Chant
Stoned on Algorithmic Botany, With Special Reference to Your Very Own Breath (Drop Out)
February 22, 2024, 10:00am-11:00am, GLAS 311
...an occult relation between man and the vegetable...
In this guided session, participants will explore the visual world of fractals and algorithmic botany based on Lindenmayer Systems. In observing the visual dynamics of L-Systems, we can become bedazzled by the remarkable order that emerges out of simple and often arbitrary rules - a botanical domain immanent to the silicon realm, what anthropologist Stefan Helmreich calls âsilicon second nature.â With our eyes soft on math and dendrites, weâll dive into the labyrinth of the lungs through simple methods of prana yoga, and give thanks for the plants with which we breathe, the minimum seven trees each of us coexists with just to breathe. Ecognosis is.
Suggested Readings: Finding Animals with Plant Intelligence ; Healing With Plant Intelligence: A Report from Ayahuasca ; Lindenmayer System Generator ; The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants
Richard Doyle visits Dr. Rosenthalâs âDerrida and the Anthropoceneâ Seminar
February 22, 2024, 5:30-7:30pm, GLAS311
Dr. Doyle will be leading the seminar in a discussion of Derridaâs Life Death.
Reading: Derridaâs Life Death (focus on sessions 1, 4, and 6, with 5 being suggested/optional) ; Jacobâs Logic of Life
