Introduction Voiceover:
00:00:03
You are listening to Season Five of
Introduction Voiceover:
00:00:05
Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:11
Alright... check check check.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:13
Looks good.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:14
Good. Would you... would you mind dimming
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:17
the lights?
Adam Huggins:
00:00:18
Oh, you want it even darker in here?
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:20
Yeah.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:20
Let me see what I can do.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:25
How's that?
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:25
Perfect. What's in this tea by the way?
Adam Huggins:
00:00:32
It's a blend of different plants. But it's
Adam Huggins:
00:00:34
mostly sweet gale, which is a plant that grows in bogs.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:39
It's really relaxing.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:41
Yeah, it's one of my favorites. And people do say
Adam Huggins:
00:00:44
that it is helpful in inducing lucid dreaming.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:48
Lucid dreaming... to know you're
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:51
dreaming while it's happening. It's been a while since I had
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:55
one of those.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:56
Yeah, I can't even remember the last time I lucid
Adam Huggins:
00:00:57
dreamed. Maybe tonight is the night.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:00
Maybe!
Adam Huggins:
00:01:01
Okay, so now that we've kind of set the mood here.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:04
I wanted to tell you that way back, before we started this
Adam Huggins:
00:01:09
podcast, and before I even knew what a podcast was, I had a
Adam Huggins:
00:01:13
college radio show for a couple of years.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:16
Did you now?
Adam Huggins:
00:01:17
I did! With a couple of friends of mine. We
Adam Huggins:
00:01:20
were young. And we had an 11pm time slot that nobody cared
Adam Huggins:
00:01:24
about. And we had the keys to the station CD library, which
Adam Huggins:
00:01:28
had an excellent vinyl collection.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:31
Knowing you, that sounds dangerous.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:33
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:34
So I'm guessing you had like two turntables and
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:36
a microphone.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:37
That was actually the exact setup. And the reason
Adam Huggins:
00:01:40
that I bring it up right now is that our college radio show was
Adam Huggins:
00:01:45
all about dreams.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:48
Welcome back, you're listening to see
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:50
JSF 90.1 FM 93.9 cable FM in Burnaby. And this is Electric
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:56
Sheep radio.
DJ Ryder:
00:01:58
We'd like you to send us your dreams.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:00
Yeah, indeed to electricsheepradio@gmail.com
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:04
If you feel like having your dreams aired on the radio,
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:07
because we just love to hear dreams as you might have
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:10
noticed.
DJ Samantha:
00:02:11
We also prefer if you record them yourself.
DJ Ryder:
00:02:13
And so I guess until we see you next time.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:16
Goodnight.
DJ Ryder:
00:02:18
Sweet dreams.
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:20
Oh my god, your little baby radio voice. Little
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:23
late night DJ Adam. But other than that, nothing's really
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:28
changed, huh?
Adam Huggins:
00:02:29
Apparently not. No, I still really love to hear
Adam Huggins:
00:02:33
dreams. And that's what we're going to do now. Except that
Adam Huggins:
00:02:37
tonight, our program is called Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:42
Well, to be precise. Tonight, it's the Shape
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:45
of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish. A recurrent festival
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:51
that's explored the idea of consciousness, language and the
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:55
mind across non human species and beings. Initiated by the
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:00
Serpentine galleries in London since 2018, recorded on stage in
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:05
November 2022 at the Galleria do Biodiversidade in Porto,
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:09
Portugal, and then reduced and remixed by Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins:
00:03:16
Tonight, with the help of artists, scientists,
Adam Huggins:
00:03:20
philosophers and historians, were sprinkling a little bit of
Adam Huggins:
00:03:24
stardust on our understanding of dreams, reality, and non human
Adam Huggins:
00:03:29
beings — from fish, to demons, and Gods
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:35
Kicking things off, festival curators, Lucia
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:38
Pietroiusti, and Filipa Ramos.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:44
And I have the sort of impossible task of
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:48
telling you about dreams. We experience dreams as a
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:53
transition state between realms of the physical and the
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:55
spiritual. And so dreams become a kind of translation space.
Filipa Ramos:
00:03:59
But we refer to dreams when we speak about hope,
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:02
when we speak about repair. When we give symbolic interpretations
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:06
of dreams, we hold the world in place, in a sense. We shape a
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:11
world, its symbols, and its myths. We shape our sense of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:15
belonging to that world.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:17
And through the notion of the dream in this
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:19
event, we hope to -
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:21
somehow continue in our project to move away from
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:26
a human-centric conception of this world. So what might it
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:30
look like if we tried to de-anthropocenter the notion of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:35
a dream? Well, in the first instance, it might be that in a
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:40
multi-species complex planet, non-human dreams might not be at
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:46
all like what we expect of human ones, because they'd be
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:51
processes belonging to completely different ways of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:54
being in the world.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:55
So we've asked ourselves, and we'll ask
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:59
ourselves all sorts of questions — how much of a more-than-human
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:02
or-non human being sense of self are we able to intuit and
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:06
appreciate? To hopefully come out on the other side with just
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:09
a tiny bit of a slightly larger intuition, not only of how we
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:14
exist on this planet, and how we share it with more than human
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:17
beings, what our responsibility in relation to that sharing, and
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:22
also what art,
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:24
poetry,
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:25
science
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:26
when it dreams,
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:27
and so many other forms of expression,
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:30
might, in fact, be here on this earth to do?
Alex Jordan:
00:05:50
My name is Alex Jordan, and I'm a scientist. I'm
Alex Jordan:
00:05:52
a scientist very interested in the questions that we have as
Alex Jordan:
00:05:56
humans about how animals experience the world, their
Alex Jordan:
00:06:00
sense of self, their sense of awareness, their perception,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:04
perhaps their consciousness, and how we might as humans,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:09
understand and interpret and ask questions of these animals that
Alex Jordan:
00:06:14
we might better understand their worlds.
Alex Jordan:
00:06:18
Generally speaking, at a scientific level, I'm interested
Alex Jordan:
00:06:21
in the broad question of how behavior evolves. How, in the
Alex Jordan:
00:06:26
transition from simple life to more complex forms of life,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:32
including our own form of life, behaviors have evolved,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:36
cognitive capacities have evolved, and traits that help
Alex Jordan:
00:06:41
animals interact with the world and experience the world have
Alex Jordan:
00:06:45
evolved.
Alex Jordan:
00:06:46
Some research we've just published this year was about
Alex Jordan:
00:06:50
sleep, and potentially dreaming in spiders. And so we've done
Alex Jordan:
00:06:54
this work here demonstrating that jumping spiders, these
Alex Jordan:
00:06:57
beautiful, intelligent creatures have periods of REM sleep, rapid
Alex Jordan:
00:07:03
eye movement, sleep. This is a trait that was once thought
Alex Jordan:
00:07:07
exists, as many traits are thought to exist only in humans.
Alex Jordan:
00:07:11
But now we're starting to expand our perception and understanding
Alex Jordan:
00:07:14
that the idea of dreaming for a spider for a fish for a plant
Alex Jordan:
00:07:18
may not be that far off.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:21
It's delightful to dream together in
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:23
the belly of a whale. aWhat does it feel like to be a fish or a
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:29
bird or a plant?
Rain Wu:
00:07:31
The rivers and the glaciers, the big mammals and
Rain Wu:
00:07:35
the imperceptible microbes, the small algae, and the complex
Rain Wu:
00:07:39
trees.
Alex Jordan:
00:07:40
When I showed you this tree, this evolutionary
Alex Jordan:
00:07:43
tree, it's really important for me that that tree is not in a
Alex Jordan:
00:07:47
line. There's not a ladder that humans sit on the top of, and
Alex Jordan:
00:07:50
chimps are nearer to us, and then dolphins are nearer then —
Alex Jordan:
00:07:54
that evolution is pushing all animals towards. This is an
Alex Jordan:
00:07:57
absurd concept. Evolution produces solutions and animals
Alex Jordan:
00:08:03
and organisms that fulfill whatever purpose is required and
Alex Jordan:
00:08:08
whatever purpose they have. In my opinion, both my personal but
Alex Jordan:
00:08:13
also scientific opinion, many fish and many of the animals and
Alex Jordan:
00:08:16
organisms I deal with are just as intelligent and just as
Alex Jordan:
00:08:19
sophisticated and just as subtle, in many ways, as some of
Alex Jordan:
00:08:23
these species.
Alex Jordan:
00:08:25
And so a lot of my work is done in the places where these
Alex Jordan:
00:08:29
animals live. I try to take all of our approaches and questions
Alex Jordan:
00:08:33
out into the wild. Ours is a is a practice of going to the
Alex Jordan:
00:08:38
places where these animals are, trying to disturb them as little
Alex Jordan:
00:08:41
as we can, filming them, then using some of these machine
Alex Jordan:
00:08:45
learning and artificial intelligence approaches to help
Alex Jordan:
00:08:48
us understand and decompose and maybe intuit what these animals
Alex Jordan:
00:08:53
are feeling and experiencing — of one another and of the world
Alex Jordan:
00:08:57
around them. Contextualizing this behavior, of having our
Alex Jordan:
00:09:02
questions asked in the places where these animals live. And
Alex Jordan:
00:09:05
that means we have to understand and try and appreciate where
Alex Jordan:
00:09:08
they live. So we're not divorcing them from their
Alex Jordan:
00:09:11
experience — from their evolutionary history. We're
Alex Jordan:
00:09:14
trying to situate our studies in those places and recreate in
Alex Jordan:
00:09:19
silico or in some kind of analytical framework, the
Alex Jordan:
00:09:23
interactions they have not just with one another, but with the
Alex Jordan:
00:09:26
world around them.
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:30
Even the word environment, right, like the
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:32
more-than-human world has been reduced to an environment — like
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:36
just like a backdrop where the human drama unfolds.
Alex Jordan:
00:09:44
Some of my research has has asked the question, this
Alex Jordan:
00:09:49
classic test we have which is called the mirror test, in which
Alex Jordan:
00:09:52
an animal is presented, like here, with a mirror and asked...
Alex Jordan:
00:09:57
does it recognize its reflection as self or is it unable to do
Alex Jordan:
00:10:03
that... that thing that we do? Is it unable to deal with the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:08
concept of self? And this mirror test is a test in which you are
Alex Jordan:
00:10:14
supposed to see yourself in a reflection, and there's a mark
Alex Jordan:
00:10:19
on your body somewhere that you can't see, except with the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:23
mirror. And if you touch yourself, rather than touch the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:28
mirror, then you've understood that you exist in that
Alex Jordan:
00:10:32
reflection — that reflection is you. It's not some other entity.
Alex Jordan:
00:10:40
And this is wonderful. This is a perfectly valid test, provided
Alex Jordan:
00:10:45
you care. Provided you care that there's a mark on your body.
Alex Jordan:
00:10:48
Provided you have the vanity, let's say to... to worry that
Alex Jordan:
00:10:54
something about your appearance has changed.
Filipa Ramos:
00:10:56
Oh, I look different. Wait, but it's me.
Alex Jordan:
00:11:00
Is it a problem of motivation? Or is it a problem
Alex Jordan:
00:11:03
of intelligence? Can they not understand the context, or do
Alex Jordan:
00:11:08
they simply not care in the same way we do?
Onome Ekeh:
00:11:10
You know, what does wealth mean for a sparrow? Is
Onome Ekeh:
00:11:14
it, sort of, this ability to flock?
Alex Jordan:
00:11:17
and I settled on a species called the cleaner
Alex Jordan:
00:11:21
wrasse. The cleaner wrasse we thought was perfect, because it
Alex Jordan:
00:11:25
does care about these marks. Its whole biology, its whole
Alex Jordan:
00:11:28
cognitive capacity and its ecology is centered around this
Alex Jordan:
00:11:33
idea of seeing marks on the skin and trying to remove them.
Alex Jordan:
00:11:39
That's what it does. Because its whole existence is about finding
Alex Jordan:
00:11:44
and removing parasites from client fish.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:47
You can only interpret the test as revealing
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:51
something if the behavior can be considered strange or unusual in
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:56
some way. And similarly, the notion of recognizing a mark
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:12:01
somewhere, is also an experience of recognizing oneself with a
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:12:06
kind of strangeness.
Alex Jordan:
00:12:08
But this is a really important question. What
Alex Jordan:
00:12:11
on earth is unusual for an animal? How do you as a human
Alex Jordan:
00:12:16
observer, me as a scientist decide what an animal should or
Alex Jordan:
00:12:21
should not be doing? And therefore what is unusual for an
Alex Jordan:
00:12:24
animal? This is not not a simple question. I'm not being
Alex Jordan:
00:12:29
facetious here. This is a genuine question about our
Alex Jordan:
00:12:33
expectations and intuition of non human animals.
Onome Ekeh:
00:12:39
You know, you almost don't recognize what's being
Onome Ekeh:
00:12:42
said.
Alex Jordan:
00:12:43
Hang on, this is not another individual. It's
Alex Jordan:
00:12:46
copying everything I do. Maybe it's me. And in this phase,
Alex Jordan:
00:12:51
humans perform unusual behaviors.
Federico Campagna:
00:12:57
I think what's remarkable about dreams
Federico Campagna:
00:12:58
is that while you are in a dream is really not very strange at
Federico Campagna:
00:13:01
all. Everything is remarkably normal. It becomes strange, the
Federico Campagna:
00:13:04
moment you exit the dream, and then you look back, and then you
Federico Campagna:
00:13:08
realize that the two don't match up.
Alex Jordan:
00:13:10
But for these fish, this was a very clear behavior,
Alex Jordan:
00:13:14
that they were doing something completely outside of their
Alex Jordan:
00:13:16
repertoire. Some of them are very easy to interpret. Upside
Alex Jordan:
00:13:20
Down swimming — fish do not swim upside down, unless it's time to
Alex Jordan:
00:13:24
buy yourself a new goldfish. Now, if you think about it, one
Alex Jordan:
00:13:28
of the main barriers that we might have in using these kinds
Alex Jordan:
00:13:31
of tests across animals is that if they're designed for humans,
Alex Jordan:
00:13:37
how do we expect an animal without hands or fingers to be
Alex Jordan:
00:13:41
able to pass them in the same way that a human would?
Onome Ekeh:
00:13:45
You know, you wonder, like how all these
Onome Ekeh:
00:13:47
different things put together? That don't fit?
Alex Jordan:
00:13:52
One way, we've started to interrogate that
Alex Jordan:
00:13:58
question and try to get a deeper handle on what a fish is
Alex Jordan:
00:14:01
experiencing and what kind of behaviors it's performing, and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:05
what those behaviors might mean, is to start to attempt to
Alex Jordan:
00:14:08
understand the behavioral language of fishes and other
Alex Jordan:
00:14:12
animals. And as I've mentioned, we're doing that with the aid of
Alex Jordan:
00:14:16
artificial intelligence. Because for us to look at something like
Alex Jordan:
00:14:22
a fish and understand what the postures, movements and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:26
interactions mean, is an incredible challenge and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:31
potentially impossible. And so we're using an approach called
Alex Jordan:
00:14:34
behavioral decomposition. Behavioral decomposition is a
Alex Jordan:
00:14:39
method in which you look at every single movement, an animal
Alex Jordan:
00:14:42
makes — every single change in its legs, its postures, whatever
Alex Jordan:
00:14:48
it is. And you can break those behaviors down into these sort
Alex Jordan:
00:14:52
of dimensions of kinematics, and build them into this map of
Alex Jordan:
00:14:57
behavior.
Alex Jordan:
00:14:58
The fish will go to the mirror, observe its reflection, observe
Alex Jordan:
00:15:03
that it has a mark on its body, will go away from the mirror,
Alex Jordan:
00:15:08
will scrape that mark against the gravel or a rock, and then
Alex Jordan:
00:15:11
go back to the mirror to check. If the fish go through all three
Alex Jordan:
00:15:16
of the phases that I told you, and then attempt to remove this
Alex Jordan:
00:15:19
mark, they have passed the test. By the original definition of
Alex Jordan:
00:15:24
the test, by all other standards that are applied to all other
Alex Jordan:
00:15:29
organisms, they have passed the test. Now is this evidence that
Alex Jordan:
00:15:35
they are self conscious — that they are self aware? Is the
Alex Jordan:
00:15:40
performance of this behavior enough to convince you that a
Alex Jordan:
00:15:43
fish is self aware?
Filipa Ramos:
00:15:45
When you're obsessed with something
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:15:47
and once you start looking for something
Filipa Ramos:
00:15:48
you see that something everywhere.
Rain Wu:
00:15:51
The sky told stories, remembered legends and provided
Rain Wu:
00:15:54
clues.
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:15:56
Sometimes you can be suspended in a dream and
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:00
not necessarily be connected to time, but still connected to
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:04
this idea of rhythm. Constantly in this rhythmic cycle of
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:09
nutrients... it's like you're... you're eating reality, in a way.
Rain Wu:
00:16:16
Food is the connection from distant and exotic
Rain Wu:
00:16:19
landscapes, to domestic backyards — going near and far,
Rain Wu:
00:16:24
stretching across the Earth's surface. It connects the sun
Rain Wu:
00:16:28
above and the soil below, like a vertical axis of life.
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:33
And at the same time, you're reflecting on that
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:36
digestion.
Rain Wu:
00:16:37
Food connects our bodies with the surrounding
Rain Wu:
00:16:40
world. Nothing is more intimate than eating. What somebody sees
Rain Wu:
00:16:45
can be seen by others. What somebody hears can be heard by
Rain Wu:
00:16:49
others. But what somebody eats, nobdy else can eat. There's
Rain Wu:
00:16:57
nothing more private, more introverted, more turned inwards
Rain Wu:
00:17:01
on itself.
Onome Ekeh:
00:17:03
A transformation takes place
Rain Wu:
00:17:07
Thus the world was created. And out of Chaos, the
Rain Wu:
00:17:13
orderly and complex Cosmos arose.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:17:16
This most intimate of absorptions is what
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:17:19
brings you to the Cosmos.
Rain Wu:
00:17:22
Cosmos, the physical universe of things seen and
Rain Wu:
00:17:25
touched, and the spiritual entities they existed beyond.
Federico Campagna:
00:17:32
We'll get there by steps — we will go
Federico Campagna:
00:17:33
through three great transformations. And we will
Federico Campagna:
00:17:37
start by setting the scene — setting the parameters of this
Federico Campagna:
00:17:42
journey towards human and more than human dreams. The
Federico Campagna:
00:17:46
parameters are very simple. There are two parameters for our
Federico Campagna:
00:17:49
inquiry. There are two simple words — nothing, something.
Federico Campagna:
00:17:57
Nothing, something.
Federico Campagna:
00:18:01
Now, the important thing are not the words. The little pause
Federico Campagna:
00:18:06
between them is the greatest mystery of all, for science,
Federico Campagna:
00:18:12
theology, philosophy since forever. How is it possible that
Federico Campagna:
00:18:17
nothing might become something? This might sound like a very
Federico Campagna:
00:18:23
academic and useless question. But in reality, it has to do
Federico Campagna:
00:18:26
with everything we hold dear. It has to do with the very stuff of
Federico Campagna:
00:18:30
the world. Asking ourselves the question "how is it possible
Federico Campagna:
00:18:34
that nothing might become something" means asking
Federico Campagna:
00:18:37
ourselves "How did it happen? That all that surrounds us —
Federico Campagna:
00:18:41
every single thing, reality as a whole, at some point, came into
Federico Campagna:
00:18:47
existence." And it's been at the center of our imagination and
Federico Campagna:
00:18:51
concerns, as I was saying, since time immemorial. We could say
Federico Campagna:
00:18:55
literally, since the beginning, the beginning of history.
Federico Campagna:
00:18:59
History begins with the first written records we have
Federico Campagna:
00:19:02
discovered. Before that there is prehistory. About prehistory, we
Federico Campagna:
00:19:06
cannot say anything, because we don't know.
Federico Campagna:
00:19:10
And the earliest written records have to do with the problem of
Federico Campagna:
00:19:13
how the world came into existence. These are what are
Federico Campagna:
00:19:16
called Cosmogonies — so stories that tell about the birth of the
Federico Campagna:
00:19:20
cosmos. And these cosmogonies are very interesting because
Federico Campagna:
00:19:24
they address the question "how we pass from nothing to
Federico Campagna:
00:19:27
something". The question is "Can something come out of nothing?"
Federico Campagna:
00:19:36
And the answer of the mythological cosmogonies is no.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:41
The idea of reincarnation, that souls
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:43
took on successively the bodies of multiple different species,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:46
from humans to animals to plants, and back again. This
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:50
idea was embedded in a range of classical Greek and Roman
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:53
philosophy, poetry and magic. And as we'll see, reincarnation
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:58
raises fundamental question about where the identity of an
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:02
organic entity rests, and how it is constituted. Is it in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:07
movements, feelings and capabilities of the body? In the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:11
ability to vocalize or speak? Or in the capacity to remember or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:15
dream?
Federico Campagna:
00:20:16
To the question, "did from nothing,
Federico Campagna:
00:20:19
something come out," the answer is no. Nothing is an impossible
Federico Campagna:
00:20:24
philosophical concept. It is not just unthinkable, but it is
Federico Campagna:
00:20:28
impossible. Since things exist, at least we exist as points of
Federico Campagna:
00:20:34
awareness in the world as the object to our awareness, since
Federico Campagna:
00:20:37
there is existence, non existence cannot take place.
Federico Campagna:
00:20:41
Since there is being, non-being is totally impossible. So, to
Federico Campagna:
00:20:47
the question of the beginning, how you pass from nothing to
Federico Campagna:
00:20:49
something, they say, "In the beginning, there was not
Federico Campagna:
00:20:52
nothing. In the beginning that was something, but something
Federico Campagna:
00:20:54
special." This something was ineffable — is something beyond
Federico Campagna:
00:21:00
words... impossible to describe. You have philosophers and
Federico Campagna:
00:21:03
theologians talking about this. Then, this something fragmented
Federico Campagna:
00:21:08
itself into many. Simone Weil says "decreated itself".
Federico Campagna:
00:21:14
Why am I talking about this? How is this relevant in any way to
Federico Campagna:
00:21:16
our lives today? Well, the question of the beginning
Federico Campagna:
00:21:20
becomes relevant to our life today if we look at it in a
Federico Campagna:
00:21:23
mirror — be like those fish that we saw earlier. If we look at it
Federico Campagna:
00:21:27
in a mirror, the question of the origin is the question of the
Federico Campagna:
00:21:30
end. The question of what happens before birth is the same
Federico Campagna:
00:21:33
as the question of what happens after death. And now we start
Federico Campagna:
00:21:37
seeing how the question of what happens after death concerns us.
Federico Campagna:
00:21:41
There is a certain urgency to the question "After something,
Federico Campagna:
00:21:45
can there be nothing? After this life, can we be utterly
Federico Campagna:
00:21:51
annihilated?" And here we see that the intuition of the
Federico Campagna:
00:21:55
eternity of being becomes a powerful protection. Because it
Federico Campagna:
00:21:59
says that since things did not have a beginning in nothing,
Federico Campagna:
00:22:05
they cannot have an end in nothing. Nothing is an invalid
Federico Campagna:
00:22:10
concept — philosophically is an impossible concept.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:14
What we have is that the beginning had to do with the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:17
fragmentation of boundaries, an establishment of boundaries. And
Federico Campagna:
00:22:21
the end, similarly has to do with the reshuffling of
Federico Campagna:
00:22:24
boundaries. It's just a matter of movements of boundaries.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:30
There is a way in which we can understand it metaphorically.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:33
The world being the dream, and the characters of the dream
Federico Campagna:
00:22:38
being the inhabitants of the world, including ourselves. Like
Federico Campagna:
00:22:43
us, the inhabitants of a dream have no recollection of their
Federico Campagna:
00:22:46
origin, and no horizon of their end. And like us, the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:50
inhabitants of a dream are made of the same substance, as the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:55
mind of the sleeper. If you for a moment, consider what is the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:59
substance of which a dream is made, you realize that is the
Federico Campagna:
00:23:01
substance of the mind — there is a continuity. The fragments are
Federico Campagna:
00:23:05
made of the same substance of the monolith.
Federico Campagna:
00:23:08
And in fact, this idea that it's possible to understand the world
Federico Campagna:
00:23:13
as a dream, and the relationship between the world and the other
Federico Campagna:
00:23:16
worldly (so, before the beginning, after the end), is
Federico Campagna:
00:23:20
not just a metaphor that I've made up, but is a typical way of
Federico Campagna:
00:23:23
understanding the world. In many philosophies, theologies and
Federico Campagna:
00:23:26
mythologies from from all over the world.
Federico Campagna:
00:23:30
The idea is that the world that we see around ourselves is a
Federico Campagna:
00:23:35
dream of the eternal being. It is a dream in the mind of the
Federico Campagna:
00:23:41
eternal being. And that everything we see around
Federico Campagna:
00:23:45
ourselves, including ourselves as individuals, and the things
Federico Campagna:
00:23:50
and the people around us are fundamentally characters of this
Federico Campagna:
00:23:53
dream of this eternally-sleeping mind. And to this mind, that is
Federico Campagna:
00:23:59
dreaming up the whole of reality, it is not unfitting to
Federico Campagna:
00:24:02
give the name of God.
Federico Campagna:
00:24:03
Now, this realization can have consequences. Of course, in
Federico Campagna:
00:24:10
philosophy, often you observe a hypothesis about reality, you
Federico Campagna:
00:24:13
embrace them, and you see what happens, okay? You try them out.
Federico Campagna:
00:24:17
There is an engineering aspect to philosophy, very much. So if
Federico Campagna:
00:24:20
you try out this perspective, it could have, you know, a
Federico Campagna:
00:24:23
paralyzing effect or an ecstatic effect. Ecstatic effect, typical
Federico Campagna:
00:24:28
mystical reaction. A paralyzing effect, in the sense that you
Federico Campagna:
00:24:32
start asking yourself, "Doesn't this mean, then, that we are
Federico Campagna:
00:24:36
passive elements inside the dream?" If we are the characters
Federico Campagna:
00:24:40
being dreamt up by a great divine mind, to use the
Federico Campagna:
00:24:44
theological metaphor, doesn't this mean that we cannot do
Federico Campagna:
00:24:47
anything inside this dream to modify it? It's dreamt up by a
Federico Campagna:
00:24:50
mind greater than our own. If you remain equal with the
Federico Campagna:
00:24:54
metaphor of the dream, you realize that you can ask this
Federico Campagna:
00:24:57
question to your own dreams. Inside your own dream, what is
Federico Campagna:
00:25:03
the distribution of agency? Is it you? That is dreaming up the
Federico Campagna:
00:25:07
dream and directing it and unfolding it? Or should you
Federico Campagna:
00:25:10
rather say that in the dream, the, the one with the least
Federico Campagna:
00:25:14
agency is you, while in fact, it's the characters of the dream
Federico Campagna:
00:25:18
that unfold the story of which they are the protagonist. The
Federico Campagna:
00:25:22
dream dreams itself through its characters, typically. And by
Federico Campagna:
00:25:27
the same token, inside this world dream this dream world, it
Federico Campagna:
00:25:32
is us as the characters that have the possibility of
Federico Campagna:
00:25:34
unfolding the dream narration and the responsibility of doing
Federico Campagna:
00:25:40
it the best we can, as well as we can.
Onome Ekeh:
00:25:44
So I thought I'd try it out.
Alex Jordan:
00:25:46
Dreams and imagination and abstraction can
Alex Jordan:
00:25:51
function to place you in scenarios that you didn't
Alex Jordan:
00:25:56
experience. And that could be considered in the scientific
Alex Jordan:
00:26:01
terminology, adaptive. It allows your body and your mind to
Alex Jordan:
00:26:05
explore scenarios, and maybe prepare you for them, even if
Alex Jordan:
00:26:10
you didn't experience them.
Federico Campagna:
00:26:12
So dreamers that are aware of their act of
Federico Campagna:
00:26:16
creation of the world, being part of a fiction, they
Federico Campagna:
00:26:20
understand that they can redeem the world only through narrative
Federico Campagna:
00:26:23
means.
Nahum Mantra:
00:26:25
You know, because without the heart, there is no
Nahum Mantra:
00:26:26
mind. There's no blood that pumps into the brain.
Hatis Noit:
00:26:30
Yeah, every time I feel somehow lost, I try to
Hatis Noit:
00:26:35
connect to the memory of the nature there — the wild energy
Hatis Noit:
00:26:42
of the land.
Federico Campagna:
00:26:50
We started with the first great
Federico Campagna:
00:26:52
transformation, birth — the beginning. The second great
Federico Campagna:
00:26:55
transformation, death — the end. And here we have the third
Federico Campagna:
00:26:59
transformation. And the third transformation is a
Federico Campagna:
00:27:03
transformation beyond the frontiers of the human.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:06
The language of demon is a bit
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:08
tricky for us because it's used by Christians to refer
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:11
specifically to evil demons that have a particular place in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:14
cosmos and in the story of creation. Whereas, in the kind
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:17
of broader Greek and Roman usage, it's a slightly
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:20
stretchier term, and it tends to mean a kind of an intermediate
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:23
spirits, something between Gods and humans.
Onome Ekeh:
00:27:27
If she's to go into the forest realm of spirits and
Onome Ekeh:
00:27:30
ghosts, she needs to have night vision.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:36
Other fragments of his work reveal
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:38
that he identified himself as a restless demon. The Greek word
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:42
is daimon, a kind of inbetweener spirit, and one who's been
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:46
exiled from the gods — perhaps a punishment for some unspecified
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:49
crime. In this snippet of text, Empedocles recalls multiple
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:54
previous births, moving between genders and species apparently
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:58
without effort. He becomes most eloquent when remembering the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:03
past bodily experience of being a little wordless fish leaping
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:07
out of the sea.
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:09
When I retreat as far into myself as possible, I
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:13
become aware only of the shadow cast by my faint currents. The
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:19
water knows no natural boundary, and occupies all niches.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:24
Did souls have a basic identity as human
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:27
or animal? Were there limits to where souls could go? Plato
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:32
thought that human souls could get inside animals. But
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:35
Porphyry, a philosopher in the Platonist tradition, thought
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:38
human souls could only enter human bodies. Otherwise,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:42
Porphyry worries, a mother who'd returned into the body of a mule
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:45
might perhaps end up carrying her own son on her back. Was the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:50
destination body for reincarnation a deliberate
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:53
choice of the soul, as related by Plato's Er. Or was it random?
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:58
In which bodies breathe in souls as they're blown about in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:29:01
air — And that's something apparently taught by followers
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:29:04
of Pythagoras and Orpheus.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:06
And so the question that I have for you
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:08
over and over and over again, and it's not the first time that
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:10
I've asked you it, is what could be a possible metaphysics of the
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:14
more than human?
Federico Campagna:
00:29:15
Metaphysics is a Greek term that has to do
Federico Campagna:
00:29:17
with what is beyond the physics. It was originally assigned to
Federico Campagna:
00:29:21
the, the organization of Aristotle's works. He wrote a
Federico Campagna:
00:29:24
work on the Physics and the work after that was called the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:27
Metaphysics, so the one after the work on the physics. So it
Federico Campagna:
00:29:30
was just a cataloging entry.
Federico Campagna:
00:29:31
But it has to do with more than cataloguing. It has to do with
Federico Campagna:
00:29:35
the difference between what we see around ourselves, the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:37
physics, what we can experience in a particular way. And our
Federico Campagna:
00:29:42
questioning about what there is beyond. Beyond can mean many
Federico Campagna:
00:29:47
different things. Beyond can mean in the realm of the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:49
invisible, or in the realm of the infinitely small, or in the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:53
realm of the immaterial, or in the realm of the possibilities
Federico Campagna:
00:29:56
that are not actualized, and so on and so forth. Or of the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:59
impalpable, ineffable structures that hold up reality. Now, to a
Federico Campagna:
00:30:04
large extent, the things that... the structures that hold up
Federico Campagna:
00:30:08
reality are not so much inscribed within things, but
Federico Campagna:
00:30:13
they are inscribed within our mind. So within the way in which
Federico Campagna:
00:30:16
we perceive things. And in that case, we realize that the way in
Federico Campagna:
00:30:19
which we... set our interpretation of the
Federico Campagna:
00:30:25
perceptions that we have from the world goes to construct
Federico Campagna:
00:30:29
different worlds. So, it is world building in that sense. We
Federico Campagna:
00:30:33
could use another words — a Greek word "Cosmopoetics".
Federico Campagna:
00:30:38
Cosmopoetics is literally the same as worldbuilding. But maybe
Federico Campagna:
00:30:40
it's a little bit clearer, because Cosmopoetics means...
Federico Campagna:
00:30:45
Cosmos, literally order. So the setting of a particular order.
Federico Campagna:
00:30:50
And this setting is Poetics from the Greek popoieîn, "to make" —
Federico Campagna:
00:30:54
but also the same word that means "poetry".
Federico Campagna:
00:30:59
Artists, cultural producers, because they intervene
Federico Campagna:
00:31:02
particularly on the way in which we see things, they are
Federico Campagna:
00:31:06
opticians. You know, they are eye surgeons to a large extent.
Federico Campagna:
00:31:10
Through their poetic work, they construct worlds, and they help
Federico Campagna:
00:31:15
us to construct different worlds because they intervene at that
Federico Campagna:
00:31:18
level. They are not physical engineers in that sense, but
Federico Campagna:
00:31:21
they are metaphysical engineers. To the extent to which our
Federico Campagna:
00:31:27
shifting of perspective constructs different worlds.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:30
Christians thought that human souls were
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:32
restless but also fundamentally individual, singular, and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:36
monogamous in their relationship with bodies. That said, human
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:40
bodies could themselves be magicked into horses or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:42
possessed by demons, so they were also porous and unstable.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:47
The most threatening creatures in the atmosphere were demons,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:49
who could operate inside human souls and bodies and minds,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:53
animating their dreams with obscene thoughts and producing
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:56
powerful waking fantasies. Demons own thin bodies can take
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:00
on apparently more solid disguises as wild animals or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:03
beautiful women, but they were fundamentally vulnerable too —
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:06
evanescing at exorcism into a puff of smoke. We've also seen
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:10
how some Greeks and Romans had variously imagined demons as
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:14
close to or even identical with human souls, and also as souls
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:18
as much less bound to singular bodies. Some fortunate or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:22
privileged humans might even be able to recall a faint memory of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:25
an earlier incarnation, whether as a human, an animal, or even a
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:29
plant. Whether such memories and dreams of a past self were
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:34
punitive or ecstatic, depends rather on what you think it
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:38
might be like to live as a bird or a shrub.
Nahum Mantra:
00:32:44
There, I was exiled from myself. But nothing
Nahum Mantra:
00:32:49
lasts forever.
Onome Ekeh:
00:32:51
I've been trying to recreate that story, over and
Onome Ekeh:
00:32:55
over.
Alex Jordan:
00:32:56
There's this idea that dreaming is feeding
Alex Jordan:
00:33:02
nonsense into the system, such that nonsense can be
Alex Jordan:
00:33:05
discriminated from sense. And this is, in fact, at a practical
Alex Jordan:
00:33:10
level, one of the methods we have to use in many of these
Alex Jordan:
00:33:14
technological approaches. We have to feed noise into the
Alex Jordan:
00:33:18
system to differentiate it from signal.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:33:22
And now of course, a machine is complex as
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:33:24
the world itself is the world.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:26
Of course, it's hard to tell from
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:28
these little tiny fragments of archaic poetry by people like
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:31
Empedocles and Aeneas, how they related to these past selves,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:35
and indeed whether that animal incarnations dreamed in the same
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:39
way of their human incarnations. Looking more broadly, we can see
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:44
that there is a great amount of disagreement among poets and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:47
natural philosophers in antiquity, about which animals
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:50
dreamed, what they dreamed about, all done on the basis of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:54
empirical observation and inference.
Alex Jordan:
00:33:57
And it is our hope that ultimately, by looking at
Alex Jordan:
00:34:01
these animals in their natural environment, by understanding
Alex Jordan:
00:34:04
their experiences, by understanding their context, by
Alex Jordan:
00:34:08
understanding their behavioral outputs, we can then bring them
Alex Jordan:
00:34:12
into the conversation — to tell us what they want, what their
Alex Jordan:
00:34:16
aesthetic preferences are, what their desires are. But also what
Alex Jordan:
00:34:20
their language means, and perhaps if we're lucky, what
Alex Jordan:
00:34:23
their subjective experience of the world may really be.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:29
If you look more broadly at the kind of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:31
spread of literary and visual production, you can see that
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:35
there is some understanding that the world is interconnected and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:38
that human lives might contain echoes of a kind of previous
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:42
vegetal animalistic existence. So it seems to me that there are
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:46
lots of different explanations for where dreams come from in
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:50
antiquity. And some of them are very naturalistic and sort of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:53
pragmatic and to do with bodily movements. And others are much
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:56
more related to the sublime, be it the Divine or the Demonic —
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:01
and it's particularly there that you find notions that the dream
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:04
might be an uncovering of something by some third agency.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:08
There might be some interest in revealing to humans... what else
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:12
they've been.
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:31
This episode of Future Ecologies features the
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:34
words and voices of Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, Alex
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:40
Jordan, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Rain Wu, Nahum Mantra, Onome
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:46
Ekeh, Federico Campagna, Yussef Agbo-Ola, and Hatis Noit
Adam Huggins:
00:35:53
All recorded in November of 2022 as part of The
Adam Huggins:
00:35:57
Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish,
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:59
The remix of which you heard here was
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:02
produced by me, Mendel Skulski, and my co host, Adam Huggins,
Adam Huggins:
00:36:08
with music by Yussef Agbo-Ola, Hatis Noit,
Adam Huggins:
00:36:12
Any-Angled Light, and Thumbug.
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:16
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, is
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:18
a recurrent festival, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:23
Ramos, initiated by the Serpentine Galleries in London
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:27
since 2018.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:28
And held last year in partnership with the Galeria
Adam Huggins:
00:36:31
Municipal do Porto.
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:33
Special thanks to Kostas Stasinopoulos, as well
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:37
as Adam's Electric Sheep Radio co-hosts, Ryder Thomas White and
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:41
Samantha Ruth who you heard briefly at the top.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:45
You can hear more from us
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:46
and reach out across the dream and say hello
Adam Huggins:
00:36:50
at futureecologies.net
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:52
Or wherever you find your podcasts.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:55
Until next time.
00:00:03
You are listening to Season Five of
Introduction Voiceover:
00:00:05
Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:11
Alright... check check check.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:13
Looks good.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:14
Good. Would you... would you mind dimming
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:17
the lights?
Adam Huggins:
00:00:18
Oh, you want it even darker in here?
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:20
Yeah.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:20
Let me see what I can do.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:25
How's that?
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:25
Perfect. What's in this tea by the way?
Adam Huggins:
00:00:32
It's a blend of different plants. But it's
Adam Huggins:
00:00:34
mostly sweet gale, which is a plant that grows in bogs.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:39
It's really relaxing.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:41
Yeah, it's one of my favorites. And people do say
Adam Huggins:
00:00:44
that it is helpful in inducing lucid dreaming.
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:48
Lucid dreaming... to know you're
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:51
dreaming while it's happening. It's been a while since I had
Mendel Skulski:
00:00:55
one of those.
Adam Huggins:
00:00:56
Yeah, I can't even remember the last time I lucid
Adam Huggins:
00:00:57
dreamed. Maybe tonight is the night.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:00
Maybe!
Adam Huggins:
00:01:01
Okay, so now that we've kind of set the mood here.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:04
I wanted to tell you that way back, before we started this
Adam Huggins:
00:01:09
podcast, and before I even knew what a podcast was, I had a
Adam Huggins:
00:01:13
college radio show for a couple of years.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:16
Did you now?
Adam Huggins:
00:01:17
I did! With a couple of friends of mine. We
Adam Huggins:
00:01:20
were young. And we had an 11pm time slot that nobody cared
Adam Huggins:
00:01:24
about. And we had the keys to the station CD library, which
Adam Huggins:
00:01:28
had an excellent vinyl collection.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:31
Knowing you, that sounds dangerous.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:33
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:34
So I'm guessing you had like two turntables and
Mendel Skulski:
00:01:36
a microphone.
Adam Huggins:
00:01:37
That was actually the exact setup. And the reason
Adam Huggins:
00:01:40
that I bring it up right now is that our college radio show was
Adam Huggins:
00:01:45
all about dreams.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:48
Welcome back, you're listening to see
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:50
JSF 90.1 FM 93.9 cable FM in Burnaby. And this is Electric
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:01:56
Sheep radio.
DJ Ryder:
00:01:58
We'd like you to send us your dreams.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:00
Yeah, indeed to electricsheepradio@gmail.com
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:04
If you feel like having your dreams aired on the radio,
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:07
because we just love to hear dreams as you might have
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:10
noticed.
DJ Samantha:
00:02:11
We also prefer if you record them yourself.
DJ Ryder:
00:02:13
And so I guess until we see you next time.
Baby Radio DJ Adam:
00:02:16
Goodnight.
DJ Ryder:
00:02:18
Sweet dreams.
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:20
Oh my god, your little baby radio voice. Little
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:23
late night DJ Adam. But other than that, nothing's really
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:28
changed, huh?
Adam Huggins:
00:02:29
Apparently not. No, I still really love to hear
Adam Huggins:
00:02:33
dreams. And that's what we're going to do now. Except that
Adam Huggins:
00:02:37
tonight, our program is called Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:42
Well, to be precise. Tonight, it's the Shape
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:45
of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish. A recurrent festival
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:51
that's explored the idea of consciousness, language and the
Mendel Skulski:
00:02:55
mind across non human species and beings. Initiated by the
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:00
Serpentine galleries in London since 2018, recorded on stage in
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:05
November 2022 at the Galleria do Biodiversidade in Porto,
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:09
Portugal, and then reduced and remixed by Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins:
00:03:16
Tonight, with the help of artists, scientists,
Adam Huggins:
00:03:20
philosophers and historians, were sprinkling a little bit of
Adam Huggins:
00:03:24
stardust on our understanding of dreams, reality, and non human
Adam Huggins:
00:03:29
beings — from fish, to demons, and Gods
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:35
Kicking things off, festival curators, Lucia
Mendel Skulski:
00:03:38
Pietroiusti, and Filipa Ramos.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:44
And I have the sort of impossible task of
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:48
telling you about dreams. We experience dreams as a
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:53
transition state between realms of the physical and the
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:03:55
spiritual. And so dreams become a kind of translation space.
Filipa Ramos:
00:03:59
But we refer to dreams when we speak about hope,
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:02
when we speak about repair. When we give symbolic interpretations
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:06
of dreams, we hold the world in place, in a sense. We shape a
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:11
world, its symbols, and its myths. We shape our sense of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:15
belonging to that world.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:17
And through the notion of the dream in this
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:19
event, we hope to -
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:21
somehow continue in our project to move away from
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:26
a human-centric conception of this world. So what might it
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:30
look like if we tried to de-anthropocenter the notion of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:35
a dream? Well, in the first instance, it might be that in a
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:40
multi-species complex planet, non-human dreams might not be at
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:46
all like what we expect of human ones, because they'd be
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:51
processes belonging to completely different ways of
Filipa Ramos:
00:04:54
being in the world.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:55
So we've asked ourselves, and we'll ask
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:04:59
ourselves all sorts of questions — how much of a more-than-human
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:02
or-non human being sense of self are we able to intuit and
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:06
appreciate? To hopefully come out on the other side with just
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:09
a tiny bit of a slightly larger intuition, not only of how we
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:14
exist on this planet, and how we share it with more than human
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:17
beings, what our responsibility in relation to that sharing, and
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:22
also what art,
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:24
poetry,
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:25
science
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:26
when it dreams,
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:05:27
and so many other forms of expression,
Filipa Ramos:
00:05:30
might, in fact, be here on this earth to do?
Alex Jordan:
00:05:50
My name is Alex Jordan, and I'm a scientist. I'm
Alex Jordan:
00:05:52
a scientist very interested in the questions that we have as
Alex Jordan:
00:05:56
humans about how animals experience the world, their
Alex Jordan:
00:06:00
sense of self, their sense of awareness, their perception,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:04
perhaps their consciousness, and how we might as humans,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:09
understand and interpret and ask questions of these animals that
Alex Jordan:
00:06:14
we might better understand their worlds.
Alex Jordan:
00:06:18
Generally speaking, at a scientific level, I'm interested
Alex Jordan:
00:06:21
in the broad question of how behavior evolves. How, in the
Alex Jordan:
00:06:26
transition from simple life to more complex forms of life,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:32
including our own form of life, behaviors have evolved,
Alex Jordan:
00:06:36
cognitive capacities have evolved, and traits that help
Alex Jordan:
00:06:41
animals interact with the world and experience the world have
Alex Jordan:
00:06:45
evolved.
Alex Jordan:
00:06:46
Some research we've just published this year was about
Alex Jordan:
00:06:50
sleep, and potentially dreaming in spiders. And so we've done
Alex Jordan:
00:06:54
this work here demonstrating that jumping spiders, these
Alex Jordan:
00:06:57
beautiful, intelligent creatures have periods of REM sleep, rapid
Alex Jordan:
00:07:03
eye movement, sleep. This is a trait that was once thought
Alex Jordan:
00:07:07
exists, as many traits are thought to exist only in humans.
Alex Jordan:
00:07:11
But now we're starting to expand our perception and understanding
Alex Jordan:
00:07:14
that the idea of dreaming for a spider for a fish for a plant
Alex Jordan:
00:07:18
may not be that far off.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:21
It's delightful to dream together in
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:23
the belly of a whale. aWhat does it feel like to be a fish or a
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:07:29
bird or a plant?
Rain Wu:
00:07:31
The rivers and the glaciers, the big mammals and
Rain Wu:
00:07:35
the imperceptible microbes, the small algae, and the complex
Rain Wu:
00:07:39
trees.
Alex Jordan:
00:07:40
When I showed you this tree, this evolutionary
Alex Jordan:
00:07:43
tree, it's really important for me that that tree is not in a
Alex Jordan:
00:07:47
line. There's not a ladder that humans sit on the top of, and
Alex Jordan:
00:07:50
chimps are nearer to us, and then dolphins are nearer then —
Alex Jordan:
00:07:54
that evolution is pushing all animals towards. This is an
Alex Jordan:
00:07:57
absurd concept. Evolution produces solutions and animals
Alex Jordan:
00:08:03
and organisms that fulfill whatever purpose is required and
Alex Jordan:
00:08:08
whatever purpose they have. In my opinion, both my personal but
Alex Jordan:
00:08:13
also scientific opinion, many fish and many of the animals and
Alex Jordan:
00:08:16
organisms I deal with are just as intelligent and just as
Alex Jordan:
00:08:19
sophisticated and just as subtle, in many ways, as some of
Alex Jordan:
00:08:23
these species.
Alex Jordan:
00:08:25
And so a lot of my work is done in the places where these
Alex Jordan:
00:08:29
animals live. I try to take all of our approaches and questions
Alex Jordan:
00:08:33
out into the wild. Ours is a is a practice of going to the
Alex Jordan:
00:08:38
places where these animals are, trying to disturb them as little
Alex Jordan:
00:08:41
as we can, filming them, then using some of these machine
Alex Jordan:
00:08:45
learning and artificial intelligence approaches to help
Alex Jordan:
00:08:48
us understand and decompose and maybe intuit what these animals
Alex Jordan:
00:08:53
are feeling and experiencing — of one another and of the world
Alex Jordan:
00:08:57
around them. Contextualizing this behavior, of having our
Alex Jordan:
00:09:02
questions asked in the places where these animals live. And
Alex Jordan:
00:09:05
that means we have to understand and try and appreciate where
Alex Jordan:
00:09:08
they live. So we're not divorcing them from their
Alex Jordan:
00:09:11
experience — from their evolutionary history. We're
Alex Jordan:
00:09:14
trying to situate our studies in those places and recreate in
Alex Jordan:
00:09:19
silico or in some kind of analytical framework, the
Alex Jordan:
00:09:23
interactions they have not just with one another, but with the
Alex Jordan:
00:09:26
world around them.
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:30
Even the word environment, right, like the
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:32
more-than-human world has been reduced to an environment — like
Nahum Mantra:
00:09:36
just like a backdrop where the human drama unfolds.
Alex Jordan:
00:09:44
Some of my research has has asked the question, this
Alex Jordan:
00:09:49
classic test we have which is called the mirror test, in which
Alex Jordan:
00:09:52
an animal is presented, like here, with a mirror and asked...
Alex Jordan:
00:09:57
does it recognize its reflection as self or is it unable to do
Alex Jordan:
00:10:03
that... that thing that we do? Is it unable to deal with the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:08
concept of self? And this mirror test is a test in which you are
Alex Jordan:
00:10:14
supposed to see yourself in a reflection, and there's a mark
Alex Jordan:
00:10:19
on your body somewhere that you can't see, except with the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:23
mirror. And if you touch yourself, rather than touch the
Alex Jordan:
00:10:28
mirror, then you've understood that you exist in that
Alex Jordan:
00:10:32
reflection — that reflection is you. It's not some other entity.
Alex Jordan:
00:10:40
And this is wonderful. This is a perfectly valid test, provided
Alex Jordan:
00:10:45
you care. Provided you care that there's a mark on your body.
Alex Jordan:
00:10:48
Provided you have the vanity, let's say to... to worry that
Alex Jordan:
00:10:54
something about your appearance has changed.
Filipa Ramos:
00:10:56
Oh, I look different. Wait, but it's me.
Alex Jordan:
00:11:00
Is it a problem of motivation? Or is it a problem
Alex Jordan:
00:11:03
of intelligence? Can they not understand the context, or do
Alex Jordan:
00:11:08
they simply not care in the same way we do?
Onome Ekeh:
00:11:10
You know, what does wealth mean for a sparrow? Is
Onome Ekeh:
00:11:14
it, sort of, this ability to flock?
Alex Jordan:
00:11:17
and I settled on a species called the cleaner
Alex Jordan:
00:11:21
wrasse. The cleaner wrasse we thought was perfect, because it
Alex Jordan:
00:11:25
does care about these marks. Its whole biology, its whole
Alex Jordan:
00:11:28
cognitive capacity and its ecology is centered around this
Alex Jordan:
00:11:33
idea of seeing marks on the skin and trying to remove them.
Alex Jordan:
00:11:39
That's what it does. Because its whole existence is about finding
Alex Jordan:
00:11:44
and removing parasites from client fish.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:47
You can only interpret the test as revealing
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:51
something if the behavior can be considered strange or unusual in
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:11:56
some way. And similarly, the notion of recognizing a mark
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:12:01
somewhere, is also an experience of recognizing oneself with a
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:12:06
kind of strangeness.
Alex Jordan:
00:12:08
But this is a really important question. What
Alex Jordan:
00:12:11
on earth is unusual for an animal? How do you as a human
Alex Jordan:
00:12:16
observer, me as a scientist decide what an animal should or
Alex Jordan:
00:12:21
should not be doing? And therefore what is unusual for an
Alex Jordan:
00:12:24
animal? This is not not a simple question. I'm not being
Alex Jordan:
00:12:29
facetious here. This is a genuine question about our
Alex Jordan:
00:12:33
expectations and intuition of non human animals.
Onome Ekeh:
00:12:39
You know, you almost don't recognize what's being
Onome Ekeh:
00:12:42
said.
Alex Jordan:
00:12:43
Hang on, this is not another individual. It's
Alex Jordan:
00:12:46
copying everything I do. Maybe it's me. And in this phase,
Alex Jordan:
00:12:51
humans perform unusual behaviors.
Federico Campagna:
00:12:57
I think what's remarkable about dreams
Federico Campagna:
00:12:58
is that while you are in a dream is really not very strange at
Federico Campagna:
00:13:01
all. Everything is remarkably normal. It becomes strange, the
Federico Campagna:
00:13:04
moment you exit the dream, and then you look back, and then you
Federico Campagna:
00:13:08
realize that the two don't match up.
Alex Jordan:
00:13:10
But for these fish, this was a very clear behavior,
Alex Jordan:
00:13:14
that they were doing something completely outside of their
Alex Jordan:
00:13:16
repertoire. Some of them are very easy to interpret. Upside
Alex Jordan:
00:13:20
Down swimming — fish do not swim upside down, unless it's time to
Alex Jordan:
00:13:24
buy yourself a new goldfish. Now, if you think about it, one
Alex Jordan:
00:13:28
of the main barriers that we might have in using these kinds
Alex Jordan:
00:13:31
of tests across animals is that if they're designed for humans,
Alex Jordan:
00:13:37
how do we expect an animal without hands or fingers to be
Alex Jordan:
00:13:41
able to pass them in the same way that a human would?
Onome Ekeh:
00:13:45
You know, you wonder, like how all these
Onome Ekeh:
00:13:47
different things put together? That don't fit?
Alex Jordan:
00:13:52
One way, we've started to interrogate that
Alex Jordan:
00:13:58
question and try to get a deeper handle on what a fish is
Alex Jordan:
00:14:01
experiencing and what kind of behaviors it's performing, and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:05
what those behaviors might mean, is to start to attempt to
Alex Jordan:
00:14:08
understand the behavioral language of fishes and other
Alex Jordan:
00:14:12
animals. And as I've mentioned, we're doing that with the aid of
Alex Jordan:
00:14:16
artificial intelligence. Because for us to look at something like
Alex Jordan:
00:14:22
a fish and understand what the postures, movements and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:26
interactions mean, is an incredible challenge and
Alex Jordan:
00:14:31
potentially impossible. And so we're using an approach called
Alex Jordan:
00:14:34
behavioral decomposition. Behavioral decomposition is a
Alex Jordan:
00:14:39
method in which you look at every single movement, an animal
Alex Jordan:
00:14:42
makes — every single change in its legs, its postures, whatever
Alex Jordan:
00:14:48
it is. And you can break those behaviors down into these sort
Alex Jordan:
00:14:52
of dimensions of kinematics, and build them into this map of
Alex Jordan:
00:14:57
behavior.
Alex Jordan:
00:14:58
The fish will go to the mirror, observe its reflection, observe
Alex Jordan:
00:15:03
that it has a mark on its body, will go away from the mirror,
Alex Jordan:
00:15:08
will scrape that mark against the gravel or a rock, and then
Alex Jordan:
00:15:11
go back to the mirror to check. If the fish go through all three
Alex Jordan:
00:15:16
of the phases that I told you, and then attempt to remove this
Alex Jordan:
00:15:19
mark, they have passed the test. By the original definition of
Alex Jordan:
00:15:24
the test, by all other standards that are applied to all other
Alex Jordan:
00:15:29
organisms, they have passed the test. Now is this evidence that
Alex Jordan:
00:15:35
they are self conscious — that they are self aware? Is the
Alex Jordan:
00:15:40
performance of this behavior enough to convince you that a
Alex Jordan:
00:15:43
fish is self aware?
Filipa Ramos:
00:15:45
When you're obsessed with something
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:15:47
and once you start looking for something
Filipa Ramos:
00:15:48
you see that something everywhere.
Rain Wu:
00:15:51
The sky told stories, remembered legends and provided
Rain Wu:
00:15:54
clues.
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:15:56
Sometimes you can be suspended in a dream and
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:00
not necessarily be connected to time, but still connected to
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:04
this idea of rhythm. Constantly in this rhythmic cycle of
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:09
nutrients... it's like you're... you're eating reality, in a way.
Rain Wu:
00:16:16
Food is the connection from distant and exotic
Rain Wu:
00:16:19
landscapes, to domestic backyards — going near and far,
Rain Wu:
00:16:24
stretching across the Earth's surface. It connects the sun
Rain Wu:
00:16:28
above and the soil below, like a vertical axis of life.
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:33
And at the same time, you're reflecting on that
Yussef Agbo-Ola:
00:16:36
digestion.
Rain Wu:
00:16:37
Food connects our bodies with the surrounding
Rain Wu:
00:16:40
world. Nothing is more intimate than eating. What somebody sees
Rain Wu:
00:16:45
can be seen by others. What somebody hears can be heard by
Rain Wu:
00:16:49
others. But what somebody eats, nobdy else can eat. There's
Rain Wu:
00:16:57
nothing more private, more introverted, more turned inwards
Rain Wu:
00:17:01
on itself.
Onome Ekeh:
00:17:03
A transformation takes place
Rain Wu:
00:17:07
Thus the world was created. And out of Chaos, the
Rain Wu:
00:17:13
orderly and complex Cosmos arose.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:17:16
This most intimate of absorptions is what
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:17:19
brings you to the Cosmos.
Rain Wu:
00:17:22
Cosmos, the physical universe of things seen and
Rain Wu:
00:17:25
touched, and the spiritual entities they existed beyond.
Federico Campagna:
00:17:32
We'll get there by steps — we will go
Federico Campagna:
00:17:33
through three great transformations. And we will
Federico Campagna:
00:17:37
start by setting the scene — setting the parameters of this
Federico Campagna:
00:17:42
journey towards human and more than human dreams. The
Federico Campagna:
00:17:46
parameters are very simple. There are two parameters for our
Federico Campagna:
00:17:49
inquiry. There are two simple words — nothing, something.
Federico Campagna:
00:17:57
Nothing, something.
Federico Campagna:
00:18:01
Now, the important thing are not the words. The little pause
Federico Campagna:
00:18:06
between them is the greatest mystery of all, for science,
Federico Campagna:
00:18:12
theology, philosophy since forever. How is it possible that
Federico Campagna:
00:18:17
nothing might become something? This might sound like a very
Federico Campagna:
00:18:23
academic and useless question. But in reality, it has to do
Federico Campagna:
00:18:26
with everything we hold dear. It has to do with the very stuff of
Federico Campagna:
00:18:30
the world. Asking ourselves the question "how is it possible
Federico Campagna:
00:18:34
that nothing might become something" means asking
Federico Campagna:
00:18:37
ourselves "How did it happen? That all that surrounds us —
Federico Campagna:
00:18:41
every single thing, reality as a whole, at some point, came into
Federico Campagna:
00:18:47
existence." And it's been at the center of our imagination and
Federico Campagna:
00:18:51
concerns, as I was saying, since time immemorial. We could say
Federico Campagna:
00:18:55
literally, since the beginning, the beginning of history.
Federico Campagna:
00:18:59
History begins with the first written records we have
Federico Campagna:
00:19:02
discovered. Before that there is prehistory. About prehistory, we
Federico Campagna:
00:19:06
cannot say anything, because we don't know.
Federico Campagna:
00:19:10
And the earliest written records have to do with the problem of
Federico Campagna:
00:19:13
how the world came into existence. These are what are
Federico Campagna:
00:19:16
called Cosmogonies — so stories that tell about the birth of the
Federico Campagna:
00:19:20
cosmos. And these cosmogonies are very interesting because
Federico Campagna:
00:19:24
they address the question "how we pass from nothing to
Federico Campagna:
00:19:27
something". The question is "Can something come out of nothing?"
Federico Campagna:
00:19:36
And the answer of the mythological cosmogonies is no.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:41
The idea of reincarnation, that souls
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:43
took on successively the bodies of multiple different species,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:46
from humans to animals to plants, and back again. This
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:50
idea was embedded in a range of classical Greek and Roman
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:53
philosophy, poetry and magic. And as we'll see, reincarnation
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:19:58
raises fundamental question about where the identity of an
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:02
organic entity rests, and how it is constituted. Is it in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:07
movements, feelings and capabilities of the body? In the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:11
ability to vocalize or speak? Or in the capacity to remember or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:20:15
dream?
Federico Campagna:
00:20:16
To the question, "did from nothing,
Federico Campagna:
00:20:19
something come out," the answer is no. Nothing is an impossible
Federico Campagna:
00:20:24
philosophical concept. It is not just unthinkable, but it is
Federico Campagna:
00:20:28
impossible. Since things exist, at least we exist as points of
Federico Campagna:
00:20:34
awareness in the world as the object to our awareness, since
Federico Campagna:
00:20:37
there is existence, non existence cannot take place.
Federico Campagna:
00:20:41
Since there is being, non-being is totally impossible. So, to
Federico Campagna:
00:20:47
the question of the beginning, how you pass from nothing to
Federico Campagna:
00:20:49
something, they say, "In the beginning, there was not
Federico Campagna:
00:20:52
nothing. In the beginning that was something, but something
Federico Campagna:
00:20:54
special." This something was ineffable — is something beyond
Federico Campagna:
00:21:00
words... impossible to describe. You have philosophers and
Federico Campagna:
00:21:03
theologians talking about this. Then, this something fragmented
Federico Campagna:
00:21:08
itself into many. Simone Weil says "decreated itself".
Federico Campagna:
00:21:14
Why am I talking about this? How is this relevant in any way to
Federico Campagna:
00:21:16
our lives today? Well, the question of the beginning
Federico Campagna:
00:21:20
becomes relevant to our life today if we look at it in a
Federico Campagna:
00:21:23
mirror — be like those fish that we saw earlier. If we look at it
Federico Campagna:
00:21:27
in a mirror, the question of the origin is the question of the
Federico Campagna:
00:21:30
end. The question of what happens before birth is the same
Federico Campagna:
00:21:33
as the question of what happens after death. And now we start
Federico Campagna:
00:21:37
seeing how the question of what happens after death concerns us.
Federico Campagna:
00:21:41
There is a certain urgency to the question "After something,
Federico Campagna:
00:21:45
can there be nothing? After this life, can we be utterly
Federico Campagna:
00:21:51
annihilated?" And here we see that the intuition of the
Federico Campagna:
00:21:55
eternity of being becomes a powerful protection. Because it
Federico Campagna:
00:21:59
says that since things did not have a beginning in nothing,
Federico Campagna:
00:22:05
they cannot have an end in nothing. Nothing is an invalid
Federico Campagna:
00:22:10
concept — philosophically is an impossible concept.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:14
What we have is that the beginning had to do with the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:17
fragmentation of boundaries, an establishment of boundaries. And
Federico Campagna:
00:22:21
the end, similarly has to do with the reshuffling of
Federico Campagna:
00:22:24
boundaries. It's just a matter of movements of boundaries.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:30
There is a way in which we can understand it metaphorically.
Federico Campagna:
00:22:33
The world being the dream, and the characters of the dream
Federico Campagna:
00:22:38
being the inhabitants of the world, including ourselves. Like
Federico Campagna:
00:22:43
us, the inhabitants of a dream have no recollection of their
Federico Campagna:
00:22:46
origin, and no horizon of their end. And like us, the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:50
inhabitants of a dream are made of the same substance, as the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:55
mind of the sleeper. If you for a moment, consider what is the
Federico Campagna:
00:22:59
substance of which a dream is made, you realize that is the
Federico Campagna:
00:23:01
substance of the mind — there is a continuity. The fragments are
Federico Campagna:
00:23:05
made of the same substance of the monolith.
Federico Campagna:
00:23:08
And in fact, this idea that it's possible to understand the world
Federico Campagna:
00:23:13
as a dream, and the relationship between the world and the other
Federico Campagna:
00:23:16
worldly (so, before the beginning, after the end), is
Federico Campagna:
00:23:20
not just a metaphor that I've made up, but is a typical way of
Federico Campagna:
00:23:23
understanding the world. In many philosophies, theologies and
Federico Campagna:
00:23:26
mythologies from from all over the world.
Federico Campagna:
00:23:30
The idea is that the world that we see around ourselves is a
Federico Campagna:
00:23:35
dream of the eternal being. It is a dream in the mind of the
Federico Campagna:
00:23:41
eternal being. And that everything we see around
Federico Campagna:
00:23:45
ourselves, including ourselves as individuals, and the things
Federico Campagna:
00:23:50
and the people around us are fundamentally characters of this
Federico Campagna:
00:23:53
dream of this eternally-sleeping mind. And to this mind, that is
Federico Campagna:
00:23:59
dreaming up the whole of reality, it is not unfitting to
Federico Campagna:
00:24:02
give the name of God.
Federico Campagna:
00:24:03
Now, this realization can have consequences. Of course, in
Federico Campagna:
00:24:10
philosophy, often you observe a hypothesis about reality, you
Federico Campagna:
00:24:13
embrace them, and you see what happens, okay? You try them out.
Federico Campagna:
00:24:17
There is an engineering aspect to philosophy, very much. So if
Federico Campagna:
00:24:20
you try out this perspective, it could have, you know, a
Federico Campagna:
00:24:23
paralyzing effect or an ecstatic effect. Ecstatic effect, typical
Federico Campagna:
00:24:28
mystical reaction. A paralyzing effect, in the sense that you
Federico Campagna:
00:24:32
start asking yourself, "Doesn't this mean, then, that we are
Federico Campagna:
00:24:36
passive elements inside the dream?" If we are the characters
Federico Campagna:
00:24:40
being dreamt up by a great divine mind, to use the
Federico Campagna:
00:24:44
theological metaphor, doesn't this mean that we cannot do
Federico Campagna:
00:24:47
anything inside this dream to modify it? It's dreamt up by a
Federico Campagna:
00:24:50
mind greater than our own. If you remain equal with the
Federico Campagna:
00:24:54
metaphor of the dream, you realize that you can ask this
Federico Campagna:
00:24:57
question to your own dreams. Inside your own dream, what is
Federico Campagna:
00:25:03
the distribution of agency? Is it you? That is dreaming up the
Federico Campagna:
00:25:07
dream and directing it and unfolding it? Or should you
Federico Campagna:
00:25:10
rather say that in the dream, the, the one with the least
Federico Campagna:
00:25:14
agency is you, while in fact, it's the characters of the dream
Federico Campagna:
00:25:18
that unfold the story of which they are the protagonist. The
Federico Campagna:
00:25:22
dream dreams itself through its characters, typically. And by
Federico Campagna:
00:25:27
the same token, inside this world dream this dream world, it
Federico Campagna:
00:25:32
is us as the characters that have the possibility of
Federico Campagna:
00:25:34
unfolding the dream narration and the responsibility of doing
Federico Campagna:
00:25:40
it the best we can, as well as we can.
Onome Ekeh:
00:25:44
So I thought I'd try it out.
Alex Jordan:
00:25:46
Dreams and imagination and abstraction can
Alex Jordan:
00:25:51
function to place you in scenarios that you didn't
Alex Jordan:
00:25:56
experience. And that could be considered in the scientific
Alex Jordan:
00:26:01
terminology, adaptive. It allows your body and your mind to
Alex Jordan:
00:26:05
explore scenarios, and maybe prepare you for them, even if
Alex Jordan:
00:26:10
you didn't experience them.
Federico Campagna:
00:26:12
So dreamers that are aware of their act of
Federico Campagna:
00:26:16
creation of the world, being part of a fiction, they
Federico Campagna:
00:26:20
understand that they can redeem the world only through narrative
Federico Campagna:
00:26:23
means.
Nahum Mantra:
00:26:25
You know, because without the heart, there is no
Nahum Mantra:
00:26:26
mind. There's no blood that pumps into the brain.
Hatis Noit:
00:26:30
Yeah, every time I feel somehow lost, I try to
Hatis Noit:
00:26:35
connect to the memory of the nature there — the wild energy
Hatis Noit:
00:26:42
of the land.
Federico Campagna:
00:26:50
We started with the first great
Federico Campagna:
00:26:52
transformation, birth — the beginning. The second great
Federico Campagna:
00:26:55
transformation, death — the end. And here we have the third
Federico Campagna:
00:26:59
transformation. And the third transformation is a
Federico Campagna:
00:27:03
transformation beyond the frontiers of the human.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:06
The language of demon is a bit
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:08
tricky for us because it's used by Christians to refer
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:11
specifically to evil demons that have a particular place in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:14
cosmos and in the story of creation. Whereas, in the kind
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:17
of broader Greek and Roman usage, it's a slightly
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:20
stretchier term, and it tends to mean a kind of an intermediate
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:23
spirits, something between Gods and humans.
Onome Ekeh:
00:27:27
If she's to go into the forest realm of spirits and
Onome Ekeh:
00:27:30
ghosts, she needs to have night vision.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:36
Other fragments of his work reveal
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:38
that he identified himself as a restless demon. The Greek word
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:42
is daimon, a kind of inbetweener spirit, and one who's been
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:46
exiled from the gods — perhaps a punishment for some unspecified
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:49
crime. In this snippet of text, Empedocles recalls multiple
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:54
previous births, moving between genders and species apparently
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:27:58
without effort. He becomes most eloquent when remembering the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:03
past bodily experience of being a little wordless fish leaping
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:07
out of the sea.
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:09
When I retreat as far into myself as possible, I
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:13
become aware only of the shadow cast by my faint currents. The
Nahum Mantra:
00:28:19
water knows no natural boundary, and occupies all niches.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:24
Did souls have a basic identity as human
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:27
or animal? Were there limits to where souls could go? Plato
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:32
thought that human souls could get inside animals. But
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:35
Porphyry, a philosopher in the Platonist tradition, thought
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:38
human souls could only enter human bodies. Otherwise,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:42
Porphyry worries, a mother who'd returned into the body of a mule
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:45
might perhaps end up carrying her own son on her back. Was the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:50
destination body for reincarnation a deliberate
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:53
choice of the soul, as related by Plato's Er. Or was it random?
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:28:58
In which bodies breathe in souls as they're blown about in the
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:29:01
air — And that's something apparently taught by followers
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:29:04
of Pythagoras and Orpheus.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:06
And so the question that I have for you
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:08
over and over and over again, and it's not the first time that
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:10
I've asked you it, is what could be a possible metaphysics of the
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:29:14
more than human?
Federico Campagna:
00:29:15
Metaphysics is a Greek term that has to do
Federico Campagna:
00:29:17
with what is beyond the physics. It was originally assigned to
Federico Campagna:
00:29:21
the, the organization of Aristotle's works. He wrote a
Federico Campagna:
00:29:24
work on the Physics and the work after that was called the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:27
Metaphysics, so the one after the work on the physics. So it
Federico Campagna:
00:29:30
was just a cataloging entry.
Federico Campagna:
00:29:31
But it has to do with more than cataloguing. It has to do with
Federico Campagna:
00:29:35
the difference between what we see around ourselves, the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:37
physics, what we can experience in a particular way. And our
Federico Campagna:
00:29:42
questioning about what there is beyond. Beyond can mean many
Federico Campagna:
00:29:47
different things. Beyond can mean in the realm of the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:49
invisible, or in the realm of the infinitely small, or in the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:53
realm of the immaterial, or in the realm of the possibilities
Federico Campagna:
00:29:56
that are not actualized, and so on and so forth. Or of the
Federico Campagna:
00:29:59
impalpable, ineffable structures that hold up reality. Now, to a
Federico Campagna:
00:30:04
large extent, the things that... the structures that hold up
Federico Campagna:
00:30:08
reality are not so much inscribed within things, but
Federico Campagna:
00:30:13
they are inscribed within our mind. So within the way in which
Federico Campagna:
00:30:16
we perceive things. And in that case, we realize that the way in
Federico Campagna:
00:30:19
which we... set our interpretation of the
Federico Campagna:
00:30:25
perceptions that we have from the world goes to construct
Federico Campagna:
00:30:29
different worlds. So, it is world building in that sense. We
Federico Campagna:
00:30:33
could use another words — a Greek word "Cosmopoetics".
Federico Campagna:
00:30:38
Cosmopoetics is literally the same as worldbuilding. But maybe
Federico Campagna:
00:30:40
it's a little bit clearer, because Cosmopoetics means...
Federico Campagna:
00:30:45
Cosmos, literally order. So the setting of a particular order.
Federico Campagna:
00:30:50
And this setting is Poetics from the Greek popoieîn, "to make" —
Federico Campagna:
00:30:54
but also the same word that means "poetry".
Federico Campagna:
00:30:59
Artists, cultural producers, because they intervene
Federico Campagna:
00:31:02
particularly on the way in which we see things, they are
Federico Campagna:
00:31:06
opticians. You know, they are eye surgeons to a large extent.
Federico Campagna:
00:31:10
Through their poetic work, they construct worlds, and they help
Federico Campagna:
00:31:15
us to construct different worlds because they intervene at that
Federico Campagna:
00:31:18
level. They are not physical engineers in that sense, but
Federico Campagna:
00:31:21
they are metaphysical engineers. To the extent to which our
Federico Campagna:
00:31:27
shifting of perspective constructs different worlds.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:30
Christians thought that human souls were
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:32
restless but also fundamentally individual, singular, and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:36
monogamous in their relationship with bodies. That said, human
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:40
bodies could themselves be magicked into horses or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:42
possessed by demons, so they were also porous and unstable.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:47
The most threatening creatures in the atmosphere were demons,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:49
who could operate inside human souls and bodies and minds,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:53
animating their dreams with obscene thoughts and producing
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:31:56
powerful waking fantasies. Demons own thin bodies can take
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:00
on apparently more solid disguises as wild animals or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:03
beautiful women, but they were fundamentally vulnerable too —
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:06
evanescing at exorcism into a puff of smoke. We've also seen
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:10
how some Greeks and Romans had variously imagined demons as
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:14
close to or even identical with human souls, and also as souls
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:18
as much less bound to singular bodies. Some fortunate or
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:22
privileged humans might even be able to recall a faint memory of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:25
an earlier incarnation, whether as a human, an animal, or even a
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:29
plant. Whether such memories and dreams of a past self were
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:34
punitive or ecstatic, depends rather on what you think it
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:32:38
might be like to live as a bird or a shrub.
Nahum Mantra:
00:32:44
There, I was exiled from myself. But nothing
Nahum Mantra:
00:32:49
lasts forever.
Onome Ekeh:
00:32:51
I've been trying to recreate that story, over and
Onome Ekeh:
00:32:55
over.
Alex Jordan:
00:32:56
There's this idea that dreaming is feeding
Alex Jordan:
00:33:02
nonsense into the system, such that nonsense can be
Alex Jordan:
00:33:05
discriminated from sense. And this is, in fact, at a practical
Alex Jordan:
00:33:10
level, one of the methods we have to use in many of these
Alex Jordan:
00:33:14
technological approaches. We have to feed noise into the
Alex Jordan:
00:33:18
system to differentiate it from signal.
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:33:22
And now of course, a machine is complex as
Lucia Pietroiusti:
00:33:24
the world itself is the world.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:26
Of course, it's hard to tell from
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:28
these little tiny fragments of archaic poetry by people like
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:31
Empedocles and Aeneas, how they related to these past selves,
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:35
and indeed whether that animal incarnations dreamed in the same
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:39
way of their human incarnations. Looking more broadly, we can see
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:44
that there is a great amount of disagreement among poets and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:47
natural philosophers in antiquity, about which animals
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:50
dreamed, what they dreamed about, all done on the basis of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:33:54
empirical observation and inference.
Alex Jordan:
00:33:57
And it is our hope that ultimately, by looking at
Alex Jordan:
00:34:01
these animals in their natural environment, by understanding
Alex Jordan:
00:34:04
their experiences, by understanding their context, by
Alex Jordan:
00:34:08
understanding their behavioral outputs, we can then bring them
Alex Jordan:
00:34:12
into the conversation — to tell us what they want, what their
Alex Jordan:
00:34:16
aesthetic preferences are, what their desires are. But also what
Alex Jordan:
00:34:20
their language means, and perhaps if we're lucky, what
Alex Jordan:
00:34:23
their subjective experience of the world may really be.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:29
If you look more broadly at the kind of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:31
spread of literary and visual production, you can see that
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:35
there is some understanding that the world is interconnected and
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:38
that human lives might contain echoes of a kind of previous
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:42
vegetal animalistic existence. So it seems to me that there are
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:46
lots of different explanations for where dreams come from in
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:50
antiquity. And some of them are very naturalistic and sort of
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:53
pragmatic and to do with bodily movements. And others are much
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:34:56
more related to the sublime, be it the Divine or the Demonic —
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:01
and it's particularly there that you find notions that the dream
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:04
might be an uncovering of something by some third agency.
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:08
There might be some interest in revealing to humans... what else
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe:
00:35:12
they've been.
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:31
This episode of Future Ecologies features the
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:34
words and voices of Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, Alex
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:40
Jordan, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Rain Wu, Nahum Mantra, Onome
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:46
Ekeh, Federico Campagna, Yussef Agbo-Ola, and Hatis Noit
Adam Huggins:
00:35:53
All recorded in November of 2022 as part of The
Adam Huggins:
00:35:57
Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish,
Mendel Skulski:
00:35:59
The remix of which you heard here was
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:02
produced by me, Mendel Skulski, and my co host, Adam Huggins,
Adam Huggins:
00:36:08
with music by Yussef Agbo-Ola, Hatis Noit,
Adam Huggins:
00:36:12
Any-Angled Light, and Thumbug.
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:16
The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, is
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:18
a recurrent festival, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:23
Ramos, initiated by the Serpentine Galleries in London
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:27
since 2018.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:28
And held last year in partnership with the Galeria
Adam Huggins:
00:36:31
Municipal do Porto.
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:33
Special thanks to Kostas Stasinopoulos, as well
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:37
as Adam's Electric Sheep Radio co-hosts, Ryder Thomas White and
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:41
Samantha Ruth who you heard briefly at the top.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:45
You can hear more from us
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:46
and reach out across the dream and say hello
Adam Huggins:
00:36:50
at futureecologies.net
Mendel Skulski:
00:36:52
Or wherever you find your podcasts.
Adam Huggins:
00:36:55
Until next time.
