Self-Awareness Mechanisms
These speculative devices represent the mind as a mechanism. The looping tubes are intended to imply a feedback loop between the device and the awareness flowing through it. I’m interested in self‑awareness from both the neuroscience perspective, where it emerges through cognitive processes, and non‑dualistic perspectives such as Advaita Vedanta and Zen, where awareness is understood as a fundamental property of existence. The series developed from the ideas that awareness is substrate independent and that consciousness and self-awareness emerge from the recursive interaction between fundamental awareness, cognitive mechanisms, and the information being observed and processed.
In addition to the conceptual inquiry, these works were also inspired by my fascination with the complexity of light and material behavior, and the physics underlying visual experience. When I began this series in 2008, I was exploring Maxwell Render, the first commercially available unbiased physically based renderer. I’d envisioned this capability since I started working in CG and finally being able to simulate realistic light and complex material properties was thrilling. This aesthetic fascination is inseparable from the conceptual inquiry and remains central to my process.
Fancy talk aside, I think I just really like thinking, and especially thinking about thinking.
