Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
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events such as TSC and publications such as the Journal of Consciousness Studies6 aggregate and disseminate new original research, the community is comparatively small. Building a festival promoted to the general public around an event such as TSC would provide financial support for a self-sustaining event, raise awareness, and build local community interest.
with plenary presentations by Ovid Tzeng, Ken Mogi, Hugo DeGaris (based in Xiamen), Ramesh Manocha, Yingxu Wang, Hakwan Lau, and myself. David Chalmers and Stuart Hameroff also presented their latest work. The plenary tracks were recorded for sharing on the conference NING site. There were also many outstanding concurrent talks and panel presentations including Benjamin Youngs humorous Sesame Street themed presentation arguing that thalamic connections are not required as a necessary condition for consciousness based upon the olfactory system.9 With blessings from the Center for Consciousness Studies, we experimented with expanding the TSC to address the growing interest in consciousness and the role that technology can play in fostering communication and collaboration. One experiment was to enable groups to organize thematic conferences around dates of the TSC. The thematic conference provides more time to address a topic than a TSC session, with a different review and program committee. By moving the event to the early summer, academics could afford more time off. Thematic conferences cater to the many of the tribes that have emerged within the TSC community and provide additional presentation opportunities for academics. Three thematic conferences were held immediately before and after TSC. These included a conference on Social Approaches organized by Charles Whitehead,10 a conference on Meaningful Media organized by John Stewart, Stephen Schafer, and I,11 and a conference on Machine Consciousness organized by Ben Goertzel.12 The events were organized independently with TSC organizers providing venue and logistical support. Another new element to TSC was the application of new communication technologies to the event. In recent years, new methods for organizing meetings have emerged that facilitate greater group participation and discussion such as Open Spaces Technology,13 dialogues,14 and World Caf.15 The Meaningful Media Conference was held as a facilitated Open Spaces event with over eighty people in
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attendance. A birds-of-a-feather session at the conclusion of TSC was held as a stimulating dialogue that lasted near four hours. The Internet and associated services such as Facebook16 and YouTube17 are changing the dynamics of publishing and to enable the rapid dissemination of ideas from research laboratories into living rooms and stimulating new collaborations. This years TSC included the establishment of a social network. The site enabled Conference participants to meet each other before the event and also follow up with new acquaintances after the event. Photos and video highlights of the conference are also available The TSC event also included consciousness-related music and theatrical performances. Jeff Warren premiered a lively and humorous multimedia performance piece that examined the different states of consciousness across a twenty-four hour period. Martha Curtis, a concert violinist that underwent three lobotomies to her right brain to relieve epilepsy, performed a Brahms D Minor Sonata after her personal narrative of the experience. Ed Mikenas hosted an audienceparticipation drumming session and discussing the power of drumming to create a collective consciousness followed by a demonstration of Applied Kinesiology between different individuals that bordered on magic (I would not have believed it myself were one of the volunteer subjects not Samantha Hameroff, a sceptic). In addition to the live performances, the TSC featured an expanded art and technology exhibition and associated presentations. Many of the exhibits applied technology and media to create meaningful experiences. For example, Jennifer Kanary Nikolova creates disorienting spaces that simulate the experience of schizophrenic psychosis. Louis Miguel Girao displayed interactive devices that sense ones body field. Alexander Graur presented his approach to health through music. A.J. Libunao demonstrated a robot that encouraged empathy by measuring and monitoring heart-rate variability. The many thought provoking, yet accessible works stimulated discussion and served to reinforce the Conferences theme of applied consciousness studies. In addition to the TSC exhibition, several Hong Kong galleries also hosted consciousness related exhibitions as part of the festival. As well as exhibiting his mechanical painting creations, American artist Barry Freedland whose work explores the relationship between technology and identity conducted a workshop.
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five keynote addresses. The conference focused upon implementation aspects of machine intelligence including information representation, manipulation, and machine learning. In a cross-fertilization of ideas, Stuart Hameroff gave the opening keynote address to ICCI, while many ICCI participants also attended the Machine Consciousness Workshop. As a complement to TSC targeting the LOHAS community, a three-day conference titled About Consciousness was held the weekend prior to TSC. AC included a mixture of stable members of the consciousness studies community such as Marilyn Schlitz, Stuart Hameroff, Stanley Block, and Alan Combs, as well as popular pseudo-scientists such as Masaru Emoto and healers such as Eric Pearl and Peter Fraser.
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research. We hope to develop these relationships into research funding opportunities. The mixture of different disciplines, especially between consciousness, computer science, and media, led to many interesting discussions. One of the many exciting developments was an interdisciplinary community rallying around meaningful media. Media such as films and games influence our world-view and affect the autonomic nervous system. How do the experiences we create with media technologies impact our notion of reality? An international community of academics, content producers, consciousness researchers, and media technologists is emerging to investigate this to develop new knowledge and products. A team is actively planning next years Asia Consciousness Festival and associated events. As the name indicates, it is our intention to spread the festival to other cities across Asia in the coming years and inspire similar events globally. We are happy to share our experiences with others also working toward organizing similar events and may be contacted through mcgino@polyu.edu.hk.