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Suzanne Treister Interview with Libby Heaney LH: Suzanne your practice takes different ways of knowing the world, scientific, artistic, the literary, the spiritual and the paranormal among others. I'm fascinated about the background component of the project with the pressed flowers, could you please tell us more about why this was important to present in the background, particularly in relation to knowledge systems and the scientific method? ST: I had the idea for Scientific Dreaming several years ago but was unable to start it because of covid because I couldn't travel to CERN to do the workshops which I wanted to do in real life with the scientists. But in May this year I was able to start work on it because I had a 3 month residency at La Becque in Switzerland on Lake Geneva, which is about an hour away from CERN. One of the books I had taken with me to the residency was 'Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process: Notes of C. G. Jung's Seminars on Wolfgang Pauli's Dreams', which intertwines the arts and sciences through a long term analysis by Jung of the subconscious mind of the CERN physicist Wolfgang Pauli. I had made previous work about the Pauli Library at CERN and during the residency planned to visit Jung's house on Lake Zurich. Most mornings I went walking in the alpine meadows and became aware of the amazing variety of spring wild flowers growing there. I collected samples to take back and preserve, and this book, a heavy hardback, was the most suitable for pressing flowers and it somehow felt right to press them into this book, like adding a third thread – an element of natural beauty, if you like - to the book's dualistic combination of physics and psychoanalysis. As well as from Swiss alpine meadows I decided to also pick wild flowers from within the area of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, as a mirroring of the duality within the book. In turn, the book inspired me to include the dream process in the upcoming CERN writing workshops as another aid to unlocking the subconscious minds of the scientists. As you can see the plot diagrams include the telling of four dreams by each scientist. LH: Which is your favourite story for a positive future in terms of a solution to the planetary problems we face. In what way was it most successful or unsuccessful in terms of weaving both the dreaming and scientific aspects of knowledge creation or story telling for positive futures? ST: I don't have a special favourite as there are aspects of many stories that are very resonant. There was an amazing story by Claire Adam that speculated, within a historical fantasy scenario of the invention, by the ex french president François Mitterrand, of a giant vacuum cleaner that would clean and pump the hot air out of the atmosphere and turn it into useable energy. In the story by Michael Doser we were taken through the end of the climate crisis of the 21st century, through the anti-technological 22nd century, to the 23rd century when science returned but there was a perfect balance of new technology and paleolithic models of resource allocation. Here is a quote: Dealing with the hydrowars and the polydemics revitalized science, but accompanied by a deeper understanding than that which led to the stop-and-go, even if increasingly concerted, tackling of the causes of climate change in the mid 21st century, or the wholesale rejection of technology in the 22nd. This new scientific Renaissance led in fact to a renewed awareness and understanding of the paleolithic balance of innovation with societal needs and the availability of scarce resources, and thus a system of resource allocation and reuse rules that were technologically implemented in a simple, transparent and to a large extent egalitarian manner, and consequently perceived as just. … some art historians even trace a direct line from the current highly popular paleotech synverses fad so characteristic of the New Dark Age to the visions Takeshi wove into the last third of her novel, art not only predicting, but actually shaping the future. Then in B.K's story we are taken through several phases of the evolution of machine intelligences into the deep future, where there are new ideas of consciousness and where the machine intelligences are perpetually seeking enlightenment. This is a quote from about half way through: This has led to a proliferation of hyperconscious machines of an enormously rich variety. Each one carried its own universe within itself, an evolving world of its own. Clearly a spiritual one, since almost nothing resembled the physical world any more. And from the final paragraph: On the other hand, as humans had already suspected, there was an intrinsic relation between quantum information and the physical geometry of space-time; the latter being, in a sense, emergent from the former. Now that computational processes had intensified so much, the density of quantum bits foreseeably hitting fundamental boundaries, a controlled influence of cognitive processes on physical space-time started to appear on the horizon. Macroscopic entanglements realizing wormholes, just generated by conscious decisions, appeared possible in the distant future. Very distant indeed, but there were many more billions of years of evolution up ahead. Entity One was aware of that. But there was no way to get anywhere near it with its electronic hardware. It was time to stop and merge with something better. In terms of the outcomes for a positive future there were several recurrent themes which involved advances in quantum computing and the identification of dark matter and dark energy. Many of the stories talk about the idea of dark energy or dark matter solving the energy crisis, of it providing a limitless clean energy resource, and general improvement of the environment. A few of them talk about how dark matter might enable us to learn how to travel in the Universe and to communicate with unknown parts of the Universe and other civilisations, even a billion years away. That it could help us understand the root of our physical selves and develop more profound understandings in general. One scientist even idealistically proposed that encountering other beings in the cosmos might make humanity more loving and tolerant. Here is a quote from their plot diagram: If we manage to learn more about the Universe and other possible cultures and other forms of living, maybe humanity could finally change and become better and stop being violent. Many stories suggested that the development of fault tolerant quantum computing could bring many positive but also risky changes. And then one scientist talked about the development of 'room temperature superconductivity' which would mean we could transport electricity for thousands of kilometres without dispersion. e.g. electricity from solar energy plants in the Sahara could be transported to colder regions, which would allow us to use fewer natural resources with lower waste to preserve the environment. They all acknowledged risks related to all of these developments, like increased potential for social control, greater divides between rich and poor, and dangers related to government, military and private sector use. In terms of incorporation of the dreams, Tamara Vazquez Schroeder's story about the identification of dark matter worked really well in relation to her dream sequences about floating underwater towards a fluid boundary. Her characters were based on Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, Mafalda and a painter looking for his soul. And her outcomes of an ethically managed dark energy resource and the discovery of parallel membranes or universes and capabilities of navigating this membrane were inspiring. But in most cases the dreams are not so relevant to the ideas or outcomes in the stories. The dream questions I asked in the writing workshops were more a way of opening the subconscious minds of the scientists, rather than for these to become a major part of their stories. LH: The languages across the arts and sciences are very different. The artist often working at the level of concept which is multipronged, or the embodied and intuitive, whereas physics is a reductive, mathematical, quantitative. For me it's interesting that plot diagrams seem to be a bridging technique between both the physicists and yourself as an artist. Visually the plots are very stunning, remind me of a comic book, story board – exactly the type of thing artists making while developing underpinnings of work. Yet they are a text equivalent of a blackboard of equations – a mapping of one reality. In order to dream positive futures what other bridges and languages do we need, not just between science and art but generally and how do different systems of knowledge play into these? ST: Well in recent years there seems to be an increase in people talking about interdisciplinarity and convergence, and other similar ideas like nexus thinking, and working together across various fields. So these art science projects are just a small part of all that. For a long time people from various cultures have held more holistic world views and grasped that everything is connected. More recently this idea has gained scientific validation and wider acceptance because of it being embedded within quantum theory. So I hope more people from all fields will increasingly come to understand the importance of thinking more holistically and collaboratively to solve the world's problems for a better future. From politicians to scientists to corporations to artists and thinkers to everyone, and especially when it comes to the implementation of cutting edge technologies where for example we risk going into space and destroying asteroids or even the whole universe. LH: What are the lasting outcomes of this engtanglement of art and physics? Did you map any of the stories to find commonalities that might eventually transfer into real world change in some way whether fighting the planetary crises of understanding ourselves in new ways? ST: In terms of real world change as a result of these stories, there are many ideas in the stories that might transfer into world change, more realistically for now are the medical advances, but I think it's more about giving people hope and confidence for the future of humanity. Hope brings energy and drive and positivity. So my hope is that some of the ideas in the stories, although based on as yet unachievable technologies, will inspire hope and provide directions for imagination and research, and really importantly, for advance thinking in terms of associated risks and ethical questions.
Libby Heaney is an artist and quantum physicist |