Consciousness and Teleportation: The 6th Swiss Biennial On Science, Technics + Aesthetics/Bewusstsein und Teleportation: 6. Schweizer Biennale Zu Wissenschaft, Technik + Asthetik (review)

Drawing consciousness and teleportation together as the topic of the sixth Biennial on Science, Technics and Aesthetics, organized by Réne Stettler, was certainly an inspired move. Artists, philosophers and scientists were gathered up in a relatively harmonious intellectual setting, in which each was prepared to meet the others on their own grounds. Of the 300 or so who attended each day, about 60% were artists prepared to follow some complex maths, while the remainder appeared to be scientists open to the more speculative and philosophical aspects of their work. In a two-day event Stettler assembled a program of 17 speakers, chairpersons and presenters from Australia, Germany, England, Holland, Austria, the U.S.A. and Switzerland that was organized along the lines of an extended seminar and drew out some key issues in consciousness studies, quantum theory and philosophy. There were of course no conclusions, no manifestos, nor any plans for future action, but there was an intense and informed focus on the interface between science, philosophy and art that transcended the usual intellectually amorphous consensus clawing at the idea of collaboration as some sort of WASP moral high ground. For this refreshing rupture, if nothing else, Stettler should be congratulated. But in the intellectually relaxed and open atmosphere his topic of teleportation revived the hunt for a new kind of science—parascience based on a no-less rigorous methodology—that includes in its investigative remit "that which is without matter."

On the downside, however, was the absence of any discussion of the schlock fantasy promised by the poster. Leonard Nimoy (the actor who portrays the half human/half Vulcan Mr. Spock), who stared out from behind a 35mm ribbon of portraits of the presenters, evoked the Hollywood vision of full-body teleportation. Instead, with the exception of some visionary presentations from Karl Pribram and Roy Ascott, the overwhelming hegemony of positivist science could only guarantee the teleportation of very small things, and even then it would be constrained by the speed of light. Despite this prosaic interpretation relative to the blockbuster adventures on the Holodeck, thinking small did bring into focus one of the most important implications of quantum-teleportation—that is, the implications for consciousness studies. It seems that the favored way of reconciling one of the problems that positivism presents is to acknowledge that the predictions of classical physics fail at a particular resolution and, at a certain scale, new laws seem to apply. As it happens, there are elements in consciousness that appear to be governed by both laws of physics. So while a thrown ball follows one law, the system that allows us to catch it follows another. This is not simply because our sensory system works so slowly that we could not possibly "see" the ball in time to catch it, but also because telling our hands and arms to move would involve an infinite chain of command between brain and hand that would never actually connect. Using the logic of a quantum physics that is blessed with ideas such as "enchantment" and "entanglement," however, consciousness and matter can be connected at the microbiological level without too much loss of face for the classicists. The persistent exegesis of this notion (whatever its worth) was followed in the papers at the cost of the idea of teleportation as an expression of the widespread dissatisfaction with monorealism: an idea that effortlessly flows from the Cloud of Unknowing to "Star Trek," galvanizing a resistance that has often threatened to destabilize the dominant discourses of power (both sacred and secular) and shaped the history of ideas for two millennia. This particular view of consciousness as a sub-atomic materialist process open to explanation seemed to be generally accepted (even among some artists and philosophers who had no investment in the classical world-view), that is until...