Constraint is Freedom

Brian Reffin Smith studied at Brunel University and the Royal College of Art, London. He is currently Professeur, Atelier Art et Info, École Nationale Supérieure d'Art, Bourges, France. He lives and works as an artist and writer in Berlin, Germany, and is the author of 8 books about computers and/or art, and numerous articles contributions to books and journals. His artworks are exhibited and performances given internationally. He is represented by Krammig & Pepper, Berlin. He won the first ever Prix Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 1987. He is Regent of the College de 'Pataphysique, Paris, France, holding the Chair of Catachemistry and Computational Metallurgy, and is a member of the artists' group OuPeinPo, Paris. Given that computers are not merely information-processors but rather representation-processors, who are the people most suited to dealing with representations of consciousness or the lack of it, once these consist in a computer? Who are the experts on irredundant holism when it comes to making sense of and manipulating these representations? Neither scientists nor philosophers, but rather artists, poets and so on. If this is the case it is not surprising that there already exists, in and out of the computational domain, a body of knowledge about and evidence for the synthesis in an almost alchemical way of the scientific and philosophical (spiritual, one might almost say) approaches to consciousness. This presentation will examine aspects of zombie in both computer-based and traditional art, with several previously unknown examples of the use of zombie-like imagery in classical art leading to contemporary attempts to portray the 'nothing' that being a zombie is like. Audience participation will be more or less obligatory.