The Planetary Collegium's ninth international research conference, consciousness reframed
pp. 8-9
in: Roy Ascott, Gerald Bast, Wolfgang Fiel, Margarete Jahrmann, Ruth Schnell (eds), New realities, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Although fifteen years ago, I was unaware of the terminological potency of "syncretism" (paradoxically, it was immersion in the spiritual cultures of Brazil that brought me to its significance), there is no doubt that it has been an essentially syncretic impulse that has guided my development of CAiiA and the Planetary Collegium since its inception in 1994. Indeed the emergent field of enquiry in which our groundbreaking research artists were first engaged — that of Interactive Art — was intrinsically syncretic in seeking the symbiosis of what was then, and is to some extent now, commonly seen as the incompatibility of science and art.