DECONversation performance Toronto/ Maurice Benayoun, PierreLevy, Steve Mann, Derrick de Kerckhove

Thursday.8pm.August14.2003

DECONversation / Maurice Benayoun, Pierre Levy, and Steve Mann, moderated by
Derrick de Kerckhove

at DECONISM Gallery, 330 Dundas St. West, Toronto

(across the street from the Art Gallery of Ontario),

tickets available at the door.





What would happen if we took what is restricted to some, nonpolitical,
personal, concealed, domestic, tacit and implicit and made it open to
everyone, in physical view of others, impersonal, acknowledged and explicit?
Post-post cyborg, performance artist and visionary Steve Mann as well as
virtual reality artist Maurice Benayoun and the French cyberspace
philosopher Pierre Levy will take part in a HOT TUB PANEL discussion
mediated by the director of the Marshall McLuhan Program in Culture and
Technology, Derrick de Kerckhove. The topic of discussion will be fictitious
truth, virtual fiction, realiction, and conjured reality.



The personal will turn political as the three intellectuals debate what is
real, whilst submerging themselves in a translucent, networked, interactive
and IMMERSIVE multimedia art installation. Displaying the private
DECONversation as a public event will allow for an interactive reversal
between the counterpublic and the counterprivate. The reversal will come
into full effect as microphones and cameras will project the communal bath
by means of simulation and simulacra, in the guise of Plato's Caves, into
another spatial reality. Professor Steve Mann's vision that: In the coming
decades we will live in an age of shared realities and new levels of
cultural discourse Steve Mann and Hal Niedzviecki (Cyborg: Digital Destiny
and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer, Canada:
Doubleday, 2001) p.38., will be exposed in the process of becoming.



Michelle Rosshandler: PR/Curator Deconism Gallery: [email protected]

Steve Mann: Director Deconism Gallery: 416.593.9330 [email protected]



Brainwave Building Blog



Deconism Gallery/Arts Complex was designed as a blog — something we call
"buildinglog" (which, like cyborglog, abbreviates to "glog").



We've all seen smart buildings, smart lightswitches, smart toilets, and
intelligent user interfaces, but what happens when you have "smart people"?
What happens when you wire up the "intelligence" onto people?



2003 August 14th and 15th we explore what happens when the intelligent
building meets intelligent occupants.



The August 14th event will be an intellectual discussion about the
relationship between cyborglogs and buildinglogs. Three panelists (Maurice
Benayoun, Pierre Levy, Steve Mann), moderated by the Director of the
Marshall McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, will enter an immersive
multimedia space (a brainwave bath) while discussing the implications of the
post-cyborg age.



The August 15th event will be an actual collective (de)consciousness where
the occupant-cyborgs interact with the building, to create an audiovisual
experience from their brainwaves, as part of a brainwave (de)concert
performed by jazz musicians Bryden Baird, James Fung, Dave Gouveia, Sandy
Mamane, and Corey Manders.



For more information, see http://eyetap.org/deconism/index.htm
<http://eyetap.org/deconism/index.htm>

http://wearcam.org/ctheory/

www.benayoun.com <http://www.benayoun.com/>