Aided by machine intelligence with computational speeds measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second and software capable of analyzing petabytes of significant data, we are codifying and digitizing the entire resource of human knowledge.
We use our very curiosity and creativity to invent novel ways to map the myriad connections existing within these matrices of information. Vast interconnected databases reveal deep relationships between previously disparate disciplines, such as biology, astronomy, physics, and neuroscience.
Our powerful technological tools of art are used to create imaginary virtual worlds for diversion and the utterly real worlds of military combat and computer-assisted brain surgery. In this way, we see the correspondences between the real and the virtual, and we come to better understand the relationship between art and life. It is the same as the relationship between culture and nature. They mirror each other. This mirroring is our own, species-specific mental experience, the human mind in the world as experienced by human beings.
Advances in our ability to create intricately detailed visual images allow us to see farther, deeper, and more precisely. When we can actually see complex physical processes at both microscopic and macroscopic scales, we can conceive of new mathematical relationships and physical processes, which yield novel ways to forge new materials, inventions, and world views.
We bring our cultural knowledge and resources to the task of symbolically representing nature and our place within it. This mirroring of the world and natural processes by technology and its transformation into an aesthetically significant experience is the nexus of science and art. It is our culture. And now we are programming it into supercomputers. Supercomputing power heralds a new age of enlightenment, in which science, technology, and art comingle.
Spurred on by networked media and the urgency of mass culture, our words, images, and narratives evolve, advancing global repositories of cultural memes. Harnessed by economic and political realities, their power to change us is magnified by rapid technological advance. There is vast potential for good here. Exponential increase in intelligence holds the promise of the rapid evolution of better cultural memes, better minds…a better world.
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First Image: 00000011 – Tullio – 2013
Second Image: 00000010 – Tullio – ink drawing – 2013
Tullio DeSantis 