1 00:00:03,090 --> 00:00:05,430 Introduction Voiceover: You are listening to Season Five of 2 00:00:05,430 --> 00:00:06,750 Future Ecologies. 3 00:00:11,430 --> 00:00:13,140 Mendel Skulski: Alright... check check check. 4 00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:14,160 Adam Huggins: Looks good. 5 00:00:14,460 --> 00:00:17,580 Mendel Skulski: Good. Would you... would you mind dimming 6 00:00:17,910 --> 00:00:18,600 the lights? 7 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:20,190 Adam Huggins: Oh, you want it even darker in here? 8 00:00:20,250 --> 00:00:20,670 Mendel Skulski: Yeah. 9 00:00:20,970 --> 00:00:21,750 Adam Huggins: Let me see what I can do. 10 00:00:25,230 --> 00:00:25,770 How's that? 11 00:00:25,830 --> 00:00:32,070 Mendel Skulski: Perfect. What's in this tea by the way? 12 00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:34,590 Adam Huggins: It's a blend of different plants. But it's 13 00:00:34,590 --> 00:00:38,010 mostly sweet gale, which is a plant that grows in bogs. 14 00:00:39,900 --> 00:00:40,980 Mendel Skulski: It's really relaxing. 15 00:00:41,310 --> 00:00:44,640 Adam Huggins: Yeah, it's one of my favorites. And people do say 16 00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:48,300 that it is helpful in inducing lucid dreaming. 17 00:00:48,750 --> 00:00:51,180 Mendel Skulski: Lucid dreaming... to know you're 18 00:00:51,180 --> 00:00:55,140 dreaming while it's happening. It's been a while since I had 19 00:00:55,140 --> 00:00:55,890 one of those. 20 00:00:56,010 --> 00:00:57,870 Adam Huggins: Yeah, I can't even remember the last time I lucid 21 00:00:57,870 --> 00:01:00,000 dreamed. Maybe tonight is the night. 22 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:00,720 Mendel Skulski: Maybe! 23 00:01:01,410 --> 00:01:04,290 Adam Huggins: Okay, so now that we've kind of set the mood here. 24 00:01:04,860 --> 00:01:09,000 I wanted to tell you that way back, before we started this 25 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:13,680 podcast, and before I even knew what a podcast was, I had a 26 00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:15,660 college radio show for a couple of years. 27 00:01:16,350 --> 00:01:16,980 Mendel Skulski: Did you now? 28 00:01:17,220 --> 00:01:20,820 Adam Huggins: I did! With a couple of friends of mine. We 29 00:01:20,820 --> 00:01:24,450 were young. And we had an 11pm time slot that nobody cared 30 00:01:24,450 --> 00:01:28,380 about. And we had the keys to the station CD library, which 31 00:01:28,380 --> 00:01:30,450 had an excellent vinyl collection. 32 00:01:31,770 --> 00:01:33,870 Mendel Skulski: Knowing you, that sounds dangerous. 33 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:34,410 Adam Huggins: Yeah. 34 00:01:34,560 --> 00:01:36,960 Mendel Skulski: So I'm guessing you had like two turntables and 35 00:01:36,960 --> 00:01:37,650 a microphone. 36 00:01:37,860 --> 00:01:40,920 Adam Huggins: That was actually the exact setup. And the reason 37 00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:45,660 that I bring it up right now is that our college radio show was 38 00:01:45,660 --> 00:01:47,490 all about dreams. 39 00:01:48,450 --> 00:01:50,970 Baby Radio DJ Adam: Welcome back, you're listening to see 40 00:01:50,970 --> 00:01:56,970 JSF 90.1 FM 93.9 cable FM in Burnaby. And this is Electric 41 00:01:56,970 --> 00:01:57,810 Sheep radio. 42 00:01:58,320 --> 00:02:00,870 DJ Ryder: We'd like you to send us your dreams. 43 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:04,290 Baby Radio DJ Adam: Yeah, indeed to electricsheepradio@gmail.com 44 00:02:04,650 --> 00:02:07,260 If you feel like having your dreams aired on the radio, 45 00:02:07,290 --> 00:02:10,560 because we just love to hear dreams as you might have 46 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:11,040 noticed. 47 00:02:11,070 --> 00:02:13,200 DJ Samantha: We also prefer if you record them yourself. 48 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:16,230 DJ Ryder: And so I guess until we see you next time. 49 00:02:16,980 --> 00:02:17,640 Baby Radio DJ Adam: Goodnight. 50 00:02:18,630 --> 00:02:19,350 DJ Ryder: Sweet dreams. 51 00:02:20,070 --> 00:02:23,610 Mendel Skulski: Oh my god, your little baby radio voice. Little 52 00:02:23,670 --> 00:02:28,890 late night DJ Adam. But other than that, nothing's really 53 00:02:28,890 --> 00:02:29,610 changed, huh? 54 00:02:29,820 --> 00:02:33,750 Adam Huggins: Apparently not. No, I still really love to hear 55 00:02:33,750 --> 00:02:37,860 dreams. And that's what we're going to do now. Except that 56 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:42,090 tonight, our program is called Future Ecologies. 57 00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:45,750 Mendel Skulski: Well, to be precise. Tonight, it's the Shape 58 00:02:45,750 --> 00:02:51,120 of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish. A recurrent festival 59 00:02:51,180 --> 00:02:55,260 that's explored the idea of consciousness, language and the 60 00:02:55,260 --> 00:03:00,030 mind across non human species and beings. Initiated by the 61 00:03:00,030 --> 00:03:05,190 Serpentine galleries in London since 2018, recorded on stage in 62 00:03:05,190 --> 00:03:09,810 November 2022 at the Galleria do Biodiversidade in Porto, 63 00:03:09,930 --> 00:03:15,930 Portugal, and then reduced and remixed by Future Ecologies. 64 00:03:16,650 --> 00:03:20,040 Adam Huggins: Tonight, with the help of artists, scientists, 65 00:03:20,190 --> 00:03:24,150 philosophers and historians, were sprinkling a little bit of 66 00:03:24,150 --> 00:03:29,160 stardust on our understanding of dreams, reality, and non human 67 00:03:29,160 --> 00:03:33,840 beings — from fish, to demons, and Gods 68 00:03:35,130 --> 00:03:38,340 Mendel Skulski: Kicking things off, festival curators, Lucia 69 00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:41,070 Pietroiusti, and Filipa Ramos. 70 00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:48,150 Lucia Pietroiusti: And I have the sort of impossible task of 71 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:53,190 telling you about dreams. We experience dreams as a 72 00:03:53,190 --> 00:03:55,920 transition state between realms of the physical and the 73 00:03:55,920 --> 00:03:58,980 spiritual. And so dreams become a kind of translation space. 74 00:03:59,490 --> 00:04:02,070 Filipa Ramos: But we refer to dreams when we speak about hope, 75 00:04:02,310 --> 00:04:06,240 when we speak about repair. When we give symbolic interpretations 76 00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:11,100 of dreams, we hold the world in place, in a sense. We shape a 77 00:04:11,100 --> 00:04:15,390 world, its symbols, and its myths. We shape our sense of 78 00:04:15,390 --> 00:04:17,190 belonging to that world. 79 00:04:17,520 --> 00:04:19,830 Lucia Pietroiusti: And through the notion of the dream in this 80 00:04:19,830 --> 00:04:21,720 event, we hope to - 81 00:04:21,930 --> 00:04:26,190 Filipa Ramos: somehow continue in our project to move away from 82 00:04:26,190 --> 00:04:30,570 a human-centric conception of this world. So what might it 83 00:04:30,570 --> 00:04:35,520 look like if we tried to de-anthropocenter the notion of 84 00:04:35,520 --> 00:04:40,890 a dream? Well, in the first instance, it might be that in a 85 00:04:40,890 --> 00:04:46,860 multi-species complex planet, non-human dreams might not be at 86 00:04:46,860 --> 00:04:51,570 all like what we expect of human ones, because they'd be 87 00:04:51,570 --> 00:04:54,480 processes belonging to completely different ways of 88 00:04:54,480 --> 00:04:55,470 being in the world. 89 00:04:55,930 --> 00:04:59,110 Lucia Pietroiusti: So we've asked ourselves, and we'll ask 90 00:04:59,110 --> 00:05:02,230 ourselves all sorts of questions — how much of a more-than-human 91 00:05:02,470 --> 00:05:06,040 or-non human being sense of self are we able to intuit and 92 00:05:06,040 --> 00:05:09,580 appreciate? To hopefully come out on the other side with just 93 00:05:09,580 --> 00:05:14,650 a tiny bit of a slightly larger intuition, not only of how we 94 00:05:14,650 --> 00:05:17,590 exist on this planet, and how we share it with more than human 95 00:05:17,590 --> 00:05:22,660 beings, what our responsibility in relation to that sharing, and 96 00:05:22,660 --> 00:05:24,190 also what art, 97 00:05:24,550 --> 00:05:25,300 Filipa Ramos: poetry, 98 00:05:25,660 --> 00:05:26,380 Lucia Pietroiusti: science 99 00:05:26,530 --> 00:05:27,670 Filipa Ramos: when it dreams, 100 00:05:27,850 --> 00:05:30,040 Lucia Pietroiusti: and so many other forms of expression, 101 00:05:30,220 --> 00:05:33,670 Filipa Ramos: might, in fact, be here on this earth to do? 102 00:05:50,130 --> 00:05:52,860 Alex Jordan: My name is Alex Jordan, and I'm a scientist. I'm 103 00:05:52,860 --> 00:05:56,790 a scientist very interested in the questions that we have as 104 00:05:56,790 --> 00:06:00,360 humans about how animals experience the world, their 105 00:06:00,360 --> 00:06:03,930 sense of self, their sense of awareness, their perception, 106 00:06:04,410 --> 00:06:09,240 perhaps their consciousness, and how we might as humans, 107 00:06:09,450 --> 00:06:14,490 understand and interpret and ask questions of these animals that 108 00:06:14,490 --> 00:06:17,550 we might better understand their worlds. 109 00:06:18,870 --> 00:06:21,930 Generally speaking, at a scientific level, I'm interested 110 00:06:21,930 --> 00:06:26,970 in the broad question of how behavior evolves. How, in the 111 00:06:26,970 --> 00:06:32,520 transition from simple life to more complex forms of life, 112 00:06:32,550 --> 00:06:36,840 including our own form of life, behaviors have evolved, 113 00:06:36,840 --> 00:06:41,130 cognitive capacities have evolved, and traits that help 114 00:06:41,130 --> 00:06:45,660 animals interact with the world and experience the world have 115 00:06:45,660 --> 00:06:46,320 evolved. 116 00:06:46,890 --> 00:06:50,550 Some research we've just published this year was about 117 00:06:50,580 --> 00:06:54,600 sleep, and potentially dreaming in spiders. And so we've done 118 00:06:54,600 --> 00:06:57,930 this work here demonstrating that jumping spiders, these 119 00:06:57,930 --> 00:07:03,780 beautiful, intelligent creatures have periods of REM sleep, rapid 120 00:07:03,780 --> 00:07:07,080 eye movement, sleep. This is a trait that was once thought 121 00:07:07,110 --> 00:07:10,740 exists, as many traits are thought to exist only in humans. 122 00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:13,950 But now we're starting to expand our perception and understanding 123 00:07:14,370 --> 00:07:18,660 that the idea of dreaming for a spider for a fish for a plant 124 00:07:18,930 --> 00:07:20,190 may not be that far off. 125 00:07:21,920 --> 00:07:23,810 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: It's delightful to dream together in 126 00:07:23,810 --> 00:07:29,450 the belly of a whale. aWhat does it feel like to be a fish or a 127 00:07:29,450 --> 00:07:30,890 bird or a plant? 128 00:07:31,220 --> 00:07:35,060 Rain Wu: The rivers and the glaciers, the big mammals and 129 00:07:35,060 --> 00:07:39,920 the imperceptible microbes, the small algae, and the complex 130 00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:40,580 trees. 131 00:07:40,810 --> 00:07:43,240 Alex Jordan: When I showed you this tree, this evolutionary 132 00:07:43,240 --> 00:07:47,050 tree, it's really important for me that that tree is not in a 133 00:07:47,050 --> 00:07:50,800 line. There's not a ladder that humans sit on the top of, and 134 00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:54,160 chimps are nearer to us, and then dolphins are nearer then — 135 00:07:54,460 --> 00:07:57,910 that evolution is pushing all animals towards. This is an 136 00:07:57,910 --> 00:08:03,370 absurd concept. Evolution produces solutions and animals 137 00:08:03,370 --> 00:08:08,020 and organisms that fulfill whatever purpose is required and 138 00:08:08,020 --> 00:08:13,030 whatever purpose they have. In my opinion, both my personal but 139 00:08:13,030 --> 00:08:16,360 also scientific opinion, many fish and many of the animals and 140 00:08:16,360 --> 00:08:19,540 organisms I deal with are just as intelligent and just as 141 00:08:19,660 --> 00:08:23,740 sophisticated and just as subtle, in many ways, as some of 142 00:08:23,740 --> 00:08:24,940 these species. 143 00:08:25,230 --> 00:08:29,610 And so a lot of my work is done in the places where these 144 00:08:29,610 --> 00:08:33,960 animals live. I try to take all of our approaches and questions 145 00:08:33,960 --> 00:08:38,070 out into the wild. Ours is a is a practice of going to the 146 00:08:38,070 --> 00:08:41,460 places where these animals are, trying to disturb them as little 147 00:08:41,460 --> 00:08:45,720 as we can, filming them, then using some of these machine 148 00:08:45,720 --> 00:08:48,720 learning and artificial intelligence approaches to help 149 00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:53,760 us understand and decompose and maybe intuit what these animals 150 00:08:53,760 --> 00:08:57,960 are feeling and experiencing — of one another and of the world 151 00:08:57,960 --> 00:09:02,250 around them. Contextualizing this behavior, of having our 152 00:09:02,250 --> 00:09:05,970 questions asked in the places where these animals live. And 153 00:09:05,970 --> 00:09:08,820 that means we have to understand and try and appreciate where 154 00:09:08,820 --> 00:09:11,910 they live. So we're not divorcing them from their 155 00:09:11,910 --> 00:09:14,550 experience — from their evolutionary history. We're 156 00:09:14,550 --> 00:09:19,260 trying to situate our studies in those places and recreate in 157 00:09:19,260 --> 00:09:23,580 silico or in some kind of analytical framework, the 158 00:09:23,670 --> 00:09:26,970 interactions they have not just with one another, but with the 159 00:09:26,970 --> 00:09:27,750 world around them. 160 00:09:30,270 --> 00:09:32,340 Nahum Mantra: Even the word environment, right, like the 161 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:36,840 more-than-human world has been reduced to an environment — like 162 00:09:36,840 --> 00:09:42,060 just like a backdrop where the human drama unfolds. 163 00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:49,230 Alex Jordan: Some of my research has has asked the question, this 164 00:09:49,230 --> 00:09:52,920 classic test we have which is called the mirror test, in which 165 00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:56,940 an animal is presented, like here, with a mirror and asked... 166 00:09:57,210 --> 00:10:03,600 does it recognize its reflection as self or is it unable to do 167 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:08,640 that... that thing that we do? Is it unable to deal with the 168 00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:14,220 concept of self? And this mirror test is a test in which you are 169 00:10:14,220 --> 00:10:19,230 supposed to see yourself in a reflection, and there's a mark 170 00:10:19,230 --> 00:10:23,760 on your body somewhere that you can't see, except with the 171 00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:28,470 mirror. And if you touch yourself, rather than touch the 172 00:10:28,470 --> 00:10:32,820 mirror, then you've understood that you exist in that 173 00:10:32,820 --> 00:10:37,680 reflection — that reflection is you. It's not some other entity. 174 00:10:40,440 --> 00:10:45,060 And this is wonderful. This is a perfectly valid test, provided 175 00:10:45,060 --> 00:10:48,780 you care. Provided you care that there's a mark on your body. 176 00:10:48,900 --> 00:10:54,120 Provided you have the vanity, let's say to... to worry that 177 00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:56,250 something about your appearance has changed. 178 00:10:56,490 --> 00:10:59,760 Filipa Ramos: Oh, I look different. Wait, but it's me. 179 00:11:00,930 --> 00:11:03,750 Alex Jordan: Is it a problem of motivation? Or is it a problem 180 00:11:03,750 --> 00:11:08,370 of intelligence? Can they not understand the context, or do 181 00:11:08,370 --> 00:11:10,260 they simply not care in the same way we do? 182 00:11:10,920 --> 00:11:14,340 Onome Ekeh: You know, what does wealth mean for a sparrow? Is 183 00:11:14,340 --> 00:11:17,070 it, sort of, this ability to flock? 184 00:11:17,460 --> 00:11:21,180 Alex Jordan: and I settled on a species called the cleaner 185 00:11:21,180 --> 00:11:25,290 wrasse. The cleaner wrasse we thought was perfect, because it 186 00:11:25,290 --> 00:11:28,290 does care about these marks. Its whole biology, its whole 187 00:11:28,530 --> 00:11:33,900 cognitive capacity and its ecology is centered around this 188 00:11:33,900 --> 00:11:39,600 idea of seeing marks on the skin and trying to remove them. 189 00:11:39,660 --> 00:11:44,040 That's what it does. Because its whole existence is about finding 190 00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:47,190 and removing parasites from client fish. 191 00:11:47,420 --> 00:11:51,440 Lucia Pietroiusti: You can only interpret the test as revealing 192 00:11:51,440 --> 00:11:56,810 something if the behavior can be considered strange or unusual in 193 00:11:56,810 --> 00:12:01,160 some way. And similarly, the notion of recognizing a mark 194 00:12:01,190 --> 00:12:06,260 somewhere, is also an experience of recognizing oneself with a 195 00:12:06,260 --> 00:12:07,850 kind of strangeness. 196 00:12:08,420 --> 00:12:11,360 Alex Jordan: But this is a really important question. What 197 00:12:11,360 --> 00:12:16,460 on earth is unusual for an animal? How do you as a human 198 00:12:16,610 --> 00:12:21,530 observer, me as a scientist decide what an animal should or 199 00:12:21,530 --> 00:12:24,680 should not be doing? And therefore what is unusual for an 200 00:12:24,680 --> 00:12:29,720 animal? This is not not a simple question. I'm not being 201 00:12:29,720 --> 00:12:33,020 facetious here. This is a genuine question about our 202 00:12:33,020 --> 00:12:36,740 expectations and intuition of non human animals. 203 00:12:39,050 --> 00:12:42,560 Onome Ekeh: You know, you almost don't recognize what's being 204 00:12:42,560 --> 00:12:43,010 said. 205 00:12:43,190 --> 00:12:46,130 Alex Jordan: Hang on, this is not another individual. It's 206 00:12:46,130 --> 00:12:51,170 copying everything I do. Maybe it's me. And in this phase, 207 00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:54,710 humans perform unusual behaviors. 208 00:12:57,350 --> 00:12:58,880 Federico Campagna: I think what's remarkable about dreams 209 00:12:58,910 --> 00:13:01,610 is that while you are in a dream is really not very strange at 210 00:13:01,610 --> 00:13:04,970 all. Everything is remarkably normal. It becomes strange, the 211 00:13:04,970 --> 00:13:08,180 moment you exit the dream, and then you look back, and then you 212 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:10,100 realize that the two don't match up. 213 00:13:10,820 --> 00:13:14,150 Alex Jordan: But for these fish, this was a very clear behavior, 214 00:13:14,270 --> 00:13:16,520 that they were doing something completely outside of their 215 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:20,180 repertoire. Some of them are very easy to interpret. Upside 216 00:13:20,180 --> 00:13:24,590 Down swimming — fish do not swim upside down, unless it's time to 217 00:13:24,590 --> 00:13:28,580 buy yourself a new goldfish. Now, if you think about it, one 218 00:13:28,580 --> 00:13:31,940 of the main barriers that we might have in using these kinds 219 00:13:31,940 --> 00:13:36,920 of tests across animals is that if they're designed for humans, 220 00:13:37,100 --> 00:13:41,780 how do we expect an animal without hands or fingers to be 221 00:13:41,780 --> 00:13:44,360 able to pass them in the same way that a human would? 222 00:13:45,750 --> 00:13:47,580 Onome Ekeh: You know, you wonder, like how all these 223 00:13:47,580 --> 00:13:51,930 different things put together? That don't fit? 224 00:13:52,920 --> 00:13:58,020 Alex Jordan: One way, we've started to interrogate that 225 00:13:58,020 --> 00:14:01,950 question and try to get a deeper handle on what a fish is 226 00:14:01,950 --> 00:14:05,490 experiencing and what kind of behaviors it's performing, and 227 00:14:05,490 --> 00:14:08,910 what those behaviors might mean, is to start to attempt to 228 00:14:08,910 --> 00:14:12,930 understand the behavioral language of fishes and other 229 00:14:12,930 --> 00:14:16,980 animals. And as I've mentioned, we're doing that with the aid of 230 00:14:16,980 --> 00:14:22,590 artificial intelligence. Because for us to look at something like 231 00:14:22,590 --> 00:14:26,910 a fish and understand what the postures, movements and 232 00:14:26,910 --> 00:14:31,080 interactions mean, is an incredible challenge and 233 00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:34,860 potentially impossible. And so we're using an approach called 234 00:14:34,860 --> 00:14:39,030 behavioral decomposition. Behavioral decomposition is a 235 00:14:39,030 --> 00:14:42,870 method in which you look at every single movement, an animal 236 00:14:42,870 --> 00:14:48,000 makes — every single change in its legs, its postures, whatever 237 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:52,920 it is. And you can break those behaviors down into these sort 238 00:14:52,920 --> 00:14:57,270 of dimensions of kinematics, and build them into this map of 239 00:14:57,270 --> 00:14:57,900 behavior. 240 00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:03,930 The fish will go to the mirror, observe its reflection, observe 241 00:15:03,930 --> 00:15:07,800 that it has a mark on its body, will go away from the mirror, 242 00:15:08,130 --> 00:15:11,940 will scrape that mark against the gravel or a rock, and then 243 00:15:11,940 --> 00:15:16,800 go back to the mirror to check. If the fish go through all three 244 00:15:16,800 --> 00:15:19,770 of the phases that I told you, and then attempt to remove this 245 00:15:19,770 --> 00:15:24,930 mark, they have passed the test. By the original definition of 246 00:15:24,930 --> 00:15:29,190 the test, by all other standards that are applied to all other 247 00:15:29,190 --> 00:15:35,520 organisms, they have passed the test. Now is this evidence that 248 00:15:35,520 --> 00:15:40,020 they are self conscious — that they are self aware? Is the 249 00:15:40,020 --> 00:15:43,470 performance of this behavior enough to convince you that a 250 00:15:43,470 --> 00:15:45,630 fish is self aware? 251 00:15:45,990 --> 00:15:47,490 Filipa Ramos: When you're obsessed with something 252 00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:48,960 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: and once you start looking for something 253 00:15:48,990 --> 00:15:50,700 Filipa Ramos: you see that something everywhere. 254 00:15:51,240 --> 00:15:54,780 Rain Wu: The sky told stories, remembered legends and provided 255 00:15:54,810 --> 00:15:55,500 clues. 256 00:15:56,320 --> 00:16:00,340 Yussef Agbo-Ola: Sometimes you can be suspended in a dream and 257 00:16:00,610 --> 00:16:04,330 not necessarily be connected to time, but still connected to 258 00:16:04,330 --> 00:16:09,070 this idea of rhythm. Constantly in this rhythmic cycle of 259 00:16:09,190 --> 00:16:15,190 nutrients... it's like you're... you're eating reality, in a way. 260 00:16:16,030 --> 00:16:19,000 Rain Wu: Food is the connection from distant and exotic 261 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:24,040 landscapes, to domestic backyards — going near and far, 262 00:16:24,520 --> 00:16:28,810 stretching across the Earth's surface. It connects the sun 263 00:16:28,810 --> 00:16:33,280 above and the soil below, like a vertical axis of life. 264 00:16:33,790 --> 00:16:36,190 Yussef Agbo-Ola: And at the same time, you're reflecting on that 265 00:16:36,190 --> 00:16:37,150 digestion. 266 00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:40,150 Rain Wu: Food connects our bodies with the surrounding 267 00:16:40,150 --> 00:16:45,910 world. Nothing is more intimate than eating. What somebody sees 268 00:16:45,910 --> 00:16:49,900 can be seen by others. What somebody hears can be heard by 269 00:16:49,900 --> 00:16:57,040 others. But what somebody eats, nobdy else can eat. There's 270 00:16:57,040 --> 00:17:01,450 nothing more private, more introverted, more turned inwards 271 00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:02,440 on itself. 272 00:17:03,910 --> 00:17:05,650 Onome Ekeh: A transformation takes place 273 00:17:07,540 --> 00:17:13,810 Rain Wu: Thus the world was created. And out of Chaos, the 274 00:17:13,810 --> 00:17:16,270 orderly and complex Cosmos arose. 275 00:17:16,570 --> 00:17:19,510 Lucia Pietroiusti: This most intimate of absorptions is what 276 00:17:19,510 --> 00:17:21,100 brings you to the Cosmos. 277 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:25,510 Rain Wu: Cosmos, the physical universe of things seen and 278 00:17:25,510 --> 00:17:29,710 touched, and the spiritual entities they existed beyond. 279 00:17:32,270 --> 00:17:33,950 Federico Campagna: We'll get there by steps — we will go 280 00:17:33,950 --> 00:17:37,580 through three great transformations. And we will 281 00:17:37,580 --> 00:17:41,570 start by setting the scene — setting the parameters of this 282 00:17:42,290 --> 00:17:46,280 journey towards human and more than human dreams. The 283 00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:49,880 parameters are very simple. There are two parameters for our 284 00:17:49,880 --> 00:17:55,580 inquiry. There are two simple words — nothing, something. 285 00:17:57,650 --> 00:17:59,840 Nothing, something. 286 00:18:01,580 --> 00:18:06,080 Now, the important thing are not the words. The little pause 287 00:18:06,260 --> 00:18:12,110 between them is the greatest mystery of all, for science, 288 00:18:12,140 --> 00:18:17,240 theology, philosophy since forever. How is it possible that 289 00:18:17,300 --> 00:18:23,300 nothing might become something? This might sound like a very 290 00:18:23,300 --> 00:18:26,270 academic and useless question. But in reality, it has to do 291 00:18:26,270 --> 00:18:30,290 with everything we hold dear. It has to do with the very stuff of 292 00:18:30,290 --> 00:18:34,130 the world. Asking ourselves the question "how is it possible 293 00:18:34,130 --> 00:18:37,310 that nothing might become something" means asking 294 00:18:37,310 --> 00:18:41,930 ourselves "How did it happen? That all that surrounds us — 295 00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:47,330 every single thing, reality as a whole, at some point, came into 296 00:18:47,330 --> 00:18:51,890 existence." And it's been at the center of our imagination and 297 00:18:51,890 --> 00:18:55,520 concerns, as I was saying, since time immemorial. We could say 298 00:18:55,520 --> 00:18:59,120 literally, since the beginning, the beginning of history. 299 00:18:59,660 --> 00:19:02,480 History begins with the first written records we have 300 00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:06,230 discovered. Before that there is prehistory. About prehistory, we 301 00:19:06,230 --> 00:19:07,790 cannot say anything, because we don't know. 302 00:19:10,040 --> 00:19:13,070 And the earliest written records have to do with the problem of 303 00:19:13,070 --> 00:19:16,310 how the world came into existence. These are what are 304 00:19:16,310 --> 00:19:20,750 called Cosmogonies — so stories that tell about the birth of the 305 00:19:20,750 --> 00:19:24,560 cosmos. And these cosmogonies are very interesting because 306 00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:27,650 they address the question "how we pass from nothing to 307 00:19:27,650 --> 00:19:33,530 something". The question is "Can something come out of nothing?" 308 00:19:36,110 --> 00:19:40,280 And the answer of the mythological cosmogonies is no. 309 00:19:41,600 --> 00:19:43,910 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: The idea of reincarnation, that souls 310 00:19:43,910 --> 00:19:46,940 took on successively the bodies of multiple different species, 311 00:19:46,940 --> 00:19:50,750 from humans to animals to plants, and back again. This 312 00:19:50,750 --> 00:19:53,510 idea was embedded in a range of classical Greek and Roman 313 00:19:53,510 --> 00:19:58,580 philosophy, poetry and magic. And as we'll see, reincarnation 314 00:19:58,580 --> 00:20:02,450 raises fundamental question about where the identity of an 315 00:20:02,450 --> 00:20:07,190 organic entity rests, and how it is constituted. Is it in the 316 00:20:07,190 --> 00:20:11,000 movements, feelings and capabilities of the body? In the 317 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:15,260 ability to vocalize or speak? Or in the capacity to remember or 318 00:20:15,260 --> 00:20:15,890 dream? 319 00:20:16,950 --> 00:20:19,200 Federico Campagna: To the question, "did from nothing, 320 00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:24,270 something come out," the answer is no. Nothing is an impossible 321 00:20:24,300 --> 00:20:28,650 philosophical concept. It is not just unthinkable, but it is 322 00:20:28,650 --> 00:20:34,410 impossible. Since things exist, at least we exist as points of 323 00:20:34,410 --> 00:20:37,440 awareness in the world as the object to our awareness, since 324 00:20:37,440 --> 00:20:40,710 there is existence, non existence cannot take place. 325 00:20:41,850 --> 00:20:47,010 Since there is being, non-being is totally impossible. So, to 326 00:20:47,010 --> 00:20:49,230 the question of the beginning, how you pass from nothing to 327 00:20:49,230 --> 00:20:52,110 something, they say, "In the beginning, there was not 328 00:20:52,110 --> 00:20:54,690 nothing. In the beginning that was something, but something 329 00:20:54,690 --> 00:21:00,180 special." This something was ineffable — is something beyond 330 00:21:00,180 --> 00:21:03,240 words... impossible to describe. You have philosophers and 331 00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:08,190 theologians talking about this. Then, this something fragmented 332 00:21:08,190 --> 00:21:13,350 itself into many. Simone Weil says "decreated itself". 333 00:21:14,040 --> 00:21:16,950 Why am I talking about this? How is this relevant in any way to 334 00:21:16,950 --> 00:21:20,610 our lives today? Well, the question of the beginning 335 00:21:20,610 --> 00:21:23,640 becomes relevant to our life today if we look at it in a 336 00:21:23,640 --> 00:21:27,450 mirror — be like those fish that we saw earlier. If we look at it 337 00:21:27,450 --> 00:21:30,090 in a mirror, the question of the origin is the question of the 338 00:21:30,090 --> 00:21:33,780 end. The question of what happens before birth is the same 339 00:21:33,780 --> 00:21:37,110 as the question of what happens after death. And now we start 340 00:21:37,110 --> 00:21:41,550 seeing how the question of what happens after death concerns us. 341 00:21:41,850 --> 00:21:45,240 There is a certain urgency to the question "After something, 342 00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:51,270 can there be nothing? After this life, can we be utterly 343 00:21:51,300 --> 00:21:55,710 annihilated?" And here we see that the intuition of the 344 00:21:55,710 --> 00:21:59,580 eternity of being becomes a powerful protection. Because it 345 00:21:59,580 --> 00:22:05,880 says that since things did not have a beginning in nothing, 346 00:22:05,910 --> 00:22:10,170 they cannot have an end in nothing. Nothing is an invalid 347 00:22:10,170 --> 00:22:12,660 concept — philosophically is an impossible concept. 348 00:22:14,910 --> 00:22:17,400 What we have is that the beginning had to do with the 349 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:21,360 fragmentation of boundaries, an establishment of boundaries. And 350 00:22:21,360 --> 00:22:24,570 the end, similarly has to do with the reshuffling of 351 00:22:24,570 --> 00:22:28,620 boundaries. It's just a matter of movements of boundaries. 352 00:22:30,300 --> 00:22:33,120 There is a way in which we can understand it metaphorically. 353 00:22:33,930 --> 00:22:38,790 The world being the dream, and the characters of the dream 354 00:22:38,820 --> 00:22:43,200 being the inhabitants of the world, including ourselves. Like 355 00:22:43,230 --> 00:22:46,830 us, the inhabitants of a dream have no recollection of their 356 00:22:46,830 --> 00:22:50,700 origin, and no horizon of their end. And like us, the 357 00:22:50,700 --> 00:22:55,320 inhabitants of a dream are made of the same substance, as the 358 00:22:55,320 --> 00:22:59,250 mind of the sleeper. If you for a moment, consider what is the 359 00:22:59,250 --> 00:23:01,590 substance of which a dream is made, you realize that is the 360 00:23:01,590 --> 00:23:05,760 substance of the mind — there is a continuity. The fragments are 361 00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:07,440 made of the same substance of the monolith. 362 00:23:08,850 --> 00:23:12,990 And in fact, this idea that it's possible to understand the world 363 00:23:13,020 --> 00:23:16,110 as a dream, and the relationship between the world and the other 364 00:23:16,110 --> 00:23:19,980 worldly (so, before the beginning, after the end), is 365 00:23:20,340 --> 00:23:23,550 not just a metaphor that I've made up, but is a typical way of 366 00:23:23,550 --> 00:23:26,910 understanding the world. In many philosophies, theologies and 367 00:23:26,910 --> 00:23:29,070 mythologies from from all over the world. 368 00:23:30,450 --> 00:23:35,910 The idea is that the world that we see around ourselves is a 369 00:23:35,910 --> 00:23:41,370 dream of the eternal being. It is a dream in the mind of the 370 00:23:41,370 --> 00:23:45,900 eternal being. And that everything we see around 371 00:23:45,900 --> 00:23:50,220 ourselves, including ourselves as individuals, and the things 372 00:23:50,220 --> 00:23:53,730 and the people around us are fundamentally characters of this 373 00:23:53,730 --> 00:23:59,160 dream of this eternally-sleeping mind. And to this mind, that is 374 00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,580 dreaming up the whole of reality, it is not unfitting to 375 00:24:02,580 --> 00:24:03,540 give the name of God. 376 00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:10,050 Now, this realization can have consequences. Of course, in 377 00:24:10,050 --> 00:24:13,890 philosophy, often you observe a hypothesis about reality, you 378 00:24:13,890 --> 00:24:16,800 embrace them, and you see what happens, okay? You try them out. 379 00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:20,070 There is an engineering aspect to philosophy, very much. So if 380 00:24:20,070 --> 00:24:23,580 you try out this perspective, it could have, you know, a 381 00:24:23,580 --> 00:24:28,260 paralyzing effect or an ecstatic effect. Ecstatic effect, typical 382 00:24:28,260 --> 00:24:32,100 mystical reaction. A paralyzing effect, in the sense that you 383 00:24:32,100 --> 00:24:36,540 start asking yourself, "Doesn't this mean, then, that we are 384 00:24:36,570 --> 00:24:40,620 passive elements inside the dream?" If we are the characters 385 00:24:40,620 --> 00:24:44,190 being dreamt up by a great divine mind, to use the 386 00:24:44,220 --> 00:24:47,220 theological metaphor, doesn't this mean that we cannot do 387 00:24:47,220 --> 00:24:50,700 anything inside this dream to modify it? It's dreamt up by a 388 00:24:50,700 --> 00:24:54,030 mind greater than our own. If you remain equal with the 389 00:24:54,150 --> 00:24:57,480 metaphor of the dream, you realize that you can ask this 390 00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:03,180 question to your own dreams. Inside your own dream, what is 391 00:25:03,180 --> 00:25:07,800 the distribution of agency? Is it you? That is dreaming up the 392 00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:10,680 dream and directing it and unfolding it? Or should you 393 00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,040 rather say that in the dream, the, the one with the least 394 00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:17,730 agency is you, while in fact, it's the characters of the dream 395 00:25:18,270 --> 00:25:22,800 that unfold the story of which they are the protagonist. The 396 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:27,360 dream dreams itself through its characters, typically. And by 397 00:25:27,360 --> 00:25:32,040 the same token, inside this world dream this dream world, it 398 00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,950 is us as the characters that have the possibility of 399 00:25:34,950 --> 00:25:40,770 unfolding the dream narration and the responsibility of doing 400 00:25:40,770 --> 00:25:43,320 it the best we can, as well as we can. 401 00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,950 Onome Ekeh: So I thought I'd try it out. 402 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:51,370 Alex Jordan: Dreams and imagination and abstraction can 403 00:25:51,370 --> 00:25:56,020 function to place you in scenarios that you didn't 404 00:25:56,020 --> 00:26:00,670 experience. And that could be considered in the scientific 405 00:26:01,090 --> 00:26:05,890 terminology, adaptive. It allows your body and your mind to 406 00:26:05,890 --> 00:26:10,000 explore scenarios, and maybe prepare you for them, even if 407 00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:11,080 you didn't experience them. 408 00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:16,330 Federico Campagna: So dreamers that are aware of their act of 409 00:26:16,330 --> 00:26:20,080 creation of the world, being part of a fiction, they 410 00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,770 understand that they can redeem the world only through narrative 411 00:26:23,770 --> 00:26:24,310 means. 412 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:26,500 Nahum Mantra: You know, because without the heart, there is no 413 00:26:26,500 --> 00:26:30,130 mind. There's no blood that pumps into the brain. 414 00:26:30,550 --> 00:26:35,230 Hatis Noit: Yeah, every time I feel somehow lost, I try to 415 00:26:35,260 --> 00:26:42,280 connect to the memory of the nature there — the wild energy 416 00:26:42,730 --> 00:26:43,540 of the land. 417 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:52,060 Federico Campagna: We started with the first great 418 00:26:52,090 --> 00:26:55,930 transformation, birth — the beginning. The second great 419 00:26:55,930 --> 00:26:59,530 transformation, death — the end. And here we have the third 420 00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:03,160 transformation. And the third transformation is a 421 00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,070 transformation beyond the frontiers of the human. 422 00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:08,140 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: The language of demon is a bit 423 00:27:08,500 --> 00:27:11,440 tricky for us because it's used by Christians to refer 424 00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,920 specifically to evil demons that have a particular place in the 425 00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,950 cosmos and in the story of creation. Whereas, in the kind 426 00:27:17,950 --> 00:27:20,170 of broader Greek and Roman usage, it's a slightly 427 00:27:20,170 --> 00:27:23,320 stretchier term, and it tends to mean a kind of an intermediate 428 00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:25,840 spirits, something between Gods and humans. 429 00:27:27,630 --> 00:27:30,870 Onome Ekeh: If she's to go into the forest realm of spirits and 430 00:27:30,870 --> 00:27:33,810 ghosts, she needs to have night vision. 431 00:27:36,930 --> 00:27:38,490 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: Other fragments of his work reveal 432 00:27:38,490 --> 00:27:42,030 that he identified himself as a restless demon. The Greek word 433 00:27:42,030 --> 00:27:45,990 is daimon, a kind of inbetweener spirit, and one who's been 434 00:27:46,020 --> 00:27:49,800 exiled from the gods — perhaps a punishment for some unspecified 435 00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:54,840 crime. In this snippet of text, Empedocles recalls multiple 436 00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:58,560 previous births, moving between genders and species apparently 437 00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:03,060 without effort. He becomes most eloquent when remembering the 438 00:28:03,060 --> 00:28:07,110 past bodily experience of being a little wordless fish leaping 439 00:28:07,110 --> 00:28:07,980 out of the sea. 440 00:28:09,060 --> 00:28:13,680 Nahum Mantra: When I retreat as far into myself as possible, I 441 00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:19,110 become aware only of the shadow cast by my faint currents. The 442 00:28:19,110 --> 00:28:24,480 water knows no natural boundary, and occupies all niches. 443 00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:27,780 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: Did souls have a basic identity as human 444 00:28:27,780 --> 00:28:32,670 or animal? Were there limits to where souls could go? Plato 445 00:28:32,670 --> 00:28:35,700 thought that human souls could get inside animals. But 446 00:28:35,700 --> 00:28:38,700 Porphyry, a philosopher in the Platonist tradition, thought 447 00:28:38,700 --> 00:28:42,180 human souls could only enter human bodies. Otherwise, 448 00:28:42,180 --> 00:28:45,780 Porphyry worries, a mother who'd returned into the body of a mule 449 00:28:45,990 --> 00:28:50,970 might perhaps end up carrying her own son on her back. Was the 450 00:28:50,970 --> 00:28:53,340 destination body for reincarnation a deliberate 451 00:28:53,340 --> 00:28:57,900 choice of the soul, as related by Plato's Er. Or was it random? 452 00:28:58,230 --> 00:29:01,860 In which bodies breathe in souls as they're blown about in the 453 00:29:01,860 --> 00:29:04,470 air — And that's something apparently taught by followers 454 00:29:04,470 --> 00:29:06,180 of Pythagoras and Orpheus. 455 00:29:06,690 --> 00:29:08,040 Lucia Pietroiusti: And so the question that I have for you 456 00:29:08,130 --> 00:29:10,410 over and over and over again, and it's not the first time that 457 00:29:10,410 --> 00:29:14,280 I've asked you it, is what could be a possible metaphysics of the 458 00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:15,090 more than human? 459 00:29:15,540 --> 00:29:17,670 Federico Campagna: Metaphysics is a Greek term that has to do 460 00:29:17,670 --> 00:29:21,000 with what is beyond the physics. It was originally assigned to 461 00:29:21,090 --> 00:29:24,300 the, the organization of Aristotle's works. He wrote a 462 00:29:24,330 --> 00:29:27,270 work on the Physics and the work after that was called the 463 00:29:27,270 --> 00:29:30,180 Metaphysics, so the one after the work on the physics. So it 464 00:29:30,180 --> 00:29:31,620 was just a cataloging entry. 465 00:29:31,750 --> 00:29:35,110 But it has to do with more than cataloguing. It has to do with 466 00:29:35,140 --> 00:29:37,600 the difference between what we see around ourselves, the 467 00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:42,250 physics, what we can experience in a particular way. And our 468 00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:47,200 questioning about what there is beyond. Beyond can mean many 469 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:49,300 different things. Beyond can mean in the realm of the 470 00:29:49,330 --> 00:29:53,560 invisible, or in the realm of the infinitely small, or in the 471 00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,710 realm of the immaterial, or in the realm of the possibilities 472 00:29:56,710 --> 00:29:59,260 that are not actualized, and so on and so forth. Or of the 473 00:29:59,710 --> 00:30:04,810 impalpable, ineffable structures that hold up reality. Now, to a 474 00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,260 large extent, the things that... the structures that hold up 475 00:30:08,260 --> 00:30:13,210 reality are not so much inscribed within things, but 476 00:30:13,210 --> 00:30:16,000 they are inscribed within our mind. So within the way in which 477 00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:19,630 we perceive things. And in that case, we realize that the way in 478 00:30:19,630 --> 00:30:25,120 which we... set our interpretation of the 479 00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,990 perceptions that we have from the world goes to construct 480 00:30:29,020 --> 00:30:33,970 different worlds. So, it is world building in that sense. We 481 00:30:33,970 --> 00:30:37,570 could use another words — a Greek word "Cosmopoetics". 482 00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:40,870 Cosmopoetics is literally the same as worldbuilding. But maybe 483 00:30:40,870 --> 00:30:45,010 it's a little bit clearer, because Cosmopoetics means... 484 00:30:45,220 --> 00:30:50,260 Cosmos, literally order. So the setting of a particular order. 485 00:30:50,770 --> 00:30:54,550 And this setting is Poetics from the Greek popoieîn, "to make" — 486 00:30:54,610 --> 00:30:57,070 but also the same word that means "poetry". 487 00:30:59,350 --> 00:31:02,830 Artists, cultural producers, because they intervene 488 00:31:02,830 --> 00:31:06,160 particularly on the way in which we see things, they are 489 00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:09,370 opticians. You know, they are eye surgeons to a large extent. 490 00:31:10,210 --> 00:31:15,310 Through their poetic work, they construct worlds, and they help 491 00:31:15,310 --> 00:31:18,400 us to construct different worlds because they intervene at that 492 00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,970 level. They are not physical engineers in that sense, but 493 00:31:21,970 --> 00:31:27,010 they are metaphysical engineers. To the extent to which our 494 00:31:27,370 --> 00:31:29,800 shifting of perspective constructs different worlds. 495 00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:32,930 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: Christians thought that human souls were 496 00:31:32,930 --> 00:31:36,680 restless but also fundamentally individual, singular, and 497 00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,070 monogamous in their relationship with bodies. That said, human 498 00:31:40,070 --> 00:31:42,770 bodies could themselves be magicked into horses or 499 00:31:42,770 --> 00:31:46,580 possessed by demons, so they were also porous and unstable. 500 00:31:47,060 --> 00:31:49,640 The most threatening creatures in the atmosphere were demons, 501 00:31:49,670 --> 00:31:53,330 who could operate inside human souls and bodies and minds, 502 00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,210 animating their dreams with obscene thoughts and producing 503 00:31:56,210 --> 00:32:00,110 powerful waking fantasies. Demons own thin bodies can take 504 00:32:00,110 --> 00:32:03,050 on apparently more solid disguises as wild animals or 505 00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:06,650 beautiful women, but they were fundamentally vulnerable too — 506 00:32:06,650 --> 00:32:10,940 evanescing at exorcism into a puff of smoke. We've also seen 507 00:32:10,940 --> 00:32:14,360 how some Greeks and Romans had variously imagined demons as 508 00:32:14,390 --> 00:32:18,530 close to or even identical with human souls, and also as souls 509 00:32:18,530 --> 00:32:22,610 as much less bound to singular bodies. Some fortunate or 510 00:32:22,610 --> 00:32:25,730 privileged humans might even be able to recall a faint memory of 511 00:32:25,730 --> 00:32:29,540 an earlier incarnation, whether as a human, an animal, or even a 512 00:32:29,540 --> 00:32:34,190 plant. Whether such memories and dreams of a past self were 513 00:32:34,190 --> 00:32:38,000 punitive or ecstatic, depends rather on what you think it 514 00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:43,070 might be like to live as a bird or a shrub. 515 00:32:44,060 --> 00:32:49,460 Nahum Mantra: There, I was exiled from myself. But nothing 516 00:32:49,460 --> 00:32:50,510 lasts forever. 517 00:32:51,950 --> 00:32:55,070 Onome Ekeh: I've been trying to recreate that story, over and 518 00:32:55,070 --> 00:32:55,670 over. 519 00:32:56,870 --> 00:33:01,220 Alex Jordan: There's this idea that dreaming is feeding 520 00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,060 nonsense into the system, such that nonsense can be 521 00:33:05,060 --> 00:33:10,490 discriminated from sense. And this is, in fact, at a practical 522 00:33:10,490 --> 00:33:14,060 level, one of the methods we have to use in many of these 523 00:33:14,060 --> 00:33:18,470 technological approaches. We have to feed noise into the 524 00:33:18,470 --> 00:33:20,690 system to differentiate it from signal. 525 00:33:22,010 --> 00:33:24,380 Lucia Pietroiusti: And now of course, a machine is complex as 526 00:33:24,380 --> 00:33:25,730 the world itself is the world. 527 00:33:26,710 --> 00:33:28,000 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: Of course, it's hard to tell from 528 00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,300 these little tiny fragments of archaic poetry by people like 529 00:33:31,330 --> 00:33:35,830 Empedocles and Aeneas, how they related to these past selves, 530 00:33:35,980 --> 00:33:39,220 and indeed whether that animal incarnations dreamed in the same 531 00:33:39,220 --> 00:33:44,620 way of their human incarnations. Looking more broadly, we can see 532 00:33:44,620 --> 00:33:47,680 that there is a great amount of disagreement among poets and 533 00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:50,770 natural philosophers in antiquity, about which animals 534 00:33:50,770 --> 00:33:54,520 dreamed, what they dreamed about, all done on the basis of 535 00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:56,620 empirical observation and inference. 536 00:33:57,940 --> 00:34:01,150 Alex Jordan: And it is our hope that ultimately, by looking at 537 00:34:01,150 --> 00:34:04,630 these animals in their natural environment, by understanding 538 00:34:04,750 --> 00:34:08,170 their experiences, by understanding their context, by 539 00:34:08,170 --> 00:34:12,130 understanding their behavioral outputs, we can then bring them 540 00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:16,600 into the conversation — to tell us what they want, what their 541 00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:20,710 aesthetic preferences are, what their desires are. But also what 542 00:34:20,710 --> 00:34:23,920 their language means, and perhaps if we're lucky, what 543 00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,310 their subjective experience of the world may really be. 544 00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:31,260 Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe: If you look more broadly at the kind of 545 00:34:31,260 --> 00:34:35,160 spread of literary and visual production, you can see that 546 00:34:35,610 --> 00:34:38,820 there is some understanding that the world is interconnected and 547 00:34:38,820 --> 00:34:42,270 that human lives might contain echoes of a kind of previous 548 00:34:42,270 --> 00:34:46,920 vegetal animalistic existence. So it seems to me that there are 549 00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:50,760 lots of different explanations for where dreams come from in 550 00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,610 antiquity. And some of them are very naturalistic and sort of 551 00:34:53,610 --> 00:34:56,820 pragmatic and to do with bodily movements. And others are much 552 00:34:56,820 --> 00:35:01,200 more related to the sublime, be it the Divine or the Demonic — 553 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,770 and it's particularly there that you find notions that the dream 554 00:35:04,770 --> 00:35:08,280 might be an uncovering of something by some third agency. 555 00:35:08,490 --> 00:35:12,120 There might be some interest in revealing to humans... what else 556 00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:12,660 they've been. 557 00:35:31,860 --> 00:35:34,800 Mendel Skulski: This episode of Future Ecologies features the 558 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:40,140 words and voices of Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, Alex 559 00:35:40,140 --> 00:35:46,320 Jordan, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Rain Wu, Nahum Mantra, Onome 560 00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:52,650 Ekeh, Federico Campagna, Yussef Agbo-Ola, and Hatis Noit 561 00:35:53,130 --> 00:35:57,030 Adam Huggins: All recorded in November of 2022 as part of The 562 00:35:57,030 --> 00:35:59,550 Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish, 563 00:35:59,850 --> 00:36:02,220 Mendel Skulski: The remix of which you heard here was 564 00:36:02,220 --> 00:36:07,110 produced by me, Mendel Skulski, and my co host, Adam Huggins, 565 00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:12,690 Adam Huggins: with music by Yussef Agbo-Ola, Hatis Noit, 566 00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,510 Any-Angled Light, and Thumbug. 567 00:36:16,050 --> 00:36:18,990 Mendel Skulski: The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish, is 568 00:36:18,990 --> 00:36:23,250 a recurrent festival, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa 569 00:36:23,250 --> 00:36:27,150 Ramos, initiated by the Serpentine Galleries in London 570 00:36:27,180 --> 00:36:28,650 since 2018. 571 00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,620 Adam Huggins: And held last year in partnership with the Galeria 572 00:36:31,620 --> 00:36:33,060 Municipal do Porto. 573 00:36:33,750 --> 00:36:37,020 Mendel Skulski: Special thanks to Kostas Stasinopoulos, as well 574 00:36:37,020 --> 00:36:41,430 as Adam's Electric Sheep Radio co-hosts, Ryder Thomas White and 575 00:36:41,430 --> 00:36:43,950 Samantha Ruth who you heard briefly at the top. 576 00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:46,380 Adam Huggins: You can hear more from us 577 00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:49,830 Mendel Skulski: and reach out across the dream and say hello 578 00:36:50,310 --> 00:36:51,660 Adam Huggins: at futureecologies.net 579 00:36:52,710 --> 00:36:54,930 Mendel Skulski: Or wherever you find your podcasts. 580 00:36:55,770 --> 00:36:56,610 Adam Huggins: Until next time. 581 00:36:57,240 --> 00:36:57,930 Mendel Skulski: Dream easy.