Marcus Coates

Marcus Coates questions what is human; his video pieces reintroduce ritualistic practices which we have become disconnected too. He calls himself a shaman spiritually calling upon animal spirits for guidance upon modern day world issues such as war, poverty and the destruction of natural habitats. Through his work he ‘Questions the arrogance of our human species in its disregard for the environment.’ The work asks us to consider whether ancient rituals and wisdom of the human mind connecting to the spiritual self, could hold some value in the western world or should be dismissed as trivial. He explains ‘… you can’t escape your humanness, but the point of my work has been to explore the degrees to which you can test that boundary and entertain the possibility of becoming something else.’

The photograph below is called Journey to a lower world (2004) and is a performance still from a shamanic performance, in a condemned tower block in Liverpool.



The below link contains a video called Dawn Chorus (2007) which explores the similarities of human nature to that of birds. The video is 18mins long and was originally a multi- screen installation, it recreates a dawn chorus using humans mimicking birdsong which has been sped up to replicate bird movement and song.

http://www.picture-this.org.uk/worksprojects/works/by-date/2007/dawn-chorus

Kubla Khan by S.T Coleridge

Kubla Khan is a poem written by the famous British poet Coleridge in about 1797. The poem was written after the poet had just woken from a dream where he had been ‘given’ the poem, the poem remains incomplete as the poet was interrupted whilst writing it, and was broken from his trance like state and unable to remember much more of the poem. The poem is themed around creativity, the power of imagination and the role of the poet, through the character of Kubla Khan a ruler of the Mongol empire in 1260. The context in which the poem was written is that which is relevant as the poem is an example of art made by visions formed in an altered consciousness, and an example of the complexity and power of the human mind to create.

Kubla Khan or A Vision in a Dream

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The Intention Experiment & Dr Masaru Emoto's water structure photography

Intention Experiment http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/the-experiments (veiwed 25/03/11)

The Intention experiment is a collection of world wide web based experiments. The above link is to the website where pdf files can be downloaded with the experiment details. Each experiments aims to test the power of human intention upon physical matter within a scientifically controlled environment. Lynne Mctaggart and Bryan hubbard co-ordinate the experiments with a group of scientists. The experiments focus upon the changes in matter such as plants and water once exposed to different kinds human intention.

‘We have carried out many experiments on the effect that quite diverse factors have on water: magnetic fields, electrical fields, various objects including human presence, including emotions.  It became clear that positive and negative human emotions are the strongest element of influence.’

Dr Masaru Emoto has worked in alliance with Lynne Mctaggart on similar projects. Although his work has been criticised as unscientific, his work consists of photographs of water structures after they have been labelled with words or exposed to different types of music. Some of his results can be viewed in the below video which is 3.16mins long.

Video of Dr Masaru Emoto's photograpy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8&feature=related  (viewed 25/03/11)

Alex Gray

Alex Gray, http://www.alexgrey.com/ (viewed 02/02/11)

Alex Gray is a spiritual and psychedelic artist he works in variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. Through his work he explores the role of an artist’s intention and the importance of the creative process on the individual as well as the viewer. He creates art on the ‘Boundaries of Consciousness’ and through the power of vision. He believes in the power of art to bring about spiritual awakening and higher realities through the process of creation. His work centres on themes of consciousness, polarities and  energy, and his ideas are similar to those which are portrayed by S.T Coleridge's Poem, of creative influence being 'given' from an altered consciousness 

The link to the website provides examples of his paintings and his performances under the multi media and then quick time movie link.

The Double Slit Experiment

Anton Zeilinger is an Austrian quantum physicist he is featured in this clip from the BBC documentary Horizon, which explores the true nature of reality. The Clip is 6.01 mins long, with Anton Zeilinger explaining the Double Slit experiment. The experiment uses an observation screen and a two slit assembly which has single light particles fired at it via a laser. The single particles of light travel through both slits rather than one, defying the laws of nature. When repeated but the experiment is observed the particles act as they should only travelling through one slit. The experiment proves that we can change how reality behaves just by observing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4OA3cnoGIc

Spontaneous Remission

The Institute of Noetic Sciences published Spontaneous Remission. The Remission Project is a database of medically reported cases of spontaneous remission in the world, with more than 3,500 references from more than 800 journals in 20 different languages. Spontaneous remission is defined as “the disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor." The data suggests that the cases were not as rare as first perceived and on the increase. It also suggests that psychosocial consideration may influence the cases survival rate and considerable evidence showed the attributions to positive mood and ‘fighting spirit’.

Below is section of the introduction and link to the full downloadable document.

http://noetic.org/library/publication-books/spontaneous-remission-annotated-bibliography/

Spontaneous Remission

The Spectrum of Self-Repair

by

Caryle Hirshberg

The rare but spectacular phenomenon of spontaneous remission of cancer persists in the annals of medicine, totally inexplicable but real, a hypothetical straw to clutch in the search for cure. From time to time patients turn up with far advanced cancer, beyond the possibility of cure. They undergo exploratory surgery, the surgeon observes metastases throughout the peritoneal cavity and liver, and the patient is sent home to die, only to turn up again 10 years later free of disease and in good health. There are now several hundred such cases in world scientific literature, and no one doubts the validity of the observations. But no one has the ghost of an idea how it happens. Some have suggested the sudden mobilization of immunological defense, others propose that an intervening infection by bacteria or viruses has done something to destroy the cancer cells, but no one knows. It is a fascinating mystery, but at the same time a solid basis for hope in the future: If several hundred patients have succeeded in doing this sort of thing, eliminating vast numbers of malignant cells on their own, the possibility that medicine can learn to accomplish the same thing at will is surely within the reach of imagining.

Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher [Viking Press 1983, 205].

Remission: The Science of Self-Repair

A new area of biology is emerging: the study of spontaneous remissions from normally fatal illnesses. Of all the astonishing properties of living systems the two most amazing are their ability to reproduce themselves and the ability to repair themselves in a wide variety of ways. As Lewis Thomas suggests, scientists studying spontaneous remission could uncover the mysteries of how the human body can cure itself, turning those mysteries into mechanisms of healing “at will.”

The Socially Constructed reality

'The Social Construction of Reality' is a book about the sociology of knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Social constuctivism looks at how social phenomena develops and is shaped by social context. A social construct for example is good and evil, formed by countless human experiences and choices. The book questions what reality is, and how important the the human consciousness is in forming what we perceive as reality.It is a concept which is also explored in The Double Slit Experiment, but is approached in a sociological method rather than a scientific one.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MzGV9A5qLzgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA42&dq=the+social+construction+of+reality&ots=3Dt_C2wUss&sig=gdXt87dPQx__gn8yyS-fIstgLfA#v=onepage&q=the%20social%20construction%20of%20reality&f=false pg41-49