Improvising Consciousness

"Do you ever feel you can't put the true richness of your thoughts into words? Do you ever wake up and find the solution to a nagging problem is suddenly in your head? What is really going on in our minds: hiding in there behind language? My lecture will explain!"

Improvising Consciousness is a performative lecture by Professor Årnstay, Professor of Material and Analogical Eco-Cognition visiting from an "unspecified time and place." The lecture addresses questions of situated consciousness, and pre- & post- human identity.

With conscious paradox, the Improvising Consciousness uses dramatic story-telling to make an argument that language and narrative distort and limit our cognitive capacities. As Professor Årnstay puts it, "Our minds have never been exclusively in our heads, have they? But the worlds inside our minds are as extensive, multiple and varied as the environments that engender them. Come and explore them with me."

The Improvising Consciousness performative lecture and participatory activities have evolved iteratively in a production/performance cycle. The core of the project is this performative lecture that purports to be a scholarly account of human cognition from 2.5M BCE to 3,000 CE.

Performed by Josephine Anstey, Associate Professor and chair of UB's Department of Media Study, Improvising Consciousness cognitive exercise will be part of Cleveland's Performance Art Festival curated in "ENACT" an online exhibition that will accompany "Present and Accounted," the festival's 25th anniversary, and will also be presented at the Creativity and Cognition Conference in Sydney in June 2013.