The Tao of Technoetic Arts

I think the key word that links the process in design, in architecture and art that I’m talking about, and the Tao, is immersion. The Tao is a recognition that we are immersed in the flow. We are the flow. We’re not – we’re not there isn’t, like, a float that we enter. We are immersed– we are part of it. And I think what the Tao teaches us is to realize that we are part of the flow. And that we are the path. So, you know, many other kinds of disciplines and religions put the path, or put knowledge, something, over there, that has to be sort of apprehended. It seems to me the Tao says you are, we are in it.

We just have to open ourselves to this flow that is taking place. But it calls for integrity and that is the discipline of Taoism. You know, it calls for diligence, it calls for, you know, awareness that we are part of the flow. But that is my understanding, and that I think is the connection. We’re now immersed as artists in developing processes. So there is a structure, there are independent elements, and all together, they are dealing with this larger field which we’re describing, that consists of art, technology, or I should say technologies, and consciousness, and the mind.

And the very question of consciousness is key to all of this, and this is what relates us to our understanding, such as we have, of the Tao. That consciousness, we consider to be a field. We consider the brain to be an organ of access to that field. We do not think that the brain is muscle and matter that generates consciousness. And from that kind of model, we are very much I think related to tradition and to Taoist thought, which is important to us. That there is a field, that we are the field, we are part of that field of consciousness. We don’t create it, we navigate it, and that has consequences for our practice.

And some of those consequences are structured within the actual curriculum of the course.