Artist: Erwin Jeneralczyk
Curator: Adriana Markowska
If the level of consciousness is a measure of evolution, and consciousness is the realm where information is experienced, then the evolutionary cycle plays out beyond human beings; beyond us. We have already learned. The past and the present are two realities merging into a single path of possible outcomes. Artificial intelligence is becoming an anthropomorphic replica of the human brain; it searches through one’s still unbridled imagination for associations.
The word prompt comes from the Latin verb promptus, which means ready, quick, or willing. In English, it originally referred to the act of prompting an actor who had forgotten their lines during a performance. Over time, the meaning of the word expanded to include the concept of a cue, encouragement, or readiness to act. In some religions, the word prompt can be interpreted as divine inspiration or an inner voice guiding a person on the right path.
The process of thinking is a journey. A journey teaches, among other things, how to reach the destination as quickly as possible. This is useful but also dangerous. Unused neurons wither. They become increasingly weak, so that well-trodden paths become the only possible ones.
The absorbing extended imagination in Jeneralczyk’s works, the collective consciousness of the neural network, on the one hand, generates new possibilities for experience, and on the other hand, is entangled in an anthropocentric perspective. It leads us to a slowdown. Both in the sense of movement, understood as a deceleration that leads to increased mindfulness, and also in the sense of a withdrawal from the responsibility of navigating familiar areas. A gradual divergence of definitions occurs. Words break away from their meanings. They become intruders. Meanings begin to re-emerge. But what if the mere “expression of willingness” itself becomes a fleeting manifestation of a new kind of consciousness in a non-human entity learning analogously to how early humans observed shapes long before language existed?
Jeneralczyk creates an imaginarium composed of hyperobjects, where hyper does not signify size, and the object can be anything – the definition becomes illusory. The use of illusion should be separated from negative connotations, and perception elevated to the next level. “If we call hallucinations uncontrolled perception, then we can define perception as controlled hallucination.”*
*Muthukumaraswamy S., Carhart-Harris R. L., Moran R. J., Brookes M. J., Williams, T. M., Errtizoe D., et al. (2013) – Broadband cortical desynchronization underlies the human psychedelic state.
