Shifter Magazine 16 special issue on Pluripotential.
Edited by Sreshta Rit Premnath & Warren Neidich
Contributors: Éric Alliez , Bernard Andrieu, Eric Anglès , Kader Attia, Elena Bajo, Lindsay Benedict , Nicholas Chase, Seth Cluett , Zoe Crosher , Krysten Cunningham, Yevgeniy Fiks , Dan Levenson, Antje Majewski , T. Kelly Mason, Michele Masucci , Daniel Miller, Seth Nehil , Warren Neidich, Susanne Neubauer, Hans Ulrich Obrist , Chloe Piene, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Linda Quinlan, Patricia Reed , Silva Reichwein, Barry Schwabsky, Gemma Sharpe, Amy Sillman , Francesco Spampinato, Tyler Stallings, Laura Stein, Clarissa Tossin , Brindalyn Webster , Lee Welch , Olav Westphalen …
It is symptomatic of the current plight of concept of ‘potentiality’ that one requires the prefix ‘pluri’ to denote an understanding of a highly diversified notion of the term. The dichotomous relationship that has been instantiated between the ‘potential’ and the ‘actual’ is an unfortunate simplification, in which potentiality is reduced to a state of waiting for a catalytic event in order to render it productive, to render it actual, to render it other. This dichotomous relationship between the potential and the actual is inferred by such general statements as a “child has the potential to know“(1), signifying that the child “…must …
Part 1.
“…The most extensive modification to take place in human brain evolution – the disproportionate expansion of the cerebral cortex, and specifically of the prefrontal cortex – reflects the evolutionary adaptation to this intensive working memory processing demand imposed by symbol learning. So the very nature of symbolic reference, and its unusual cognitive demands when compared to non-symbolic forms of reference, is a selection force working on those neurological resources most critical to supporting it. In the context of a society heavily dependent on symbol use-as is any conceivable human society, but no nonhuman societies-brains would have been under intense selection to adapt to …