‘extensions’ is a collaborative project spanning across disciplines investigating the mysteries of matter. What is matter made from? How does our perception affect our definitions of understanding the basic make up of the universe? How can we illuminate the invisible? Can we make the unseen tangible? What role do our cognitive processes play in filling the void?
Since Aristotle, matter is made of “prime matter”, the stuff of the world – a fringe and intricate concept that has fascinated thinkers for centuries. Although providing concreteness, tangibility, and resistance to the universe, prime matter is in itself non-concrete, non-extended, intangible, and unknowable. As a consequence, the corporeal existence of the world is grounded on an enigma—the marginal existence of a shadow which is not here or there, which is not to be seen or smelled or touched but, like a mother, breeds all bodies to their concreteness. Calcidius, (a commentator of Plato from the 4th century), compared that knowledge to seeing the darkness and perceiving an absence. It is the raising of a doubt within us—a doubt concerning the structure of reality and a doubt that led and still leads philosophers and scientists to question the nature of existence.
How can absence can be perceived, a loss be present, a shadow be seen? These questions have intrigued scientists and philosophers, theologians and poets for centuries. The epistemic accesses they constructed shall be de-constructed in order to gain a new vision of the invisible intertwining of cognitions, existences, and extensions governing the peripheries of our understanding.
Our project aims towards this re-construction. A collective effort of scientists and artists, philosophers and historians focused on trespassing the limitations of the epistemic world we ourselves have constructed, disciplinarily and culturally.
Since Aristotle, matter is made of “prime matter”, the stuff of the world – a fringe and intricate concept that has fascinated thinkers for centuries. Although providing concreteness, tangibility, and resistance to the universe, prime matter is in itself non-concrete, non-extended, intangible, and unknowable. As a consequence, the corporeal existence of the world is grounded on an enigma—the marginal existence of a shadow which is not here or there, which is not to be seen or smelled or touched but, like a mother, breeds all bodies to their concreteness. Calcidius, (a commentator of Plato from the 4th century), compared that knowledge to seeing the darkness and perceiving an absence. It is the raising of a doubt within us—a doubt concerning the structure of reality and a doubt that led and still leads philosophers and scientists to question the nature of existence.
How can absence can be perceived, a loss be present, a shadow be seen? These questions have intrigued scientists and philosophers, theologians and poets for centuries. The epistemic accesses they constructed shall be de-constructed in order to gain a new vision of the invisible intertwining of cognitions, existences, and extensions governing the peripheries of our understanding.
Our project aims towards this re-construction. A collective effort of scientists and artists, philosophers and historians focused on trespassing the limitations of the epistemic world we ourselves have constructed, disciplinarily and culturally.
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