Every Thought There Ever Was
Every Thought There Ever Was — Lindsay Seers
What & When
A new large-scale artwork and touring exhibition (2018-20) by British artist Lindsay Seers, concerned with the phenomenon of consciousness. The work was co-commissioned by five UK arts organisations and funded by Wellcome Trust, a charitable foundation supporting scientific research into life, health and wellbeing. Incorporating industrial robotics in conjunction with a three-screen video projection, Every Thought There Ever Was explores and makes tangible the extraordinary brain functioning that occurs in the condition of schizophrenia. I contributed to the production management of the final phase of the project between November 2017 - May 2018, seeing it through to its inaugural exhibition at The MAC, Belfast.
How & Who
The artwork embodies philosophical ideas and scientific research concerned with the phenomenon of consciousness through digital animation, special effects, drawing and sound design. Two screens in motion, animated by industrial robot arms, are accompanied by a soundscape of a layered, 7-channel voiceover. Seer’s process was informed by first person accounts and a collaborative drawing exchange with people living with schizophrenia. The project came together through dialogue with Anil Seth at The Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, and Chris Frith, Emeritus and Professor of Neuropsychology, UCL. The work draws specifically on an experimental treatment known as Avatar Therapy.
Why
“Understanding the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the great challenges for 21st century science”, according to Anil Seth, professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. The work of Seth and his peers at The Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, a partner in the production of this artwork, is concerned with moving away from a Cartesian understanding of selfhood, that draws a divide between body and mind, instead showing how perception of the world around us, and of ourselves within it, happens with, through, and because of our living bodies. This in turn situates us in “a context in which we are more part of, and less apart from, the rest of nature” (Seth, 2020).