Alchemy: Messy, Strange... Human
Scrolling, scrolling .. a hit, a like, a moment of capture,… dopamine, … cortisol, … the crash, … a digital hangover. Algorithms guide and nudge to make sure we do one thing in the mediasphere, be predictable so that we can be co-opted (a product), and monetized (a good consumer of products). Sure it feels like what we wished for, just a little less real, less trustworthy… cortisol… stress…begin again, … maybe this time it’ll feel more ‘natural’? …repeat.
In a reality less binary than the internet of things, humans practice stagecraft, immersive theater and art. Unpredictable and mysterious, no one knows the outcome. You may put on a mask not knowing how you’ll feel or what you’ll do. Part of you may dissolve, melt, and coagulate forming something new.
In Knowing’s Art & Alchemy of Transmutation episode artist Carl Johan Bridge turns us on to the practice of alchemy to take us from a landscape made barren by machine into something more akin to what came before and, to what we are, life. Carl’s a percussionist, life size puppet maker, visual artist, and art teacher. He practices alchemy and tells us how we may too. It’s the art of transmutation, it’s magic, the weird, messy, wonderful stuff of unpredictable humans. The metaphors of alchemy: forge, melt, distill, burn off, calcify, solvate, … are hot, messy, and strange, like us!
Listen to Carl on alchemy on episode 4 of Knowing, a podcast about the synthesis of knowledge as the ground of creativity and insight.
Featured on this episode is visual artist Ranier Wood, award winning author Lona Godin, banjo virtuoso Tony Furtado, and musician Chocolate George.