Augmented Reality and The Extended Mind
“I wondered whether one could imagine something one had never experienced, in particular whether one could imagine a colour one had never seen. I built up a sort of pharmacological mountain, and when I was very loaded, this connected my mind with the seventh colour of the spectrum: indigo, and the fact that no two people will ever agree on what is indigo or whether there is an indigo. I said to myself at the peak of my experience, I want to see indigo now and suddenly as if thrown by a paintbrush, a trembling pear shaped blob of indigo appeared on the wall. I leant towards it in a sort of ecstasy, it was a colour I’d never seen. I thought, purely metaphorically of course, this is the colour of heaven ... which Giotto had tried to get, but never could. I also thought, it’s a colour which is no longer in the world. This was the colour of the Paleozoic sea that disappeared, and as I leant forward the blob disappeared, but I somehow felt that blob not only as luminous but as numinous” -Oliver Sacks CBE FRCP

My practice of virtual psychedelics aims to extend the mind using technology instead of psychotropic drugs. In the same way Oliver Sacks experiences new visions through psycho pharmaceuticals, I use Augmented Reality (AR) technology to create supernormal experiences.

In 1956 William Ross Ashby wrote of intelligence amplification by machines in his book, An Introduction to Cybernetics. It was another 40 years before philosophers Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers proposed that our cognition comes from neural, bodily, and environmental processes, calling it The Extended Mind. Since then, the internet and smart phones have proven to be convincing demonstrations of this hypothesis. Our phones are our irreplaceable memory and knowledge stores, communication devices, and navigation systems; essential tools that we can’t live without. David Chalmers takes this one step further in his latest book Reality + suggesting that in the future, a stolen smart phone will register as assault rather than theft; a violation of the extended mind.

Augmented Reality adds new layers of complexity and richness to mind extension and super intelligence. AR contact lenses will replace glasses, and connect to AI systems predicted to be a billion times more intelligent than humans by 2049. As AR becomes our portal to metaverses with infinite possibilities, and our gateway to infinite intelligence, it’s hard to imagine why anyone will choose to live without it.

5-HT Daytrip AR Created to compliment the One Small Step installation at “Art in the Age of Now” (London May 2021 (https://artbelow.org/projects/art-in-the-age-of-now/project-spaces/#onesmallstep).AR flowerhead avatars float in a gravity free out-of-this world space, encircled by revolving colour ball comets and a translucent earth. Merging space with virtual psychedelics to evoke a cybernaut adventure “the Goal of the trip is ecstasy”. Daytrip was later presented by CADAF at Digital Art Month Paris in June 2021(https://www.digitalartmonth.com/paris), and in Denderhook Belgium with XRT(https://xrtimmersive.com).
Link to effect: https://www.instagram.com/ar/4220520011293908/

Formerly founder and creative director of high-end accessories label Glovedup Gloves. For over a decade Laura crafted trend-defining gloves and showpieces for designers and divas like Anna Piaggi, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Peaches, Rihanna, among many others. Her accessories and gloves featured extensively in British and Italian Vogue editorials, among many other style bibles.