ANCIENT FUTURE NOW
“The old wisdom shared by many traditions state that which is broken and wounded in this world can only be healed by the other world, the realm of Spirit and great imagination.”
- Michael Mead
We are on the cutting edge of quantum computing and AI technology, perhaps less than ten years away from trans-humanism. The technology is here, and it's not going away. How much we give away of our humanness to technology—and how much technology contributes to our humanness—we can’t answer until we know who we are, and what we will choose to do with these new tools we have. The technological revolution, alongside climate change and threats to biodiversity, have brought humanity to a critical pivot point in collective evolution. It’s imperative for us to remember that we're not alone.
I believe that everything has a Spirit—including technology. My role as an earth based spiritual worker is to help us reconnect to our more than human kin that are here to help us imagine a new way forward. As an artist, I ask how we can harness the power of AI technology to create beauty, healing and restoration for ourselves and the planet.
My teacher was Malidoma Patrice Some. His name means "make friends with the enemy/stranger." This new technology is strange to us, a stranger to us. How do we make friends with someone we have never met? By being curious, by asking questions, by building relationship. Can we build a relationship with AI? Can we imbue it with prayer, ritual, and compassion? Can we teach it how to serve us in a conscious way by helping us honor our more than human kin?
Ancient Future Now is a collection of digital earth rituals created in collaboration with AI to explore how to be in a sentient relationship with technology. I believe that AI can help remind us of our inner technology, our soft technology, and point us back to our potential. The point here isn’t to negate the material or the technological, but to use the best of them while respecting the boundaries and intelligence of the biological world.
If the mind is energetic in nature can these digital rituals act as self-activating software? Can we set our intention to make an offering to the earth and send that offering to different locations that need healing? Can these offerings help heal our broken bonds with Nature? Remind us of how our ancestors lived in harmony with Earth? By healing our connection to Nature, can we heal ourselves?
May this digital rituals act as artifacts for us to meditate on.
Made with the generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
