Mare Incognito is a performance by Daniela de Paulis, during which sleep is recorded and transmitted into space in real time. During the performance (Spring 2022), we will record and transmit sonified EEG signals to space in real time as radio waves. The work aims at exploring the gradual dissolution of consciousness and of the thinking process while falling asleep. We are especially interested in exploring the moment during the sleep cycle while awareness seems to dissolve and the self gradually detaches from the continuous narrative thread we carry in our mind. 
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The perceived loss of consciousness as we transition into sleep is the only moment in daily life when the thinking process gradually dissolves into a form of 'nothingness', perhaps the same nothingness experienced during the process of dying. Mare Incognito thus poetically explores and draws reflection upon the process of dying as a daily occurrence in human life. In Mare Incognito the mind is converted into radio waves that move as the physical, yet invisible extension of the mind into outer space. The mind fuses with the cosmic distances, posing questions about the limits of human bodily presence.

Click here to see more work by Daniela de Paulis.

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People

Daniela de Paulis is a trans-disciplinary artist, licensed radio operator and radio telescope operator. From 2009 to 2019 she was based at the Dwingeloo radio telescope, where she developed the Visual Moonbounce technology and a series of innovative projects combining radio technologies with live performance art and neuroscience. Since 2010 she has collaborated with a number of organisations, including Astronomers Without Borders and more recently with the Human Space Program. She is a member of the IAA SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Permanent Committee. She is the recent recipient of the Baruch Bloomberg Fellowship in Astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory (USA). She is a regular host for the Wow! Signal Podcast.

Tristan Bekinschtein is a biologist, Master in Neurophysiology and PhD in Neuroscience, Buenos Aires University. In 2011 he founded the Consciousness and Cognition Lab at the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge. He is a Wellcome Trust Fellow and a Turing Fellow. Tristan works on the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, primarily on the fragmentation of cognition as we lose consciousness while falling asleep or getting sedated; on the cognitive and neural differences between conscious states; and on the interaction between attention and consciousness in health and disease.

Çağatay Demirel did a bachelor in computer science and engineering at Marmara University, Istanbul, and at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and a master in computer science and engineering at Istanbul Technical University. After some time as a machine learning engineer in the industry, he joined the Donders Sleep & Memory Lab for his PhD on BCI and machine learning applications on sleep and dreaming.

Martin Dresler is an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Donders Institute / Radboud University Medical Center. He was trained in biopsychology, philosophy and mathematics at Ruhr University, Bochum; received his PhD from Philipps University, Marburg; and performed postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Oxford University and Stanford University. The research of his group centers on the cognitive neuroscience of sleep, including cognitive processes occurring during sleep and the role of sleep for memory processes, neuroplasticity and general cognitive functioning.

Alejandro Ezquerro-Nassar recently completed a PhD in Psychology at the Consciousness and Cognition Lab, University of Cambridge (2021). His research involves the use of EEG and statistical modelling techniques to investigate the neural-cognitive dynamics of the sleep onset period as well as the phenomenology of hypnagogic states. He also serves as Research Impact Manager for Dream in Cosmos, generating and maintaining collaborations between researchers and artists. He currently supervises the knowledge transfer and public engagement activities for the Dream in Cosmos group.

Jarrod Gott did a master in neuroscience at Swinburne University, Melbourne, investigating the neural and behavioural correlates of mental imagery. Jarrod is focused on modelling the relationship between phenomenal perception, electrophysiological activity and agent control; particularly regarding aberrant metacognitive states. He is presently working as a researcher at the Donders Institute, Nijmegen, investigating the neural and psychological mechanisms that underpin metacognition in healthy, psychotic and altered conscious states. He is specifically interested in lucid dreaming, mind-wandering, imagination and hallucinosis as a continuous spectrum of phenomena.

Thomas Moynihan a writer and researcher from the UK. He completed a PhD at Oriel College, Oxford (2019) on the history of human extinction, and has worked with Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, supported by grants from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative and Long-Term Future Fund. Thomas is interested in the history of existential risk and of existential hope: that is, how people first came to understand the perils and promises that face us as a species.

Fabian Schmidt is a scientific staff member (Forschungsgruppenleiter) at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik (MPA), Garching (near Munich), Germany. He is interested in all aspects of cosmology, and has also worked on weak gravitational lensing and cosmic ray physics.

Mirjam Somers is a visual artist from the Netherlands whose video stills portray the fragile balance between humans, animals, and nature. After studying sculpture at the St. Joost School of Art & Design in Den Bosch, The Netherlands, she completed her postgraduate degree in video making at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. Besides her artwork, Mirjam also produces, and collaborates on, short informative films for a broad range of clients. During the pandemic, she started her project Daily Drawings, a series of 200 drawings.

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