Thoughts & Insights

We make conscious use of the capability of our brain when we are awake. But we also use it unconsciously when we are not awake. When we are asleep or falling asleep or dozing in a half-sleep we seem to switch off our brain or at least to run it on such a low level that we believe it’s switched off. But that’s just an illusion.

This was the intriguing title given to a panel discussion held on 2 June at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art during this year’s World Science Festival.

Can you really remember something you’ve never seen before? And if you really can, how can this be possible?

If I’ve chosen to write about OUBEY and the Fosbury Flop today, it’s because I was inspired by the brilliant introductory talk Professor Peter Kruse gave at the opening night of the OUBEY Global Encounters Tour in Berlin two weeks ago.

“I like the idea of my paintings travelling”, OUBEY once said. “I hope they would fascinate an original inhabitant of South America just as much as an Inuit or native New Yorker.”

Up to about fifteen thousand years ago, our ancestors were nomads living in a simple world of the transitory present. Feeding themselves by hunting and gathering, they could see no further than the immediate satisfaction of their daily needs.

Perhaps paradise hasn’t been the dream of all peoples at all times throughout history. But it is certainly one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring dreams.

“This picture reminds me of the Burgess Shale, the Cambrian Explosion 500 million years ago,” exclaimed Seth Shostak, Chief Astronomer at the SETI Institute for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Mountain View, when he unveiled the painting I’d brought with me for the Encounter with OUBEY. And he didn’t know that OUBEY had called this painting “Krypto”.

As human consciousness develops, which direction is it taking? When and how will artificial intelligence became a genuine strong factor with a real impact on our lives on this planet? Will we be able to prolong our life span indefinitely by ‘hacking’ into the biological code – and what would be the consequences? Is there such a thing as extraterrestrial intelligence and if there is, what – if anything – would it find interesting in our human race? What shape will the cosmos take in the next ten billion years?

After intensifying my treatment of space colony prototypes, I stumbled upon a topic of another kind entirely in recent weeks.

We search for life on other planets and investigate the possibilities of extraterrestrial intelligence.

On the evening of 11 August 2004 I had a phone call. It was from someone who had heard of OUBEYs death in a car crash the week before and who was ringing me to express his sorrow.