Beyond Binary Seminar Brussels

 

Non-Dual Perspectives on Art and Technology

The seminar Beyond Binary brings together artists, thinkers, and researchers to reflect on how emerging technologies challenge binary paradigms – digital/analogue, material/immaterial, real/virtual – and how such opposites may instead be seen as deeply intertwined.

Non-dual perspectives offer ways of understanding technology and reality that move beyond binary thinking. The Buddhist concept of non-duality, for instance, suggests that distinctions like self/other or subject/object are ultimately illusory, pointing instead to an interconnected reality. This resonates with quantum mechanics, where entanglement reveals interdependence that undermines the notion of separate entities.

Non-duality encourages us to look past fixed states, embracing paradox, ambiguity, and the “both-and” nature of reality. This aligns with the probabilistic logic of quantum mechanics, where outcomes are expressed as probabilities rather than certainties.

Adopting such views allows us to expand both philosophically and ethically in our engagement with technology, providing a vital framework for reimagining the boundaries of art, technology, and thought.

 

With talks, panels, and a workshop by Kristof Timmerman, Steven Humblet, Koenraad Jonckheere, Martina Menegon, Marcel Van Brakel (Polymorf), David Young, Victorine Van Alphen, Ilona Puskás (New European Bauhaus), Vanessa Hannesschläger (Ars Electronica) and CREW.

This seminar is organized by the research groups of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, Maxlab and Thinking Tools, in collaboration with ARIA (Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts).

More information and free registration: https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/research-groups/aria/activities/research-seminars/beyond-binary/