Tarot and the AlloSphere –

Why Card Readers Should be at Home with Cutting Edge Science and Technology

Inside the AlloSphere – Photo by Kevin Steele

 

Communication is the mode of all human interaction. We use sound, gestures and images to evoke responses in one another. In reading Tarot and Oracle cards we seek answers in the story suggested by the images on randomized cards in various sequences. The poetry of the story speaks to us and we obtain inspiration and guidance. We are accessing many portals of communication in our readings and synthesize the mélange of information into guidance for our clients and ourselves.

Each method of communication carries other forms within it, i.e. writing may rely on sound, the structure of language, marketing and visual images. Music may rely on written form and has a structure of notes and harmonies. Imagine a new type of communication interaction that is a merging of virtually all modes of communication and data analysis into a mandala of form that is a brand new expression.

What if we could map sound into an interactive visual structure? What if we could have music invent itself? What if we could take a drop of water from an estuary, analyze it and create an unending three-dimensional display of all living organisms and structures within it and watch as life, death and evolution takes place? What if we could study the first 20-minute segment of time from when the Swiss Franc was decoupled from the Euro early this year and view the resultant impact on the world financial markets in a three and four dimensional display of data and effect?

I did more than imagine all of that last Friday. I visited the AlloSphere at UCSB.

In April, I had seen a presentation on this research facility at the annual Economic Summit, an event produced by the UCSB Economics Department. I found the most interesting content at this event was about the AlloSphere and social media. Economics is a pretty dry subject to an English major, but these topics made it much more interesting. UCSB Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, the Director of the AlloSphere Research Facility and a Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Professor of Music, gave a presentation on the AlloSphere facility including a slideshow on one of the topics I mentioned above – the surprise decoupling of the Swiss Franc from the Euro that occurred on Jan. 15, 2015. You can read my review on the Economic Summit here in my other co-incarnation as a commercial real estate broker.

After the Economic Summit I had expressed my fascination with the AlloSphere to a friend of our family who has ties to the Engineering Department at UCSB. She was kind enough to arrange tickets for our whole family (three of us) to see the AlloSphere in action at the annual party for the Engineering Department last Friday! I especially wanted our 16 year old son to see the exhibit to see what it sparked in him. This was an honor and we are greatly appreciative.

So, after lots of small talk with students and professors we entered the AlloSphere with around 30 people. One woman present told Professor Kuchera-Morin that she had flown in from China just to view the facility and to talk with her. I felt lucky that we were able to do the same and we only had to drive about 10 minutes!

My wife and I were overwhelmed by the presentation. Really, it was so much new information that we had a hard time just walking out, but it felt vaguely familiar to me! Our son was awestruck and appreciative, but more collected in wondering about the opportunities that will come from it.

I find it hard to describe the phenomenal experience that marries so many sciences and arts together into a blended expression so I am going to quote from the “About” section at www.allosphere.ucsb.edu:

“The AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story near-to-anechoic (echo free) cube, allows for synthesis, manipulation, exploration and analysis of large-scale data sets in an environment that can simulate virtually real sensorial perception. It is a physical place designed to facilitate creativity and incubate ideas via collaboration. Researchers find a multitude of interactive interfaces for research into: scientific visualization, numerical simulations, data mining, visual/aural abstract data representations, knowledge discovery, systems integration, human perception, and many other areas of inquiry.”

The AlloSphere is not just a very expensive virtual reality machine. It is an altogether new and unique exploration of our world. It is a collaboration of engineering, chemistry, biology, art, music and virtually all other disciplines to push the limits of analysis and communication.

“Scientifically, it is an instrument for gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture: abstract, higher-dimensional information spaces, the worlds of the very small or very large, and the realms of the very fast or very slow, in fields ranging from nanotechnology to theoretical physics, from proteomics to cosmology, from neurophysiology to the spaces of consciousness, and from new materials to new media.

Artistically, the AlloSphere is an instrument for the creation and performance of avant-garde new works and the development of entirely new modes and genres of expression and forms of immersion-based entertainment, fusing future art, architecture, music, media, games, cinema, and more.”

Ventures such as the AlloSphere are at the cutting edge of scientific and artistic inquiry. Our new world consists of ever-expansive combinations of information modalities. Young people take the concurrent use of many divergent communication modalities as the norm.

As accomplished readers we utilize language, art, intuition and knowledge in helping our clients and ourselves. In the merging of diverse disciplines and artistic expression we become a conduit for inspired answers. We explore the esoteric structure of communication even beyond the mundane and push those limits as a matter of course. Ideally, we are always learning because the universe is not static.

So, even though I was overloaded, I felt right at home in the AlloSphere. I enjoyed being inundated with new and exciting modes of information expression with the goal of further exploration of the universe. It strikes me that this is what I try and do this every time I read cards. So in a sense, the exercise didn’t seem so completely new after all!