Panel 07 Travelling to Other Worlds and Altered States of Consciousness: Human-Artificial relational interactions and living worlds in the Age of Aquarius

In popular consciousness, 1969 marked the completion of the 2,150 years astrological cycle and transition from the Age of Capricorn to the Age of Aquarius, as part of the 25,772 years natural gyroscopic precession of Earth's axis. It also marked the year when the Apollo 11 mission stepped foot on the Moon, broadcasted live on TV sets across the world. A year later, Gene Youngblood published his famous book on "expanded cinema," which aimed to opening the "horizons beyond the point of infinity" moving Humanity's "oceanic consciousness" towards a "cosmic consciousness." Since that time, media performance technologies have made huge leaps in modes and means of audio-visual representation, introducing interactive live technologies, cyber environments, virtual and augmented realities, establishing virtual utopian and/or dystopian Other Worlds in which humans co-exist via their Avatar personalities, developing primary artificial and human interactions via board games, and even developing spiritual interactions between humans and AI. This panel calls for papers focusing on the rapid development of "metaverses" as interactive fields and/or performances, as a means of mapping the emergence of a new universal meta-human consciousness, to reflect upon the role Anthropology can play as an active agent of change.