More than skin and bones, the body is a hotly contested item. Without it we wouldn’t exist, yet our efforts to transcend it, escape it and control it are as…

Electronic music is a kind of rhythmic intelligence that escapes the boundaries of the tonal. Operating as a kind of sonic life-form, electronica incorporates a host of samples, wavelengths and…

Trance parties, festivals, squat-parties and ‘alternative’ cultural events’ are highly contested spaces. Aside from the invariable troubles they pick up with authorities, they are often prone to internal conflicts over…

Swarming insects are the defining symbols of our newly emergent global culture. Assailed by a raging sea of pictures, icons and branded coding, the humanity of the new millennium is…

In Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, Eric Drexler outlines what promises to be the technology of the 21st century. In a nutshell, Drexler describes how the genetic…

The sacred dance, in Maya cosmology, was represented in the sinuous curves of the Vision Serpent - a symbolic representation of the axis of communication between the human world and…

Alongside the emergence of standardised tools and art, writing is one of the most important cultural revolutions undergone by our species. Yet, the emergence of script marked the end of…

Contemporary technologically advanced societies appear to have actualized magic. Humans living in these cultures harness energies that were once the providence of sorcerers: they can fly, communicate instantly, cure ailments…

In the course of a research expedition to Sicily in 1638, the alchemist Athanasius Kircher had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius. There, perched on a rock in the…

Welcome to the postmodern present where reality is remixed ‘live’ to CNN theme-muzak. In a world where the real is no longer hip enough, there can be no talk of…