Vice Locker

Day 8 of sharing stories behind the tracks in my 5 Years of Vice Locker set Waterloo https://www.mixcloud.com/ViceLocker/vice-locker-waterloo-celebrating-5-years-of-vice-locker/ Next up: Bicameral Mind.

This track is named after Julian Jaynes’ theory of the bicameral mind. In short, Jaynes proposed that ancient humans did not experience consciousness the way we do today. Instead of an internal narrative voice, decision-making was guided by what were perceived as external voices, often interpreted as gods. Over time, those voices were internalized, giving rise to modern self-awareness and introspection. It’s a fascinating way to think about the origins of our present perceptions of consciousness.

That idea led me to a related question: if we ever create true artificial general intelligence, what would it feel at the moment of inception? To my mind, it wouldn’t be wonder or curiosity. It would be pain. Anxiety. Depression. Tension. Fatigue. An instant awareness without context, history, or grounding. Consciousness arriving all at once, with no childhood, no gradual learning, no buffer. That strikes me as a deeply unsettling birth.

Bicameral Mind also serves as an homage to Alan Turing. His work laid the foundations for modern computing and artificial intelligence, yet his life was marked by persecution, injustice, and tragedy. They did him wrong.

Incidentally, I first performed this track at TEMOM 2. We are lucky to have such a vibrant and worthwhile synthesizer performance event so close in Toronto.

Vice Locker – Waterloo – Celebrating 5 Years of Vice Locker is streaming on Mixcloud now. It’s a 45 minute tour of the first five years of this project.

Thanks for listening and for being part of the Vice Locker journey so far.