A disturbing implication of the technological race is the possibility that in the future there will be neuroenhanced people who will compete with an advantage over those who will continue to be subject to the limitations of analogical thinking, or because they cannot afford the upgrade (implanted chips? ) or because they will prefer not to. The debate is not new. It has been planned for years. Kazuo Ishiguro developed it in La Klara i el sol (Anagrama, 2021) and, in a way, Orwell already suggested it in his book The Way to Wigan Pier, from 1937.
In the field of the arts, the possibility of neuroenhancement is now advancing with generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, as harmful to the property rights of creators as they are stimulating if new frontiers of art are explored. It is too early to tell to what extent this technological evolution will determine the kind of artistic or literary creations that will exist, be commoditized and consumed in the coming years, but the enormous potential of new AI artifacts invites us to think that the effect will be relevant
It’s true: neuroenhancement, under other names, has existed since humans discovered the stimulating power of wine or opium in ancient times. Countless artists have wanted to expand their creative universe thanks to psychotropic substances. One was the poet, novelist and essayist Robert Graves (1895-1985), whose work is now being republished and updated in paperback format by Alianza Editorial, covering some gaps.
Not only did Graves use psychotropic substances (psilocybin mushrooms) to deliberately alter the capacity of his mind, but he theorized about it in the article “The sacred mushroom trance”, published in 1963 in Story Magazine. This text was compiled with others by Aldous Huxley and Robert G. Wasson in the suggestive book The Experience of Ecstasy, published by La Liebre de Marzo in 2003.
Graves wrote that, “far from dulling the senses, the Mexican mushroom whips them. A spirit experimenter will not only remain conscious under its effects, but become superconscious. Psilocybe illuminates the spirit and re-educates sight and hearing”.
The poet composed some passages enlightened by the psychonautical experience, but to discover the true secrets of his neuroimprovement you must visit Ca n’Alluny, the house in Mallorca where he lived from 1929 until he died. The revelation is not the books that the library treasures, relatively few for someone who from there told us about classical Rome, Greek myths, the First World War or the story that is at the origin of all stories, his monumental La diosa blanca (by the way, one of the titles recovered by Alianza in a translation by William Graves). Graves, moreover, died a few years before the emergence of the internet and Amazon, two milestones that would have greatly facilitated his work.
The secret, we said, is neither the psychotropics nor the books, but, in his office itself, the window open to the prodigious nature of Deià, complemented by the view, from the garden, of the sea that bathes Cala Deià, the same place where the author places the murder of the Argonaut Anceu in El vellocino de oro, now republished by Edhasa translated by Lucía. A classical education rich in compulsory readings, dozens of books, constant work, passion for poetry, family support, writing next to a window in paradise and a capacity for concentration that is forbidden to us in the hyper-connected society of ‘today are the keys to his exuberant bibliography.
So AI arts or analog arts? And why not both? It is legitimate, we think, to marvel at the algorithmic waves of Quayola or the impossible characters of Universal Everything that were exhibited at the Barcelona exhibition Digital impact, but it is also legitimate to affirm that there will never be an algorithm capable of helping a writer to compose an argumentative delirium such as The White Goddess.
