Before reading this paper, I had never heard the word “technoshamanism” in my life. But after reading it, the concept actually made a lot of sense to me. Shanken explains that a shaman is a person in ancient cultures who had a special role in their community. Using tools like drums, chanting, and plant medicines, they would enter a deep spiritual state and use that experience to heal people. What surprised me is that Shanken argues modern artists are doing the exact same thing, just with technology instead.

The example that hit me the most was Roy Ascott. He traveled to the Amazon and participated in ceremonies using a plant medicine that makes you feel deeply connected to everything around you, like the boundaries between yourself and other people just disappear. He then looked at the internet and realized it creates the exact same feeling. As he wrote, “this ancient ritual mirrors our contemporary artistic aspirations using digital technologies.” That comparison felt so real to me because we experience that sense of connection online every single day.

In live coding, when you perform in a shared session with other people in real time, something interesting happens. You stop focusing on yourself as an individual and instead you become fully absorbed in the collective sound you are all building together. That feeling of losing yourself inside something bigger is exactly what Shanken is describing throughout the whole paper.

This reading was my first time encountering the idea of Shamanism. Before reading ahead, I googled the definition, and it said the practitioner in this religious practice, the Shaman, enters a trance-like state to interact with the spirit world. I immediately went into the reading with the idea that this would correspond to live coding in the sense that our work is supposed us and the audience into ‘another dimension’. In the reading, there was also a lot of mention of the idea of consciousness, and Pauline Oliveros says, “This altered state of consciousness in performance is exhilarating and inspiring.” She also says, “The music comes through as if I have nothing to do with it but allow it to emerge through my instrument and voice.” I singled out these two quotes from the reading cause I found them to be one of the only ones I could relate to live coding. I may be misinterpreting what she means, but the way I took it was that as we perform in live coding, especially as we improvise, we reach this state in our minds where we are essentially having an adrenaline rush, you’re not sure what will work, how this might mess with your pre-existing sound and visuals but there’s a beauty in experiencing that along the audience. You’re in charge of putting your audience in a trance.

The Huni Kuin videogame caught me off guard, mainly because I wasn’t expecting any content about videogames. Shanken almost slips it in — Amazonian shamanic knowledge, ancestral stories, now a game. At first, it feels like flattening, like something sacred turned into interface. But I’m not sure it’s that simple.

Gamification gets dismissed quickly, and often for good reason. But that’s not the whole picture. What we do in live coding is somehow similar — building systems and patterns hat unfold in real time, responsive, unstable, alive. A game works like that too. It’s not static or purely consumable; it shifts with the player. Each experience is slightly different.

So it’s not just representing a culture. It’s something you enter.

The key difference here is authorship. The Huni Kuin weren’t just depicted — they helped shape the system. That changes it. It becomes less extraction, more construction. Like what Pauline Oliveros describes: using technology to open perception rather than fix it in place.

Shanken’s concern about gamification as colonization is valid. But the issue isn’t the medium — it’s control. Who builds the system, who sets the rules, who decides what’s possible.

Added a Youtube video link to the game if anyone is interested

Technoshamanism

As a person who grew up in a culture that has both Shamanic and Buddhist practices, I found the discussion of “Birdman” (2005) by Kim Jeong Han to be the most interesting. In his work, it questions and reflects some of the most prevalent ideas in Buddhism and Shamanism, which are the belief in Buddhism that “the self and other are the same,” and the Shamanic practice of experiencing others through the self, reflecting a similar idea. He describes the idea that the self and other are not separate. In this artwork, this idea allows people to feel and empathize with others more deeply, as he questions the life of a half-bird and half-human by realizing it is both at the same time.

Shanken’s idea at the end of the paper on Technoshamanism as an art for healing and a tool for sustaining life on Earth felt like a very compelling way to connect everything he discussed. I understand that technology, tools, and instruments are often rooted in hard science and mathematics, which can sometimes make them feel metallic or soulless. However, shamanic practice creates shared consciousness and connects indigenous knowledge with technoscience. To support his point, he also referenced Donna Haraway’s ecofeminist theories, where everything is seen as connected and originating from one. I think this strengthens his argument that shamanism shows we are all connected and part of one whole. It reminds us that we are spiritual human beings, rather than turning us into something like AI or abstract robots. In this way, he is saying that employing such tools (computers, AI) to create artistic experiences can help sustain life and support healing.

I found Edward Shanken’s take on Technoshamanism deeply fascinating, especially his refusal to treat nature and technology as opposing forces. What really stood out to me was the idea of artists acting as modern shamans using wet (biological), dry (silicon), and moist technologies to build symbiotic relationships between humans, machines, and the broader ecosystem. His framing of interdisciplinary art as a psychic dress rehearsal for the future is a compelling way to look at how we might navigate our current ecological crises. Ultimately, the paper completely shifted my perspective, leaving me thinking a lot about how we can repurpose emerging tech not just for standard innovation, but as genuine tools for expanding consciousness and planetary healing.

I did not expect a paper about shamanism to make me think about my Hydra and TidalCycles setup, but here we are. Shanken’s framing of technoshamanism as a merger of ancient tranceinducing technologies with digital tools actually relates onto what live coding feels like from the inside. There is something about writing patterns in real time and watching sound emerge from syntax, that feels less like programming and more like tuning into something. You are not always fully in control and that is kind of the point.

The part that stuck with me most was Pauline Oliveros. Shanken describes her relationship to music as bodily and preconscious, and her ideal AI chip as something that could “perceive the spiritual connection and interdependence of all beings.” That is a wild ask for a piece of hardware, but I think I get what she means. Deep listening is never passive but a practice of expanding your attention until the boundaries between you and the sound start to blur.

What I am still sitting with is whether the technology actually enables that expanded consciousness or just simulates it. I am curious and that gap feels worth exploring more.