Liminal Landscapes: Generative Art as a Technoshanic Instrument in the Representation of Altered States of Consciousness
Emília Simão, João Martinho Moura, Daniel Brandão
ARTECH November 26, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1145/3773699.3774340 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Generative audiovisual installations can evoke altered states of consciousness similar to those in shamanic rituals, bridging technology and spirituality. The artistic project Liminal Landscapes uses organic image and sound processes, with water as a metaphor for the unconscious, to create immersive, meditative experiences that break linear temporality. Art functions as a technoshamanic instrument, mediating between the visible and invisible, and offering a path to sensitive knowledge connecting body, technology, landscape, and consciousness.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Generative audiovisual installations can assume functions comparable to ancestral shamanic rituals, enabling immersive, introspective, and liminal experiences for the public. |
Abstract
This article proposes a theoretical and practical reflection on the capacity of generative audiovisual installations to represent and evoke altered states of consciousness, based on the artistic project Liminal Landscapes. In a historical moment marked by crises of meaning, technological alienation, and symbolic disintegration, a new sensibility emerges that seeks to resume ecstatic and spiritual experiences, now mediated by digital devices. By cross-referencing from the visionary arts, the anthropology of ritual, technoshamanism and media arts, it is argued that certain contemporary artistic creations can assume functions comparable to those of ancestral shamanic rituals, enabling the public to have immersive, introspective, and liminal experiences. The installation Liminal Landscapes develops from organic and generative processes of image and sound, symbolically focusing on the element of water as a metaphor for the unconscious, crossing, and transformation. The circular structure of the work, combined with the enveloping sound and visual dissolution, invites the viewer to enter a meditative state, breaking with linear temporality and evoking ritual practices. Based on a practical research methodology, the project analyzes how the artistic gesture can function as a mediator between the visible and the invisible, the aesthetic and the spiritual. Art, in this context, is proposed as a technoshamanic instrument and a legitimate avenue for sensitive knowledge, capable of bridging the gap between the body, technology, landscape, and consciousness.