Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings

2 papers in the library · publishing 2025

Papers

Bridging the Neural and the Numinous

Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings September 2, 2025 Emma Gephart

Psychedelics, once central to countercultural spirituality, have been rebranded in Silicon Valley as tools for optimization, productivity, and cognitive control. This analysis examines how tech elites reconfigure psychedelic practice under the influence of TESCREAL—an ideological bundle of Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. Drawing on discourse analysis of media coverage, cultural texts, and case studies including Bryan Johnson’s Project Blueprint, Michael Pollan’s reframing of psychedelics as medicine, Elon Musk’s advocacy, and Mindstate Design Labs, the study introduces the term post-mysticality to describe the standardization of mystical experiences into predictable protocols for capitalist utility. Psychedelics become folded into a larger TESCREAL project of technological transcendence, where the unknown is treated as a problem to be solved rather than a mystery to be encountered.

DOI: 10.24908/iqurcp19911 Full text Computer science Philosophy Sociology

"Bionic Bodies — Exploring 'Moist Media' at the Intersection of Psychedelic States, Technology and Queer Perspectives through Print Media Practises"

Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings August 28, 2025 Kelby Paquette-Anderson

This research merges wet (serigraph prints) and dry (digital editing) processes to reimagine the bionic body as a site of transformation. Drawing on Roy Ascott's syncretism, Legacy Russell's glitch theory, and McKenzie Wark's concept of hacking, it positions non-binary and queer identities as agents of disruption that remap physical and virtual forms. The resulting giclée prints embody fuzzy ambiguities and darting associations that challenge fixed binaries, reflecting a moist framework between wet and dry. The work bridges art, technology, and philosophy, proposing bodies as fluid sites of innovation and resistance that negotiate materiality and immateriality, inviting critical engagement with power systems and ancestral and queer ways of knowing.

DOI: 10.24908/iqurcp18744 Full text Art Philosophy