Exploring Psytrance as Technognosis
This chapter explores the performative process occurring in the dance-floor/stage of a psytrance event as ‘technognosis', a concept that combines media, arts, performance and technology with the notion of gnosis. Technognosis is proposed as an overarching concept, able to theorize the whole transpersonal range of the psytrance experience, including its spiritual dimension, enabled by the induction and facilitation of alterations in consciousness. The psytrance experience is analyzed it terms of aesthetic, visionary and mystical experiences understood here as qualities of gnosis. At the same time, this chapter contends that technognosis affects participation and invites its multi-media and performative expression, triggering fundamental changes in ways of human thinking, imagining and operating; potentiating the adoption of participation as the next paradigm in human existence. In parallel, the chapter proposes a post-modern approach in researching and analyzing the psytrance phenomenon as a whole, combining media and performance studies with religious studies methodological tools.