Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble
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A recursive collaboration with selves — and a process as the art.
Preface
Cultures, spiritualities, and belief systems can be expansive tools to experience the breadth of the world through. In studying them since youth, they’ve personally been a cherished source of inspiration
In the past year, I’ve extended that research into exploring the relationships between cultural metacognition, notions of truth (both of which I discuss in this essay, “Paradoxical Intelligence”), various uses of archetypes, belief systems and spiritualities, tools for consciousness (from sonic to mythopoetic), and psychoanalysis through artistic practices, through a self designed art and research residency. I wrote about the process in an essay titled, “Sculpting Consciousness: Art as a Materialization of Research — and Vice Versa.”
Part of what inspired the research shared in the essay on Sculpting Consciousness, included my explorations with AI and using it as a tool to study society. Which also accidentally taught me much about myself. I wrote about those explorations in an essay titled, “Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis.”
The research I shared in Sculpting Consciousness was partly inspired by my explorations with AI — using it as a tool to study society and myself. I wrote about those experiences in another essay, “Computational Anthropology and Exploring Identity through Artificial Synthesis.”
During that period of research, I was also creating this body of work. As the title of the first essay suggests, much of the artwork is a direct materialization of the inquiries I pursued. Art has become a fluid way for me to translate abstract ideas into tangible, sensorial forms — a kind of public pedagogy grounded in the arts. To conclude this phase, I opened my studio to the community, sharing my findings in the hope that the work might inspire others on their own paths as humans and creatives. It was an incredibly fulfilling time, rich with connection and exchange. In writing and sharing this essay, I hope it might offer something meaningful to your journey as well — wherever you may be.
This essay is filled with hypotheticals and theories — not meant to be taken as fact or dogma, but as invitations: questions that lead to more questions, and a mirror for self-reflection. While it feels like the beginning of a long journey of inquiry, it also carries the baton passed down by the brilliant thinkers who came before me — an homage to their insight. These reflections are offered not as conclusions, but as seeds — for a quiet, ongoing gardening of the spirit.
The Otzkö Kazo Research Atelier Studio Tour: Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble
This body of work is titled Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble, and it was presented as a tour — transforming my studio into the imagined world of Otzkö Kazo. The concept of Otzkö Kazo is difficult to define; its meaning continues to evolve the more I engage with it. Over time, it has taken shape as a philosophical framework, a culture, a timeless and intangible place — a world of its own. Its name, untranslatable into any known language, serves as a symbol for venturing into the unknown. The tour began with work from my first two essays, exploring the Computational Anthropology Series and Identity Synthesis. From there, I guided guests toward a set of charts (visible on the counter in the photograph below).
As explored in the earlier essays and in the initial works shared during the tour, I discovered that AI can serve as a powerful tool for dissecting and better understanding society. By prompting language and seeing it translated into imagery, we gain access to visual synonyms — revealing how words function as symbols that mirror a culture’s values and perceptions of truth. Culture, in many ways, programs our perception; it shapes how and what we see, often unconsciously. Its influence seeps into our psyche, guiding how we interpret the world around us — and within us. The deeper I investigated societal constructs through the Computational Anthropology Series, the more I began to question: Who am I beyond, or perhaps more clearly aware of, these external influences?
I entered this body of work with a few guiding objectives and ideas:
- Flow: As an artist, the most gratifying part of the creative process for me is being in a flow state — a space where thinking quiets and feeling leads. I see flow as the absence of doubt or questioning. In contrast, I believe the main barrier to flow is being unrooted in one’s practice — feeling unsure, doubtful, or unconfident. I began to wonder: could those barriers be lessened if I had a clearer understanding of my own truths? In pursuit of entering flow consistently, across any medium and in every creative space I stepped into, I realized I needed to know what my truths were. This body of work became an investment in uncovering them.
- Inner Knowledge: While “truth” can be a slippery word, here I define it as what one believes without needing to question its validity. In the West, we’re taught to think scientifically — to seek truth and knowledge outside of ourselves. But I’ve come to believe that this way of thinking can calcify our connection to intuition, even to the point of distrusting it altogether.
- Myths and Consciousness:
For most of human history, people understood the world through myth — storytelling as a way to make sense of experience. Thinkers like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell found striking similarities among myths across cultures that had no contact with each other. Campbell dedicated his life to studying global mythologies and noticed consistent patterns — archetypes and tropes expressed through different symbols. Jung proposed the idea of the Collective Unconscious: that humans share innate understandings beyond personal experience. In many non-Western and Indigenous cultures, intuition and spirit are trusted sources of knowledge — tools used to create complex technologies and sustainable systems that modernity often overlooks or destroys. In contrast, Western thought tends to privilege external knowledge over inner knowing. This work was, in part, my effort to reconnect with my own subconscious and refine my access to inner truth — despite being shaped by modern systems. - Lenses: Science is a powerful way of knowing, but it’s only one lens. And when we rely on a single lens, we only see what it allows us to perceive. Expanding our understanding requires expanding our tools of perception. This work is an attempt to craft new lenses — ones that include intuition, spirit, and myth alongside rational analysis.
- New forms of logic: Too often, science legitimizes itself by dismissing intuition, myth, and spiritual knowing. This body of work proposes a different framework — one that explores the possibility of harmony between science and spirit, not as competitors, but as collaborators in the search for meaning.
- Enlightenment and Spirituality: Years of studying diverse forms of enlightenment and spirituality deeply influenced this work. From Taoism and Buddhism in the East, to Western Stoicism, to the rituals and architectural philosophies of the African diaspora — such as the Batammaliba houses of Togo — each offered valuable ways of knowing and being. This project is an attempt to synthesize those ontologies and epistemologies into a contemporary, living form.
- Quantum energies: Drawing inspiration from the behavior of quantum phenomena, I reimagine the concept of “quantum” within the world of Otzkö Kazo — not as strict physics, but as metaphor for human potential and perception. Reflecting on my long-standing pursuit of cognitive refinement — intellectualism as society defines it — I began to ask: Why does this culture prioritize cognitive intelligence over emotional or intuitive intelligence? Why do Western logics often sever emotion from reason, and spirit from science? And how did ancient cultures, without modern technologies, accomplish such remarkable feats? What were their technologies? One theory I explore in this work imagines an equal distribution of perceptual capacities — what I liken to a kind of human quantum behavior. I sense that our existing senses are over-attuned to familiar, external inputs: what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. But what if other forms of perception exist — ones we’ve neglected because we rely so heavily on our current perceptual frameworks? Much like meditation or transcendental rituals, could we cultivate new ways of sensing reality?
- Consciousness as a technology: Much of this work challenges conventional ideas of technology. We often equate technology with the digital, but consciousness itself is a form of technology — the original interface through which we perceive the world. It is programmed, wired, and shaped by the forces that influence it. And because of that, it can also be intentionally reprogrammed. This project explores that malleability, with my own consciousness as the subject of inquiry. It also investigates the concept of sentient technologies — tools and systems capable of adapting, evolving, or even sensing — and what it might mean to write sentient code.
Building on these ideas, I began creating the myth of Otzkö Kazo, developing 12 archetypes to embody its logic. The charts (shown in the image below) are visual maps of their interrelationships. These archetypes emerged both from tendencies I recognized within myself and from broader human patterns. They function individually — as distinct lenses through which to interpret experience — but also sequentially, forming a structure that theorizes possible pathways toward human enlightenment.
This world operates on a logic meant to counterbalance contemporary scientific paradigms. Where conventional science might center on chemicals and quantifiable matter, the logic of Otzkö Kazo centers emotions as elemental forces — foundational to understanding, growth, and transformation.
In this iteration of Otzkö Kazo, the world is created by Azueli. I introduced guests to the core archetypes — exploring their design, their relationships to duality, and how their traits might map onto paths toward enlightenment in today’s world. Arranged in a sequential order, the archetypes reflect a progression of awareness, inviting the audience to deepen their own self-understanding along the way.
Part of this journey involves recognizing how emotions can shape — or distort — our perceptions of memories, people, and places. Cultivating mindfulness of these emotional filters can be the key to shifting from reactivity to intentionality. In this opening segment, I discuss how each archetype engages with these ideas. From there, we step fully into the world of Otzkö Kazo.
Here we have some of the artifacts from the world of Otzkö Kazo. This body of work is titled Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble because each piece was developed — whether through creation, reflection, or post-rationalization — by embodying one or more of the 12 Otzkö Kazoian archetypes.
I coined the term Meta-Interiority to describe the self-aware analysis of one’s inner world. It parallels the shift seen in anthropology when cybernetics evolved into second-order cybernetics — adding self-awareness to the observation of feedback systems.
The term Ensemble speaks to how these works coexist within a shared sonic environment. At the center of the space, a plant-like sculpture emits sound that shapes the entire experience. Other works function as tools for sonic expression, and the final piece incorporates immersive sound as well. I’ll describe each of these in more detail — but first, let’s begin with the paintings.
Top left is Seira, Mother Earth. Top right is Soloro, the Sun. Bottom left is Anza, the archetype of meditation and detachment. The central and bottom right paintings explore a duality I see not only in artistic practice, but in human existence as a whole.
Furthest right is Htzioro, representing the masculine side of that duality. As an artist, he’s devoted to the external perception of craft. As a painter, he focuses on technical mastery — creating work that others can recognize and value, often through figurative realism. The five top paintings were made in his mode of expression.
The feminine counterpart, Htziara, values internal experience over external validation. As a dancer, her concern lies in how sound moves through her — embodying it freely, regardless of how eccentric or unrefined her movements may seem. She’s not shaping her body to be admired, but rather allowing it to be transformed by the experience itself.
The bottom painting is a symbolic representation of Azueli and Toiszo — another feminine/masculine pairing. Azueli, a water-being, symbolizes emotion. Toiszo, representing air, symbolizes intellect. The painting draws from symbols used across cultures to express similar energies. For instance, the snake — a recurring global motif representing feminine power — is used here to evoke the essence of Azueli and to signal the world of Otzkö Kazo’s intention to restore greater access to feminine energy.
This intention responds to a world currently skewed toward masculine-coded values: ego, individualism, external validation. In this work, the feminine and masculine are not defined by gender but by symbolic energies — similar to yin and yang in Eastern philosophy. Neither is superior; each holds distinct qualities. The work explores how both energies exist within all sentient beings, regardless of gender, and how balancing them can lead to greater awareness and wholeness.
The labyrinth imposed onto the form of the snake is created using an original algorithm I designed, which is still being painted along the border of the piece. This labyrinth signifies the presence of Toiszo — the archetype of intellect — through its structured, logic-based design. The algorithm draws inspiration from the Punnett square, a genetic tool used to predict genotypic outcomes. In this work, the intersection of values within the border’s grid determines whether the snake’s form bends fluidly or angles sharply — illustrating how pattern and logic can shape even symbolic, organic figures.
This technique serves not only as a visual metaphor for intellect and order, but also as a demonstration of how technology can exist beyond digital forms — even within the physical construction of a painted world.
While the central figures in this mythology are archetypes that transcend time and geography, this specific body of work also engages a particular historical moment: the early colonial period in the Caribbean. It reflects on the arrival of Europeans and the resulting transformation of the region — a time marked by catastrophic consequences for Indigenous peoples, including displacement and disease. This era also initiated the transatlantic slave trade, beginning the brutal system of chattel slavery that reshaped the Americas. These histories are not just background — they are part of the psychic terrain that Otzkö Kazo emerges from and seeks to reflect, reimagine, and transform.
My ancestors came from the island of Hispaniola — certainly from what is now the Dominican Republic, and likely from Haiti as well. They are direct products of the colonial moment that reshaped the Caribbean. The symbolic painting of Azueli and Toiszo is set from the vantage point of standing on Haitian land, overlooking Lake Azuei toward the Dominican Republic. Lake Azuei — geographically positioned at the border between the two nations — inspired the name Azueli, linking emotional and geographical symbolism.
Much of this work reflects on the severed connections to ancestral memory, particularly for those of us who descend from peoples whose histories were erased before they could be documented. Many of the island’s original inhabitants — Caribs, Arawaks, and Tainos — died before their knowledge systems, cosmologies, and technologies could be preserved. That loss represents a deep rupture in my lineage. It’s not a unique experience — it’s common to many of us whose ancestral knowledge has been interrupted.
If we consider that our behaviors and tendencies may be shaped by epigenetic memory — imprints passed through generations — then the absence of historical context creates a gap in understanding who we are and why. This work became a way to explore whether the subconscious might be a place where those lost memories still live, and if it could be used to begin reconstructing that knowledge.
In the image above, I fed archival images of artifacts created by Indigenous Caribbean peoples into AI tools to imagine how those forms might evolve in a contemporary setting. It was an experiment in using AI to simulate a history that was interrupted — part recovery, part reimagining. This approach was inspired by Victor Dibia’s 2018 project, in which he used AI to generate African masks as a form of speculative preservation.
This is the flag of Otzkö Kazo. It was created as a meditation on the power of language — on how words don’t just communicate, but reflect the values and priorities of a culture. This idea was inspired by my work in the Computational Anthropology Series, where I observed how words could dramatically alter visual outputs based on how those words are most commonly used or understood.
I also found myself reflecting on moments when I encountered words in other languages that have no direct English translation. I see that as a powerful signifier: that a culture values a concept so deeply it created a word for it. And when such a word doesn’t exist in English, it signals the relative absence — or at least de-emphasis — of that value in English-speaking cultures.
Each panel on this flag represents one of those untranslatable words — terms that exist within the culture of Otzkö Kazo. These characters symbolize concepts that are central to this world’s ontology, yet have no exact counterpart in English. They are, in a way, linguistic artifacts — each one revealing what this imagined culture holds most sacred.
This is the cosmogram of Otzkö Kazo, a symbolic map representing the 12 archetypes. Each colored circle corresponds to an archetype, with its hues reflecting the tendencies and energies it embodies. This piece serves as both a visual system and an icon of possibility — inviting reflection on what it means to embody these archetypes, whether individually or in combination.
At the center, the markings illustrate the relationships between them, mapping their interactions, tensions, and potential harmonies. In this way, the cosmogram is not just a static diagram, but a dynamic tool for navigating inner states and evolving consciousness.
This cosmogram functions as a visual tool within the studio — a reminder of the 12 archetypes, their interrelationships, and the creative possibilities that arise from embodying them, whether individually or in collaboration with one another.
As another tool within the studio — and using a visual language similar to the flag — is a representation of Otzkö Kazoian time scales. The columns symbolize the past, present, and future, but each panel explores how these dimensions might be experienced through 18 distinct notions of time. These alternative temporalities serve as conceptual entry points for creation, offering new ways to understand and work with time beyond linear progression.
Finally, we arrive at the source of the ambient, otherworldly sound that has accompanied this entire experience: Symphosynthesis de Otzkö Kazo. This piece symbolically represents the love between Seira (Mother Earth) and Soloro (the Sun). In scientific terms, this relationship manifests as photosynthesis — the process by which plants convert sunlight into life-sustaining energy.
Photosynthesis has been identified as a rare instance of biomolecular quantum behavior, typically only observable in tightly controlled scientific environments. In this piece, I’ve brought that phenomenon into the sensory realm.
Sensors placed on the plants detect the subtle electromagnetic waves they emit during photosynthesis. These signals are converted into electronic voltage using a biofeedback module, integrated within my synthesizer. When patched into a voltage-controlled oscillator, the plant’s invisible activity is translated into sound — a sonic abstraction of its behavior, allowing humans to hear a normally imperceptible form of life energy.
The sounds generated by the plants’ energy are complemented by polyrhythmic percussive patterns I designed through the synthesizer. These rhythms pay homage to the role of drums across cultures — especially within African traditions — as tools for sculpting human consciousness. Historically, repetitive drumming has been used to induce trance states in spiritual rituals, guiding participants into altered modes of awareness.
In this way, Symphosynthesis becomes a sonic representation of collective sentient consciousness: a conversation between plant and human. The plants emit energy and simultaneously receive ours. They are alive — conscious in ways that likely extend beyond our current understanding. The drums, then, become a bridge: a means of altering not only human consciousness, but perhaps even that of the plants themselves.
Next, we encounter the sonic sculptures of Gjzitiua, performed by Htziara. These pieces were intuitively crafted, then transformed into tools for sound experimentation. When played and amplified through post-processing sound effect machines, they add another layer to the Symphosynthesis soundscape.
The sounds they produce fall outside traditional sonic palettes — unfamiliar, textural, and raw — making them uniquely reflective of Htziara’s unconventional, inwardly focused nature. These sculptures are not just instruments, but extensions of her intuitive expression and embodied soundwork.
This marks the final stage of the Otzkö Kazo studio tour: Theater of Meta-Interiority, Ensemble. At the heart of this experience is a short film I created to abstractly narrate the story of Otzkö Kazo. The visuals were generated using AI, then transformed into video and post-processed to create a cohesive, dreamlike aesthetic. (Stills from the film are shared below.)
As each guest takes their place in the dome seat, I perform a live sound mix tailored specifically to them — no two soundscapes are the same. The compositions are rich in texture and vibrant percussion, designed to complement and respond to the visuals in real time.
The dome itself becomes an active part of the experience — its structure distorting sound and visuals in ways that heighten immersion and expand the viewing experience in attempt to dissolve theboundaries between sound, image, and self.
At the end of the tour, I would sit and talk with guests about their experiences. For some, it was a rare moment of stillness — an encounter with something indescribable, yet deeply felt. Others noticed how they were subconsciously making sense of the sounds and images through the stories I had shared, layering their own meaning onto the experience. Some left with a renewed eagerness to return to the world carrying new lenses of perception.
Often, we discovered that we were exploring similar themes in our creative work or undergoing parallel realizations in our lives. Sharing such intimate space and witnessing how this work resonated with others was a deeply fulfilling gift. What began as a personal exploration grew more meaningful through connection — through seeing others find use, insight, or even healing in it.
As I close this chapter and step into the next phase of this research, I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to treat art not just as a product, but as a process — a portal inward that can shift how we see the world around us.
I hope this essay has offered you something useful for your own journey — be it a new question, a new lens, or simply a moment of pause.
