About
About the project.
Cor is a ground-up atlas of the human motivational-emotional architecture built from primary-source review across evolutionary biology, affective neuroscience, developmental psychology, behavioral ecology, primatology, and anthropology.
The story
Cor grew out of the same question that drove Most Human Post-Human: what happens when exponential technology meets an organism that has not changed fast enough to meet it? The project moved from artistic investigation into long-form evidence assembly because the underlying problem kept presenting itself the same way: the human side of the equation was being described in abstractions when what was needed was a structured atlas.
Cor is currently an atlas. The specification is the operational layer it is being built toward. The papers are cited. The derivation chains are public. Where the atlas takes an interpretive position rather than reporting consensus, that is marked.
Maarten Rischen
Background in music composition, with residencies at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2016) and Trinity College Dublin (2017), working across evolutionary science and artistic practice. The culminating artistic work was Most Human Post-Human, a world-premiere musical theatre production directed by Gavin Robins at Adelaide Fringe 2024. That production became the catalyst for full-time commitment to Cor.
Most Human Post-Human
The theatre production that staged the question the atlas was built to answer. What happens when exponential technology meets an organism that has not changed in 200,000 years?
Working papers
Both papers have been updated to reflect the atlas as of April 2026.