At the intersection of science and art, crocheted stitches, intricate needlework and textile sculptures aren’t usually what you’d expect. But these are the threads that tie my artistic exploration of mind, body, and consciousness together.

After all, science and art are processes of exploration and discovery from different perspectives. Science seeks to explain the truth behind consciousness, while art is a manifestation of consciousness. And, as I discovered, both allow further discovery of oneself from new perspectives.

How are these perspectives important? I would argue that in today’s complex world, it is more important than ever to deepen our awareness of selves, so that we might better understand how to respond to the challenges we face–both internally and externally. To do this, we need to shift our individualised mindset to one of collective action. This is no simple task.

To make this shift in perspective, neuroscience helps answer questions around consciousness and the internal processes that influence our experiences. So, to gain a better understanding of the way we process information, I began by exploring our Internal Landscapes. These works visualise the unseen, inner workings of the body, while referencing the complimentary relationship between visual art and medical science.

Chrys Zantis: Internal Landscapes

There are many commonalities in geometric, visual structures between textiles and the web of tissues and systems of specialised cells in our bodies. Just as in science as in art, small branching patterns comprise and resemble larger ones, allowing me to express the true nature of our biology through my work.

If you delve deeper, you’ll also find textile art shares similarities with scientific nomenclature; ‘stitch’, ‘knit/knot’, ‘thread’, ‘fibre’, ‘cable’, ‘ladder’, ‘braid’, ‘stretch’, and ‘suture’. A central motif in this body of work is the mandala shaped circle. It alludes to the shapes of cells, microscope lenses, alveolar sacs and neurons.

Each of my carefully planned stitches references and extends on these relationships between visual art and medical science. By externalising these internal cells and interacting with them, I began to understand our differences and our similarities from a new perspective. This exploration only served to heighten my curiosity of the mysterious inner workings between the folds of grey matter within our brains.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” (Albert Einstein, 1931¹)

At a masterclass conducted by Professor Stephen Williams from the Queensland Brain Institute (University of Queensland), I witnessed cell clamping of mouse neurons. Neuroscientists work on a microscopic scale to activate and record the action potential of individual neuron. Even outside its small body, these tiny cells from a mouse’s brain lit up.

“The brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s volume, yet consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy. A pearly grey, gelatinous, three-pound universe, this exceptional organ can map parsecs and plot the whereabouts of distant galaxies measured in quintillions of light-years. The brain accomplishes this magic trick without ever having to leave its ensorcelled oval cranial shell. From minuscule-wattage electrical currents crisscrossing and ricocheting within the walls, the brain can reconstruct a detailed diorama of how it imagines the earth appeared four billion years ago. It can generate poetry so achingly beautiful that readers weep, hatred so intense that otherwise rational people reel in the torture of others and love so oceanic that entwined lovers lose the boundaries of their physical beings.” (Leonard Shlain, 2014²)

In studies of the human brain, neuroscientists such as Associate Professor Marta Garrido are conducting research into how the schizophrenic brain sees an altered view of the world, and as such, a different perspective. In 2019, I became artist in residence with Dr Garrido and her team within the Cognitive Neuroscience and Computational Laboratory (University of Melbourne) and observed research using number of neuroimaging methods (EEG, fMRI) and computational modelling.

The research shows how our brains’ ability to learn through recognition and synthesis of patterns is crucial. However, it also revealed that people with psychosis form an incomplete picture of the world. Their ability to map their internal predicted world-view onto reality is impaired (has “glitches”)^3,4. Psychosis and schizotypy fall along a spectrum from functional and healthy to non-functional and illness⁵.

Understanding these “glitches” and how those with psychosis have an altered reality can remind us that one’s own world-view can change through different perspectives⁶. As an extension of our brains’ pattern seeking behaviours, my artwork recreates various patterns using repeated stitches and symbolic imagery to facilitate new perspectives on unseen processes within the brain.

Chrys Zantis: Beneath the Surface (photo by novablooming)

Neuroscience has shown⁷ the narrative structure increases our understanding and empathy. This is partly because the typical brain is able to make predictions based on experiences that are familiar. In a natural progression, my latest exhibition, Hidden in the Folds, extends on the neuroscientific research, to tell the stories of human experiences from both a scientific and mythological perspective.

The works depict a journey from mental illness and self-doubt toward awareness and transformation. Because hidden within the folds of our brains lies all the delusions, creativity, joys, sorrows and insights that make us individual and unique. This perspective is revolutionary, because we cannot possibly begin to work toward solving the complex societal and environmental challenges we face until we understand who we are as both an individual and as a part of the community. The works remind us we’re constantly trying to understand ourselves, and others, either through scientific research or contemplation and mindfulness.

“Stories are maps, a string of landmarks that tell us where we’ve been and point the way home.” (Daegan Miller, 2022⁸)

However, as humans, our biological similarities don’t end with each other. Our lung bronchioles, blood capillaries and neuron dendrites in our brain resemble naturally occurring patterns in tree roots, river systems and more. The emergence of these similarities offers insights into our species as being at one with, and not separate from, the natural world.

Chrys Zantis: Lay of the Land – aerial view (photo by Christina Lowry).

Thousands of crocheted loops and folds of fabric stitched, woven and sewn together make up Lay of the Land. The landscape is layered with land maps, story maps, celestial maps, and brain maps.

On a macro scale, it shows the breadth of our personal journey–navigating difficult typography toward growth and transformation. It’s not often in life that we’re able to view our internal journeys from this outside perspective. Does this foster empathy and self-forgiveness?

The islands contain information from mythology, land and brain. Symbolically, each of the islands are individuals that come together to form a supportive community who enrich our lives. The river represents the flow of time and the natural flow of nature along with all her cycles, transitions, transformation and passageways.

The brain topology resembles earth topography. Zoom in to see the threads which connect it together. Like scientists, artists also map data or document their process and musings. These motifs are woven and stitched into and onto the work to show tethered links between land, story and brain.

Chrys Zantis: Lay of the Land – close up (photo by Christina Lowry).

Where are you on your adventure? Just like life, each time we come to the same spot again we are a little more aware, a little more transformed.

We are the protagonists of this tale, moving toward self-discovery but the weight of our internal journey isn’t always easy. Featuring broken EEG caps, the evocative photographs in Beneath the Surface read like still frames from an indie film.

Chrys Zantis: Beneath the Surface (photo by novablooming)

The images illustrate the sensory and social disruptions experienced by sufferers of mental ill-health when performing daily tasks, as found in Dr. Garrido’s research. The entrancing headdress integrates anatomical features of the brain and nervous system with intricate, elaborate elements of haute contour. Budgerigar wings flutter in a murmuration above the headdress, like thoughts flittering in and out of existence.

The piece externalises the inner world of schizoaffective and anxious disorders, in a pan-cultural manifestation of thought, emotion, and cognition.

Chrys Zantis: Mavri Nihta (photo by Christina LOwry)

Greek for ‘Black Night’, Mavri Nihta is the goddess of darkness. The Heroine has been lost in the darkness of her own thoughts, spiralling into psychosis. Black feathers hang from the front of the headdress to cover Mavri Nihta’s eyes. Installed before a mirror, it reflects our internal struggles back to us.

Chrys Zantis: Hook Line and Sinker (photo by Christina Lowry)

Chrys Zantia: Hook Line and Sinker – close up (photo by Christina Lowry)

Moving along this mythological journey, we experience the ominous cloud of black thoughts in Hook Line and Sinker. Dark thoughts swirl within the folds of fabric and rain down in a jumbled murmuration of black and grey Budgerigars.

In an fMRI experiment¹⁰ led by Marta Garrido and Ilvana Dzafic the recall of Budgerigar bird sounds were impaired by those experiencing symptoms of psychosis. In this piece, the incomplete birds are metaphors for the brain’s inability to recall complete data when compared to those with typical brain function.

The dull, incomplete Budgerigars are anchored under a dark cloud of brooding thoughts. It reminds us of the heavy feeling of negative, ruminating thoughts. Interpreting our experiences merely through a personal, and therefore reductive lens, expresses a person who is unawakened. We deplete our imaginal forces by honouring only the literalness of life. And when this depletion occurs, it results in a kind of soul flatness. When our primary modality of interpretation involves a symbolic component, then myths have the potential to reveal pathways out of situations that are causing anguish.

But we are more than our thoughts.

Chrys Zantis: Murmuration – close up (photo by Christina Lowry)

Chrys Zantis: Murmuration – zoomed out (photo by Christina Lowry)

Linked by a powerful mythological narrative, this murmuration of Budgerigars is about consciousness and perception. In our mind’s eye, the stationary wings from Mavri Nihta’s headdress take flight in a self-organising emergent synchronised fashion. Both partial and entire birds symbolise the heroine’s awakening into self-awareness.

Colourful birds flock in an intricate aerial ballet. The flock becomes an emergent system that is grander than the sum of its individual parts. The wings are a metaphor for synchronised thoughts as opposed to the black and white ruminating thoughts in Hook Line and Sinker. These are about community and cohesion.

A similar ballet takes place in our brain as neurons and synapses create thoughts and ideas. Overlaid on the swerving bird murmuration is a relief sculpture created with long green and gold glass beads, seed beads and coloured florist wire, to symbolise the data maps created by neuroscientists to display connectivity between different areas of the brain.

We can find these images in data from the Human Connectome Project. A current world-wide project that collects data to better map the human brain. In this installation, I overlap maps to show the connections between different genres and trains of thought.

On her mythological journey, our heroine is becoming less centred on self. She turns to look for her flock and be part of a murmuration.

In neuroscience, consciousness is thought of as an emergent property. It is more than the choreographed dance of neurons firing. Akin to the murmuration of a dancing cloud of birds in synchronised flight, it is more than the sum of its parts.

The natural world abounds in emergence: ripples in the sand, cyclones in the atmosphere, the growth of crystals and murmuration. Swarming is an emergent behaviour, resulting from a set of simple rules followed by each individual animal, bird or fish, with no centralised control or leadership. A murmuration of Budgerigars is a breathtaking sight with thousands of birds moving in harmony, almost filling the skies.

“The closest I have ever come to what I believe it would be like to witness consciousness as an external observer is a tear-jerking beauty, complexity, and richness of massive flocks: murmuration. When I view such massive flocks, I feel like I am looking into a system closer to revealed consciousness than any other system so easily exposed to our senses.” (Keith Wiley, 2014⁹)

Our whole sense of being is an emergent effect. The reality we create is a matter of inputs and the way our brain processes them. Our perspectives, ideas, imaginings and fantasies emerge from the collective firing of neurons in the “pearly grey, gelatinous, three-pound universe”.² What can we learn about ourselves from the flocking birds of the world?

Chrys Zantis: Theophany from Inside Out (photo by novablooming)

Installed in a cave of mirrors is the headdress and costuming for Theophany,[1] Greek for ‘Goddess Revealed’.

Rather than view Theophany and Mavri Nihta as a dichotomy of good and bad, it’s important to understand that we each experience internal struggles, and at times, feel like a goddess. Ying and Yang create a circle. Theophany and Mavri Nihta are equally important to the whole. As you move your image and Theophany’s image in the mirrors can become fractured. In terms of spiritual symbolism, mirrors reflect truth. They reflect what is.

The mirrors show the sculpture from all perspectives. To achieve social cohesion, we need to have empathy, be aware of our biases and understand many differently perspectives.

In the neuroscience world, there could be a neurological explanation for empathy. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when the animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. They provide a direct internal experience of another being’s actions or emotions and may be the neurological basis of empathy.

Chrys Zantis: Brain Chatter (photo by Christina Lowry)

Brain Chatter is the large textile sculpture of the brain which is cut in half by a beaded corpus callosum; the band of fibres linking two halves of the brain. On either side are silky folds of grey matter, punctuated by Budgerigars like thoughts chattering in the brain. On the left of the corpus callosum whole birds appear to be coming out of the folds. To the right are just wings. The incomplete birds allude to the glitches in our brain that Dr Ilvana Dzafic was looking for in her experiment.

Looking at the brain in this way allows us to understand with greater insight how our internal differences and similarities impact how we interact and experience the world, providing scientific reasons for Theophany’s or Mavri Nihta’s experiences.

When we can acknowledge the similarities and differences in human condition, we can view our internal and external worlds with empathy and understanding. This perspective allows for a better pathway towards social cohesion and collective efficacy.

………………………….

Endnotes

1. Einstein, A. Living Philosophies. (Ams Press Inc, 1931).
2. Shlain, L. Leonardo’s Brain. (Brilliance Audio, 2014).
3. Taylor, J. A., Matthews, N., Michie, P. T., Rosa, M. J. & Garrido, M. I. Auditory prediction errors as individual biomarkers of schizophrenia. NeuroImage Clin. 15, 264–273 (2017).
4. Larsen, K. M. et al. Aberrant connectivity in auditory precision encoding in schizophrenia spectrum disorder and across the continuum of psychotic-like experiences. Schizophr. Res. 222, 185–194 (2020).
5. Randeniya, R., Oestreich, L. K. L. & Garrido, M. I. Sensory prediction errors in the continuum of psychosis. Schizophr. Res. 191, 109–122 (2018).
6. Oestreich, L. K. L., Randeniya, R. & Garrido, M. I. Auditory prediction errors and auditory white matter microstructure associated with psychotic-like experiences in healthy individuals. Brain Struct. Funct. 224, 3277–3289 (2019).
7. Martinez-Conde, S. et al. The Storytelling Brain: How Neuroscience Stories Help Bridge the Gap between Research and Society. J. Neurosci. 39, 8285–8290 (2019).
8. Miller, D. Of wandering angels and lost landmarks. Emergence Magazine (2022).
9. Wiley, K. A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading. (Alautun Press, 2014).
10. Dzafic, I, et al. The Neural Dynamics of Belief Formation: Impairments Specific to the Schizophremia Spectrum and Feature that Align on the Psychosis Continuum, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 45, Issue Supplement 2, S186 (2019).

[1] To represent healing and transformation

……………………………………….

www.chryszantis.com

All images copyright and courtesy of Chrys Zantis

Art, Brain, Creativity, Sculpture