Altered States explores such subjects as the science and experience of psychedelics, altered and augmented states of consciousness, neuroscience and the clinical use of psychedelics, machine language, literary illustration and digital 3D representations of artworks.

Marta Kaczmarczyk is an expert in persuasive science and technology. She is interested in demystifying the psychedelic experience and creating a scientific framework that would be more accessible to the Western mind and more relevant than the shamanic or new age framework which is popular in the psychedelic community. She is a co-founder and a coordinator of the Psychedelic Society of the Netherlands; a non-profit organization focused on advocating a safe use of psychedelic substances. She discusses her work in Demystifying the psychedelic experience.

Steve Sangapore is a contemporary oil painter based in Boston, MA. Using vastly different stylistic approaches with various series’, his work can be described as an amalgamation of realism, surrealism and abstraction with thematic focuses on the human condition. In Superposition he shows his recent series of artworks.

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H is an Anglo-Scandinavian philosopher of mind who specializes in the thought of Whitehead and Nietzsche, and in fields pertaining to panpsychism and altered states of sentience. He discusses his ideas and work in Philosophy and Psychedelics.

Fine artist Luciana Haill works with brainwaves (EEG signal) exploring consciousness & expressing the results through digital media, performance, sound & drawings. Her artworks focus on sleep, more specifically the discrete states of Lucid Dreaming (awareness within a dream & the ability to take control) & ‘Hypnagogia’ – a more commonly experienced state at the onset of sleep & day-dreaming. She investigates the neural correlates & reveals these to the audience as changes in textured soundscapes & data visualisations. In, Ecstasis, she discusses her latest work.

Joshua Burraway is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection between social and political theory, cultural phenomenology, addiction medicine, and psychiatry. He is interested in how historical and structural forces shape different modes of subjectivity, in particular with regards to altered states of consciousness induced by psychoactive chemicals among homeless substance-users. He discusses his work in Becoming somebody else.

Paul Broks is an English neuropsychologist and science writer. Trained as a clinical psychologist at Oxford University, he is a specialist in clinical neuropsychology and is the author of The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars. Garry Kennard is a painter, writer and founding director of Art and Mind. A fascination with how the brain reacts to works of art has lead Kennard to research, write and lecture on these topics. In their correspondence, On ‘The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars, Paul Broks discusses the production of this book with Garry Kennard, its illustrator.

Dr. Sheena Calvert is a philosopher/artist/designer and educator, working at both University of the Arts, London and the Royal College of Art. She is particularly concerned with exploring the implications of emergent language-based technologies, including developments in ‘natural’ language technologies, which potentially impact on the future of human language. She discusses this in Language: The Non-Trivial Machine.

Sidney Perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus at Emory University, writes about science and art, and other popular topics in science. He discusses recent developments in the reproduction of artworks in Altered States: 2D digital displays become 3D reality – Digital Technology Lets You Touch Great Art.

Plus, there are articles by Elizabeth Tunbridge: How the power of art can help scientists like me understand the experience of schizophrenia ; Robert Pepperell: How a trippy 1980s video effect might help to explain consciousness ; and Christian Jarrett: Ketamine trips are uncannily like near-death experiences.

What is certain is that we are witnessing the appearance of an intelligence with the potential of unlimited creativity. We don’t have to go to Mars to seek new intelligences, they are developing right next to us. And – extraordinary to contemplate – we are beginning to merge with them.

Arthur I Miller: On The Artist in the Machine (Interalia Magazine – September 2019)

AI and Creativity explores ideas and work on the cutting edge of art and artificial intelligence, robotics, artificial neural networks, and computer-created art.

Professor Arthur I Miller is an authority on creativity, in both the arts and sciences. In his latest book, The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity, he introduces us to AI-powered computers that are creating art, literature, and music that may well surpass the creations of humans. In this exclusive interview he discusses ideas and work that forms the subject of his book and celebrates the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence in art, music, and literature.

Anna Ridler is an artist and researcher who works with information and data. She was a 2018 EMAP fellow and was listed by Artnet as one of nine “pioneering artists” exploring AI’s creative potential. Georgia Ward Dyer studied Philosophy at the University of Cambridge before developing an art practice which focuses on creating conversations about abstract, complex ideas by making them tangible through process-led, multivalent works. In Fairy Tales and Machine Learning: Retelling, Reflecting, Repeating, Recreating they explore their own versions of classic tales which are mediated through different machine learning tools; from image captioning to speech-to-text conversion.

Simon Colton is a British computer scientist, currently working as Professor of Computational Creativity in the Game AI Research Group at Queen Mary University of London, UK and in the Sensilab at Monash University, Australia. In From Computational Creativity to Creative AI and Back Again he compares and contrasts the AI research field of Computational Creativity and the Creative AI technological movement, both of which are contributing to progress in the arts.

Sofia Crespo’s work consists of different projects working with artificial intelligence, computed image recognition, and neural networks. Her project, Neural Zoo, explores how creativity combines known elements in a specific way in order to create something entirely new. In the process of generating new creatures, that don’t exist yet, she offers a perspective on how similar human creativity works. The creator, in this case, would be the algorithm itself, but with a human artist as its muse.

Ahmed Elgammal is Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University. Director of the Art & AI Lab. Executive Council Faculty at the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. His research focusses on Computer Vision, Visual Learning, Data Science in Digital Humanities, and Human motion analysis. In Meet AICAN, a machine that operates as an autonomous artist, he discusses his research on Art & AI.

Gene Kogan is an artist, programmer and leading educator in the field of creative AI – who is developing the world’s first decentralized autonomous artist. He is a collaborator within numerous open-source software projects, and gives workshops and lectures on topics at the intersection of code and art. He discusses his work in Art and Generative Systems.

Ernest Edmonds’ art is in the constructivist tradition and he is a pioneer in the use of computers and computational ideas. His art explores algorithms used to relation to colour, time, communication and interaction. He first used computers in his practice in 1968, first showed an interactive artwork with Stroud Cornock in 1970 and first showed a generative time-based computer work in London in 1985. He discusses his ideas and work in On Computational Art.

Taney Roniger is a visual artist and writer based in New York. Her work has been shown in a number of venues in the States and abroad. Since 2012 she has been a contributing writer at The Brooklyn Rail, for which she served as Guest Editor in December 2017. She discusses her ideas in In Praise of Form: Towards a New Post-Humanist Art.

Kit Yates is a Senior Lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath. His job consists of taking real-world phenomena and uncovering the mathematical truths that lie behind them. He extracts the common patterns that underlie these processes and communicates them. His latest book is called The Maths of Life and Death.

Plus, there are articles by Rui Penha & Miguel Carvalhais: If machines want to make art, will humans understand it? ; Hakwan Lau: Is consciousness a battle between your beliefs and perceptions? ; and Melissa Avdeeff: AI’s first pop album ushers in a new musical era.

And, a feature on Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic AI robot artist.

We think Dark Matter is some mysterious particle which we think is zooming around, through the earth, through rooms, through the air, through whatever environment you are reading this. I say “zooming” because we think it is moving at several hundred kilometres per second. We think it is there because when we look at the motion of objects such as stars and galaxies, we can only explain how fast they are moving due to some extra gravitational acceleration created by some matter which must be there but which we cannot see.

Professor Malcolm Fairbairn: 95% of the Universe is Missing (Interalia Magazine July 2019)

Dark Matter explores the elusive building blocks of our Universe through art and physics – and why 95 per cent of it cannot be observed.

Contributions include –

Brian Clegg is an English science writer. He is the author of popular science books on topics including light, infinity, quantum entanglement and surviving the impact of climate change, and biographies of Roger Bacon and Eadweard Muybridge. In this exclusive interview he discusses ideas relating to his latest book, ‘Dark Matter & Dark Energy: The Hidden 95% of the Universe’

Aura Satz’s work encompasses film, sound, performance and sculpture. Interested in modes of heightened perception and sensory disorientation such as flicker and psychoacoustics, Satz has used various technologies as the subject of her work, including the Chladni plate, Rubens’ tube, theremin, mechanical music, phonograph grooves, dial tones, drawn/optical sound and early colour film. She discusses her work in Voices.

Semiconductor is UK artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. They make visually and intellectually engaging artworks which explore the material nature of our world and how we experience it through the lens of science and technology, questioning how these devices mediate our experiences. They discuss their work in Exploring the material nature of our world and how we experience it.

Professor Malcolm Fairbairn is a member of the Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology Research Group, Kings College London. His research lies at the boundary between cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics. In particular, he is interested in dark matter, dark energy, cosmological inflation and particle astrophysics. He discusses his ideas in 95% of the Universe is missing.

Rachel Pimm works in sculpture, video and performance to explore environments and their materialities, histories and politics often from the point of view of non-human agents such as plants, minerals, worms, water, gravity or rubber. Working in sound, Lori E Allen uses sources including obscure dialogue, background noise, cut-up word percussion and distorted popular television themes to create unique audio landscapes. They discuss their collaborative work in On the Surface.

Yu-Chen Wang’s central practice is drawing, allowing her to explore and meditate on mechanical and biological forms, and the ways in which their bodily borderlines blur and mutate. From these extemporisations, she then finds collaborative routes that take her work into the realms of fictional text, provoking the subsequent production of sculptural installation, performance, music, and film, in various combinations. She discusses her ideas and work in There’s more to this than meets the eye.

Andy Holden is an artist who works in a variety of mediums. His immersive new installation, ‘Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape’, for the Science Gallery London exhibition ‘Dark Matter: 95% of the Universe is missing’ reflects on the physics of a cartoon environment which defy the normal conditions of gravity, force, and velocity. He discusses his ideas and work in Cartoon Logic.

Experimenting with ideas of time, space and physicality, Carey Young’s body of artistic work explores law as a separate kind of ‘reality’, one with its own inherent subjectivities and points of breakdown. Missing Mass (2010) is exhibited at the Science Gallery, London exhibition ‘Dark Matter: 95% of the Universe is missing’.

Plus, there are article by Carole Mundell: Experiment picks up light from the first stars – and it may change our understanding of dark matter ; Juri Smirnov: Dark matter may not actually exist – and our alternative theory can be put to the test ; Ian G McCarthy: Our study suggests the elusive ‘neutrino’ could make up a significant part of dark matter ;  Jamie Farnes: Bizarre ‘dark fluid’ with negative mass could dominate the universe – what my research suggests.

And, information on the Science Gallery London ‘Dark Matter: 95% of the Universe is Missing’ exhibition.

The French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard wrote ‘Man is an Imagining Being’, but what do we imagine we are talking about when we speak of the imagination? Or, to put it another way, can we imagine the imagination? Where do our ideas about the imagination come from? How are creativity, imagination and philosophy related? Are there ‘types’ of imagination are there and can its capacity sometimes be restrictive? And can the imagination be ‘educated’?

These are just some of the questions that are explored in Celebrating the Imagination (Part 2).

Gary Lachman is the author of twenty-two books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. In an exclusive interview, Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, he discusses his ideas that draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.

Ryota Matsumoto is an artist, designer and urban planner. In The Alchemy of Oblique Topography he shows his artwork that reflects the morphological transformations of our ever-evolving urban and ecological milieus.

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources in education and business. His inspiring TED talks have been viewed more than 25 million times and seen by an estimated 250 million people in over 150 countries. In Creativity, Imagination and ‘Finding Your Element’ he discusses subjects such as the transformative role of creativity and imagination in education and how we can all ‘Find Our Element’.

Nicholas Wiltsher is a philosopher, working on imagination, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, phenomenology, and feminist philosophy. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas on the relationship between philosophy and the imagination.

Lindsay Clarke is the author of seven novels, including The Chymical Wedding, which won the Whitbread Award for Fiction in 1989. He has been Writer in Residence at the University of Wales, Cardiff, where he became a long-term Associate of the MA Creative Writing programme. In The Mythic Imagination he discusses the role of the imagination from Ancient Troy to the Present Day.

Dana Simmons is a neuroscientist, science-artist, and medical writer in Chicago. She is endlessly fascinated by the beauty in the brain and the patterns that are ever-present throughout microscopic and macroscopic nature. She shows and discusses her work in The Purkinje Pattern.

Dustin Stokes is a philosopher at the University of Utah, having previously researched and taught at the Universities of Sussex and Toronto, in both philosophy and cognitive science. His research includes work on perception, imagination, and creative thought and behaviour. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas on creativity, imagination and philosophy.

In Cassini’s Dreams, artist China Blue and her team translated the raw data from the dust and ice particles combined with an artistic interpretation of what would be heard from Cassini’s viewpoint as it travelled through and around Saturn’s rings, to create the bases of her exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2019.

Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn OBE was an innovator in creative education and the founder of The Pushkin Trust, an organisation that supports creative learning and education across Ireland, works to provide and support a holistic model to spark imagination and deepen awareness of our collective creativity, our humanity and ‘the child’ within each one of us.

Sadly, Sacha died on 10 December 2018 and this interview, Imagination in Education, first published in the launch issue of Interalia Magazine (May 2014), is re-published here as a tribute to her creativity, compassion and imagination.

On a bright, still December day author, artist and poet, John Moat, meditates on the connection sea, streams and fountain have with the Imagination and the Sacred… and much more.

And poet, James Harpur, celebrates the imagination in Opera – an impromptu school trip back in the day which as much as an opera as the actual opera we went to see.

There are articles by Tom McLeish: We talk about artistic inspiration all the time – but scientific inspiration is a thing too ; Valerie van Mulukom: How imagination can help people overcome fear and anxiety ; Amy Kind: Imagination is a powerful tool: why is philosophy afraid of it? ; and Howard Rachlin: Teleological behaviourism or what it means to imagine a lion.

Plus, a feature on the exhibition Borderlines at The Edge.

An overall definition of identity? If I gave one, I would almost certainly invite reproof for ignoring this aspect of the concept or that. If you twist my arm, I would say identity is about repulsion, something that allows me to say this is mine, not yours; ours, not theirs; deserving of my/our loyalty, attachment and respect, and, by implication, to discriminate others.

Florian Coulmas: On ‘Identity’ (Interalia Magazine, April 2019)

Identity explores current thinking on personal identity as well as national/global identities.

Contributions include:

Florian Coulmas is Professor of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. His latest publication, ‘Identity: A Very Short Introduction’, was published in February 2019. In On ‘Identity’ he discusses the concept of identity, its history and our contemporary understanding.

Inspired by an aesthetic in which art, science, medicine and ecology intersect, Elaine Whittaker’s transdisciplinary art practice considers biology as contemporary art practice. In Contained she shows works abstracted and transformed by her mother’s experience of living in a TB sanatorium.

Adrian Holme is a teacher, writer and artist. His cross-disciplinary background encompasses biology, fine art and information science. In ‘A house built on sand?’ he presents a sociological critique of contemporary ‘identity politics’.

Jonathan O. Chimakonam Ph.D, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. In this exclusive interview he discusses his aim to break new grounds in African philosophy by formulating a system that unveils new concepts and opens new vistas for thought; a method that represents a new approach to philosophising in African and intercultural philosophies; and a system of logic that grounds them both.

Matthew MacKisack is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School. He has published numerous articles on the intellectual and cultural history of imagining, and recently co-curated ‘Extreme Imagination – inside the mind’s eye’, an exhibition of art by people who cannot visualise. In Notes on an Aphantasic Artist he discusses the phenomenon of ‘creativity without visualisation’.

Plus, there are articles by Giuliana Mazzoni: The ‘real you’ is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want ; Caitlin Curtis: How DNA ancestry testing can change our ideas of who we are : and M M Owen: Erik Erikson knew that self-invention takes a lifetime.

Drawing Thoughts (Part 4) continues exploring current thinking on the practice and theory of Drawing, its creative, expressive and educational value, as well as its fundamental importance to translating and analysing the world.

Contributions include:-

Juliette Losq is an artist known for photo-realistic pieces which seem like a portal to another world. Her oil paintings and drawings, which include the intricate and intimate as well as large-scale works and installations, incorporate imagery from a range of diverse interests, which she fuses with her own photographs taken during explorations of overgrown and forgotten places, The result are drawings, composed of fragments from all these realities, that transport the viewer to the border between the urban world and the wilderness. She discusses her work in Between the urban and the wilderness.

Joe Graham is a Lecturer in Drawing at Falmouth School of Art, Falmouth University. He is an artist who writes about drawing and conducts research through drawing using various propositions drawn from phenomenology and ontology. His interests revolve around understanding how drawing operates as both a vehicle for expression and a mode of thought. He discusses his ideas and work in Drawing, research and philosophy.

Laura Hudson is a cross-media artist, writer and curator with a background in filmmaking and edible horticulture. In 2018 she was awarded the student prize at Trinity Buoy Wharf (formerly Jerwood) Drawing Prize, for her Nail House Drawings, and The Roger de Grey Drawing Prize. She discusses the importance of drawing in her work in Drawing as a form of learning.

Simon Head is an artist whose work incorporates drawing, sculpture, poetry and text. He discusses his work in time-image-structure.

Bethann Garramon Merkle is a multi-disciplinary science communicator and artist who specializes in sharing science through depictions of the natural world. In particular, her work explores the role stories play in shaping public perspectives of science and ecology topics. She discusses her work in Drawing Science.

Ruth Chambers is an artist whose work explores themes including the changing material culture of communication, paper culture, and the history and function of surface pattern. In On the overlooked and forgotten, she discusses her ideas and work.

Sophie Erin Cooper creates work exploring the intricacies in the natural world and intangible human experiences; such as memories, thought patterns and the passing of time. Her piece ‘A Split Second of Humanity (Phase Two)’ was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2018 and is currently being exhibited on a national UK tour. She discusses her work in Fragility and impermanence.

In Exploring interconnections of order and chaos, artist Katherine Gravett discusses some of her drawings and work that draws heavily from a traumatic family event. She has also worked in collaboration with neuroscientists in Cambridge and her work has been exhibited in artistic, scientific and therapeutic settings.

Artist and writer, Richard Bright, has addressed the relationship between art, science and consciousness for over 30 years. In Think of yourself as a Wave, he shows works from his recent series of drawings where he explores the impermanent and shifting process of time and waves.

Plus, there are articles by Gabriele Neher – Leonardo da Vinci: 500 years after his death his genius shines as bright as ever ; and Christopher Henshilwood & Karen Loise van Niekerk: South Africa’s Blombos cave is home to the earliest drawing by a human.

Towards New Thinking explores contemporary thinking and work in art and science relating to such topics as climate change, our future relationship with the environment, visualizing nature, and the role of technology in social progress.

For over 40 years, Diane Burko has investigated monumental geological phenomena. Her practice at the intersection of art and science focuses on issues of climate change. Originally basing her imagery on research and visual data from scientists, she soon moved to bear witness directly in the Polar regions. She discusses her work in The intersection of Art and the Environment.

Jasmine Pradissitto is a physicist and a painter who sculpts and creates installations in plastics, light, metal, and geopolymers, embracing the dual worlds of the Scientist and Artist. Described as ‘holograms you can touch’, her sculptures in new and discarded plastics, change in colour as the observer moves. Inspired by nature, the human condition, and scientific breakthroughs, forms are melted and reshaped from plastics using an innovative process she has developed, as a commentary on an unsustainable, increasingly Anthropocene world slowly being reshaped by the things we consume and then disregard. She discusses her latest work in Why the search for a ‘Brave New World’ is to be found in your back yard.

Epicurean Endocrinology’s latest project, ‘Cooking Sex’, is a series of sex-hormone altering meals and food products that explore the endocrine-system altering properties of industrially produced food. Byron Rich and Liz Flintz discuss their project in Epicurean Endocrinology – Cooking Sex.

Sarah Sutton is an associate professor of Art at Ithaca College, who is interested in vision science, spatial structures and speculative futures. Although her work is grounded in her painting practice, her collaboration with scientists and philosophers with overlapping interests provides creativity and vitality to her painting and teaching. She discusses her ideas and work in an exclusive interview Interconnecting Perceptions.

Nicolas Strappini’s work investigates how physical science apparatus and experimental equipment can be used alongside printmaking and many other mark-making processes to form novel artworks. The formations that he creates appear to be self-authoring and generative, and use techniques that are to some degree dependent on natural, random processes. He discusses his work in Blurring boundaries between art and science.

Rebecca Gasior Altman is a writer and sociologist. Her work explores the social history of chemistry, plastics, pollution and environmental legacy— what we pass from one generation to the next. She holds a PhD in environmental sociology from Brown University, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Science and Environmental Health Network, a national think-tank. In an exclusive interview, Being Plastic, she discusses her ideas on the history and future of plastic.

Siobhan McDonald is an award-winning Irish artist interested in the changeable nature of landmass, historical events and their interconnection to time. Her latest exhibition, titled Hidden Monuments, presents a series of artistic enquiries to remind us of the Cairns, standing stones and Megalithic structures that foreshadow our architectural histories.

Artist Emma Tuck’s work is informed by natural forms and patterns, refracted through the psychological, the political and the trivial. Her work is increasingly motivated by the catastrophic impact of human actions on the natural world. She discusses her ideas and work in What I see around me.

BioBAT Art Space is the first exhibition space in New York City that is entirely dedicated to the intersection of Art and Science. Their inaugural art exhibit, Spontaneous Emergence of Order, curated by Elena Soterakis and Jeannine Bardo, features four interdisciplinary artists, Richelle Gribble, Tanya Chaly, Magdalena Dukiewicz and Tarah Rhoda, who create works based in science and technology. The article also features an introduction to the exhibition by Benjamin Sutton.

Plus, there are articles by Tony D. Sampson – Brave New World: the pill-popping, social media obsessed dystopia we live in ; Denise Baden – Environmental storytelling can help spread big ideas for saving the planet ; and Garth Paine – Listening to nature: How sound can help us understand environmental change.

“There is, of course, the neuroscience of art, where researchers seek to tease out the brain features that characterize artists, as a means to understand how the brain achieves such complex and nuanced outward expressions, and how disruption of brain networks alters these expressions. On the other hand, there is art based on neuroscience, such as mine and others in this issue, that provide an alternate view of scientific concepts. These bi-directional connections strengthen both art and neuroscience.”

Amanpreet Badhwar

The Lines that Connect is co-edited with Dr. Amanpreet Badhwar (neuroscientist and artist) and explores contemporary thinking and work on the interactions between art and neuroscience.

Contributions include:-

Canadian multidisciplinary artist Stéphanie Morissette’s works reflect on human behaviour and the use of technologies in our quotidian life as well as in the geopolitical sphere; on conflicts and their psychological impact on the different participating actors.

In this exclusive interview she discusses her project, ‘Shadows in a Labyrinth’ (with co-collaborator Dale Einarson), which reflects on the complexity, the flaws and ephemeral aspects of our brain and memory, as well as on the medium and technologies, drawing parallels with mental illness and disease like Alzheimer.

Amanpreet Badhwar is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Recherche de l’Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Université de Montréal , where she works on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias. Her research combines structural and functional imaging with clinical and genetic assessments to relate variations in brain connectivity to clinical status, and to develop early markers of AD pathology. She is also an artist. In this exclusive interview, The Lines that Connect, she discusses her relationship between art and neuroscience.

Dan Lloyd is the Thomas C. Brownell Professor of Philosophy and a Professor of Neuroscience at Trinity College, Connecticut. He is the author/editor of Subjective Time: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of temporality (co-edited with Valtteri Arstila). In Notes Toward a Theory of Sensorimotor Understanding he discusses his developing research into the animation and sonification of brain activity.

Alexa Piotte is a graphic designer living in Montreal. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts majoring in Design and minoring in behavioural neuroscience psychology from Concordia University. In Design and Neuroscience she discusses her work relating design and neuroscience, including her collaborative project, ‘BDL: Mapping out the Genetic Blueprint of the Fruit Fly Visual System’, with Hunter Shaw, a Ph.D. candidate in biology at McGill University.

Tyler Sloan is a freelance data artist/scientist. While he is not developing custom Jupyter-based data processing pipelines, he produces computer-generated artwork and datadriven motion design using Open Data and formal scientific models. His artwork combines elements of his training as a developmental neurobiologist (B.Sc, Ph.D.) with his passion for Open Data. He discusses his work and thinking in Neural Connections.

Julia Buntaine Hoel is a conceptual artist whose work is inspired by and based on Neuroscience, the scientific study of the brain. She is also director of SciArt Center, and editor in chief of SciArt Magazine. Julia attained her double BA in neuroscience and sculpture from Hampshire College, her post-baccalaureate certificate in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art, and her MFA of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. She shows some of her latest work in Neuroscience-Art.

Anjan Chatterjee is a professor of neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics and a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. His research focuses on spatial cognition and its relationship to language. He also conducts neuroaesthetics research and writes about the ethical use of neuroscience findings in society. He discusses his ideas in Aesthetics and Memory.

Shanthi Chandrasekar is a multimedia and multidisciplinary artist with a BSc in Physics and an MA in Psychology. The underlying focus of her work is to understand the workings of the cosmos and life itself, with a particular fascination for the workings of the brain. She discusses this in Neurocosmologies.

Tia Besser-Paul shows work from her project Cellular Kinesics, an exploration of the communication methods of cells during a spinal cord injury. Heavily influenced by the research data, videos, and imaging of neuroscientist Andrew Greenhalgh, this work is a collaborative effort of science and art.

Shima Rastegarnia has a B.Sc. in computer science. She was always interested in art and uses different mediums in her paintings. Shima is also interested in graphic design, 3D modeling, and in making video games. Currently she is working at Centre de recherche de l’Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM) under the supervision of Dr. AmanPreet Badhwar, where she hopes to gain better understanding of neuroscientific principles, along with expertise in neuroinformatics and science communication. She discusses her work in Making Art with Neuroscience.

Rosi Maria Di Meglio has recently completed a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Concordia University. Her artistic practice focuses on space and memory, on real life experiences and transformation. She considers herself a lyrical romantic abstract expressionist artist. Her philosophy is founded on the ideas that art has the power to move people whether they are observing or creating. She discusses her work in Guiding Memory.

Josefina Maranzano is mostly a self-taught artist. She studied medicine in La Plata and worked for a few years in Argentina as a general practitioner and a radiologist. At present, Josefina shares her life between painting and exploring new techniques in visual arts and conducting brain imaging medical research. She very recently submitted her Ph.D. thesis in neuroscience (with a focus in multiple sclerosis) at McGill University. She shows some of her work in Autism.

Richard Bright is an artist and editor of Interalia Magazine. In Neural Communications he shows some of his work, which draws inspiration from neuroscientific literature and imagery. “I create drawings that offer an interpretation on mental processes to reveal the nature of human consciousness and the process of thought, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behaviour of neurons.”

Visions explores current thinking and work by artists who are engaged with and inspired by science and technology.

Contributions include –

Catherine Richardson experiments with natural processes using paint, inks, pond water and metals; building a library of textures by freezing, thawing, evaporating, heating and burning. Using these textures the artist compiles mixed medium ‘paintings’ on panel or paper. Richardson then uses digital techniques to organize a collage of scanned textures, creating imagery that expresses Landforms experienced.

Daniel Ambrosi has been exploring ground-breaking methods of visual presentation since graduating from Cornell University with degrees in architecture and 3D graphics. In 2011, he devised a unique form of computational photography that generates extremely high-resolution immersive vibrant images, His latest work, ‘Dreamscapes’, builds upon his previous experiments by adding a powerful new graphics tool, a modified version of ‘DeepDream’, a computer vision program evolved from Google engineers’ desire to visualize the inner workings of Deep Learning artificial intelligence models.

Julie Light is a visual artist primarily creating sculptural objects in glass and other materials. Her current work is focused on the relationships between medical technologies and the self. She discusses her work in Visions of Science.

Anastasia Tyurina’s art practice involves an interplay between photography and scientific imaging, and is concentrated in the specific area of scientific photography made by the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), which has expanded the boundaries of observation and representation of the micro world. In Unseen Water, she discusses her work in the field of photomicrography, which aims to expand human visual vocabulary, revealing principles of beauty which are typically difficult to otherwise access.

Jenny Walsh is a glass artist who uses glass in combination with other materials to explore the interface between art, science and technology, examining both the role of glass in scientific discoveries, as well as using glass to convey scientific concepts. She discusses her ideas and work in The Vital Spark.

Leonie Bradley is an artist working in a range of media including film, photography and print. Her work explores scale and ways of looking, from a unique tonal range. She creates large, handmade digital images that subvert the conventional viewing distance. Wavefront is a collaboration with Kit Yates, Senior Lecturer in Department of Mathematical Sciences and Tim Rogers, Reader in Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Bath.

Costas Andrew Mikellides is a qualified Interior Designer, former Chairman of the British Institute of Interior Design, Fellow Member of the Royal Chartered Society of Designers, with experience in industry and education. He discusses his ideas and work in Elements of Line.

Tam Hunt discusses the “hard problem” of consciousness by asking the question Could consciousness all come down to the way things vibrate? and Thomas Cronin discusses visual ecology in Seeing without eyes – the unexpected world of nonvisual photoreception.

In Poetry, Sacred Art and the Book of Kells Francesca Diano reviews poet James Harpur’s latest book The White Silhouette where she discovers a maze of connections that takes her on a journey through Neoplatonism to Krishnamurti and quantum mechanics.

And Interalia Magazine editor, Richard Bright, reviews Gemma Anderson’s book Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science, which introduces tested ways in which drawing as a research practice can enhance morphological insight, specifically within the natural sciences, mathematics and art.

“We are all bodies of water! What we do to water, we do to every body, including ourselves.”

Astrida Neimanis

“The challenges we face with water are largely a consequence of how we perceive it in postmodern industrialized societies.”

D.L.’West’ Marrin

“Water issues are vast and present intricately complex problems. I think that the solutions and suggestions for actions lie in a diversity of approaches. It will take all of us working together cooperatively to come to the assistance of bodies of water around the globe.”

Basia Irland

Interconnecting Water explores current thinking and work on ways that water connects us to each other and the world.

Contributions include:-

John Finney is Emeritus Professor of Physics at University College, London. In The origin of water he discusses the questions How did water originate? And How did it get to Earth?

In her pioneering inter-disciplinary practice, Basia Irland focusses on rivers and watersheds, water scarcity, climate change, ecological restoration and waterborne diseases. Her poetic, socially-engaged work endeavours to reconnect people with their local waterways in order to foster care, appreciation and responsibility. She discusses her work in Reading the River.

D.L. Marrin (nickname West) is an applied scientist specializing in biogeochemistry, water resources and aquatic ecology. In Perspectives on altering our perceptions of water he discusses the biological and behavioral factors that complicate our capacity and inclination to expand our perceptions of water.

Susan Derges has established an international reputation through her practice involving cameraless, lens-based, digital and reinvented photographic processes, encompassing subject matter informed by the physical and biological sciences as well as landscape and abstraction. She discusses her relationship with water in Interconnecting Water.

David Teeple is a multidisciplinary artist using glass, water, and light to create formally simple yet perceptually complex works, which centers on the many facets of water: as a subject, a material, and an experience. He discusses his ideas and work in Modified Perceptual Conditions and the Sublime.

Astrida Neimanis writes mostly about bodies, water and weather, in an intersectional feminist mode. Her most recent monograph is Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. She discusses her ideas and work in Bodies of Water.

Amy Sharrocks is a live artist, sculptor and film-maker who invites people to come on journeys in which their own experience, communication and expression are a vital part. She has making work about people and water for 10 years. In What’s the point of cities? she discusses the role that swimming has in connecting people with cities.

Laura Ferguson has made her own body the subject of her art, finding beauty in a curving spine and exploring the connections between pain, consciousness, and creativity. Floating on inner seas will be part of a book-in-progress about her own art and the process of making it, The Consciousness of the Body.

Siobhan McDonald is a visual artist working in the medium of paint, film and sound. She is interested in the changeable nature of landmass, historical events and their interconnection to time. She discusses her relationship with water in How the water moves.

Plus, James Sprittles discusses the importance and implications of understanding the behaviour of water droplets in We may just have solved the great mystery of why drops splash and Jonti Horner discusses the discovery of water in the universe in Water, water, everywhere in our Solar system but what does that mean for life?