You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all…. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action.

Without it, we are nothing

Luis Buñuel, Memoirs

Memory Networks is co-edited with Julia Buntaine, Director of the SciArt Center of New York (www.sciartcenter.org) and Editor-in-Chief of SciArt Magazine (www.sciartmagazine.com). The aim of the issue is to feature the work of artists and scientists that explore the brain, the nature of memory and networks.

Richelle Gribble creates mixed media paintings and drawings, prints, videos, puzzles and sculptures. Her artwork is inspired by concepts of virality, biology, networks, group dynamics, and social trends that connect us all. In Networks and Living Systems she discusses the multiple networks that inspire and run through life and work.

In Dendrites, Brains and Frontiers Reimagined, Dr Marius Kwint, Reader in Visual Culture in the School of Art and Design at the University of Portsmouth, UK, discusses his work studying dendritic structures and his involvement in the major exhibitions Simply Complex ; Brains: the Mind as Matter ;and Frontiers Re-imagined: Art That Connects Us.

Self Reflected has been described as “your brain perceiving itself”. In an exclusive interview, artist and neuroscientist, Greg Dunn, discusses this extraordinary artwork that aims to reveal the nature of human consciousness, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behaviour of neurons.

In Brainscapes, Mind Masks and States of Mind interdisciplinary artist-designer and filmmaker, Karen Ingham, explores the interplay between brain and mind, matter and metaphysics, our inner ‘self’ and our public visage.

In Memory-Connections Matter, artist Patricia Moss-Vreeland discusses memory as a meditation on who we are. Her paintings, drawings, prints, mixed media collages, and artist books evoke an awakening of feelings, experiences, and imagery embedded in our everyday memories, probing the unexplored territory where art and science meet.

The nature of memory is also explored in the work of artists China Blue in Memory Networks, MindDraw and Imagining Blue ; Judith Modrak in Dendrites and Memories ; and Laura Krasnow in Memories photographed.

Eran Gilat is a neuroscientist and avid fine art photographer. In From ‘Life Science’, he shows images from his latest book, which reflects his long lasting confrontation with biological tissues, contemplating issues of materialism, erotica, and mortality, corresponding with the complicated and intriguing category of “animal reminder” in the visual arts.

The relationship between Science and Surrealism is explored in the work of cognitive scientist and artist, Albert Barque-Duran, in Cognitive Science and Surrealism and artist Steve Sangapore in Known unknowns.

As an artist, Julia Buntaine is interested in what has proven to be the most complex puzzle, the epitome of emergence, the deepest well our sciences have examined; the brain. In Neuroscience Art she shows some of her work that provides the viewer an alternative way to understand the wonders of biology we have discovered in ourselves.

Artwork that has been influenced by neuroscience is also featured in articles by Bonnie Cutts in Brainbow and beyond and Richard Bright in Brainscapes, Slices and Thoughts.

Plus, there’s an essay ‘imagining possibilities’ by painter and writer, Garry Kennard, titled Memory: What exactly happened?

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flashes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact, they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

Arthur Koestler: The Act of Creation.

Human creativity is something of a mystery, not to say a paradox. One new idea may be creative, while another is merely new. What’s the difference? And how is creativity possible? Creative ideas are unpredictable. Sometimes, they even seem to be impossible — and yet they happen. How can that be explained? Could a scientific psychology help us to understand how creativity is possible?

Margaret A Boden: Creativity in a Nutshell.

I define creativity as the production of new knowledge from already existing knowledge. Creativity is essentially problem solving. Not very romantic but what else can it be?

Arthur I Miller: On Creativity and Metaphor in Art and Science

This issue explores Creativity and Metaphor in the arts, sciences, education, language and music. The very notion of creativity is being redefined in this age of machines and we may have to re-think what we mean by thinking and the creative process. Creativity is a vast subject and can occur in many ways. The aim of this issue is to focus on particular areas were creativity occurs, with the hope of getting closer to a definition and an understanding of its process.

In an exclusive interview, Arthur I Miller discusses ideas that will be the subject of his forthcoming book, in which he explores creativity and metaphor in art and science.

Jasmine Pradissitto describes herself as “painter who sculpts with light and colour using the scientific knowledge accumulated over years of experience”. In Joining the creative dots: A personal journey through Science to Art, she discusses her work and her thoughts on the creative process, on the role of metaphors and how to communicate them.

The ‘forms of creativity’ and ‘creativity and computers’ are explored by Margaret A. Boden in Creativity in a Nutshell and in Authenticity and Computer Art, she asks whether the notion of authenticity can be applied to any/all types of computer art.

In the first months of 2016, twenty Dutch artists with a background in comics devoted themselves to the early medieval songbook Utrecht Psalter.They had received an assignment from the Utrecht University, who have custody of the book, to illustrate one given psalm in their own, modern style. With essays and exclusive interviews with a number of the artists, Utrechts Psalter 2016 A.D relates the creative process that was involved in the project.

In Are some cultures more creative than others? Stuart Boydell, explores the differences between Western and South-East Asian ideas of creativity, and asks the question that if “there are two differing conceptualisations of creativity broadly divided down an east-west divide, what then does all this mean for the future?”

In exclusive interviews, Ronald Carter explores the idea that creativity, far from being simply a property of exceptional people, is an exceptional property of all people in Creativity and Language,, and Mark A Runco discusses Metaphorical thinking and creativity.

As well as being an artist, Lynne Cameron has also been a Professor of Applied Linguistics; a teacher of children and adults; and a trainer of teachers. In Empathy, metaphor and ‘dynamic painting’ she discusses not only her artwork but also the relationship between metaphor and dynamics of empathy.

The employment of metaphors in the representational problems of modern physics is explored by Tor-Finn Malum Fitje in The Color of Quarks

And, in Mr. Turner, artist, meets Mrs. Somerville, scientist, Sidney Perkowitz explores the connection and influence between the two.

Plus, there is a Creativity and Metaphor video blog featuring – Sir Ken Robinson: Can Creativity Be Taught? ; an interview with David Cope ; ‘Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius’: a discussion between Brian Greene, R. Douglas Fields, Philip Glass, Rex Jung, Dean Keith Simonton, Julie Taymor and Marcus du Sautoy ; and ‘Madness Redefined: Creativity, Intelligence and the Dark Side of the Mind’: a discussion between James Fallon, Kay Redfield Jamison, Susan McKeown and Elyn Saks.

“The heartbeat marks both the beginning and the end of life. It symbolizes our finitude. The symbolic meaning of the heart can hardly be overestimated as a temple of the feelings of fear, love, purity and identity”

Chantal Pollier: Taxonomy of Love

“I’m more interested in what the heart actually is, as a material and psychic entity, than what it symbolises, although I grant that its symbolic power in our culture has undoubtedly shaped and informed my understanding of it. What interests me about the heart is its surprising capabilities and the growing body of evidence supporting the notion of its entanglements with emotional states.”

Helen Pynor: The Body is a Big Place.

The Art in HeArt is co-edited with Vasia Hatzi, PhD Geneticist, artist and creator and director of MEDinART (www.medinart.eu). The aim of the issue is to explore the work of artists that are inspired by the human heart, together with a scientist and medical illustrator who the discuss the relationship between cardiology and art.

In an exclusive interview, Hybrid Thinking from the Heart, Vasia Hatzi talks about LaB, MEDinArt, hybrid thinking and the heart.

With her training in psychology and art, Chantal Pollier explores the symbolic meaning of the heart in Taxonomy of Love.

The Body is a Big Place is a collaborative installation work by Helen Pynor and Peta Clancy In exclusive interviews, they discuss the installation from their own personal perspectives, exploring their work, the subject of organ transplantation and the ambiguous thresholds between life and death.

Benjamin A. Vierling is an American artist who is widely respected for his trademark rendering of arcane mysticism. In The Mystic Heart he talks about the symbolism and meanings of the heart in his work.

Federico Carbajal, an architect based in Montreal, creates beautiful artworks based on human anatomy. Using galvanized wire, stainless steel, and acrylic, The Spatial Heart exude the essence of life.

The heart in science is explored in two features. Joanna Culley is the Lead Medical and Scientific Illustrator & founder of Medical-Artist.com, producing large scale medical and scientific artworks. In The Heart in Art she shows some of her work. Julia Grapsa is a consultant cardiologist and organiser of “Cardio MEDICINE 2016: A Field of Science – Art & Economics”. In Cardiology and Art, she talks with Vasia Hatzi (founder of MEDinART) about the conference and the relationship between cardiology and art.

And the heart as inspiration and symbol is explored in Textile Anatomy by textile artist Valentina Stefanescu and in The Metaphorical Heart by artist Κonstantinos Patsios.

Imagery and visual metaphors are essential to effective scientific practice, because they enable a concise way to capture complex information, and also convenient ways to think about complicated natural systems……Images are excellent ways to capture information, to guide our thinking, and to help us imagine domains which we cannot easily ‘see’ with our physiological sensory apparatuses…..The mental representations that we form of these microscopic domains is closely linked to the imagery that we develop, and in fact forms our intuition for how they behave.

David Glowacki

If we were to name the most powerful assumption of all, which leads one on and on in an attempt to understand life, it is that all things are made of atoms, and that everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms.

Richard Feynman

Micro-choreography is co-edited with scientist, artist, and cultural theorist, David Glowacki. The aim of the issue is to highlight examples where aesthetic practice draws inspiration from the molecular sciences and ways in which science uses aesthetics to create representations of nature which are invisible to our eyes. We are particularly interested in how to capture dynamical molecular and microscopic processes.

Eric Heller is a Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Harvard University, known for his work on time dependent quantum mechanics. In addition to his scientific accomplishments, Heller is also a practicing artist. He is best known for digital renderings based on the results of his physics research. In this ‘Painting’ with electron flow he shows some of his artwork, as well as giving an exclusive interview with David Glowacki.

David Glowacki is a scientist, artist, and cultural theorist. A Royal Society Research Fellow based at the University of Bristol, and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. In Hidden Fields he discusses these projects, the aesthetics of scientific imagination and the fusion of scientific and artistic practice.

Luke Jerram’s multidisciplinary practice involves the creation of sculptures, installations and live arts projects. Since 2004, he has been turning viruses and other pathogens into stunning glass sculptures, in an ongoing series titled “Glass Microbiology.” Covering maladies such as AIDS, Ebola and Swine Flu, his works are both beautiful and disturbing, challenging observers to reinterpret their view of the tiny organisms.

Günes-Hélène Isitan is a professional transdisciplinary artist; her practice, anchored in biomedia arts, is an interweaving of visual and interactive art, life sciences and philosophy. In Humanscapes she uses microorganisms to explore the cultural barriers humans have built in the life continuum, questioning the Nature/Culture dichotomy and offering a new perspective on our relationship to non-human agents.

David S. Goodsell is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute. He is also an artist, using ink and watercolor painting to represent cells and their compartments: anything from a bacterium to the Golgi apparatus of a eukaryotic cell, nerve synapses or even viral particles. His series of paintings Nanotransport capture different aspects of the active transport of molecules in and out of living cells.

Lisa May Thomas is a dance artist trained at Laban London and specializes in working with the moving image. In Virtual Connections she discusses her involvement in the multi-award winning project and her latest work.

Drew Berry is a biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. His scientifically accurate and aesthetically rich visualizations are elucidating cellular and molecular processes for a wide range of audiences. Biomedical Animations shows some of his award-winning work.

Simon Park is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey, where he teaches Microbiology and Molecular Biology. For nearly 10 years now, he has also worked at the fertile intersection between art and science and here, his practice has been inspired by the aesthetics and processes of the usually invisible microbiological and chemical world. As well as collaborating with artists, he also produces his own work. Crystal Worlds is an example.

We sent out a call to artists and scientists for images of their work that ‘aesthetically represent the dynamics of microscopic & molecular processes’. A selection of the best images (assessed in terms of their aesthetic impact and scientific content) are included in the Micro-choreography gallery, which includes images by Florian Stroehl, Ljiljana Fruk, Ula Alexander, Susanna Monti, Craig Russell and Becca Rose.

Plus, there are videos on Molecular vibration by danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) and Richard Feynman talking about Jiggling Atoms.

The issue aims to explore the different approaches artists and scientists have to using algorithms, code and programming languages as their media. For example, artists may use simple instructions and code to produce complex visual outputs (and sometimes vice versa), and scientists have used genetic coding to create virtual creatures.

The relationship between code and output to produce visual meanings will be explored.

Jean-Pierre Hébert is an independent artist of algorithmic art, drawings, and mixed media. He co-founded the Algorists in 1995 with Roman Verostko. Hébert produces works on paper, including ink and pencil drawings, paintings, etchings and dry points from polymer and copper plates, and recently digital prints. In Drawing is just a thought he shows some of his work.

In Code as Muse, Alex May discusses his use of a wide range of digital technologies, most notably video projection onto physical objects, interactive installations, generative works, full-size humanoid robots, performance, and video art.

Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg are pioneers in data visualization and analytics. As leaders of Google’s data visualization research group, they focus on finding new ways for users to understand and explore data. In The Color of Data they show how they created specialized color languages for different visualizations.

In Notes Towards a History of Art, Code and Autonomy, artist Paul Brown presents a view of developments in the history of art, code, and autonomy from his own perspective.

Thomas Ray is an ecologist who uses self-replicating machine code programs evolved by natural selection to create Aesthetically Evolved Virtual Pets.

There is also a blog on Raven Kwok’s Algorithmic Videos

Plus there’s a ‘Code as Muse’ video blog featuring the Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition (ICA 1968), The story of Cybernetic Serendipity Music, Karl Sims Evolving Virtual Creatures with Genetic Algorithms, Thomas Ray’s Project Tierra, and Robert Rowe on Iannis Xenakis and Algorithmic Composition.

A space that is an integral part and an extension of the natural world around it, yet reveals the individuality of those who reside there and allows people to interact meaningfully to create a deep sense of belonging. (Marilyn Finnemore: Importance of Place)

Space and Place are familiar words denoting common experiences. They are basic concepts of the lived world. We tend to take them for granted. However, when we think of them, they may assume unexpected meanings and raise questions we have not thought to ask.

This issue explores the sense of place and space, both as an exterior phenomena (physical space) and as a source of internal personal transformation (altered mental space).

In Visual Perception, Abstraction and Invention: an Exploration, artist Nathan Cohen explores the question that “what we see we must inevitably have recourse to our experience of the physical world around us” and how we see the world around us can be altered through images and physical interaction with space and visual form.

Acclaimed photographer and anthropologist, Martin Gray, has spent the last 20 years on an amazing pilgrimage: visiting 1,000 sacred sites in 80 countries around the world. In The Power of Place: Sacred Sites and the Presence of the Miraculous he reveals just how devoutly pre-industrial cultures everywhere worshiped and respected the Earth.

The indelible connect between art, faith, and life that transcends stylistic, geographical, chronological and ideological boundaries, and the profound bond between arts and spirituality is discussed by Sushma K Bahl & Archana B Sapra in Multiple Contemporaries & Sacred Indian Art.

In an exclusive interview on his latest book, Time, Light and the Dice of Creation, Philip Franses invites us to travel through a journey, and a life, full of surprise and ambiguity, from paradoxes in physics to the meaning of time and the mythology of creation.

An altered sense of place and space inside us is explored by Luciana Haill in Revelations by Flicker, Dreamachines and Electroencephalographic signals in art and Flickering Phrontisterion.

Louise K Wilson’s article, In Surgical Sleep, discusses how artists have explored different states of (un)consciousness by placing themselves in intense and sometimes risky situations, where their experiences and perceptions of these states are recorded and re-contextualised.

In Caress of the Gaze, architect and interaction designer, Behnaz Farahi asks “What if our clothing could behave as an artificial skin capable of changing its shape and operating as an interface with the world, defining social issues such as intimacy, gender and even personal identities?”

The Reader is a large six foot sculpture of the artist Stanza wearing a hoodie reading a book. The artwork is a metaphor for the engagement of reading in the digital age.

Plus, there are two reviews by Garry Kennard – In Their Right Minds: The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses by Carole Brooks Platt and The Encounter: A new play by Complicite/Simon McBurney.

Drawing remains a central and pivotal activity to the work of many artists and designers – a touchstone and tool of creative exploration that informs visual discovery. It fundamentally enables the visualisation and development of perceptions and ideas. With a history as long and intensive as the history of our culture, the act of drawing remains a fundamental means to translate, document, record and analyse the worlds we inhabit. The role of drawing in education remains critical, and not just to the creative disciplines in art and design for which it is foundational.

Anita Taylor: Why drawing needs to be a curriculum essential (Guardian, 2014)

Drawing Thoughts explores 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.

Why has there been such an upsurge in interest in drawing? Why is drawing important? Can drawings change the way we think? Where is drawing now? Are there any crossovers of drawing practice between the arts and sciences?

These are just some the questions discussed with leading contemporary artists and educators.

Deanna Petherbridge CBE is an artist, writer and curator primarily concerned with drawing. Her practice is drawing-based. In On Drawing she discusses her work and her thoughts on drawing.

Angela Eames is a drawer and lecturer. Her visual practice utilises all drawing media from autographic procedures, through computing and moving image. In Spatial Manoeuvres: The Drawings of Angela Eames she discusses her work.

Anita Taylor discusses her work, as a practicing artist, educator, exhibition organiser and founding Director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize project, in Drawing and Educating.

Karen Kurczynski’s Drawing Is the New Painting examines the rise of drawing as a major medium or “anti-medium” in the contemporary period, ranging from expressive and reproductive practices to the relationship of hand drawing to technology.

‘How-to-draw’ books of the early twentieth century are explored by James Faure Walker in Learning to Draw from Forgotten Manuals, who also contributes an article on his own drawings in Five Paragraphs and Seven Pictures.

Wendy Smith’s work is about line. In Touching the Surface she discusses what primarily her artistic practice involves.

Gemma Anderson’s practice is at the interface of art and science. She has worked on different collaborative projects with mathematicians and natural scientists. In Drawing as a way of knowing she discusses her work as an artist, researcher and university lecturer.

In Drawing and Climate Change, Zaria Forman discusses her drawings and her artistic role in communicating climate change.

Danielle Groves explores the significance of the history of tattooing in various cultures and how this has influenced modern times, in The Tattoo: Drawing on the Body.

Visual articles are provided by –

Maureen McQuillan, who explores aspects of growth and unpredictability, repetition, replication and imperfection in the process and activity of drawing itself in Drawing Color. In Testing, Jaq Chartier’s paintings explore scientific methods through experimentation with paint and process. Eve Andrée Laramée explores the mutable, triadic relationship between art, science and nature in Drawing Out the Dross and Richard Bright explores the relationship of drawing and thought in his work with lines of thought.

Lost in Translation is a recent artwork by Stanza. Where a custom made robot responds to a series of texts and makes drawings unique to each reader.

And, Garry Kennard explores experience and perception through life drawing in his imaginary prose-piece, Paying attention – the disappearance of Rosa.

Plus, there’s a video by Sir Roger Penrose on How Drawing Is Used for Maths and Science.

The nature of consciousness remains deeply mysterious and profoundly important, with existential, scientific and spiritual implications. We know what it is like to be conscious – to have awareness, a conscious ‘mind’, but who, or what, are ‘we’ who know such things? How is the subjective nature of phenomenal experience to be explained in scientific terms? How is quantum physics related to consciousness? What is the function on dreaming? What does art reveal about our nature? How does the digital world impact on our mind?

In With Consciousness in Mind (Part 3) we continue our exploration into the nature of consciousness and look into some of these questions, and many more.

In Mind Change, Baroness Susan Greenfield discusses the all-pervading technologies that now surround us which, in her view, are creating a new environment, with vast implications, because our minds are physically adapting, are being rewired.

Philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë discusses his latest book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, which raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature?

The relationship of quantum physics and consciousness is discussed in an exclusive interview with Basil Hiley on Quantum theory, the Implicate Order and Consciousness and an article by Stuart Hameroff in Is your brain really a computer, or is it a quantum orchestra tuned to the universe?

Dreaming is the most often occurring altered states of consciousness, yet its function remains unsolved. In exclusive interviews, Katja Valli discusses her research and work into the content and behavioral genetics of dreaming in On Dreaming and Antti Revonsuo discusses the dreaming brain as a model of consciousness in Dreaming, Consciousness and Virtual Reality.

Teacher and educator, Sona Ahuja, discusses her research interests are consciousness studies, pedagogical practices, yoga and meditation in Education, Mindfulness and The Consciousness Quotient and B Alan Wallace seeks ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind in A Radically Empirical Approach to the Exploration of Consciousness.

In exclusive interviews, Rocco J Gennaro discusses Higher-Order Thoughts and The Consciousness Paradox and James Ladyman explains Metaphysics Naturalized.

There is also a blog on a revelatory collection of rare Tantric paintings in Tantric Song by Richard Bright and a review by Tony Robbin of a new biography, Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway.

Plus, With Consciousness in Mind (Part 3) blog video talks featuring – The Hard Problem of Consciousness (David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett & Donald Hoffman) ; Christof Koch: The scientific pursuit of consciousness ; Olaf Blanke: Out-of body experiences, consciousness, and cognitive neuroprosthetics ; and Ned Block: Two Forms of Higher Order Theories of Consciousness.

The boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness is reality.

Charlene Spretnak : Relational Reality

The general view I have is that participation is fundamental. We must have dialogues, we must share our thoughts. We must be able to think together. If we can’t think together and talk together, then we can do nothing together. Culture implies shared meaning in which everybody participates.

David Bohm; From Art meets Science and Spirituality in a changing Economy Conference (1990)

“Dialogue among people of different faiths can help to open up and transform…..It can bring about a spiritual renewal. But it is important to recognize that creative dialogue about spirituality is not and cannot remain restricted to people of religious adherence. It must embrace the secular world to make a difference”.

Ursula King: The Search for Spirituality

The aim of this issue we explore the interdependence between Art, Science, Mind and Life. We consider the nature of spirituality in regards to modern art, science and thought, and how it advances progress in human well-being.

Charlene Spretnak discussses her latest book, On The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art,  which draws on direct statements by scores of leading artists to demonstrate that spirituality, far from being inconsequential in the terrain of modern art, is generative.

In Holism and Reductionism in the Entwined History of Light and Mind, Arthur Zajonc argues that we need a new method to speak to the holism of human experience.

As one of Britain’s leading authors and educators in modern spirituality and a holistic approach to individual and community wellbeing, William Bloom discusses what a ‘Person Centred’ approach means .

Artist, poet, scientist and writer, Krishna Kumari Challa, communicates science through art and literature. In this exclusive interview she discusses her art and work in Communicating Science through Art.

In an exclusive interview, Andrew Stone (Lord Stone of Blackheath) discusses both his own personal journey and his work with people and organisations, in Coherence in Art, Science and Life, that involves a way of looking and understanding the world, combining the perspectives of art, science and spirituality.

Zara Houshmand is an Iranian-American writer. She has worked with the Mind and Life Institute for almost twenty years as an editor for books representing its dialogues between scientists and the Dalai Lama. In an exclusive interview she discusses her work as a poet, writer and editor.

The issue also features two ‘visual articles’. One by architect and designer, Arjun Rathi, on his innovative environment, called We are Beings of Light. The other by artist and photographer, Pogus Caesar, on his photographic essay, Schwarz Flaneur.

Plus, there are blog video talks featuring Anselm Kiefer: Art is Spiritual ; Evan Thompson – Context Matters: Steps to an Embodied Cognitive Science of Mindfulness ; Linda Dalrymple Henderson: Abstract Art in Its Spiritual and Scientific Context ;  Alain de Botton: On Art as Therapy ; and Jeff Lieberman: Science and Spirituality

And also, this month’s issue begins the new section, Emerging Ideas, which showcases the work of artists, photographers, scientists, and writers, who are exploring new ideas.

“Rhythm and its entrainment of movement (and often emotion – [e-motion]), its power to “move” people, in both senses of the word, may well have had a crucial cultural and economic function in human evolution, bringing people together, producing a sense of collectivity and community”

Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, 2007  (Keeping Time: Rhythm and Movement, p 246)

The entire natural world is full of rhythms. Circadian rhythms govern a remarkable variety of metabolic and physiological functions. Biological clocks provide the mechanisms which give order to all living things. They impose a structure that enables us to change our behaviour in relation to the time of day, month or year.

Studies of mechanisms in the brain that allow complicated things to happen in a coordinated fashion have produced one of the most spectacular discoveries in neuroscience – neuronal synchronization.

What connects the notion of rhythm across the Arts, Sciences and Nature?

Artist and ceramicist, Clare Crouchman, explores the underlying connections and systems that reflect notions in quantum physics and the idea of unity, in Infinite Connections.  The resulting patterns or rhythms of lines are interrelating but there is not necessarily a sequence of events, more an underlying network of integration.

In Rhythmic ‘States of Mind’, artist Karen Margolis devises architectural renderings of the mind’s operations, developing a system to translate her inner thoughts and feelings into molecular patterns and rhythms, maps that chronicle the chemistry of her “states of mind”.

What do African rhythms, spallation neutron source accelerators in nuclear physics, string theory in computer science, and an ancient algorithm described by Euclid have in common? Godfried Toussaint reveals the answer in The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms.

Hearing without ears is explored by Eleni Ikoniaou in Hyperrhythmia and Steven Gawoski reveals the drama and rhythms of the infinitesimal in The Drama of Forms.

The Rhythmic Sound of Living Cells explores the discovery of cellular sounds through the science nano-biotechnology and how it is being utilized in art.

Plus, there are blog video talks featuring featuring Russell Foster: The Rhythms of Life – What your body clock means to you from eye disease to jet lag ; Phillip M Gilley: Brain Rhythms ; Bernie Krause: The voice of the natural world ; Clayton Cameron: The Brush Master ; Anje-Margriet Neutel: Feedback loops: How nature gets its rhythms ; and Sabina Sandoval: Celebrating the rhythms of life by being in the pocket.

And also, this month’s issue begins the new section, Emerging Ideas, which showcases the work of artists, photographers, scientists, and writers, who are exploring new ideas.