Tag Archives: Brain

Brainscapes, Mind Masks and States of Mind

“Betwixt brain and mind is a beguiling if bewildering masquerade. The interplay, between brain and mind, matter and metaphysics, our inner ‘self’ and our public visage, has been a recurring interest in my practice for over a decade.”

Karen Ingham is an interdisciplinary artist-designer and filmmaker, whose primary art form is lens-based arts and hybrid craft. Her approach incorporates theory and practice, and she often works site-specifically, with major themes exploring biomedical discourse and museology

From ‘Life Science’

Eran Gilat is a neuroscientist and avid fine art photographer. His scientific research focuses on the study of the mechanisms underlying epilepsy, as well as on the development of an innovative cure for this illness. His latest book, ‘Life Science’, 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.

Dendrites and Memories

“My work is indebted to science and the observation of the physical and natural world, though differs from scientific inquiry in that it provides a three-dimensional, personal, emotional interpretation of phenomena and experience. From the beginning, humans have sought ways to record their experience in tangible form and leave testimony that their lives mattered……….Collectively, we understand what’s happening in our brains in a way that we never did before.”

In this exclusive interview, Judith Modrak discusses her work focused on memory and inspired by brain cells, emotions and psychological states.

Memory-Connections Matter

“When we examine memory, there’s the potential to understand our own individual experience more fully, to see who we are – and at the same time find points of connections with others. Memory only holds truth for us in a context.”

Patricia Moss-Vreeland explores 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. Incorporating close to two decades of research into the functioning of the human brain and the construction of memory, Moss-Vreeland’s work was hailed by the Baltimore Sun as “an invitation to think differently” about memory and the creative process.

In this exclusive interview she discusses the role of memory in her work .

Dendrites, Brains and Frontiers Reimagined

Dr Marius Kwint is Reader in Visual Culture in the School of Art and Design at the University of Portsmouth, UK. In 2012 and 2013, he was lead curator of the highly popular exhibition, Brains: the Mind as Matter, on the visual and material culture of neuroscience at Wellcome Collection, London, and at MSI Manchester. His most recent major project was co-curating, with Sundaram Tagore, the Venice Biennale official collateral event Frontiers Reimagined: Art That Connects Us, featuring 44 artists from around the world on the subject of cultural crossing-points.

Networks and Living Systems

“I explore life at all levels of living systems – organisms, social systems, and ecosystems – to examine and promote our interdependence. At each scale, under close scrutiny, nodes of a network reveal themselves as smaller 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 this exclusive interview she discusses the multiple networks that inspire and run through life and work.

On ‘Self Reflected’

Dr. Greg Dunn (artist and neuroscientist) and Dr. Brian Edwards (artist and applied physicist) created ‘Self Reflected’ to reveal the nature of human consciousness, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behavior of neurons. ‘Self Reflected’ offers an unprecedented insight of the brain into itself, revealing through a technique called reflective microetching the enormous scope of beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we observe this work of art. The work was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity.

In this exclusive interview, Greg Dunn discusses the ideas and work that went into creating ‘Self Reflected’.

Creativity and Metaphor video blog link

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

Flickering Phrontisterion

In this interactive, participatory artwork the Brainwaves of participants are monitored whilst experiencing a Dream Machine, invoking the phenomena Flicker via neurofeedback. Emergent sonic guides and voices recede, new ideas come to the fore. The resulting Hypnagogic & Hypnopompic brainwaves are fed-back to the participant, and change the sonification. In a secluded space, eyes closed, reclined in an air-pumped Dentist chair, they float back down, where time disappeared – experiencing Reverie, increased Theta waves. Feedback has shown increased relaxation, refreshed creativity and non linear thinking.