Zara Houshmand is an Iranian-American writer. Her work has ranged from modern Iranian theater to traditional Balinese puppetry, from virtual reality as an art form to literary translation. 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 this exclusive interview she discusses her work as a poet, writer and editor.
Many details in the biography of anatomist Andreas Vesalius have been confirmed as hoaxes in the past few decades. The most malicious ones concern his alleged trouble with the Inquisition and his death in a shipwreck. Nobody can ignore, though, the sources proving that Vesalius travelled to the Holy Land as a devout pilgrim with the support of his employer, and that, upon his return, he did not die on a deserted beach along the Ionian coast, but expired in Zakynthos, where he was buried in the Santa Maria delle Grazie Church, now destroyed.
Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. His seminal book, The Master and his Emissary, is a fascinating exploration of the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres and their effects on society, history and culture. In it, he argues that, despite its inferior grasp of reality, the left hemisphere is increasingly taking precedence in the modern world, with potentially disastrous consequences. In this exclusive interview, Iain McGilchrist discusses the book and the need for a greater understanding between science and the humanities.
Garry Kennard is a painter, writer and founding director of Art and Mind (www.artandmind.org). A fascination with how the brain reacts to works of art has lead Kennard to research, write and lecture on these topics. With Rita Carter and Annabel Huxley he devised and directed the unique Art and Mind Festivals which attracted leading artists and scientists to explore what light the brain sciences can throw on contemporary culture. He has an interest in mountaineering and has climbed in the Alps and Africa, as well as leading his own expeditions to the Nepalese Himalayas.
Featuring: Boho Interactive: Chaos, complexity, balloons and bunnies ; Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry, reality’s riddle ; Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide? ; Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs
“It is virtually impossible to look at the workings of the sky without somehow being moved by it. There is no greater teacher of time and space than the sky, no greater courier to the sense of majesty, no greater dwarfer of one’s own significance, and no greater prompter to the question ‘why’. To watch and interpret the skies has always been one of man’s most basic instincts, providing a way of placing oneself in the context of the universe.” In this article, Richard Bright explores the ‘significance of the sky’ through astronomy, myths and metaphors of the eclipse, together with the work of James Turrell.
“Poets help us discover within ourselves such joy in looking that sometimes, in the presence of a perfectly familiar object, we experience an extension of our intimate space”. According to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, inside and outside form a dialectics of division. Yet, despite their mutual resistance, Bachelard argues that both inside and outside depend upon one another for the sake of preserving their identities and that aesthetic experiences and “escapades of imagination” prompts a revision of the boundaries of inside and outside.
Michael Benson works at the intersection of art and science. A photographer, writer, filmmaker, book-maker, and exhibitions producer, in the last decade he has staged a series of increasingly large-scale shows of planetary landscape photography internationally. In his latest book, ‘Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space through Time’, he turns his attention to the history of the visual description and mapping of the universe. This is a story that begins inmyth and ends with science. Selecting the most artful and profound examples of cosmic imagery, Benson chronicles successive cosmological models that capture our growing awareness of humanity’s place in nature.
Helen Moore’s award-winning poem records the mock ecocide trial held at London’s Supreme Court in 2011. The project was initiated by Polly Higgins, an environmental lawyer, barrister and author, as part of the Eradicating Ecocide campaign to make ecocide the fifth international Crime against Peace.
Split This Rock explores and celebrates the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the centrality of the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.