Tag Archives: Mind

Between the human body and the inner self

Valeriya N-Georg is an artist inspired from Neuroscience, Psychology and Consciousness studies, who works with a range of media: drawing, printmaking, mixed media and sculpture.

“My principal interest is Neuroscience, as a system of exploring the relationship between the human body and the embodied self. I use fragments of physical anatomy to visually represent the inexpressible experience of inhabiting a body; the boundaries between the inner and outer self; between the physical and metaphysical; tangible and intangible, the tactile and the optical.”

The Language of Line

“The entry point to my mark making lies in my everyday experience. These marks I interpret as imaginary traces that reflect the fragility of both human and environmental interconnectedness. Although I constantly see traces around me, the experience of absorbing these traces is not so much a visual experience as it is a physical process. Seeing is more a cyclical slippage between the reception of absorbing external traces and the inner resonance I feel inside my body.”

Formally a cardiac nurse, artist Sonya Rademeyer uses the vehicle of sound, movement and deep listening to explore the sensing of traces in her everyday experiences and the fragility of line to capture and translate them into form.

AI and Consciousness

Keith Frankish is a philosopher and writer. He is an Honorary Reader in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow (formerly Senior Lecturer) at The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Program in Neurosciences at the University of Crete. His interests lie mainly in philosophy of mind, and he is well known for defending an illusionist view of phenomenal consciousness and a two-level theory of the human mind. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas on the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness.

Creativity in the Age of Machines

Arthur I. Miller is fascinated by the nature of creative thinking – the mind’s ability to transform information from everyday experiences into the most sublime works of art, literature, music and science. Professor Emeritus at University College London, he is currently completing a book on AI and creativity in art, literature and music, ‘Mozart’s Flute: Genius and Creativity in the Age of Machines’.

Alan MacDonald: Metaphysical Art

“As a metaphysical artist I am concerned with a three-way comparison between: metaphysics (science of subject / why), Science of object (how), and information technology, the most important metaphor we have for the nature of consciousness.”

On The Psychology of Spirituality

“To avoid killing its essence, rather than as a specimen to pin down and dissect, it is best to think of spirituality as related to experience – often subtle, but also usually powerful and emotionally charged experience. The spiritual dimension is therefore better considered as an adventure playground to explore, full of fun, challenge and excitement, of opportunities to test oneself, to learn and to grow.”

Larry Culliford was a hospital doctor and GP before becoming a psychiatrist. In 1998, he helped found the ‘spirituality and psychiatry’ special interest group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In this exclusive interview he discusses his experience and ideas into understanding the psychology of spirituality.

An avenue to self-knowledge

Bill Viola is a seminal figure in the field of video creating installations, films, sound environments, flat panel video pieces and works for concerts, opera and sacred spaces for over four decades. Viola uses video to explore the phenomenon of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian Mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.

Contemplations

“My art seeks to give form to those processes of thought which have yet to be fully articulated and to explore the enormous scope of the beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we think.

In the ‘Contemplation’ series of drawings the process of repetitive mark-making enables a heightening of concentration, acting like a visual mantra or kasina, focussing shifting thoughts and intending to settle the mind of the practitioner.

Building up in layers, the work plays with the transitory nature of light and perception. The viewer becomes a part of the process, whose eyes move across the work, creating an opportunity of awareness into the temporal nature of reality and, hopefully, stillness of the mind.”