Art and Neuroscience: The Historical Emergence and Conceptual [PDF]

manifestations of neuro art and identifies its conceptual and historical roots. ..... ethics, neuro-law, neuro-psycholog

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Idea Transcript


Art and Neuroscience: The Historical Emergence and Conceptual Context of Neuro-Art

by Carin Laura D’Souza

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of:

Doctor of Philosophy in Art History

Approved Dissertation Committee: Prof. Dr. Paul Crowther, chair Prof. Dr. Claus Hilgetag Dr. Timothy Senior Prof. Dr. Robert Zwijnenberg

Date of Defense: November 13, 2012

School of Humanities and Social Science, Jacobs University, Bremen

 

 

 

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Abstract This study has developed on the premise that neuroscience has a significant impact on contemporary art, and on the observation that, from the dialogue with neuroscience, a new artistic tendency has been emerging. The aim of this research was therefore to investigate the roots, the emergence, and development of what I generically call neuro art. The main objective of the research was to initiate the history of neuro art. This history of neuro art investigates, for the first time, the relationship between neuroscience and contemporary practice of the visual arts by identifying and examining those artworks that rely on knowledge of the brain and the nervous system. The study begins with a broad analysis of the role neuroscience plays in contemporary culture. The analysis situates neuro art within the larger context of cultural interactions with neuroscience, defines neuro art, and frames the history of neuro art in relation with two other disciplines: neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. The core of the research addresses in detail the history of art objects about the brain and the nervous system. Setting the scene, the thesis first describes the earlier manifestations of neuro art and identifies its conceptual and historical roots. It further addresses the exhibitions of neuro art and it evaluates their role in the overall history of this phenomenon. The last, and most consistent part of this research is a detailed thematic analysis of the actual works of neuro art. The thesis concludes by providing explicit answers to the questions that have guided this research, and by confronting its initial assumptions with actual findings about neuro art.

 

 

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Contents   Abstract  ............................................................................................................................................  iii   Contents  .............................................................................................................................................  v   Preface  .............................................................................................................................................  vii   Introduction:  What  Neuro  Art  Is  ...............................................................................................  1   Neuro  Art  within  Neuroculture  ..............................................................................................................................  3   Neuro  Art:  Towards  a  Definition  ...........................................................................................................................  7   Art  and  Neuroscience  ...............................................................................................................................................  10   Literature  Review  .......................................................................................................................................................  17   The  History  of  Neuro  Art:  Methodological  Strategies  .................................................................................  21   The  Limits  of  Neuroaesthetics  and  Neuroarthistory  ..................................................................................  24   Neuroaesthetics  .....................................................................................................................................................  28   Neuroarthistory  .....................................................................................................................................................  45   Framing  the  History  of  Neuro  Art  ..................................................................................................................  49   Chapter  I:  Anticipating  Neuro  Art  ...........................................................................................  53   Early  Popularization  of  Neuroscience  ...............................................................................................................  53   Art,  Brain,  and  Computers  ......................................................................................................................................  59   Conceptual  Art,  Technology,  and  the  Roots  of  Neuro  Art  .........................................................................  64   Neuro  Art  in  the  1980s  .............................................................................................................................................  71   Chapter  II:  Neuro  Art  –  The  First  Major  Exhibitions  ........................................................  77   Chapter  III:  Cellular  Neuro  Art  –  The  Story  of  the  Neuron  in  Art  .................................  99   Discovering  the  Brain  Cell  ......................................................................................................................................  99   Cajal’s  Revenge  .........................................................................................................................................................  105   Neuronal  Forest  .......................................................................................................................................................  110   From  Neuroabstractions  to  Synapses:  Neurons,  Synapses,  Connections  .......................................  127   Chapter  IV:  Neuro  Imaging  Art  –  Visualizing  the  Brain  ................................................  139   Looking  at  the  Brain  ...............................................................................................................................................  139   The  Sculpted  Brain  ..................................................................................................................................................  156   Neuro  Art  Portraiture  ............................................................................................................................................  163   Walking  in  the  Brain  ...............................................................................................................................................  201   Chapter  V:  Neuro  Art  between  Systems  and  Behavioral  Neuroscience  ..................  207   Neuro  Art  and  the  Senses  .....................................................................................................................................  207   Neuro  Art  of  Vision  .................................................................................................................................................  213   Emotions,  Memory,  and  Sleep  in  Neuro  Art  .................................................................................................  231   Chapter  VI:  Neurology  and  Neuro  Art  ................................................................................  259   Conclusions  .................................................................................................................................  269   Bibliography  ...............................................................................................................................  279   Illustration  sources  ..................................................................................................................  299   List  of  Artist’s  Websites:  .........................................................................................................  311   List  of  Relevant  Exhibitions  ...................................................................................................  315  

 

 

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Preface This research had as a starting point the small exhibition catalogue the Wellcome Trust and the Science Museum London launched along with the Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind exhibition in 2002. The exhibition invited artists to work with neuroscientists and commissioned art projects about the brain and the nervous system. As I found the exhibition absolutely fascinating, both in aesthetic and conceptual terms, I began to wonder if this dialog between art and neuroscience was an isolated occurrence or if there were other artistic ventures into the world of neuroscience. After little exploration it became apparent, not only that Head On was not a singular event of this kind, but also that, since 2002, an increasing number of artists, art historians, curators, and scientists manifested great interest in the interaction between the two fields. I began to suspect that a new artistic phenomenon was emerging from the collaboration between art and neuroscience, and I set out to verify this supposition. At the time this research was initiated in 2007, a large number of artworks, projects, and exhibitions that now make the object of this thesis did not yet exist. As the research was progressing, an increasing number of artists and curators displayed their own side of the art-and-neuroscience story. As I write these lines, in the spring of 2012, several exhibitions around the world, taking place almost concomitantly, are looking at the art-brain relationship.1 The rapid evolution of the phenomenon I was investigating made it difficult to contain the research within rigid parameters, and made a holistic perspective difficult. Consequently, this research has developed like a puzzle, with new pieces emerging gradually and slightly modifying the overall picture of neuro art. On a positive note, however, the constant emergence of new cultural objects at the intersection of art with neuroscience reinforced the idea that neuro art really exists and gave me great confidence in pursuing this project further. I wrote this thesis aiming to fill the absence of systematic investigation into this remarkable body of work. As I am concluding this dissertation, I am fully aware that I                                                                                                                 1

 

Synaptic Connections: Art & the Brain, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax (23 September 2011 – 29

 

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have reviewed only a fragment of this artistic phenomenon, much of which is perhaps yet to be developed. It is hoped, nevertheless, that this study will serve as firm foundation for further investigation of neuro art. This research would have not been possible without the support, guidance, and encouragement of a number of people. Firstly, I thank professor Paul Crowther, my supervisor, not only for the opportunity to pursue this research, but also for his endless patience and guidance throughout the development of this project. I also thank my committee members professor Claus Hilgetag, professor Robert Zwijnenberg, and Dr. Timothy Senior for their support. I wish to express special thanks to Dr. Senior for offering advice and encouragement when I needed them the most. I am further thankful to my colleagues and friends at Jacobs University. I specially thank Jessica, for keeping me company on this long and sometimes painful road. I cherish greatly all the moments of joy and hopelessness that we shared in the past years. Thanks also go out to Ira for her curiosity in my research and for her constant encouragement. Many thanks to my ‘Mercator family’: to Max and Aska for their invaluable friendship, to Sammy and Charitra for believing in me, to Niky and Vikram for always being there for me, and to Aimee and Lily for making me smile and reminding me of the important things in life. I would also like to thank warmly my fellow resident associates: Jenny, Bassem, Ogi, and Lara for their support with the work in the college. Without your help and understanding, this project would have taken much longer to complete. I thank my parents, my sister Andra, and the rest of the family, for their continuous support from far-far way, for always thinking of me, and cheering me up when I was down. Very special thanks to Roy who, while writing his own PhD, found energy to motivate me, to cook for me, and to read throughout the entire manuscript. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my dear teacher, Tibi Alexa, for discovering my passion for art history and for setting me on the path the led me here. You have influenced my life tremendously.

   

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Introduction: What Neuro Art Is The study of the brain and the nervous system is gradually changing what we know about ourselves and is setting the grounds for a reevaluation of what it means to be human. In doing so, neuroscientific research, and through extension its popularizing arguments, are not only expanding our understanding of artistic production and aesthetic reception, but are also directly transforming the outcome of artistic creativity. Neuro art is the expression of an augmented artistic imagination, which under the impact of neuroscience addresses the most essential aspects of human nature. The senses and their complex neural mechanisms, the problem of consciousness and identity, the question of emotional response and its neurobiological underpinnings, the mystery of sleep, and the effects of neurological impairments are major issues neuro art ventures to explore. Drawing inspiration from neuroscientific knowledge, from colorful representations of neural activity and microscopic imagery, from popular speculation about the brain and personal stories, neuro art lives up to high aesthetic and conceptual expectations. The intellectual complexity and the aesthetic qualities of the projects under scrutiny in this research are strong proofs against the skeptical assertion that science-and-art projects trivialize both art and science — making neuro art not only a viable research subject, but also a particularly interesting one. In the spring of 2002 at the Science Museum in London, the Wellcome Trust presented to the public the exhibition Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind. Having had the admirable goal to establish parallels and juxtapositions between art and neuroscience “at a level that avoids opportunistic and approximate solutions,”2 the                                                                                                                 2

 

Caterina Albano, Ken Arnold, and Marina Wallace, Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind (London:

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organizers of the exhibition recognized the artist and the neuroscientist as complimentary investigators of the brain. In spite of the scientific and medical agenda, this curatorial project created a valuable bridge between art and neuroscience, of great relevance to art history. In fact, the exhibition’s visual focus was not on the scientific and historical material about the brain, but on contemporary artworks. Apart from using already existing artworks to illustrate various aspects of brain knowledge, the curators took a further step in connecting art with neuroscience by inviting direct artistic collaborations with neuroscientists. As an active call for a neuroscience and art dialogue, Head On was arguably the first commission of “art with the brain in mind.”3 Artistic explorations in the field of neuroscience have been regarded, up until now, as isolated incidents within the larger framework of art and science. Head on is one of the early indications that artistic encounters with neuroscience are not longer unrelated and scattered events. This exhibition shows that by 2002 curators, artists, neuroscientists, cultural and scientific institutions, and the general public, were all — for different reasons — eager to explore the potential interactions of art and neuroscience. Even before 2002, but particularly in the last decade, a large number of artists have dedicated themselves to exploring the dialogue of art with neuroscience. An increasing number of projects, exhibitions, publications, conferences and festivals bear witness to the influence neuroscience exerts on the art world and suggest that neuro art is an emerging contemporary artistic phenomenon, which deserves a history of its own. The present thesis is built on the assumption that artists draw inspiration from neuroscience to such a degree that a new artistic phenomenon — neuro art — is emerging. This introduction addresses the most important elements that allow us to talk of neuro art. It firstly discusses the larger cultural phenomenon neuro art is part of and it estimates where from does the artistic interest for neuroscience spring. It then defines neuro art, it sketches how art historical studies have approached neuro art so far, and sets the methodological strategy for the overall thesis. The last part of the introduction defines the history of art in relation to neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory, and                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Artakt, 2002), p. 19. 3 Ibid.

 

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establishes the limits of these two disciplines in framing the study of neuro art.

Neuro Art within Neuroculture Neuro art refers to the creative use of neuroscientific concepts and tools by artists, and it is part of a larger cultural phenomenon that has been labeled neuroculture. In a Nature Reviews paper of 2009, neuroscientist Giovanni Frazzetto and artist Suzanne Anker assess that “we are witnessing the rise of a neuroculture (or neurocultures), in which neuroscience knowledge partakes in our daily lives, social practices and intellectual discourses.”4 Hybrid research in new fields with composite names: neuroethics, neuro-law, neuro-psychology, neuro-economics, neuro-marketing, neurofinances, neuro-advertising, neuro-linguistics, neuroaesthetics, neuroarthistory, social neuroscience, to name just the most recurrent — are symptomatic of the rise of what Frazzetto and Anker define as neuroculture. With slight variations — used in singular5 or plural,6 the term neuroculture has generally been defined as “the incorporation of neuroscientific knowledge into our lives”7 or as a new way of understanding the world on the basis of knowledge about the brain.8 In other words, as Frazzetto and Anker underline, neuroculture is a cultural phenomenon that develops along with the understanding of the nervous system.9 The more we understand about the brain, the authors argue, the more culture is determined by this knowledge. With the intellectual support of other scholars like Francisco Ortega and Fernando                                                                                                                 4

Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker, "Neuroculture," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, 11 (2009), p. 815. 5

Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker, "Neuroculture.org," http://neuroculture.org/ (accessed January 13, 2012); Francisco Mora, Neurocultura: Una Cultura Basada En El Cerebro (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2007). 6

Francisco Ortega and Fernando Vidal, Neurocultures: Glimpses into an Expanding Universe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), and Fernando Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity," History of the Human Sciences 22, 1 (2009). 7 8 9

 

Frazzetto and Anker, "Neuroculture," p. 819. Mora, Neurocultura: Una Cultura Basada En El Cerebro, pp. 24-25. Frazzetto and Anker, "Neuroculture," p. 815.

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Vidal,10 and Francisco Mora11 — Frazzetto and Anker are largely responsible for establishing and promoting the concept of neuroculture. Previous to their Nature article, Anker and Frazzetto had launched neuroculture.org — “an online forum for the documentation, promotion and exchange of cultural projects at the intersection between neuroscience, the arts and the humanities;”12 they curated Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain (2006), an art exhibition at the Westport Center of Arts in Connecticut;13 and prepared a film collage called Brainstorm (2009) to describe the ways in which the neuron and the brain have been portrayed by science and popular culture. Anker’s artistic work abounds with neuroscientific references, while Frazzetto’s scientific career ventures with regularity into the world of art. Therefore, their artistic and academic work not only observes and documents the way neuroscientific ideas and processes permeate contemporary culture, but also actively contribute to the emergence of the very phenomenon they are defining. In the context of my own research, neuroculture serves as a framework. Observations about neuroculture point out that neuroscientific influences on art are not solitary, but part of a larger cultural phenomenon. The emergence and institutionalization of new academic fields at the intersection of neuroscience with culture — such as neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory — legitimizes further the need for a history of neuro art. Neuro artworks are, at least in part, what Anker and Frazzetto would define as ‘neurocultural products’14 — namely products that through medium or form symbolize “the transfer of brain knowledge from the laboratory to every day living.”15 As neurocultural products, the two scholars propose, works of art serve as an interface                                                                                                                 10 11

See: Ortega and Vidal, Neurocultures: Glimpses into an Expanding Universe. See: Mora, Neurocultura: Una Cultura Basada En El Cerebro.

12

Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker, "Neuroculture.org," http://neuroculture.org/statement.pdf (accessed January 13, 2012). 13

Westport Arts Center, "Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain," http://www.westportartscenter.org/press_rls?rls=84 (accessed January 13, 2012). 14

Giovanni Frazzetto and Suzanne Anker, "Neuroculture.org," http://neuroculture.org/statement.pdf (accessed January 13, 2012). 15

 

Ibid.

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between neuroscience and the public’s perception of neuroscientific ideas.16 The assumption that neuro art serves as a mediator in disseminating neuroscientific knowledge into culture cannot be taken for granted. In most cases, in fact, artists appropriate knowledge about the brain that is already available in popular culture. This situation rather suggests that popular culture serves as interface between neuroscience and neuro art. The relationship between art, neuroscience, and culture is neither straightforward nor unidirectional. Fernado Vidal rightfully observes that neuro researchers of all kinds describe neuroscience as having an impact on society and culture as if assuming that neuroscience itself would be external to society and culture.17 Calling attention to the notion of ‘brainhood’ as “the quality or condition of being a brain,” and tracing the historical development of this concept, Vidal suggests that the notion of self as a brain, so prominent in contemporary culture, is not, as commonly believed, based on neuroscientific knowledge. In fact, he argues, “brainhood predated reliable neuroscientific discoveries, and constituted a motivating factor of the research that, in turn, legitimized it.”18 Vidal’s argument has significant implications for this research as it points out that the relationship between neuroscience and other disciplines, art included, is more complex than the idea of influence or impact can suggest. The history of neuro art, as envisioned in this research, takes into account Vidal’s observation. Neuroscience, neuro art, and neuroculture are seen as elements in the same equation. Art and neuroscience are embedded in the same culture, informing, and being informed by one another, and feeding back and transforming the very culture that has given rise to them. From a different perspective, however, it can be argued that the relationship between neuroscience and art is different than that between neuroscience and culture. While it is clear that neuroscience, as any human endeavor, is part of culture; the same                                                                                                                 16

Although Frazzetto and Anker often refer to artistic products inspired by neuroscience, they do not refer to them as neuro art objects. 17 18

 

Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity," p. 22. Ibid., p. 14.

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inclusion is not applicable to the relationship of art with neuroscience. Neuroscience is not naturally included in art nor vice versa. Although there are aspects in which art is relevant to research about the nervous system, it can be assessed that, more often than not, brain-science actually has an influence on art. Therefore, acknowledging art’s own role in the emergence of neuroculture and its occasional contribution to neuroscientific research, this thesis aims to specifically define the side of the equation on which neuro art lies, by understanding how the other elements within neuroculture corroborate towards the emergence and development of this artistic phenomenon. Along with neuro art, neuroaesthetics, and neuroarthistory are two neurocultural products of particular relevance to the history of art. Both neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory have been established as academic disciplines before neuro art has been defined as an artistic tendency. In the light of this aspect, an initial assumption of this research was that the products of neuroaesthetic and neuroarthistorical research must have facilitates the emergence of neuro art. On a closer look, however, neuro art has little if any contact with these two fields, and in turn, neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory have not expressed a specific interest in neuro art. Nevertheless — given their common emergence at the point of contact between art and neuroscience — their interdependence can be easily assumed. Therefore, the relation between neuro art, neuroaesthetic, neuroarthistory, and the history of neuro art cannot be taken for granted and will be addressed in detail in the last part of the introduction. For now, it is perhaps important to point out the most essential difference, which are necessary in defining what neuro art is. In a short, oversimplified definition, the scope of neuroaesthetics is to identify the neurological basis of aesthetic experience, while the intention of neuroarthistory is to make use of neuroscientific ideas to the benefit of art history and theory. In contrast, the history of neuro art I am proposing here aims to investigate the way in which artists make use of neuroscientific ideas and tools. The history of neuro art is thus a neurocultural product concerned itself with studying a particular class of neurocultural products, namely, neuro artworks.

 

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Neuro Art: Towards a Definition The term neuro art has been previously used to designate several different aspects of neuroculture, most of which are close in meaning to neuroaesthetics.19 For example, The NeuroArts Lab is a research laboratory at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, run by Steve Brown and “devoted to developing a holistic understanding of the neural, cognitive and evolutionary foundations of the arts.”20 Another similar example is the NeuroArts Conference held in early 2011 at the University of Plymouth. In this case, the term NeuroArts is used as an umbrella concept to designate an interdisciplinary field of investigation carried out by scientists, artists, musicians, and academics, which incorporates neuroaesthetics, neuro-ethics, and neuro-philosophy. Similarly, in his book Neuro-cultura, Francisco Mora explicitly points out, that for him neuro art is not a new form, style, or tendency that has recently emerged in art.21 He defines ‘neuroarte’ as a field which investigates art in relation to its neurobiological processes. In this research, in contrast with Mora’s definition, the term neuro art refers exactly to those creative practices which, in the past decades, emerge at the crossroads of art with neuroscience. In other words, neuro art designates the artistic production inspired by knowledge about the brain and the nervous system. With a similar denotation, neuro art has been used thus far only once, by Fernando Vidal.22 The very last section of his article “Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity,” discusses contemporary artistic engagements with medical technologies in relationship to the brainhood concept. Only in passing, Vidal suggests further texts on ‘neuro art’ and guides the reader towards the Head On23 catalogue and the ‘Neuroculture’24 article. Defined as an art tendency which developed under the spell of neuroscience, the                                                                                                                 19 20 21 22 23 24

 

For a more detailed definition of neuroaesthetics, see the chapter on Neuroaesthetics, p. 28. The NeuroArts Lab, http://neuroarts.org/index.html (accessed February 10, 2012). Mora, Neurocultura: Una Cultura Basada En El Cerebro, p. 132. Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity." Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On. Frazzetto and Anker, "Neuroculture."

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notion of neuro art requires several clarifications. Firstly, neuro artworks need to be differentiated from works of art which receive neuroscientific explanations and interpretation, but which in themselves are not connected to neuroscience. This distinction is essential particularly in a context in which cultural historians and neuroscientists have recurrently referred to artists as neuroscientists, assuming thus that artworks, as products of the brain, can be read through the perspective of neuroscientific knowledge. This is to say that artworks, which are or could be read in a neuroscientific key, are not necessarily works of neuro art. For example, artworks touching upon matters of the mind or vision are many times interpreted against a neuroscientific background, even though the artists themselves might not have considered neuroscientific knowledge when creating the works. The connections with neuroscience in these cases are made by curators and writers of art and not by the artists themselves. A case in point here is Op art.25 Although in certain ways it can be understood as a precursor of neuro art, op art developed a decade before neuroscience was established as a discipline and did not emerge as a result of neuroscientific influence. The interest in the visual system and in psychology, even coupled with the spectacular retinal effects is not sufficient to designate op art as neuro art. Just because artists intuitively discovered optical illusions of the kind that are explored with regularity by neuroscientists of visions, and just because these illusions can illustrate interesting aspects about vision, does not qualify these works as a neuro art. Therefore, since they lack the unequivocal relationship to neuroscience, works like these are excluded from the current analysis. At the other end of the spectrum is the distinction between neuro art and scientific illustration. Neuro artworks are not illustrations of a particular scientific topic, but a creative aesthetic exercise which purposefully takes scientific ideas beyond their scientific relevance. In fact, most artists explicitly move away from the scientific content that inspired them, and often explicitly declare their desire to do so. An important issue in the creative process, Frank Gillette points out, is to distinguish between art and                                                                                                                 25

In relation to this see: Mengfei Huang, "The Neuroscience of Art," Stanford Journal of Neuroscience 2, 1(2009): 24-26.

 

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science “in such a way that science does not overwhelm the facts of art.”26 Likewise, while speaking of science as a context for art Andrew Carnie remarks that, although scientific influences alter the field of art, artists will continue doing art, not science.27 In the same line of thought, Helga Griffiths states: “Even though I use scientific methods of analysis in my projects and use scientific processes, I clearly see myself as an artist, because the scientific results, which often have a claim to authenticity, are being transformed artistically, newly interpreted and are also being questioned artistically.”28 Artists, art historian Stephen Wilson has observed, “engage scientific and technological research at many different moments in the scientific research process, identifying questions that would be unlikely to be pursued by other researchers.”29 The purposeful choice of ambiguous and unresolved issues is in itself an artistic strategy that distinguishes the scope of art from the scientific method. While scientists choose unresolved issues to uncover and explain them, more often then not artist embrace the ambiguity of their chosen subject, they engage in imaginative speculations, and appreciate topics that escape scientific elucidation. Oftentimes, artists take up an idea from where the scientists left off. Open questions and unsubstantiated theories, ideas subjected to debate — any scientist’s nightmare — becomes an ideal subject for artistic exploration. Although scientific illustrations serve often as source of inspirations and occasionally are even included in artworks, on their own they are not neuro artworks. This is not to say that they do not have aesthetic qualities. Scientific illustrations become increasingly appealing in visual terms. Illustrators are often trained artists or designers who use graphic tools and artistic strategies to enhance the aesthetic quality of scientific imagery. Competitions of neuroscientific illustrations, such as The Art of                                                                                                                 26

Cited in: Rumeysa Kiger, "New Trends Raise Questions of Human and Artistic Identity through Science," Today’s Zaman 2011, available online at: http://www.todayszaman.com (accessed October 8, 2011). 27

Ibid.

28

Christian Huther, "Grenzgänge in Wahrnehmungsräumen: Ein Gespräch mit Helga Griffiths," Kunstforum 174 (2005), p. 190, available in English online on the artist webpage: "Expanding the Horizons of Space Perception: A Dialogue with Christian Huther," http://www.helgagriffiths.de/interviews/20041116_kunstforum.html (accessed, February 25). 29

 

Stephen Wilson, Art + Science Now (London: Thames & Hudson, 2010), p. 11.

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Neuroscience30 or The Brain-Art Competition,31 encourage neuroscientists to confer aesthetic value to their scientific images, while books such as DeFelipe’s Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul,32 or Carl Schoonover’s Portraits of the Mind33 recognize retrospectively the beauty of many scientific images about the brain. Still, beautiful illustrations are just that — beautiful illustrations, and not works of neuro art. Therefore, the study of scientific illustration is beyond the purpose of this project. A last distinction pertains to the common assumption that if brain and art are associated, some kind of neurological disorder should be involved. Despite the fact that some of the artists discussed in this research had intimate contact with neurological disorders, and few of them experienced neuro deficiencies themselves, neither the products of art therapy nor the works of artists under neurological distress is of direct relevance to this research. The exceptions are a few artists who, while suffering of neurological illnesses, have turned their disorders into the subject of their work, addressing thus neuroscience directly. The encounter with the disease prompted the artists in question to reflect upon and express artistically aspects of the neurological condition they are experiencing. Therefore, their artistic products are not only an indirect result of a neural affection, but also an active exploration of the brain and the mind.

Art and Neuroscience Neuroscience is, for artists, as any other scientific discipline, first and foremost, a rich source of new ideas. The importance of and fascination with the brain in art circles should not come as a surprise. The brain is the most important and mysterious organ in                                                                                                                 30

Competition organized by the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience. See: Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience, "Art of Neuroscience," http://aon.nin.knaw.nl (accessed January 9, 2012). 31

For more details, see: The Neuro Bureau, "Brain-Art Competition 2012," http://neurobureau.projects.nitrc.org/BrainArt/Competition.html (accessed January 9, 2012). 32

Javier DeFelipe, Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul: Science and Art (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 33

Carl E. Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century (New York: Abrams, 2010).

 

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our body. Our thoughts, feelings, and experiences all originate in our brains. Everything that we do involves our brains. There are, however, a few aspects of neuroscience beyond subject matter that make this scientific field particularly appealing for artists. In his article, “Leonardo da Vinci’s Contributions to Neuroscience,”34 Jonathan Pevsner speculates that neuroimaging technologies and studies about the visual system would have been of primary interest to Leonardo had he lived today. This speculation is notable since the visual system and neuroimaging techniques seem to be indeed the main aspects of neuroscience that contemporary artists attend to. Pevsner’s assumption is quite intuitive. It seems only natural for artists to be inquisitive about vision — the sense of most relevance to their work, and neuroscience provides new tools for its exploration. Neuroscience not only explores vision by studying the mechanism of seeing but also expands the very field of vision, by offering novel modes of visualization. A wide range of technological advancements — from staining techniques and confocal microscopy to PET and fMRI scans — are able to reveal never-before seen images. The sight of fluorescent neurons or brain ‘photographs’ must be, today, at least as enthralling as x-ray images must have been for modernist artists. At a more general level, as Warren Neidich remarks, art is relevant for neuroscientists and, in turn, neuroscience is relevant for artists mostly because many issues like color, spatial relationships, form, memory, creativity, or perception are equally explored by artists and neuroscientists.35 Artists, Margaret Livingstone assesses, have been studying how we see a lot longer than neurobiologists, and have made important discoveries about the visual system without even being aware of it. As a neurobiologist and researcher of the visual system, Livingstone describes her work as “only catching up, in scientific terms, to what artists have long known about vision.”36                                                                                                                 34

Jonathan Pevsner, "Leonardo Da Vinci’s Contributions to Neuroscience," Trends in Neurosciences 25, 4 (2002). 35

Charles Gere, "Interview with Warren Neidich," Interviewstream (2004), available online at: http://interviewstream.zkm.de/?p=7 (accessed February 25, 2012). 36

Jonathan Gilmore, "Brain Trust: On Art and the New Biology of Mind," Artforum International 4, 10 (2006), p. 121.

 

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Semir Zeki goes even further, holding the view that “artists are in some sense neurobiologists, studying the brain with techniques that are unique to them, but studying unknowingly the brain and its organization nevertheless.”37 Furthermore, in a Nature article entitled “The Artist as Neuroscientist,” Patrick Cavanagh concludes “paintings and drawings are a 40,000-year record of experiments in visual neuroscience.”38 Ever since 1959, when Charles Percy Snow declared in a notorious Rede Lecture the unfortunate separation of the ‘two cultures,’39 historians of art and science, as well as artists and scientists have searched for ways to connect the two. The theoretical obsession to merge the two cultures led the discourse from one extreme to the other. If C.P. Snow bitterly denounces the separation of science and the humanities, cultural historians today are often too eager to celebrate their union. There are, indeed, many similarities in the artistic and scientific endeavor, but the idea that artists are neuroscientists and neuroscientists are artists should be received with circumspection. Noah Hutton rightfully points out that some writers “stick to the metaphorical realm with this line of thought, believing that artists do intuit some profound truths about the human experience that are later supported by hard, scientific data. Others, however, take this relationship to the next level, suggesting that the artists are actually making scientific breakthroughs themselves — a step beyond intuition and into the realm of the scientists, who wield their testable, repeatable, peer-reviewed methodology.”40 A significant number of scholarly texts place great emphasis on the importance of creativity in both art and science — situating thus the concept of creativity as one of the core elements the two fields have in common. This perspective, accompanied by                                                                                                                 37

Semir Zeki, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 10-11. 38

Patrick Cavanagh, "The Artist as Neuroscientist," Nature 434 (2005), p. 306.

39

As an initial reference to the work of scientists and literary intellectuals, the concept of the two cultures was gradually generalized to address the separation of art and the humanities on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other. Although referring mostly to poetry C.P. Snow himself writes: “It is bizarre how very little of twentieth-century science has been assimilated into twentieth-century art,” [Charles Percy Snow, The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 16] opening thus the road for his ideas to be applied to other artistic domains. 40

Noah Hutton, "Who Is a Neuroscientist?," The Beautiful Brain, (2010), http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2010/03/who-is-a-neuroscientist/ (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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further narratives about the aesthetic value of science and the potential scientific value of art, had eventually stirred a wave of reverse reactions — against the excessive attempts to bridge art and science. Art historians were soon to realize that general observations about the importance of creativity, imagination, and beauty in both art and science are weak arguments in the attempt to justify the encounter of the two fields. Rightfully, Siân Ede argues against the use of creativity as a bridge between the arts and the sciences, reasoning that the creative process is generally applicable to any human activity, and that the encounter and collaboration of the ‘two cultures’ do not imply or even require a similarity between the arts and the sciences. The clash between the two, the differences, and the specificities, Ede believes, are the elements that make the art and science encounter so fascinating.41 Artists need not be neuroscientists, and neuroscientists need not be artists to appreciate the potential of technical and intellectual exchanged between the two disciplines. James Elkins goes further in suggesting that art and science “should be allowed to go their separate ways.”42 Arguing vehemently against the possibility of a fruitful interaction between art and science, Elkins refutes the aesthetic argument of science, it disputes scientific approaches to art history, and denies art any scientific value. Concerning the artistic engagement with science Elkins underlines several aspects. Firstly, he points out that most artists do not approach science at all, and if they do, it is not science per se, but the popular discourse surrounding it, which they misinterpret and misrepresent. To exemplify this point Elkins, brings into discussion the case of cubism and the relativity theory. “Pablo Picasso,” he explains, “learned a little about relativity from a high school teacher. Cubism cannot be explained well in terms of relativity, and Picasso himself didn’t care: He used the bit of relativity he knew in a                                                                                                                 41

Siân Ede, Strange and Charmed: Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts (London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2000), p. 30. 42

James Elkins, "Aesthetics and the Two Cultures: Why Art and Science Should Be Allowed to Go Their Separate Ways," in Rediscovering Aesthetics: Transdisciplinary Voices from Art History, Philosophy, and Art Practice, ed. Francis Halsall, Julia Jansen, and Tony O'Connor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 34.

 

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willfully eccentric fashion.”43 The second argument goes out against art historians who attempt at explaining art in terms of science. He firstly points out that most art historians, just like artists, could not care less about science, but when the art historical narrative actually relies on scientific arguments is unconvincing for at least two reasons. On the one hand, Elkins argues, art historians overestimate the scientific content they encounter, and on the other hand, this content in itself is, for a majority of viewers, irrelevant. Elkins further underlines that artist with a predominantly scientific interest have not been taken seriously by art historians and, consequently, their names44 remain marginal to the history of art. Interesting art, he believes, has little to do with science and scientific aspects are irrelevant to artists. In this context, it seems that the art historical narrative I am proposing in this thesis needs to be explained and defended. Although in general agreement with the arguments Elkins puts forward, certain nuance are necessary in the defense of an art historical investigation of neuro art. To begin with, my intention here is not to suggest that art and neuroscience are similar, nor that they are merging into one another, but to point out that neuroscience is a valuable source of ideas and tools, and that artists have a great affinity with neuroscientific ideas and take increasing advantage of its tools. Secondly, as it will become apparent further in this research, an art historical discourse which explains art from a scientific perspective is not what I am after either. The scientific knowledge serves in this research inasmuch as it informs about the content of the neurocultural products under scrutiny. Thirdly, the scientific relevance of art is not under discussion in this research either. Neuro artworks are in most instances purposeful attempts at recontextualizing a scientific idea, endowing it with metaphoric meaning, and overcoming original scientific limitations in favor of a creative and aesthetic perspective.                                                                                                                 43

Ibid., pp. 38-39.

44

Here he quotes obscure artists like Lodovico Cigoli, Gerard Ter Borch or Henri Valenciennes and observes that artists like M.C. Escher, in spite the popular admiration remains absent from art historical books.

 

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It is also true that artists are often inspired by popular literature and rarely by peer-reviewed scientific articles. Even in the few instances in which artists collaborate directly with scientist and use the laboratory as a forum for documentation, the final artistic products do not aim at scientific relevance. However, the lack of relevance from a scientific perspective does not render the content and form of these artworks irrelevant for the history of art. In contrast to Picasso’s attitude to relativity theory, contemporary artists acknowledge their interest in neuroscientific questions, they address these questions in an artistic form, and expect the viewer to recognize and appreciate these conceptual references, in the same way a portrait painter expects the audience to recognize the one portrayed. Thus, although acknowledging that art and neuroscience are different and independent fields, that neuroscientific research should not be guided by aesthetic principle, nor should art be guided by scientific ones, there are two aspects in Elkins arguments that this thesis aims to overturn. As a first point, I disagree with Elkins’ argument that most interesting art has nothing to do with science, if by this he implies (as it would seem from the overall argumentation) that art that has something to do with science is uninteresting. Neuro art, as this research aims to show, is a solid argument against this perspective. The second point of contrast refers to the idea that art history is not and should not be concerned with art about science, as this kind of art is marginal to the history of art. Arguing the opposite, this research proposes that art history should no longer ignore neuro art. It is in fact surprising that the history of neuro art has been left unexplored for so long, particularly since art and neuroscience have expressed curiosity for one another for more than a decade. The absence of neuro art examples in neuroaesthetics, for example, is all the more remarkable when taking into account the fact that neuroscientists like Semir Zeki and David Hubel anticipated neuro art and bemoaned the artist’s lack of interest in neuroscience. In 1999, in the same book that declared artists to be, unknowingly, neuroscientists, Zeki points out that: painters “know nothing

 

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about neurological theories, and care less.”45 Several years later, David Hubel makes a similar observation, deploring artists’ lack of knowledge and interest in neuroscience. Neuroscience, David Hubel notices, “is not abstruse, in the way relativity or quantum mechanics is” and, given how easy it is to convey ideas about the brain, it seems unfortunate “that people in general, and artists in particular, should be so insulated from them.”46 The wish Zeki and Hubel express, that artists find interests in neuroscience, is stated only as a matter of principle. It is actually doubtful that either Zeki or Hubel investigated if and to what degree artists already started exploring neuroscientific ideas and tools. In fact, as it will become evident later in this research, a few artists found neuroscientific tools and knowledge about the brain of relevance to their projects already in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ten years after Zeki, in a book titled The Neural Imagination, Irving Massey acknowledged the value neuroscience could have for the visual arts. Referring to music compositions which “attempt to translate brain data directly into music,” Massey suggests that, “some knowledge of neuroscience may be of greater value to the visual artist than to the musician.”47 He goes further in explaining how materials from neuroscience could provide subjects for art, and even mentions, as a point of comparison, the way artists have used DNA patterns and microbial cultures in their work. In this context, in which Massey acknowledges the potential contribution of neuroscience to art, while, at the same time, bringing into discussion genetic art, it is surprising that there are no references to actual neuro art works. Massey, like Zeki and Hubel before him, considered only the hypothetical artistic engagement with neuroscience, without exploring the degree to which such art had already been developed. The extent to which artists find interest in neuroscientific ideas, and the aesthetic and conceptual significance of the resulting art projects make neuro art a valuable subject of investigation in contemporary art historical research. Perhaps not (yet?)                                                                                                                 45

Zeki, Inner Vision, p. 70.

46

Margaret Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (New York: Abrams, 2002), p. 9. Irving Massey, The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), p. 7. 47

 

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central to the overall art historical discourse, neuro art is, nevertheless, worthy of art historical attention. Emerging from the observation that art history is yet to investigate neuro art, the following thesis sets to demonstrate the existence of neuro art as a contemporary art tendency, and hopes to further stimulate both art historical investigation into the world of neuro art and artistic engagements with neuroscience.

Literature Review Although developing since the 1990s in parallel with other ‘neuro-’ disciplines like neuroarthistory and neuroaesthetics — neuro art is a chapter in art history which, thus far, has received little scholarly attention. Even though some artists and artworks that make the object of this research have been noted in previous articles, book chapters, and exhibition catalogs, the overall neuroscientific contribution to art, and the assumption that neuro art is an emerging artistic phenomenon have not yet been evaluated. However, a number of art historians who have looked at the intersection of art with science came across and addressed some of the most important neuro art projects, albeit within the larger scope of the history of art and science. Martin Kemp, in his Nature column, published several short texts about artists like Andrew Carnie48 and Annie Cattrell,49 whose works address neuroscientific issues, and remarked in a third article that “latterly, artists have been fascinated by the revelations of mental processes from modern imaging techniques, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).”50 Likewise, Fernando Vidal in “Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity,” picks several neuro art projects by Helen Chadwick, Susan Aldworth, and Andrew Carnie, to exemplify “the extent to which the brain has become the self’s body.”51Richard Wingate and Marius Kwint dedicated an article to the visual                                                                                                                 48

Martin Kemp, "Science in Culture: Knowing Neurons," Nature 416 (2002).

49

Martin Kemp, "A Flowering of Pleasure and Pain," Nature 465 (2010), Martin Kemp, "From Science in Art to the Art of Science," Nature 434 (2005), Martin Kemp, "Science in Culture: Seeing Sense," Nature 424 (2003). 50 51

 

Martin Kemp, "From Science in Art to the Art of Science," p. 309. Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity," p. 26.

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history of the neuron52 in which they bring into discussion Andrew Carnie’s artistic investigation of neurons. Independently, Marius Kwint further wrote about the work of Annie Cattrell.53 Most art-and-science historiographers identified in their compendia artworks with the brain in mind. In Art and Science Now,54 for example, Stephen Wilson lists new artistic experimentation with neuroscience and neurotechnology within the “Human Biology” section. Along with robotic installations, tissue-culture projects, and virtual reality animations, artworks by Andrew Carnie, Annie Cattrell, Marta de Menezes, and Susan Aldworth, are meant to illustrate the way artists explore radical ways of thinking about the human body.55 In a much earlier book, Information Arts —“the first comprehensive international survey of artists working at the frontiers of scientific inquiry and emerging technology”56 — Stephen Wilson provides a taxonomy of science-related art in which neuro artworks find their place in a composite chapter dedicated to “Brain processes, Heartbeats, Breath, Biosensors, and Psychology.”57 The series of artworks introduced by Wilson here are representative of the early generation of projects inspired mostly by technologies associated with brainwave recording such as Electroencephalography (EEG) and Electromyography (EMG). Nina Sobell’s Interactive Brainwave Drawings (since 1975) and Janine Antoni’s Slumber (since 1994) are among the art installations discussed. A few other early neuro artworks make the object of the last chapter in Bettyann Kevles book Naked to the Bone.58 Entitled “The Transparent Body in Late Twentieth                                                                                                                 52

R. Wingate and M. Kwint, "Imagining the Brain Cell: The Neuron in Visual Culture," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, 9 (2006). 53 Marius Kwint, "Cosmic Dust: The Work of Annie Cattrell," in Annie Cattrell: Arresting, ed. Annie Cattrell and Anne Faggionato (London: Anne Faggionato Gallery, 2006). 54 55

Wilson, Art + Science Now. Ibid., p. 66.

56

Joel Slayton in “Foreword” to Stephen Wilson, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), p. xxi. 57

Ibid., pp. 180-189.

58

Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997).

 

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Century Culture,” the chapter explores the way new technologies make their way into popular culture. Kevles analyzes in depth the emergence of CT, PET and MRI scans and identifies the early artworks to incorporate neuroscientific imagery. Beside Nina Sobell’s already mentioned brainwave drawings, Joyce Cutler Shaw’s photo collage The Anatomy Lesson: Memory picture with CT (1992), Annie Leibovitz’s Laurie Anderson MRI (1994) and Steven Miller MRI portraits are illustrative examples. Two chapters in Siân Ede’s book Art and Science59 — “Sculpted by the World” and “New Bodies for Old” make extensive use of knowledge about neuroscience looking for insight into the workings of the brain and examining its scientific and philosophical relevance for art. However, as with the previous writings, artworks by Helen Chadwick, Andrew Carnie, Alexa Wright and Annie Cattrell, are in Ede's book merely few examples in an overview of contemporary art and science practice. Recently, in “Brains, Art and the Humanities,”60 considering the role of the brain in art, Robert Zwijnenberg brings into attention the work of Helen Chadwick, Andrew Carnie and Susan Aldworth, artists which according to the author, ”offer us a unique access to complex and challenging new neuroscientific developments.”61 For the most part, the emphasis of this chapter is not neuro art, but neuroscience and the brain. The three artists and their works discussed here have the role of illustrating the crucial part neuroscience and its technologies are playing for the humanities. The only article to directly investigate “the degree to which recent neuroscience had impacted visual arts,” concludes that “the actual influence of current neuroscience […] is fairly limited.”62 In reaching his conclusion, Geoffrey Koetsch calls into discussion the dominance of psychoanalysis on the twentieth century view of the mind, and compares the influence of brain science on contemporary art with that of psychoanalysis on Surrealism. For this article titled “Art and the Mind in the 21st                                                                                                                 59

Siân Ede, Art and Science (London: Tauris, 2008).

60

Robert Zwijnenberg, "Brains Art, and the Humanities," in Neurocultures: Glimpse into an Expanding Universe, ed. Francisco Ortega and Fernando Vidal (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011). 61

Ibid., p. 307.

62

Geoffrey Koetsch, "Artists and the Mind in the 21st Century," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 5 (2011), p. 8.

 

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Century”63 published in the electronic journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Koetsch conducted an informal study with eight New England artists who chose brain processes as their subject and whose works demonstrated the change in the artists’ view of the mind in the light of recent neuroscientific discoveries. A small fragment in the history of neuro art, Koetsch’s article draws a rather hasty conclusion about the influence neuroscience has exerted on art by grounding the study on a very small sample of artists and also by ignoring all artistic experiments with neuroscience outside Boston area. Fortunately, there is sufficient evidence to argue otherwise. Artists have been incorporating neuroscientific ideas, imagery, technology, and research methods into the creative process for more than a decade. Neuroscience, as it will become evident in this research, informs and shapes artistic expression in a substantial way already, and it is yet, arguably, at its beginnings. Judging from the current texts on art about the brain, it has become apparent that certain artistic presences are recurrent. Artworks like Andrew Carnie’s Magic Forest (2002), Nina Sobell’s Brainwave Drawings (since 1974), and Helen Chadwick’s Self Portrait (1991) have become iconic representations for neuro art. Although these images do represent a focal point in art about the brain, their recurrence shows that art historians have only identified the tip of neuro art’s iceberg. Beyond these highlights there is much more to discover about neuro art. The evaluation of how neuro art has been addressed so far suggests that art with curiosity for neuroscience is surfacing in art historical writing and is catching the attention of those art historians interested in art’s affair with science. Neuro art works are listed in art and science compendia and appear in articles dedicated to particular artists or artworks. However, when historians of art and science write about it, neuro art’s presence is incidental. Neuro art works are offered as examples in art and science investigations to support one argument or the other, without receiving any considerable attention to the history and implication of the works in question. This research brings neuro art into focus.                                                                                                                 63

 

Ibid.

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The History of Neuro Art: Methodological Strategies Having mapped the concept of neuro art, the next natural step would be to define the methodological strategy of this research. Therefore, this section of the introduction brings about several observations about the nature and structure of this research. Neuro art does not assume, by any means, the existence of a coherent artistic group or movement. Although changes of ideas between artists might be speculated and direct connections between artists do exist, in most cases artists work independently from one another. There is no cohesive group of ‘neuro artists’ who share similar aesthetic values, political views, or social beliefs. Only recently, artists are gradually becoming aware of other artists with similar interests as theirs. What all artists under scrutiny in this research have in common is a general interest for brain science, which is manifested in their artistic creations. Since in most instances artistic projects emerge in parallel and independent from one another, and are directly informed by neuroculture, establishing historical genealogies and identifying artistic influences seems rather ineffective. As a consequence of this situation, a chronological approach to neuro art would be inappropriate. Another aspect of methodological relevance is the fact that, most artists, have a genuine interest for scientific topics and tools, and, for many of them, neuroscience is only one in many scientific curiosities. Although there are several artists who dedicated a considerable amount of creative time to neuro art projects, calling them ‘neuro artists’ would be, in most cases, an overstatement. As such, a bibliographical gallery of ‘neuro artists’ would not be an effective way of approaching the study of neuro art either. Even though, discussing the status of the ‘neuro artist’ is relevant, a detailed discussion of the main artists is not sufficient to catch the complexities of neuro art, and consequently a biographic approach cannot be the guiding structure of this research. Therefore, the most appropriate way of approaching the history of neuro art is by

 

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means of identifying those occurrences where art and neuroscience meet and addressing them within a thematic framework. In fact, many investigations into the art and science dialogue adopt this format. When art historians, like Martin Kemp,64 Stephen Wilson,65 Siân Ede,66 and Suzanne Anker67 survey artists who pursue scientific questions, they most typically do so in a thematic way. Characteristically, studies in contemporary art and science cluster artworks around certain themes, sorting them according to the scientific field they are affiliated to. Following in these academic footsteps, the current research takes a similar approach to neuro art. Early in the process of collecting and evaluating neuro art material, it became evident that several themes are recurrent and that particular categories emerge. These categories, which informed the structure of the following chapters, seem to echo neuroscientific taxonomies. It is only natural, of course, if the criterion of categorization is the relationship the artwork has with neuroscience, that the categories emerging will reflect, to a certain degree, parallels with structure of neuroscientific research. Needless to say, the art’s receptivity to neuroscience is selective and revolves around aspects with affinity for art. Placing an emphasis on seeing as neurological mechanism and visualizing as a process of revealing images about the brain and the nervous system, artists are concerned with ideas originating in cellular neuroscience, neuroscientific imaging techniques, systems and behavioral neuroscience, brain mechanisms of emotions, brain rhythms and sleep, and mental illness. All these different approaches to neuroscientific issues can be roughly grouped in four overarching categories. Some artists expressed an interest in (1) cellular neuroscience, some were captivated by (2) neuroimaging technology, others approached issues pertaining to the senses, to emotions and to other aspects generally                                                                                                                 64

Martin Kemp, Seen | Unseen: Art, Science, and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 65 66

Wilson, Art + Science Now. Ede, Art and Science.

67

Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004).

 

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investigated within the subfield of (3) systems and behavioral neuroscience. Lastly, several artists refer to (4) neurological illness in their work. Accordingly, the four categories in neuro art can be metaphorically labeled as: cellular neuro art, neuroimaging art, systems neuro art, and neurology art. Although reductive in its nature, such a classification is intended here as guiding tool for systematizing and analyzing the material. However, the categories need to be flexible since in many instances artworks do not fit perfectly in any category, while in others would easily be considered part of more than one.

* * * * *

In summary, neuro art is an artistic tendency inspired by knowledge about the brain. Isolated at first, this artistic phenomenon evolved substantially, was noticed timidly by art historians, and is currently receiving increasing institutional attention, particularly in the form of art-and-brain exhibitions. Part of the larger cultural phenomenon that Anker and Frazzetto called neuroculture, neuro art has created and proposed for display and contemplation project which are both aesthetically and conceptually interesting. As an artistic tendency, neuro art represents a compelling chapter in the history of contemporary art. In what follows, before engaging into the systematic analysis of neuro art, an important distinction needs to be drawn between the practice of neuroaesthetics, neuroarthistory, and the history of neuro art. Like neuro art and its history, these two fields of investigation are manifestations within contemporary culture that are concerned with the relationship between the arts and neuroscience. These academic directions — neuroaesthetics, neuroarthistory and the history of neuro art — are in scope rather different, in spite of their apparent similarities. It is hoped that by contouring the trajectory of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory it will become evident, through comparison, what the history of neuro art proposes and why there is a need for such a history. The last part of this introduction aims therefore to define the history of neuro art against the background of the other two disciplines and, at the same time, to  

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assess the limits of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory for the investigation of neuro art.

The Limits of Neuroaesthetics and Neuroarthistory  

One of the initial intentions of this research was to investigate neuro art within the framework of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. I was naively hoping that neuroaesthetic theories and neuroarthistorical ideas would provide the most interesting perspective on neuro art. It seemed only natural to investigate art about the brain through the lens of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. The goal would have been then — besides observing how artists use neuroscientific concepts — to address neurological perspectives about creativity, to understand what happens in the mind of the artist when they create neuro artworks, and at the same time to explain the neurological mechanisms which make possible the perception of a neuro art object. This initial intention was based on the assumption that neuroscience, neuroaesthetics, and neuroarthistory can answer profound questions about art, and that these answers have profound implications for the history of art. In reality, however, all these neurofields touch upon art in a superficial and misleading way. From an art historical perspective, as James Elkins has pointed out, such approaches to art deform the scientific discourse to fit art historical circumstances, and viceversa, art historical facts are disregarded or manipulated to fit neuroscientific arguments. The aim of the following pages is to briefly define different forms of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory, to explain why these approaches do not provide a suitable framework for the investigation of neuro art, and finally to define the scope of the history of neuro art against the background of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory.

* * * * *

 

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To say that artistic creation and aesthetic experience are deeply rooted in neurological activity is superfluous, since all human activity involves brain processes. However, it has only been in the last few decades that scientists and art historians became aware that grasping certain neurological processes might be relevant to the understanding of artistic and aesthetic processes. Rather than artists or art historians, it was the scientific world to firstly suggest that art and neuroscience are relevant to each other and to encourage the bridging of the two disciplines. Since the last decade of the twentieth century, some scientists, notably Jean Pierre Changeux, Richard L. Gregory, Margaret Livingstone, Semir Zeki, Dahlia W. Zaidel, Robert L. Solso, and Vilayanur Ramachandran, began to explore various aspects of art creation and appreciation from a neuroscientific perspective. These early explorations eventually lead to the crystallization of neuroaesthetics. Jean Pierre Changeux’s article “Art and Neuroscience: Neural Origins of Aesthetic Pleasure and Artistic Creation,”68 published in the fall 1994 issue of Leonardo, is arguably the first text to explicitly connect neuroscience to the study of art.69 Exploring what neuroscience can say about an artwork, Changeux’s article describes the process of vision, recognition, and perception in relation to one painting. The chosen sample — The Lamentation upon Dead Christ, by Jacques-Charles de Bellage serves Changeux as a pretext to explain the stages in the visual process from the retina to the visual cortices and further up to the association cortex. Interesting as it might be, this article fails to bring forth anything of particular relevance to art. One could trade the Lamentation with any other object in the visual field without any detriment to the general argument. Observations regarding, for example, the fact that a prosopagnostic70 patient would                                                                                                                 68

Jean Pierre Changeux, "Art and Neuroscience," Leonardo 27, 3 (1994).

69

Studies in the psychology of vision and aesthetics which depended on knowledge and speculations about the brain existed before Changeux’s article. Ideas about brain function and visual perception had long before made their intrusion into the history and theory of art, particularly through psychology. The work of Rudolf Arnheim, Ernst Gombrich or Michael Baxandall attests to it. It was Changeux, however, to first suggest a beneficial collaboration between art and the modern field of neuroscience. 70

Prosopagnosia is an impaired ability to recognize previously familiar faces, impairment usually associated with damage to the posterior right hemisphere of the brain. From: "prosopagnosia n." Andrew M. Colman ed., A Dictionary of Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2009, http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t87.e6728 (accessed January

 

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have been unable to “identify the donor located in the right-hand part of the painting who, at the time, must have been a well-known church dignitary”71 — bring little contribution to either the historical understanding or the aesthetic experience of the painting. The questions Changeux raises, albeit interesting in themselves, are not efficiently connected to the artistic analysis, and therefore the article’s effective contribution to the history of art or aesthetic theory is rather limited. The greatest merit of Changeux’s article is perhaps that of introducing neuroscientific issues about perception, visual recognition, color consistency, memory, aesthetic pleasure, mental Darwinism and mirror neurons — to artists and art historians, while at the same time launching one of the earliest invitation to scientist and art historians to investigate the neural origin of aesthetic pleasure and artistic creation. If Changeux looks up to neuroscience to find what it can tell us about an artwork, Livingstone looks at art works in order to find out what art can tell us about the visual brain. Following the footsteps of Richard L. Gregory, who in his 1966 book on vision: Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, devotes a chapter to “The Realities of Art” and explains how art can shed light on our perception of shape, perspective and color,72 Margaret Livingstone dedicates an entire book to deciphering the neurological mystery of sight on the basis of our experience of art representations. In her colorful, entertaining and informative book: Vision and Art: the Biology of Vision, Livingstone explores how various works of art reflect different properties of our visual system.73 Using scientific observations about light, about the eye’s physiology and about neural mechanisms leading to perception, Margaret Livingstone elucidates several visual problems of relevance to art. Throughout the book she defines color, luminance, shape, texture and line in neurophysiologic terms, while illustrating her theories with vivid examples of artworks. Livingstone argues, for instance, that the powerful vibrancy of                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         2, 2012). 71

Changeux, "Art and Neuroscience," p. 190.

72

Richard Langton Gregory, Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 170-193. 73

 

Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing.

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Monet’s Impression Sunrise can be easily explained in terms of equiluminance. “By making [the sun] the exact luminance as the sky, he achieves an eerie effect.”74 To make her point, Livingstone presents a black and white reproduction in which the sun is hardy distinguishable in value from the sky and shows that, when in a later version Monet makes the sun lighter than in the original, the vibrant effect is, paradoxically, lost. Similarly, Livingstone decodes, neurophysiologically, Mona Lisa’s smile. She suggests that the way we perceive her smile varies depending on where one is looking. This happens because the unequal distribution of photosensitive rod and cone cells in the retina leads to an uneven visual acuity: high resolution in the center of the gaze and low resolution in the periphery. Mona Lisa’s smile is more apparent, it seems, to the peripheral vision. “This explains,” Livingstone argues, “its elusive quality — you literally can’t catch her smile by looking at it. Every time you look directly at her mouth, her smile disappears because your central vision does not perceive the coarse components very well.”75 Changeux and Livingstone bring about two directions of investigation at the intersection of art and neuroscience. One applies knowledge from neuroscience in an attempt to explicate the perception of art; the other explores what can be learned in neuroscience of vision by studying visual perception of certain, very specific, art objects.

                                                                                                                74 75

 

Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., pp. 71-72.

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Neuroaesthetics Out of these early neuroscientific incursions into the art world a new academic field began to emerge. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Semir Zeki76 and Warren Neidich created, in parallel, and gave slightly different meanings to the concept of ‘neuroaesthetics.’ Understood today generically as “a certain way of doing aesthetics using neuroscience as a method of enquiry,”77 the way neuroaesthetics is practiced takes a variety of scholarly forms. Although, as will become apparent later in this section, the two scholars approach neuroaesthetics differently, their early work can be discussed under the umbrella of theoretical neuroaesthetics, and is to be distinguished from the later — experimental — stage of neuroaesthetics. In Inner Vision, Zeki intends to set the basis for a “theory of aesthetics that is biologically based.”78 His insights into the visual system and its neural mechanisms provide a wide range of fascinating explanations of how the brain generates vision. The application of his research to art, however, is far from convincing and raises a multitude of questions and arguments. The starting assumption of the book is that the function of art is an extension of the function of the visual brain. Both the brain and the visual art, Zeki believes, have as chief function the acquisition of knowledge, and aim to extract essential, permanent information about the environment. In his own words: “… the function of art is very similar to the function of the brain: to represent the constant, lasting, essential and enduring features of objects, surfaces, faces, situations and so on, and thus allow us to acquire knowledge not only about the particular object, or face, or condition represented on the canvas but to generalize from that to many other objects

                                                                                                                76

Professor of neurobiology at University College London, Zeki devoted over 40 years of research to the study of the visual brain. In 2001, Zeki and The Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology created the first Institute of Neuroaesthetics. Studies done at the institute are concerned with “the relationship of visual art to the functioning of the visual brain,” and seek to unravel the “biological and neurobiological foundations of aesthetic experience.” From Neuroaesthetics Institute, "An Introduction to the Neuroaesthetics Institute," http://neuroesthetics.org/institute.php (accessed December 12, 2011). 77

Martin Skov and Oshin Vartanian, Neuroaesthetics (Amityville: Baywood Publishing Company, 2009), p. 2. 78

 

Zeki, Inner Vision, p. 1.

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and thus acquire knowledge about a wide category of objects or faces.”79

There are many instances in history where art aims at something greatly different than just “to depict objects as they are” or to facilitate knowledge acquisition. Zeki himself points out the case of Cubist art that ‘fails’ to achieve what the brain does. Cubist compositions, according to Zeki, “are not recognizable by an ordinary brain as the objects that the titles declare them to be. It is in this sense alone that one judges Cubism to have been a failure.”80 It might be argued however, that particularly in the case of Cubism, many work titles function as aide-mémoires and thus the title is there to trigger the recognition of the object, like in game, and not necessarily to verify the viewers’ recognition abilities. In regard to Fauvists, Zeki, acknowledging their desire to liberate colors in order to enhance their expressive powers, assumes that Fauvists intended the liberation of color from form — and argues that such a separation is not possible in neurological terms because “in order to construct colour, the brain has to take the ratio of light of all wavebands reflected from one surface and that reflected from surrounding surfaces”81 and thus color is bound to form. Without contesting the validity of Zeki’s observation about color-form perceptual alliance, it is clear, however, that his initial assumption is erroneous. The liberation of color that the Fauvists aimed at was not a liberation from form, but rather from certain chromatic norms and conventions (like ‘natural’ colors) that painters had adopted up to that point.82 The art historical premises on which Zeki’s arguments are based are false, and thus Zeki’s conclusions about art are, from an art historical perspective, erroneous.                                                                                                                 79 80

Ibid., pp. 9-10. (Italics in original) Ibid., p. 56.

81

Ibid., p. 197. This aspect is well known in art history. The distinctive use of ‘pure colors’ by fauvists, in contrast to naturalistic colors, is discussed by scholars of fauvism (like Sarah Whitfield, Jean Louis Ferrier, and others), by scholars of color (like John Gage), and by the fauvists themselves. Henri Matisse declared: "I used color as a means of expressing my emotions and not as a transcription of nature." [In Jack D. Flam and Henri Matisse, Matisse on Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p.178.] It was Robert Hughes, in his video documentary and book The Shock of the New to talk about fauvism’s liberation of color, in relation to the work of Matisse. See: Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New: Art and the Century of Change (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991). See also: Sarah Whitfield, Fauvism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), and Jean Louis Ferrier, Les Fauves: le règne de la couleur (Paris: Terrail, 1992). 82

 

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Reading the text carefully, it becomes obvious that in many instances Zeki replaces what art historians would call ‘the viewer’ with ‘the brain’ but keeps the argumentation to a level that does not justify the replacement. One example in this sense is the discussion about the work of Michelangelo aimed to illustrate Zeki’s concepts of situational and implicit constancy, which he defines in the following way: “I will first call situational constancy — a given situation that has features that are common to many other situations of the same kind, enabling the brain to categorise it immediately as being representative of all. […] The second I will call implicit constancy; it is best exemplified by ‘unfinished’ works where the brain is allowed free play in interpreting the work in as many ways as possible.”83

Zeki’s arguments revolve around the idea of ambiguity as the characteristic of all great art. For him the ‘neurological definition’84 of ambiguity, does not refer to “the vagueness and uncertainty found in the dictionaries” but on the contrary to “the certainty of many different, and essential conditions, each of which is equal to others, all express in a single profound painting, profound because it is so faithfully representative of so much.”85 Zeki’s idea is that the value of art resides on its capacity to allow for a multitude of interpretations. It is however unclear what the role of the brain is in all this, beyond the fact that no perception would be possible in its absence. Saying that “the brain is allowed the free play in interpreting the work,”86 or that an artwork “has the capacity to stir a great deal in the brain’s stored memory of past events,”87 Zeki’s bottom line argument is quite banal. In essence, it contends that the artworks he discusses are interesting because they engage imagination and recollection. The argumentation is further compromised by systematic manipulation of historical information. In regard to Michelangelo, Zeki argues not only that his non finito works have been left unfinished deliberately, but also that Michelangelo, by                                                                                                                 83

Ibid., p. 22.

84

Zeki himself refer to this definition as neurological, but his own analysis has no neuroscientific grounds per se. “Situational constancy,” Zeki declares, “is a subject that neurology has not yet studied, indeed the problem itself has not been addressed. We have hardly begun to understand the simpler kind of constancy, of form and colour for example […]”,Ibid., p. 27. 85

Ibid., p. 26. Ibid., p. 22. 87 Ibid., p. 29. 86

 

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leaving them unfinished, must have been aware of the neurological trick he was engaging the viewer. Leaving the form of his works implicit for the brain to discover, Zeki argue, Michelangelo endowed the brain of the viewer with great imaginative powers.88 Furthermore, Zeki derives Michelangelo’s intention and his views on art from a sonnet Michelangelo wrote in Italian, choosing explicitly an English translation that erroneously translates the Italian intelletto into English as brain.89 Many other aspects can be brought into discussion in regard to the validity Zeki’s narrative. At this point however, a few concluding arguments would suffice to point out why such a perspective is not appropriate in the investigation of neuro art. Zeki’s neurological observations are only relevant to explain how our perception is possible in neurological terms, but bring nothing new about the specific case of artistic perception. Artworks are only accessories in a preconceived narrative. Examples that do not fit the argument are either ignored or regarded, from a neurological point of view, as failures. The suggestion that art, as an extension of the brain, is in search of constancy is followed by estimates about how miserable one movement or another had failed to achieve what the brain does. In fact, these ‘failures’ do nothing but raise the question of whether the aim of art does, indeed, coincide with the aim of the visual brain. Often not substantiated by research, neuroscientific speculations are coupled with erroneous art historical premises, and unfounded interpretations of personal artistic aims. Neuroaesthetics, as Zeki presents it, is thus characterized by a superficial treatment of neuroscientific knowledge in relation to art and a misguided understanding of art and its history. No less controversial and speculative is the work of another prominent spokesman of neuroaesthetics. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, an acclaimed figure in neuroscience, has published widely in the fields of visual perception and behavioral neurobiology. Extensively covered by the media Ramachandran’s studies on synesthesia, phantom limbs syndrome, autism or visual neglect, have now become part                                                                                                                 88

Ibid., p. 31.

89

In a footnote that accompanies the sonnet, Zeki motivates his choice: “I have used the translation by J. A. Symonds, […]; other translations do not use the word brain. The original uses the word intelletto, not brain. […] Either way, Symonds has, astutely in my view, rendered it into brain.” Ibid., p. 36.

 

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of popular culture. In his neuroaesthetic search of artistic universals, Ramachandran makes the ambitious claim to have found “some universal laws or principles”90 that are neurologically valid for all art regardless of the culture they come from. He takes further Zeki’s definition of art, declaring that “[t]he purpose of art, surely, is not merely to depict or represent reality—for that can be accomplished very easily with a camera— but to enhance, transcend, or indeed even to distort reality.”91 We enjoy art, Ramachandran considers, due to a psychological effect called ‘peak shift’ that activates the same neural mechanism that the objects represented activate, only more powerful. However, Ramachandran’s understanding of art as a ‘super stimulus,’ firstly limits the category of art to distorted naturalistic representations only, and secondly, fails to explain what would make art different from any other non-artistic super stimulus. In proposing laws of aesthetic perception, Ramachandran enumerates in fact principles of the visual system which mostly explain visual, but not necessarily aesthetic perception. Among the laws he proposes as being universal for aesthetic experience are, along with peak shift, perceptual grouping, contrast, symmetry, and metaphor. These are elements that have been discussed both in the history of art and in the studies of visual perception, and therefore the idea of merging the two perspective would seem commendable. In Ramachandran’s discourse, however, the two perspectives do not really meet. Discussing perceptual grouping for example, he writes: “The notion that art exploits grouping principles is of course not new (Gombrich, 1973; Arnheim, 1956; Penrose, 1973), but what is novel here is our claim that the grouping doesn’t always occur ‘spontaneously’; that out of a temporary binding a signal sent to the limbic system to reinforce the binding, and this is one source of the aesthetic experience.”92 From an art historical perspective, such observations are not particularly relevant, saying nothing about aesthetic experience. In fact, such an approach reduces aesthetic                                                                                                                 90

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Imposter Poodles to Purple Numbers (New York: Pi Press, 2005), p. 40. 91

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein, "The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience," Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (1999), p. 16. 92

 

Ibid., p. 23-24.

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experience to a set of mechanistic rules and does not account for the subtleties and complexities of the actual aesthetic perception. Furthermore, just like Zeki, Ramachandran presents arguments which are built on unsound art historical premises and, as a consequence, yield specious conclusions. For example, addressing contrast as an essential element in aesthetic perception Ramachandran suggests that contrast does not emerge only from luminance and color, but also from compositional strategies. As an argument in this sense, he gives the following example: “a nude wearing baroque (antique) gold jewellery (and nothing else) is aesthetically much more pleasing than a completely nude woman or one wearing both jewellery and clothes, presumably because the homogeneity and smoothness of the naked skin contrasts sharply with the ornateness and rich texture of the jewellery.”93 Such a generalizing statement ignores not only the individual differences in aesthetic perception but also the value of artistic skill. Arguably, a skillfully painted portrait of a dressed woman with jewelry would be more aesthetically pleasing than a badly painted, sculpted, or photographed nude wearing only jewelry. It is hard to understand how such statements could justify the universal validity of a theory about aesthetic experience. The universality of these principles is itself contradicted by Ramachandran in one of his concluding statements in which he declares that art “emerges either from exploiting these principles or from a playful and deliberate violation of them.”94 This conclusion in itself violates the idea of aesthetic laws by underlining the fact that respecting these criteria is in fact irrelevant in the creation of an artistic object. Thus, Ramachandran’s universal laws of aesthetic experience provide no solid ground for the investigation of art, because they pay no attention to either artistic skill, cultural perspective, or conceptual content.

                                                                                                                93 94

 

Ibid. Ibid.

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* * * * *

When art historians engage in neuroaesthetics, the historical and cultural aspect of art are considered more carefully. However, just like scientist, art historians speculate creatively when they draw connections between art and neuroscience. David Freedberg95 is one of the art historians who strongly believe that studies of the human brain can bring significant contributions to the understanding of art and history. Having a background in sixteenth and seventeenth century history of art and science, and a great interest in the perception of art, David Freedberg was one of the first art historians to investigate aesthetic experience by means of neuroscience, advocating that the study of art history should give a greater attention to the neural substrates of emotional responses to art. In a 2006 article, “Composition and Emotion,” Freedberg postulated the correlation between the composition of an artwork and the emotional responses that it elicits. He suggests that the way a picture looks and the emotions it arouses are directly connected.96 Freedberg develops this idea further in his elaborate essay on “Empathy, Motion and Emotion.”97 Starting from the observation that certain emotions and bodily reactions to art are recurrent in spite of temporal and geographical difference, Freedberg suggests that “some responses to works of art might be automatic or directly dependent on the structure and neural networks of the brain.”98 In his writing, Freedberg combines efficiently along with theoretical concepts — Aby Warburg’s concept of Pathosformel, Merleau Ponty’s concern for the viewers’ corporeal involvement in art works, and Antonio Damasio’s theory of somatic markers and the ‘as-if loop’ concept — neuroscientific knowledge about visceral reactions to images, amygdalic responses to fear, correlations of emotional and facial expression,                                                                                                                 95

He is currently a professor at Columbia University and the director at the Italian Academy in Rome – which hosts a program for Arts and Neuroscience since 2006. 96

David Freedberg, "Composition and Emotion," in The Artful Mind - Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 97

David Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion," in Wie sich Gefühle Ausdruck verschaffen: Emotionen in Nahsicht, ed. Klaus Herding and Antje Krause-Wahl, (Berlin: Driesen, 2007). 98

 

Ibid., p. 22.

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the fusiform face area and the extrastriate body, etc. Lastly and most significantly, Freedberg addresses the role of mirror neurons in emotional and aesthetic responses. The discovery of mirror neurons in the late 1980s by a group of scientists lead by Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma in Italy, has been arguably one of the spectacular discoveries in neuroscience — one that has become particularly appealing to neuro-humanities. The specific characteristic of these brain cells, as Rizzolatti describes in a review of mirror neurons, is that they fire “both when the monkey performed a certain motor act (e.g., grasping an object) and when it observed another individual (monkey or human) performing that or a similar motor act.”99 A multitude of studies since their dicovery, show that mirror neurons are present in various cortical areas of the brain, and speculate about the possible functions they might have. Apart from the logical conclusion that mirror neurons are essential in simulating the activity of others, it has been suggested that they underlie imitation and are, thus, essential in learning new things and acquiring language abilities. Some studies, which investigate the relevance of mirror neurons in social interaction, conclude that mirror-neuron systems might “enable[s] the observer to understand others’ behavior, without the necessity for complex cognitive elaborations.”100 Scientists had further observed that the location of mirror neurons in specific cortical areas is significant, as it determines a particular mirroring effect. For example, Rizzolatti points out, mirror neurons “located in emotional centers like the insula or the cingulate cortex intervene in phenomena like empathy, while those located in the parieto-frontal circuit provides the observer with motor representations of others’ motor actions devoid of emotional content.”101 It was Changeux, in his “Art and Neuroscience” article of 1991, to first mention in an art-related context the neurons that Rizzolatti and his team observed in the previous

                                                                                                                99

Giacomo Rizzolatti and Maddalena Fabbri-Destro, "Mirror Neurons: From Discovery to Autism," Experimental Brain Research 200, 3-4 (2010), p. 223. 100 101

 

Ibid., p. 227. Ibid., p. 227.

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years.102 However, while Changeux merely points out the potential implications Rizzolatti’s discovery might have for art history, it was David Freedberg to analyze in depth their implications for aesthetics. Mirror neurons have, according to Freedberg, a two-fold role in aesthetic experience — firstly, by transforming visual information in motor acts103 mirror neurons explain the corporeal involvement of a viewer in the reception of an artwork. Secondly, mirror neurons are essential in understanding “the basis for physical empathy with a picture, and therefore with the emotions shown in a picture.”104 In the last part of this article,105 Freedberg builds on the theory of mirror neurons to explain how empathetic and emotional responses are dependent on neural structures and rooted in our perception of movement and actions in others. Mirror neurons, Freedberg believes, support and explain the visceral engagement with an artwork. Choosing conspicuously emotional art works as examples — like Goya’s Désastres de la Guerre, Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, or Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas — Freedberg aims to emphasize that “the emotional effectiveness of the image is predicated on the evocation of corporeal identification.”106 In a similar article, co authored by Vittorio Gallese and published in Trends in Cognitive Science, the role of the mirror mechanism is examined not only in the response to figurative images but also to objects and even abstract images. Both objects in figurative paintings as well as “visible traces of the artist's creative gestures”107 in abstract art, Freedberg and Gallese argue, ensue bodily involvement on the part of the viewer, and mirror neurons are essential in this process. In essence, Freedberg and Gallese’s main argument is that regardless of the representation type — be it a figurative composition, a still life, or an abstract painting the reception of an artwork involves not                                                                                                                 102 103 104 105 106

Although only briefly and without naming them mirror neurons. Rizzolatti and Fabbri-Destro, "Mirror Neurons: From Discovery to Autism," p. 227. Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion," p. 36. Ibid., pp. 34-43. Ibid., p. 38.

107

David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Aesthetic Experience," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, 5 (May 2007), p. 199.

 

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only visual perception but also an immediate corporeal reaction. When compared to the work of Zeki and Ramachandran, Freedberg’s writing, is more valuable to art history. As an art historian, Freedberg pays great attention to art historical details and his narrative does not purposefully manipulate art historical facts to fit the agenda of neuroaesthetics. However, the core interest of his work, just as in the writings of Ramachandran and Zeki, is the viewer, the brain and the aesthetic behavior, and not the actual artwork. Despite Freedberg’s profound consideration of art historical complexities, his theories have similar goals with Zeki and Ramachandran’s aesthetics, namely to explain aesthetic behavior in neuroscientific terms. The observations Freedberg makes about aesthetics are applicable to a very specific set of images, those who elicit powerful emotional response. In spite of their neuroscientific content — which sometimes actually concerns emotions — neuro artworks do not fit the category of artworks Freedberg investigates. Therefore, neuro art is of no interest to Freedberg’s neuroaesthetics, and Freedberg’s theories have little relevance to the study of neuro art.

* * * * *

Another definition of neuroaesthetics — slightly different from the one put forward by Zeki and illustrated by Ramachandran and Freedberg — has been given by Warren Neidich.108 For Neidich, neuroaesthetics is not, as it was for Zeki, a neurobiological investigation of aesthetic perception, but a “language connecting aesthetics and neuroscience.”109 In Neidich’s view, neuroscientific knowledge is relevant in the making and the perception of artworks. Neuroaesthetics, as Neidich defines it, is an appropriation of scientific knowledge for artistic aims. “Neuroscience,” Neidich contends, “is a readymade, which is recontextualized out from its original                                                                                                                 108

Warren Neidich is an artist with a background in neuro-ophthalmology; the founding editor of Artbrain.org and the electronic Journal of Neuroaesthetics; and the curator of the exhibition Conceptual Art as Neurobiologic Praxis, New York, 1999. 109

Gere, "Interview with Warren Neidich." http://interviewstream.zkm.de/?p=7 (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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context as a scientific based paradigm into one that is aesthetically based.”110 He distinguishes between his own neuroaesthetics and redefines Zeki’s approach as ‘aesthetic neuro-biology.’ Aesthetic neuro-biology, according to Neidich, differs greatly from his own neuroaesthetics in that it takes the work of art out from its cultural context and setting, it strips it from the conditions that produces it, and investigates the aesthetic experiences this work produces in a laboratory setting.111 While Zeki uses neuroscience to learn about art, Neidich argues that art [canvas] “can be used to make comments on the ontological development of the nervous system”112 because artworks are records of neurobiological perception maps. Brain and art, in Neidich’s neuroaesthetics paradigm, are in tandem, depending and reflecting one another, and transforming under the impact of the same environment. This understanding of the art, brain, and environment, echoes conceptually the dialogue between neuroscience, neuro art and culture, discussed earlier in the introduction.113 The parallel resides in the circularity of dialogue between the three elements. Just as neuroscience, neuro art, and culture are engaged in a complex relationship of mutual exchange; art, brain, and environment are in dialogue with one another and affect each other’s evolution. In Neidich’s own words: “the canvas and the brain are both in a constant state of mutation as they are configured and reconfigured by a group of immaterial relations such as psychological dispositions, social upheavals, political intrigues as well as historical reformulations, which express themselves simultaneously —although quite differently—in the shape of sculpted marble and the arrangement of the neurons in the neural networks of the brain.”114 Central to Neidich’s aesthetic discourse is the idea of neural group selection,                                                                                                                 110

Ibid. The term of aesthetic neuro-biology is more appropriate to describe the experimental phase of neuroaesthetic, briefly addressed in the next section, pp. 41-42. 111

112

Warren Neidich, "Visual and Cognitive Ergonomics: Formulating a Model through Which Neurobiology and Aesthetics Are Linked," http://www.warrenneidich.com/visual-and-cognitiveergonomics-formulating-a-model-through-which-neurobiology-and-aesthetics-are-linked/ (accessed February 25, 2012). 113

See p. 5.

114

Neidich, "Visual and Cognitive Ergonomics: Formulating a Model through Which Neurobiology and Aesthetics Are Linked," http://www.warrenneidich.com/visual-and-cognitive-ergonomics-formulating-amodel-through-which-neurobiology-and-aesthetics-are-linked/ (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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based on Gerald Edelman’s theory of neural Darwinism.115 According to this theory, at birth the brain is equipped with a ‘primary repertoire’ which, throughout life, transforms, develops and configures according to the outside world, thus leading the brain to acquire a ‘second repertoire.’ Repeatedly stimulated neurons, Neidich explains Edelman’s theory, “by stimuli in the real/imaginary/virtual world most often develop faster and with more efficient firing and wiring capacities, which in the end allows them to be selected for above and beyond other neurons not so stimulated.”116 The ‘secondary repertoire,’ as it emerges from the specific context in which the individual brain is born, becomes essential in Neidich’s understanding of the brain-art evolution. Along with the idea of the secondary repertoire, Neidich introduces the concept of visual and cognitive ergonomics, in order to explains how the transformation of aesthetic perception occurs over time. “Visual and cognitive ergonomics,” he defines, “are the tacit processes through which the aesthetic transformation of our perception, and our subsequent cognition of the physical world and its changing nature, affects the way a particular set of stimuli is perceived and cognized.”117 In regards to the visual ergonomics, Neidich places a great emphasis on the role visualizing technologies have in systematically reshaping art and reshaping the brain, with a particular focus on how optical devices influence aesthetic systems. “The devices,” Neidich points out, “come to stand in for how we see, or know, the physical world.”118 Art history, in Neidich’s understanding is “an ever-refined series of ergonomically constructed changes, that may first take place on the surface of the canvas/laboratory and spread out into the world through the contribution of other aesthetic practices such as architecture and design.” These aesthetic practices have thus                                                                                                                 115

Gerald M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 116

Gere, "Interview with Warren Neidich." http://interviewstream.zkm.de/?p=7 (accessed February 25, 2012). 117

Neidich, "Visual and Cognitive Ergonomics: Formulating a Model through Which Neurobiology and Aesthetics Are Linked," http://www.warrenneidich.com/visual-and-cognitive-ergonomics-formulating-amodel-through-which-neurobiology-and-aesthetics-are-linked/ (accessed February 25, 2012). 118

 

Ibid.

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a direct effect on the way physical reality is configured, and an indirect effect on the configuration of the second repertoire. From this perspective, it is highly plausible, Neidich holds, that the brain in the past centuries would have had a different neurological configuration than our brains have today, from the simple fact that visual field of a past observer would have looked and felt much different than the visual field of today’s observer. Another neuroaesthetic theory, quite similar in essence with Neidich’s, was put forward by Oliver Elbs. A physicist and a mathematician with studies of religion and art history, Oliver Elbs places his theory of neuroaesthetics on the grounds of what he calls ‘mapology.’ He understands the world as a complex set of networks and maps. According to his paradigm everything — sensations, ideas, images, sciences, theories, schemata, and diagrams — “may boil down to (neural?) maps and shifts within an individual mapmaker…”119 In this context, the artist, the viewer and the art historian are “map-makers” and any artistic creation, art historical account, artistic interpretation, or aesthetic perception is a map. “Thus, the whole ‘History of Art’ seems to boil down to a mere systematic-methodical sounding out of the ‘possibilities’ and potentialities of ‘the brain’ […].”120 Art historical interpretation itself, as well as artistic creation and aesthetic perception, depend on the previous neuronal maps and the relation between them in within any creator or historian. Seeing networks everywhere, Elbs argues, “may simply be due to the fact that “networks“ are always seen and detected by an individual viewer — and thus […] always by a neural network […].”121 It is, however, intriguing, as Warren Neidich suggests, that “new network relations in the world select for new relations in the brain.”122 Thus, if the networks in the world are determined by the configuration of the neural networks in the brain, these configurations are in turn dependent on the network                                                                                                                 119

Quoted from Oliver Elbs, "Seminar: Neuro-Esthetics (and Mapology)," www.mapology.org (accessed February 20, 2010). 120 121

Ibid. Ibid.

122

Gere, "Interview with Warren Neidich." http://interviewstream.zkm.de/?p=7 (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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connections in the world. This circularity, present also in Neidich theory, is not as it might seem, a chicken-egg type problem, but it suggests a perpetual dialogue and an interdependent mutability between internal and external networks. Neuroaesthetics as proposed by Neidich and Elbs, pays a closer look at art, and provides a general theory about the reciprocal relationship of art with the brain and with culture. This theoretical approach mergers cultural perspective and biological function, and provides an overview of the history of art as a succession of concomitant changes in artistic expression, artistic perception, and brain configurations. The concept of the artwork as the reflection of neural map, and the idea that visual devices are important in reconfiguring our visual understanding of the world can be useful in defining the emergences of neuro art. According with this conceptual paradigm, neuro artworks would be understood as reflections of neural configurations in the brain. At the same time, neuro art as an artistic tendency, one could assume, emerged from a new aesthetic sensibility shaped partially by new optical devices (such as MRI or the CT scanners). Beyond this rather generalizing perspective however, this form of neuroaesthetics does not provide a system or tools to investigate the particular evolution of neuro art. Although, in theory Neidich neuroaesthetics takes into consideration the artist and the art object as elements in the art-brain-society dialogue, the actual historic aspects of art and the specific aesthetic qualities of individual art objects are of no interest to neuroaesthetics. In fact, Neidich’s neuroaesthetics, just as the rest of theoretical neuroaesthetics, is concerned with articulating overarching theories about art and the brain, but has little interest for individual art objects, their emergences, and their aesthetic values, and is, therefore, limited in relevance to the history of neuro art.

* * * * *

Neuroaesthetics is a field yet in its early days. The neural mechanisms underlining aesthetic experience and artistic creativity are too complex to permit a straightforward elucidation. Since its inception, however, neuroaesthetics is gradually  

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moving away from a purely theoretical debate towards systematic experimental research. This step, Anjan Chatterjee believes, signals that neuroaesthetics is coming of age.123 There are several predominant areas of investigation within research base neuroaesthetics. Finding the neurobiological basis for aesthetic experience has been one of its main preoccupations. By means of fMRI, MEG studies or through EEG experiments, scientists are aiming to identify the neural circuits responsible, mostly, for the perception of beauty. Given the complexities of brain mechanisms, the intricacies of aesthetic experience, and the difficulties in combining neuroscientific methodologies with the philosophy of beauty — it should come as no surprise that hardly any consensus has been reached in the attempt to identify experimentally the neural basis of aesthetics.124 Theories and speculations have been put forward with the declared aim of creating a starting point, proposing challenges, and stimulating further inquiry into the field. In most case, however, current experiential studies, as Anjan Chatterjee observes, provide some insight into the brain without contributing substantial to our understanding of aesthetics. Evaluating the role and the achievements of neuroaesthetics to date, other writers have reached similar conclusions. A recent book, edited by Martin Skov and Oshin Vartanian brings together under the title of Neuroaesthetics different academic approaches to the field, signaling the involvement of a multitude of research areas and methodological perspectives.125 Defining neuroaesthetic as a ‘quintessentially interdisciplinary’ the editors include in this volume, along with studies of visual art,                                                                                                                 123

Anjan Chatterjee, "Neuroaesthetics: A Coming of Age Story," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23, 1 (2011). 124

In this regard, Anjan Chatterjee proposes a neuropsychological model of aesthetic preference, while Leder propose a model of visual aesthetics formulated however from a psychological perspective. Furthermore, Nadal offers a tentative framework for the neural correlates of aesthetic preference, by reviewing several neuroimaging studies which aim at locating brain activity associated with aesthetic experience. These attempts are however symptomatic of a yet absent solid framework of neuroaesthetics. For reference see: Anjan Chatterjee, "Prospects for a Cognitive Neuroscience of Visual Aesthetics," Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts 4, 2 (2003); Helmut Leder and et al., "A Model of Aesthetic Appreciation and Aesthetic Judgments," British Journal of Psychology 95 (2004); and Marcos Nadal and et al., "Towards a Framework for the Study of the Neural Correlates of Aesthetic Preference," Spatial Vision 21, 3-5 (2008). 125

 

Skov and Vartanian, Neuroaesthetics.

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research papers about music and the literary arts. At the same time, however, like Chatterjee, Skov and Vartanian recognize that the dominant research emphasis is not on art, music, or literature, but on the brain. Therefore, they rightfully infer that neuroaesthetics is a predominately scientific field and suggest that neuroaesthetics studies should be integrated within the larger scope of the neuroscientific program.126 Likewise, in his book, The Neural Imagination, Massey has pointed out the distinction between humanistic and neuroscientific approaches to art, and has explained that although neuroscience can contribute to our understanding of art, the contribution is not necessarily by means of aesthetics. Massey believes that even though neuroscience can explain certain artistic effects (such as optical illusions), and certain aspects of the creative process (such as the effects of stroke or neural deficiency in artistic creativity), the neuroscientific contribution to aesthetics is rather irrelevant. Addressing fascinating questions about the human brain with great implications for knowledge of our cognitive and emotional makeup, neuroaesthetics is as of yet unsuccessful in providing conclusive answers about the neurologic nature of aesthetic judgment art objects or artistic creativity. Despite the abundance of studies and the continuous strive for answers neuroaesthetics remains controversial. Art historians and philosophers have been particularly critical of the methods and results of this new research field. One of the most frequent critical observations to neuroaesthetics pertains to the fact that neuroaesthetic findings can be applied to a sizable amount of objects in our perceptual field that are not artworks. Furthermore, experiencing artwork reproductions as part of a laboratory experiment, while in a functional MRI scanner, for example, must have a very different neurological effect then when seeing the original in a Parisian museum. Beyond these observations, neuroaesthetics has often been accused of “a lack of understanding pertaining to the relevant issues of the art historical agenda, and a neglect of cultural and social dimensions that are crucial for art history.”127 Practitioners                                                                                                                 126

Ibid., p. 5.

127

Alkim Almila Akdag Salah and Albert Ali Salah, "Technoscience Art: A Bridge between Neuroesthetics and Art History?," Review of General Psychology 12, 2 (2008).

 

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of neuroaesthetics use terms like art, aesthetics, and beauty in inappropriate and misleading ways, without being aware of, or without taking into consideration, the tremendous ambiguities inherent to these terms.128 In this contest one could rightfully question the validity of a neuroaesthetic experiment investigating beauty without being able to clearly define what beauty is. However, even if considering unproblematic the assumption that we all experience beauty similarly, and imagining a research design able to discriminate neural correlates of beauty, the relevance of such a study to art history is still contestable. Understanding which brain areas are active during a supposed aesthetic process, have hardly any value in explaining the actual nature of aesthetic experience. Bringing into discussion brain localization Massey writes: “it does not tell us anything about the work of art to say that the work activates, or is associated with, a certain spot in the brain.”129 In other words, if the neuroscientific investigation of beauty, might suggest, for example, that neural activity in the orbitofrontal cortex is increased by stimuli judged as beautiful,130 the aesthetic questions remain, however, unanswered. “What we ought to be asking” Alva Noë stresses in a rather aggressive critique to neuroaesthetics, “is Why do we value some works as art? Why do they move us? Why does art matter?”131 Such questions have found no answers in contemporary neuroaesthetic practices, mostly because they are irrelevant to the neuroscientific investigation. Neuroscientific methodology does not offer appropriate means, nor is it interested in investigating such subjective aspects of human nature. From the observations above, it can be concluded that neuroaesthetics, experimental neuroaesthetics in particular, tells more about the brain than about art, and is therefore more relevant to neuroscience than to art history. In relation to the                                                                                                                 128

Steven Brown and Ellen Dissanayake “The Arts are More than Aesthetics: Neuroaesthetics as Narrow Aesthetics.” In Skov and Vartanian, Neuroaesthetics, p. 43. 129 Massey, The Neural Imagination, p. 16. 130

Hideaki Kawabata and Semir Zeki, "Neural Correlates of Beauty," Journal of Neurophysiology 91, 4 (2004). 131

Alva Noë, "Art and the Limits of Neuroscience," in: The Opinion Page, New York Times Online, (December 4 2011), http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/art-and-the-limits-ofneuroscience/ (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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current research, the theories, the concepts, and the experiments proposed by neuroaesthetics are unsuitable in framing the history of neuro art.

Neuroarthistory The second neurocultural investigation at the point of contact between neuroscience and art — against which the history of neuro art needs to be defined — was labeled, by John Onians, neuroarthistory. Art historians have, for the most part, received neuroaesthetic investigation with skepticism. This situation can easily justify the late and more limited interest art historians express in neuroscience. Concepts from neuroscience, Semir Zeki notes in his 1999 book, have made “no intrusion into the writing or thinking of the art historians and critics, even those writing today.”132 This situation indicates that Jean-Pierre Changeux’s invitation and encouragement to carry on the work initiated by Gombrich, “by investigating the possible neural origin of aesthetic pleasure and artistic creation,”133 was not followed by art historians. Later, in 2004, at the time Oliver Elbs was writing his Neuro-Aesthetics, the situations was, it seems, unchanged. Unfortunately, Elbs points out, “while there seem to be now more and more neuroscientists opening their minds for art history, […], the reverse is rather rare.”134 Generally speaking, a much smaller number of art historians are receptive to neuroscientific knowledge then neuroscientists to art. If neuroaesthetics encompasses many research fields and allows for a large array of approaches and methodologies, neuroarthistory is, for the time being, a one-man-show. John Onians at the University of East Anglia has initiated neuroarthistorical research in the early 1990s and since published his first book on neuroarthistory under                                                                                                                 132 133

Zeki, Inner Vision, p. 16. Changeux, "Art and Neuroscience," p. 189.

134

Oliver Elbs, Neuro-Esthetics: Mapological Foundations and Applications (München: Meidenbauer, 2005), p. xi.

 

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the title Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki.135 Investigating from a neuroscientific perspective the intellectual history of writers about art from antiquity to present, From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki is only the first in a series of three books on neuroarthistory. The following two will take a neuroarthistorical approach to the art of Europe and the world respectively. Upon its completion, this series of books will most likely be considered as the first neurohistory of art. Onians initially defined neuroarthistory as a field of research that aims at understanding what happens inside the artist’s mind, by using tools and techniques specific to neuroscientific investigations. Understanding the phenomena of taste change and style transformations in art, finding creative difference between amateur and professional artists, and identifying the origin of art are a few of the initially declared neuroarthistorical objectives.136 Subsequently, Onians defines the neuroarthistorian as an art historian who, while taking into account the workings of the brain, is able to evaluate the intellectual makeup of the artist and to identify the neural elements that lead to the creation of a work of art. “While neuroaesthetics is more concerned with using neuroscience to shed light on universal patterns of response to art,” Onians explains, “neuroarthistory is more concerned with using neuroscience to answer art historical questions, such as why particular people living in a particular place at a particular time make a particular type of art.”137 The first book on Neuroarthistory is, however, concerned not with artists but with writers about art. The writers in question are those philosophers, art historians, and scientists who, according to Onians, although not in direct contact with neuroscientists,                                                                                                                 135

John Onians, Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 136

See for example University of East Anglia, "Cracking the Real Da Vinci Code: What Happens in the Artist's Brain?," ScienceDaily, (6 September 2006), http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060906091616.htm (accessed March 5, 2010). 137

John Onians, "Neuroarthistory: What a New Discipline Can Add to Our Understanding of Nineteenth Century Art," Conference Abstract, in The Copenhagen Neuroaesthetics Conference (2009), http://naconference.ikk.ku.dk/keynote/John_Onians.pdf/ (accessed October 13, 2011).

 

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nor even particularly familiar with research on the brain and the nervous system — nevertheless, share the belief that knowledge of nature and the brain is important. They are, Onians considers, the key figures in the development of neuroarthistory — ‘neuroarthistorians before neuroarthistory.’138 Where previous histories have hoped to shed light on the conscious mental formation of the art historians whom they investigate, Onians’ account “is paying particular attention to the more unconscious formation of their minds, focusing on the uniqueness of their experiences.”139 Onians further suggests that, by using neuroscientific knowledge, certain aspects of the artist’s neural make-up can be inferred. A further step would then be to understand how this neural make-up is responsible for generating the aesthetic object — in artists’ case, or the written text in the case of art historians. “The particular strength of neuroarthistory,” Onians suggests, “is the ability to reconstruct the unconscious intellectual formation of the makers, users, and viewers of art [...].”140 If Zeki claims that artists are often neuroscientists without knowing it — Onians writes — his own book makes a similar claim for writers.141 Proposing a ‘neural’ approach to the intellectual formation of the writers discussed in the book, Onians labels these writers as ‘neural subjects,’ and tries to understand, on the one hand how historical information can explain the writers’ neural make-up,142 and on the other hand how this neural make-up generated their ideas about art. In effect, on the one hand, Onians indentifies those fragments in his subject’s writing which anticipate neuroscience, and provides neuroscientific explanations for old ideas about art; on the other hand he speculates on how the experiences of his subjects shaped their neural apparatus. To give one example, Onians praises Aristotle for his insight into the operations of                                                                                                                 138 139 140

Onians, Neuroarthistory: From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, p. 10. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 13.

141

Ibid., p. 13. Onians compares Aristotle’s neural formation with that of Plato (p. 21), he discuses Pliny’s unconscious experience and the context of its formation (p. 33), talks about Alberti’s personal mental formation in the context of his upbringing (pp. 42-43), speculates about Leonardo’s ‘neural’ history (p. 53), etc. 142

 

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the brain when he identifies and defines imagination. He further parallels Aristotle’s thought with rather superficial neurological explanations of imagination. In his own words: “Aristotle realized that in our mental activity we often seem to be working with images of things we cannot see, as when we remember or think about something. […] Aristotle,” Onians continues, “was, of course, correct. We now know that because the process of seeing takes place not in the eye but in the brain, we can indeed see something whether or not is before our eyes.”143

About Aristotle, Onians further holds that his limited knowledge about biology, allowed him nevertheless “to treat human beings as biological specimens and to look for regularities in their behavior.”144 By doing so, Onians believes, Aristotle anticipates the views of modern scientists. Such parallels between the current idea that seeing is a prerogative of the brain and Aristotle's thoughts on imagination, or between his curiosity for human beings and the principles of scientific investigation, are not only overplayed, but also simplistic. Aristotle's writing gains noting from the comparison with neuroscience. The observations about his insight into human nature can expressed with a similar effect in the absence of neuroscientific reference.

* * * * * Outside of what Onians defines as neuroarthistory, there have been few art historians to appreciate and investigate the role neuroscience can play for art history and theory. Arguably the most significant contribution to art history that draws from neuroscience is found in the writings of Barbara Maria Stafford. Along David Freedberg, Stafford is one of the art historians to suggest that neuroscience and art scholarship can be mutually illuminating. Through her writing, she encourages cultural scholars and neuroscientist alike to engage in bridging the divide between neuroscience and the humanities. Neuroscience, she believes, gives art                                                                                                                 143 144

 

Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 29.

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historians “new intellectual tools to reimagine everything from autopoesis to mental imagery.”145 Writing what she calls a ‘multipolar’ work that does not aim to harmonize the multiple phenomena which it addresses, Stafford explains fascinating neuroscientific concepts and establishes connections to art history and art theory, providing artistic examples to efficiently illustrate the link. Her book, Echo objects: the cognitive work of images — is a composite text that brings into discussion a large array of ideas from aesthetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, art history, and art theory. It calls into reevaluation formalism, in the light of neuroscientific studies about form perception; takes a close look at artistic mimesis in the context of mirror neurons; and draws conclusions about cave and rock art by invoking the neurobiology of altered states of consciousness like addictions, hallucinations, or trance experiences. A mosaic of thoughts, Stafford’s book presents itself in the form of a powerful brainstorm of ideas that are, however, incongruously related to one another. As one of the texts to follow Changeux’s initial encouragement of “investigating the possible neural origins of aesthetic pleasure and artistic creation,”146 Echo Objects, is a step further from Changeux’s own investigation in “Art and Neuroscience”, but as with the Changeux’s text, this book’s heterogeneity testifies to the incipient stage of the art and neuroscience collaboration.

Framing the History of Neuro Art The expectation that neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory would provide the tools to investigate neuro art needed to be confronted in order to justify the approach this research has take towards neuro art, and to distinguish the history of neuro art from other endeavors in art history, art theory, and aesthetics that call upon neuroscientific                                                                                                                 145

Barbara Maria Stafford, Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 1. 146

 

Changeux, "Art and Neuroscience," p. 189.

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knowledge. Scientists have made statements about neural underpinnings of aesthetic perception and, sometimes, of artistic creativity, aiming to provide universally valid observation with relevance to art. In the end, neuroaesthetics says more about the brain than about art, underlining what happens in the brain when one looks at an image, without providing satisfactory observation about what is it that makes an art object have a particular aesthetic effect on the brain. Art historians on the other hand, are enthralled by certain neuroscientific discoveries and make use of these ideas to re-evaluate old theories about art or to develop new ones. Neuroscientific ideas in the history of art provide a flexible framework, are used in a speculative way, and are illustrated with art objects that have been very carefully selected to fit the argument. Arguably, both neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory aim on the one hand to understand how the organization of the brain is reflected in art production and aesthetic experience, and on the other hand, to estimate how art affects the brain. As they present themselves today, neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory are two innovative fields that have not, until now, clearly defined what their main aims are and how these aims are to be achieved. Recalling the strategy of ‘design thinking’ (an innovation process that emphasizes observation, collaboration, fast learning, and visualization of ideas), it seems reasonable to suggest that art historians and neuroscientists are in the early stages of creative brainstorming, when innovation is uninhibited, ideas are rough, and the path to the final goal is still unclear. The role of this chapter was to sketch the main avenues of interaction between art and neuroscience that have been approached in scientific research and art history. Considering the solutions neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory have proposed so far, there are no grounds to investigate neuro art within the framework of either neuroaesthetics or neuroarthistory. It is unlikely that investigating the brain of the artist while creating a work of neuro art, or scanning the brain of neuro art’s audience would yield any relevant observations about neuro art. Looking at neuro art through a neuroaesthetic frame would only provide simplistic,

 

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over-generalizing observations which, for the most part, ignore the particularities of the artistic object and the context in which it was created. According to Zeki, for example, one could say that the function of neuro art would be an extension of the function of the brain, in search for essential information about the environment; or that the value of neuro art would reside in its ambiguity. If we ask Ramachandran, the purpose of neuro art would be to enhance or distort reality. Freedberg’s theory, on the other hand, would suggest that the reception of neuro art involves not only vision but also an imidiate physical response. Finaly, in the context of Neidich and Elbs’ theories, neuro art is the result of specific neural configurations, or neural maps (which in turn are a reflection of the natural and cultural environment). It is also perhaps interesting to observe that, in their neuroarthistorical and neuroaesthetic investigations, historians and neuroscientists have called upon artistic examples from all artistic eras, from cave art,147 Indian sculptures from the Chola period,148 Renaissance, Baroque and 17th century paintings,149 to modern and contemporary artworks,150 — with hardly any reference to neuro art projects.151 This situation would suggest not only that neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory have little to say about neuro art, but also that neuro art object do not posses qualities of interest to neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. Within this context, the history of neuro art as initiated by this research is distinguished from both the practice of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. The history of neuro art does not aim to decipher the neurological basis of aesthetic experience nor to use of neuroscientific knowledge to the benefit of art theory, but rather to observe how neuroscientific concepts and tools are used in art. This study remains within the traditional practices of art history — bringing forward a contextual, descriptive, and interpretative examination of neuro art. Exploratory in nature, the thesis that follows,                                                                                                                 147 148 149 150

Stafford, Echo Objects. Ramachandran and Hirstein, "The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience." Freedberg, "Empathy, Motion and Emotion;" Changeux, "Art and Neuroscience." Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing; Huang, "The Neuroscience of Art."

151

The only exception is Stafford’s Echo Objects, in which the author mentions one neuro artwork by Suzanne Anker, in Stafford, Echo Objects, pp. 49-51.

 

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has the ultimate goal to survey how neuro art has developed down to the present, by first identifying the artworks, understanding their historical and conceptual roots, recognizing the recurrent themes, and lastly, by opening an enquiry into the meaning formation and possible interpretations of the artworks in question.  

 

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Chapter I: Anticipating Neuro Art

Early Popularization of Neuroscience Scientific discoveries are particularly efficient in triggering visions, speculations, fantasies and fears, of what we are to expect in the years, decades or centuries to come. Breakthroughs in science alter the way we understand, experience, and further transform the world in which we live. In the last hundred years, and particularly in the past decades, knowledge about the brain has evolved to such a degree, that some futurologists launched speculations about the emergence of a neurosociety. According to Zack Lynch152 — a social forecaster, as he calls himself153 — in the next five decades or so, we should anticipate a neurotechnological wave of change, so strong that it will eventually lead to “a new form of human society […] a postindustrial, postinformational neurosociety.”154 If we were to believe Lynch, we are facing a society in which knowledge about the brain, facilitated by “nanobiochips” and “nano-imaging” techniques, would advance to the point in which “neurotechnology will enable people to consciously improve their emotional stability, enhance their cognitive clarity and extend their most satisfying sensory experiences.”155 Speculations of this sort are useful here in as much as they suggest how wide neuroscientific knowledge, and sometimes pseudo-scientific knowledge about the brain, has already spread over contemporary culture.156 Such predictions seem far-fetched and                                                                                                                 152

Zack Lynch, The Neuro Revolution: How Brain Science Is Changing Our World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009). 153

Zack Lynch, "Emerging Neurosociety," http://www.neurosociety.com/aboutzacklynch.html (accessed February 23, 2012). 154 155 156

 

Lynch, The Neuro Revolution, p. 206. Ibid., pp. 11-12. Although Lynch’s perceptive welcomes such neuro-societal change, others would regard it with

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raise a set of problematic questions. However, the reality of everyday life confirms that neuroscientific ideas have long left the laboratories and made their way into public consciousness. The 1990s have been declared, in the United States, the Decade of the Brain. A program was launched then, aiming “to enhance awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research,” and to encourage “a public dialogue on ethical, philosophical and humanistic implications of these emerging discoveries.”157 Brain festivals, awareness weeks, university courses, exhibitions, popularizing books, and documentaries made information about the brain readily available to a general audience, thereby setting the stage for an increasingly neurocentric world, and prompting the beginning of the ‘brain century.’158 Neuroscience, as an independent research field studying the brain and the nervous system, has emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Theories about brain function have existed since ancient times and brain exploration has been documented over centuries. However until recently, knowledge of the brain was too limited to require an independent research field. Standard anatomical investigation which, for the longest time provided natural philosophers with knowledge about muscles, bones and internal organs had very little to say about the brain. The great challenges that the study of the brain entails, have only found solutions in the last century. Since the early twentieth century, when the groundbreaking Nobel prize-winning research of Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal on the structure of the nervous system eventually led to the discovery of the neuron, brain studies have had a spectacular evolution. Numerous technological inventions contributed to a rapid advancement in brain research, and gradually, the field of neuroscience became a recognized discipline. Judging by books and journal titles, Jacalyn Duffin estimates that                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         skepticism and fear. It is perhaps interesting to point out here that although such curious speculation, are promoted by certain B grade movies and pulp fiction, visual artists are hardly ever preoccupied with fear-driven ideas about dystopian neurological futures. This is even the more surprising if considering the degree to which genetic art, for example, places a strong emphasis on the possible negative implications of genetic research. 157

George Bush, "Presidential Proclamation 6158," Project on the Decade of the Brain, http://www.loc.gov/loc/brain/proclaim.html, (accessed February 23, 2012). 158

 

See for example Ortega and Vidal, Neurocultures, p. 8.

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“the word ‘neuroscience’ to designate a scientific field of inquiry emerged in the early 1960s.”159 The earliest article to use the word in its title, she points out further, was publishes in 1967. Two years later, in 1969, to mark the recognition of neuroscience as new field of investigation and to encourage a focused research of the nervous system, Ralph Waldo Gerard founded the Society for Neuroscience. The next decades160 witnessed the discovery, development and dissemination of neuroimaging technology: computed axial tomography (CAT), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Together with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),161 these technologies gradually allowed the visualization and partial understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system. They brought about an innovative way to look at the brain, and, together, provided a non-invasive way towards structural, functional, and metabolic information about the brain. In other words, these developments revolutionized the way we look at and the way we understand the brain. In January 1974, Time Magazine dedicated its cover story to the brain. Entitled “Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind,” the feature proclaimed the brain as “the most important of the body’s organs.”162 The article presents sensational aspects of brain research. For example, it describes observations about electrode stimulation in the brain of epilepsy patients, which led to vivid recollections of experiences long thought forgotten. While voicing public fears associated with brain research (such as the possibility of mind control), the article is, for the most part, celebratory. It further describes the process of biofeedback; mentions the role of protein synthesis in learning,                                                                                                                 159

Jacalyn Duffin, History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction, (Toronto University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 60. 160

The 1970s were years of extreme importance in the development of imaging technology. The first CT (computer tomography) scan of the head was demonstrated in London by Electric & Musical Industries — the manufacturer of the CT scanner, in 1971. A year later Niels Lassen, a Danish medical doctor, uses SPECT Scans (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) to map brain functions by tracking blood flow. In 1973, Paul Lauterbur set the basis for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) in the Nature paper: Paul C. Lauterbur, "Image Formation by Induced Local Interactions – Examples Employing Nuclear Magnetic-Resonance," Nature 242 (1973). 161

It only started being used in the 1990s.

162

"Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind," Time Magazine 103, 2 (January 14, 1974), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908395,00.html (accessed February 23, 2012).

 

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explains neurological illnesses, talks about memory as ‘delocalized’ and presents the three-level theory of memory (long-, medium-, and short-term). The Time’s article is only one in myriad popularizing texts published in the 1970s and since. It is an early example showing how neuroscientific ideas started sliding into popular culture already in the early 1970s. From this point onwards up to 2009, when Frazzetto and Anker defined neuroculture, the presence of neuroscientific ideas and imagery in the public domain grew more and more rapidly, populating not only magazines, but also literature, film, theater, music, and visual arts. In “Neuroculture,”163 Frazzetto and Anker have traced the earliest neurocultural products to a series of movies and books from the 1980s, such as Brainstorm (1983) and The Man with Two Brains (1983) — two B-grade science-fiction movies, and Neuromancer (1984) — William Gibson’s novel — all of which address dystopian aspects of futuristic brain sciences. In art, the article only looks back as far 1991, mentioning Helen Chadwick’s Self-Portrait, as an early artistic neurocultural object. A few artists however, as it will become apparent in what follows, have approached the brain and the nervous system since the early 1960s.

* * * * *

Although neuro art truly emerged as a new artistic tendency in the 1990s, the roots of neuro art can be found in art already three decades earlier. Some of these artworks are fully-fledged neuro artworks, directly inspired by the neuroscientific tools and concepts. Other art projects, however, are not neuro artworks per se, but are addressed in this chapter for the reason that they anticipate neuro art, and are valuable examples in clarifying the historical origins and conceptual context which allowed neuro art to emerge. It is perhaps fitting to begin the history of neuro art by looking at a renowned                                                                                                                 163

 

Frazzetto and Anker, "Neuroculture."

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brain project form the 1960s, which has an interesting in-between status at the intersection of art, science, medicine, and education. The Upjohn Brain (1960) (Fig. 1) by information designer Will Burtin is one in a series of three seminal installation projects that Burtin created as a freelance collaborator with the pharmaceutical company Upjohn. Following The Cell (1958) and preceding The Chromosome (1966), The Brain installation had been conceived, as author himself declares as a “time and space demonstration of principles on which consciousness is based.”164 The project was directly inspired by the contemporary scientific knowledge about the brain, and had as an ultimate aim to make scientific knowledge about the brain accessible to wider audience. In the 1950s and 70s, as Roger Remington165 points out, information on how the brain works “was available only in specialized publications that made difficult reading, even for the physician.”166 Burtin struggled through neurological knowledge of the time. He quotes papers by renowned neurologists and neurophysiologists like Wilder Penfield, Herbert Jasper and Horace Winchell Magoun as grounding his work. Out of these readings, one of the aspects Burtin extracted was the importance of temporality in the process of consciousness. The element of time, Burtin observes “was stressed in the papers by Penfield, Jasper and Magoun over and over again.”167 As a consequence of his reading, and out of the desire to efficiently represent contemporary knowledge about the brain, Burtin decided against an approach in which the installation would present visual similarities with the brain, and opted instead to give priority to illustrating the functionality of the brain. This choice, Burtin justifies,                                                                                                                 164

Cited in: R. Roger Remington and Robert Fripp, Design and Science: The Life and Work of Will Burtin (Burlington, Vermont: Lund Humphries, 2007), also available online: Robert Fripp, "Personal Webpage," http://robertfripp.ca (accessed March 19, 2012). 165

Roger Remington is an important Burtin scholar. Together with Barbara Hodik, Remington dedicated a chapter on Burtin in their book: R. Roger Remington and Barbara J. Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), pp. 104-118. Remington has also published an article about The Brain: R. Roger Remington, "Will Burtin’s Brain Exhibit for Upjohn," Information Design Journal + Document Design 13, 3 (2005), and wrote together with Robert Fripp Burtin’s monograph: Remington and Fripp, Design and Science. 166

Cited in: Remington and Fripp, Design and Science, available online: Robert Fripp, "Personal Webpage," http://robertfripp.ca/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ArticleDisplay&ArticleID=510 (accessed March 19, 2012). 167

 

Ibid.

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was determined by the difficulty in exemplifying the function of the brain while keeping anatomical resemblance with the actual brain. He writes: “[i]n studying the anatomy of the brain some years back, while working on a lead article of 'Scope' with Dr. Macleod, I found that the concern over anatomical details prevented or made very difficult an understanding of operational principles on which consciousness – the essential product of the brain – is based.”168 In essence, the role of The Brain was to educate a wider audience about the marvels of the neural system as understood in the late 1950s. The press of the time described the installation in the following terms: “By employing most advances visual techniques, this educational device correlates relevant scientific data on the brain’s function that has emerged largely in the past decade. A system of moving lights and flashing images shows: how the brain receives information, how it correlates this information, how it evaluates it; and how it responds to the information.”169 Having a strong didactical perspective, the project is, however, remarkable in aesthetic and conceptual terms. A sculpture and a multimedia show in one, which, as Remington points out, preceded the grand multimedia events of the decades to come, The Brain installation must have been a great visual and audio spectacle at the time. It incorporates video projections on screens and provides audio streaming via earphones aiming to illustrate the mechanisms of vision and hearing as they would have been created in a brain experiencing ‘a moment at the opera.’ Remington describes this technological installation in the following way: “Inputs were received through the eyes, symbolized by two saucer-like structures, and the ears, (placed) to the outside and below. These inputs then transferred through elaborate circuitry to various centers of the Brain such as the midbrain (dome-like structure at the bottom), the visual cortices (top, left and right), and memory cortices (pair of large discs on left and right). The experience of seeing and hearing was registered on the 'consciousness screen' at the center. Although this screen is imaginary, it symbolizes the brain's most striking characteristic. Only in the human being does such a 'screen' project past experiences as well as estimates of future experiences. Thus humans are able to form thoughts and judgments. The use of this central consciousness screen was necessary to assure a logical and clear relationship between the mechanical

                                                                                                                168

Ibid.

169

Will Burtin, "The Brain," Industrial Design (August 1964)., Cited in: Remington and Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design, p. 114.

 

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process and the representational nature of thinking.”170

In fact, as Burtin himself points out, the question of thinking and the problem of representing this mechanism in a visual way were of great concern in the creation of this project. In retrospect, he writes, “the most profound experience of working The Brain, was the idea that the problem of how we think about thinking had become a design problem as well. In tracing the logic by which awareness of reality and dream is established, I felt often as if I were looking into the reasoning of creation itself.”171 Taking all these elements into consideration, I will argue that The Brain can be considered — way ahead of time — the first project of neuro art, and one of great complexity. It brings together art, science, and technology in creating an educational yet artistically relevant installation-object. At the same time, the project creatively illustrates the degree to which the brain was understood and gives an idea about the means used to popularize this knowledge.172 Lastly, The Brain, provids also a reference point against which the development of neuroscience and neuro art in the next decades become evident.

Art, Brain, and Computers At the same time neuroscience was acquiring its status as an independent discipline, and artists were first starting to develop an interest for matters of the brain, the art world was manifesting, as Ingeborg Reichle observes, “a widespread impulse to turn away from traditional art genres, to try out new media material and create a new repertoire of forms of expression.”173 In the 1960s and the 1970s the computers were                                                                                                                 170

Cited in: Remington and Fripp, Design and Science, p. 89, also available online: http://robertfripp.ca (accessed March 21, 2012) 171

Ibid.

172

In this regard it is perhaps important to observe that after traveling around the United States: from Miami — where it was presented for the first time at the at the American Medical Association’s annual meeting on June 13, 1960 — to Chicago and New York, a second version of The Brain was created for the European public. The Brain represented The United States a the American Pavilion in Turin, Italy in 1961, it traveled to Germany, the Netherlands, England, France, and Belgium. 173

Ingeborg Reichle, Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art, (New York: Springer, 2009), p. 1.

 

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infiltrating into society, and artists were eager to explore their potential as an artistic medium. In this context, it should come as no surprise that some of the first artistic engagement with the brain beyond anatomical representations174 emerged in conjunction with the computer-brain metaphor.175 In 1968, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Jasia Reichardt curated an acclaimed exhibition whose declared aim was to explore the relationship between technology and creativity. Titled Cybernetic Serendipity, the show was, as the curator declares, “the first exhibition to attempt to demonstrate all aspects of computer-aided creativity: art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture, animation.”176 Cybernetic Serendipity anticipated and, in all likelihood, functioned as a catalyst for artistic exploration dealing with the concept of machine-creativity and with the idea that the computer can simulate properties of the brain. Most objects in the exhibition                                                                                                                 174

Certain artistic representations of the brain in art history, which go beyond scientific illustrations and can be addressed as artworks, are nevertheless connected to anatomy. Such are for example several anatomical oil painting by Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty, or Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deijman (1656) are addressed in the history of art, but cannot be considered as anticipating neuro art. 175

In the 1940s, Norbert Wiener in his book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (New York: Wiley, 1948), defined the brain as a logical machine. Later, The Computer and the Brain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), written by the mathematician John von Neumann and published posthumous in 1958, was the first comparison, in a systematic fashion, between the brain and the computer. The second part of the book, dedicated to the brain is an explication of the neural system in computer terms. In the later years, the metaphor lost its appeal and was deemed as inadequate and misleading. Already in the aforementioned 1974 Times article, the authors expose the inadequacy of the parallelism. “While a sophisticated electronic computer,” the article reads, “can store and recall some 100 billion "bits" of information, for example, the capacity of the brain seems infinite. The computer can make out a payroll, compute the trajectory of a spacecraft or figure the odds against drawing a straight flush far faster than any human. But the computer is, after all, a machine, capable of doing only what its human builders tell it to do. […]Furthermore, the brain, unlike the computer, can repair itself: one area can learn to perform the functions of another in some cases of brain damage. And, unlike the computer, which can be turned off at the flip of a switch, the brain remains continuously active, whether waking or sleeping. It can, like an infinitely repeated image in a hall of mirrors, think about itself as it thinks about itself thinking about itself.” ("Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind." Time Magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908395,00.html, accessed February 23, 2012). In the later years, as Richard L. Gregory also pointed out, the parallel between brain and computer has been reversed. “For millennia”, Gregory writes, “it was current technologies that suggested how minds might work – strings, hydraulics, telephone exchanges – but now we see an opposite trend, feeding back into technology. For now we look to concepts of mind for designing intelligent machines.” (Richard L. Gregory, "The Art and Science of What Goes in Our Heads " in Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 4). 176

Jasia Reichardt, "Cybernetic Serendipity," press release for the exhibit curated by Jasia Reichardt at the ICA London August 2 to October 20, 1968, available online at: www.medienkunstnetz.de/exhibitions/serendipity/ (accessed February 25, 2012).

 

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illustrated the way artists and engineers engage with computer technology. Having on display computer generated graphics, drawing and music machines, robots, and computer animated-films, the exhibition proposed an exploratory journey into the world of early computer technology. Dealing with, as the catalogue states, “possibilities rather than achievements,”177 the exhibition concept not only tolerated but deliberately emphasized ambiguity with regard to the authorship and status of the objects displayed. As Reichardt states in the Introduction, “[…] no visitor to the exhibition, unless he reads all the notes relating to all the works, will know whether he is looking at something made by an artist, engineer, mathematician, or architect.”178 This curatorial choice reflects the contemporary desire of dissolving the boundaries between the traditional art and the new media. Two of the early project to explore conceptually the relationship between the brain and the computer were exhibits in the Cybernetic Serendipity show. Both of them, The Honeywell-Emett ‘Forget-me-not’ (pachyderm computer) (1965) (Fig. 2) by Rowland Emett and Cybernetic Introspective Pattern-Classifier (CIPC) by Christopher Evans tackle in a scientific and metaphoric way the workings of the brain. The Honeywell Forget-me-not by British cartoonist and inventor Rowland Emett is a whimsical surrealist-like construction in the spirit of Juan Miro, which plays with the mechanics of memory. It was commissioned in 1965 by Honeywell Inc. Corporation for the promotion of their newly released commercial computer Honeywell 200, and as part of this promotion had originally toured the department stores in the UK. The Honeywell Forget-me-not had as a starting point the computer and is intended as an exuberant interpretation of its functions. Within this construction Emett establishes, at several levels, curious parallels between the brain and the computer. The exhibition catalogue presents the author intriguing description of the installation: “Among its many worthwhile features are a mass memory, where a number of miniature

                                                                                                                177

Jasia Reichardt, ed. Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts (London Studio International Special Issue,1968), p. 5. 178

 

Ibid., p. 5.

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minds can think instantly in a clockwise direction (influenced by even tinier circuits which only oscillate); a closed-circuit of activated Heavy Water boosts the Main Brain via fluid technology, while wrong numbers and unworthy thoughts are washed away into the Brain Drain. A single Billicycle (instead of a tiresome one billion cycles) ferries Messages from side to side.”179

The Honeywell Forget-me-not is a playful and amusing elephant-like construction designed as Emett himself states, “in strict accordance with Livingston's Laws, ‘Memory may hold the door but elephants never forget.’”180 Every detail of the installation — in the form little gadgets — can be read as comic representation of some aspect in computer or brain processing. To give one example, Emmett names the memory cycle181 a “billicycle” and defines it as the time it takes a little figure called Billy, on his little bicycle, to carry a message from one end of the computer to the other. Particularly interesting, flanking the pachyderm to the right is F.R.E.D, the Fantastically Rapid Evaluator and Dispenser, who, “wearing a tartan tie (Honeywell Computers are made in Scotland) and leaning nonchalantly upon his static-discharged umbrella, scans the Programme and teases the Forget-me-not with a pre-loaded Information Bun. His digestive System is capable of dealing with magnetic tape-measures, and it will be seen that there is a built-in set of butterflies to prove intense concentration and the fact that he is almost human.”182

With the risk of falling into the trap of over-interpretation, it seems surprising that what makes F.R.E.D. ‘almost human,’ are the butterflies in the stomach — that state of nervousness provoked by what has been named the ‘second brain’ or ‘the brain in the gut’ — namely the enteric nervous system. A unique neural system embedded in the digestive system, the enteric division of the autonomic nervous system consists of two networks which control many of the physiological processes involved in the transport and digestion of food and, when under stress, induce the ‘butterflies.’183                                                                                                                 179 180 181

Ibid., p. 46. Ibid.

The memory cycle is defied as a “the complete sequence of events for a unit of memory to go from a quiescent state through a read and/or write phase and back to a quiescent state” ("memory cycle," In John Daintith and Edmund Wright, A Dictionary of Computing (Oxford Refernce Online: Oxford University Press, 2008), http://www.oxfordreference.com (accessed January 15, 2012). 182

Reichardt, ed. Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts, p. 46.

183

Mark F. Bear, Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso, Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain (Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007), p. 173.

 

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The existence of the ‘abdominal brain’ as named by its discoverer Byron Robinson — has been scientifically acknowledged since 1907.184 The probability, however, that Emett was aware of the function of the enteric nervous system in triggering the butterflies in the stomach, and had this in mind when he created F.R.E.D is rather farfetched. If that would be the case, however, if this association would be more than just speculations — we would have in Emett’s work one of the very first neuro-art projects. Nonetheless, this “hilarious sendup of electronic-brain” — as Time Magazine185 has defined the work, which has a metaphoric enteric division and memory capabilities — is without doubt a predecessor of neuro art. Emett’s Peripheral Pachyderm Computer rises, in an amusing way, issues about the computer-brain association and brings along a large number of metaphorical references to the human brain itself. Dr. Christopher Evans, of National Physics Laboratory London, displayed in the exhibition the Cybernetic Introspective Pattern-Classifier (CIPC), a scientific instrument used in the study of after-image formation. In the catalogue entry, Evans addresses the capacity of the brain to sustain a constant and continuous visual image of the world in spite of the unbelievably large array of visual stimuli and constant eye movements. The machine itself has the purpose to disrupt visual perception and at the same time to make us aware of the remarkable process of vision we are endowed with. About this work the catalogue description writes: “People looking into the CIPC will be given a brief, bright flash of a pattern which plants an image on the retina in such a way that it can be seen, with eyes closed, for one or two minutes. Since the image is fixed on the retina, eye-movements are irrelevant, and the perceptual system collapses as described above. The pattern can be seen to fragment and change its form, and these forms are probably the basic perceptual units used by the brain in recognizing the pattern. This exhibit therefore allows people to watch their own cerebral processes actually in action.”186

The device, as Evans argues, is not the exhibit itself: “it is by means of this device that the human brain can be turned into its own exhibit.”187 The emphasis on introspection:                                                                                                                 184

Byron Robinson, The Abdominal and Pelvic Brain (Hammond: F. S. Betz, 1907).

185

"The Gothic-Kinetic Merlin of Wild Goose Cottage," Time Magazine 108, 18 (November 1, 1976), p. 68. 186 187

 

Reichardt, ed. Cybernetic Serendipity, p. 51. Ibid.

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the brain looking at itself, and the vivid interest on the visual possibilities of our neural system, will become recurrent themes in neuro-art. Cybernetic Introspective PatternClassifier — a tool of scientific investigation displayed alongside art installations, drawing machines, and computer projects has the great merit of having brought attention to the brain and to neural mechanisms more than 20 years before the ‘decade of the brain.’

Conceptual Art, Technology, and the Roots of Neuro Art

In his early career, at the beginning of the 1960s, the American conceptual artist Robert Morris — who had a fundamental artistic and theoretic contribution to minimalism, process art, and land art — created a number of works pertaining to the brain. Some of these works were small minimalist brain sculptures titled Wax Brain (1963), Brain (1963-64) (Fig. 3), Silver Brain (1964), and consisted of a brain-form covered in banknotes, gold paint, or silver paint. By using such materials, Morris’s Brain series made a symbolic reference to the value of the brain, which is perhaps also suggestive of a problem which so many artists addressed in the 1960s and since, namely the commodification of (artistic) ideas. At about the same time Morris was creating his first brain sculptures, an instrument used in brain research, namely the Electroencephalograph,188 had also started sparking artistic interest. For a different work, Morris engaged with the brain in a more profound way by creating an EEG self-portrait. Frequently defined as ‘an ironic’ portrait, Morris’ Self-Portrait EEG (1963) (Fig. 4) consists of the artist’s EEG graph

                                                                                                                188

The electroencephalogram, or EEG, is the measurement of electric activity of the cerebral cortex, measured at the level of the scalp. It gives generalized observations about the electric activity of large populations of neurons over time. The first human EEG recording was described in the 1920s by the German psychiatrist Hans Berg, but the EEG roots lie in the work of Richard Caton who, in 1875, using primitive devices sensitive to voltage recorded electrical brain activity in dogs and rabbits. In contemporary medicine and science, the EEG is used in diagnosis of certain neurological deficiencies (epilepsy for example) and in research, particularly for the study of sleep. See for example: “Brain Rhythms and Sleep,” in Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, pp. 586-616.

 

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recorded from his brain activity while he was reflecting on himself.189 The artist’s brainwaves were recorded for the length of time necessary for the electroencephalograph to inscribe on paper lines equal to the artist’s height. Recalling Duchamp’s mischievous conceptual strategies and his interests in scientific measurements, the Self-Portrait represents a new way of depicting the self. Creating the portrait through a machine, a ready-made of sorts, which does not require the artistic intervention, at least not in a traditional sense, Morris achieves a truly conceptual portrait. In a paradoxical way, however, the self as the subject of a conceptual artwork — an immaterial idea generated by the artist’s mind — is rematerialized through the EEG graph, which supposedly records directly the concept of self-portrait while it is being generated by the artist’s brain. This conceptual art work is not yet an illustration of Fernando Vidal brainhood idea.190 If in later works of neuro art, as will become evident later in Chapter IV,191 brain recordings of various kinds are symbolically equivalent to the self, and suggest that we are in fact our brain, Morris’s artwork is a different kind of self-portrait. This work is a portrait because it was conceived as such. In the spirit of conceptual art, the EEG recording is the symbolic representation of the very though, of the idea of ‘self-portrait’. In the next decade, another artist to use electroencephalography and related technology in her work is media artist Nina Sobell. Two of her works in the 1970: Interactive Brain Wave Drawings (since 1974) (Fig. 5) and Video Telemetry Environment (1975) (Fig. 6) make use of video art, computer technology, and EEG to investigate how thoughts and feelings can be communicated through the new artistic medium. Nina Sobell, who defines her work as a combination of conceptual, performance, and installation art,192 initiated these projects aiming to use video to expres the unspoken communication between two minds. Arguing against the idea that technology stays in                                                                                                                 189

Leo Castelli Gallery, "Robert Morris: Deflationary Objects, 1962-1976,” Press Release, http://www.castelligallery.com/press_releases/deflationarypr.html (accessed August 8, 2011). 190 191

Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity." See Neuro Art Portraiture, p. 163.

192

Nina Sobel, "Artist Statement," available online at: http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/statement.html (accessed January 15, 2012).

 

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the way of communication, Nina Sobell searches for ways to use technology as a medium that enables people to express themselves more easily through technology than without it.193 The Brain Wave Drawings project came into existence in the early 1970s and has been developing now for about forty years. It started from the observation that while video is an electric medium, so is the brain, in the sense that it emits measurable electrical frequencies.194 At first in her own studio, and letter in the laboratory of Dr. Barry Sturman at the Sepulveda Veterans Neuropsychology Laboratory, the artist collected and processed brain wave data taken from two participants at the a time. The output of the participant’s brain wave recordings was connected into an oscilloscope, one on the Y-axis and the other on the X-axis. In visual terms, the result of the recording was a Lissajous pattern, which combined the brain wave emission of both participants. A development of the same project, Video Telemetry Environment (1975), displayed for the first time in Houston, Texas, at the Contemporary Arts Museum, replicates in a different setting and in a more elaborate way a similar excursion into the neural world. This time, in a museum setting, the installation is constructed as a livingroom environment around a television set in which visitors are invited to participate. Outside the “private” setting of the living-room like environment, separated by a wall, five television monitors displays publicly EEG recordings and videos from the previous participants, which show the brain drawings superimposed on the visitor’s faces. Nina Sobell’s Brain Wave Drawings series, just like Morris’s Self-Portrait, addresses aspects that artists would consider once again two decades later. In many ways, Sobell’s projects are fundamental in the history of neuro art. The outcome of a genuine interest in perception, memory, and questions about how the mind works, Sobell’s work grew out of a fruitful mélange between conceptual art and its interaction with technology. As in conceptual art, the ideas are primordial, but equally important is the                                                                                                                 193

See artist’s discussion on "Brain Wave Drawings LA (1974)," available online at: http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/3/frame.html (accessed January 15, 2012). 194

Emily Hartzell, "Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell: Collaborators in Art with Technology," in Women, Art, and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998).

 

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way they are expressed and communicated. The medium itself is being problematized; it becomes integral part in the conception of the work. Nina Sobell questions the consequences of technological development and its potential in altering human interaction. Remarking, for example, that human behavior is affected by the very presence of technology, and observing its possible alienating effects, Nina Sobell strives to apply these exact technological tools to opposite aims — to explore and encourage communication. In her case, although the medium is being addressed critically, and the technological aspects affect greatly the way viewers understand the work, it is not the medium in itself that is at stake. As Sobell voices, although using closed-circuit video and computer technologies as the primary medium, her concerned with their function does not go beyond their ability to aid her in realizing her vision.195 Another conceptual artist who can be considered a forerunner of neuro art is Dan Graham. His art however, addresses aspects which anticipate neuro art in a different way. It is his curiosity for optical phenomena, his knowledge about optical devices, and his ability to manipulate vision and perception through art, that make his projects of great relevance to the history of neuro art. One of Grahams early works, March 31, 1966 (1966) (Fig. 7) sets the stage for a dual investigation of both, vision as a neurological mechanism, and self-perception as a phenomenon of consciousness. It is a work that was conceived to be published as a text in a popular magazine and consists of eleven lines — a list of distances which, with a viewer as a reference point, range form the edge of the known universe to the lens of the glasses. With the last line “.000000098 miles to cornea from retinal wall,” the reference point becomes internal, within the spectator own eye. In this way, the work becomes self-referential. As in the case of Christopher Evans’ Cybernetic Introspective Pattern-Classifier, the artwork prompts reflection on one’s own visual system. Experiencing the artwork becomes an experience of the self. Another work, Time Delay Room 1 (1974) (Fig. 8) — a video installation — is described by the artist in the following way:                                                                                                                 195

Nina Sobel, "Artist Statement," available online at: http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/statement.html (accessed January 15, 2012).

 

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“on monitor 1 a spectator from audience A can see himself only after an 8 second delay. While he views audience B (in the other room) on monitor 2, this audience sees him live on the monitor whose image can also be seen by audience A. The same Situation is true for audience B. A spectator may choose to pass from one room and audience to the other. To walk the passage-way takes about 8 seconds. A member of audience A entering audience B's room would now see the view of audience B that he had just seen 8 seconds previous when leaving the other room: but he is now part of that audience 8 seconds later. As 8 seconds have passed, the composition of the continuum which makes up audience B, has shifted as a function of time — he has joined it while other present members have arranged their relative positions within it or left and joined the other room.”196

The eight seconds one needs to travel from one room to another in order to surprise him/her-self on the monitor, coincides, as Gregor Stemmrich pointed out, with “the outer limit of the neurophysiological short-term memory that forms an immediate part of our present perception.”197 “If you see your behavior eight seconds ago presented on a video monitor ‘from outside,’” Stemmrich explains, “you will probably therefore not recognize the distance in time but tend to identify your current perception and current behavior with the state eight seconds earlier. Since this leads to inconsistent impressions, which you then respond to, you get caught up in a feedback loop. You feel trapped in a state of observation, in which your self-observation is subject to some outside visible control. In this manner, you as the viewer experience yourself as part of a social group of observed observers (instead of, as in the traditional view of art, standing arrested in individual contemplation before an auratic object).”198

By exploring vision and by drawing attentions to the mechanisms the brain uses in the process of perception Graham’s artworks address issues which will be central to neuro art as it will later develop in the late 1990s, although not neuro artworks themselves, Graham’s project anticipate conceptually neuro art and illustrates the roots of this artistic movement.

                                                                                                                196

Marianne Brouwer and Dan Graham, Dan Graham: Works 1965 - 2000 (Düsseldorf: Richter, 2001), p. 149. 197

Gregor Stemmrich, "Dan Graham," in Ctrl[Space]. Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, ed. Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel (Karlsruhe: ZKM Center for Art and Media; Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2002), p. 68. 198

 

Ibid., p. 70.

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* * * * *

Observing the first artistic experiments with neuroscience and evaluating the conceptual context in which they emerge, it can be concluded that neuro art finds means to reconcile the differences between conceptual art, art-and-technology, and artand-science and successfully merges some of their prime features. If the connection on neuro art with technology and science is obvious and indisputable, the idea that neuro art has roots in conceptual art is not evident. As Edward A. Shanken observes, “arthistorical literature traditionally has drawn rigid categorical distinctions between conceptual art and art-and-technology,” regardless of the fact that conceptual art emerged during a time of intense experimentation with technology.199 One of the prime values of conceptual art, which conflict with those of art-andtechnology, regards the materiality of the object. While art-and-technology relies on new instruments and new materials, conceptual art presupposes a ‘dematerialization’ of the art object. Lucy Lippard was the American writer to famously stipulate conceptual art as dematerialized.200 According to Lippard conceptual art presupposes a “work in which idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized’.”201 However, the dematerialization of conceptual art does not necessarily require the artist’s refusal to engage with technology. In fact, as Shanken skillfully demonstrates, many conceptual artists found in technology and in new media means to reach the desired ‘dematerialization.’202 From this perspective, technology becomes a tool which conceptual artists can use to question the materiality of the art object — understood in its conventional sense. A different way to close the gap between conceptual art and technology is to observe that, in some instances, although the concept for an artwork is primordial, the                                                                                                                 199

Edward A. Shanken, "Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art," Leonardo 35, 4 (2002), p. 433. 200

Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkeley University of California Press, 1973). 201 202

 

Ibid., p. vii. Shanken, "Art in the Information Age," p. 438.

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use of a particular media and the choice of a certain technological instrument are important inasmuch as they provides the best way to make the idea visible. In essence, both Dan Graham and Nina Sobell, explore the ways in which the medium can grab the participant into a cognitive feedback loop, influencing their cognitive processes, self-perception, and behavior. Both artists recognize the medium’s power to bring the spectator into direct and instant involvement with the artwork. The use of technology is here an integral part of the conceptual process. As Marianne Brouwer had stated in regard to Graham’s work: “The work would not exist without the concept, but neither would it exist if it were not executed.”203 Although it has lost the conceptual art’s political and programmatic aspects and gain more interest in aesthetic matters, distinctive aspects of conceptual art — the primordially of the concept, the emphasis on performative and processual approaches, and the demand for “an informed and critically active audience […] expected to work in order to fully engage with the objects, texts, installations, etc., […]”204 — are recurrent in neuro art. Neuro art has a profound connection with conceptual art. Not only were conceptual artists the first to explicitly approach matters of the brain in their art, but also many contemporary artists working in neuro art have been creating artworks in the spirit of conceptual art. For example, Markus Sixay’s artistic strategy for his work Conclusions that logic can not reach (2005) (Fig. 9), which consists of a brain-object in a transparent jar, clearly evokes conceptual art principles and recalls Duchamp’s readymades. In fact, the title of this artwork is a direct quotation of Sol Lewitt’s first sentence on conceptual art, which reads: “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”205 Sixay’s work is one example to shows that conceptual art is not only a forerunner of neuro art, but also that conceptual strategies are still visible in contemporary neuro artworks.                                                                                                                 203 204

Brouwer and Graham, Dan Graham, p. 15. Michael Newman and Jon Bird, eds., Rewriting Conceptual Art (London: Reaktion Books,1999), p. 6.

205

Sol Lewitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” were first published in 0-9, 5 (January 1969), reprinted in Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

 

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Neuro Art in the 1980s The 1980s have been rather uneventful for neuro art, with perhaps two notable exceptions: the artistic work and theoretical writing of Todd Siler, and the artwork of conceptual artist Andrew Krasnow. In 1985, the Leonardo journal of arts, science, and technology, published Todd Siler’s article “Neurocosmology: Ideas and Images towards an Art-Science-Technology Synthesis.” Todd Siler’s neurocosmology is based on the idea the brain is a product of the universe, and art is a product of the brain. Starting from the premise that the brain should be reflecting the structure of the universe, Siler believes that art should further reflect the structure of the brain. Neurocosmology is explained, the article states, by combining neuroscience, cosmology and art “to study the nature and the connectedness of the brain and the universe it explores and creates.”206 Drawing parallels between the brain and the universe, between neural pathways and star radiation, Siler aims to understand the evolution of the brain in the context of the birth and growth of the universe, by exploring both the ‘universe of the brain’ and ‘the brain of the universe’. Conceptually interesting, Siler’s further association of the brain with nearly everything (as for example nuclear reactors), seems rather arbitrary. In his art project Cerebreactors (1980) (Fig. 10, 11) — the first example of artworks to illustrate the goals of neurocosmology — neurophysiology and nuclear physics are conjoined such that “the central nervous system is depicted as an organic reactor, with the spinal cord as a conduit and the brain as a reactor chamber, where particles (in a manner akin to nerve cell interaction) produce energy fields that shape the pattern and substance of thought.”207 Defining neural activity in terms of ‘cerebral fusion-fission’, these works, Siler claims, imply that “nuclear events are analogous to neural events on some relativistic scale.”208 Siler’s works reflect a free-association style thinking. “In describing the ‘ways’ of                                                                                                                 206

Todd Siler, "Neurocosmology – Ideas and Images Towards an Art-Science – Technology Synthesis," Leonardo 18, 1 (1985), p. 1. 207 208

 

Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 5

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the brain,” Siler declares, “whatever metaphor I use my vision and feelings are moved by pairs of interlocking complementary ideas: things either diverge, or converge, split or merge.”209 While drawing metaphoric parallels between the brain and many other mechanisms and applying the jargon of the particular scientific field to describe cognitive processes, his work does not survive well conceptually in the absence of theory and thus might come across as obscure. Consequently, the images in the article (see Fig. 10) are accompanied by large descriptive captions aimed at elucidating the otherwise cryptic metaphors. “Every line, color and form,” Siler explains one of the images in the Cerebreactor series, “corresponds to some aspect of design and function of the human brain and reactor technology. The process of generating ‘intuitions’ in the Cerebreactor involves the ‘heating’ of the Limbic system (via cerebral cortex and brain stem) in whose center (thalamus) there are several points into which sensory information, like nuclear and atomic fuel, is added and acted upon, i.e. received and processed.” 210

Although published in Leonardo, a magazine extensively read by the art-science community, and later reiterated in books and exhibition catalogues, Siler’s neurocosmology theory did not have a direct impact in artistic manifestations of neuro art. However, Siler’s great interest in neuroscience, his focus on the brain and on mental processes, the scientific and pseudo-scientific frameworks he situates his work in, make him a unique figure in the history of neuro art. His later works, from the last two decades, will make the object of further discussion in a later chapter. Another neuro art project of the 1980s is Andrew Krasnow’s Core Text of the Mind (1988) (Fig. 12). An interactive installation, the work consists of five human brains floating in colored solution and formaldehyde within the transparent crest of five containers. The containers are about as tall as a human being and are made of cooper, steel, and glass. The brains within the crests are set into motion by the viewer’s breath. When the gallery visitors exhale in specially designed holes, the air causes the brains to float up in the crest and to emerge from the surrounding liquid. Rooted in the a politicized conceptual perspective, the work, one reads on the artist’s website, “examines the commodification of the brain and the ethics surrounding the use of                                                                                                                 209 210

 

Ibid., p. 5 Ibid., p. 4 caption to Fig. 3 – Cerebreactor (Fig. 10 in this thesis).

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human tissue.”211 The title, Core Text of the Mind, is an ingenious word play associating the idea of the ‘core text’ to the cortex. On the one hand, the work brings the brain to the fore, as the organ to generate the mind — that essential and immaterial feature of the human spirit. On the other hand, the breath-activated feature of the work alludes to the lifeless status of the brain in a specimen-like condition. In this way, Core Text of the Mind addresses both the material and immaterial aspects of the brain, presenting the brain both as a generator of thoughts and as an inert anatomic specimen. Although the 1980s were not particularly fruitful in the creation of art projects about the brain and the nervous system, the decade in itself is of interest to the history of neuro art. It was the time when the overall interest in science and technology started to pervade the world of art. A renew interest in identity and the body, Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin assess, coupled with a curiosity about what science has to say about it, facilitated in the 1980s an increasing artistic engagement with the biological sciences.212 In the same decade the growing number of exhibition about art and science determined Frank Popper to declare the emergence of ‘technoscience art.’213 Furthermore, the first artists to find their way in scientific labs did so also in the 1980s. Of particular interest for these artists were research fields like biology, genetic engineering, and tissue culture. Working with petty dishes, florescent proteins, and various types of cells, artists venture to discover new means of artistic expression.214 Therefore, it can be claimed that the cultural environment of the 1980s which gave birth to genetic art215 — an environment in which science and technologies are not only fundamental to society but are also increasingly popularized and available to a large audience — set favorable grounds for neuro art to emerged.

                                                                                                                211 212 213 214

Andrew Krasnow, Artist Webpage, http://www.krasnow.net/ (accessed May 1, 2012). Anker and Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze. Frank Popper, "Technoscience Art – the Next Step," Leonardo 20, 4 (1987). Reichle, Art in the Age of Technoscience, p. 1 and p. 4.

215

About the emergence of genetic art see for example: Anker and Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze; and Reichle, Art in the Age of Technoscience.

 

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* * * * *

The artistic examples presented here generally point out that neuro art has roots in the 1960s and the 1970s owing much to both conceptual art and the experimentation of art with technology. Conceptual artists as well as artists interested in new technological developments — sometimes in the same individual — were the first to be receptive to brain-related metaphors and scientific tools of neural investigation. Exploring vision, re-imagining ways of representing the self in the light of neurotechnology, and engaging the viewer in reflecting upon neurological processes that allow for the perception of the self, are all core elements of neuro art that have been address from a very early stage in the history of this artistic tendency. The electroencephalogram was the first tool from brain sciences to be used by artists. The usage of EEG in the 1970s was a small step, preceding the technological boom that would shake the art of the following decades. From the 1970s onwards, contemporary artists would employ a much larger array of devices: from microscopes and brain wave recording machines, to PET and fMRI scans. The first signs of artistic interest in neuroscience coincided roughly with the emergence of neuroscience as a discipline and with the foundation of the Society for Neuroscience. Although there are no direct consequential retaliations between the establishment of the Society, and artistic engagement with neuroscience, it can be assumed that the rapid transformations in neuroscience, neuroscientific discoveries, and their public dissemination must have inspired artistic creativity. It is likely that the overall interest artists manifested in the sciences open the artist’s curiosity for neuroscience as well. Neuro art developed along other artistic tendencies inspired by scientific research like genetic art, kinetic and robotic art, ecologic art, or art informed by the physical sciences.216 The artworks discussed here are only the first manifestations of artistic interest with the brain. Neuro art fully emerged only in the late 1990s. In this context, the                                                                                                                 216

For a survey and discussion of the main trends in art and science see: Wilson, Information Arts, and Wilson, Art + Science Now.

 

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emergence of neuroscience, the spreading of computer technology, the development of conceptual art, and the art’s involvement with technology were all favorable factors in the materialization of neuro art. Therefore, when the 1990s were declared the decade of the brain, and neuroscientific knowledge and brain imagery truly invaded popular culture, the cultural setting was opportune for neuro art to emerge.

 

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Chapter II: Neuro Art – The First Major Exhibitions The editorial article which inspired this chapter was published by Frank Popper in Leonardo in 1987 and carried the title “Technoscience Art: The Next Step.”217 In this text Popper proposed ‘technoscience art’ as a term to define the new artistic tendency he suspected was emerging at the intersection of art, science, and technology. The article is, in essence, a short review of the art and science exhibition of the late 1970s and 1980s — exhibitions which prompted Popper to define ‘technoscience art.’ Electra (1983) and Les Immateriaux (1985) in Paris, Kunst und Technologie (1984) in Bonn, Ars Electronica, which has been mounted five times in Linz since 1979, and the Art and Science themed Venice Biennale of 1986 were among the exhibitions he discussed. The aim of the article was to underline the importance of the new art-and-science trend and to find appropriate terminology to define it. My strategy here, in proposing neuro art is very similar and comes from the desire to find a more precise definition to a tendency that has been developing for the past few decades, within the field of scienceand-art. Over the past ten years in particular, neuro art exhibitions have been a recurring presence on the curatorial landscape of art, science and technology interaction. In the context of this research, neuro art exhibitions have a similar function artand-science exhibitions had in Popper’s article. Neuro art exhibitions are, at the same time, a symptom of the emerging neuro art, a forum for neuro art to present itself to the world, and, in several instances, through commissions and call for artworks — a catalyst in the evolution of neuro art. The French art historian Jean-Marc Poinsot has noted in his contribution to Thinking about Exhibitions that “contemporary art comes to us through the medium of the exhibition.”218 This is certainly the case with neuro art.                                                                                                                 217 218

 

Popper, "Technoscience Art." Jean-Marc Poinsot, “Large Exhibitions: A Sketch of Typology,” in: Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W.

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Creating a framework in which neuro artworks come together, neuro art exhibitions indicate that the neuroscience interaction with art has become a topic of increased interest not only for artists, but also for exhibition-makers. The large curatorial interest in this work also suggests that neuro art, although young as an art tendency, is already receiving considerable institutional recognition. Thematic exhibitions, Ralph Rugoff once noted, are oftentimes received with criticism.219 Such exhibitions, Rugoff points out, particularly those that are ‘about’ a certain subject or issue like genetics or war, are believed to be reductive and restrictive. In single themed exhibitions, such critics would argue, that art is merely serving the illustration of a theme, reducing thus the interpretation possibilities of a given work, and forcing the viewer to examine it through a limited thematic filter.220 This chapter, it is hoped, will be able to successfully counter this argument, at least in regard to neuro art exhibitions. Without analyzing in detail the artworks on display, the following chapter takes a look at the most important art and neuroscience exhibitions aiming to understand the role they play in the history of neuro art and to grasp overarching trends in neuro art. Although, as already mentioned,221 a chronological research of neuro art would be inefficient, the study of exhibitions about neuro art could provide a perspective of how the attitude about neuroscience and its relationship to art has been evolving for the past decade or so. Therefore, if one aims at understanding the historical evolution of neuro art, looking at the succession of neuro art exhibitions can be very informative. As collective efforts, neuro art shows reflect the general tendencies in the evolution of neuro art.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne, eds., Thinking About Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 1996), p.39. 219

Ralph Rugoff, "You Talking to Me? On Curating Group Shows That Give You a Chance to Join the Group," in What Makes a Great Exhibition?, ed. Paula Marincola (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, 2006). 220 221

 

Ibid., pp. 47-48. See p. 21.

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* * * * *

The short history of the neuro art exhibition that I am presenting here spans over about one decade and is flanked by two related events. As this project is being written, the Wellcome Trust is preparing a new exhibition curated by Marius Kwint and Lucy Shanahan titled Brains: the Mind as Matter222 to open at the Wellcome Collection in March, almost exactly 10 years after the opening of Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind, at the Science Museum in March 2002. It is fortunate, almost symbolic, that the beginning and the end of a decade of neuro art have been marked by two exhibitions dedicated to the brain, both of which have been organized by the same institution. Although historically not the first exhibition of neuro art,223 Head on: Art with the Brain in Mind was the curatorial project which inspired and initiated the current research. The great merit of the Wellcome Trust’s initiative was not only to collect and offer for display brain-related artifacts, but also to actively contribute to the development of neuro art.224 The curators, Caterina Albano, Ken Arnold and Marina Wallace, invited eight artists — Osi Aud, Andrew Carnie, Annie Cattrell, Katharine Dowson, Letizia Galli, Claude Heat, Gerhard Lang, Tim O’Riley225 — whom while working in collaboration with neuroscientist for a year, created some of the most interesting and acclaimed neuro artworks. The curators adopted a strategy of display which created an engaging dialogue between historical and contemporary objects, scientific specimens, brain models, illustrations and art projects. Head On, the catalogue underlines:                                                                                                                 222

See: Wellcome Collection, Brains: The Mind as Matter (2012), Press Release, http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/brains.aspx (accessed January 25, 2012). 223

See below the entry on the Art and Brain exhibitions, pp. 82-83.

224

According to the exhibition press information leaflet “the European Dana Alliance for the Brain suggested scientists with whom the eight artists might enter a dialogue, and provided the contacts. Those initial scientists then referred the artists to further scientists –- generally those specializing in the precise fields to which the individual artists’ work related. The dialogue then continued as the artists developed their commissions so that the final visual works are based on a real collaboration with the scientists.” ("Neurocuture.org," http://www.neuroculture.org/HeadOn.pdf (accessed February 17, 2012). 225

Other artists contributed works as well, without however being involved in the one year collaboration project. This includes works by following artists: Elizabeth Frink, Marc Quinn, Tony Bevan, John Beard, Patrick Hughes, Pat York, Christine Borland, David Hockney, and Richard Wentworth.

 

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“tries throughout to make intriguing connections between the approaches of artists and scientists. Not concerned with the potential integration of their methodologies, nor with the supposed hidden beauty of science and hidden rigor of art, the exhibition instead seeks inspiration in the overlaps and cross-overs between these different cultural approaches. Rarely presenting answers to any questions, Head On suggests instead that we might understand more by seeking than finding.”226

The insistence on the fact that “the exhibition does not present polished conclusions but represents work in progress, a starting point for further elaboration rather than a consolidation of set answers,”227 has a striking resemblance to the curatorial tactics adopted by Jasia Reichardt in regard to the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition, which too, in the late 1960s pioneered a new tendency in art.228 If the art and neuroscience interaction continues to evolve in the next decades in the same way computer technology and the arts evolved since 1968, it can be speculated that Head On will receive in the world of neuro art a similar iconic reputation Cybernetic Serendipity gained over the years in the world of art and technology. Such an approach is symptomatic of new beginnings, and displays a sense of anticipation for something exciting. The depiction of the brain as an ‘irresistible magnet for curiosity and wonder’ and neuroscience as ‘undergoing breathtaking advances’ only emphasize the optimistic outlook towards neuroscience and neuro art. At the same time, however, the curators recognize the inaccurate image the general public has developed about the brain. Reflecting on the remarkable progress in perception research, Richard Gregory remarks in the introductory text: “it is still not generally known that colors and sounds are products of brains” even after three hundred years since Isaac Newton and John Lock recognized this fact.229 Spectacular aspects about the brain, like the ability to create colors, accompanied by provocative philosophical questions pertaining to the mind, the nature of reality, and the existence of consciousness, are scattered through the small catalogue that accompanies the exhibitions. The variety of information the catalogue provides and the                                                                                                                 226

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 12.

227

The Wellcome Trust, Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind (2002), Exhibition Information, http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/headon/scr80.html (accessed January 20, 2012). 228 See Chaper I, pp. 60-61. 229

 

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 4.

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complexity of questions it addresses, complements the artistic projects but without overshadowing them. The artworks, which will be discussed in detail in further chapters, approach equally interesting issues and propose enthralling interpretations. Inspired by a large array of neuroscientific aspects, the artistic collaboration with neuroscientists literally gave shape to sculptures, drawings, paintings, and multi-media installations.230 In an explorative way, the artists addressed the growth and proliferation of brain cells, the neural activity behind the senses, weaknesses associated with mental disorders, the formation of memory, stereoscopic properties of visual experience, and, lastly, the relationship between perception and consciousness. The three sections of the exhibition, already hint to the main themes of neuro art. The Anatomy of the Brain section prefigures the expansive use of brain scanning technology and the artistic manipulation of brain and neuron imagery. Face, Form and Character presents — along with reference to physiognomic studies and to phrenology — artworks which bring a neuroscientific perspective to portraiture and the exploration of self. The reinterpretation of the portraiture genre on the basis of neuroscientific knowledge proves to be an important theme throughout neuro art. The last section of the exhibition refers to brain models and metaphors, which occupy a significant role in neuro art as well. This exhibition and the small catalogue published along with it has become a reference points when writers on art talk about ‘art with the brain in mind.’231 The fact that the Wellcome Trust has initiated, ten years later, an exhibition having the brain as the superstar, only attests the persistent freshness and relevance of the subject. If compared to Head On, the exhibition Brains: the Mind as Matter, proposes a very different perspective on the brain. While Head on focused on contemporary art and how the brain and the nervous system are perceived in art and culture,232 Brains “seeks to explore what humans have done to brains in the case of medical intervention,                                                                                                                 230

Ibid., p. 19.

231

References to the exhibition and the catalogue will be found amongst others also in the following texts Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity;" Zwijnenberg, "Brains Art, and the Humanities;" Ede, Art and Science; Richard Wingate and Marius Kwint, "Imagining the Brain Cell." 232

 

Arguably aiming to contribute to and guide this perception.

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scientific enquiry, cultural meaning and technological change.”233 The exhibition is, thus, not about understanding the brain from the perspective of what the brain can do for us, but to evaluate how we have acted upon the brain. A second significant difference from 2002 is the absence of artistic commissions. Although neuro artworks will be present in the show, they have not been specially commissioned for this occasion. This fact can be seen as a consequence of the shift in subject from art with the brain in mind, to the brain as an object. At another level, however, judging by the number of artists who will be displaying artworks, it can be suspected that the increased number of already available neuro artworks was a disincentive for commissioning new ones.

* * * * *

A few years before Head On, in Germany, first at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in 1994, and in the following year at the Deutsches Museum Bonn, the neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel and the curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist attempted a similar endeavor, but perhaps of smaller proportions and impact. Aiming to promote the dialogue between art and science, the Art & Brain exhibitions invited artists to create works about the brain. As part of this project, Peter Kogler, Douglas Gordon, Mark Dion, and Via Lewandowsky together with the poet Durs Grünbein created, by very different means, installations about the brain. The great merit of this curatorial project is perhaps, its courage to invite artistic contributions despite skepticism and fear that such commissions will unavoidably be reductive illustrations of scientific problems.234 Through the display and the seminars that accompanied the exhibition, Art and Brain initiated discussions between scientists, artists and philosophers and invited critical debates about art, brain and aesthetics — which contributed to neurocultural discourse, perhaps more than to neuro art per se.                                                                                                                 233

Wellcome Collection, Brains: The Mind as Matter (2012), Press Release, http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/brains.aspx. (accessed January 25, 2012). 234

For a discussion of the emergence of this project see: Christiane Fricke, "Art & Brain," Kunstforum October 1996 - January 1997, 135 (1996).

 

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Apart from Art and Brain, several exhibitions in the 1990s made explicit references to brain, mind and consciousness, but without a significant neuro art participation. However, through the curatorial strategies they propose and the theories they advance, the exhibitions in question still have relevance for neuro art, even if not through the artworks they display. Preceding most neuro art exhibitions, these curatorial projects paved the road for later shows and, therefore, deserve some attention. Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis (1999), curated by Warren Neidich at the Thread Waxing Space in New York, is a case in point. The exhibition was about conceptual art and aimed, like many other exhibitions in the 1990s, to cast new light on conceptualism, to (re-)write the history of conceptual art, and to indicate the historical importance of this artistic movement.235 As an exhibition who’s title implies a direct relation between art and neuroscience, Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis has, surprisingly, not a single neuro art project on display, not even conceptual artworks inspired by knowledge of the brain of the kind discussed in the previous chapter.236 This is even more unexpected, given that the curator himself is a multimedia conceptual artist whose works are inspired by neurobiological theories of perception. “Rather than being a show about the collaboration between art and science or a reductive methodology of how the brain works,” Warren Neidich writes, “the exhibition attempted to promote the idea of a becoming brain.”237 The concept of the exhibition has the premises in one of Neidich’s theories of                                                                                                                 235

See for example: Claude Gintz, L'art Conceptuel, Une Perspective (Paris: Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1989); Christian Schlatter, Art Conceptuel, Formes Conceptuelles (Paris: Galerie 19002000, 1990); Ann Goldstein and Anne Rorimer, Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965 - 1975, ed. Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995); John Roberts, Impossible Document: Photography and Conceptual Art in Britain, 1966-1976 (London: Cameraworks, 1997); David Mellor, Chemical Traces: Photography and Conceptual Art, 1968-1998, ed. Ferens Art Galery (Kingston upon Hull: Ferens Art Galery 1998); Paul Schimmel and Kristine Stiles, Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979, ed. Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles & London: Thames & Hudson, 1998); Stephen Bann and László Beke, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1850s-1980s, ed. Queens Museum of Art (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999). 236

See p. 64.

237

Werren Neidich, "Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis" http://www.warrenneidich.com/conceptual-art-as-neurobiological-praxis-1999/ (accessed January 21, 2012).

 

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aesthetics with roots in neurobiology, namely the theory of the ‘mutated observer.’ According to Neidich, science and technology essentially alter the reality of experience and implicitly transform the neural configurations of our brains. “The pattern of neural connections of the seventeenth century observer is different,” Neidich believes, “than his / her counterpart in the twentieth century. This occurs because changes in built space also mutate and alter the way neurons, the basic unit of the nervous system, are configured during critical periods of the brain’s development.”238 A mutated observer, is thus a new observer whose neural synapse and neural networks have been sculpted by culture, and therefore, differs from a past observer. Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis provides a new frame for conceptual art, from the perspective of the ‘mutated observer,’ by “attempting a rereading or expansion of the roots, causes and concerns of conceptualism while at the same time linking it to the history of artistic and technologic apparatuses and processes as they float between the investigation of perception and cognition on the one hand and artistic production on the other.”239 An engaging curatorial project, of great relevance in the landscape of neuroculture, the exhibition contributes little to the history of neuro art, and not through the proposed display, but through the theory that surrounds it, which plays a significant role in disseminating ideas and encouraging their cross-pollination. This example is important here also as a point of contrast between those art exhibitions whose curatorial interest is to apply a neuroscientific framework to artworks which have nothing to do with neuroscience. Sometimes, as is the case with Searchlight, Consciousness at the Millennium, exhibition curated at the California College of Arts and Craft, San Francisco in 1999,240 neuroscientific research is of utmost importance in the development and theoretical support of the exhibition itself, but without presenting works of neuro art. The exhibition is, however, noteworthy on the basis of the subject it                                                                                                                 238

California Museum of Photography, Warren Neidich, the Mutated Observer (2002), Exhibition Summary, http://138.23.124.165/exhibitions/neidich/default.html (accessed January 21, 2012). See also, Neidich, Blow-Up: Photography, Cinema and the Brain. 239

Werren Neidich, "Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis" http://www.warrenneidich.com/conceptual-art-as-neurobiological-praxis-1999/ (accessed January 21, 2012). 240

 

Lawrence Rinder, Searchlight: Consciousness at the Millennium (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999).

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proposes. Rooted in the observation that “art possesses a unique capacity to embody consciousness, and thereby to heighten the viewer’s awareness of his or her consciousness,” the exhibition skillfully illustrates the curators’ concept of ‘consciousness art.’ “What we are calling ‘Consciousness Art,’” Lawrence Rinder and George Lakoff declare, “not only reveals the sensation and mechanism of consciousness itself, but also allow us to experience firsthand conscious sensation. […] It emphasizes ‘mindfulness’ - an experience of profound self awareness.”241 Although the works in the exhibition have little to do with neuro art, the concept of ‘consciousness art,’ which Rinder and Lakoff are proposing and explaining, is applicable to much of neuro art itself. This, along with the questions the catalogue raises about the neurobiological basis of consciousness and about the role neuroscience has in defining such bewildering attributes of our mind, are sufficient reasons to address Searchlight, Consciousness at the Millennium within the context of this chapter. As a short summary, it can be claimed that neuro art exhibitions were not yet very popular in the 1990. The Art and Brian series seems to be the only project displaying neuro art in this decade. It is however interesting to notice that curators, just as art historian and artists before them, also found inspiration in neuroscience, which they materialized in curatorial projects.

* * * * *

The exhibitions about the brain from the last decade can be roughly grouped in three categories. The first category represents curatorial projects which, just like the aforementioned Head On and Brains, are interested in bringing together artworks and other artifacts in order to inform the public about certain aspects of neuroscience and artistic engagement with it. Such an example is Images of the Mind. Curated by Colleen M. Schmitz and                                                                                                                 241

 

Ibid., p. 26.

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Ladislav Kesner the exhibition opened in 2010 in Dresden and was later on show at the Moravian Gallery in Brno. Conceptually, the exhibition is quite similar to Head On, which is hardly surprising considering that the organizing institution, Das Deutsche Hygiene-Museum Dresden, is one of the German museums with which the Wellcome Collection has a close relation.242 The Exhibition incorporates along with artifacts from the history of science, a much larger number of historical artworks to illustrate the main themes of the exhibition. Images of the Mind the museum website explains: “will display a wide scope of exhibits: from medieval medical tractates and illuminated manuscripts via medical illustration from the 19th century to current high-tech biomedicine images and visualizations. They will be accompanied by a broad spectrum of artistic expressions of various origins that depict the working of the mind -- such as Renaissance portraits representing the ‘movement of the mind’ or examples of Chinese landscape paintings created as clear metaphors of the human mind, works of art of classic modernism and contemporary art, including installations, new media and videoart. In addition to the above ‘iconography of the mind’, the exhibition will offer exhibits working with formal structures in a more subtle way allowing a sensitive viewer a self-reflective view of the workings of his own mind at the moment when it is being confronted with the image.”243

From this description it is apparent on the one hand that most artworks in the exhibition are outside the framework of neuro art, and on the other hand that the exhibitionmakers are displaying artworks which illustrate Rinder’s concept of ‘consciousness art’. In comparison to Head On, this exhibition is more concerned with the concept of the mind, rather that with the workings of the brain. As a consequence of this, certain aspects of the exhibition — the great interest in emotions as depicted in historical portraits, or the emphasis on dreams and unconscious phenomena, are of less relevance to neuro art. The exhibition, however, also displays known works of neuro art, such as those by Andrew Carnie, Susan Aldworth, Helen Chadwick, Katharine Dowson, and Pablo Garcia Lopez merging successfully contemporary artwork with historical painting and scientific artifacts.                                                                                                                 242

Two exhibition the Wellcome Collection has had on display in its rather short history (operating since 2007) had been organized as a two-part collaboration between the two institutions. See: War & Medicine (2009) and Sleeping & Dreaming (2008) at Wellcome Collection, http://www.wellcomecollection.org/ (accessed January 25, 2012). 243

Moravian Gallery in Brno, "Images of Mind," http://www.moravska-galerie.cz/ (accessed January 27, 2012). See also: Colleen M. Schmitz and Ladislav Kesner, Images of the Mind: Bildwelten Des Geistes Aus Kunst Und Wissenschaft (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011).

 

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* * * * *

The second, and most important category of exhibitions is what I would like to call a ‘pure’ neuro art exhibition, which focuses exclusively on contemporary arts and their visual speculations about the brain. Eight such exhibitions will make the object of this analysis. In chronological order these are: Neural Notations (San Francisco/Christchurch, 2000-2001), Neuro (Pasadena, 2003), Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain (Westport, 2006), Brainwaves: Common Senses (New York, 2008), MINDmatters (Boston, 2008) Brainstorm (London, 2011), and Fundamentally Human, (Istanbul, 2011). Neural Notations, is one of the first curatorial projects to explicitly address the connection between art and neuroscience. Curated by Donna Schumacher, the exhibition had as starting point Oliver Sack’s book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. Schumacher’s interest was to identify artists who explore ideas similar to those Oliver Sacks talks about in the book. The artists in the exhibition investigate the connection between the neurological and the emotional.244 The exhibition is mostly concerned with neurological aspects such as trauma, pain, and neural disease. This fact, the curator recalls,245 made galleries hesitant to install the exhibition at first, as they feared the subject would be deemed uncomfortable.246 Judging by exhibition reviews, the fear seems to have been partially justified, as the exhibition brought about disconcerting feelings. However, it was particularly this unsettling feeling which gave the exhibition its strength. “A dark edgy humor”, Emma Bugden points out in one such exhibition review, “was a feature of the show, notably in Gail Wight’s work The First Evolutionary Occurrence of Pain (1999), a diagram of a snail’s primitive pain receptors wired directly into a tiny model diorama of a car crash — funny, not funny. And again, in the sad/funny Brain Dolls of Donna Leigh Schumacher, who danced a brave, wobbly dance atop a plinth, their composition equal parts rag doll and serotonin boosters.”247

                                                                                                                244 245

Julia Chiapella, "UCSC Art Show Has Lots of Brain," Santa Cruz Sentinel 2000. Personal communication, e-mail received January 24, 2012.

246

Eventually, the exhibition was mounted at two galleries in California, and subsequently at the Physics Room in Christchurch, New Zealand 247

 

Emma Bugden, "Neural Notations," in The Physics Room Annual 2001, ed. Emma Bugden and

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Among the neuro art exhibition, Neural Notations is in this sense unique, addressing mostly the uncomfortable side of neural activity, whereas future exhibitions would, for the most part, present a celebratory attitude to neuroscience and a positive depiction of the brain as a fascinating object. While other exhibitions such as MINDmatters (2008) and Brainstorm (2011) had on display artworks referring to brain illnesses, neurological issues were, however, not primordial to any of the two curatorial concepts. Neuro art exhibitions would be considered by most fascinating rather than upsetting. Neuro, an exhibition organized in 2003, started from completely different premises. It came into existence as collaborative project between two Institutions: California Institute of Technology and Art Center College of Design. The work on display was the result of a two-year collaboration between artists and scientists at the Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering (CNSE). In this case, the goal of the collaboration was to make scientific knowledge accessible to a larger audience, through art. Pietro Petrona — one of the participating scientists and organizers of the exhibition, testifies to this intention. “The National Science Foundation,” he declares, “encourages us to make our science and technology accessible to everyone. Through the work of talented artists we can reach people who may feel intimidated by our scientific lingo. We also hope to be able to look at our work with new eyes: artists can provide us with fresh insight into the meaning of what we do.”248

This exhibition represents one of the few situations in the history of neuro art exhibitions in which the accent falls on science rather than art, and in which the scientific contribution to the art objects is clearly visible. This seems to be a rather unique perspective in the art and science collaborations in general, which are mostly believed to benefiting the arts (as a source of inspiration) rather than the sciences.249 What makes this exhibition different from an a curatorial project like Head on, for                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Rosemary Forde (Christchurch: The Physics Room Trust, 2002), p. 17. 248

Pietro Perona cited in: Art Center College of Design, "Neuro," Press Page, http://www.artcenter.edu/williamson/press/neuro/ (accessed, February 28, 2012). 249

About the debate on the profitability of this exchange for art and science see: Stephen Webster, "Science and Society – Art and Science Collaborations in the United Kingdom," Nature Reviews Immunology 5, 12 (2005).

 

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example, is the absence of non-artistic images and objects. The projects in the exhibition, although a result of lengthy collaborations with science, are all in the end artworks. Furthermore, the artworks in this exhibition are inspired directly by concrete scientific research projects carried out by scientists and engineers at CNSE. The ultimate goal of these scientific projects, one reads on the exhibition press page, “is to enable the machines of the future to interact with, learn from, and adapt to their environment with a flexibility equivalent to that of living creatures.”250 In this context, much of the research at the Center aims to understand the senses in neuroscientific terms. As a consequence of the center’s profile, the works in the Neuro exhibition have their main interest in sensation and perception, and address, as the curator Stephen Nowlin observes, “how we sense and make sense of the world, and how our comprehension of it is forged through the modes of sensory perception available to us.”251 In this process, some artists take a step further in exploring the senses by providing new sensorial environments as alternative to what the brain is normally accustomed to. Body Electric by Malcolm MacIver and Simon Penny, for example — an immersive virtual environment — merges familiar and unfamiliar sensorial strategies252 to create perceptual shifts that are unnatural, yet highly believable. Tricking perception in this way is meant to encourage reflection on our own perceptual mechanism and on the readiness with which we accept what is presented to us. Another exhibition, Neuroculture, which Suzanne Anker and Giovanni Frazzetto organized at the Westport Art Center in 2006, was a wonderful illustration of the concept the two curators defined. To illustrate the idea of an emerging neuroculture, Anker and Frazzetto create an artistic display that reflected the way in which neuroscience defines new realities.253 Neuroculture was the only exhibition of neuro art                                                                                                                 250

Art Center College of Design, "Neuro," Press Page, http://www.artcenter.edu/williamson/press/neuro/ (accessed, February 28, 2012). 251

Stephen Nowlin, "Painting Neuro," http://www.artcenter.edu/williamson/neuro/exhibit/f_body_nowlin.html (accessed, February 28, 2012). 252

Ibid.

253

Westport Arts Center, Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain (2006), Exhibition Catalogue, http://www.neuroculture.org/neuroculture1.pdf (accessed October 12, 2011).

 

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up to that point to raise ethical questions about the practice of neuroscientific research and its clinical applications. One of the main themes of the exhibition refers to “enhancement of the neurochemical ‘self’ through current access to psychopharmacology.”254 The exhibition catalogue devotes a substantial chapter to talk about the ‘neuro self,’ about implant brain chips, and about the aspiration scientists have to visualize mental functions as a process via functional MRI recordings. Tom O’Connor, the Visual Arts co-chair of the Westport Arts Center, remarks in the introduction that “artists in the modern world have consistently responded to the promises of science with thoughtful circumspection and a healthy dose of skepticism, evident in the work gathered.”255 The artworks in the exhibitions, however, approach rather timidly the ethical and controversial aspects of neuroscientific research. If, for example, one compares the skepticism and circumspection with which artist had addressed genetic research and its ethical implications, the works of neuro art — in this exhibition and elsewhere — seem too subtle to be worth mentioning. The parallel with the genetic art, which the curators themselves address in several occasions,256 has important implication in the recognition of neuro art as an emerging phenomenon. The comparison of neuro art to genetic art — an artistic tendency that has already been acknowledged in the history of art — grants neuro art a similar status. Just as genetic art, neuro art is an artistic tendency in it’s own right, a more-or-less unified entity which deserves scholarly attention on its own. A similar recognition of the emergent neuro art is visible in the curatorial strategies of Exit Art, an art gallery and interdisciplinary cultural center in New York. The center — which prides itself with “producing exhibitions that illuminate the pressing issues of our time while supporting artists whose works reflect the transformations of our culture”257 — presented Brainwaves: Common Senses, a neuro                                                                                                                 254 255

Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 2.

256

Anker’s artistic and academic career has been previously dedicated to genetic art. See for example: Suzanne Anker, "Gene Culture – Molecular Metaphor in Visual Art," Leonardo 33, 5 (2000), and Anker and Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze. 257

 

Exit Art, Gallery Webpage, http://www.exitart.org/about/mission.html (accessed October 12, 2011).

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art show curated by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, as part of an exhibition series untitled Unknown Territories. The series, which explored the impact scientific advances have on contemporary culture, placed Brainwaves in succession to a prominent exhibition of art and biology Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution. In the company of Paradise Now, a landmark exhibition in art and genetics, Brainwaves attests the recognition of neuro art. The search for artworks “that capture the mystery of the mind, rather then merely illustrate scientific insights”258 materialized in a large array of art projects, ranging from sculptures and paintings to video projections, mechanical objects, and smell installations. Like Neuro before, Brainwaves looks at the brain as “site for scientific and philosophical debates, for examining our relationship to the world — and for questioning our common sense.”259 The senses are at the core of this exhibition, and, for the first time in a neuro art exhibition, the smell is introduced as a sense to be explored in a visual art context. In the same year, Geoffrey Koetsch and Ellen Schön curated at the Laconia Gallery in Boston MINDmatters, an exhibition exploring the concept of the mind. The artworks, by artist from the Boston area, explored the mind — sometimes in connection to the brain and sometimes independently of the organ that generates it. The artists were reported to have created artworks which approach the neural structures of the brain from different perspectives. “Some of the artists,” Koetsch writes, “had had personal experiences with pathologies of the brain […]. Some artists were personally involved with new technologies of cognitive psychology. Others were inspired by the sheer physical beauty of the brain […].”260 The exhibition press release points out the striking difference between how the mind was represented when inspiration came from neuroscience, as opposed to when artists embraced psychological theories. “Notably absent,” the text reads, “are                                                                                                                 258

Exit Art Gallery, "Brainwave: Common Senses, Press Release," http://www.exitart.org/assets/files/press/press_releases/Brainwave_PressRelease.pdf (accessed October 12, 2011). 259

260

 

Ibid. Koetsch, "Artists and the Mind in the 21st Century," p. 1.

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reflections on Freud, dreams, sex or violence.”261 Interestingly however, one of the artworks in the exhibition, a video by the filmmaker Karl Nussbaum, called Reframing — juxtaposes visually a dream-like vision, suggestive of subconscious experience, with artistic renderings of the brain, brain parts, neurons, and neural connection in action. Recalling the example of Neural Notations, the artworks on display in this exhibition are often the result of the artists’ intimate contact with mental illness — dementia, brain surgery, and bi-polar disorder. One of the most interesting exhibitions of neuro art was curated at the end of 2011 in London at the GV Art gallery by Robert Devcic, under the title Brainstorm. The starting point of the exhibition was unlike any of other curatorial projects discussed thus far. “The exhibition came about,” a press release in 2011 states, “thanks to Dr. Dexter who invited Robert Devcic, Director of GV Art and the curator of the exhibition, and two artists, Katharine Dowson and David Marron, to watch a ‘brain cut up’ by a Neuropathologist researching the physical effects on the brain of multiple sclerosis.”262 Through this exhibition, besides creating a startling display, Robert Devcic hoped to raise awareness of brain disorders and to underline the importance of brain donations for research. Scientists rely on brain donations of healthy and unhealthy brains in the process of understanding many debilitating brain diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis. To this aim, the exhibition incorporated a video of the slicing event and the brain slices thus obtained — slices of brain tissue affected by multiple sclerosis. Katharine Dowson and David Marron, the two artists who attended the event, created artworks in response to their observations. The idea of having real brain tissue on display in an art gallery was not received well by everyone, and controversies about this curatorial initiative begun in the early days of the opening, suggesting, most frequently, that the display as ‘degrading’ and

                                                                                                                261

Laconia Gallery Boston, "MINDmatters," Press Release, http://www.laconiagallery.org/exhibit18.html (accessed October 12, 2011). 262

GV Art London, "Brainstorm: Investigating the Brain through Art and Science," Press Release, http://www.gvart.co.uk/press/brainstorm_press_release_2011.pdf (accessed May 3, 2012).

 

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distasteful.263 This was hardly the case. Visitors of the exhibition, were soon to realize that the tissue on display was by no means more degrading than any of the biological specimens displayed for decades in science museums, nor was its display overwhelmingly dominating the exhibition — as it might have seemed from the public debate. Furthermore, the unsettling feeling associated with such a description, was not actually reflected in the exhibition. The artworks on display, by Susan Aldworth, Annie Cattrell, Andrew Carnie, Katharine Dowson, Rachel Gadsden, David Marron and Helen Pynor, created a coherent visual discourse which was at the same time thoughprovoking and aesthetically stimulating, without being discomforting. Perhaps more than any of the previous exhibitions, Brainstorm focused on the artistic representations of the brain — not of the mind, not of the senses, nor of the neuron — but of the actual brain. Carnie’s Echo Pearl Delta and Seized two Brains, Cattrell’s From within, Dowsons’ s My soul and Coronal 5 Views, are all skillful renderings of brain images. The last exhibition of neuro art to be addressed here, took place in Istanbul in the summer of 2011, at the Pera Museum. Fundamentally Human: Contemporary Art and Neuroscience was curated by Suzanne Anker under interesting circumstances. Pera Museum opened its doors in early June 2005 under the sponsorship of Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation, a foundation that aims to help Turkey’s researchers in undertaking efficient research in healthcare, and particularly in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Having the overarching goal to contribute to society “through a series of undertakings in the fields of education, healthcare, culture, and arts,”264 Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation inaugurated in the same year the Pera Museum was opened, the Neurodegeneration Research Laboratory at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul.                                                                                                                 263

London Evening Standard, quotes the Conservative MP David Amess, a former member of the health select committee, as saying: “It's one thing if this is done in a laboratory, but it's degrading to put body parts on display in a public place. In my personal opinion, this is a disrespectful way to treat the human body and is unacceptable.” Cited in Sophie Goodchild, "Human Brain Goes on Show in ‘Degrading’ Gallery Exhibit," The London Evening Standard, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/human-brain-goeson-show-in-degrading-gallery-exhibit-6554235.html?origin=internalSearch (accessed May 3, 2012). 264

Pera Museum, "About Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation," http://en.peramuzesi.org.tr (accessed, May 3, 2012).

 

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Fundamentally Human is an integral par in the Foundation’s mission, and has been organized in conjunction with the third Suna Kıraç biannual conference on Neurodegeneration: Recent Themes in Motor Neuron Biology, held, in fact, at the Pera Museum itself. “The Museum has organized a fascinating exhibition,” the organizers of the conference proudly state in the welcome address, “exploring the powerful relationship between neurosciences and contemporary art […]. We believe that both the exhibition and the speech by its curator, Prof. Suzanne Anker, Dean of New York School of Visual Arts, will enrich this year's conference by adding an additional dimension.”265 The conference and the exhibition bring the art and neuroscience dialogue at a level which involves a high degree of artistic and scientific participation. In her presentation within the conferences, Suzanne Anker makes the point of underlining that, the images in the show are artworks and not mere scientific illustrations, and that artist go beyond simple visual descriptions of scientific concept, and confer them a new conceptual framework. The exhibition is only partially a reiteration of Neuroculture, the exhibition Suzanne Anker co-curated with Giovanni Frazzetto several years back on the same topic. The highlights of the exhibition are Anker’s own fMRI Butterflies and Andrew Carnie’s Magic Forest, but along with them a few new other artist - like Rona Pondick and Leonel Moura — complete the display with works not seen before in a neuro art context. In essence, Fundamentally Human is an invitation to ponder on human nature and on the determinant role the brain might have in defining who we are. The exhibition underlines the assumption that it is the brain that makes us human — fundamentally human.

                                                                                                                265

Suna Kıraç Conference on Neurodegeneration, "Recent Themes in Motor Neuron Biology Conference," Welcome Addresses, http://www.skconferences.org/2011/news.asp (accessed May 3, 2012).

 

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* * * * *

It is important to mention also that, besides these exhibitions of neuro art, smaller exhibitions — of one of two artists, as well individual shows — exist and contribute to the overall curatorial landscape of neuro art.266 Other exhibitions, like Walking in my Mind (2009)267 at The Hayward Gallery in London and And Therefore I Am (2006)268 at Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery in Saratoga Springs, New York, touch upon neuroscience only tangentially. Emotions, thoughts, memories, consciousness and dreams, have been explored as subjects for artistic creativity for centuries, and more often than not they are unrelated to neuroscience. Not every artistic investigation into memory and dreams, not even into the mind is necessarily a work of neuro art. However, among the contemporary artworks investigating memory, consciousness and dreams independent from neuroscientific knowledge a few neuro artworks269 are encountered, and therefore these exhibitions too have a role in neuro art. Along all the art exhibitions, the science world also proposed two curatorial strategies that make the brain and the nervous system available to a large audience. One is the didactic exhibition presenting information about the brain, and nervous system, created with the declared intention to inform and educate,270 the second is the aesthetic exhibition displaying stunning scientific visualization with the intention to delight.271 In both cases, the relevance of these displays for neuro art resides in the                                                                                                                 266

See for example: Eye of the Beholder (2007) at The Philoctetes Center in New York, Exhibition Webpage, http://philoctetes.org/exhibitions/eye_of_the_beholder/ (accessed May 3, 2012); Landscapes of the Mind: Contemporary Artists Contemplate the Brain (2010) at Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Exhibition Webpage, http://wcma.williams.edu/exhibit/landscapes/ (accessed May 3, 2012); Between: Mind, Matter, and Materials (2011) at Bristol Neuroscience, Exhibition Webpage, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neuroscience/bn-news/2011/110119.html (accessed May 3, 2012). 267

Hayward Gallery, Walking in My Mind, Exhibition Webpage, http://walkinginmymind.southbankcentre.co.uk/html/exhibition (accessed May 3, 2012). 268

Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, And Therefore I Am (2006), Exhibition Webpage, http://tang.skidmore.edu/index.php/calendars/view/21/tag:1/year:2006. (accessed May 3, 2012). 269

An example in this case was is Jochem Hendricks’ Brain of the Artist (1998) on display in Tang Museum’s above-mentioned exhibition. 270

See for example: Brain: The Inside Story (2011) at The American Museum of Natural History, Exhibition Webpage, http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/brain/about.php (accessed May 3, 3012). 271

 

See for example Neural Architecture at Zurich University (2010), Exhibition Webpage,

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potential role these exhibitions have in disseminating neuroscientific information among artists and also enticing scientist towards artistic and aesthetic ideas, making them perhaps more eager to engage artists in their research work.

* * * * *

This chapter reveals that, for the past decade, the interaction of art with neuroscience within curatorial practices has been abundant and diverse. The diversity in curatorial conception is one aspect to argue (1) against the understanding of neuro art exhibition as a reductive illustration of neuroscience through artistic means and (2) for the investigation of neuro art as an artistic tendency in contemporary art practice. Each exhibition immerses the visitors in different ways and gives them various possibilities of exploring the world of neuroscience and art. Some exhibition focus on neurological illnesses, some explore the senses, while others are particularly interested in the brain — its form, its function, and its metaphors. A curious mind would be equally drawn in by the artistic concepts, by the use of technology, and by the multitude of questions that artworks about the brain unavoidably raise about perception, consciousness, or neurological illnesses. The experience of walking through the exhibitions raises curiosity every step of the way and provide interesting perceptual, aesthetic, and informational experiences. If in some cases the commission of art is motivated by a scientific agenda, with the aim of making neuroscience available to a large audience and to gain support for its neuroscientific endeavors, in most case however, neuro art exhibition are inspired by the emergent neuro art. In other words, curators too identified this tendency in art and decided to put forward curatorial projects pertaining to it. Neuro art exhibitions, as themed exhibitions — to return to the initial argument — provide a meaningful framework for the artworks without being reductive. In fact, the display of more neuro artworks together only creates a stronger impression. One                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         http://www.neurons.ch/ (accessed May 8, 2012) or NeuroScape (2008) at Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem, Exhibition Webpage, http://www.mada.org.il/brain/nerves-e.html (accessed May 8, 2012)

 

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artwork is informed by the artworks experienced previously and in turn it influences the way next artworks will be perceived. Complementing each other, the works within a neuro art display create a powerful cumulative effect — and give the exhibition a unified perspective. In the same way neuro artworks complement each other conceptually and aesthetically within an exhibition, curatorial projects of neuro art are also complementing each other, and together give an overall perspective of neuro art. The cumulative effect and the information all these exhibitions provide together is a solid basis for a neuro art investigation. Most artists and artworks in the chapters that follow were connected one way or another to the exhibitions described above. The neuro art exhibitions provided the argument and the preliminary material for the study of neuro art. The chapters that follow are dedicated to the major themes of neuro art. Curatorial projects discussed in this chapter, already hinted some of the thematics neuro art revolves around, such as the senses and employing imaging technology. Other themes however — as for example the artistic exploration of the neuron — only become evident when retrospectively assessing neuro art as a whole. Therefore, although neuro art exhibitions were essential in initiating this history of neuro art, and they already identified certain tendencies in neuro art, many aspects of neuro art are not readily visible from the history of the exhibitions alone. While focusing on neuro art the scope of this history goes beyond neuro art exhibitions.

 

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Chapter III: Cellular Neuro Art – The Story of the Neuron in Art In 2006, in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, in an article about the image of the neuron in visual cultures, Richard Wingate and Marius Kwint272 observe that, after a century since its discovery, the image of the neuron has finally taken a new life in the public media. The form, structure, and functionality of the neuron have sparked interest beyond the scientific world. Observing how knowledge of the neuron has increasingly become relevant to wide audience — being picked up by film directors, designers and artists — Wingate and Kwint suggest that the neural dendrites deserve an ‘art history’ of their own. This chapter would attempt exactly this: to provide a history of the neuron in the world of art. By the time Wingate and Kwint’s article was published, artists were only starting to embrace the expressive powers of the neuron. Most artworks in this chapter were created in the years to follow the publication of the article. This does not to imply a direct correlation between the publication of the article and the booming artistic interest in the neuron. The artistic curiosity for the neuron has more to do with the overall hype neuroscience has attracted in the past decade and with the great array of images, articles, and books that spread widely the image of the neuron. This chapter shows that Wingate and Kwint were right in estimating that the neuron was concealing an important aesthetic and conceptual potential for art.

Discovering the Brain Cell The recognition of the nerve cell as an individual and fundamental unit of the brain was without doubt a crucial discovery in neuroscience. Few would have imagined, however, that this discovery would have any relevance to the history of art.                                                                                                                 272

 

Wingate and Kwint, "Imagining the Brain Cell."

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In the late nineteenth – early twentieth century, when Santiago Ramón y Cajal identified the neuron as a cellular entity and promoted the neuron doctrine, he was, unknowingly, setting the grounds for the history of neuro art. The section that follows aims therefore to presents in detail the role Cajal’s work played in the history of art. Today we assume without questioning that the brain is formed by discrete morphological entities called neurons. In the 19th century this was a revolutionary idea. Even though the cell theory was postulated and generally accepted since 1830s, and brain cell bodies had already been spotted under the microscope, most scientists in the 19th century believed the brain had a reticular organization.273 The microscopic method that allowed Cajal to better understand the structure of the nervous system and thereby prove the existence of the neuron was developed by a passionate advocate of the reticular theory. The Italian scientist Camillo Golgi, who never accepted the neuron doctrine, invented a silver-chromate tissue staining technique which had the great advantage of dying selectively only few neurons in a tissues sample. In this way, in spite of the extremely dense and uniformly colored structure of the brain tissue — the silver stain was able to reveal, their axons, and their dendritic arbors. The Golgi stain or la ‘reazione nera’ (the black reaction) as it became known, found true applications in the work of Cajal. The Spanish scientist improved the technique, increased the speed of what used to be an extremely long experiment, and published numerous studies about the applications of the method on tissue from many regions of the brain. It was this reaction and the fascination with its beauty that led Cajal to identify the neuron and to understand the cellular structure of the brain. As a young man, Cajal wanted to become an artist, but gave up his dream under his father’s insistence and joined medical school instead. He talks bitterly about having to change “the magic palette of the painter for the nasty and prosaic bag of surgical instruments.”274 Throughout his scientific career, however, Cajal never abandoned                                                                                                                 273 274

 

Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience, p. 12. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Recollections of My Life (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), p. 42.

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entirely his artistic ambitions, finding, as he himself points out, great consolation in drawing, lithography, and ‘the art of Daguerre.’275 Cajal’s artistic interest is well known and often talked about. Historians go so far as to suggest that it was his artistic predisposition that led him to understand the brain cell in a way Golgi could not.276 Cajal’s own biography attests that the scientific path he followed was often guided by aesthetic criteria and artistic aims. He enjoyed scientific drawing and declared to have studied with interest only anatomy and physiology fields in which he could make use of his artistic talent. “I may say”, Cajal writes in his memoirs, “that one of the stimuli which led me to scrutinize the hippocampus and the fascia dentata was the elegant architecture shown by the cells and the layers of these centers, as revealed by the illustrious Golgi in his great work.277 “It is an actual fact that, […] the garden of neurology holds out to the investigator captivating spectacles and incomparable artistic emotions. In it, my aesthetic instincts found full satisfaction at last.”278 Cajal’s passion for drawing led him to create “some of the most beautiful scientific illustrations ever made.”279 His stunning scientific drawings, the hallmark for Cajal’s histological career, continue to illustrate neuroscience books up to present day. In his drawings, the aesthetic sensibility and artistic skill are coupled, in a remarkable way, with the scientific information they aim to convey. At the time of Cajal, before microphotographic techniques had been fully developed, scientific illustrations had an unprivileged status: they were regarded with skepticism by both historians of science and historians of art. Interestingly, the art historian will emphasize the scientific aspect of the illustrations, while the scientist will underline its aesthetic properties. Thus, scientific illustrations in general, were considered too interpretative to be scientifically accurate, and not creative enough to                                                                                                                 275 276 277 278

Ibid., p. 268. Alison Abbott, "Hidden Treasures: The Cajal Collection in Madrid," Nature 452 (2008). Ramón y Cajal, Recollections of My Life, p. 415. Ibid., p. 363.

279

Pedro J. Andres-Barquin, "Ramón y Cajal: A Century after the Publication of His Masterpiece," Endeavour, 1 (2001), p. 15.

 

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stand as art works. In this sense, Cajal’s histological drawings are no exception. In spite of their elegance and artistic skill, Cajal’s scientific and artistic drawings alone were not enough to secure him a significant role in the history of art. As Robert S. Root-Bernstein points out in his article on “Music, Creativity and Scientific Thinking,” Cajal was one of those creative individuals who were able to correlate their apparently diverging talents in the most fruitful way, by “finding the unexpected connections, from making use of skills, ideas, insights and analogies from disparate fields.”280 In this way, Cajal created a bridge between art and brain science long before neuroscience existed as a discipline. However, the correlation of talent was of benefit to the field of science, and not to the field of art. Sadly perhaps, Cajal had not become a prominent figure in the history of art. His beautiful drawings in histology and anatomy have recently been rediscovered, reconsidered, and appreciated as skillful scientific illustrations, but not as art works. Similarly, his no-scientific artworks: landscapes, portraits and still life — although of aesthetic interest — lack the vibrancy and ingenuity of his avant-garde contemporaries like Picasso, Dali, or Miro. In fact, Cajal had no appreciation of contemporary avant-garde. In spite of his aesthetic preoccupations, he did not have the same visionary understanding of art as he had of science. Naming the avant-garde “la lepra del arte moderno” (the plague of modern art) and endorsing Ortega y Gasset’s idea of the dehumanized art281 in a pejorative way, Cajal shows great disregard for the art of his contemporaries. DeFelipe’s suggestion that many of Cajal’s illustrations “can be considered to belong to different artistic movements, such as modernism, surrealism, cubism, abstraction and impressionism”282 would have displeased not only a great number of art historians but Cajal himself. For Cajal, “a good drawing, like a good microscope preparation, is a fragment of reality, scientific documents that indefinitely maintain their value and                                                                                                                 280

Robert S. Root-Bernstein, "Music, Creativity and Scientific Thinking," Leonardo 34, 1 (2001) pp. 63– 68. 281

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, El Mundo Visto a Los Ochenta Años (Madrid: Tipografia artistica, 1934), p. 151. 282

 

DeFelipe, Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul, p. xiv.

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whose study will always be useful, whatever interpretation might inspire.”283 The usefulness and scientific accuracy of an image were for Cajal more important then the artistic value. It is certainly most fortunate for the history of neuro art, that the scientist to first identify the neuron and set the grounds for neuroscientific research had a great passion and talent for the visual arts. Cajal’s exquisite histological drawings are the images to first celebrate the beauty of the neuron. Cajal’s interest in art granted the neuron an aesthetic value from the very moment of its discovery. Yet, Cajal’s position in the world of art would be reevaluated in this chapter, not as an artist but as a scientist whose research and illustrations inspired artistic creativity. For more than a hundred years since its discovery, the neuron was virtually absent from the art world. It is rather surprising that avant-garde artists, who were generally receptive to the scientific ideas of their time, and had the right mind-set to assimilate and use a scientific icon as the neuron, did not do so. It is quite likely that Cajal’s elegant drawings did not inspire the art of his contemporaries, mostly because, until very recently, they were virtually unknown. If Cajal’s studies and theories had profound impact on the research of his era,284 his work was little known outside the scientific communities, and his drawings, paintings, and photographs are still very seldom on public display or print. Cajal’s legacy was neglected for many decades after his death and it is estimated that about a quarter of his drawings had been lost over time.285 An inventory of his work had started in the 1970s but it was not until 1997 that a substantial effort in archiving and restoring his work was initiated. In the last decades, and especially since the centenary celebration of the Nobel Prize award which Cajal and Golgi shared in 1906, Cajal’s hidden works started making their public appearance. A commemorative exhibition with Cajal’s illustrations traveled from Madrid (2006) to Chicago (2007). Books and Internet resources are increasingly reproducing Cajal’s drawings. Early in 2010, Javier DeFelipe published a                                                                                                                 283 284 285

 

Cited in Ibid., p. xiv. Ibid., p. 3. Xavier Bosch and Alison Abbott, "The Brain in Spain," Nature 409 (2001), p. 451.

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book-catalogue Cajal’s Butterflies of the Soul, which reproduces a large number of never before published drawings by Cajal and other brain scientists. Rafael Rodrigo confidently concludes his foreword to the book by stating that this collection of illustration will serve as “an inexhaustible source for artistic inspiration.”286 Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the neuron has become a wellknown biological entity and a cultural icon which begun to stir artistic interest. The schematic structure of the neuron: the cell body, crowned by the dendritic tree and extended by the axon — is immediately recognizable. While not everyone would be able to explain how action potentials are formed or understand what chemical and physical phenomena make possible the reception, transmission, and processing of impulses, most people would recognize with ease the image of a neuron. It would be safe to assume that outside the scientific world, the nerve cell would be much easier to identify then most other cells types in the human body. The visual recognition of a biological icon is important, for artists are less likely to use scientific ideas and symbols that have no resonance with their audience. The renewed interest in the scientific and illustrative work of Cajal coincides with an increasing interest in neuroscience and a growing curiosity for different aspects pertaining to our brains. After more than a century since its discovery, new investigations in neuro-histology bring the neuron into public attention and present it visually and conceptually in a way that makes the brain-cell attractive to artists. Advances in microscopy, refinements in microphotography, and discoveries of fluorescent dyes led to beautifully colored histological images, mesmerizing microphotographs and scientific illustrations which reveal the neuron as a fascinating biological structure. Knowledge about pyramidal, chandelier, stellate, and basket neurons portray the neuron as a visually stimulating entity; while observation about neuron specialization, and discoveries of mirror- and face selective-neurons, make the nerve cells conceptually interesting.

                                                                                                                286

 

DeFelipe, Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul, p. ix.

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Cajal’s Revenge In retrospect, Cajal’s contribution to the history of art is manifested through artworks by other artists. Inspired by Cajal’s creative ideas and exquisite drawings, a number of contemporary artists have developed projects pertaining to the workings of the brain. In 2006, to inaugurate its office building in Washington, the Society for Neuroscience commissioned a monumental wood bass-relief reproducing one of Cajal’s scientific drawings. The drawing, which illustrates the six-layered structure of a mouse’s neocortex, was transposed, with the help of a computer model, in a monumental mural. Published for the first time in 1904, in Cajal’s Textura del Sistema Nervioso del Hombre y de los Vertebrado, the image was selected by the Society for Neuroscience on the basis that it was ‘representative of neuroscience.’287 Cajal’s drawing has been used in this project as a template for a decorative wall. Although the creative input in the preparation of the work is minimal, the image was transformed into an object intended for aesthetic observation and lost most of its didactic function. One could argue, given the context of the institution which commissioned and which hosts the work, that the scientific relevance of the drawing has not been lost entirely, it has only been undermined in favor of its visual properties. The mural is more an architectural project than an artwork but it emphasizes the aesthetic attributes of scientific illustration. From a visual point of view, the layered structure of the selected image is particularly appropriate for the destination and dimensions of the work. The mural marks the aesthetic aspirations of the Society for Neuroscience and commemorates the scientist’s achievements. In the spirit of Cajal, this project celebrates the neuron as a representative structure in neuroscience and as a visually appealing structure. One artist to directly acknowledge Cajal’s influence is British artist Andrew Carnie.                                                                                                                 287

Neuroscience Quarterly, "Cajal Mural Dedicated in Society's New Office Space," http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=neurosciencequarterly_06summer_cajal&print=on (accessed May 8, 2012).

 

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This influence is not immediately apparent, except if one thinks of Cajal whenever the image of the neuron is presented. The reference to Cajal in Carnie’s work is through theory. The artist quotes Cajal as one of the scientific sources to inform and inspire two of his works Magic Forest (2002) (Fig. 30-32) and Complex Brain (2004) (Fig. 13). For Carnie, the life and work of the Spanish scientist was a source of fascination. Having an education in chemistry, zoology, and psychology, the artist chose the life path Cajal abandoned. Carnie gave up a professional path in the sciences and dedicated himself to the arts. Carnie encountered for the first time the work of Cajal in a general neurology textbook and later engaged in an active search for his drawings in books and online. For the Head on: Art with the Brain in Mind exhibition, in order to indicate the contextual source of the Magic Forest, Carnie displayed along his work, selected drawings from one of Cajal’s early publications. Carnie speaks with fascination about the amazing aesthetic qualities of the scientist’s histological illustrations: “I was always struck by the finesse of the drawings, their quality, the sensitivity of making. I really like the drawings and it is their tree like quality, in Cajal's drawings, the fact that they don't seem to be simply diagrams or illustrations, they are like pieces of art, sensitive expressive rendering of the subject. […]This feeling of the quality of Cajal's drawings is confirmed when you learn of his early wish to be an artist and his long standing interest in photography.”288

The same finesse and sensibility Carnie notices in these scientific illustrations can be identified in his own works. As slide dissolve installations projected in dark rooms, Magic Forest and Complex Brain comprise of multiple slides successively projected onto translucent screens, one dissolving into another. The primary element of the two works is the image of the neuron. Two projections in each installation, screened from opposite sides of dark rooms, fuse the images one into another or echo them at different levels on successive semi-transparent screens. Neuron images overlap other neuron images, and projections of figurative images, in a way in which they suggest the growth, proliferation, and migration of neurons in the human body. Describing Magic Forest, the artist writes:                                                                                                                 288

 

Personal e-mail exchange, received March 14, 2010

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“The work starts with the location of the growing brain in the skull and proceeds with an ever-growing forest of neurones developing on the screens; the mass increases, filling the whole screen with layers and layers of neurones in different colours. The work ends when the system collapses and the neurones disappear, blackness returns and the skull is shown again getting larger and larger and the work begins to cycle around once more. Each cycle lasts about fifteen minutes. The colours in the work reflect the fluorescence used and seen in the staining of individual neurones, which produce the images under the confocal microscope.”289

Laser scanning confocal microscopy, the procedure Carnie used to collect the neuron images in Richard Wingate’s laboratory, differs greatly from the capricious method Cajal and Golgi were struggling with a century before. Staining the tissue with fluorescent dyes, collecting the visual information point-to-point and digitally reconstructing it with the aid of a computer program, has great advantages over the silver staining method. The image information in confocal microscopy is limited to one depth level at a time with no interference with the background, and therefore the result is a reconstruction with great contrast and high definition. Given the layer selectivity and the possibility to restrict the image collection to a well-defined plane, the procedure does not require an extremely finely cut brain tissue for exploration. The great advantage of this is the fact that brain tissue does not demand fixation before staining which gives neuroscientist the chance to observe cells while still alive. With this method, scientists, and in this case artists can obtain high quality three-dimensional images of live neurons. Pablo Garcia Lopez is the artist whose entire artistic creation has roots in Cajal’s research. A Spanish Cajal scholar, with a PhD in neuroscience and masters of fine arts, Lopez’s art is a direct reaction to the life and work of Cajal. His project, The Cortical Garden (2009) (Fig. 14), is inspired by Cajal’s scientific metaphors and refers directly to one of the most cited fragments in Cajal’s writings: “ … the cerebral cortex is similar to a garden filled with trees, the pyramidal cells, which, thanks to intelligent culture, can multiply their branches, sending their roots deeper and producing more and more varied and exquisite flowers and fruits.”290

                                                                                                                289

Andrew Carnie, Artist Webpage: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/magicforest.htm (accessed February 28, 2012) 290

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, The Croonian Lecture: La fine structure des centres nerveux, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 55 (1894), translated by DeFelipe and Jones, in: Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Javier de Felipe, and Edward G. Jones, Cajal on the Cerebral Cortex: An Annotated Translation of the

 

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In his photo installation, Lopez does not use the neuron as a visual symbol, but embraces the literal meaning of Cajal’s text, suggesting the idea of a ‘blooming brain.’ Various flowers and insects seem to grow and populate the rather arid surface of the cerebral cortex. The Brain Sculpture Gallery (2009) (Fig. 15) project is inspired by the idea of neural plasticity, or ‘neural gymnastic’ as Cajal had termed it. The project emerged from Cajal’s idea that “every man, if he so desires, becomes the sculptor of his own brain.”291 Using silk, leather, clay and paint, wax, fabric or plastic, Lopez creates a gallery of brain-looking shapes, each in itself an individual sculpture. In these two projects, Lopez takes Cajal’s scientific metaphors of the ‘cortical garden’ and the ‘sculpted brain’ and visualizes them in their literal sense. Katherine Sherwood,292 on the other hand, a Californian artist exploring connections between art and medical imagery, makes use of Cajal’s scientific imagery in a metaphorical way. In her art, appropriated neuron images by Cajal are converted into elements of mystery and magic. Cajal’s Revenge (Fig. 16), a work from 2007, is not only inspired by Cajal’s drawings but it actually appropriates it. By transforming a scientific image into an artistic element, Sherwood symbolically reclaims Cajal’s status as an artist. What was a didactic scientific illustration becomes an integral part of the artwork. Pablo Picasso assumed that when one possesses an object, s/he assimilates the properties of its former owner.293 In artistic terms, he believed that through artistic appropriation, by quoting works by other artists and reenacting particular creative processes, an artist would magically assimilate the artistic powers, the talent, and prestige of the artists s/he appropriates. In Cajal’s Revenge, a similar mystic exchange of                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Complete Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 87. 291

Cited by Pablo Garcia Lopez, Artist Website, http://pablogarcialopez.com/artwork/1069073_Brain_Sculpture_Gallery.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 292

Sherwood is an artist in residency at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and a teacher at the Department of Practice Art at University of California Berkley. 293

 

Timothy Anglin Burgard, "Picasso and Appropriation" The Art Bulletin LXXIII, 3 (1991), p. 486.

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artistic powers seems to take place between Sherwood and Cajal, but in a reverse way. By appropriating the illustration, Sherwood instates Cajal’s drawing as an artwork and thus shares her own artistic power with a scientist who had dreamt of becoming an artist. Magic and myth are not foreign to Sherwood’s artistic process. In fact, her work frequently employs images of Solomon’s seals in a symbolic way. The seals from The Lesser Key of Solomon, a famous 17th century book in demonology, were believed to bring health, prosperity, and knowledge to those who wear them appropriately. Sherwood uses the seals as symbols of magic and healing. Sherwood’s own life experience — as an artist who suffered a stroke which paralyzed the right side of her body and forced her to relearn how to speak, move and paint using only her left side — placed her art under a symbolic, introspective, and reflective disposition. The use of seals is often associated with Sherwood’s own hope and process of healing.294 The choice of seals is motivated by the underlying symbolic meanings that they evoke. The intentional and careful selection of appropriate seals is apparent in Cajal’s Revenge. Sherwood associates the image of the neuron with distorted fragments from the seal of Marquize Cimeies (Fig. 17), the one spirit whose office “is to teach perfectly Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and to discover things Lost or Hidden, and Treasures.”295 By association with the seal, Sherwood invokes Cajal as the one who discovered and understood hidden neuroscientific treasures. The illustration of a Purkinje cell (Fig. 18), a large motor neuron with an intricate dendritic arbor and important role in movement coordination, is a recurrent element in Sherwood’s work. Fragments of the image appear along with the ‘a-b’ scientific notations in a work suggestively entitled Water Snake (2008) (Fig. 19) and in Golgi’s Door (2007) (Fig. 20). Although the title honors Golgi and alludes to the importance Golgi had in discovering the silver stain and opening the door to neuroscientific research, the artwork also seems to suggest that, after all, it was Cajal to actually walked through the door Golgi open, and thus recalls                                                                                                                 294

Anjan Chatterjee, "Apoplexy and Personhood in Katherine Sherwood’s Paintings," in Golgi's Door (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences 2008). 295

Joseph H. Peterson, "Of the Arte Goetia," (1999), digital edition: http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/goetia.htm (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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the scientific dispute between Golgi and Cajal. Sherwood makes use of one of Golgi scientific illustration in her work One in 100 Billion (2008) (Fig. 21). The upside-down arrangement of the image might suggest more than just a compositional choice. By turning the image around, Sherwood discreetly suggests that Golgi got everything wrong. Incidentally, this image was used by Golgi to support his argument for the reticular theory. “All one can gather of these connections,” Golgi states in his Nobel lecture, “speaks in favor of the whole dentate gyrus acting as a group and against any individual action of these cells.”296 In this context, using an illustration by Cajal in Golgi’s Door and an upside-down illustration by Golgi in One in 100 Billion, Sherwood finds a playful ironic way to revenge Cajal, both as a scientist and as an artist.

Neuronal Forest In his memoirs, Recollections of my Life, Cajal remembers a witty and original discourse of Mr. Foster at the banquet of The Royal Society London in which Mr. Foster uses the forest metaphor to praise Cajal’s achievements. “[…T]hanks to my work,” Cajal recalls Mr. Foster’s remark, “the impenetrable forest of the nervous system had been converted into a well laid out and delightful park.”297 Cajal himself associates neurons with trees in several instances either as a descriptive metaphor of brain organization: “It was a case of finding out how the roots and branches of these trees in the gray matter terminate, in that forest so dense that, by a refinement of complexity, there are no spaces in it, so that the trunks, branches, and leaves touch everywhere […]”298 or, poetically, to illustrate his admirations for visual appearance of neurons under the microscope: “Is there in our parks any tree more elegant and luxuriant then

                                                                                                                296

Camillo Golgi, "Neuron Doctrine – Theory and Facts," in Physiology or Medicine: 1971-1980, ed. Jan Lindsten (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 1992), p. 203. 297 298

 

Ramón y Cajal, Recollections of My Life, p. 421. Ibid., p. 324.

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the Purkinje cell of the cerebellum […]?”299 The same admiration and simple visual observation must have determined artist to use the neuron-tree metaphor in their art. The association of trees with neuron is the most recurrent metaphor artists apply to the image of the neuron. Neurons are identified as trees and brains as forests. It is not surprising that artists use recurrently this association. The parallel between the image of the neuron and that of a tree is intuitive. It is remarkable, however, how a straightforward, almost banal, formal association sparks such a great diversity of artworks with complex metaphorical entanglements. All artworks in this section explore the tree-neuron parallelism, and by doing so they expand the meaning of both elements of the analogy. In the process of “becoming” neurons, trees increase their metaphorical suggestions, while neurons become conceptually even more fascinating in the context of the forest. Unprecedented analogies between the neuron and the tree call into question the way neuroscientific metaphors are articulated in visual art. The primary purpose of this chapter is to point out how a predictable and apparently repetitive metaphor can yield a large variety of visually interesting and intellectually stimulating artworks.

* * * * *

One of the early art projects to bring together the tree and the neuron is Structure of Thought by Mike and Dough Starn. Started in early 2001, Structure of Thought is a complex exploration of tree images as allegory of the mind. Images of dark and contorted trees are used as metaphors for thought, knowledge, and memory. Although the Starn brothers do speculate on the association of the two dendritic structures, the parallel between the neurons and the trees was not essential in choosing the tree as a metaphor for thought. Initially it was the metaphor of light that determined the artists to associate thought processes with the tree.                                                                                                                 299

 

Ibid., p. 364.

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Light, as a physical phenomenon and as metaphor has been a guiding force in the Starns’ artistic process since late 1990s. Several art series in their work, Structure of Thought included, explored extensively the conceptual potential of light. Attracted to Light (1996-2004), Blot out of Sun (1998-2007), and Black Pulse (2000-2007) address various facets of the light metaphor, portraying it as a source of power, energy, and knowledge. In their work, light is used both as medium and as a symbol. For the artists, light “is history, the future, and spirituality…Light is what controls every decision and action we take; light is thought.”300 As the artists further explain, “in almost any culture in the history of the world, light is used as a metaphor for thought, knowledge, intelligence... With this metaphor as our foundation, we recognize that a tree grows toward light, and of course, it uses light in the process of photosynthesis, […]. The structure of thought is a living dendritic accumulation of intersections and layers.”301 The image of the tree, growing towards light and absorbing light, corresponds metaphorically to the mind in search for knowledge. In most of the works in the series, as for example in Structure of Thought 5, 6 (Fig. 22, 23) and 10 the idea of the neuron is only subtly suggested by the branching structure of the trees and underlined by the idea of ‘thought’ in the title. Although initially the similarity with the neuron was not a criterion for selecting the tree as a symbol for thought, the parallel between the two dendritic forms is retrospectively acknowledged and embraced by the artists. “We had been working on the series Structure of Thought for a couple of years,” the brothers state, “and the silhouetted trees already symbolized the layers and layers of sensory input, memories, emotion, imagination and ideas. For us, the dendritic and rhizomatic form presented broad dynamic fluid movement between points all connected or able to connect, so when we stumbled upon the same form in the image of a brain neuron we felt validated.”302

The association of the tree with the neuron becomes explicit in two of the later works in the series. For Structure of Thought 13 (Fig. 24), the Starn brothers appropriate two                                                                                                                 300

Mike and Doug Starn, Artist Webpage, http://www.starnstudio.com/Books_ATL.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 301

Mike and Doug Starn, Artist Webpage, http://www.starnstudio.com/Abs_Transmission.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 302

 

Ibid.

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different images in time of the same in vitro live tadpole neuron — collected over a twenty-four hour time by Dr. Hollis Cline’s team at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dr. Hollis’ laboratory carries out in vitro time lapse imaging studies of brain cells to observe neuronal development and synapse formation. The brother’s work echoes symbolically this scientific research. In the same way in which the research team investigates how “synaptic inputs drive dendritic arbor development”303 the Starn brothers observe how the source of light drives the development of trees. Structure of Thought 13 is a multi-layered work in which inkjet prints of trees, branches and neurons printed on several semitransparent surfaces like Gampi, Thai mulberry and tissue papers overlap and merge into one-another, creating a graphic symbiosis. The two images of the neuron occupy the layer in between. They are superimposed on the image of a leafless tree crown and they stand as the background for small framed tree bodies. By overlapping and merging branches and dendrites, the Starn brothers create an ambiguous relationship between the trees and the brain cell. The neuronal dendrites seem to connect with the trees in the foreground as if forming synapses. The foreground image calls to mind Golgi’s impregnated preparations of brain tissue on rectangular microscopic slides. Neurons and tree branches are connecting with and are incorporating each other. There is a constant play between the visual level of the image and the metaphors it suggest. Extensive metaphorical speculations are encouraged not only visually but also by the artists’ statements and the textual information which sometimes accompany the images. In the catalogue for the exhibition Absorption — Transmission, edited by the National Academy of Science, the neuron images that have inspired Structure of Thought 13 are accompanied by Werner Heisenberg’s following text: “It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments

                                                                                                                303

Hollis Cline’s Lab, "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory," http://clinelab.cshl.edu/research.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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may follow.”304

In this context the “line of thought” metaphor in Heisenberg’s words is reverted and brings into focus the actual physical presence of the line as a graphic element. The neuronal branches meet with each other and with those of the tree. ‘Two different lines of though,’ become literal lines meeting on paper. In Structure of Thought 16 (2005) (Fig. 26), the Starn brothers approach the neuron directly and transform it into a tree. Using as a starting point the scientific images of a florescent protein expressed in the cerebral neurons of a transgenic mouse, they create through repetition the suggestion of a distant misty forest. Although, usually it is the colorful reconstructions of the fluorescent emissions that charms the artists’ eye in a confocal laser scans, in this case the artists opt in favor of a black and white image which recalls the sight that fascinated Cajal when he first observed brain tissue impregnated with the Golgi stain. For Cajal the neuron revealed itself as "coloured brownish black […], standing out with unsurpassable clarity upon a transparent yellow background.” All was, Cajal recalls in his memories, “sharp as a sketch with Chinese ink.”305 The choice of a black and white negative of confocal laser microscopy images (in both Structure of Thought 13 and 16) is without doubt an aesthetic and conceptual choice. As all elements in the work of Mike and Doug Starn, the black ink printing has symbolical weight and brings a different dimension to the artwork. “Black is”, one reads in the artists’ statement “in the color spectrum, literally the absorption of all visible light. We use this symbolically in our silhouetted images of trees; in this understanding, we relate the black of body of the trees to the black of written information, the black ink on the pages of books through thousands of years of transcribed thought and creation. The Sun writes of its complex knowledge and describes itself, the trees as containers of comprehensive information and layered knowledge. The interconnectedness of trees-branches over branches into branches. Web, network, synapses, like dendritic neurons in the brain. The network of information and links. The pictogram nature of Chinese calligraphy is in relation to the silhouetted form of trees; the layered dendritic branches are in relation to the complexities of knowledge, understanding, memory and imagination. These trees are light written in the calligraphy of the sun. And in a delightful coincidence, the way the living neurons are

                                                                                                                304

Mike and Doug Starn, "Absorption – Transmission, March 18, 2005 – July 15, 2005," National Academy of Sciences ed. (2005), p. 3. 305

Marina Bentivoglio, "Life and Discoveries of Santiago Ramón y Cajal,” Nobelprize.org, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1906/cajal-article.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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imaged is bioluminenesence (harvested from a jellyfish or firefly) is expressed into a single neuron and the neuron becomes illuminated (and a photomicrograph is taken of it)—the neuron absorbs the light.”306

The Starns give great importance to the graphic quality of their work placing great emphasis on structure itself. Black neurons on a white-yellowish background echo in a more efficient way the images of the trees printed with heavy black ink on translucent paper. In the same way, the tress themselves are striped bare of their foliage, in spite of the theoretical reference to photosynthesis. Leafless elm-looking arbors are more powerful in evoking memories and more appropriate in addressing the intricate structure of thought. Furthermore, the barren trees of thought are more suggestive of neurons and neural networks then a full-foliage tree.

* * * * *

Like the Starn Brothers, Roxy Paine has reached the neuron by first addressing the metaphorical malleability of dendritic structures, with the tree as a starting point. Neuron (2010) is a monumental stainless steel sculpture installed for Sydney’s 17th Art Biennale in 2010, and which developed naturally within Paine’s Dendroid series. Started in 1998, the Dendroid series was prompted by a general interest in the dendritic form and it aimed to emphasize the dichotomy between the natural and the artificial. Using industrial piping, Paine constructed a large number of tree-looking forms of great dimensions, which were displayed either in nature, as monumental sculptures or in museums and galleries — as installations encompassing the entire gallery space. The name of the series ‘dendroids,’ evokes more than just the idea of tree-form, it also suggests a fusion of dendritic and android like forms. Natural dendritic structures are rendered lifeless becoming a mechanical, industrial system. With each Dendroid in the series, the form gets further away from the initial illusionistic image of the tree. If the first Dendroid - Impostor (1999) (Fig. 27) is a rather                                                                                                                 306

Mike and Doug Starn, Artists Webpage, http://www.starnstudio.com/Abs_Transmission.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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realistic representation of an arbor, subsequent Dendroids evolve in a direction that increasingly defy natural laws. Eleanor Heartney, in her book on Roxy Paine, describes the gradual metamorphosis of the tree images towards abstract metal structures. “The interwoven branches of Conjoined (2007), seem to have grown towards each other rather than towards light. Inversion grows upside-down.”307 Heartney points out that, in his later works, Paine manipulates and re-orders the dendritic elements creating thus the suggestion of networking structures which have little to do with trees, and instead recall energy fields, computer circuits, or neural networks. In Maelstrom, Heartney observes, the new hybrid is suggestive of neural networks. With the next projects, Neuron (2010) (Fig. 28) and Distillation (2010) (Fig. 29), Paine uses the neuron explicitly and takes the idea of interconnected networks further. In Distillation, the tree is transformed beyond recognition into an installation of pipes, food processing tanks, industrial valves, and pharmaceutical glass vessels along with steel kidney shaped reservoirs, mushrooms, branches and neuron forms. All elements together compose an installation reminiscent of an alchemy laboratory.308 Neuron-like shapes are present in this work as well, but what stands out about this piece, as a neuro artwork, is the conceptual parallel Paine makes between Distillation and his own thought process while creating art. Distillation, Paine states, “also relates to the way I've always thought about my process. How ideas come in coarse and ferment in the brain, and eventually are distilled out of that brew. It's a map of the way humans constantly flit between different frames of mind and fields of knowledge.”309 In becoming a neuron, Paine’s dendroid loses the intimate contact the initial trees had with the environment. The interplay between natural and man-made, and the reflection upon the interaction of the two, is no longer evoked by Neuron. Instead, starting with Distillation, a new metaphorical dimension becomes apparent. The Dendroid series is not only suggestive                                                                                                                 307

Eleanor Heartney, Roxy Paine (Munich: Prestel, 2009), p. 74.

308

James Cohan Gallery, Roxy Paine: Distillation (2010), Press Release: http://www.jamescohan.com/exhibitions/2010-10-16_roxy-paine/press-release/ (accessed February 28, 2012). 309

Cited in: Hilarie M. Sheets, "Man of Steel's Industrial Web, Mirroring Nature " The New York Times (13 October 2010), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/arts/design/17roxy.html?pagewanted=all (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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of natural forms in industrial coating, but they are also evocative of natural processes in the form of industrial mechanisms. The initial intention of exploring the materiality and structure of the natural in contrast to the industrial form, transformed into the investigation of natural and industrial processes. If, as Heartney explains, “ early examples focused more on the visual contradictions between the living tree and their leafless metal counterparts,”310 the later installations focus on the idea of the dendritic form as connecting systems of visible and invisible networks.311

* * * * *

One of the most spectacular contributions to the neuron-tree metaphor is found in the works of Andrew Carnie. Two of his artistic projects, both of which have as a starting point scientific research, address the formal parallelism between neurons and trees. The first project makes use of neuron images as suggestive of trees, while the second uses tree images to allude to neural process. Carnie started using the neuron as symbolic element in 2002, when he engaged in the art-neuroscience collaborative project initiated by the Wellcome Trust. The first artistic project, already mentioned in the previous chapter,312 was inspired by the work of Cajal and was informed by contemporary research in neuroscience. The result, Magic Forest (2002) (Fig. 30-32), was displayed first at the Science Museum in London, as part of the Head On: Art with the Brain In Mind exhibition, and had since traveled the world. According to Carnie, Magic Forest started as an exploration of memory. The artwork is a response to the contemporary observation in neuroscience that memories are determined by electrical signals which pass back and forth between the hippocampus and the cortex over lengthy periods as they are fixed into long term memory.313 As the artists describes in the project statement:                                                                                                                 310 311 312 313

 

Heartney, Roxy Paine, p. 72. Ibid., p. 211. See pp. 106-7. Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 40.

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“… the work is based on contemporary concepts of neuronal proliferation, migration, connectivity and cell death (apoptosis). Visually owing much to looking at optical sections of the structure of the brain, the work started as an examination of memory. The brain structure holds memories: the work reflects some recent findings about the slow drift of memory and the processing that happens over the years to fix memories through dreams. Magic Forest reflects the state of flux, fluidity and change that is revealed through contemporary science. The work pays homage to the beauty and sheer complexity of the structure of the brain and its steady development, its geneticallydriven growth influences by experience. ”314

At the basis of the work are images of neurons obtained through laser confocal microscopy scanning in the laboratory of Richard Wingate, at Kings College, London.315 The images in the Magic Forest are of fluorescent stained in vitro neurons which grow and transform over time. If the Starn brothers opted for the black and white negative images of the neuron, because it served better their aesthetic aims, in Carnie’s work, the colors which “reflect the fluorescence used and seen in the staining of individual neurones”316 add a iridescent touch to the Magic Forest. Looking at florescent neurons under the microscope and knowing that these minute biological entities are responsible for us seeing, thinking, and imagining — can be nothing but astonishing. When stepping into the dark room installation — a dark magic forest of florescent neurons — one feels as if metaphorically walking inside a fantastic brain. If at the beginning the slide show keeps the viewer at a distance, through the image of the skull, as soon as the skull disappears however, the viewer becomes part of the installation and is being enclosed within a forest of ever growing neurons. The darkness that surrounds the installation is significant not only in technical terms, making the slide images more vivid, but contributes also to the emotional impact of the dreamlike ‘magic forest.’ The analogy to the magic forest, Siân Ede points out, brings about

                                                                                                                314

Ibid., p. 40.

315

The confocal microscope allows for point-to-point image collection. The shape of the neuron is digitally reconstructed one depth level at the time. The image information is restricted at a well-defined plane and has great contrast and definition. This method does require neither thin slicing nor tissue fixation, and consequently it permits the examination of living tissue. 316

Andrew Carnie, Artist website: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/magicforest.htm (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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feelings of mystery, fear, and surprise.317 Like a magic forest, the brain, inspires fascination, mystery and uneasiness. The second artwork series delving into the tree-neuron similarity consists of a large number of giclée inkjet printings in which images of trees overlap slices of axial brain scans. Part of a project entitled Dimensions of/in Perception, an initiative of Global Eye Art,318 the prints were displayed at the VG Art gallery in London in the fall of 2010, in an exhibition suggestively entitled ‘Dendritic Forms.’ The Global Eye Art project, and subsequently Carnie’s works, set out to explore a fundamental issues for both art and science: human perception. Irrigate (2009) (Fig. 33), for example, was inspired by a seminal scientific experiment on vision carried out in the early 1960s by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. Huble and Wiesel raised newborn kittens with one eye close, discovering thus that, after three months of life with an eye occluded, the kittens were blind in the deprived eye, and that most cells in the visual cortex would only respond to stimuli in the visual field of the normal eye.319 According to Carnie, Irrigate, was inspired by the idea, concluded from this research, that what we see in the first three months of our lives has irreversible impact on the way our brain is wired. The roots of the plants in Irrigate, being exposed to different levels of irrigation, Carnie states, produce different plants.320 Carnie’s work addresses two different aspects of brain function. Works Like Irrigate, What Did You Expect, Refraction, You are there, and I Can See What You Say Now probe visual perception, while Twisted Cyclone, TLE 2 - Swirl, and TLE 1 New World, make reference to neurological conditions, such as temporal lobe epilepsy. In Irrigate, as in most other works in the series, the tree and plant images are superimposed on images of axial brain scans. The two plants in this work, and the trees in subsequent images are situated such that they seem to be growing out of the brain at                                                                                                                 317 318

Ede, Art and Science, pp. 101-102. Global Eye Art, Project Webpage, http://global-eye-art.com/mission.asp (accessed February 28, 2012).

319

Torsten N. Wiesel, "The Postnatal Development of the Visual Cortex and the Influence of Enviroment," in Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1981-1990, ed. Tore Frängsmyr and Jan Lindsten (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 1993). 320

Shanta Barley, "One-Eyed Cats: Art Wired for Science," New Scientist Blog (2010), http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/06/andrew-carnie-an-artist-wired-for-science.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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the level of the eye orbits, referring thus primarily to the phenomenon of visual perception. In some prints, as for example in Refraction (2009) (Fig. 34), vision is portrayed as partially mirroring reality. The work suggests an understanding of the visual phenomenon as determined at the same time by the external reality and by the brain wiring. Because of this duality, the mental representations are determined by a constant loop in which the external reality predetermines the way our brain wires, but at the same time, our brain wiring determines how the external reality is perceived. The meeting point between the external and internal tree is at the level of the retina. As the image enters the mind, it is slightly re-shaped, adapting to a new environment — the neural environment. The extension of the branching structures beyond the retina and towards the occipital lobe recalls the intricate neural pathways which — starting at the retinal level and projecting towards the visual cortex — make vision possible. Refraction, but even more so Ways of Seeing Three (2009) (Fig. 35) addresses vision in yet another way, by offering a visual play in which the vertical shifts into the horizontal and vice-versa. In one reading of this image, the trees stand vertically, having the head/brain as ‘the ground,’ as the place of their roots. The other reading would interpret the axial section of the brain as seen from above, and in this case, the trees themselves are in horizontal position, parallel to a hypothetical ground. Such a visual play would have been avoided, had the artist chosen instead of an axial view, a vertical — sagittal or coronal section of the brain. Ways of Seeing can thus be seen as incorporating vision and its complexities as its subject, but at the same time addressing the viewers’ own visual processes directly. With such an understanding of Refraction, it is interesting to look at one more artwork in the series: What Did You Expect (2009) (Fig. 36). Through its title, the image calls to mind the idea of visual priming. We are primed when we interpret what we see in the light of what we are expecting to see. The mental reflections of the trees suggest the great degree to which one’s expectation influences what one actually sees. Further works, grounded in knowledge about temporal lobe epilepsy, display the turbulent twists of trees in a vertigo-like hallucination. In Twisted Cyclone (2009) (Fig.

 

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37) and TLE 2 - Swirl (2009) (Fig. 38), the tree images are contained within the perimeter of the brain scan. In these images, in comparison to the works previously discussed, the trees do not break the surface delimited by the skull at the orbital level, as if suggesting that everything is happening within the brain, disconnected from the external reality. In more general terms, Carnie’s work has been described as exploring “how the forms of neurons and neuronal connectivity is determined by the environment, and how the very environment one grows up in determines the form of our nervous system.”321 Irrigate, is in this regard, an effective example. In a different work, entitled Echo Perl Delta (2010) (Fig. 39), Carnie introduces in an ingenious way another environmental element, and speculates on a further parallel between the tree and the brain. By overlapping on the brain slice an image of tree rings, the artist emphasizes the parallel between the environmental impact on both brains and trees. The tree rings, are commonly regarded as a record of the tree’s history, but while recording their own history, the trees also record the history of their environment. 322 In the same spirit, the brain is an imprint of personal evolution and a response to environmental changes. All Carnies work presented here are metaphoric reflections on neurological processes which encourage a complex way of interpretation. Whereas Magic Forest proposes a forest of neurons, the Dendritic Forms series inserts the tree forms within the brain. Together the two projects put forward the idea that the artist has substituted one dendritic form for the other, employing the neuron where the tree would be expected and using the tree when one would look for the neuron.

                                                                                                                321

Global Eye Art, Project Webpage, http://global-eye-art.com/project01.asp (accessed February 28, 2012). 322

In a very interesting piece of research, Ulf Büntgen and his team inferred from tree ring studies a strong historical association between hydroclimatic conditions and human history. Ulf Büntgen, et al., "2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility," Science 331 (January 13, 2011).

 

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* * * * *

To discover the tree-neuron connection and to fully use the metaphorical implication of this parallelism, Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, like Roxy Paine or the Starn brothers, started with something else in mind. The two artists’ collaboration begun in 1997 and their works portray the same dichotomy that informs the work of Roxy Paine, between artificial and natural. If Paine places artificial constructions of trees in natural or semi-natural spaces such as parks, Steiner and Lenzlinger employ natural and man-made objects for their indoor installations. Falling Garden (2003) (Fig. 40), the first installation to use real tree branches and twigs along a large array of other natural and artificial products - taxidermic specimens, home grown fertilizer crystals, plastic fruits, rubber snakes, seeds and thorns, teeth and bones, etc. - was displayed in the church of San Staë in Venice, as a Swiss contribution to the 50th Biennale. This installation has little, if any, reference to neuroscientific ideas, but is, nevertheless, important as it precedes and informs several later works by Steiner and Lenzlinger, which introduce the image of trees as neurons. Visually enthralling, the installation re-modeled the atmosphere of the Baroque church. Inspired by and constructed in the spirit of the space it occupies, Falling Garden is symbolically understood by the artists as completing two stories — that of Saint Eustace and that of the church itself. “The Doge (Mocenigo) needed a church so as to be able to have a monumental tomb built for himself, the church (San Staë) needed a saint so as to be able to be built, the saint (San Eustachio) needed a miracle so as to be pronounced a saint, the miracle needed a stag in order to be seen, and we built the garden for the reindeer.”323

In this context, the artists created a suspended garden for the deer that miraculously showed Eustatchio the life path that made him worthy of being a saint. A large round white bed in the center of the sanctuary above the Doge’s grave invited the visitors to lay down and contemplate what Philip Auslander calls a “colorful rain shower in a state

                                                                                                                323

Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Artists Webpage, http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_giardino.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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of suspended animation.”324 The last sentence in the installation’s description: “the visitors lie on the bed above the doge’s gravestone, and the garden thinks for them,” points directly to the idea of the thinking forest that later works such as the Brainforest (2004) (Fig. 41) and the Vegetative Nervous System (2006) (Fig. 42) explore further. All three projects — Fallen Garden, Brainforest, and Vegetative Nervous System — are different versions of the same idea. However, thanks to the artists’ particular attention to the distinctiveness of each space/place which hosts their work, each instance of this creative idea comes to life in a specific and individual way. “We love to work with the energy that already exists in a place and just has to be channeled into a certain direction,” the artists state.325 In the city of Kanazawa in Japan, where Brainforest was created, Steiner and Lenzlinger — brought along some fragments of the Fallen Garden, but also made use of local resources to create the installation. Local school pupils, senior citizens, and art students contributed objects and work force, bringing a ‘collective individuality’ to the project. Kanazawa left its mark on the artwork in the same way the work made its contribution to and affected the life of Kanazawa. Brainforest incorporates memories, it stirs memories, and leaves an imprint on the visitors’ memory. The description of the artwork is not only poetic but it also contributes to defining the work’s meaning, and therefore, it is valuable to reproduce it here entirely: “The large white room (16 m x 16 m x 12 m) is a tiny section of the huge brain of Kanazawa. In the newly-born museum the nerve cells have to make decisive connections. People from Kanazawa pull on the threads with us. Gardeners help in the search for various roots, lianas and branches in the luscious forests. Three primary and secondary school classes make flowers out of plastic bottles and illustrated magazines. At a senior citizens' club members fold dice-shaped paper flowers, and a group involved in pressing flower petals gives us a present of birds. In the Kenrokuen Garden all the leaves are carefully swept up from the ground every day so that the moss can thrive. Art students then gild these leaves. Kanazawa means “gold stream” and is a reference to the tradition of gold-beating to produce gold-leaf. The artificial plants are

                                                                                                                324

Philip Auslander, "The Biennale and Its Discontents," A Journal of Performance and Art 26, 1 (2004), p. 57. 325

Cited in: Kathrin Frauenfelder, "Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger: Visions of Paradise," Sculpture 25, 8 ( 2006), p. 29.

 

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from the 100-yen shop and souvenirs from ‘Giardino calante’ in Venice. We gather abandoned telephone and computer cable from three different rubbish heaps. On the beach we find pieces of polystyrene, bits of nets, string and rope, plastic of all kinds. These are discarded thoughts that are repeatedly washed ashore. In the rain forest of the brain, the bio-diversity of thoughts proliferates and the intellect's short-circuits whirr in your eyes. Needless to say, as time goes by the circuits get tired and nervous; there are burn-outs and failures. But chance creates the most sparkling ideas.”326

Through the idea of ‘brainforest,’ the artists associate the workings of the mind with that of a rainforest suggesting complex connections and parallels between the neuronal forest and tropical jungle. Yet, unlike the mysterious brain and the dense impenetrable rainforest, Brainforest is light, luminous, and colorful. Merging natural and artificial elements — colorful fertilizer crystals, plastic, gold, and paper connected and supported through networks of branches, twigs and cables lead to, as Yuko Hasegawa points out, “an astonishing biodiversity that serves as a metaphor for the vast range of thoughts that are activated by synapses.”327 Another site-specific work was installed at the museum Kunst Palast Düsseldorf since 2006. Vegetative Nervous System is based on the same principles as Brainforest. Delicate branches support minute objects, some of which have been manufactured by the artists, others collected during their travels across the world, and some were gathered in Düsseldorf.328 Vegetative Nervous System represents a further development of the Brainforest. It introduces the idea of the museum as a body with a nervous system. The ends of the installation, according to the artists, “branch out into pillars, railings, walls and ceilings where they join the body ‘museum’. They stimulate it and give the necessary impulses.”329 The artists make a direct parallel between their work and the autonomic nervous system, having thus an even more prominent influence from brain sciences. “Unimpressed by will or order,” the artists write, “the vegetative nervous                                                                                                                 326

From Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Artists Webpage, http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_brainforest.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 327

Yuko Hasegawa, "Biological Alchemy as Salvation of the Soul," from Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Artists Webpage, http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/stomachj_biological.html (accessed April 7, 2011). 328

Museum kunst palast, "Spot On: Das Vegetative Nervensystem." http://www.smkp.de/ausstellungen/archiv/2008.html (accessed April 7, 2011). 329

Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Artists Webpage, http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_dasvegetativenervensystem.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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system (the autonomic nervous system) works autonomously in the body and takes decisions independently. […] Autonomous actions are the fertilizer of the inner garden.” 330

As a choice of words, “vegetative” brings back the reference to the vegetal and re-

emphasizes the natural-artificial dualism. In theory, the reference to the autonomic nervous system — as the nervous system that regulates the body's involuntary functions — removes from the work the implicit complexity of thoughts and memories associated to the Brainforest. In practical terms, however, the colorful and elegant construction would likely leave on the viewer an impression similar to the one left by Brainforest and Falling Garden. Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, involve the nervous system at different symbolic levels in their work. They invoke along with thoughts, memories and memory formation, also the involuntary neural processes our body is engaged in. Making use of branches and twigs to symbolize neurons and neurological connections, the two artists create e neural forest out of real trees. In this way, their work adds a new dimension to the tree-neuron metaphor. It is not only that the tree images are suggestive of neurons and images of neurons suggestive of trees; in Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger work, one biological dendritic structure substitutes symbolically the other.

* * * * *

Part of elaborated artistic discourses, all works in this chapter belong to series of works in which the ideas develop organically. All projects, (except Carnie’s Dendritic Forms) are large-scale installations which use a variety of media to play with the metaphorical content of the ideas they illustrate. In most cases, discovering the neuron as a potential subject for artistic investigation is the consequence of a long conceptual process. The evolution of thought can be observed in the visual development of the artworks as well as in the theoretical discourse which surrounds them. Often, artists seem to come across conceptual suggestions which, although not initially intended, are                                                                                                                 330

 

Ibid.

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serendipitously encountered and developed further. Such is the case of Starn brother’s work Structure of Thought, where although the suggestion of tree-neuron parallelism was not intended, the moment the idea became apparent, it led to subsequent art works which introduced neuron images along trees and speculated upon their similarity. All artists made direct reference to neuroscience and some of them — Andrew Carnie and Mike and Doug Starn for example — had direct conceptual or visual inspiration from scientific laboratories. However, none of the images are intended as scientific illustration or have a didactical purpose, but take upon a scientific idea and transform it to serve aesthetic aims. In spite of the large variety of visual results, artists address recurrent concerns such as the exploration of memory and the interest for the natural/man-made dichotomy. Perhaps the most interesting recurrence is the attention to the context, the surrounding, and the environment. Carnie’s work explores the way the external environment influences how the brain is wired and how reality is perceived. Roxy Paine places his ‘impostor’ trees in parks, in forests, or concrete dominated spaces, thus bringing attention not only to the artwork but also to the environment surrounding it. The meaning of the installations is directly dependent on the places it has been created for. In the work of the Starn brothers, for example, the way the Structure of Thought is displayed changes — sometimes slightly, sometimes radically — the meaning of the works. Included in several exhibitions, Structure of Thought develops and adjusts in a chameleonic way along other art works, responding to the individual needs of each exhibition setting. Artworks from different series have been displayed along with the Structure of Thought in different visual configurations. In each instance, the artists create a new context which prompts new levels of meaning and increases the metaphorical complexity of the works. The Gravity of Light exhibition, for example,331 emphasizes the literal and metaphorical force of light for trees, nocturnal insects, and                                                                                                                 331

Gravity of Light was displayed at: Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts (October 2008), and at Färgfabriken Kunsthalle, Stockholm (November 2004 – January 2005).

 

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thoughts. The Absorption + Transmission332 exhibition prompts associations with the process of photosynthesis, carbon emission, absorption of light, and transmissions of impulses. In Behind your Eye,333 the phenomenon of vision, photography, and photosensitivity are emphasized. A similar metamorphosis of meaning can be experienced in the work of Steiner and Lenzlinger. From Fallen Garden to Brainforest and Vegetative Nervous System, the artworks incorporate the ‘local,’ they assimilate the influences of the environment, and, in the process of doing so, they reasemble old elements in new configurations. All artists lift the neuron beyond its formal structure and emphasize its potential in stimulating metaphorical thought, creating thus works of great aesthetic and conceptual value. Re-contextualizing — sometimes the same idea, and sometimes the same work — artists emphasize and reinterpret the metaphors. Visually simple and elegant, these projects present an amazingly intricate conceptual background, which invites incursions in our own nervous system, our own memories, and our own thoughts.

From Neuroabstractions to Synapses: Neurons, Synapses, Connections Although the most prominent metaphorical interpretation of the neuron is attained through the association with the tree, artists had made use of the image, structure, and functionality of the neuron in other ways. In this chapter, I examine a number of artworks which experiment with the neuron further, and I reflect on the status of these artworks in the context of neuro art. Elizabeth Horowitz is an artist who draws direct inspiration from scientific imagery, and, while keeping the structure of the scientific illustration almost intact, transposes the image in watercolor. The artist uses neuroabstractions (a term she copyrighted) to define her aquarelle interpretations of microscopic images of brain tissue. As a watercolor painter, Horowitz encountered neuroscience and the brain                                                                                                                 332 333

 

On display at The National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, (March – July 2005). On display at the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York, (March – August 2004).

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serendipitously. The artist herself sees the encounter with neuroscientific imagery as a radical turn in her artistic career towards abstraction. She describes neuroabstractions as images “halfway between trivial realism and randomness.”334 As a term, neuroabstractions opens up interesting conceptual discussions. It is questionable to what degree the neuroabstractions are in fact abstract images. Serving a scientific purpose, the microphotographs that inspire Horowitz’s watercolors, are generally considered naturalistic interpretations of a microscopic reality. Arguably therefore, despite their resemblance to the geometric forms of abstract art, Horowitz’s neuroabstractions are, in fact, realistic representations of a microscopic reality. The representational character of her images is emphasized by the direct reference to the scientific images. In a lecture at Montclair State University 335 in 2009, Horowitz presented her images side by side with scientific illustrations from the neuroscience laboratory of Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki (compare Fig. 43 and Fig. 44). The similarity in composition and chromatics between the scientific illustrations and the watercolors are striking. Thus, Horowitz’s artworks bring hardly anything new conceptually or visually to the image. When presented to our eyes and our minds, the two images will elicit a similar reaction. In some instances, poetic titles suggest slight metaphoric interpretations (as for example: Dendritic Dance, Pathway to Peace, Dentate Forest Aflame), however most of the watercolors carry along the anatomical description of the scientific illustration (Dentate Gyrus, Pyramidal Cell, Neural Network). Thus the merit of Horowitz’s works is not their creativity (in terms of subject, composition or chromatics) or their contribution to the history of art, but the fact that they introduce neuroscientific imagery to an audience (art gallery visitors) that is perhaps less likely to be exposed to neuroscientific images. Although, as a concept, the notion of neuroabstraction is worthy of note, the artistic results are not particularly spectacular and lack conceptual complexity. Although visually appealing, due to their                                                                                                                 334

Elizabeth Horowitz, Artist Webpage, http://www.elizabethjhorowitz.com/content/neuros/neurosas.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 335

Elizabeth Horowitz, "The Brain: Creating Science Creating Art," Sokol Lecture Series, video recording available at: http://www.montclair.edu/news/article.php?ArticleID=3619&ChannelID=7 (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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elegant graphism and vivid palette, the neuroabstractions are as engaging as their scientific counterparts. Laura Splan on the other hand, which, like Horowitz, draws inspiration from neuro-anatomical structures, adds powerful metaphorical connotations to the images by using her own blood ‘as ink.’ Upon initial inspection, the images seem to be simple graphic interpretations of neuron-like structures: neuron bodies, dendrites, cone neurons, and glia cells. The medium and the titles - Reflexive (2004) (Fig. 45) and Thought Patterns (2003) (Fig. 46) — encourage the onlooker to approach the images thoughtfully. The two series, as the artist affirms, “explore the relationship between the images being depicted and the source of the medium with which they are drawn.”336 The elegant and fragile looking drawings contrast the powerful effect triggered by blood as the medium. Awareness that blood has been used as ink invites a detective like attitude to interpreting the images. Whose blood was used? How was it obtained? What instrument was used to apply it on paper? What could have been the motive for using it? These are few questions one is prone to ask when investigating Laura Splan’s artworks. Describing her work, the artist writes: “Reflexive explores the narrative implications of blood through its physical qualities. Each drawing was created using blood taken from my fingertips as the primary medium. The drawings reference neuroanatomical forms sometimes directly, sometimes loosely. I was drawn to these images as a formal exploration of the elements of our body that tell us we sense pain or pleasure. We respond to these sensations in a way that we often have no control over. Bleeding itself is an involuntary response to the penetration of the skin. The images of neurons and other brain structures evoke the complex psychological and physiological responses our body has to outside forces. The forms of the brain structures act as visual metaphors for the extreme complexity and delicate fragility of the human body.”337

By using blood as a medium, the artist gives a morbid touch to the images. Although blood is the medium that supplies oxygen and nutrients to our body and brain, it is rare that one looks at blood with fascination. Associated with accidents, violence, or laboratory analysis in search of diseases, the sight of blood commonly triggers a                                                                                                                 336

Laura Splan, Artist Webpage, http://laurasplan.com/projects/thought_patterns.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 337

Laura Splan, Artist Webpage, http://laurasplan.com/projects/reflexive.html (accessed February 28, 2012).

 

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squeamish reaction. In this context however, the use of blood as ink gives the work a performative aspect. In a similar fashion to action painting, the creative gesture becomes relevant to the artwork. As the artist points out, using blood prompts the onlooker to visualize the artistic process. “The way the viewer will imagine me making the work becomes part of its conceptual meaning. The image of me drawing with blood […] is certainly part of the work unfolding for the viewer.”338 These works also bring into focus metaphorical levels of interaction between blood and neurons. One of the drawings in the Reflexive series depicts images of neurons resembling the cone cells of the retina, cells that are essential in the first stages of color processing. One could speculate that, by drawing in blood neurons responsible for processing color, the artwork underlines the importance of cone cells in detecting the red color, and consequently, in understanding the message of the image. Through her works, one could say, Laura Splan has achieved her declared goal of creating images which challenge the viewer, evoke questions and maintain a sense of wonder.339

* * * * *

Despite its important function in the nervous system, as the junction at which one neuron communicates with another, the synapse has received little attention in art and popular culture. The variety and complexity of synapses are only known to the specialist; for the rest, synapses are represented schematically as the space between neurons. Artists, therefore, did not find the synapse particularly appealing from a visual or conceptual point of view. Most works which allude to synapses appear visually as clichés of tangled networks. Philip Vaughan’s Scintillating Synapse (2001) (Fig. 47) and Pryor Callway's Synapses (2011) (Fig. 48) are each a case in point — nothing but simplistic visualization                                                                                                                 338 339

 

Paulina McFarland, "Interview with Laura Splan," Art XX Magazine, 2 ( 2009), p. 42. Ibid., p. 43.

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of intersecting lines. The virtue of Callway's art installation resides in the play of threedimensional line and the connective networks that the construction establishes with its own shadow on the walls. The visual appeal of the work is given by the shadow projections, which virtually expand the visual space and connect at particular junctions with the mash of plastic straws. The development of the line in space, the way it expands with spontaneity and lightness gives the work a graphic refinement — but there is hardly anything else to this work. Among the few artworks which tackle the synapse as an artistic subject, Kim Ye's project from 2009 stands out through its conceptual complexity. A sculpture, an installation, and a performance at the same time, Ye's Synapses (Fig. 48) is a unique artistic manifestation. Making direct visual (see Axon, Fig. 50) and textual references to the neural synapse, the work uses the synaptic connectivity as a pretext to explore a more encompassing notion of connectivity — that between two individuals. The two models performing in the installation are wearing bizarre costumes made out of latex and polyester, extended by tubular appendages which take contorted forms and fill the gallery space. The performers are literally connected through their costumes and their movements are partially constrained by the dendritic looking extensions. There are two potential readings to this performative sculpture. Firstly, one could understand the organic structures as humanoid personifications of neurons engaged in a synaptic connection with each other. In this way, the artist draws the viewer's attention towards the fantastic, yet imperceptible, activity of neurons. The second reading is also a metaphorical extrapolation of the concept of connectivity. Through their outfits, the two performers are literally connected with each other and they constrain each other’s movements. But the connection between the two goes beyond the physical. They communicate also at an instinctual, emotional, and intellectual level. The physical interaction of the two actors, dressed in neuron-like outfits, alludes to brain processes which make possible and determine interpersonal relationships. The performance underlines the importance of the neurological substrata for any type of human interaction, be it with the environment or with another human being.

 

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In a very different way, Phillip Stearns address the same phenomenon: the interaction between two entities and the neural networks that supports them. His electronic sculpture Artificial Analog Neural Network (AANN) (2009) (Fig. 51), is a project of interactive media art inspired by scientific endeavors of neurobiology, cognitive science, network science, and electronics. The sculpture reacts to the movement and the sound produced by the gallery visitors and, as a response, it emits “quick chirps or tone bursts descending in pitch, and small red lights distributed throughout the sculpture light up with each outburst.”340 In turn, upon their realization that their presence affects AANN, the visitors actively provoke the installation by directly engaging with it. “The cause is not immediately known to the viewer — the artist observes — but the invitation for interaction is irresistible. Waving and clapping hands, even shouting, makes the sculpture blink, twitter and chirp more vigorously, and occasionally the fragile mass of electronics chatters on its own for a few moments before settling back down. Eventually the temptation is for the viewer to adopt the sculpture's language and to "speak" to it by chirping and whistling in turn.”341

The sculpture is made out of 45 electronic units, called neurons, which create a network whose typology is informed by network computing models. This sculpture is particularly intriguing in the context of this chapter as it introduces in art an aspect rarely addressed by artists, namely the structure and functionality of neurons. Most commonly, artists are interested in the formal aspect of the neuron — its beauty and form, its metaphorical potential in relation to other dendritic structures — and less interested in the way it works as part of a neural network. Therefore, Stearns’ work is important in awakening an aesthetic interest for the way the neuron functions. Furthermore, Stearns’ installation reveals the human instinct to interact with its surrounding and the entities which populate it. The success of this installation depends on the viewers’ curiosity and willingness to interact with an unpredictable artificial structure. As the author has observed, visitors are interested in understanding the rules according to which AANN operates, such that they become                                                                                                                 340

Phillip Stearns, Artist Webpage, http://www.art-rash.com/pixelform/projects.html (accessed February 28, 2012). 341

 

Ibid.

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able to trigger particular reactions in their interlocutor. Although the process of communication is artificial, in experiencing the artwork, viewers obtain substantial information about AANN, and find considerable satisfaction in discovering clues about the sculpture’s interactive behavior. The composition of small electronic components, connected by differently colored wires, places the work at the borderline between art and technology. Their arrangement in a squid-like form, and the hand-made status, confirm that aesthetic aspects have been considered in the construction of the sculpture. A structure at the borderline between art and technology Artificial Analog Neural Network, as the artist himself points out, “is not a tool for running calculations; the project is meant to give a physical and interactive form to otherwise abstract computational theories used by computer scientists in pattern recognition applications.” Therefore, despite its rather weak aesthetic properties, being more an electronic construction than an art object, Artificial Analog Neural Network displays creative ideas which justify its presence in an art historical study. Another science-and-art project, whose conceptual and scientific features overshadow the aesthetic ones, was developed by a group of engineers, scientists, and artists of the SymbioticA group at The University of Western Australia. A hybrid product, MEART-The Semi Living Artist (2002) (Fig. 52), is a device which merges electronic and biological parts to construct a ‘semi-living artist’. The idea of this project was initiated at SymbioticA by Oron Catts, the artist and designer whose research interest was to create semi-living objects or products outside of academic, medical, or agricultural research fields. As the founder of Tissue Culture and Art Project342 in 1996, and of SymbioticA343 later in 2006, Oron Catts proposed a new form of aesthetic expression achieved through the manipulation of growing living cells. Semi-living art, for the first time in MEART, is concerned with the manipulation of                                                                                                                 342

Oron Catts, "The Tissue Culture and Art," Project Webpage, http://tcaproject.org (accessed March 1, 2012). 343

The University of Western Australia, "SymbioticA – The Art & Science Collaborative Research Lab," Project Webpage, http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au (accessed March 1, 2012).

 

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nerve cells. MEART is a drawing robotic arm controlled by electric impulses received from several thousands neurons from embryonic rat cortex grown over a Multi Electrode Array. The bio-cybernetic ‘artist’ is a sort of a performing artist, working ‘live’ in various gallery spaces. The robotic arm, placed at different times in different art galleries around the world performs certain ‘artistic’ tasks. In one exhibition, for example, MEART was drawing portraits of visitors in the gallery. The neurons in the ‘brain’ of the artists — placed remotely in Dr. Steve Potter's lab at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta — receive, via the Internet, information about the visitors’ looks. Captured by a video camera, the portraits of the visitors are converted by a software into electronic impulses and transmitted to the neurons growing in Atlanta, which in turn respond by guiding the arm in drawing the portrait. “MEART has the ability to sense the outside world through a camera that acts as its eyes. It has the ability to process what it sees through the neurons that act as its brain. It has the ability to react accordingly through the robotic drawing arm that acts as its body. The Internet functions as its nervous system.”344 It is easy to see how this construction — which, like artists, has gained notoriety — fascinates and intrigues both the researchers and the spectators. Paul Vanouse, contemplating on the semi-living artist wrote: “to view Meart is to witness a collage of contradictions.”345 Defining MEART by scientific or art historical parameters causes a series of problematic aspects. What MEART really is, and what its scientific and art historical implications are is not clear. In scientific terms, as the project description suggests, MEART is an experiment “performed in order to explore the relationships between the input/stimulation to the neuronal culture and the output/drawings.” The outcomes of the experiment are, however, equivocal. Discussing the contradictions we are faced with when experiencing MEART, Vanouse questions the role of the biological                                                                                                                 344

"MEART – The Semi Living Artist," Project Webpage, http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/project.html (accessed June 21, 2010). 345

Paul Vanouse, cited in: Douglas J. Bakkum and et al., "MEART: The Semi-Living Artist," Frontiers in Neurobotics, Online Research Article (2007), p. 7; article available online: http://www.paulvanouse.com/MEART_PV_essay.pdf (accessed May 12, 2012).

 

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component in the construction of the installation. Asking weather the neurons are just captive in a closed circuit simply returning the electrical impulses they receive, he points out that it is not clear what causes the slight differences in the drawing output. The small variations in the so-called portraits could be “merely low level ‘noise’ in the system”346 or configuration inaccuracies of the process. If this would be the case, then MEART is hardly different from any other software that aims at automating the creative process. MEART anticipates the project website describes, “future scenarios where humans will create/grow/manufacture intuitive and creative “thinking entities” that could be intelligent and unpredictable beings. They may be created by humans for anthropocentric use, but as they will be creative and unpredictable they might not necessarily stay the way they were originally intended.”347 What makes MEART extraordinary is the use of neurons as a functional unit. If the neurons do process the information they receive, then the variations in representation could be seen as evidence of a learning neural network. These are speculations which make the project conceptually interesting. From an art historical perspective, MEART might seem as a project mocking the status of the artist by suggesting it takes rather few neurons to create an artwork. However, in the same spirit of innate contradictions, one could understand MEART as alluding to the complex processing mechanism required for producing on paper just a few lines, and inviting contemplation on what our brain have to process to come up with complex projects like MEART. In contrast to MEART, Silent Barrage 348 (2006) (Fig. 53), another SimbioticA project, abandons the idea of the installation as the creative entity, and brings attention to itself as a created art-and-science project. Born from the same roots and in a similar context, Silent Barrage is, what Steve Potter calls, the new generation of MEART. Based                                                                                                                 346

Paul Vanouse, "Contemplating "Meart – the Semi Living Artist"," (2006) http://www.paulvanouse.com/MEART_PV_essay.pdf (accessed May 12, 2012). 347

"MEART – The Semi Living Artist," Project Webpage, http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/project.html (accessed June 21, 2010). 348

 

"Silent Barrage," Project Webpage, http://silentbarrage.com/project.html (accessed May 12, 2012).

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on the same principle: neurons on a Multi Electrode Array controling electronic entities, Silent Barrage, gives a different visual configuration to the same concept. An immersive installation of architectural proportion, Silent Barrage is made of a small forest of thirtytwo white poles, on which robotic objects move, make noise, and leave marks as guided by the activity of neurons in a petri dish. The neurons and the robotic objects are connected in real time via the Internet through a grid of sixteen electrodes, forming a closed loop. Like with MEART, the performance of Silent Barrage is directly dependent on the presence or absence of visitors in the gallery. Cameras record the movement of the audience and visual information is interpreted through position mapping technology and then relayed to ‘the brain’ by way of electrodes. The robotic objects change their behavior in accordance to the impulses they receive from the gallery. The creators of the Silent Barrage, emphasize that the project has important scientific, artistic, and philosophical implications. In scientific terms, the project hopes to better understand how the uncontrolled activity of neural tissue - typical for culture cells and epilepsy — can be repressed. The project had as a starting point the observation that in culture, lack of sensorial input determines a barrage of activity in neurons, similar to the activity of neurons specific to epileptic seizures. Thus, the electric stimulation determined by the visitors’ movement silences down the impulsive burst of neural activity. Steve Potter hopes, such research will eventually propose feasible alternatives to brain surgery in controlling epileptic seizures. Although the independence and the unpredictability of the robotic bodies are speculated upon, Silent Barrage reinstates the human individual as the creative entity. From a theoretical perspective, Silent Barrage, address issues about learning, memory and brain plasticity, while at the same time raising public awareness about possible implications (ethical and aesthetic) of such hybrid constructions. As the first projects to use the neuron for its functionality in a media art project, MEART and Silent Barrage invite philosophical and ethical debate, without promoting a dystopian interpretation of science and technology. They bind together the natural and the artificial, the brain and

 

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the machine, humans and robots, not only by questioning the dividing lines between them, but also by investigating the possibility for their conflation.

 

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Chapter IV: Neuro Imaging Art – Visualizing the Brain Looking at the Brain “The first time I saw a naked cortex, freshly removed from its bony encasing,” Jonah Lehrer describes in his “Forward” to Portraits of the Mind, “I was struck by its bloodiness. There was no soul there, just a thinking machine made of flesh and fat, dense with purple veins and leaking all sorts of spooky fluids. I couldn’t believe that I had emerged from a similar mass, just these three pounds of meat with the texture of Jell-O.”349 Looking at the naked brain with our bare eyes can trigger a very unsettling experience. For the longest time, visual access to the brain was a morbid encounter. Except for the unfortunate situation when trepanation was performed, or in the event of an open skull fracture, contact with the brain was always postmortem. Information about the brain was only obtained by investigating dead brain tissue. Anatomical drawings and preserved brain specimens were the most common visual encounters with the brain. Preserved human brains can be perhaps perceived with scientific curiosity, maybe even fascination, given the depersonalized situation in which they are presented. But once a name is attached to the brain, or when one becomes aware that this mass of gray matter was, at one time, a human being, the situation changes and one is forced to reflect upon oneself and one’s own mortality. This description can hardly be qualified as beautiful. However, in the past decades, the image of the brain has been completely reframed. Revolutionary brain                                                                                                                 349

 

Jonah Lehrer, Forward to Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind, p. 6.

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imaging technologies provide astounding ways of looking into the brain without opening the skull. What is more, it is now possible — and widely known — that certain imaging techniques are able to track and record activity in the living brain. Tools like CT (computer tomography), PET (positron-emission tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and MEG (magneto-encephalography), are not only essential in digitally reconstructing the form and function of the brain for clinical diagnosis, but are also extensively used in research about the nature of the healthy human brain. Understanding the structure of the nervous system, interpreting the functionality of sensory, motor and visual systems, grasping the mechanism of emotion and the neural basis of cognition and social behavior — all depend substantially on imaging techniques. Brain research and the images that inform, accompany, and illustrate it have become a lot more fascinating than they are disturbing. Unlike older medical technologies — such as the X-rays for example — PET and fMRI technology do not imagine the bones and the familiar skeleton, but record the brain while it is functioning, and thus seem to celebrate life.350 Along with other scientific emblems of the last century — such as Bohr’s model of hydrogen atom, the DNA molecule, or the spherical fullerene molecule — brain images (particularly PET and fMRI scans) are widely disseminated and easily recognizable. Since the results of imaging studies are often intriguing and bear significant implications for society, they frequently become the object of news stories.351 In popular discourse, the role of these images is regularly overstated. Brain scans are presented as authoritative scientific proofs; they are, as Kelly Ann Joyce observes, deemed capable to “reveal the truth about one physical condition, to produce a definitive diagnosis, and reveal one’s identity,”352 when in fact the information the images provide is much more complex and much less clear than it is depicted. In the past years, an increasing number of scholars have addressed the misleading way in which brain images have been used in popular culture to support                                                                                                                 350

Kevles, Naked to the Bone, p. 262.

351

Michelle G. Gibbons, "Seeing the Mind in the Matter: Functional Brain Imaging as Framed Visual Argument," Argumentation and Advocacy 43, 3/4 (2007), p. 175. 352

Kelly Ann Joyce, Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 2.

 

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untruthful claims and to create and inflate brain rhetoric.353 This positive and uncritical framing of the brain has implications both on the way brain images are received by a wide audience, and on the way artists are appropriating the image of the brain in art. If compared to genetic art, neuro art is more celebratory of scientific research than critical. Although neuroscientific research, just as genetic research, has potentially negative implications for the future of humanity, the controversial and critical perspectives on neuroscience do not seem to be of interest (at least not yet) to artists.354 On the contrary, neuroscience is in art celebrated for the fascinating array of topics and the beauty of brain imagery. The presumption of verity and accuracy that the popular media endows brain images with is complemented and reinforced by their beauty. Many of the neuroscientific representations of the brain, particularly those that make the pages of popular magazines and Internet websites, are often praised for their aesthetic quality and mesmerizing effect. But if the popular media is responsible for attributing unjust accuracy and validity to the brain imagery, it is often the scientific community which promotes the brain imagery as beautiful. Organizing image competitions based on aesthetic criteria, curating exhibitions, and publishing coffee-table books about the beauty of neuroscientific imagery, neuroscientists contribute — sometimes purposefully — in promoting overenthusiastic perceptions of brain imagery. From an art historical perspective, it is remarkable how frequently and easily scientists refer to their images and their theories as being beautiful. “Contemporary scientists,” Siân Ede remarks, “often talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘elegance’; artists hardly                                                                                                                 353

See for example Davi Johnson Thornton, Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2011); Joyce, Magnetic Appeal; Gibbons, "Seeing the Mind in the Matter." 354 Neuroscientists and particularly researchers of neuroethics, have identified controversial aspects of neuroscience, both immediate and very distant ones. Enhancement of neurological functions, court ordered neurological rehabilitation, and brain reading are issues believed to be of immediate relevance. In this regard see M. J. Farah, "Emerging Ethical Issues in Neuroscience," Nature Neuroscience 5, 11 (2002). For futuristic prediction in regard to neuroscience see also: Lynch, The Neuro Revolution, and Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution, (New York: Picador, 2003). About the political ramifications of neuroscience see for example Robert H. Blank, Brain Policy: How the New Neuroscience Will Change Our Lives and Our Politics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999).

 

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ever do so.”355 In art and art history, beauty has become a rather trivial quality,356 — an adjective frequently avoided, used ironically within quotations marks, or dissected in scholarly texts on aesthetic judgments — hardly ever used in the evaluation of an image. Art historians trying to understand a particular artifact, Ivan Gaskell points out, usually do so “without the explicit intrusion of aesthetic judgment, which is properly the concern of the critic and, for the theory of such judgment, the philosopher.”357 It is therefore surprising that scientific imagery is often explicitly regarded as beautiful where art is not. In the same book in which Jonah Lehrer provided the gruesome description of the brain this chapter started with, and only few pages later, Carl Schoonover expresses his enthusiasm for the beauty of brain imagery: “I hope that the reader will find, as I do, that they [brain images] are intuitively beautiful and require no explanation for some degree of appreciation, but I also wish that their compelling aesthetic qualities will invite inquiry into what they show and especially into how they are obtained. For if the images are extraordinarily beautiful, I would argue that the principles underling the techniques that created them are in some instances even more exquisite. The manifestations of beauty that we have been licensed to encounter in every nook and cranny of the brain depend, in every single case, on the cleverness and elegance of the strategies employed to illuminate them.”358

Descriptions as this one encourage similar attitudes to the brain in the world of art. Sometimes, as in the case of Elizabeth Jameson, artists who encountered neuroimaging techniques as a diagnosis tool in search for neural dysfunctions still take an overall positive attitude to the image of the brain. Jameson’s fascination with brain scans started from her personal experience. “Diagnosed with the disease of multiple sclerosis,” Jameson explains her interests in medical imaging, “I found myself confronting stark images of my brain that seemed equally frightening and mesmerizing. In tackling this contradiction, I felt a strong urge to reinterpret these images — to use them to explore the amazing biological structure of the brain.”359                                                                                                                 355

Ede, Art and Science, p. 1.

356

Ivan Gaskell, “Beauty,” in: Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, Critical Terms for Art History (Chicago: Univiversity of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 267-280. 357 358

Ibid., p. 268. Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind, p. 9.

359

Elizabeth Jameson, Artist Statement, http://www.jamesonfineart.com/about.html (accessed February 2, 2012).

 

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Jameson’s artworks are chromatic experiments that transform the cold scientific look of MRI scans and angiograms into increasingly colorful artistic interpretations. MRIs, the artist remarks, “produce images of a brain that are naked and without emotional context, without passion or sadness, without all the frailties, humor, and idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. I feel I am enormously lucky that my art allows me to spend my time hunting for images where I can find beauty and sensuousness, as well as perplexing complexity.”360 The declared aim of her work is to make brain imaging more accessible and more friendly, to create something attractive from something frightening, which could inspire a more appropriate medical discourse for diagnosis communication. The MRI scans represent for the artist symbols for the disease, but by creating something visually pleasing the artist wishes to eventually point out the beauty of the brain, even of the diseased brain. Her oeuvre consists of a series of artworks inspired by medical technology. It explores the image of the brain from various angles, fragmented and presented in details, and as a collage of brain images that simulate on a two-dimensional surface a three-dimensional reconstruction of brain. Although employing brain scans obtained by advanced brain imaging techniques, the medium of the artworks itself is most often conventional, raging from paintings on silk, solar etchings on paper, and textile quilts — which are reminiscent of traditional decorative arts. The technique of solar-plate etching is for the artist an efficient way to create etching plates directly from brain scans. A solar etching is obtained on a light sensitized steel plate through exposure to UV light. The light passing through a film like surface such as X-rays, photographic films or MRI transparencies, fixes the surface of the plate corresponding to the transparent shapes on the film. The surface to be used for etching is obtained by washing off the unexposed surfaces of the plate which are soluble in water. Through this process a brain image captured by the MRI machine, is transposed in negative on the steel plate from which the color print on paper is created. The aesthetic solutions proposed through etching, but also sometimes through digital alterations, are themselves very decorative, placing great emphasis on the                                                                                                                 360

 

Ibid.

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chromatic and compositional harmony, rather than on conceptual problems. In a manner that recalls Elizabeth Horowitz’s neuroabstractions, Jameson’s works retain in their title the neuroscientific references, but also bring new metaphorical references. In Jameson’s work however, the transformation of the images that inspired them is much more significant. Emerging I MRI: coronal view of the neo-cortex (Fig. 54) represents the fragment of the artists brain — a cold blue frontal lobe separated from a warm yellowish ‘outside’ by the light couture of the cranium. “In this image,” the artist states in an interview “my brain and the skull are emerging from the quiet of my interior self and entering into the world outside.” Emerging I is thus an invitation to reconcile the relationship between the in-and-out of the skull, and as Jameson suggests, “to meditate on where the brain is going in its journey.”361 Most works of neuro art are given profound conceptual dimensions or complex metaphorical perspectives in an attempt to avoid simplistic reproductions of neuroscientific imagery or reductionist illustration of scientific concepts. By focusing on form and color, Jameson’s works are enriched by subtle metaphorical touches, occupying thus a niche in between reductionist simplification and complex conceptual depth. Similar to the scientific illustrations that Jonah Lehrer celebrates in Portraits of the Mind, her artworks are appreciated for their play of chromatic harmonies and dissonances, for their formal elegance, in other words, for their decorative function. But if in science chromatic elements and increased contrasts are introduced with the aim of augmenting visibility and conferring a more detailed understanding of what is seen in the image, Jameson’s chromatic play — be it subtle or explosive — is exclusively aesthetically motivated. The colorful interpretations of the MRI scans are not, as their scientific counterparts, anonymous images in a research or medical database, but metaphorical depictions of the self in a way that gives a different narrative to neurological diseases and celebrates the beauty of the brain. * * * * *                                                                                                                 361

Noah Hutton, "Interview with Elizabeth Jameson," The Beautiful Brain, http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2011/04/gallery-elizabeth-jameson-spring-2011/ (accessed February 2, 2012).

 

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The artworks addressed in the following pages, treat the brain as disembodied, stripped of its functionality and appreciated for the formal qualities and metaphorical potential of its shape. In the form of decorative images and three-dimensional ‘brain sculptures,’ the artworks under scrutiny here depend greatly on the technological developments of neuroscience for visualizing the brain. They not only appropriate brain scans which look within the brain structure, but also other modalities of visualizing the brain which reconstruct and navigate the terrain of the cerebral surface. It is interesting to observe here the cultural context in which the MRI technology itself has emerged and the general impression it has generated. MRI technology developed, Kelly Ann Joyce explains, “within two cultural contexts: (1) the sociotechnical turn towards visuality and (2) the emphasis on nuclear technologies and knowledge.”362 In popular culture, MRI is rather simplistically understood as an imaging machine which pictures the brain. The technology that produces the MRI anatomical images is, however, much more complex than it is generally understood. An MRI machine does not posses any photographic lenses nor does it use X-rays to look inside the body. Based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology, what MRI machines measure is the energy absorbed and released by hydrogen nuclei in response to specific frequencies when placed in magnetic field.363 MRI scanning thus provides numerical information about the placement of hydrogen atoms in the body, and not images. Consequently, MRI images are a conventional rendering of numerical data mapped into a visual form — they are ‘data portraits.’ Interestingly, the choice to visually depict MRI data as vibrantly colored images, the choice of green, yellow, or red to represent the interior of the body — Joyce believes — Is rooted in the visual culture of the decade in which the MRI emerged. “Resembling Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein’s bright color prints,” Joyce argues, “the scientists’ choice mirrored the aesthetics of popular art and television in the 1970s.”364 To what degree a real correlation between the artistic representations of the                                                                                                                 362 363 364

 

Joyce, Magnetic Appeal, p. 25. Ibid. Ibid., p. 35.

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1970s and the choice of using colors in the interpretation of digital MRI data is of course debatable. However, if Joyce is right, than neuro art — inspired by medical imagery whose visual appearance was in turn inspired by visual art — closes full circle the exchange between art and neuroscientific visual imagery. There are, of course, differences between how scientists and artists relate to and interpret MRI imagery. Although both scientists and artists look at these images aiming to extract meaningful content from the form they are exposed to, artists make sense of the visual data thus obtained by searching for further forms, interpretations, and metaphors, while scientists look for specific knowledge and efficiency in diagnosis. The artistic strategy to creatively interpret shapes and structures within MRIgenerated images is — unexpectedly — a practice encountered in the medical profession as well. I am referring here to the phenomenon known as pareidolia — a tendency of our perceptual apparatus to interpret obscure and unstructured stimuli as concrete recognizable shapes. Seeing faces, objects, or animals in cloud formations, flame shapes, shadow contours, inkblots, or any other random configuration are frequent manifestations of pareidolic experiences. It is hardly surprising that artists often recognize significant form in the convoluted image of brain scans. It is, however, unexpected that scientists do too. In an article titled “Neuropareidolia” and published in Arquivos de NeuroPsiquiatria, Pericles Maranhao-Filho and Maurice B. Vincent explain the possible benefits of pareidolic reading of neuroimages as a diagnostic strategy. The two authors observe that “[a]nimals may be pareidolically recognized in neuroimages according to the presence of specific diseases.”365 Particular visual stimuli identified in brain scans, they believe, relate to a particular disease of the nervous system, and these stimuli can be read in a pareidolic key. “The most important pareidolical perceptions of animals in neuroimaging” the authors observe, “are the hummingbird sign in progressive supranuclear palsy, the panda sign in Wilson’s disease, the panda sign in sarcoidosis, the butterfly sign in glioblastomas, the butterfly sign in progressive scoliosis and                                                                                                                 365

Péricles Maranhão-FilhoI and Maurice B. Vincent, "Neuropareidolia Diagnostic Clues Apropos of Visual Illusions," Arquivos De Neuro-Psiquiatria 67, 4 (2009), p. 1117.

 

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horizontal gaze palsy, the elephant sign in Alzheimer’s disease and the eye-of-the-tiger sign in pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegenerative disease.”366 This approach to reading brain imagery, the article argues in conclusion, reinforce mnemonic strategies making the diagnosis process more efficient. Some of the pareidolic symbols Maranhao-Filho and Vincent describe in their article have been independently observed and explored in neuro art. Elizabeth Jameson’s works, particularly those in The Brain up Close series, are often pareidolic exercises. Brain Bird I, II & III, (Fig. 55, 56) The Good Egg series (Fig. 57), The Sun and the Moon (Fig. 58), and Valentine I & II (Fig. 59) are images which, in Jameson’s specific aesthetic style, make use of color to reinforce the initial pareidolic shape identified in the structure of the brain. In the Brain Bird works, for example, Jameson identifies the head, the eyes, the beak, and the wings of the bird in the axial view of the brain stem and cerebellum, while in Valentine the artist recognizes the shape of the heart in a coronal view of the brain stem, parietal lobe, and lateral ventricles. For Valentine, the artist explains, “I chose this portion of the brain because of its shape — the structure that echoes that of the human heart. I use warm and cool colors in my work to evoke the emotions that I feel when I immerse myself in the interior of the brain, and to express my happiness in discovering the image of the heart within the interiors of my brain.”367 The most frequent pareidolic image found in the structure of the brain and expressed artistically is that of the butterfly. In fact, the association of the butterfly with the brain is slightly more complex than just the formal similarity. The metaphor of the butterflies in the brain takes us first back to Rowland Emett’s The Honeywell-Emett ‘Forget-me-not’ (1965) and the enteric nervous system.368 But if Emett indirectly referred to the brain by addressing the emotional distress F.R.E.D. felt, and which manifested as butterflies in the stomach, the artists in this chapter find the butterflies hidden within the                                                                                                                 366

Ibid., p. 1117.

367

Noah Hutton, "Interview with Elizabeth Jameson," The Beautiful Brain, http://thebeautifulbrain.com/2011/04/gallery-elizabeth-jameson-spring-2011/ (accessed February 4, 2012). 368

 

See previous chapter, pp. 61-63.

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structures of the brain. Madeleine Strindberg’s work was inspired by her own MRI scans and by illustrations of a scientific textbook, and led to the Central Nervous System (1997-99) (Fig. 60) series. Using traditional media, such as painting and drawing, the artist finds in brain images a pretext for metaphorical metamorphosis.369 In the representation of the medulla oblongata, Strindberg discovers the hidden resemblance with the butterfly shape, which she reproduces almost obsessively not only in the paintings themselves but also outside the paintings, suspended in the air and on the gallery walls.370 “Traverse sections of the medulla oblongata,” Siân Ede describes her work, “float like butterflies over a golden yellow background, an adulation of form for its own sake.”371 It also helps to know, Ede further points out, “ that the medulla oblongata controls bodily movement and the maintenance of equilibrium, so the butterflies’ tentative balance is more meaningful intellectually.”372 The resemblance between the medulla and the butterfly, the metaphorical transformation of the factual — the brain’s shape — into the imagined butterfly, represents, as Gooding point out, the key that gives the work its power and significance.373 An artist who explores the pareidolic experience to the largest extent and at multiple levels is Suzanne Anker. The Butterfly in the Brain (2002-2011) (Fig. 61, 62) is an artistic project that has been developed over a number of years — it has been augmented, transformed, and recontextualized. The Butterfly project springs out of Anker’s large interest in biological sciences, which ranges from artistic investigation in bio-morphology and genetics, to psychology and neuroscience. With the precision of a lepidopterist, and in a spirit that recalls Aby Warburg’ s collection of pathos formulae,                                                                                                                 369

Madeline Strindberg and Mel Gooding, Madeleine Strindberg – Tunnel Vision, (Brighton: Brighton University, 1998), Catalogue Essey available online at: http://madeleinestrindberg.typepad.com/madeleine_strindberg/ce.html (accessed February 5, 2012); Mel Gooding, "Central Nervous System," Catalogue Essay, http://www.madeleinestrindberg.com (accessed February 5, 2012). 370

See the exhibitions: Flightpath (1999), Chapman Gallery in Manchester, and Madeleine Strindberg – Tunnel Vision (1998) at Brighton University, installation view photographs for both exhibitions are available online: http://www.madeleinestrindberg.com (accessed February 5, 2012). 371 372 373

 

Ede, Art and Science, p. 138. Ibid., p. 138. Strindberg and Gooding, Madeleine Strindberg – Tunnel Vision.

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Anker brings together a large array of visual specimens — butterflies, neural maps, brain scans, as well as chromosomes. When juxtaposed or superimposed, these forms give rise to a cascade of metaphorical suggestions. Anker is one of the artists who, while working systematically with scientific imagery and tools, aim to liberate them from their scientific obligations, to recontextualize them, and to give them a new metaphoric life. Art as opposed to science, Anker believes, “[…] has the capacity to hold two different ideas in its realm simultaneously. Art compounds metaphors, compresses information, deals in sensory and affective experience — it essentially has a very difficult time being defined.”374 Dense with meaning and fluctuating metaphors, Anker’s butterflies, brains, and chromosomes have been liberated from their scientific constrains and readapted, reshaped, and re-conceptualized in several artistic contexts. As with Emett’s The Honeywell-Emett ‘Forget-me-not,’ the idea of the butterflies in the brain is suggestive of the butterflies in the stomach experience when we feel nervous. But if in Emett’s case the reference to the enteric nervous system is implicit, Anker’s reference to the butterflies in the stomach is explicit, and brings about a political dimension. “The Butterfly in the Brain,”375 Anker declares, “is my answer to the way in which we think about butterflies in the stomach when we feel nervous. This was a way in which I could make art about the anxiety that I experience in the unpredictable world and was my first body of work after witnessing the events of 9/11.”376 Through this, by expressing contemporary fears and anxieties, the artworks receive a political twist that most works of neuro art are lacking. However, the political underpinnings of the Butterfly in the Brain are practically nonexistent in visual terms. Nothing in Anker’s images will betray the presence of this personal meaning. Instead, the artwork gives new metaphoric life to a rather ordinary set of bilaterally symmetric forms. At an early stage, of The Butterfly in the Brain (2002)                                                                                                                 374

Cited in: about Suzanne Anker’s "The Butterfly in the Brain," Paper presented at symposium From Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa: Visual Art and the Brain, briefings available online at: http://www.nyas.org/Publications/EBriefings/Detail.aspx?cid=c9e01685-57ed-4a63-b917-f3bb862caa2b (accessed March 1, 2012). 375 376

 

Ibid. Ibid.

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(Fig. 61), the brain butterflies are discovered within neuronal maps. Like in a child’s game, Anker connects together dots until a ‘butterfly constellation’ becomes apparent in the structure of stained brain tissue. In the compositions of the Codex Eyespot (2002) series, Anker juxtaposes and at times overlaps, images of brain scans, butterflies, chromosomes, and Rorschach diagrams, in fashion that recalls the display strategies of an entomology collection of butterfly specimens. In Total Recall (2002) (Fig. 63) — a work in this series — the artist visually replaces the brain ventricles with chromosome pairs, whose shape is echoed by butterflies and Rorschach-like inkblots forms. The Rorschach inkblots, in this and later work, emphasize Anker’s intention to stimulate pareidolic experiences. Developed by the Swiss psychiatrist Herman Rorschach in the 1920s, the inkblot test was first intended for psychiatric evaluation and later used in psychology to examine the characteristics of one’s personality. A controversial practice in psychology, the inkblot images are intended to engage the viewer in a spontaneous and uninhibited association process. In a context like this, however, the free association is actually inhibited by the presence of the brain, the butterfly, and the chromosome, which directly affect the reception of the inkblots on display. What seems to be happening is the reversal of a mental mechanism in which by looking at the butterfly, one has the association with the inkblot, rather than the other way around. The whole installation377 plays with the idea of shape association and visual dialogue between forms as a way to create meaning. From the precise overlaying of butterfly wings, constellations, chromosomes, and neural patterns, Barbara Stafford points out, new and enriched figures are coming into existence.378 The pareidolic strategy in looking at the brain is further emphasized by another work in the Codex Eyespot series — Seahorse (Hippocampus) (2002) (Fig. 64). In this work, along with, by now expected, images of brains and butterflies, three small seahorses are on display. These water creatures gave their Latin name to the structure in the limbic system which contributes to memory consolidation and spatial navigation —                                                                                                                 377

Seen on display for example at Universal Concepts Unlimited gallery in New York. For installation views see: http://www.suzanneanker.com (accessed February 5, 2012). 378

 

Stafford, Echo Objects, p. 50.

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the hippocampus. Naming the hippocampus was in itself a visual association process, creating a visual connection between the anatomical structure and the form of the aquatic animal. A further interesting development of the Rorschach forms is their transformation from flat inkblot structures to three-dimensional forms. Through rapid prototyping technology, Anker sculpturally renders in plaster resin all the ten images in the inkblot test. Some of them were further casted in bronze. The texture and color of these forms, which are suggestive in themselves, take the associative exercise a step further. Looking at the inkblots in their three-dimensional form, Anker argues, “one begins to assess new meanings: bones, sea creatures, body parts. These are surrogates for the imagination itself, opening up a dialog between the mind and body. What happens when you can pick up a psychology test in your hand? The mind essentially has been embodied.”379 Thus, it is not only the form of the inkblots that are suggestive of something they are not, but the relief, the color, and the structure of the sculpted form feeds new creative clues to our imagination. Anker’s project took a new form with MRI Butterfly (2008) (Fig. 65, 66, 67). A similar conceptual strategy in a slightly different aesthetic form, MRI Butterfly has been exhibited as digital prints380 and video animation.381 In the artist’s own description, MRI Butterfly is: “an animation of flapping butterfly wings superimposed onto MRI scans which create perceptual illusions. In this work, a transparent, yet identical butterfly is superimposed over a unique inkblot, which in turn is overlaid on one of the brain’s distinct ventricles. Because of the butterfly’s transparency, its own composition appears and reappears as if it is morphing. In addition, this “real-time” device engaging the temporal is a metaphor for the way in which thought or consciousness is in constant flux.”382

In its printed form, the work comprises of fifteen brain scans on a black                                                                                                                 379

Cited in symposium briefing: "The Butterfly in the Brain," From Mirror Neurons to the Mona Lisa: Visual Art and the Brain, http://www.nyas.org/Publications/EBriefings/Detail.aspx?cid=c9e01685-57ed4a63-b917-f3bb862caa2b (accessed February 5, 2012). 380 381

On display at Exit Art, New York as part of the Brainwave: Common Senses (2008) exhibition. On display at the Pera Museum, Istanbul as part of the Fundamentally Human (2011) exhibition.

382

Sabine Flach, Daniel Margulies, and Jan Sõffner, eds., Habitus in Habitatat: Emotion and Motion, Nature, Science and the Arts (Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2010), p. 145.

 

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background and displayed in a grid structure similar to scientific displays. In science, the succession of images represents slices of the brain obtained at different levels, which together reconstruct the volumetric structure of the brain. Seen in parallel, the images thus displayed, seem to be identical apart for the butterfly image. But in fact, as with the video animation, the butterfly is identical in all fifteen representations, it is the inkblot placed at the ventricles’ level that alters our perception of the butterfly. Anker succession of MRI images recalls a functional MRI scanning, which records not only the brain structure but also neural activity in time — thus suggesting that mental states fluctuate at the flap of a butterfly’s wing. The various stages of the Butterfly in the Brain installations allow for complex metaphorical dialogue and invite a long interpretive chain of though. As art historians had pointed out, Anker’s Butterfly in the Brain, “explores the similarities across biological domains,”383 while at the same time addresses the harmonious connection of the mind and the brain with nature and the universe.384 In Anker’s work, one encounters connections and references to anything from microscopic observation of neurons to celestial constellations. Presented in the same context, the images of the brain, the butterfly, the chromosome, the neuron, etc. initiate a dialogue that goes beyond formal similarity and invites reflections on our very human nature and our relation to the world.

*****

Psyche, the Hellenistic personification of the human soul is often depicted in Greek mythology with butterfly wings.385 In the meaning of the word psykh, the ancient Greek language brings together the soul and the butterfly. It is perhaps, with this                                                                                                                 383 384

Wilson, Art + Science Now, p. 71. Thomas McEvilley, "Suzanne Anker," Art in America 90, 12 (2002), p. 107.

385

"Psyche", Elizabeth Knowles, ed. A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Oxford Reference Online: Oxford University Press, 2006), http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t214.e5749 (accessed 6 February, 2012).

 

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symbolism in mind, that Cajal refers to neurons as the ‘butterflies of the soul.’ “Like the entomologist hunting for brightly colored butterflies,” Cajal writes in Recollections of my life, “my attention was drawn to the flower garden of the gray matter, which contained cells with delicate and elegant forms, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, the beating of whose wings may some day (who knows?) clarify the secrets of mental life.”386 Pablo Garcia Lopez, the artist whose exploration of neuroscience and art finds never-ending inspiration in the scientific texts, memoirs, and illustrations of Cajal, has dedicated his PET series to the soul butterflies. Positron emission tomography (PET) is, like the MRI, a scanning technique which involves a mathematical image reconstruction. In contrast with the MRI which reconstructs the structure of the brain, PET scans allow researchers to study the fluctuations of brain activity by observing the changes in blood flow. When nerve cells are more active, they require more oxygenation, and therefore an increase in blood flow indicates an increase in neural activity. The procedure is based on the injection of a radioactive isotope387 into the subject’s blood stream. The reading of these scans is based on the assumption that brain activity is indicated by high radioactivity. At some point after the injection, the isotope decays with the emission of a positron which is readily detected by the scanning device and then computed and rendered as an image. PET scans are popularly recognized for their bright color and their reproduction of contrasting pairs of brain images, one for the control situation (or normal brain) and the other of the diseased brain. Control brains have been compared in the PET scanner with those of subjects with schizophrenia, dementia, Parkinson’s, obesity, or drug consumption. Due to this rendition, José van Dijck argues, “PET scans have already begun to connote ‘psychic dysfunction’ […].”388 Lopez’s works, PET Soul Butterflies (2009) (Fig. 68), Golden PET (2009) (Fig. 69), and Butterfly Bats (2009) (Fig. 70) are derived from the image of PET scans and directly                                                                                                                 386 387

Cited in: DeFelipe, Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul, p. vii. The most commonly used molecule in PET scanning is fluorodeoxyglocose (FDG).

388

José van Dijck, The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), p. 12. .

 

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inspired by Cajal’s text cited above. They depict a midsagittal section of the head within which Lopez elaborates on Cajal’s metaphor of neurons as ‘butterflies of the soul,’ removing thus the medical connotation of the image. In a collage like fashion, the images are constructed from several materials including butterfly prints, silk screens, paintings, onyx stone pigments, and satin bow ties, mounted on black Plexiglas. The artworks’ chromatics ranges from black-on-black and golden, to vibrantly colorful. In this context, the recourse to butterflies is not motivated by the formal similarity between the anatomy of the brain and the shape of the butterfly389 but by a literary metaphor. The choice for such visual metaphors of the brain, Lopez explains in a research article, is driven by his own romantic desire to convey a concept of the brain as a natural organ rather than a mechanical cybernetic one, in the attempt ”to renaturalize the public perception of the brain.”390 The materials Lopez chooses for these works are in accordance with this desire. “That is also one of the reasons,” the artist points out, “I usually work with silk (the product of the cocoons neuronsbutterflies), a very fragile/resistant and plastic material related to the butterfly’s metamorphosis or neuronal plasticity.”391 Interestingly, he further points out, “silk has been recently used as a scaffold for neuronal grafts, regeneration and remielinzation in the peripherical nervous system.”392 The substitution of butterflies with bow ties393 is yet another ingenious metamorphosis. Silk is the product of a larvae insect in its vulnerable pupa phase, when it constructs a cocoon to protect itself. As most silk worms will never become butterflies

                                                                                                                389

As a side note, it is perhaps meaningful to notice here that butterflies themselves take great advantage of the pareidolic propensity of visual perception. As James Elkins has elegantly pointed out, some insects, butterflies included, grow ‘fake eyes on their body with which to frighten of away predators. “Butterflies and moths,” he suggests, ”tend to have these eyes on their lower wings, so that they can keep them hidden under the upper wings until they need to slash them in some animal’s face.” In: James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing, (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1997), p. 75. 390 391 392

Pablo Garcia-Lopez, "Sculpting the Bain," Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2012), p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10.

393

Bow-ties are often discussed among connoisseurs in terms of butterflies. Furthermore, in French the same word – papillon – designates both a butterfly and a bow-tie.

 

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(or rather moths), the silk bow-tie seems to be grimly mocking the butterfly situation.394 It is in Spinal Cord Butterfly (2009) (Fig. 71) that Lopez observes the similarity in form between the structure of the nervous system and the butterfly. This time, the artist identifies the butterfly not in the brain, but in the section of the spine. The elegantly embossed section of the spine metamorphosed into a butterfly creates in Spinal Cord Butterfly, a shape which unavoidably recalls395 the bat like inkblot form Anker’s The Butterfly in the Brain. From the observation above, it can be concluded that the parallel between the brain and the butterfly comes from a variety of sources — from the pareidolic experience with the shape of the nervous system and its depiction by brain imaging techniques, from the feeling of ‘butterflies in the stomach,’ and also from metaphors which have roots in Greek mythologies. It is perhaps fitting to conclude this chapter and initiate the next by bringing into discussion a work by John Baldessari: Brain/Cloud (Two Views): With Palm Tree and Seascapes (2010) (Fig. 72). The installation of Brain/Cloud, made especially for the Pure Beauty exhibition at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, displayed a sculptural brain resembling a cloud, flanked by a photomural of the ocean. “On the fourth wall,” Katherine Satoriu describes the installation, “in a nod to his early video work (and the 1970s time-delay videos of Bruce Nauman and Dan Graham), a feed of the hanging white brain played on a slight delay, so that viewers found themselves watching the versions of themselves that had existed a short time earlier.”396 Through these means, the artist brings into the artistic discourse also the question of the process of recollection and the formation of memories. In his work, Baldessari, whose art has been guided by a search for alternative                                                                                                                 394

Lopez himself took this concept further in a recent silk installation entitled: Silk explosion or how to destroy 1,000,000 cocoons that will never become butterfly (2011), see also: http://pablogarcialopez.com/ (accessed February 6, 2012). 395 396

 

At least to the readers of this chapter. Katherine Satorius, "John Baldessari," ArtUS, 30 (2010), p. 17.

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ways of seeing,397 was inspired by the easiness with which images in the clouds are identified. It is a work that seems to suggest that the brain is no longer the unstructured shape in which our minds avidly looks for meaningful form, but a familiar form one recognizes in the random shape of the cloud. In fact, the artist does not really ‘find’ the shape of the brain in the cloud. If, for the most part, our perception is manipulated into recognizing coherent shapes in clouds, Baldessari manipulates instead the shape of the brain to look just like a cloud. Seen from this perspective, Baldessari’s work, like other works in this chapter, tries to make sense of the brain shape by associating it with something else — in this case, a cloud.

The Sculpted Brain The history of neuroscience, Carl Schoonover argues, “is the history of the techniques we employ to delve into the brain.”398 Few will argue that everything we know in neuroscience and our ability to further investigate and learn about the brain depends substantially on visualization tools from microscopes and tissue stain techniques to contrast agents and MRI machines. Warren Neidich had further argued that technological development in the field of visualization not only influences our understanding of the brain, but also has a direct impact on the brain itself. Neidich advocates the idea that, by making visible never before seen images, or by altering reality as we know it, optical devices transform the neural configurations of our brains and our conscious experience. “These optical inventions”, Neidich underlines, “feed back on culture itself, changing its face in the context of this new view of itself, as well as feeding back on the brain through their effects on networked relations in the real world and the brain’s response to them.”399 Perhaps on a much smaller scale than                                                                                                                 397

Tate Channel, "John Baldessari: Pure Beauty," http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/45538302001, (accessed February 7, 2012). 398

Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind, p. 8.

399

Warren Neidich, "Blow Up: Photography, Cinema and the Brain," Journal of Neuro-Aesthetic Theory, 2 (2000), available online: http://www.artbrain.org/blow-up-photography-cinema-and-the-brain/ (accessed February 7, 2012).

 

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photography, cinematic experience, or virtual reality, visualizing tools in neuroscience too alter our perception of the world and of the self. Microscopes and MRI scanners not only contribute directly to our knowledge of the brain but they also, — by providing new visual contexts and experiences — implicitly contribute to reshaping our neural configurations. In this sense, Neidich believes, the brain is being sculpted by culture. He elaborately discusses this in most of his theoretical writing but particularly in his book Blow-Up: Photography, Cinema and the Brain400 and in an article fittingly titled “Sculpting the Brain, and I don’t mean like Rodin.”401 His theories about the sculpted brain and the mutated observer,402 build on ideas about brain plasticity, neural Darwinism, and neural constructivism. The metaphor of the sculpted brain has been equally used by scientists, artists, and art historians and goes back to the writing of Cajal. His famous phrase “every man if he so desires, becomes sculptor of his own brain”403 refers to brain plasticity, or what Cajal called ‘cerebral gymnastics.’ Aiming to explain the great intellectual capacity of some brains over others, Cajal suggests that the capacity of the brain could be augmented through a mechanism by which neuronal connections are multiplied as the result of continuous neural stimulation.404 Since Cajal, scientists understand the metaphor of sculpting the brain as referring to one of two different, but related, aspects of brain development. On one side, the sculpting of the brain refers to neuroplasticity — that capacity of neurons and neural networks to reorganize their connections and change behavior in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage, or dysfunction.405 The second                                                                                                                 400 401 402 403

Neidich, Blow-Up: Photography, Cinema and the Brain. Warren Neidich, "Sculpting the Brain, and I Don’t Mean Like Rodin," Shifter, 16 Pluripotential (2010). See the discussion about the mutated observer in Chapter II, p. 84. Cited in: Garcia-Lopez, "Sculpting the Bain," p. 3.

404

See Javier DeFelipe, "Brain Plasticity and Mental Processes: Cajal Again," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7, 10 (2006). 405

"neuroplasticity," Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Academic Edition, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/410552/neuroplasticity (accessed February 8, 2012).

 

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meaning scientists assign to the sculpting of the brain is the actual physical folding of the cortex, the transformation of the fetal brain from a structure with a flat surface in the first six months of development, to its characteristic wrinkled form at the time of birth.406 Although the phenomenon of neural plasticity is sometimes addressed in art, this is not the case with the works in this chapter, which take the metaphor of the sculpted brain literally. However, by literally ‘sculpting the brain’ artists invest their sculptures with new metaphoric layers of meaning. Jonathon Keats’ famous enterprise of selling his brain (2003) is conceptually motivated by the idea that, as a brain of the artist, sculpted by his experience, the brain can justly be considered a valuable work of art, perhaps the most valuable product of an artistic career. Keats, a conceptual artist, has copyrighted and put out for sale his brain — as a sculpture created in the medium of thinking. The owner of the copyrighted ‘artwork’ is granted a set of exclusive rights of use, copy or distribution of the ‘sculpture’ for as long as 70 years after the artist’s death. Copyrighting a brain theoretically implies a number of things. To begin with, it places the brain in a category of objects which have aesthetic value and can be reproduced, which makes one wonder how this copyright can be infringed upon by use, copy, or distribution? This is, however, hardly the point of the copyright in this case. Judging by the artist’s declarations, the idea of a copyrighted brain expresses the hope for immortality. “I’m doing this,” the artist has been quoted saying, “for the sake of immortality simply because it seemed like it was more interesting than dying.”407 In a Duchampian spirit, by creating a ‘sculpture’ in this fashion, Keats brings into discussion questions pertaining to commodification and intellectual property. However, if one inscribes Keats strategies in succession to Duchamp’s ready-mades, the artist’s brain, as a sculpture, receives new connotations. One hundred years from now, in a retrospective of conceptual art — placing on display Keats’ sculpture in the company of                                                                                                                 406

Claus C. Hilgetag and Helen Barbas, "Sculpting the Brain," Scientific American 300, 2 (2009).

407

Maggie Shiels, "The Man Who Sold His Brain," BBC News (October 27, 2003), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3217423.stm (accessed February 9, 2012).

 

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Duchamp’s Bottle-rack (1914), or any other ready-mades for that matter, can only be imagined as a bold curatorial statement.408 Preceding Keats brain copyright, Durs Grünbein and Via Lewandowsky together created a project titled The Artist’s Brain (1998) (Fig. 73) which follows similar conceptual principles in a less ostentatious way. An unfinished work, The Artist’s Brain should eventually hold and display Lewandowsky’s brain. “In exchange for the preservation of his brain, Via Lewandowsky leaves his body to science” is the declaration that now stands beneath the luminous transparent case which should posthumously exhibit the artist’s brain. These two projects transform the artist’s actual brains in two conceptual art objects. Other artists, such as Pablo Garcia Lopez, Jun Takita, and Dustin Wenzel took a different approach to sculpting the brain by creating shapes which do not refer back to their own brains. In 2009, Lopez initiated a brain collection, which comprised of a large number of brain-form objects created in different materials, structures, and colors. The emphasis on the formal aspects is in strong contrast with the conceptual and formless sculpture of Keats and Lewandowsky. Lopez’s Brain Sculpture Gallery (2009) (Fig. 15, 74, 75) is inspired by Cajal’s statement on sculpting the brain, and comes as a response to what Lopez calls “the great Neuroscience projects” of creating standard models of brain functioning.409 “Although these models could work as a general model of brain, functioning,” Lopez further assesses, “every person is different and so [is] his brain.”410 Just as his Cortical Garden and PET Butterflies mentioned previously,411 Lopez’s Brain Sculpture Gallery is driven by the desire to provide a conceptual and visual                                                                                                                 408

Such a perspective, would likely be favored by Keats himself who endorses the ‘law of unintended consequences’ and believes that "[t]he perfect misunderstanding would lead to the greatest of conceptual artwork." Ibid. 409

Pablo Garcia Lopez, Artist Webpage, http://pablogarcialopez.com/artwork/1069073_Brain_Sculpture_Gallery.html (accessed February 9, 2012). 410 411

 

Ibid. See Chapter III, p. 107 and Chapter IV, p. 153.

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alternative to the mechanistic and reductive models of the brain, which science is proposing. “Mechanistic metaphors,” Lopez analyzes, “seem more objective than organic ones, but I believe comparing the brain to a computer has the same heuristic value as comparing the brain to a cauliflower. Depending on where you put the focus of your analysis, you will highlight or hide some important characteristics about the brain. Both systems of metaphors give us opposite, but complementary intellectual models, and both have their own aesthetic beauty.”412 The gallery contains a variety of colorful brains made of wax, natural dyed silk fixed with hair gel, leather, cloth, plastic, golden painted clay, and dried brainy-flowers, which Lopez hopes will reveal essential characteristics about the brain that the mechanist models are hiding. Through the materials he uses and the colors chosen, Lopez metaphorically invokes inherited aspects of the brain such as its natural origin, neural malleability, and uniqueness. An artwork that could easily be integrated into Lopez’s gallery is a sculpture of the brain by the Japanese artist Jun Takita titled Light, Only Light (2004) (Fig. 76). Takita was the first artist to explore the use of transgenetic plants in his work, and this sculpture was part of larger project involving transgenetic plants. In 2004, the Leonardo magazine hosted a description of a hypothetical project, Bioluminescent Garden, which built upon both knowledge of visual perception and genetic manipulation of plants. The plans for the garden did not materialize, but out of the interest for bioluminescent transgenetic plants emerged the work Light, Only Light — a bioluminescent brain sculpture consisting of a resin model of the artist’s MRI brain scan, covered in genetically modified moss and luciferin. “The transgenetic moss in this work,” one reads on the artist’s web page, “emits its light when sprayed with a luciferin solution […] the light can be seen in complete darkness using an ultra sensitive digital video camera. Emitting time varies according to the quantity of moss and luciferin.”413 This work, Takita writes, “is the expression of man’s impossible desire to possess light. Here, a sculpture in the shape of a luminous brain represents the light-emitting man superimposed with the light receiving man.” Takita’s metaphoric play with the brain in                                                                                                                 412 413

 

Garcia-Lopez, "Sculpting the Bain," p. 5. Jun Takita, Artist Webpage, http://www.juntakita.com/lightlight.html (accessed February 9, 2012).

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this work recalls the Starn brothers’ aspiration towards light and knowledge in Structure of Thought.414 In a very different fashion, however, using a brain form and covering it with bioluminescent moss rather than drawing a parallel between the neuron and the tree, Light, Only Light similarly invokes light, plants, and photosynthesis in connection to the brain and the human aspiration towards light. Taking a different approach to brain sculpture, Dustin Wenzel steps in the illustrious footprints of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo’s interest in the anatomy of the brain led him to apply a well-known wax casting technique used in sculpture to understand the shape of the brain’s ventricles. At the time of Leonardo, the idea that the ventricles rather than the surrounding tissue was responsible for the brain functions dominated scientific and philosophical thought, having been derived from the ancient belief that the immaterial soul must reside in the cavities of the brain.415 Therefore, the structure of brain ventricles was of utmost importance. Using his expertise as a sculptor, Leonardo was the first to establish the true shape of the ventricles by casting them in wax. Dustin Wenzel’s work Right Whale Endocranial Cast (2007) (Fig. 77) and Sperm Whale Endocranial Cast (2007) (Fig. 78) recalls Leonardo strategies, although mapping not the cavities of the brain but that of the cranium. Usually employed by paleoanthropologists, endocasts are molds made of the skull’s interior of typically extinct hominids and other primates, aiming to observe the size and general form of the cranial cavity and attempting to estimate the degree of cerebral development.416 Wenzel’s casts have been commissioned by New Brunswick Museum in Canada, and are based on whale skulls belonging to the museum’s zoological collection. 417                                                                                                                 414 415

See Chapter III, pp. 111-115. Pevsner, "Leonardo Da Vinci’s Contributions to Neuroscience."

416

Johnson Symington, "Endocranial Casts and Brain Form: A Criticism of Some Recent Speculations," Journal of anatomy and physiology, 50 (1916). 417

New Brunswick Museum, "Inside Whales: Brain Cavity Castings of Great Whales at the New Brunswick Museum," Archived Press Release, http://www.nbmmnb.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219&Itemid=561 (accessed February 9, 2012).

 

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The choice of the right whale, as one of the endangered species of cetaceans; and the sperm whale, as the animal with the largest brain — is certainly more than coincidental. “These castings,” Donald McAlpine, curator of Zoology and the museum mentions, “provide insight into the physiology of some of the world's largest mammals and promote inquiry into the nature of their intelligence.”418 Recent discoveries in the cetacean’s cortical architecture reveal a large number of spindle neurons419 — a type of neuron previously known to exist only in humans, elephants, and great apes420 and believed to underlie “certain aspects of higher cognitive abilities in humans such as social and emotional cognition, awareness, and intuition”421 — and raise questions about a whale’s level of cognitive complexity. As Andy Coghlan argues, such discoveries are likely to “stimulate debate both on the level of whale intelligence and on the ethics of hunting them.”422 Questioning what neurology can offer us “in terms of our understanding of other species, and how in-turn does this factor into our perception of human intelligence,” Wenzel’s work is, undoubtedly, an integral part of the ethical discourse surrounding the relationship we have with the animal world.423 “From cave paintings to cartoons, advertising, and neuroscience,” Wenzel describes his artistic endeavor, “my work focuses on the cultural forces that mediate our relationships with other species, framing our ideas of self, and ultimately informing our sense of place and purpose as a species on the planet.”424 In creating these artworks, the artists have distanced themselves from the brain as the core of the individual. These sculptures are disembodied brain-objects and not neural portraits. Artists express a general fascination for the ‘marvelous object’ and                                                                                                                 418

Ibid.

419

Lori Marino and et al., "Cetaceans Have Complex Brains for Complex Cognition," Plos Biology, 5 (2007). 420

Spindle neurons have been also identifies in large-brained cetaceans, several types of dolphins, and the beluga whale. See: Camilla Butti and et al., "Total Number and Volume of Von Economo Neurons in the Cerebral Cortex of Cetaceans," Journal of Comparative Neurology 515, 2 (2009). 421

Ibid.

422

Andy Coghlan, "Whales Boast the Brain Cells That 'Make Us Human'," New Scientist, 27 November (2006). 423

Neuroculture.org, “Gallery Four” http://neuroculture.org/GalleryFour.html (accessed February 9, 2012). 424 Ibid., www.neuroculture.org/Members.html (accessed February 9, 2012).

 

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explore it for its aesthetic potential rather than for the philosophical and existential questions it might raise. In the chapter that follows, images of the brain in painting, sculpture, and media art function as portraits, they are intrinsically connected with a particular human individual who is being portrayed, and address aspects of mind, identity, and consciousness.

Neuro Art Portraiture In 2010, when he published the book Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century, Carl Schoonover uncritically used the notion of portraiture to define brain related imagery. Considering the classic definition of portraiture, there are no actual portraits in Portraits of the Mind. Carl Schoonover’s catalogue title provides an ideal anchor for addressing the question of what neuro art portraiture is. The catalogue, which gives a glimpse into the history of brain visualization, comprises of historical and contemporary images of neurons and glia, brain drawings, retina illustrations, computer generated simulations of brain activity patterns, graphics of action potential in live monkey brains, synaptic transmission illustrations, and connectivity maps — all presented as mind portraits. By assigning the concept of portrait to these images without providing justification for the title choice, the editor assumes an intuitive understanding on the part of the reader. Rightfully so, the mind portrait metaphor seems to requires no theoretical justification outside of a discussion such as this. The metaphor is immediately recognized and understood. The choice of portrait — as a term which invites the reader to parallel their own mental activity with the images in the book — was clearly deliberate. By naming the display of brain images a gallery of ‘scientific self-portraits,’425 the book suggests these images are portraits — not only of the mind, but also of ourselves. The role neuroscience has in defining our notion of self had been increasingly discussed across a variety of research fields and cultural domains. Michael Gazzaniga,                                                                                                                 425

 

Schoonover, Portraits of the Mind, pp. 7-8.

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renowned researcher in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, considers that “what makes us persons rather than merely creatures is our ability to create a story about ourselves.”426 Neuroscientific research, he believes, suggests that “the self is a narrator.” If we understand self as a narrative we construct about ourselves, then we have to acknowledge that science, technology, and fiction contribute to the constant transformation of this self-narrative. In the past decades, not only neuroscience guided our search and understanding of the self, but, as Nikolas Rose suggests, the self itself has been subjected to transformations by biomedical technology.427 In the western world, over the past century, he argues, human individuals have become ‘neurochemical selves.’ “While our desires, moods, and discontents might previously have been mapped onto a psychological space,” Rose states, “they are now mapped upon the body itself, or one particular organ of the body — the brain. And this brain is itself understood in a particular register. In significant ways, I suggest, we have become ‘neurochemical selves.’”428

Importantly, however, Rose acknowledges that the ‘neurochemical self’ has not displaced or replaced all other different senses of selfhood.429 In a similar line of though, Francisco Vidal postulated that, for better or worse, the concept of personhood has been replaced in the western culture with that of brainhood. Defining brainhood as “the quality of being rather than simply having a brain,”430 Vidal remarks that a unity between the brain and the person have been established in the cultural understanding of self. Although the significance of the brain in relation to notions of self is not universal and occurs in different degrees for different people, the awareness of neuroscientific research and the understanding of oneself in terms of cerebral processes are                                                                                                                 426

Cited in: Hilary Bok Debra J. H. Mathews, and Peter V. Rabins, ed. Personal Identity and Fractured Selves: Perspectives from Philosophy, Ethics, and Neuroscience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 3. 427

Nikolas S. Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 187. 428 Ibid., p. 188. 429 430

 

Ibid., p. 222. Vidal, "Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity," p. 6.

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undoubtedly rising.431 This sense of selfhood in relationship to the brain and the nervous system is what artists explore in neuro art portraiture. Neuro art portraits, and particularly self-portraits, can be understood as visual representations of narratives about the self, which are informed by neuroscience, and have as a central element the brain. Neuro art portraits are thus visual narratives of the neurochemical self.

* * * * *

If contemporary scientific thought and philosophical inquiries are establishing a complex relationship between brain and self, art history brings to the table two significant legacies which contribute to the emergence of neuro art portraiture. On the one hand, exploring issues of selfhood and identity have been essential in art for the past fifty years. Identity, a ubiquitous but elusive term gained popularity in the 1950s.432 Referring initially to the self as an existential category,433 identity was to become, in contemporary discourse and artistic practice, a strongly politicized concept, meant to assert the artists’ affiliation to a particular group, which was generally situated at the margins of or in conflict with the dominant culture. Since the 70s, the notion of identity holds a place of utmost centrality in the practice and theory of art. Cultural, racial, ethnic, sexual, and artistic identities are systematically questioned and redefined. Changes in personal identity are explored and issues of identity theft or loss are topics of cultural and artistic debate. Artists were not only preoccupied with discovering their personal and artistic identity, but, while considering identity formation as a process, aimed at transforming and constructing new identities and personas. Through their conceptual portraits, artists                                                                                                                 431

See for example Martyn Pickersgilla, Sarah Cunningham-Burleya, and Paul Martin, "Constituting Neurologic Subjects: Neuroscience, Subjectivity and the Mundane Significance of the Brain," Subjectivity, 4 (2011). 432

Philip Gleason, "Identifying Identity – A Semantic History," Journal of American History 69, 4 (1983), p. 910. 433

Richard Meyer, "Identity," in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 345.

 

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like Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, and Yasumasa Morimura reflect the artist’s intention to redefine themselves through art. Performance art, photography, and video offered, more than traditional media, an ideal context for exploring, performing, and transforming the self. Born out of this tradition is Veronika Bromova’s Views series of 1996 (Fig. 79), one of the early artistic projects to incorporate the image of a naked brain in a portrait. In the form of large digitally manipulated photographs, Bromova’s Views display in a provocative way her own naked body stripped of its skin and with minute depictions of internal organs, which recall anatomical illustrations. Springing out of the feminist discourse, Bromova’s art engages critically with issues of female identity and gender differences in a way that evokes the work of Cindy Sherman and Orlan. Bromova’s screaming self-portrait with the brain exposed — with hair, skin, and bone digitally removed — has little, if any, connection with neuroscience. In the contexts of this metaphoric surgery — which exposes also the jaws, the internal organs, the muscles of the ties and the genitals — the brain is an organ like any other. In this sense, Bromova’s portrait might be anticipating neuro art portraiture but only visually. The metaphorical complexities pertaining to the brain that neuro art later explores, are beyond the artist’s intentions. However, Bromova’s Views shows how scientific and technological knowledge bring about a new perspective of ourselves. Imaging technologies give the body a new visual identity. The second art historical legacy refers to the transformation the portrait genre has undergone in the last century. Arguably since the invention of photography, the portrait genre has been in constant search for new ways of representing someone through different means than just rendering their physiognomic features. Scientific knowledge and visualizing technologies contributed considerably to the conceptual re-definition of portraiture and provided the necessary tools for exploring new ways of portraiture. The past decades had witnessed a wide variety of ways artists make use of scientific knowledge and medical technologies to probe into the notion of self. Orlan’s resculpting of her physiognomic features through surgery, Tori Ellison’s interest in X-rays,

 

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Mona Hatoum’s use of endoscopy as a tool of artistic investigation, and the numerous genetic portraits by Gary Schneider, Kevin Clark, Steve Miller, and Dennis Ashbaugh,434 are all artworks which explicitly call upon scientific investigation to explore unseen aspects of personal identity. Neuro art portraiture is part of this artistic development; being yet another way for contemporary portraiture to question notions of subjectivity and to undermine the mimetic conceptions of portrait representation435 by focusing on the brain. Using brain scans, reconstructions of functional activity, angiograms, drawings, and photographs of the brain in various aesthetic configurations, artists create portraits and self-portraits. By addressing them as portraits, the artists bring subjectivity and individuality into neuro artistic discourse. Since there is no direct visual access to the brain — as we cannot see our brains in the mirror — brain scans are the closest to a brain mirror we have. However, the unfamiliarity with the image of the brain makes it difficult to identify one’s own brain out a multitude of brain scans. From the brain scan alone, one can hardly tell the gender, the age, the ethnicity or the race of the subject portrayed. This might explain why, in brain portraiture identity is defined from within, rather than through contrast with an external other. Although science presents us with comparative images of brains, for example by displaying side by side PET scans of healthy and unhealthy brains, artists seem to be less concerned with how one brain is different from the other and instead marvel at all brains for their ability to generate — among so many other things — consciousness and self-representation. The brain, Suzanne Anker and Giovanni Frazzetto remark, “seems to have gained supremacy over other organs of the body or the genome and become a metonymy for the ‘self.’”436 Neuroscience has painted the brain as the most important organ of our body, the one organ without which the self cannot exist. Thought-exercises, such as the                                                                                                                 434

For a detail examination of genetic portraiture see for example Anker and Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze, pp. 27-45. 435

Ernst van Alphen, "The Portrait’s Dispersal: Concepts of Representation and Subjectivity in Contemporary Portraiture," in Portraiture: Facing the Subject, ed. Joanna Woodall (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 56. 436

 

Neuroculture.org, Statement, http://www.neuroculture.org/statement.pdf (accessed February 9, 2012).

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idea of a ‘body transplant,’ or the notion of the ‘brain in the vat’ are frequent in popular movies and pulp fiction,437 and further accentuate the idea of brainhood. In the 1960s and 1970s, Rober J. White had reported to give both ideas a scientific investigation. His articles published in Science (1963)438 and Surgery (1971)439 report in vitro brain activity recorded in rhesus monkey brains, and full head transplant operations in monkeys, respectively. These appalling set of experiments, which brought science fiction into the lab, were severely criticized and deemed scientifically irrelevant and misleading. Although grotesque, such experiments and their discussion in the media440 highlighted the special status the brain has among all other organs of the body — as the repository of the self. The hypothetical transfer of a brain from one body to another has profound implication in evaluating the role brain has in defining our identity. Keats and Lewandowsky’s art projects, intending to preserve their brains as aesthetic artifacts,441 are remnant of these grotesque experiments. However, in these cases particularly, the notions of identity or self are not at the core of the artistic endeavor. The idea of having the brain preserved outside its natural environment is approached as a conceptual conundrum. As ‘the brain of the artist,’ the cerebrum on display has an equally celebratory function and a macabre resonance. It is at the same time an anatomical object out of the dissection table; a ‘still life’ recalling the ‘memento mori’ symbolism of 15th century vanitas; and the creative agent of the artwork in question. If Keats and Lewandowsky conceptually transform their brains into sculpture and depersonalize them in the process, the acclaimed UK artist, Helen Chadwick employs images of depersonalized naked brains as metaphors for the self. In 1990, at the                                                                                                                 437

The idea of brain transplants or brain switch is explores in movies like The Man with Two Brains (1983), Brainstorm (1983), and Who Is Julia? (1986). The concept appears also in cartoons, children movies (Re-Animated, 2006), and pulp fiction literature. 438

Robert J. White, Maurice S. Albin, and Javier Verdura, "Isolation of the Monkey Brain: In Vitro Preparation and Maintenance," Science, 141 (1963). 439

Robert J. White and et al., "Cephalic Exchange Transplantation in the Monkey," Surgery 70, 1 (1971).

440

See "Frankenstein Fears after Head Transplant," BBC News (April 6, 2001), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1263758.stm (accessed February 10, 2012). 441

 

See Chapter IV, pp. 158-159.

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London teaching hospital, Chadwick took a number of brain photographs for her work. Eroticism (1990) (Fig. 80), a diptych that first made use of these images, consists of two oval back-lit transparencies of the same picture of a naked brain, duplicated such that it creates a mirror image which suggests dialogue of one brain with the other. Writing about this work, Chadwick describes it in the following terms: “The oval locket of a cranium is opened to reveal an amatory vanitas more vital than the traditional melancholic emblem of mortality, the skull. Here singularity is doubled; two brains lie enraptured, exposed to our gaze, yet we witness the field of their activity, the turbulence of the fabric they lie on. Is this a single brain mirrored, or two individualities? An open locket or a bed? Is eroticism a reciprocal exchange between two or a blind narcissian projection of oneself towards an unseeable other?” 442

This artwork has emerged naturally from Chadwick’s body of work, from her perpetual interest in representing the body anew. Throughout her oeuvre Chadwick explores “the concept of the self as being infinitely subjected to change”443 and takes the exploration of the body beyond its skin boundaries.444 In Eroticism, a radiant electric blue light illuminates the center of the image seemingly triggered by the proximity of the brains. The spark between the two brains suggests an ‘electric’ communication, an active tension which brings the image to life, overcomes the morbidity of the flesh, and “transcends the usual physical and visual qualities of a preserved medical specimen.”445 Chadwick, Elizabeth Manchester writes, “had originally intended to photograph the brain against black velvet, but was disappointed by the overwhelming sense of death this created. However, setting it on a

                                                                                                                442

Cited in: Richard Howard, Thomas McEvilley, and Helen Chadwick, DeLight: Helen Chadwick (Institute of Contemporary Art, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania 1991), p. 14, available online at: http://www.tate.org.uk (accessed February 10, 2012). 443

Nick James and Helen Chadwick, "Helen Chadwick: Of Mutability," Cv/Visual Arts Research Archive 50 (1989/2011), p. 6. 444

In Viral Landscapes (1989), for example, “an art project consisting of computer-generated composite images combining photographs of the Pembrokeshire coastal landscape with hugely enlarged microscopic slides of Chadwick’s own cell,” the artists uses microscopic images of her own cells to symbolize ”fragments of the inner self.” See: Stephen Walker, "Viral Architecture, Viral Landscapes: The Impact of Modern Science on Helen Chadwick's Art," Leonardo 43, 5 (2010); and James and Chadwick, "Helen Chadwick: Of Mutability." 445

Elizabeth Manchester, Eroticism 1990, Tate Online, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chadwickeroticism-t07411/text-summary (accessed May 17, 2012).

 

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crumpled piece of flesh-coloured velvet proved transformative.”446 The desire to bring energy and life into insentient tissue is remarkable and creates a tension in the image between the idea of a thinking brain and the photography’s fleshliness. A year later, Helen Chadwick created another backlit photographic transparency depicting the artists’ hands holding a naked brain and designated this image as a Selfportrait (1991) (Fig. 81). Repulsive and enthralling at the same time the Self-Portrait (1991) places the brain — supposedly the artist’s brain — as the core center of the artist’s identity. For Chadwick, the brain is more justified to represent someone’s individuality than a superficial physiognomic portrait. Self-Portrait is thus an efficient illustration of the ‘cerebral subject’ as being rather than having a brain. When looking at this Self-Portrait we are faced with an unsettling experience when we realize that, in fact, this photograph of the brain cannot function as a self-portrait. The artist’s brain is not carefully held between her fingers, but is out of the frame, looking as we do at someone else’s brain. When trying to settle the relationship between the notion of the self-portrait and the image of the brain in the photograph, this experience leads the brain of the onlooker into a loop. Ultimately, our brains are forced to mentally look at themselves as if someone else, a homunculus perhaps, had visual access to the gray neuronal landscape. Helen Chadwick’s Self-Portrait is an outstanding example that illustrates what Lawrence Rinder calls consciousness art. It is an artwork which inspires the contemplation of consciousness as a phenomenon, while at the same time provides us with the awareness of our own conscious sensation. Chadwick’s Self-Portrait, Gill Saunders elegantly writes, “becomes a collective self-portrait of mankind, in which consciousness — this ability to contemplate one’s own mind — is synonymous with human identity.”447

                                                                                                                446 447

Ibid.

Gill Saunders, “States of Mind,” in Susan Aldworth, Scribing the Soul, ed. Transition Gallery (BPR Publishers, 2008), p. 3.

 

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* * * * *

In 1992, a residency at the School of Medicine of the University of California at San Diego brought Joyce Cutler-Shaw in contact with the medical world. Her inresidency project, titled The Anatomy Lesson (since 1992) (Fig. 83) gives a contemporary perspective to anatomic drawing. Choosing drawing as the main medium of expression, along with photographs and collages, Cutler-Shaw gives particular attention to the body in its two existential extremes: the new born and the dying. During her residency, Cutler-Shaw developed an interest in the history of anatomical representation. Out of this interest, as a chapter of The Anatomy Lesson, emerged a set of collages known as The Memory Pictures. In the center of this collection and perhaps the most known image of the series is Memory Picture with CT (1992) (Fig. 82). In this photo collage, a portrait (the artist?) is visually obstructed by a CT scan, which literally replaces the portrait’s physiognomic features. The form of the scan — the two dark spots at the ventricular level, and the overall contour, echoes the shape and the structure of the face. In the context of the series, the CT scan in Memory Picture with CT represents one of the multiple historical representations of the human body. Taken out of this visual context, and addressed individually, the image becomes a powerful metaphor for how we see ourselves under the spell of medical technologies. With new technologies, Cutler-Shaw believes, “we are simultaneously dematerialized in an explosion of noninvasive imaging systems. We split our body from our sentient self.”448 The artist perceives the digital reconstruction of the body with fascination and curiosity. “In re-discovering the body, flesh, blood, and the tactile recede, as we are re-presented electronically by CT, and PET and MRI…. We are holographically projected and sonically graphed by the wonders of ultrasound in a media base world. We are translated into minimalist tonal images which take highly developed skills of detail

                                                                                                                448

 

Cited in: Kevles, Naked to the Bone, p. 293.

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visual reading to interpret.”449

Through these words, the artist addresses identity from a cultural-collective perspective. Individual identity is altered by the imaging technology, but we all experience this transformation in similar ways. Despite the sense of awe the expanding field of technoscience inspires, CutlerShaw’s rarely made use of medical technology. Her favorite medium of expression remained drawing. “Drawing by hand, on paper,” the artist insists, “[is] an essential, primary language […]. Drawing is an act of empathy.”450 In this regard, Cutler-Shaw’s interest in the body, the brain, the soul, and the way science and medicine re-shape them for us, is uniquely expressed by traditional artistic means. The use of technology and digital media is, for most artists, essential in expressing visually how the image of the body and the brain has changed. The New York artist, Steve Miller was one of the first artists to systematically turn towards medical and scientific imagery as tools for portraiture. Since the early 1990s, Miller has created a gallery of portraits and self-portraits which, while integrating in a hybrid way X-rays, sonograms, mammograms, electrocardiographs, microscopic imagery, PET, and MRI scans, explore notions of identity and personal history. Using medical technology and transposing them in artworks through an artistic process that involves drawing, silkscreen printing, and painting — Miller transforms a diagnostic procedure in a form of portraiture. Miller’s portraits depict one’s identity from within. His ‘sitters’ although in a healthy state are subjected, in the process of being portrayed, to medical screening. They donate blood for analysis, expose themselves to radiations, and spend time in MRI scanners. The final artworks, however, are not only raw scientific data that represents the one portrayed. Particular details ensure that the images are meaningful portraits beyond a simple representation of the internal landscape. If medical imagery erases personality, Miller’s artworks are bringing parts of it back. The names inscribed in the medical negatives are not the only clues that tell us                                                                                                                 449 450

 

Ibid., p. 292. Ibid., p. 293.

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about the identity of the sitter. The careful choice of specific medical technology on the one hand, and the parts of the body portraited on the other, aims to capture significant aspects of one’s identity and are symbolic of the sitter’s personality or profession. His double portrait of Jacques and Veronique Mauguin (1993) (Fig. 85), for example, combines the sonogram of Ms. Mauguin’s ovaries and uterus with a radiography of Mr. Mauguin’s hip.451 The portrait of the art critic Pierre Restany (Fig. 84) comprises of an xray profile with glasses and a cigar above his x-rayed hands, 452 while the portrait of the writer Simon Lane is composed of x-rays of the Lane’s teeth atop a reproduction of Van Gogh’s painting Still Life with Books (1887-88).453 Several of his portraits and self-portraits come closer to neurobiology and the brain. The Portrait of Dr. William Frosch (1993) (Fig. 86), a psychiatrist, is illustrated by a succession of 19 MRI scans of the doctor’s brain. Miller’s Self-Portrait Black (1993) — a ‘technological self-portrait’ as Richard Huntington calls it — brings together an MRI scan of the artist’s brain and an x-ray of his spine. Many of Miller’s self portraits belong to the Vanitas series. Self-Portrait Vanitas # 25 (1998) (Fig. 88), Self-Portrait Vanitas # 80 (1999), Self-Portrait Vanitas # 48 (1998) (Fig. 89) couple x-rays of symbolic objects typically encountered in sixteenth and seventeenth century vanitas paintings — hourglasses, musical instruments, dried plants —with MRI scans, angiograms, and Xrays of his brain and body. The aim of Miller’s Vanitas, like their historical counterparts, is to subtly bring to attention the ephemeral aspect of human nature. Interestingly however — as Michael Rush points out — “Miller’s silkscreens are not, by and large, morbid. His use of pop shades of red, blue and orange hints at a lightness about death, or at least a sense of reconciliation with the fact of it.”454 Miller’s avid curiosity for science and his interest in medical technology led him                                                                                                                 451 452

Ibid., p. 289. Steve Miller, Artist Webpage, http://stevemiller.com/press-articles/712-2/ (accessed May 17, 2012).

453

Steve Miller, Artist Webpage, http://stevemiller.com/press-articles/art-press-187/ (accessed May 17, 2012). 454

Michael Rush, "Steve Miller at Universal Concepts Unlimited," Art in America 88, 7 (2000), http://stevemiller.com/press-articles/steve-miller-at-universal-concepts-unlimited/ (accessed May 17, 2012).

 

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to the re-frame the portrait genre from a medico-scientific perspective. He is, perhaps, the artist to explore the widest array of medical tools to portray himself and others. Brain scans, blood or chromosome micrographs, x-rays, sonograms, and angiograms are not ‘found objects’ the artist integrates into his work, nor are they encountered in a natural diagnostic process, but are particularly sought for by the artist. The references to neuroscience consist mostly of few MRI scans of the brain and the suggestion of nerve structures in the paint cracks.455 They are therefore minimal. However, although neurobiology is only one field among many fields from which Miller borrows tools and imagery, his portraits are important examples of neuro artworks in the way they engage the brain in an aesthetic and metaphoric dialogue about the identity. In 1995, within a retrospective dedicated to the work of Annie Leibovitz — the renowned American photographer — one could find among celebrity and family portraits a colored MRI image of Laurie Anderson’s brain. Laurie Anderson, a multimedia performance artist, best known for her experimental electronic music, her pioneering inventions of musical devices, and her elaborate performance events — is portrayed by Leibovitz as a succession of fifteen colorful MRI scans displayed in three columns. Leibovitz’s Laurie Anderson MRI (1994) (Fig. 90), Bettyann Kevles writes, “looks at Anderson from the perspective of the kind of virtual image she likes to project — an apt metaphor for the soul of a performer immersed in computer technology.”456 Discussing Leibovitz’s portrait, Kevles observes the surprised reaction and the smiles this work elicits from its viewers. “A century ago,” Kevles postulates, “no lay observer, seeing those images, would have been able to identify a brain. Annie Leibovitz’s MRI is targeted at the late twentieth-century eyes for whom the subject is at once recognizable but new to have special meaning.”457 Kelves’ observation stands for most neuro artworks. They are generally dedicated to an observer, which, while familiar with, is yet fascinated by neuroscientific knowledge and imagery.                                                                                                                 455

Richard Huntington, "Self-Portraits from the inside Out," The Buffalo News (1993), available online at: http://stevemiller.com/press-articles/the-buffalo-news-inside-out/ (accessed May 17, 2012). 456 457

 

Kevles, Naked to the Bone, p. 295. Ibid., pp. 295-296.

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Taking a look back at the at the artworks addressed in this chapter so far, an interesting difference between the way brain images are used in relation to portraiture emerges. If Helen Chadwick uses the image of an unknown naked brain as a metaphoric substitute for a self-portrait, and Joyce Cutler-Shaw appropriates an unknown CT scan to replace the facial features of a portrait, Leibovitz, just like Miller before, applies the MRI scan of a known person to portray that particular person. But unlike Miller, whose portraits are constructed from a variety of visual clues, Leibovitz’s image configures the portrait from MRI scans alone. For the first time, the MRI scans on their own render an explicit portrait. In the same year Leibovitz displayed Laurie Anderson MRI, the Visible Human Project — a digital archive commissioned by the National Library of Medicine — became available to the public. The aim of this digital atlas was to create a complete anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representation of the normal male and female human bodies by acquiring axial CT, MRI, and cryosection images of representative male and female cadavers.458 Few years later, the New York based Australian artist Justine Cooper was directly influenced by the Visible Human Project when she created Rapt I and II (1998) (Fig. 91)— two of her MRI-based works which revolve around the artist’s body. In video form, “intended to be viewed rear projected in a blacked out room on a floating panel,”459 and in installation form — made of 76 MRI scans slices which assemble in a ten meter long data-body, the Rapt project, as Robyn Donohue points out is a ‘fantastic voyage’460 inside the artist’s ethereal digitalized body. “As the film proceeds,” Patrick Crogan describes Rapt I, “the body transcends its indeterminate beginnings to become a particular body with a particular face, a face that comes into resolution as an assembled sedimentation of horizontal sections of virtual head at the conventional filmic scale of the close up. This shot of the face begs the question of identity and individuality rather than simply answering it. It is monochrome, fractured and schematic — unlike a conventional photograph or portrait it does not speak of unique appearance or personality but of construction, digital compression and

                                                                                                                458

U.S. National Library of Medicine, "The Visible Human Project," http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html (accessed May 18, 2012). 459 460

 

Justine Cooper, Artist Webpage, http://www.justinecooper.com/index.html (accessed May 18, 2012). Robyn Donohue, "Justine Cooper: Rapt," Photofile 56 (1999), p. 38-40.

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extrapolation.”461

In these works, although the digital image is a direct reconstruction of the artist’s body, the concept of portraiture is hardly addressed. The artist’s body becomes a rather anonymous digital atlas, similar to the archive that inspired it. The artworks bring attention to the digitalization of the body, and the power new technologies have in transforming the physical into digital. In a reverse process, the artist transforms the digital data back into a physical object. The attention given to the process of digitalizing the body is apparent in the artist’s own words: “At the point of imaging, solid organic tissue is transposed into an ephemeral digital language of zeroes and ones, in much the same way that a cipher uses substitution to encrypt information. In the resulting physical work I attempt to retain some of the ephemerality of that earlier translation into digital space, some of the obscurity of the cipher, while offsetting them against the apparent tangibility of the body.”462

Rapt is thus more about the MRI as a technology to peak into the body, than about the body’s identity. At a later stage, the question of portraiture is touched upon slightly in Trap – Self Portrait (1998) (Fig. 92) and Reach (2000) (Fig. 93). These two sculptures, conceptually very similar to Rapt, are of smaller proportions and more intimate in their reconstruction of the head and the hands of the artist from MRI slices. In terms of identity, the difference from Rapt consists mainly in the titles which suggest a personal reading of the impersonal MRI structure. An almost identical artistic trajectory with strikingly similar visual solution can be found in the work of Marilène Oliver. Like Cooper, the artist’s interest lies in exploring the role of the body within the context of digital technologies. “My relationship with the body,” the artist confesses, “is nostalgic and romantic, based on an anxiety that the body is becoming redundant. New technologies, especially communications and medical imaging alienate us from the bodies that we have. They

                                                                                                                461

Patrick Crogan, "Insides Out: Speculations on the Body in 3D Computer Animation" (paper presented at the Society for Animation Studies Conference, 1999) available online at: http://justinecooper.com/insidesout.html (accessed May 18, 2012). 462

 

Justine Cooper, Artist Webpage, http://justinecooper.com/reach.html (accessed March 13, 2012).

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promote a decentralisation of the self - they allow us to project ourselves into different spaces and offer us new views of our bodies that belittle being contained in a physical body.”463

Oliver’s reference to the Visible Human Project is even more specific than in the case of Rapt. Her early work I Know You Inside Out (2001) is, in the artist’s own word: “a reconstruction of a 39-year old convicted murderer named Joseph Paul Jernigan, who prior to his execution, was persuaded to donate his body to medical science in order to become the ‘Visible Human,’ a dataset of cryosections, CT scans and MRI scans. My desire to create a sculpture of Jernigan was not anatomical nor medical – I was fascinated by the virtuality of the Visible Human – in becoming ‘visible’, Jernigan’s body was converted from flesh to voxel: in order to create the dataset Jernigan’s corpse was frozen and sliced so finely that it disintegrated to mush, leaving only digital photographs and scans. The images of his body where uploaded onto the Internet allowing him to be viewed at anytime and any place (but never all at once), he was under constant threat of being copied or translated. I downloaded images of his body and printed them onto sheets of acrylic and then ‘put him back together again’. In making I know you inside out Jernigan was relocated in time and space; returned from a digital to analogue state; no longer decentralized, fragmented and prone, but centered, whole and upright.”464

In the process of reconstructing Jernigan, Oliver was inspired to create, from digital MRI scans, a Family Portrait (2003) (Fig. 94). “MRI, which is a bespoke and allows bodies into the scanner for non-clinical reasons, has the most potential for subverting the cold, distanced medical gaze. By putting my family into the scanner, love and emotion entered a space normally reserved for pathological diagnosis.”465 Thus, in a similar process that lead Cooper to Rapt, Oliver reconstructs from MRI scans, life size sculptures of each member of her close family. A later development of this idea is Radiant (2006) (Fig. 95) — a work constructed this time from layering PET scans. In this work, through the PET images, the artist brings color into her works. Just as Cooper, the artist’s overall intention was to explore the question of knowledge through seeing and the issue of digitalizing the body. It is only                                                                                                                 463

Marilène Oliver, Artist Statement, http://www.marileneoliver.com/writings/writsartiststat.htm (accessed March 13, 2012). 464

Ibid.

465

Marilène Oliver, "Resurrecting the Digitized Body: The Use of the 'Scanned in' Body for Making Artworks" (paper presented at the Electronic Information, the Visual Arts and Beyond Conference, London 2007), available online at: http://www.marileneoliver.com/writings/writpubpapers.html (accessed March 13, 2012).

 

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indirectly that the artists bring into discussion the idea of portraiture. From certain viewing angles, the identity of the sitters can be grasped by reconstructing the external contour of their bodies, but the question of who this person is pales in comparison with the complex inquiry surrounding the nature of the body and the way it can be seen, understood, and represented through both science and art. The works of Cooper and Oliver are reflections on the possibilities of understanding the body by scrutinizing it visually and by reinterpreting this knowledge in an aesthetic form. A similar aesthetic intention can be recognized in the work of Angela Palmer. Several of her self-portraits and the portrait of novelist Robert Harris (Fig. 96) have, as a starting point, MRI scans of the person portrayed. As with the work of Cooper and Oliver, Palmer’s portraits are reconstructed from MRI and CT scan details on a multitude of transparent sheets of glass.466 But unlike the work of Cooper and Oliver, Palmer’s portraits do not reproduce the scans directly; the artist transposes the structure of the scan on glass through drawing or engraving. The result is a three-dimensional graphic structure made of a multitude of black ink or white engraving lines. “The finished pieces,” Palmer describes her work, “presented in three dimensions in a vertical plane, reveal the extraordinary inner anatomical architecture concealed beneath the surface, thus creating the most objective form of portraiture. The image floats ethereally in its glass chamber, but can only be viewed from certain angles — from above and from the side the image vanishes and the viewer sees only a void.”467 Abandoning the scans, and making use of graphic expression through line, the artist switches the focus of attention from the body as digitally recorded, towards an artistic portrait. “While my works may not be instantly recognizable as a portrait,” the artist observes, “they are objective representations — removing the familiar to expose                                                                                                                 466

The technique of these sculptures was inspired by the penicillin model created in the same fashion by the Noble Prize winning scientist, Dorothy Hodgkin – model which the artist encountered at the Science Museum in Oxford. Angela Palmer, Artist’s Statement, http://www.angelaspalmer.com/ (accessed March 13, 2012). 467

 

Ibid.

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the extraordinary architecture of the internal human form.”468 However, perhaps more than the work of Cooper or Oliver, Palmer’s self-portraits relate to the identity of the one portrayed. Using the entire body (Self-Portrait Crouching, Fig. 97), just the head (Self portrait in ink, Fig. 98), or only the brain (Brain of the Artist, Fig. 100), Palmer plays with the aesthetic possibilities the MRI scanner provides in representing the self. Sometimes, as in Self-Portrait Crouching (Fig. 97) or in Double Self-Portrait (Fig. 99), the identity of the sitter, and aspects of her personality seem to become apparent. The act of crouching — an untypical posture for a scanned body,469 just like the mouth wide open as if screaming, distance the artwork from the medical scans and adds new levels of expressivity.

* * * * *

In the same year Carl Schoonover published Portraits of the Mind (2010), Betty Zimmerberg and Kathryn Price curated at the Williams College Museum of Art the exhibition Landscapes of the Mind: Contemporary Artists Contemplating the Brain. Although unrelated, these two events have in common the uncritical use of art historical terminology to define images about the brain. Just as there are no portraits in Portraits of the Mind, there are no landscapes in Landscapes of the Mind. Susan Aldworth, one of the artists whose works were on displayed in this exhibition, opens for discussion the idea — which, for Schoonover, was a natural assumption — that neuroscientific brain imagery can serve as portraits. “Contemporary neuroscience,” the artists points out, “talks of ‘mapping the mind’ […] But whilst a map of the mind suggests the idea of a landscape if we are talking about minds in general, it changes into a kind of portraiture as soon as we consider the map or landscape of the                                                                                                                 468

Jane Elliott, "Artist Gets inside the Human Body," BBC News Online February 3, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6319979.stm (accessed March 13, 2012). 469

The scan of the crouching body was enabled by the vertical MRI scanner at Aberdeen University, which allows for postures other than lying horizontally.

 

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mind of someone in particular.”470 Further on, Aldworth differentiates between the two metaphors by considering the scientific mapping of the mind as landscapes rather than portraits. “This artistic metaphor where landscape refers to the objective mapping of the mind and portraiture references the subjective self,” the artist suggests, “reflects the problems with scientific investigation into the nature of consciousness which is by definition a subjective experience.”471 Inherently reductionist, Aldworth argues, scanning technologies are “breaking down the self into its component parts without offering an explanation of the whole.” Consequently, brain scans “are incomplete records of an individual” and prove inefficient as portraits. Scanning technologies, Aldworth observes, “seem to promise to disclose something of our very essence as people as they open our minds to visual inspection. But they disappoint on this front on their own […]. They offer a landscape of the mind when it is a portrait that we want.”472 Since 1999, as the consequence of seeing her own brain scans during a diagnosis procedure, Susan Aldworth has dedicated her art to exploring the brain, the nature of thinking, and consciousness. The sight of her brain images, the artist points out, triggered a curiosity for the relationship between the physical brain and the sense of self.473 Collaborating with doctors and neuroscientists and making use of a great array of media: from etchings, brain scan collages, digital prints, drawings, water colors, and light installations, Aldworth created a number of art series which addressed the daunting questions of how the brain, as a material structure, gives rise to immaterial thought and to the sense of self. Trying to understand the material basis of personality Aldworth defines her work in direct relationship to neuroscience in the following way: “Contemporary neuroscience is supported by extraordinary brain imaging techniques (MRI, PET, CT and EEG) so that it is now possible to localize and visualize various forms

                                                                                                                470

Susan Aldworth, "I Am Both in My Mind and out of My Brain," in Williams College Museum of Art, (2010): http://wcma.williams.edu/exhibtions/%E2%80%9Ci-am-both-in-my-mind-and-out-of-mybrain%E2%80%9D/ (accessed February 14, 2012). 471 472 473

 

Ibid. Ibid. Susan Aldworth, Artist Webpage, http://susanaldworth.com/about-me/ (accessed May 25, 2012).

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of activity in the brain. My work responds to, and uses this contemporary imagery, to build up an alternative and more complete picture of someone by referring to the dimensions of self which reside inside the body. With this approach I aim to give insight into identity by blending personal (subjective) and scientific (objective) narratives. I hope to breach the barriers between the philosophical and scientific discourses through images that reveal previously unseen aspects of the self but which, without their individual narratives, have an impersonal quality. I hope my work challenges conventional expectations of portraiture.”474

The concept of portraiture opens interesting avenues of interpretation in her art. Inspired by the sight of her own brain, Aldworth’s investigation into the mental universe has as a visual starting point brains scans which, many times, are not her own. Therefore, by using brain scans of patients at the neuroradiology department of the Royal London Hospital, Aldworth explores identity both at a personal and universal level. In her work, the artist investigates the nature of consciousness and the relationship of her mind with her body, but at the same time gives shape to a collective self-portrait. Aldworth’s etchings, Saunders points out, which are in a sense “intimate ‘portraits’ in that they record or represent the brain scans of individuals, have been transmuted from specific to generic, from personal to universal.”475 Taking this idea further it becomes apparent that Aldworth’s works are portraits at three different levels. They are representations of individual people – the patients; they are universal portraits of the human mind; and lastly they are self-portraits. “You are seeing the inside of the brain with your brain,” the artist reflects, “You are thinking about what you are seeing with what you are seeing on the screen. You are looking inside your head while thinking, seeing, feeling — your brain is working while you are looking inside it. But where is the ‘me’ in all this?”476 — the artist asks. Most of Aldworth’s art projects since 1999 reflect the interest in the universal dimension of portraiture, focusing on general concepts like thought and imagination in correlation to the brain that produces them. “For me,” the artist declares, “the brain is                                                                                                                 474 475 476

Susan Aldworth, "I am both in my mind and out of my brain." Gill Saunders, "States of Mind," in Scribing the Soul, ed. Susan Aldworth (BPR Publishers, 2008), p. 3.

Susan Aldworth, "The Phisical Brain and the Sense of Self: An Artist's Exploration," in Neurocultures, ed. Ortega and Vidal, p. 276.

 

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the key to personal identity: it has become the mainspring of my work. The lines and twists of its physical structure have become my visual language to explore identity.”477 Brain imagery in the form of scans and angiograms became the artist’s tool in exploring issues of identity and consciousness. One of Aldworth’s early works, No Ghost in the Machine (2004) (Fig. 101), is a series of light boxes which draws direct inspiration from the artist’s experience as patient at the Royal London Hospital and addresses the profound materialistic perspective medical imagery urges. “Looking into a functional brain live on a monitor must make us question the relationship between the physical brain and our sense of self,” the artist conjectures; “there is no ghost in the machine, only a machine.”478 No Ghost in the Machine is a contemporary consideration of the Cartesian dualism, and the title is an explicit reference to Descartes.479 Reflecting on neuroscience’s inability to efficiently account for conscious experience within the brain, Aldworth’s work questions the relation between the material brain and the nature of self. “[I]f you don’t believe in a Cartesian soul (which I don’t),” the artists presents the conundrum, “then what is the material nature of personality?”480 The images present life-size drawings in white line of transparent body parts, combined such that they recreate the structure of a transparent human-like figure. In these images, as the artist herself suggests, the ghosts have an anatomical structure which render the seat of the soul as ‘the organ of self.’ Thus, what is questioned here, as in most of Aldworth’s works, is how meat becomes mind. “At this point in medical history,” Aldworth asks, “what could be a more contemporary portrait than the one which shows a living, functional human brain via a brain scan.”481 This sentence, however, is immediately followed by a skeptical                                                                                                                 477 478 479

Ibid., p. 274. Ibid., p. 275.

The expression of the ‘ghost in the machine’ introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind, was intended as a pejorative label to what he calls Descartes’ myth of mind-body dualism. Gilbert Ryle and Daniel C. Dennett, The Concept of Mind, (London: Penguin Books, 2000). 480 481

 

Ortega and Vidal, Neurocultures, p. 277. Aldworth, "The Phisical Brain and the Sense of Self," p. 274.

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perspective concerning the brain’s capacity to communicate significant aspects about its owner. “But I have spent a year,” the artists reveals, “looking into the brain of thirty strangers — what do I know about who they are?”482 Out of closely observing these brains while under medical scrutiny — on the operating table, being subjected to cerebral angiography or brain scanning — a new project emerged. Brainscapes: Inside the Head of Thirty Strangers (2006) (Fig. 102) is a series of etchings in blue and white which explores further the question of how brain alters personality. The thirty strangers were patients who suffer from various cerebral dysfunctions and had undergone neurological interventions. The artist assisted the surgeries, as part of her artist-inresidence position at the Royal London Hospital. Aldworth’s initial drawings on location are transposed in a series of deep blue color etchings. “An intense blue,” the artist describes her artistic process, “was beginning to emerge in my studio work — which I later called cerebral blue. It is a color which many patients say they associate with brain trauma.”483 The experience, the impact, and the suggestive power of colors are explored by the artist also in the work series entitled Location Drawings (2005–06) (Fig. 103). In contrast with most of Aldworth’s works in which monochromatic expression —usually in a cold color — predominates, the Location Drawing is an explosion of vibrant color through which the artist aims to represent the ‘person’ and to suggests consciousness. “For me,” the artist explains, “consciousness has to be in color.”484 The art projects that reflect the idea of self-investigation to the largest degree are perhaps the Cogito Ergo Sum series (Fig. 104-106). For the first time in these works, the artist makes use of brain scans not only as inspiration, but also as actual elements in her work. On fMRI scans, she digitally superimposes images of portraits, anatomic drawings, artistically rendered brains, eyes, butterflies, skeletons, and circus characters, all with the aim of suggesting “what an MRI scan might look like if it could show what was

                                                                                                                482

Ibid., p. 274. Ibid., p. 282. 484 Ibid., p. 280. 483

 

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going on in the mind.”485 The aim is thus to aesthetically augment brain images to make room for the representation of the mind and the self. Along the visual transformation of the brain imagery into ‘mind imagery’, the prints in Cogito Ergo Sum, particularly in Cogito Ergo Sum 2 (2002) (Fig. 105), are accompanied by textual statements aimed to provoke philosophical reflection about life and death, about self and the brain, and about the way brain illness impacts ones identity. “Are you any near to finding yourself by looking at it?,” “I am going out of my mind,” “You can look into my brain but you will never find me,” ”I no longer feel immortal” — are few of the statements one is confronted with when viewing the work. Aldworth produced a large number of work series which illustrate the dynamic play between the material and immaterial aspects of the brain. No Ghost in the Machine (2004), Thought Process (2005), Location Drawings (2005–06), Between a Thing and a Thought (2006), Brainscapes (2006), Matter into Imagination (2006), Birth of Thought (2007), Apoptosis (2007), and The Self as a Shadow Puppet (2007) are artistic response to the neuroscientific challenge of finding a place for the self within the brain. The interest in the exploration of the self addresses questions about the nature of the soul, about the way neuroscience makes the brain (but not the mind) visible, and about the way changes in the brain affect the sense of self. The latter, is particularly represented in Aldworth’s most recent work, Reassembling the Self (since 2010). Created as part of her residence at the Newcastle University, this project explores the experience of schizophrenia. Based on the artist’s interaction with patients, her work relies on the reported experience with this disease, and incorporates self-portraits by the patients themselves. The project aims to reflect how identity is under attack when schizophrenic symptoms are manifested. One other artist whose artistic interest in neuroscience was shaped by partnership with scientists at Newcastle University is the sculptor Katharine Dowson. Part of the Head On project, the artist’s collaboration with scientist was motivated by the desire to understand as much as possible about dyslexia, a condition the artist herself had been                                                                                                                 485

 

Ibid., p. 288.

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diagnosed with as a child.486 Taking part as subject in research projects that investigate the way in which the brain of a dyslexic person functions differently in processing words, Dowson was inspired to create artworks which explore reading difficulties. Word Search (2001), You Have 5 Seconds (2001) and Dyslexics (2002) are meant to illustrate the sense of frustration felt by dyslexics, particularly dyslexic children, when they realize that while their peers read and write with ease, they are unable to do so. The result of this collaboration was a series of artworks, which, as the artist explains can be divided into three categories: words associated with dyslexia, IQ tests which seem to base intelligence on primarily linguistic and numerical skills, and, lastly, ‘the physical dyslexic self.’487 Part of the exploration of the ‘dyslexic’ self, Dowson first created Chromosome Puzzle (2002) — an artwork in the form of an acrylic board with removable pieces which reproduce the shape of the artist’s chromosomes. The artwork recalls a puzzle games for children, and at the same time points to recent theories linking dyslexia to genetic inheritance. Furthermore, the images of the chromosomes are presented as if they were the letters in an unknown alphabet. A later version of the same work, Self Portrait (2005) (Fig. 107) represents the artist’s chromosomes printed onto 23 glass tiles. Each tile is numbered and inscribed with a particular attribute associated with the specific chromosome. Number six is the chromosome associated with dyslexia. As a development of the same concepts illustrated in these works, Dowson created a set of works dedicated to the brain. Brain Bricks (2004) (Fig. 108) plays on the idea of the puzzle, but this time the image that the puzzle reconstructs is that of the artist’s brain. When arranged correctly, the twelve painted cubes of transparent glass form the image of the artist’s MRI scan. The artwork, which can be displayed as assembled or in a scrambled state, is a powerful metaphor for the dyslexic self. A second work, My Soul (2005) (Fig. 109), is a three-dimensional laser-etched image of the artist’s brain transposed in two glass blocks that, together, form a cube. My                                                                                                                 486 487

 

See Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, pp. 44-45. Ibid., p. 44.

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Soul is an elegant sculpture of a brain, evoking ethereal nature of the mind and the soul. Although the work came as a result of the artist participation as a subject in an MRI research study about dyslexia, the work leaves behind any notion of brain deficiency and celebrates the enchanting brain. A phantom-like brain, My Soul recalls Aldworth’s work No Ghost in the Machine. But if Aldworth’s work contests the existence of the soul, My Soul embraces it. In spite of being a reconstruction of the artist’s brain, and thus referring to the physical object of the brain, the transparent nature of this work brings about a spiritual dimension and invokes the symbolic existence of the soul. The work is an accurate reproduction of the artist’s brain, but the transparent, immaterial brain image creates a conceptual conflict between the image of an actual brain and the immaterial components of the self, which this work proposes. The sculpture is at the same time a portrait of the artist and a metaphoric illustration of the insubstantial soul. Another artist to incorporate personal experience with neurological trauma in her work is Katherine Sherwood, the artist who after a hemorrhage to the left hemisphere of the brain was left with severe motor dysfunctions to the right side of he body and with language deficiencies.488 Throughout, her artwork addresses issues of creative and personal identity as affected by neurological changes, pointing to the role the brain has in defining who we are, how we experience, interact, and influence the world. The experience of the stroke had a powerful impact not only on her personality, but also on her creative style. While her brain and her body needed to relearn how to speak and walk, her art became more powerful and effortless. “Her art,” Anjan Chatterjee suggests, “has changed along with her life. Sherwood finds that her images “flow” more easily. She is less anxious about them, perhaps less controlling of her output. Her movements on canvas are rendered more gracefully even as she herself moves about her canvas haltingly.”489 Interestingly, Sherwood’s artistic curiosity for the brain preceded her stroke. In an                                                                                                                 488

See also the Chapter III, pp. 108-110.

489

Chatterjee, "Apoplexy and Personhood in Katherine Sherwood’s Paintings," available online http://www.katherinesherwood.com (accessed February 14, 2012).

 

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article about the artist, Anjan Chatterjee points out that since brain imagery has been part of her artistic vocabulary even before her stroke, the artist describes her experience as if her life was catching up with her art.490 Since the stroke however, brain imagery — including here own angiograms, but also images from medical text from Vesalius and Cajal, and neurons — have become central to her work. Just like the neuron images addressed in Chapter III,491 her own angiograms are often accompanied by symbols from the 17th century book of magic and demonology The Lesser Key of Solomon. Shape of People (2006) (Fig. 110), for example, juxtaposes over a symmetric reproduction of the artist’s angiograms ‘the key of Zepar,’ the symbol of a demonic duke appearing in red armor, like a soldier, and whose office is — some accounts describe — to cause women to love man, and to change their shape (formam) such that they may enjoy their beloved.492 The color red and the fragments of the seal corroborate the presence of Zepar invoked for his power to change someone’s shape. This symbol hints to the way one’s shape — physical and cognitive — can be altered as a consequence of an unexpected neurological occurrence. In the visual blend of the artist’s own medical images with the historical anatomical drawings of the brain and the seals — executed often with thick paint — the image of the brain become at times almost unrecognizable. In many instances, as is the case with Transports Instantaneously (2007) (Fig. 111) and Firmer Spirit (2006) (Fig. 112), Sherwood’s paintings give a first impression of pure abstractions. In these works, the neurological references are visible only in the presence of some form of priming. Although the aesthetic experience is not directly dependent on the information about the artist’s disability, once aware of the circumstances of her creative process, the meaning of the work becomes inseparable from it. “Sherwood’s stroke,” Georgina Kleege points out, “is there on the canvas, apparent in the angiogram, the visible record of that cerebral event. Katherine Sherwood’s work however, is not about overcoming                                                                                                                 490 491

Ibid. Chapter III, pp. 108-110.

492

See for example the text in “Pseudomonarchia daemonum” by Johann Wier (written in 1583), published in Joseph H. Peterson, ed. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (Weiser Books, 2001).

 

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that event; it does not seek to inspire pity or awe. Rather it makes use of that biographical fact, incorporating it into her work, making it a part of the system of symbols and visual elements that she deploys.”493 Sherwood’s artworks are portraits not only in the sense that they incorporate visual references to the artist’s brain. They are reflections of the artist’s brain and identity in a more profound way. Referring to Sherwood’s work, Georgina Kleege suggest that “all painting has an element of the self portrait,”494 even when not actually depicting the artist. She further believes that, since art is first created by the artist’s brain it is implicitly a form of inner portraiture. Such statements are regarded with skepticism in the history and theory of art, deemed too vague and too generalizing to have any theoretical value. In this regard, however, Sherwood’s case has a special status. Asking the question of what happens in the artist’s brain when s/he creates has a different connotation when referring to Katherine Sherwood’s works. Sherwood’s paintings, perhaps more than any other work in this chapter, can be perceived as visual proofs of the brain at work. They vehemently point out that these images are the result of the brain of this artist. As a brain with special features, different from those of most brains, the brain of the artist gains a strong identity of its own. Therefore, by incorporating her experience and her disability in her art, by drawing attention to the brain as the generator of the self, but also as a structure that seems to have its own identity, Sherwood’s works are evident manifestations of the brainhood idea. More recent artworks — such as those from the Healers of the Yelling Clinic495 series — use the image of the brain in a more visible way. The Healers is a series of collage figures, each composed of three different pieces: one for the head, one for the torso, and an attached hanging skirt. The portraits of these creatures are replaced with brain scans and images from neuro-anatomy texts. Mansur Healer of the Yelling Clinic                                                                                                                 493

Georgina Kleege, "Brain Work: A Meditation on the Painting of Katherine Sherwood," in Golgi's Door (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences 2008), available online at: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/articles/goglidoor_kleege.html (accessed May 28, 2012). 494 Ibid. 495

Yelling Clinic is an artist collaborative endeveor exploring issues of disability, and what it means to be disabled. For more details see: "Yelling Clinic, An Artist Collaborative," http://www.yellingclinic.com (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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(2010) (Fig. 113) is a figure with two symmetrical heads, each created from two brain scans; Belly’ s (2010) (Fig. 114) head, comprises of three overlapping brains which seem to describe a complicated coiffure; while the portrait of Blue Girl (2010) (Fig. 115) is replaced by a blue brain image which resembles the angiogram from Transports Instantaneously. In these works, the artist’s own brain scans are used as portraits for characters with strange appearances and curious names. Three more works: Burgundy Healer (2010), Dr. Speech (2010), and Neuron Nurse (2010), complete the series. Together, the Healers of the Yelling Clinic, all in female form, with long skirts, complicated hair styles and brain portraits, are symbolic representations of the artist’s own healing processes. Some Healers are perhaps suggestive of concrete aspects of her recovery: from neural-reorganization after a stroke (Neuron Nurse) to the process of regaining speech abilities (Dr. Speech). Like Susan Aldworth and Katharine Dowson, Sherwood combines her own personal experience with visual elements from neuroscience in creating portraits and self-portraits. In their creative process, all three artists investigated the role the brain has in defining, affecting, and transforming personal and creative identity. Centering their art on the relationship between the brain, the self, and the soul, they all created, in direct or subtle ways, metaphorical portraits with the brain in mind.

* * * * *

All of the artists addressed so far in this chapter draw inspiration for their neuroportraits from structural images of the brain. Although not very often, few artists do explore the relation between self and portraiture also in connection to the functions of the brain. Marta de Menezes’ Functional Portraits (2002) (Fig. 117-119) and Untitled (2008) (Fig. 116) by Daniel Margulies and Chris Sharp address the way in which visualizing the workings of the brain can lead to illustrative portraits. They use functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to articulate artistically new definitions of self. Functional MRI, like PET, detects changes in the blood flow and records neural

 

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activity. Neural activity is manifested by an increase in blood flow in the respective brain areas. In contrast to the PET scan, fMRI needs no radioactive isotopes to detect changes in the brain, but depends on the local variations of oxygen content in the blood. Furthermore, in comparison to PET scans, fMRI scans have a greater resolution. A revolutionary brain imaging technique, used more frequently in scientific research than in medical diagnosis, fMRI scanning is, just like PET scanning, particularly prone to popular misunderstandings and overestimations. In artistic representation, however, scientific accuracy is not relevant. What make an artwork interesting are its visual appeal and its power to engage the viewer intellectually. Many scientists would dismiss Daniel Margulies and Chris Sharp work Untitled (2008) as inaccurate and scientifically irrelevant. I the context of art, however, their project brings about interesting questions about aesthetics, identity, and consciousness. The artwork, in the form of a video installation, presents the reconstruction of brain activity as detected by the fMRI scanner of a subject’s brain while reading and contemplating a passage from the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant’s influential text on aesthetics, and while listening to The Rite of Spring, the seminal musical piece by Igor Stravinsky. The video illustrates a colorful reconstruction of brain activity of a brain engaged in aesthetic perception and philosophical contemplation. Changes in chromatic patterns suggest changes in neural activity. While watching this reconstruction of brain activity on the screen, the viewers also have the chance to listen to the same composition and read the same passage, and thus to metaphorically parallel their brain activity with what they see on the screen. Although contributing to the dissemination of a rather erroneous idea of the brain as ‘lighting up,’ Untitled is a conceptually powerful work which invites us, the viewers, not only to think about thinking, but also to imagine our own brain thinking about thinking. Experiencing the video while reading Kant’s text and listening to Stravinsky’s composition triggers an involuntary reflection about the brain. After experiencing this work, a similar selfreflective mechanism is likely to occur even independently of the work itself when, for example, encountering any of the two pieces Margulies and Sharp proposed for aesthetic reflection. While reading Kant’s Critique of Judgment or listening to

 

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Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the viewer’s brain would be therefore reminded to reflect on the actual process of reflection. Thus, this artwork is not only a functional portrait of the subject in the scanner, but operates also as a mirror for our own neural activity. Marta de Menezes’s employment of fMRI is less encompassing and much more specific. Working in collaboration with physicist Patricia Figueiredo at Oxford University, the artist created a series of Functional Portraits, in which the fMRI brain activity of particular individuals is recorded in a very specific situation, one that would reflect the personality of the person portrayed. Exploring the possibilities that neuroscience offers, Marta de Menezes attempts to portray her sitters not only by appearance, but also by integrating aspects of relevance for who they are. Portraits with symbolic attributes — a painter at easel, a musician with an instrument, a scholar with a book or pen, a geographer with a map, and the mathematician with a compass — have been classical subjects within the portrait genre from Renaissance painting to contemporary photography. Menezes’ Functional Portraits (2002) are conceptually inscribed in this portraiture tradition, but present the individual in a completely new form. “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of the brain,” the artist explains, “permits direct visualisation of the brain regions that are active in real time, while the subject is performing a given task. In this project I have been attempting to create Functional Portraits by imaging the brain function of the model, while performing a task that characterises herself or himself.”496 Different portraits in the Functional Portraits series are mapping different types of neural activity. Menezes firstly portrayed her collaborator, which, while in the scanner mimicked the action of playing the piano — Patricia Playing the Piano (2002). This was followed shortly by a series of functional self-portraits while drawing, and a portrait of Martin Kemp — the art historian who has dedicated his academic career to investigating the relation between art and science — while analyzing the famous painting The Ambassadors (1533) by Hans Holbein. Visually similar and made from the same combination of fMRI scans, the                                                                                                                 496

 

Marta de Menezes, Artist Webpage, http://www.martademenezes.com/ (accessed May 28, 2012).

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Functional Portraits are rendered either in temporal succession as a time-lapse video projection, or in spatial succession as prints on canvas. Both the video and the printed version are accompanied and framed by black and white photographs of the person portrayed. In the video, the frontal picture of Patricia playing the piano morphs into the coronal brain scans; while in the printed form profile portraits, looking out of the frame, are placed at the beginning and the end of the fMRI succession of axial scans. In this sense, the two versions complete each other by rendering the individual’s facial features both frontally and from profile, while the activity of his/her brain are rendered both in coronal and axial perspective. One of Menezes’ installations, commissioned for the exhibition 7/10 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon in 2003, presents two self-portraits. “In one of them,” the artist describes, “my brain activity was recorded while I was making a drawing of the Gulbenkian Foundation’s gardens while watching a photograph from the gardens. In the second portrait, my brain activity was recorded while I was making a drawing of the same gardens but using my memories alone. The two portraits have been displayed side by side, together with the two drawings and the photographs from the garden. It is fascinating to note the differences in brain activity between the two portraits. However, as some scientists have pointed out we cannot conclude from the two portraits that the brain areas involved in drawing from a picture or from memories are the ones represented. In order to make such assertions it would be necessary to repeat the same procedure with different people to demonstrate that the results observed are true observations.”497

Menezes’ description of this project is strikingly similar in conceptual terms to Margulies and Sharp’s Untitled. Although visually and aesthetically different, both projects aim to capture the brain’s neural activity while performing an art related task — playing the piano or listening to music, drawing or interpreting a painting, meditating upon at text on aesthetics. While Untitled invites reflection on aesthetic perception, the Functional Portraits focus on the creative process. It can be said that these two art projects complement each other. In this regard, Functional Portrait: Martin analyzing a painting (2002) can be considered as a conceptual point of contact between the two. The fMRI readings of Martin Kemp’s response to Holbein’s painting is, at the same time, an illustration of visual aesthetic experience — similar to the auditory                                                                                                                 497

Marta de Menezes, "Functional Portraits: Picturing the Invisible Body," A Mínima 7 (2004), available online at: http://aminima.net/wp/?p=47&language=en (accessed May 25, 2012).

 

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aesthetic experience in Untitled — but also, as a functional portrait, it is an indication of analytic and creative processes. The Functional Portrait series is exceptional within neuro art in that it does not exclude the physiognomic features of the individual it portrays. The presence of the pictures, as physiognomic portraits, raises the issue of our inability to identify someone by looking at the depiction of his or her brain activity. Unless faced with a midsagittal section of the brain,498 or with the brain of someone having an untypical brain structure,499 viewers are otherwise unable to recognize the sitter from the brain scans alone. Likewise, the attributes of the functional portraits: drawing, analyzing a painting, and playing the piano are not aid memoirs,500 but symbolic illustrations of neuronal activity that define the person portrayed. Seeing the brain scans alone, outside scientific circles and in the absence of the portrait’s title, the fMRI images are meaningless to a non-specialist — both in identifying the person or the activity they are engaged in. Unlike the work of Aldworth or Sherwood, the brain images in Functional Portraits, are not artistically retouched.501 In each individual case, the brain activity itself determines, in a very direct way, the visual output of the artwork. Menezes goes further in exploring the idea of the brain creating art directly. She suggests that, by anticipating the visual activation pattern in the brain, the brain could be stimulated in such a way that particular desired shapes could be generated on the fMRI scan. “I am now planning,” the artist declares, “as a development of Functional Portraits, to paint the brain by manipulating its activity. With the knowledge of the brain regions that are activated by certain tasks or stimuli, it is possible to design a number of simultaneous tasks and stimuli that will achieve a complex brain activity pattern. In other words, by planning a defined set of tasks it is possible to ‘paint’ a defined pattern of brain activity. Although the artwork has a short lifespan — as long as the subject is

                                                                                                                498

In which the contour of the profile is visible, and thus the external outline of the head’s shape could prompt recognition. 499

For example, someone whose brain scans displays an immediately recognizable malformation.

500

As are for example the glasses and the cigar in the X-ray portrait of Pierre Restany by Miller, see Figure: 84, p. 355. 501

Silvia Casini, "The Aesthetics of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): From the Scientific Laboratory to an Artwork," Contemporary Aesthetics 8 (2010).

 

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performing the tasks — it is possible to document it by means of fMRI. It is a case where it becomes possible to create art by simple thought.”502

Functional Portraits and Untitled together bring attention towards self-identity and self-consciousness as defined in relationship to the brain. Both projects explore the idea of self from a neuroscientific perspective, and raise questions about how we define ourselves by referring to our brain and the brains of others. Looking at these projects we become self-aware and aware of our brains, and we are invited to evaluate the connection between the two. Another project to explore the idea of creating art by thought was initiated by Adi Hoesle under the title of Pingo Ergo Sum (2012) (Fig. 120). In contrast to Menezes, who imagines an instance in which external stimuli create maps of neural activation that generate a desired pre-planed shape, Hoesle and his colleagues actually attempt to generate external images by thought alone — via brainwaves. In conceptual terms, the projects is inspired by discussions about art and creativity and has had as a starting point the rhetorical question one of Lessing’s characters — the painter Conti — posed in Emilia Galotti. “Why is it impossible to paint with our eyes?”, Conti asks, “There is so much that gets lost on the long way from our eyes along the arm to the paintbrush!”503 Throughout art history, artist had indeed struggled to close the gap between the mental concept of their work and the final result. The idea of constructing a device that could directly transpose a concept into an artwork without the intervention of the artist’s hands is fascinating. Having this in mind, the artist addresses further the question of how art would develop in the twenty-first century. Predicting that “a new generation of artists will exploit advanced tools such as neuroprosthetic devices to address fundamental questions about aesthetics, reality, perception, the nature of images, etc.,”504 the creators of this project embark in developing such tools.                                                                                                                 502

Marta de Menezes, Artist Webpage, http://www.martademenezes.com/ (accessed May 25, 2012).

503

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Emilia Galotti: A Tragedy in Five Acts, trans. Edward Dvoretzky (New York: Ungar, 1962), cited in: "Pingo Ergo Sum," Project Website, http://www.pingo-ergosum.com/?page_id=170 (accessed May 25, 2012). 504

 

Cited on the project website, http://www.pingo-ergo-sum.com/ (accessed May 25, 2012).

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Based on a system initially designed to facilitate the communication of patients with severe motor impairment caused by certain neurological disorders,505 the brain painting system and subsequently Pingo Ergo Sum, were developed together with neurobiology professor Andrea Kübler of Würzburg University. Adjusted from a language communication program by replacing the letters with art-related parameters (brush, from, size, color, opacity, etc.), brain painting promises to be the tool that materializes artistic concepts into visual images without the contribution of the hands, mouse, or keyboard — only through brain wave patterns. Brain painting, one reads on the project website, “allows for translating thoughts into paintings by means of decoding brain signals recorded via electroencephalography (EEG). More specifically, it uses the so-called P300 component in order to decode the intentions of the performing artist.”506 In practical terms, this means that creator of the work would make mental choices — in terms of color, shapes, and coordinates of painting surface — from a matrix of art-related parameters while his/her brain waves are recorded and analyzed. The computer-brain-interface detects specific brain waves, the P300 waves. These event-related potentials occur approximately 300 milliseconds after the presentation of a stimulus that is considered interesting or potentially important. In this case, the presence of the potential is believed to indicate that the stimulus presented has been chosen by the artist. First, the brain-painting tool makes this reading, and then, on a parallel screen, it displays the chosen combination of parameters (for example a blue circle in right hand side corner of the drawing surface). At this point at least, the images one generates through the tool are rather uninteresting in aesthetic terms. The artists’ dream of materializing creative thought without the limitations of the body is, by no means achieved. On the contrary, through brain-painting creative freedom is even more restricted, and the potential of materializing artistic imagination is even smaller. Therefore, what makes this project relevant is not the artistic result, but the concept of the whole project. If understood, not                                                                                                                 505

For example amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, high spinal cord injury, or stem stroke, are diseases that cause paralysis, sometimes — like in the case of ALS — leaving the patient in a locked-in state, completely unable to communicate. 506

 

Cited on the project website, http://www.pingo-ergo-sum.com/?page_id=21 (accessed May 25, 2012).

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as a tool to aesthetic aims, but as an immersive installation that allows the participant to experiment the power of his or her brainwaves to generate shapes, Pingo Ergo Sum gives rise to a set of very interesting conceptual issues. To begin with, the conversion of Descartes’ famous dictum, into ‘I paint, therefore I exist,’ correlated with references to neurological conditions that disconnect the brain from its body — as is the case with the locked-in syndrome — transforms the mindbody dualism into brain-body dualism. Furthermore, the project emphasizes the creative powers of the brain and aims to take the body out of the creative process, suggesting that the artist is in fact the brain. Pingo Ergo Sum encapsulates thus, in a very explicit way, the concept of brainhood. Pingo Ergo Sum, it can be concluded, is a complex project with a strong scientific component, which addresses some of the most essential art-relate questions. It singles out the brain as capable of generating art without active participation of the body, it identifies the artist with the brain, and it raises questions about the future involvement of neuroscientific research in augmenting artistic creativity. In the context of neuro art, Pingo Ergo Sum is unique in proposing the idea that neuroprosthetics research could potential develop new artistic tools.

* * * * *

In other art works the point of intersection between neuroscience and the self is not a matter of ‘brainhood,’ but an active exploration of how the brain dictates where the self begins and where it ends. Artists like Nicole Ottiger, Alexa Wright, and Jeanne Dunning bring into the artistic discourse the role of the relationship between the brain and the body in defining the self. Nicole Ottiger’s artworks — grouped under the project title of The Displaced Body507 and eventually titled Portrait of An Artist: The Mind's Eye (2010)508 (Fig. 121) —                                                                                                                 507

 

The project was proposed and completed as part of a nine-month residency supported by the Swiss

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are based on neuroscientific studies about human self-consciousness and subjectivity, carried out at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience of the Brain Mind Institute in Lausanne. Scientists at the Institute, like Bigna Lenggenhager and Olaf Blanke, carried out fascinating experiments which explore how the brain perceives the body. Having had as a starting point the observation that certain neurological conditions — such as autoscopic hallucinations,509 out-of-body experiences, or heautoscopy510 — disrupt the spatial unity between the perception of self and the body, the researchers at the Laboratory engaged in a search for brain mechanisms that allow for the perception of selfhood. Using a device they have named Video Ergo Sum, they designed experiments, which by means of video technology and virtual reality, expose the participants to conflicting visual-somatosensory clues that disrupt the spatial unity between the self and the body.511 By manipulating visual and tactile stimuli, the Video Ergo Sum apparatus determines the participants to identify with a virtual body, which is physically displaced from the viewer’s own body. “Participants felt as if a virtual body seen in front of them was their own body and mislocalized themselves toward the virtual body, to a position outside their bodily borders.”512 The implicit conclusion of such studies is that the self-representation is an ongoing process of tracking and                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Artists-in-Labs Programm 2010, http://artistsinlabs.ch/portfolio/nicole-ottiger/ (accessed March 15, 2012). 508

Installation featured in the "Think Art – Act Science," exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute, see http://thinkartactscience.com/?p=498 (accessed March 15, 2012). 509

During an autoscopic hallucination people experience seeing a double of themselves in extrapersonal space without the experience of leaving one’s body (no disembodiment). As compared to out-of-body experiences, individuals with autoscopic hallucination experience to see the world from their habitual visuo-spatial perspective and experience their ‘‘self,’’ or center of awareness inside their physical body. [From: Olaf Blanke and Christine Mohr, "Out-of-Body Experience, Heautoscopy, Hallucination of Neurological and Autoscopic Origin Implications for Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Corporeal Awareness and Self Consciousness," Brain Research Reviews 50, 1 (2005), p. 186.] 510

Heautoscopy is an intermediate form between autoscopic hallucination and out-of-body experience. The individual experiencing a heautoscopy also has the experience of seeing a double of himself in extrapersonal space. However, it is difficult for the subject to decide whether he/she is disembodied or not and whether the self is localized within the physical body or in the autoscopic body. (From: Ibid., p. 187). 511

Bigna Lenggenhager and et al., "Video Ergo Sum: Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness," Science 317, (2007), p. 1096. 512

 

Ibid., p. 1096.

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controlling bodily properties and not a static representation of some mysterious thing or individual substance which one calls ‘the’ self.513 The scientific goal in using Video Ergo Sum is then to identify the neurological mechanisms responsible for disrupting the perception of self, in the hope that in this way a neuroscientific theory of selfconsciousness could be established. For the artist, Video Ergo Sum is a tool that, while being able to create full body illusions, provides an ideal medium in approaching and challenging self-portraiture. The environment of Video Ergo Sum, in which the artist is creating, comprises of a vertical drawing board in front of which the artist, wearing a pair virtual reality goggles, is drawing on the board. Behind the artist and facing the board, a video camera is set, which provides video-feed to the goggles. Thus, the artist sees through her goggles, an image of herself, a few meters in front of herself, drawing on the board. In this perceptual context, the artist assumes at the same time the perspective of the video camera and of her own position in space, in front of the drawing board. This means that the artist’s brain is confronted with conflicting perceptual information. Vision and proprioception, two aspects of sensorial experience that naturally corroborate to create a seamless perception of oneself in the world, are in this case dissociated. Through vision, via the goggles, the artists is a few meters behind her own body looking at herself; through proprioception she is in front of the paper board, drawing. The final portrait on paper is the visual experience of herself drawing with the goggles on. Such a self-portrait, which displays little interest for facial features (hidden by the goggles), brings attention to self-representation from within, emphasizing the portrait as an internal self-perception, rather than the experience of self through a mirror reflection. Although at some point in this experience the artist introduces also the mirroring element, the mirror she holds in front of the goggles provides a new angle of view, but is not essential in rendering likeness, as it would have been in traditional self-portraiture. While giving a new dimension to the perception of the self, this project also brings                                                                                                                 513

Olaf Blanke and Thomas Metzinger, "Full-Body Illusions and Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, 1 (2009), p. 8.

 

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into focus the actual creative process — as interesting in itself and even more spectacular than the final artistic products. Portrait of An Artist: The Mind's Eye is particularly relevant with respect to the practice of self-portraiture, as distinct from the general practice of portraiture. Representing the self, the artist believes, is a fundamental form of reflection which explores and reveals self-consciousness.514 A profoundly reflective mechanism, the process of creating a self-portrait demands, perhaps paradoxically, a change from the first to the third person perspective.515 Thus, The Mind’s Eye is, in a way, not only a reflection of the internal mechanisms of self-perception, but also, at the same time, a form of self-portraiture from a third person perspective, seen as if in an out-of-body experience. The other two artists exploring bodily perceptions in relation to neuroscientific research, Alexa Wright and Jeanne Dunning, address similar problems of self-definition in terms of misperception of bodily presence. The interest of both artists lies in two neurological conditions manifested through the brain’s inability to adequately recognize the limits of the body. In After Image (1997) (Fig. 122) — a series of digitally manipulated photographs — Wright explores a neurological phenomenon known as phantom limb, while Jeanne Dunning, in her video performance Me Not Me (2009) (Fig. 123) investigates the phenomenon of alien limbs. While phantom limb syndrome is characterized by the sensation (usually accompanied by pain) that a limb which no longer exist, is still attached to the body; the alien limb syndrome is manifested as the movement of an existing limb without conscious control, which is often associated with the feeling the limb in question no longer belongs to the owner’s body. After Image, was one of the early art projects to be sponsored by the Wellcome Trust’s SciArt Collaborations scheme, and was realized in collaboration with neurologist John Kew and neuropsychologist Professor Peter Halligan. The photographs                                                                                                                 514

See Nicole Ottiger, "Portait of an Artist: The Mind's Eye," (paper presented at the Swissnex: Art & Neuroscience, San Francisco, 2011), available online at: http://fora.tv/2011/11/10/swissnex_Art__Neuroscience#fullprogram (accessed March 16, 2012). 515

San Francisco Art Institute, "Think Art, Act Science," Handout, http://thinkartactscience.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/03/Think-Art-Act-Science_San-Francisco_Handout.pdf (accessed March 15, 2012).

 

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in this series capture firstly the portrait of people with amputated limbs who experience phantom limbs. The artist then digitally alters the photographs such that they visually include the absent, but felt, limb. Accompanied by textual excerpts from interviews that the artist has carried out with each of the people photographed, the images tell striking and uncanny stories of this syndrome. The artistic intention is clearly described by the artist as the desire to explore the limits of the self. “As an artist,” Wright declares, “I am interested in representing the subjective experience of people with conditions which alter the perception or manifestation of the self. I am especially interested in the morphological gap which exists between a person’s sentient perception of their own body, and that same body as seen by others […]”516 The artworks address the nature of perception and its authenticity. The phantoms are typically felt so strongly that one cannot but wonder which is the real body, the one that can be seen, or the one that the person experiences? “I am interested,” the artist points out, “in the questions that the phenomenon of phantom limbs raises about where the self begins and ends, and the extent to which the body is representative of the self.”517 A similar interest is expressed in the work of Jeanne Dunning. Part of a long time artistic investigation into the human body in terms of identity and self, Dunning’s Me not Me (2009) video-work conveys an uncommon way of experiencing the body which exposes the fragility of the sense of self. The work was inspired by a medical text recorded by the neurologist Todd E. Feinberg, documenting the stories of patients who were unable to recognize their bodies, or certain body parts as their own.518 In contrast to Wright’s work, this project does not involve the actual characters depicted. The 24minute video is a reenactment of the doctor-patient interaction as described by the medical texts. Exploring the phenomenon of alien limb, Dunning, like Ottiger and Wright, probes into bodily sensations and the perception of self. But while Ottiger explores how                                                                                                                 516

Cited in: Andrew Patrizio, "The Phantom Limb in Contemporary Art and Exhibition Practice," Artbrain (2005), http://www.artbrain.org/the-phantom-limb-in-contemporary-art/html (accessed March 15, 2012). 517

Alexa Wright, "Monstrous Others, Monstrous Selves," Equinoxes, 1 (2003), http://www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes/journal/issue1/eqx1_wright.html (accessed March 15, 2012). 518

 

Susan Snodgrass, "Jeane Dunning, Donald Young and Inova," Art in America 99, 6 (2011).

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vision contributes to the formation and reevaluation of the self in relation to the body, and Wright explore the brain’s stubbornness in sensing an absent limb, Dunning exposes the distortion of self-perception given by the unfamiliarity with one’s own body. All these three accounts give intriguing insights into the human brain, question the nature of our reality and the self, and provide unexpected solutions for portraiture. With these works, neuro art portraiture — which has predominately focused on the potential of brain imagery to portray an individual — brought the body back into the picture. But perhaps, one of the great merits of neuro art is reversing the identity question to its original existential intention, which is to explore who we are as human individuals and biological entities. Through their projects, artists transformed scientific specimens and scientific data into art objects. By using brain imagery and tools to artistic aims, the artists give a subjective meaning to what is considered objective neuroscientific knowledge. In fact, particularly in the case of self-portraiture the artists intervene on their own objectified selves. In a play of words, it can be said that in the scanner the body is an object that through objective investigation is given an objective representation. Making use of these objective representations in an artistic way, the artists also confer the image a subjective imprint. Firstly, It confers aesthetic and subjective value to a medical image, and secondly gives identity to a depersonalized brain portrait. The images we are looking at are not only a scientific illustration in an artistic frame, but also a representation of complex reflections about mind, brain, and body and their contribution in giving rise to self-perception and self-consciousness.

 

Walking in the Brain This chapter is dedicated to those projects in neuro art that had attempted to create brain models in an artistic form. The first brain installation created, Burtin’s The

 

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Brain (1960), was — as I have pointed out in a previous chapter519 — at the same time an artwork and a performative educational project. The artworks in this section, created decades after The Brain, approach brain installations in a less educational and much more symbolic and speculative way. One artist to engage in creating brain models of large proportions is Todd Siler, who, as discussed earlier,520 had a great interest in exploring the human brain. His installation projects, Thought Assemblies (1983) (Fig. 124) and Cerebrarium – Model for Interpreting Human Brain Dynamics (1983), (Fig. 125) depict Siler’s own theories about brain mechanisms. For example, Though Assemblies is, as the artist suggests, a work which “explores the mysteries of creativity and the hidden dimensions of human potential. It delves into how billions of neurons form dynamic webs of cell-assemblies, and how these cell-assemblies collaborate —enabling us to know the world, represent our knowledge, and continually transform it into new and useful things.”521 In practical terms, the installation proposes a perpendicular screen that reconstructs the curved shape of the cortex on which paintings, drawings, and notes are mounted such that they describe the pattern of an EEG recording. Through this project, Siler succeeds in recreating the form of the brain by way of shaping the screen, suggesting the electric activity of the brain by means of the EEG pattern, and displaying the result of the creative mind through the paintings and drawings. Decades after the work of Burtin and Siler, other projects in art and neuroscience created models of the brain, but presenting very different visual solutions. In 2008, the multidisciplinary artist Amy Caron displayed to the public for the first time The Waves of Mu (Fig. 126) — an art installation and performance with direct reference to the brain. Inspired by the work on mirror neurons and the writings of Vittorio Gallese, Lindsay Oberman, and Vilayanur Ramachandran, The Waves of Mu was created in direct collaboration with these and other scientists over a number of years.                                                                                                                 519 520

See Chapter I, pp. 57-59. See Chapter I, pp. 71-72.

521

Todd Siler, "Odd Siler's Artscience Adventures (1975-2009)," International Journal of Education and the Arts http://www.ijea.org/siler.html (accessed March 22, 2012).

 

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The Waves of Mu takes its name after those EEG oscillations which are believed to reflect the activity of mirror neurons. The installation, which is not only an artwork but also a stage for the performance, is designed such that it creates a model of the brain and at the same time, through its intricacy, abundance of details, and chromatic richness strongly provokes the senses. Within this gigantic metaphoric brain model, the audience’s own brains are bombarded with sensorial information. Visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory experiences are involved in experiencing the installation: velvet floor tessellation, paintings, photographs, sculptures, chandeliers, chocolate, wine, and music provide a vibrant and slightly disorienting feeling. Simultaneously, however, while observing the artwork and the performance, the visitors themselves are active participants in the work. As Amanda Sanfilippo remarks in an exhibition review, “[u]pon entering a three dimensional anatomy of the brain, participants unwittingly fulfill the role of electronic neural messengers. The very way participants share, discuss, and form communities around the various representational elements illustrates the content of the piece: the empathetic power of the mirror neuron and its connection to social phenomenon.”522 Although started as an exploration of mirror neuron, the result is a complex metaphoric modeling of the brain, in which mirror neurons are only a small concern. The project explores different aspects of neuroscience. Playing the role of an eccentric scientists, the artists presents to the visitors images, scenarios, schemas, and above all, experiences which invite the visitor to reflect not only on mirror neurons, but also on their implications in the proper functioning of an individual, and on the mechanisms of the brain as a whole. The artist thus brings into the pictures also situations in which — like in the case of autism or Asperger syndrome — the malfunction of mirroring systems is believed to contribute to the behavioral differences manifested by these patients. Furthermore, brain boxes — covered with photographs of the cortex,                                                                                                                 522

Amanda Sanfilippo, "Emotional Intelligence: Amy Caron and Waves of Mu," Curator Essay, 2008, http://www.wavesofmu.com/Waves_of_Mu/Curator_Essay_files/PS122%20Essay.pdf. (accessed March 22, 2012).

 

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neuroscientific educational schemes such as sensory-motor homunculus, metaphoric localization of brain parts within the room, gigantic eye-ball objects, typewriters, shredded papers, and photographs have the great potential to engage the mind in a never-ending chain of though. Everything considered, Waves of Mu provokes the senses, incites imagination, invites self-reflection, provides knowledge, and entertains. Just like Burtin’s Brain, Caron’s installation is at the same time an aesthetic and didactic piece. However, if The Brain was intended as an educational project, which nevertheless presented aesthetic aspects, The Waves of Mu is an artwork with didactic potential. This is to say that Caron’s work is primarily a creative artistic piece. Fifty years after the first public presentation of Burtin’s Brain, as part of the scientific exhibition Brain: The Inside Story, Daniel Canogar created Synaptic Passage (2010) (Fig. 127) — a walk-in installation simulating the workings of the brain. An experiential environment, Synaptic Passage opens the curatorial journey by inviting the exhibition visitors to walk trough a cave-like, dark, and convoluted space, in which flashes of light simulate neuronal activity. Made of about 500 kilograms of recycled electric cables on which light and animations are projected intermittently from a variety of angles, Synaptic Passage creates the feeling of a metaphoric walk through an active brain evoking, as the artists points out, “the nonstop communication that occurs among the brain’s dense, tangled forest of 100 billion, interconnected neurons.”523 This ‘tunnel of firing neurons,’524 is monumental and visually spectacular, yet conceptually simplistic. The complexity of thought and reflection that Burtin, Siler, and Caron endowed their artworks with is lost in Canogar’s installation. As an immersive installation evoking a firework of neural activity, Synaptic Passage addresses the senses but involves the intellect only marginally. Other artworks, such as Katy Schimert’s The Woman’s Brain (1995) (Fig. 129) and Yaron Steinberg’s Brain/City (Fig. 128), provide more poetic models of the brain which                                                                                                                 523

Daniel Canogar, Artist Webpage, http://www.danielcanogar.com/ (accessed May 28, 2012).

524

As one reads in the exhibit’s description, The American Museum of Natural History in New York, "Brain: The inside Story," About the Exhibition, http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/brain/about.php (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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although rather detached from neuroscientific research, reflect the spirit of neuroculture. Made out of cardboard, wires, light elements, steam, little toy figures, and mini train tracks, Brain/City is an image of the artist’s brain as he imagines it to be.525 Observable from the outside as well as from the inside, as if depicting only the cortex — a shell of a brain — the installation renders roughly the form of the brain. Connecting cables, boxlike compartments, and little lights are suggestive of neural structure and brain functionality. Other elements, like toys, house-like constructions, windows, mini traintracks, and steam puffs indicate the presence of memories and emotions and thus, bring into the picture the mind. Not a walk-in installation, but a construction which can be explored from within and from outside, Brain/City is a complex metaphoric representation of the artist’s brain and, in a way, a form of mental portraiture. Katy Schimert’s The Woman’s Brain presents a few conceptual similarities to Steinberg’s Brain/City. Smaller than the installations addressed previously, this work is created out of textile fibers, electric cables, and bulbs and it is placed on the gallery floor, to be experienced by walking around it. The project emerged, the artists reveals, at the confluence of three separate conceptual sources: a statement of the artist’s father during the artist’s childhood and the reflections surrounding this statement; a science fiction book by Stanislaw Lem called Europa; and a New York Times article about differences in brain activity between the brains of men and women. “One day,” the artist recounts, “when I was about 10 or 11 he told me that a woman’s brain would evolve beyond that of a man’s. I asked him why — he said it was because of its structure and flexibility. This made perfect sense since on an episode of Star Trek, ‘The Trial of Christopher Pike,’ there was a planet of only women, with huge brains that could telecommunicate and create illusions for human beings. When I was young, it was common knowledge that we only used 7 or 10 or 15 percent of the brain. I wondered what we did with the rest and imagined that intuition and telecommunication must be part of the unused portion.”526

Further on, the artist brings into discussion — as sources for The Woman’s Brain — the two texts. The first is Lem’s Europa, a book about a brain-like planet with                                                                                                                 525

Yaron Steinberg, Artist Website, http://yaronart.com/object.html (accessed May 28, 2012).

526

Katy Schimert, "The Woven Brain," Williams College Museum of Art, http://wcma.williams.edu/exhibtions/heavenly-bodies-woven-inside-ourselves/ (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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gelatinous blue seas, which orbits two suns and causes illusions in the astronauts studying it.527 The second source is the article in the New Your Times which talks about the way men and women use their brain differently, and argues, among other things that dyslexic women seem to compensate better for their disability than dyslexic man.528 “This article,” the artist concludes, “allowed me to figure that my father was right.”529 Thus, The Woman’s Brain is not a self-portrait but a fusion of disparate elements which explores the idea of gender differences in using the brain and renders the woman’s brain as a fantastic planet with gelatinous blue seas that generates ideas and stimulates communications.

                                                                                                                527

Ibid.

528

Gina Kolata, "Men and Women Use Brain Differently, Study Discovers," New York Times (February 16, 1995). 529 Katy Schimert, “The Woven Brain.”

 

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Chapter V: Neuro Art between Systems and Behavioral Neuroscience System neuroscience is a field of research dedicated to the study of complex neural circuits and the particular functions they perform. Tracing the path of information flow within the nervous system, researchers in systems neuroscience are concerned with how neural circuits analyze information and aim to define specific brain processes. At this level of scientific investigation, researchers will talk about motor systems, visual systems, gustatory systems, memory systems, etc.. Behavioral neuroscience takes the investigation further by observing and defining the processes by which neural systems generate behavior. Learning and memory, sensation and perception, emotions, and sleep are few of the recurrent themes in this subfield of neuroscience. Neuro art has borrowed superficially from both domains, addressing perception, emotions, memory and sleep in different degrees. Artists express great interest in sensorial systems focusing, not-surprisingly, on vision. Divided in three parts, the following chapter observes how artists approach these aspects and how their works reflect the science that inspired them. Looking first at neuro art and the exploration of the senses and emotions, this chapter then presents neuro art’s involvement with memory, and lastly analyzes how neuroscience transformed the way sleep is represented in art.

Neuro Art and the Senses When writing about art, neuroscience, and the senses, one needs to be cautious to

 

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avoid the danger of interpreting every project exploring vision, tactility, or hearing as a manifestation of neuroscientific influence. The difficulty resides in drawing the line between artistic exploration of the senses in connection with neuroscience, on the one hand, and independent form it on the other. In numerous cases, particularly in the contemporary art world, artists have taken the senses as a core theme of artistic investigation. Sense-related artworks in the past decades depend greatly on technological innovations and scientific knowledge. Science and technology provide us with a new understanding of our bodies and our senses and, at the same time, create novel sensorial experiences that alter or augment our capacity of sensing.530 Without doubt, all artworks exploring the human sensorium refer to or incorporate, directly or indirectly, references to the neural system. When, for example, Steve Mann created Eye Tap (since 1995) — a piece of wearable computing equipment531 which, as Mann himself describes, allows the eye to function as both a display and a camera532 — it was technological development which concerned Mann more than the eye and the nervous system. Therefore, in spite the fact that Mann’s Eye Tap refers directly to vision and perhaps assumes knowledge about the visual system, it is not a neuro art project because it has no explicit connection with neuroscience. Among myriad art projects that actively approach the senses as a theme, few of them originate in the art and neuroscience dialogue — these projects will make the object of this chapter. Naturally, art depends on vision to be created and perceived,533                                                                                                                 530

Virtual reality devices, prosthetic vision, electrode implants, etc. provided new sensorial experiences.

531

Wearable computing is defined as the integration of computers with clothing or other wearable artefacts such as sunglasses. The proponents of wearable computing claim that the PC has not fulfilled its usability promise and that the only solution is to integrate more fully the human user and the computer. This is still a research area within mobile computing. From: “wearable computing,” Darrel Ince, A Dictionary of the Internet (Oxford Reference Online: Oxford University Press, 2009), http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t12.e3458 (accessed March 24, 2012) 532

EyeTap Personal Imaging at University of Toronto, "Eyetap: The Eye Itself as Display and Camera," http://www.eyetap.org/research/eyetap.html (accessed March 25, 2012) 533

In very rare cases, artists who cannot see engage in the process of creating visual artworks — blind artists are almost exclusively sculptors. In terms of art perception, more and more museums are creating instances in which art can be experienced by touch. The BlindArt (http://www.blindart.net/) organization has been founded with the declared aim of encouraging the visually impaired to participate and interact with the visual art domain. Artists, blind, partially sighted, and sighted are invited to create works of art

 

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and therefore vision stands out by far as the most interesting sense to be explored artistically. Apart from investigations about sound processing in music534 — which, like investigations in the visual arts, have been informed by neuroscientific research — artists deal with other senses only very briefly. Therefore, the content of this chapter will refer predominantly to neuro artistic engagement with vision. One of the complex examples in neuro art to address all senses is Annie Cattrell’s work, Sense (2001-2003) (Fig. 130). Initiated as part of the Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind commission, Sense consists of five resin sculptures, encapsulated in individual transparent cubes, which cast the patterns of neural activity corresponding to each of the five senses. Created in collaboration with several scientists, Steve Smith, Morten Kringelbach, and Mark Lythgoe among them, these works transcribe fMRI data into three dimensions through a process called rapid prototyping. “Digital information,” Cattrell points out, “reveals an activation of the living brain by isolating and mapping the location of the activated cortex, making the brain reveal that it is alive and contains detectable activity (for example the oxygen within the blood). […] These cerebral maps are not templates: they reveal the actual uniqueness of the person, and the physicality of thought.”535 By underlining the uniqueness of these shapes as the result of a neural activity specific to one sense and to one individual, Cattrell subtly transforms Sense into a form of portraiture. In addressing the senses in this way, as Marius Kwint points out in a text about the artist, the work reflects a dichotomy — between the individual as a feeling subject on the one hand, and anatomical object on the other — which is hard to reconcile.536 Further describing the artwork, Cattrell writes: “These sculptures isolate the mental activity of thoughts from the rest of the brain and make it visible in three dimensions,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         which are specifically suited to experience by touch. Exhibitions like Sense & Sensuality (2005/2006, London) is only one of an increasing number of exhibitions in which not only sculptures, but also photographs, paintings, videos, and installations give the visitor the opportunity not only to see but also to touch, listen to, or smell the artworks. 534 These investigations are however of concern to music rather then visual art history, and will not be addressed here in detail. 535 536

 

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 38. Kwint, "Cosmic Dust: The Work of Annie Cattrell," p. 15.

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revealing the anatomy of a thought or a sense which can also allow an understanding of the brain as an organ in a constant state of flux.”537 Paradoxically however, this very state of flux is, in this particular case, frozen. By being transposed in resin, the dynamic of neural activity suddenly becomes motionless. Furthermore, as Cathy Gere has suggested in an article about Cattrell’s work, the concrete physical form Annie Cattrell bestow onto mental processes, is an occasion to reflect on neurological illnesses and to approach them in a different way. “If the brain was no more than an extension of the body,” Gere points out, “psychiatric illness could then be understood along the lines of somatic disease and injury, and need carry no extra stigma.”538 Form an art historical point of view, to bring the senses back into discussion, Sense can be described as a modern version of the allegory of sense — an artistic genre particularly popular in Baroque painting. However, unlike seventeenth-century depictions in which various characters with complex attributes (mirrors, flowers, fruits, etc.) would illustrate the five senses, Cattrell’s work captures in its elegant simplicity the five traditional senses as expressed and recorded in one brain without reference to any information about what triggered them. Thus, the senses seem isolated from the external world that generated them. “These objects — which could be said to represent thought itself stilled and suspended in a transparent medium,” Cathy Gere writes, “ — make dramatically visible the doctrine of the localization of brain function.”539 The concept of this work and its visual appearance has lead Gere to open a completely new set of metaphorical perspectives into Cattrell’s work. She considers Sense as an illustration of the philosophical problem of ‘the brain in a vat’ and suggests that “the brain in a vat problem in philosophy is an outcome of the same neural ‘mapping’ project that made Cattrell’s ‘thought in a vat’ possible.”540 The idea of the ‘thought in a vat’ takes the attention away from the actual senses and redirects it towards the problem of cerebral                                                                                                                 537 538

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, pp. 38-39.

Cathy Gere, "Thought in a Vat: Thinking through Annie Cattrell," Studies in History Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 32 (2004), p. 424. 539 540

 

Ibid., p. 415. Ibid., p. 415.

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localization, thus inscribing Sense in a long conceptual tradition with roots in phrenology. In the end, although starting from an interest in sensation, perception, and cognition, Cattrell’s sculptures are not only a new way of representing the senses, but also a different way of mapping the neural cortex. Having the brain as a reference point, the artist explores the relation between the inner and the outer world, between the individual and the universal, between subjective and anatomical. When exploring the sense of smell artists tackle, on the one hand, the importance of smell in human interaction, and on the other hand, the connection between smell and memory. If artworks in the first category speculate about the connection between pheromone secretion and human behavior, and bring into discussion molecular and genetic biology,541 the works in the second category refer to the brain, invoking at times knowledge from neuroscience. Reodorant (2008), for example, is multisensory installation specially designed to trigger memories and to introduce new patterns of mental association.542 A collaborative project between an artist (Hisako Inoue), an architect (Erik Carver), a sound artist (Howard Huang), a perfumer (Takashi Sato), and a curator (Yuka Yokoyama), all creating together under the name of SERU, Reodorant mixes sound and light, but emphasizes the olfactory experience and the capacity of smell to trigger involuntary memories and create new mnemonic associations. “Smell information,” the creators explain, “is especially closely linked in the brain to both long-term and emotional memory. We are therefore testing a combination of odors with subtle but perceptible differences in order to maximize olfactory sensitivity and thus memory mobility. Of course, memory is always more creative than archival. Yet this creativity is often indistinguishable in our thoughts from reality, yielding a pervasive creative-reality.”543

Designed as a walk-in installation — a white forest of strings supporting smell, sound, and light devices (small sensory domes) — Reodorant invites the participant to engage                                                                                                                 541

In this regard see for example James Auger’s Smell + Smell - Blind Date (2009) and Carla Ursitti Pheromone Link TM exhibited in several configurations since 1997. 542

"Reodorant," Exhibition Review, available online at: http://www.isefoundation.org/english/ny/E070511now.html (accessed May 14, 2012). 543 Ibid.

 

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the senses and to allow memory to flow freely as a result of this sensorial exposure. Very similar in concept is Helga Griffiths’ Turbulent Souvenirs/Memories (2002/2005), installed in Düren and Miami respectively. Made of thousands perfume test strips, the installation fills the room while smell stations release certain scents believed to have a strong impact in triggering memories. In Turbulent Souvenirs I (2002) (Fig. 131), scents of licorice, wood fire, violets, and snow accompany the historic smell of a fragrance for women created by Guerlain in 1912 and named L'Heure Bleue (The Blue Hour). With Turbulent Souvenirs II (2005) (Fig. 132), the L'Heure Bleue perfume replaces all other senses. “L'Heure Bleue,” the artist reveals, “is the hour when the light changes between day and night and symbolizes for me also the time of change.”544 In both works, the scent of L’Heure Bleue is visually echoed by the deep blue light suffusing the installation. “While smells are being released periodically,” the artist describes her work, “there is a constant sea of voices — people from different language regions talk about memories of smell. Realities, imaginations, memories mix and give the viewer the possibility to experience not yet discovered levels of perception.”545 The artist explains the choice of smell as a medium in the following way: “Smells affect the nervous system comparatively directly and our reaction to these stimulations is more immediate, more instinctive than with the sense of vision or hearing and offers less room for distanced interpretation. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the sense of smell manages without complex interfaces such as the retina of the eye or the inner ear with its eardrum and tiny bones. For my installations this signifies an additional gain in immediacy, directness and nearness. Sometimes I am astonished with what emotional freedom the visitors react to my installations — the room becomes a real ‘space for finding one's consciousness.’”546

Anna Perry, another artist with an interest in the connection of smell, memory and the visual arts, created Fog (Fig. 133), an installation which, by bringing together heat lamps, a water shower, and a concrete slab, recreates the familiar smell of the summer                                                                                                                 544

Helga Griffiths, Artist Webpage, http://www.helgagriffiths.de/biennials/turbulent_souvenirs_memories.html (accessed April 1, 2012). 545

Ibid.

546

Christian Huther, "Grenzgänge in Wahrnehmungsräumen: Ein Gespräch mit Helga Griffiths," Kunstforum 174 (2005), p. 190, available in English online on the artist webpage: "Expanding the Horizons of Space Perception: A Dialogue with Christian Huther," http://www.helgagriffiths.de/interviews/20041116_kunstforum.html (accessed, February 25).

 

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rain. The rain-on-hot-concrete smell fills the gallery space and aims at generating recollections. These projects explore, in rather similar strategies, the way in which natural or synthetically constructed smells affect the process of recollection. In a Proustian fashion, the artists hope to engage the visitors in involuntary recollections of the past. Creating hybrid installations that address a multitude of senses, these projects challenge the status of visual art. However, while using scents that are effective due to their familiarity, and emphasizing the creative potential of experimentation with smell, the artworks in questions do retain their visual relevance. The visual play with light and perfume test papers in the work of Helga Griffiths, the elegant white forest in Reodorant, and the careful arrangement of component parts in Fog, attest to the relevance of these smellobjects for the history of art.

Neuro Art of Vision One of the early projects to invoke vision and brain sciences in an art context was Christopher Evans’ Cybernetic Introspective Pattern-Classifier (CIPC). On display in Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition of 1968, it is a device aimed to make the viewers aware of their own visual perception process by disrupting vision.547 From the same generation, created in the early 1970s, are Alfons Schilling’s Vision Machines (Sehmaschinene). Among them, the Video-Head-Set (1973) — a device consisting of two small screens feeding visual information to the two eyes independently, from two different cameras which record different views of the participant’s space — is part of Schilling’s crusade against conventional sight and binocular vision. The goals of his Vision Machines is described by the artist in detail in the following passage: “I have come to a point in my art where all the images that I produce exist only in the brain. They cannot be recognized with the retina; the information is processed further back in the brain. In fact by ordinary monocular vision these images are not perceptible.

                                                                                                                547

 

See Chapter I, pp. 63-64.

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This is very different from how in the past an image has been depicted. I am now dealing directly with the structure of the brain and how the outside world is perceived. I have taken my art from the outer eyes to the inner eye. Such images are not realized through light. In a sense they are objects of the dark, mental constructs that become visible purely through their spatial coherence.”548

Schilling’s work aims to manipulate vision such that the brain is forced to create/accept an alternative visual reality, which is different from what the eyes are normally accustomed to. Being one of the first artists to speculate about the role of the brain in actively creating a reality that, although resides in the senses, does not reflect the real world, Schilling’s Vision Machines are early anticipations virtual reality.549 In the last decades, a slight shift is observable in neuro art about vision — from an interest to manipulate vision, towards a desire to represent knowledge about vision. This is not to say that optical illusions and artistic projects that trick the eye are absent in contemporary art. However, in many instances these optical tricks are unrelated to neuroscientific knowledge and therefore of little interest for the study of neuro art. Concerning the art projects that address the neuroscience of vision, a distinction can be traced between artworks based on explanations about visions and artworks that provide explorative avenues for visual perception. The dividing line between the explanatory and the exploratory perspective on vision underlies the structure of the chapter. At first it addresses the projects derived directly from neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, and then concentrates on those artworks, which, while referring to neuroscientific knowledge, take this knowledge further and explore vision in an experimental and participatory way. The eye as an essential point of contact between the inner and outer worlds and as a ‘window to the soul,’ has been of interest for artists at least since the time of Leonardo. It is perhaps significant to point out that Leonardo developed a keen interest for the eye and the visual system, and dedicated a large number of notebooks and notes                                                                                                                 548

Laurent Mannoni, Werner Nekes, and Marina Warner, Eyes, Lies and Illusions: The Art of Deception (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2004), p. 182. 549

Madeline Schwartzman, See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception (London: Black Dog Publishing), p. 52.

 

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to vision. Taking notice of the similarity of the eye with the camera obscura,550 Leonardo “adopts the convincing argument that visual rays from the eye could never reach out to a distant object such as the sun rapidly enough to provide instantaneous perception as soon as vision is turned on it (as when the eye opens),”551 contradicting thus the commonly believed idea at the time that visual powers emanate from the eye, allowing the space to be perceived.552 However, Leonardo’s curiosity for the eye had a purely scientific purpose and his findings were not incorporated (at least not explicitly) in his artistic creations. Contemporary artists on the other hand, create artworks in which images of the eye, the retina, the iris, as well as the rods and cones have become integral elements. Given the nature of their work, many artists are genuinely concerned and curious about the eye and vision. Since the time of Leonardo, the practical and conceptual implications of the eye have been substantially multiplied. Eyes, Marius Kwint points out, “display information about heredity, but also possess uniquely individual characteristics, which can be recognized by state and corporate authorities with their iris and retinal scanners.”553 Knowledge from neuroscience further informs us about the structure and function of the eye and about the process of vision. Time Release (2002) (Fig. 134) is one of Daniel Canogar’s early projects investigating the phenomenon of vision. A room installation in which slide projections of ophthalmologic images — eyes, retinas, corneas, fovea, optical nerves, etc. — cover all walls, Time Release is a playful reflection on the theme of looking while being looked at. “The public,” Canogar suggests, “receives images from all sides and feels observed, while simultaneously penetrating with his/her eyes the depths of the optical

                                                                                                                550

Charles G. Gross, "Leonardo Da Vinci on the Brain and Eye," Neuroscientist 3, 5 (1997), also reproduced in Charles G. Gross, Brain, Vision, Memory: Tales in the History of Neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), p. 110. 551

Martin Kemp, "Leonardo and the Visual Pyramid," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977), p. 134. 552 553

 

Pevsner, "Leonardo Da Vinci’s Contributions to Neuroscience," p. 219. Kwint, "Cosmic Dust: The Work of Annie Cattrell," p. 11.

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apparatus.”554 Time release employs optical tools such as photo cameras and microscopes to portray vision. The installation decomposes the gaze by displaying in monumental size the biological components which make vision possible. Gigantic images of eyes, in different colors, of different magnification, and with different pupillary dilation invite the viewer to reflect on the mechanism of vision. The viewer’s understanding of the visual apparatus is thus confronted. However, Time Release is not a didactic illustration of the eye, but an installation which incites further reflection on the duality of seeing while being seen, while at the same time making the viewer aware of his or her own visual apparatus. Helga Griffiths’ Eye Topia (2011) (Fig. 135) takes a different perspective to the eye. Recalling the old saying about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, Griffiths takes as a model her own retinal structure and accordingly designs a sculpture-installation which portrays the eye from the inside. The work brings to attention the back of the eye as it connects to the brain through the optic nerve. Eye Topia is an interactive sculpture which changes colors depending on the physical location of the viewer in relation to the work. Metaphorically speaking, by intruding into the Eye’s field of vision, the viewer affects and transforms the work’s ‘visual field,’ which is manifested in practical terms through the change in color. Like Canogar’s Time Release, Eye Topia brings into focus the viewer’s own viewing mechanisms, but at the same time, by accurately reproducing the artist’s venal structure, the work can function as the expression of identity and thus a form of portraiture. During a residency at the neurology laboratory of the Institute of Zoology in Zurich, learning about the neurobiology of vision, about visual impairments and about the way they affect vision, artist Jill Scott created an interactive sculpture titled The Electric Retina (2008) (Fig. 136). The laboratory that hosted the artist carried out research on the zebrafish — a species of vertebrates, which, like mice and rats, are important model organisms in biology and neuroscience. In this particular laboratory, zebrafish are used as a phenotype for research on the human eye. The research group                                                                                                                 554

Daniel Canogar, Artist Webpage, http://www.danielcanogar.com/daniel-canogar.php?l=en (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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of Stephan Neuhauss examines the eye of the zebrafish under healthy and diseased conditions by modifying the fish’s genetics and testing its resultant behavior.555 Inspired by their study, Scott initiates her artistic research by questioning how a zebrafish suffering from certain eye diseases experiences its environment.556 The resulting project — a multimedia sculpture — has the shape of an eyeball and consists of two white hemispheres. The front of the eye presents an iris-like opening through which films are projected onto a screen. These films, recorded underwater and digitally altered, are representations of the ocean’s environment as if experienced by a fish afflicted with a particular eye disease. By rotating the iris, the audience can choose between five different short films — all illustrations of different visual inabilities. The other side of the eyeball, which replicates the structure of the fish’s retina, is pierced with peepholes displaying scientific imagery acquired during the research: scientific illustrations, macro photographs and video animations which address neurological and genetic aspects of vision. Inviting the viewer to experience these images through optical devices that recall the act of looking through a microscope, the artwork mimics scientific investigation. In its complexity, The Electric Retina transposes in an artistic form scientific findings about vision, it informs about visual impairments, and provides enactments of impaired visual experiences. Informed by scientific knowledge, mimicking scientific processes, and displaying scientific imagery, Scott’s The Electric Retina is strongly anchored in the scientific research that inspired it. Scott’s installation is a hybrid concoction in which creative media and scientific research are equally incorporated. Everything considered, The Electric Retina informs about visual perception and delights our vision. Andrew Carnie’s Eye: Through the Mirror Darkly (2004) (Fig. 137) and Osi Audu’s The Seeing Mind (2002) (Fig. 138) refer to the eye at a more symbolic level. Carnie’s Eye, consists of a darkroom video projection of medical imagery, on a conical shape screen. A truncated veil cone is attached to the wall to form a dark circular surface                                                                                                                 555

Corinne Hodel, Stephan C.F. Neuhauss, and Jill Scott, "The Electric Retina: An Interplay of Media Art and Neuroscience," Leonardo 43, 3 (2010), p. 265. 556

 

Ibid., p. 266.

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surrounded by the white veil cloth. Thus, the projection of the images on the screen recalls the structure of the iris surrounding the dark pupil. Although the images on the iris reproduce neurons, skulls, bones, and representation the body in a science-like fashion, thus eliciting an image of the body as a medical object, the references to the neuroscience of vision are limited. Osi Audu’s The Seeing Mind, an exploration into inner vision, had as starting premise the idea that perception is central to the head and to human consciousness.557 The concept of the work emerged from the translation of ‘ori,’ the Yoruba558 concept for head, into English as ‘that which sees.’ The reference to ‘ori’ — a sacred concept and an object of worship — gives Audu’s sculpture a mystical dimension. In Yoruba artistic representations, the ‘ori’ or the head is commonly disproportionately larger than the body. The dimension of the human head in sculptural objects, Babasehinde Ademuleya believes, goes beyond visual description and reflects a metaphysical understanding of the ‘ori.’559 In The Seeing Mind, Audu reduces the ‘ori’ to a blinking eye, thus conferring powerful mystical connotations to the sense of vision. At the same time, the association of the eye with the mind suggests, as the artist himself points out, “the idea that perception occurs, not in the eyes, but in the mind, through the eyes.”560 The mindbrain processes are also of interest to the artists. Many of Audu’s works, besides The Seeing Mind, further explore the neural processes of vision. For example, his Outer and Inner Head (since 2002) series explores vision by actively stimulating after-images in the viewer’s mind. In a short description of his work for the Head On exhibition, which included both The Seeing Mind and parts of Outer and Inner Head, Audu explains: “For this exhibition project — Head On — I am exploring the phenomenon of inner vision. I am intrigued by the brain-mind processes through which images of the visible world are perceived, and how these neurological processes can trigger or participate in conjuring other inner images such as an after-image, images in dreams, and the recall of images in memory. I feel that this process of engaging with an inner image could be

                                                                                                                557

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 36.

558

The Yoruba people, Osi Audu’s culture of origin, are an ethnic group that geographically occupies the savannah and tropical rain forest of the Western part of Nigeria. 559

Babasehinde A. Ademuleya, "The Concept of Ori in the Traditional Yoruba Visual Representation of Human Figures," Nordic Journal of African Studies 16, 2 (2007). 560

 

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On, p. 36.

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seen as a reference to an 'inner head', or, to use the Yoruba word, 'ori inu', which is seen as the seat of consciousness. I am also exploring the divide between the conscious and unconscious mind, looking at how parts of the neurons in the brain light up during MRI scanning to indicate conscious experience.”561

The eye in The Seeing Mind — just as Griffiths’ eye in Eye Topia — interacts with its audience. A sensor in the gallery triggers the opening of the eye whenever a visitor comes close to the sculpture. The effect of the opening eye places the viewer, yet again, at the center of an artwork’s gaze. The sculpture looks back to the viewer in way that is at the same time inviting and intimidating. When The Seeing Mind is outside of the interaction with the viewer — when the eye is closed — it evokes a different state of consciousness, which is meditative and depends on memory and inner representations.562 Robin Hawes’ work created in collaboration with cognitive neuroscientist Tim Hodgson, titled Private View: The Nature of Visual Process (2007) (Fig. 139), is an artistic investigation of the less explored visual phenomenon of the saccades, and it integrates both the explanatory and the exploratory perspective on vision. This work thus makes a perfect bridging point between the two types of projects. Private View is an art-experiment based on the observation that the representation one has of the world — although dependent on the external sensorial information — is in fact internally constructed by the brain. The discrepancy between the sparse amounts of information the eye accumulates and the seamless picture of reality formed in our brains is what this art-research proposes to investigate.563 According to well-defined methodology, six participants had the focus of their gaze tracked while scanning over one of Hawes’ photographic artworks. The results obtained from the eye-tracking device, were further used by the artist to simulate the actual visual information registered by the retina. The final artistic outcome consists of seven version of the artwork Iris — the original version that the participants looked at,                                                                                                                 561 562

Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 34.

563

For more details see: Robin Hawes and Tim Hodgson, "Private View: The Nature of Visual Process," http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/hawes_hodgson_details.html (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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and six simulations of each participant’s recording of the ‘actual retinal image.’ Flicker books and digital animations — revealing the process of visual information acquisition by the eyes over a ten second span — accompanied the seven artworks. An elaborate research initiative, the project brings about a simple and elegant visual solution, but at the same time provides grounds for deep and careful contemplation. While informing about vision and inviting reflection upon the complexities of visual processing, Private View: The Nature of Visual Process, confronts our eyes with the image of an eye looking at another eye. In this way the project draws attention to our own conscious experience and its relation with sight. By recording the eye movements as the eye is looking at a photographic image of an ocular iris, this project finds itself in succession to Helen Chadwick’s Self Portrait and to Margulies and Sharp’s Untitled, and is thus a ‘consciousness art’ project. From a different perspective, a project like this is particularly fascinating because it explores unexpected aspects of vision that are in disagreement with our actual visual experience. What we learn about the visual system challenges the truthfulness of what we really see. It is amazing how our visual system has the capacity to create unitary, coherent, and continuously flowing images of the world given the great ambiguity of the stimuli the eye receives and the selectivity with which the eye processes the stimuli it registers. One of the artists who substantially address notions of vision, perception, and the brain is Rune Peitersen. Writing about his work, Peitersen declares his explicit interest in exploring the mechanisms of seeing by emulating aspects of vision that escape actual perception: “Like the picture of the old woman who turns into a young lady depending on your focus,” the artist explains, “my works play with the expectations and preconceptions of the viewer by mixing genres, points of reference and conceptual models. Technically, this often entails capturing an everyday situation on video and transforming it to the point of being barely recognizable. The transformation itself and how this is achieved plays an important part in my work process. E.g. it can be done through a process of physical or digital distortion or omission, or by cut ‘n pasting the imagery onto itself until it gains a new meaning. The important thing is that the viewer is constantly forced to switch between thinking he knows what he sees and being confused and unable to

 

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comprehend the imagery.”564

Although part of the mechanism of vision, the aspects Peitersen addressed in his work — saccades, peripheral, and foveal vision — are not available to natural perception. In a sense, Peitersen decomposes the process of vision and presents aspects of the visual process, as they would presumably be experienced in isolation. One of his latest works, Observer Effect: A Tree in the Forest (2011) (Fig. 140), is part of a larger series entitled Saccadic Sightings (since 2007), and presents remarkable conceptual similarities with Hawes’ Iris. To underline the mechanism of vision at the level of the retina, this work records and presents visual information as perceived by the eye at the level of fovea, ignoring the areas in the visual field that are not in focus. The work consists of a large number of small photographic circles which, on a dark background, partially reveal the image of a tree in the forest. The fovea is the thinnest part of the retina and covers only a very small area in the field of vision, but it hosts about half of all cone cells. These cells are most effective under high light intensities and are in charge of color detection and fine detail analysis. Due to its structure, the fovea is adapted to facilitate visual processes which require detailed and precise examination. On the fovea, the image is in focus. Using an eyetracking device, Peitersen collects data in order to visualize foveal vision. The resulting photographic images are the ‘foveal spots,’ each representing one frame of foveal vision obtained at a rate of 25 frames per second. By combining the foveal spots, the artist aims “to create an impression of the data used by the brain to construct the visual experience.”565 In this and other works,566 Peitersen is looking to create unsettling but strangely familiar images aimed at confrontong the viewer with questions about the make-up of his or her own visual reality. If Saccadic Sightings highlights the role of foveal vision and distinguishes it from                                                                                                                 564

Rune Peitersen, Artist Webpage, "Brief Introduction," http://www.runepeitersen.com/2007/10/briefintroduction/ (accessed April 2, 2012). 565

Rune Peitersen, Artist Webpage, "Observer Effect," http://www.runepeitersen.com/2010/05/observereffect/ (accessed April 2, 2012). 566

 

See for example Looking at Seeing (2011), Manifest Gaze (2011).

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other elements of visual perception, Peripheral Panorama (2007) (Fig. 141), on the other hand, is a video installation which explores the paradox of peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is the part of the visual field that lies outside the center of the gaze, and is therefore out of focus. The outer layer of the retina that processes information in the peripheral area of the visual field is dominated by rod cells. These photoreceptors due to their cylindrical organization, have much more membranous discs compared to cone cells. A consequence of their structure is the abundant presence of a photopigment, rodopsin, which makes the cells about a thousand times more receptive to light than cones.567 In daylight or high levels of indoor light, the high sensitivity of rod cells to light results in saturation and inactivity. Peripheral vision is thus blurry and colorless being essential — in detecting movement and in night vision. The paradox consists of the fact that we are effectively unable to experience peripheral vision. When trying to experience peripheral vision we involuntarily redirect our gaze, such that the peripheral visual field is shifted and what used to be peripheral is now in focus. “This also means,” the artist explains, “that when we see, we do not see through our eyes like we see through a pair of binoculars, rather the eyes and the visual cortex make up the visual sensation of seeing. In its extreme, this means that what we see is the world — no matter if no one else sees it like we do.”568 The aim of Peripheral Panorama is thus to make peripheral vision available to perception in order to illustrate the discrepancy between how visual information enters our brain and how our brain presents that information to us. For this work, Peitersen was inspired by a notorious Dutch panorama from the nineteenth century painted by Hendrik Willem Mesdag. The Panorama Mesdag (1881) is a work of impressive proportion which renders, in a cylindrical format,569 the view of the Netherlandish village of Scheveninge. Peitersen’s work, installed at Filmhuis Den                                                                                                                 567

Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience, p. 239.

568

Rune Peitersen, Artist Webpage, "Notes on the Panorama," http://www.runepeitersen.com/2007/05/texts/ (accessed April 2, 2012). 569

The length of the painting is about 120 meters, which creates a cylindrical surround with a diameter of about 40 meters with a 14-meter height. For details see: "Panorama Mesdag," Interactive Webpage, http://panorama-mesdag.com/ (accessed April 2, 2012).

 

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Haag in 2007, consisted of two screens placed at a particular angle to each other, such that when viewed from a designated spot the two projections are in the viewer’s peripheral field of vision. In this configuration, the viewers’ focus of attention falls on a dark space in-between the two screens. The two videos are parallel left-right recordings of the same space that Mesdag painted in his nineteenth century panorama. During a walk, the artist recorded the videos at a view angle that, like the screens in the installation, corresponds with the angle of our peripheral vision. The videos have then been altered, the artist explains, “to resemble an estimation of how the peripheral vision is ‘seen’ by our eyes. Only movement, colour and contrast remained.”570 Peitersen’s main interest in these projects seems to reside in taking the visual system apart and creating models that illustrate isolated stages in the process of vision. The visual displays convey a rough experience of vision, as it would be perceived by the eye before being integrated in neural processes. This approach to vision and the brain is rather unique. Most artists find fascinating and consequently explore more frequently what happens in the brain once retinal information is relayed to the visual cortices and beyond. One such example is the New York artist Naho Taruishi. Two of her projects, Eye|Eye (2007) (Fig. 142) and Close your Eyes (2007) (Fig. 143), explore perception by manipulating the viewer’s visual field in unnatural ways. Creating challenging experiences for the eye and for the brain, Taruishi exposes the mechanisms of vision in a very palpable way. Both artworks are video images displayed in viewing boxes, such that only one visitor can fully experience the work at one given time. Eye|Eye disrupts the viewer’s stereoscopic perception. The phenomenon of stereopsis, known also as binocular vision, is defined as the impression of spatial depth resulting from binocular disparity. Given how are eyes are positioned, the visual information that the brain receives from the two eyes varies slightly in view angle. This disparity allows the brain to create the sensation of depth. Taruishi’s video within the viewing box challenges the brain by dividing the field of vision and providing each eye with incongruous visual                                                                                                                 570

Rune Peitersen, Artist Webpage, "Notes on the Panorama," http://www.runepeitersen.com/2007/05/texts/ (accessed April 2, 2012).

 

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information. As a result, the viewer’s brain processes the images from the right and the left eye such that the viewer experiences a congruous, yet inaccurate synthesis of the two. Taruishi’s other work, Close your Eyes, a single-channel video of flashing lights and colors in a viewing box, invites the viewer to experience vision with eyes closed, questioning thus the very act of seeing.571 The aim of the work, the artist explains, is to convert the eyelids into an internal projection screen, and to explore in this way how light and darkness — internal and external phenomena — come together and give rise to perception. The same concept — experiencing sight with closed eyes — is taken further and approached in a more elaborated and methodical way by Ivana Franke in her installation Seeing with Eyes Closed (2011) (Fig. 144). Conceived in collaboration with neuroscientist Ida Momennejad and neurosurgeon Alexandar Abbushi, Seeing with Eyes Closed explores the stroboscopic effect, a quasi-hallucinatory visual phenomenon that occurs as a response to exposure to flickering light. Brion Gysin was the first artist to explore this visual phenomenon in the 1960s. His stroboscopic Dreamachines, meant to be experienced with closed eyes reportedly produced strong visual imagery — patterns, colors, and images. Addressing the same phenomenon, Ivana Franke and her collaborators take a step further. Besides providing a visually unique experience, by embracing contemporary knowledge about vision and the brain, the artist and the scientists engage their audience in a philosophical and scientific debate about the nature of perception. Presenting the project, the creators describe their intention in a detailed way: “To understand the effects of the phenomenon, we combined artistic experimentation with statistical analysis of the participants’ phenomenal reports, and with the insights from the body of an almost 200 years old tradition of experimenting with flicker phenomena. […] While staring into the flickering light with eyes closed, one is aware that the perceived images have no foundation in external reality. The viewer experiences them as hallucinatory. This ‘conscious quasi-hallucinating’ challenges our

                                                                                                                571

Naho Taruishi, Artist Webpage, http://www.nahotaruishi.com/NAHO_TARUISHI/ Close_Your_Eyes.html (accessed April 3, 2012).

 

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sense of the real in its alternation and its permeability with the imaginary.” 572

In the scientific realm, Ida Momennejad is interested in understanding and explaining what we can learn about our perceptual apparatus by observing the states arising from exposure to untypical stimuli.573 The artist, on the other hand, is less concerned with finding explanations and is more focused on creatively exploring the questions that arise. “I wouldn’t try,” the artist expresses in an interview, “to draw a conclusion about the nature of perceptual reality based on these phenomena. What is most valuable about it is that it actually makes us question perceptual reality. Also that it adds some ephemerality and fluidity to our view of the world as its afterimage.”574 In practical terms, Seeing with Eyes Closed is a semi-cylindrical light screen in front of which visitors, one at the time, sit at the ground level in a meditation-like pose with the eyes closed and are exposed to flickering light.575 After experiencing the work, the viewers are requested, as part of the project, to describe in writing their visual hallucinations. As an experiment about vision in art and science, Seeing with Eyes Closed brings about interesting perspectives. On the one hand, observing and reflecting on the phenomenon of flicker-induce hallucinations the projects underlines the complexities of visual processing that goes beyond, or in this case is independent of, retinal stimuli. By doing this, the creators emphasize the neural complexities of image creation and underline the constructivist approach to visual perception, an approach according to which the world of images is not recorded but constructed by our neural mechanisms. Stressing the ability of the brain to generate visual imagery in the absence of actual visual experience, this projects challenges the very nature of perception.                                                                                                                 572

Ivana Franke and Ida Momennejad, "Two Practices of Seeing, with Eyes Closed. Contemporary Art and Neuroscience in Dialogue," in Seeing with Eyes Closed, ed. Elena Agudio and Ivana Franke (Munich: Fibo Druck und Design, 2011), p. 9. 573

Ida Momennejad, "Seeing with Eyes Closed: The Neuroepistemology of Perceptual Reality," in Seeing with Eyes Closed, ed. Elena Agudio and Ivana Franke (Munich: Fibo Druck und Design, 2011). 574

Franke and Momennejad, "Two Practices of Seeing, with Eyes Closed," p. 12.

575

It has been scientifically observed that hallucinatory patterns only arise within a particular frequency range of about 5 to 25 Hz. See Momennejad, "Seeing with Eyes Closed," p. 15.

 

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On the other hand, projects like these, Ida Momennejad believes, serve as an argument against the skeptical perspective on the truthfulness of sensorial perception. In her recent article, “Seeing with Eyes Closed: The Neuroepistemology of Perceptual Reality” Momennejad argues not only that hallucinatory states are valuable sources of knowledge about perception, but also that, generally observed similarities in flickerinduced hallucinations across participants reflect “a reliable structural stability of our perceptual habitat.”576 Momennejad concludes her argument by suggesting that “hallucinations need not raise doubt about the reliability of perceptual experience; but in fact they confirm the presence of stable structures of perception that manifest even when we see with our eyes closed.”577 As such, presenting different visual, conceptual, theoretical, and scientific sides of the same problem, the initiators of this project reveal and question profound aspects about vision and its neural mechanisms.

* * * * *

Another frequent visual phenomenon addressed by artists with an interest in neuroscience is the perception of afterimages. Within the explorations of this phenomenon, the role of the retina is brought back into discussion. Afterimages are optical phenomena that appear and persist in ones visual field after the stimuli that produced them has been removed. Most commonly, afterimages occur as a consequence of gazing at a powerful light source or at a brightly colored shape. Such visual stimuli would induce negative after-images in the form of dark spots or complimentary colored shapes respectively.578 Osi Audu’s Outer and Inner Head of 2002 and his subsequent renderings of the                                                                                                                 576 577

Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 15.

578

Research in the neuroscience of vision usually attribute these optical illusions either to neural adaptation in the retina or to possible adaptations at a cortical level. For more details see for example Rachel Jones, "Visual Psychophysics - Illusory Afterimages," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2, 10 (2001)., and Shinsuke Shimojo, Yukiyasu Kamitani, and Shin'ya Nishida, "Afterimage of Perceptually Filled-in Surface," Science 293,(2001).

 

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same theme in his recent work, Outer/Inner Head (Ori ode/Ori inu) (2011) (Fig. 145), exemplifies the presence of the mind’s eye, or inner head by exploring the effects of afterimages. “An optical ‘illusion’ occurs,” Audu writes, “as the viewer transfers his or her gaze from the left panel to the right panel. An after-image is formed in the viewer’s mind eye. It would appear as if the eye has a mind of its own. This visual echo, an intangible yet real image, is seen as a reference to the nature of consciousness of the ‘inner head.’”579 Audu’s works are the most uncomplicated illustration of this phenomenon. Other artists, like Luke Jerram and Jaewook Shin employ complex digital installations to experiment with afterimages. Jerram’s Retinal Memory Volume (Fig. 146), exhibited first in 1997 at the Osnabrück Media Arts Festival, is an intricate interactive light installation that re-configures shapes directly in the eye/mind of the viewer using the actual biological mechanism of vision as a tool. The reference to the mind’s eye, are not absent in Jerram’s work either. Recalling the factors that prompted the creation of this work, Jerram remembers a trip to Chartres cathedral in France, which left a strong visual impression on him. ”This experience,” he concludes, ”led me to ask, what is light actually? It also made me think about the process of seeing and the differences between seeing the ‘real’ world live and seeing images in our mind’s eye dredged up from memory.”580 The aim of Jerram’s work, as it becomes apparent form his interview with Ben Wheeler, was to create a remarkable visual experience with light that would go beyond what typical light projections enable; an installation which, while competing with the visible world around us, would demand the viewers’ attention and would mesmerize them. In his article and interview about Luke Jerram, Ben Wheeler provides a vivid description of the work. He writes: “White light that passes through a stencil from a flash gun can create an afterimage upon the retina of a viewer. Over time, the after-image appears to change color

                                                                                                                579 580

Albano, Arnold, and Wallace, Head On.

Ben Wheeler, "An Interview with Luke Jerram: "Retinal Memory Volume"," Computers in Entertainment 8, 1 (2010), p. 4.

 

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dramatically due to the three types of light-sensitive chemicals of the eye, called rhodopsins (red, green, and blue), which return to the retina at different speeds. A multicolored image is formed over time by means of a series of three stencils, creating after-images that fit together on the viewer’s retina, like a jigsaw. Illuminating a corner of the installation space using a dim strobe light set at 7 Hz, the after-image changes between that of a positive and a negative type in quick succession, thus amplifying and solidifying the image for the viewer. The after-image seems three-dimensional and is external to the viewer’s body. This strobe light acts as a blinking machine. […] The dimensions of the room are constructed so that the multicolored chair appears to be life-size and floating in the corner of the exhibition space.”581

Retinal Memory Volume, as Wheeler has pointed out, is a light sculpture, constructed by the viewer’s eye, but which is at the same time a ‘print’ or ‘photograph’ on the photosensitive retina. The artwork is indeed in the eye of the observer.582 Similar conceptual principles apply to Jaewook Shin’s work. His Afterimage (2002-present) is an installation that provides visual stimuli designed to induce vivid afterimages. The most interesting part of the installation is entitled Mind Frame (Fig. 147). It is a display of empty framed canvases leaning on the wall, waiting to be installed. The audience is invited to choose one frame and hang it on the wall. Once on the wall, a succession of abstract moving images composed of black and white squares are projected onto the canvas. After a little while, the squares disappear, and on the blank canvas, the afterimage emerges. The afterimages thus emerging are well known paintings, as for example one of Pablo Picasso’s self-portraits from his blue period. The most fascinating part of this experience, as Shin himself points out, is the merging of the afterimage with the recollection of the original painting — the point in which the retinal image is completed from memory. In the artist’s own words: “The array of tiny, moving blocks forms a very vague representation of the original image and the afterimage it creates is not very clear. But regardless, the audience perceives a well-defined impression of the subject. This happens because the afterimage subconsciously invokes the original image from their memory, neurologically combining it with the afterimage from the eye. Therefore audiences don’t see just the afterimage, but a combination of the afterimage and the original image from their own

                                                                                                                581 582

 

Ibid., pp. 1-2. Ibid., p. 2.

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memory which fills in the details more fully as they remember the original image. It’s a surprising experience, and created entirely in the mind from memories and a grid of glowing blocks.”583

Jaewook Shin’s work provides a frame for the after image, in a way that transfers, it would seem, the creative process from the artist to the viewer. The re-creation of these famous images in the eye of the beholder is a process that, at least superficially, mimics the creative process. The viewer’s eye is the sole creator of the image on the blank canvas. A different kind of ‘after’ image is the focus of Deborah Sperber’s creative work. Interested in the link between art, science, and technology and particularly curious about the mechanisms of visual perception, Deborah Sperber created in the past decade a large number of installations which appropriate, in an exciting way, works of great masters. Leonardo, Vermeer, van Eyck, Rembrandt, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, and Picasso are some of the artists whose images Sperber deconstructs and reconstructs in pixelated form in her spools-of-thread installations. Deborah Sperber is an artist interested in visual perception who, despite not collaborating directly with neuroscientists, makes extensive use of neuroscientific data to develop her art. Most of her art works take into consideration knowledge about vision and play with forms such that they underline the mechanisms of vision. “As a visual artist,” Sperber confesses, “I cannot think of a topic more stimulating and yet so basic, than the act of seeing — how the human brain makes sense of the visual world.”584 She makes use of optical devices, acrylic spheres, and convex mirrors to juggle with visual data. Many of the aspects she is exploring are informed by Margret Livingstone’s book, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing.585 After Mona Lisa 2 (Fig. 148), for example, is an installation made out of ordinary spools of thread that reconstruct an oversized, pixelated and upside-down fragment of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. This work is indebted to Livingstone’s neurobiological explanation of the intangible                                                                                                                 583

Jaewook Shin, Artist Website, http://jwook.com/afterimage/ai2_project.html (accessed April 4, 2012).

584

Deborah Sperber, Artist website, http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html_ and_2x2s/mona7.htm (accessed May 14, 2012). 585

 

Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing.

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quality of Mona Lisa’s smile.586 Unlike Leonardo’s painting, in which, according to Livingstone, the smile is only perceptible to the peripheral field of vision, in Sperber’s version, this effect is rendered by a viewing sphere. “In my rendition,” artist explains, “The Mona Lisa's elusive smile appears, changes, and disappears in a dramatic and humorous fashion.”587 Exploring reality as a subjective experience, Sperber relies on her knowledge about the biology of vision to underline the small amount of information one needs to make sense of the visual environment, and to point out how efficient our brain is in filling in the missing pieces. In her artistic statement, Sperber describes the visual system as both a bottom-up and top-down neural processing mechanism and concludes: “When the top (or brain) is convinced it knows what it is seeing (in this case, initially fixating on what appears to be a random arrangement of thread spools), the bottom level of data (the recognizable portrait) is overruled. This may explain why my use of thread spools create such a jolt or 'WOW" experience when the viewer finally sees the representation imagery in the viewing sphere, as the brain abruptly shifts focus from the individual spools to the whole recognizable image. The brain can only hold or assemble one image at a time, so its initial fixation on the individual spools does not allow the recognizable portrait to emerge until the thread spools are seen through the viewing sphere or from a significant distance. However, once the viewer "sees" the image in the thread, the brain can shift back and forth from focusing on the individual spools to the whole recognizable image. And once the viewer "knows" the image is visible in the thread, he or she can not erase it. Thus, these works function as neurological primers, literally priming or teaching the brain to make sense of visual imagery it has not yet been exposed to.”588

It is perhaps interesting to notice that most of her spool-thread installations are portraits. Six Eye-Centered Portraits (2006) (Fig. 149), for example, is a series of portraits of great art historical value,589 turned up side down and transformed into 5,024 spools of thread each. In front of them, acrylic spheres focus the pixels and reveal a                                                                                                                 586

See Introduction, p. 27.

587

Deborah Sperber, Artist Website, http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html _and_2x2s/mona2.html (accessed May 14, 2012). 588

Deborah Sperber, Artist Website, http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html _and_2x2s/6_portraits_index.html (accessed May 14, 2012) 589

The works are based on A Girl With a Watering Can (1876) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the portrait Gertrude Stein (1906) by Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait (1659) by Rembrandt van Rijn, Man in a Red Turban (1443) by Jan van Eyck, and The Girl with a Pearl Earring, (1665-1666) by Johannes Vermeer.

 

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recognizable image. As with Jaewook Shin’s Mind Frame, the element of recognition plays an important part in triggering the feeling of awe in viewers when they identify the initially hidden image. Some scientists argue that perception of faces is our most developed visual perceptual skill.590 It is quite likely that the efficiency of the neural mechanisms engaged in recognizing faces contribute to the immediate recognition of the image. Our perception of Sperber’s portrait, it can be speculated, is thus facilitated not only by the celebrity of the portraits appropriated, but also by the fact that they are portraits. Looking back at the projects emerging at the intersection of art with the neuroscience of vision, it becomes apparent that viewer’s active participation is of great importance for all artists exploring vision. The artworks in this chapter require, in various degrees, direct engagement of the audience. Artists understand vision as an active process rather than a passive response to visual stimuli, and aim to explain or directly demonstrate the complexities of its mechanisms. The results are artworks which explain, speculate on, and experiment with the phenomenon of vision in a way that is conceptually interesting, aesthetically engaging and, at times, quite astonishing. Neuro artworks about vision are particularly significant in showing the arts’ power to influence, challenge, and change perception.

Emotions, Memory, and Sleep in Neuro Art Although habitually addressed independently from one another, the investigation of emotions, memory, and sleep are neural processes that intersect and depend on one another. Artists discussed in this chapter address not only emotions, memories and sleep, but also the connections between emotions and memories, or the role of sleep in consolidating memories — situation which justifies the analysis of art about emotions, memory, and sleep together.                                                                                                                 590

See for example James V. Haxby, Elizabeth A. Hoffman, and M.Ida Gobbini, "The Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4, 6 (2000).

 

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Affective neuroscience is a relatively new concept applied to research on the neural basis of emotions. Neuroscientific studies have identified several neural pathways involved in the experience and expression of emotions. Brain structures, like the amygdala and hypothalamus, have been designated as important in processing emotional experience, but it has also been acknowledged that “emotional reactions are the result of a complex interaction between sensory stimuli, brain circuitry, past experiences, and the activity of neurotransmitter systems.”591 Increasing research in affective neuroscience makes knowledge about emotion and mood available to a larger audience. Antonio Damasio’s popular theories about the importance of emotions in high level cognition, Joseph E. LeDoux writings about the emotional brain, along with work on mirroring mechanisms and their role in empathy have reached a large audience and have had a powerful impact on aesthetic research. In the context in which affective neuroscience is receiving increasing scientific attention and becoming more and more accessible, it is quite surprising to see that, although a topic of significant relevance for the history of art and for art in general, emotions have only been approached briefly in neuro art. However, the few neuro art projects that do look into the power of emotions and attempt to express and generate emotional experiences through the lens of neuroscience are powerful explorations into human nature and deserve a close look. Eye and I (2005) (Fig. 150) is a project created by artist Helen Storey in collaboration with Jim Coan of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. An installation-experiment, Eye and I is inspired by research on the importance of emotions in general well-being and health. It consists of a cubic room within another room whose purple walls and ceiling are covered with small rectangular openings. Through the openings, the viewers are exposed to sixteen pairs of eyes portraying in unison a variety of emotional experiences for five minutes at a time. Their eyes express successively sadness, fear, anger, or joy. In search for an aesthetic language that could convey, outside of scientific laboratories, the fascinating knowkedge about emotions,                                                                                                                 591

 

Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience, p. 582.

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Helen Storey’s installation is in itself an experiment. Although it is not controlled and it does not provide specific scientific results, this artistic exploration is an opportunity to study emotional responses at a multitude of levels. The project enquires into the genuine and artificial expression of emotions; it explores the way in which changes in facial expression affects the actors’ own emotions; and it observes the emotional exchange between human beings on the basis of external emotional cues alone. The installation creates an environment which explores people’s emotional reaction to emotional expression. Everything considered, Eye and I is a powerful visual, intellectual, and emotional experiment, a powerful context of self-explorations, and an intensely moving experience. Another artistic investigation into the realm of emotion to come out of James Coan’s laboratory was Eva Lee’s Discrete Terrain: Windows on Five Emotions (2007) (Fig. 151). A three-channel digital video installation, the work is less emotional but much strongly anchored in the science of emotions. It is, as the artist describes, a visual journey through the emotional landscapes of twelve individuals who participated in a study on the brain basis of emotions.592 The landscapes are created on the basis of EEG data recorded while the participants experienced different emotional states such as anger, joy, fear, sadness, and disgust. The work in itself is not an illustration of emotions, but an abstract metaphor of internal landscapes. Discrete Terrain: Windows on Five Emotions is a way to artistically interpret scientific data, such that it symbolically renders individual emotional portraits. A very different way of engaging with the neuroscience of emotions is present in the work of Nene Humphrey. As an artist-in-residence at Joseph LeDoux’s neuroscience laboratory at New York University, Humphrey created The Plain Sense of Things (2008), (Fig. 152) a set of drawings and sculptures which explore, as the artist reveals, “the visual and emotional connection between images and the deep cellular workings of the human brain.”593 Observing through the microscope the amygdala — a structure of the                                                                                                                 592

Eva Lee, Artist Webpage, http://www.christiansonlee.com/elee_new/p_animation_DT.html (accessed May 28, 2012). 593

 

Nene Humphrey, Artist Statement, http://www.nenehumphrey.com/statement (accessed April 7,

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brain known to be involved in processing of fear and anxiety — Humphrey recorded the image of this structure in her drawings such that they reflect fear and anxiety. The following work is an ideal point of transition between affective neuro art and neuro art and memory. Artist Deborah Aschheim and neuroscientist Greg Siegle, of the University of Pittsburgh, have created together projects in art and science that investigate the connections between emotion and memory. Aschheim’s work is inspired by neuroscientific research. The series of Neural Architecture (Fig. 153), for example, are site-specific installations suggestive of brain cell clusters, which have been installed in various locations and in slightly different configurations since 2003. Neural Architecture plays with the metaphor describing the structure of neural networks as ‘architecture.’ In installations of large dimensions, the artist creates networks suggestive of neural connections, transforming the neural architecture in an actual architectural space. As Meg Linton has pointed out, such creative play is part of the artist’s desire of “making the metaphorical literal and vice versa.”594 The neural architectures are further developed in projects that explore not only the metaphors of neuroscience but involve also the artist’s personal conscious experience of neural processes. In drawings, sculptures, and particularly in her installations, the artist explores the connection between memory and emotions, between personal and collective memories, between memory as a felt experience and as a topic for scientific investigation. “I have been thinking about the structures of memory,” the artist reveals, “the synaptic pathways and neural networks that are activated when I encode, store and retrieve memories. I wonder what these pathways of memory might look like, layered into the sensory experience of the present.”595 Being born into a family with a history of Alzheimer’s disease, the artists is particularly                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         2012) 594

Meg Linton, Deborah Aschheim: Reconsider, ed. Laumeier Sculpture Park (St. Louis: Stolze Printing, 2008), p. 5. 595

Deborah Aschheim, Artist Webpage, http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/onmemory/forgetting-curve (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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interested in investigating, understanding, recording and communicating her own memories and memories of her family. The fear of loosing the ability to remember compelled Aschheim to look deeper into her own memories and into the neural mechanism of recollection. Her later installations, On Memory (2006-2007) (Fig. 154), The Forgetting Curve (2007) (Fig. 155), Nostalgia for the Future (2008) retain the neural architecture of her earlier works, but they become personal. They consist of ‘memory webs’ that map the artist’s autobiographical memory, through home videos, photographs, and personal memory maps. These works are large networks of memory nodes, connected one to another in a way which retains the actual emergences of these memories in the artist’s consciousness. Talking about the her work the artist describes her creative process: “On Memory was a map and a model of autobiographical memory. For eight weeks, I lived and worked at the Mattress Factory on the North Side of Pittsburgh, filling the second floor gallery with delicate webs based on my observation of my own mental processes of remembering. The network was built around fragments of old home movies: my grandfather’s recorded memories, and my dad’s films of my early childhood. The fragments of video served as mnemonic triggers for complex chains of thoughts and sensations. Linking LED-lit nodes with acrylic fibers, I remapped my mental pathways back into the physical space where they occurred.”596

In a further stage, Aschheim’s artistic investigation of memory and emotions was transposed into scientific exploration. Inspired by the artist’s work, Siegle’s laboratory engaged in a study that examined “whether neuroimaging can give information about an individual’s subjective experiences with emotional stimuli.”597 Together with the artist, the science laboratory investigated differences in brain activity between personally relevant and non-relevant stimuli, aiming thus to introduce subjectivity as a significant element in the scientific study of emotions. Researchers in neuroscience are, naturally, looking for stable measures that provide reliable results and which leave little room for investigating personal aspects of emotional experience. In this regard, the                                                                                                                 596

Deborah Aschheim, Artist Webpage, http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/on-memory/onmemory (accessed May 28, 2012). 597

Kyoko Kamishima and Greg Siegle, "A Neurophilosophical Investigation of the Limits of fMRI," in www.deborahaschheim.com/files/br-pdf.pdf, (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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artistic influence on neuroscientific investigation is commendable, as it sheds some light onto questions concerning the subjectivity barrier in the neuroscientific research of emotions.

* * * * *

The most significant artistic investigation into neural mechanisms of memory is encountered, along Aschheim’s installations, in the works of Karen Ingham and Timothy Senior. Karen Ingham, an artist with interest in the art and science dialogue, dedicates one of her series, Seeds of Memory (2006) (Fig. 156), to exploring the relation between art, neuroscience, and botany. A number of distinct yet inter-dependent projects address questions of memory mechanisms, memory formation, and forgetting. Using photography, video, and medical technology as creative media, Ingham incorporates neuroscientific and botanical research to address the role plant-based neuropharmaceuticals have in controlling memory degenerations. In the following passage, the artist describes the most relevant aspects to this series: “Seeds of Memory: art, neuroscience and botany, constituting an ongoing body of electronic/digital artworks that explore questions of consciousness and memory. Using time-based DVD ‘loops’ the artworks incorporate actual fMRI and electron scanning confocal microscopy images of the thinking brain as it attempts to consolidate (create memory) and re-consolidate (re-create a memory already laid down), a process vastly diminished by diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Using the conceit of the floral Dutch Vanitas paintings, which sought to allegorise the fleeting and transient nature of life and the inevitability of aging and death, the series plays with the ebb and flow of the troubled mind as beta amyloid proteins strangle and eventually destroy the synaptic connectivity that facilitates memory and cognitive mobility and awareness. The images concentrate on the hippocampus, an area crucial to memory formation, and are overlaid with images of therapeutic plants such as narcissi and galanthus (used in the Alzheimer’s treatment Aricept or Reminyl) with the ‘real time’ element supplied by the living plants and flowers which eventually wither and die, as in the original Vanitas paintings. Perhaps, this is the most extreme and hostile of all cognitive environments as the mind literally destroys its ‘self’.”598

                                                                                                                598

 

Karen Ingham, "The Inverted Eye: A Transdisciplinary Gaze into the Dysfunctional Mind" (paper

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A further development of Ingram’s curiosity for neuroscience and memory is her work Drink to Remember (2009) (Fig. 157). An ingenious play of words and ideas, Drink to Remember refers to recent research studies which suggest that red grape seed extract might have potential benefits in preventing and reducing the progressive impairments in memory and cognition associated with Alzheimer’s disease.599 “We often drink to forget,” the artist writes, “but I like the irony of drinking to remember.”600 Part of this project is a set of wine bottles laser-engraved with the image of healthy dendrites. The artist elaborates upon the metaphor by creating a parallel between the shape of the dendrite and the stems of the grape without the fruits, and lastly, by drawing similarities between the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient and a raisin. “I have also suspended grapes,” the artist explains, “within a series of test tubes and over a period of time the grapes have desiccated and shrunk, just as the brain does when attacked by the plaque build-up associated with Alzheimer’s.”601 Although, like in Aschheim’s work, Ingram’s project addresses issues pertaining to loss of memory and the fear of cognitive impairment, if compared, the two artists have a very different approach to memory. While Aschheim’s installations are intimate, incorporate personal images, and reflect the artist’s own process of recollection, Ingram’s witty digital works illustrate memory more as an abstract concept than a personal experience. In the advent of memory loss, Aschheim seeks to record and communicate her own personal memories, as if to prevente them from disappearing. Giving them material form, Aschheim looks for way to preserve memories outside of her memory mechanisms, as if preserving them for future access and reference. Ingram, on the other hand, invites reflection on how memory could be improved and preserved through neuro-pharmaceutical intervention. Even though both artists are concerned                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         presented at the MutaMorphsis Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 2007), available online at: http://mutamorphosis.org/2007/the-inverted-eye-a-transdisciplinary-gaze-into-the-dysfunctional-mind/ (accessed, April 7, 2012). 599

Jun Wang et al., "Grape-Derived Polyphenolics Prevent a Beta Oligomerization and Attenuate Cognitive Deterioration in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease," Journal of Neuroscience 28, 25 (2008). 600 Karen Ingham, Artist Website, http://kareningham.org.uk/portfolio/theatres-of-the-mind/drink-toremember (accessed May 26, 2012). 601

 

Ibid.

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with rendering the processes of memory as experienced by consciousness, they take different perspectives and emphasize different aspects. In rendering memory, Aschheim’s focus lies on neural transmission and synaptic activity. Addressing her own mnemonic experience, the artist observes and illustrates the interconnection between memories, observing how a particular memory triggers the next. Through the neural architecture that her works evoke, the artist suggests the idea that a large neural network is responsible for generating each particular memory, and that the activation of one neural network triggers successive activation leading to a cascade of memories — a stream of consciousness. Ingram’s project renders memory as a process which, from clues and thought remanences, brings past events into the present by re-creating them. Bringing together a variety of images that overlap and merge the artists emphasizes the illusive, incomplete, and uncertain aspect of our memories. If memory loss and preservation is of concern to both Aschheim and Ingram, Timothy Senior’s project, Towards the Memory Tower (2009) (Fig. 158), explores the mechanism of memory acquisition and the role sleep has in memory consolidation. In the form of an immersive digital installation, the artist appropriates fictional and real architectural landmarks in the western world. Romanesque cathedrals and sixteenth century fortifications, a model of Palladio’s villa and a polygonal temple in one of Rafael’s famous painting, Russian ecclesiastic baroque constructions and German secular baroque architecture are few of the recognizable architectural elements within the installations. If Aschheim transposes the metaphor of neural architecture into a literal architectural walk-in installation, Senior makes use of architectural motives as metaphors for the content and structure of memory traces.602 Senior’s virtual city is constructed such that it exemplifies several aspects of memory formation and memory consolidation, and consists of five key components. The first component refers to slow wave sleep, a distinct period of deep non-rapid eye movement sleep. Including three distinctive stages, slow wave sleep is perhaps the most restorative of all sleep stages and has great relevance for memory consolidation.                                                                                                                 602

 

Timothy Senior, "Memory Tower: Synopsis," http://www.art-sci.info/ (accessed April 12, 2012)

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Oscillation during slow wave sleep, the artist explains, “is thought to drive the memory consolidation process by synchronizing the firing of neurons in key brain areas, such as the thalamus, hippocampus and the neocortex.”603 Within the installation, three outer layers surround the city and create a contour similar to fortifying walls. The walls represent neural patterns observed at three different stages of slow wave sleep. Having its roots in slow wave sleep structure, the second component of the Memory Tower consists of vertical spines which represent fast oscillations recorded in the hippocampus during slow wave sleep. Called ripple oscillations and believed to correlate with the processes of memory trace reactivation, these oscillations offer a physiological substrate for the activation of long term memory in the process of consolidating new ones. Long term memory, the next key component, is represented by the already consolidated constructions within the perimeter of the virtual city. At the center of the city, the memory tower — the most essential component in the installation — is an eclectic and fragmented construction, still in the process of being consolidated. Mimicking neural mechanisms by which cortical representations are bound into stable memory traces, the fragmented tower would be bound, over time, into a unified structure. The last element in the virtual city represents rapid eye movement sleep. This sleep state, associated with dreaming, is represented in the virtual city through abstract, geometric shapes which populate the cityscape, in an organized, but fragmentary way. These shapes encasing the city are symbolic equivalents to the rhythmic theta oscillatory activity, typically recorded during REM sleep and waking states, but also believed to mark short-term memory processing. Bringing together all these elements, Senior conveys the complexities of our memory mechanisms. A spectacular virtual experience that allows the participant to navigate the cityscape in natural and unnatural ways, Towards the Memory Tower not only aims at providing an aesthetic experience, but most importantly, it aims to communicate knowledge; to make accessible to a wide audience the biological                                                                                                                 603

 

Ibid.

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mechanisms of memory. In this sense, the installation is successful inasmuch as it provides an elegant illustration of the mechanism of memory. The knowledge it aims to communicate, however, is not explanatory by visual means alone, but requires direct access to the theoretical context that frames the project, and its comprehension is directly dependent on textual knowledge. The great merit of Senior’s project lies in providing a profound scientific perspective on memory consolidation and in addressing memory both as a cultural and biological phenomenon. At the same time, as many other neuro art projects, while conveying knowledge about memory, the work also invites the participants to reflect upon their own experience of remembering and on how the actual experience of the environment itself is being committed to memory.

* * * * *

Having explored the way artists address emotions and memory from a neuroscientific perspective, in what follows, I am investigating further how neuroscientific knowledge contributed to artistic representations of sleep. If artists and philosophers were concerned and fascinated with sleep since the ancient times and throughout history,604 the investigation of sleep and dreaming is a relatively new preoccupation in scientific circles. Although emerging already in the mid-nineteenth century, the science of sleep has only gathered momentum after 1953, when REM sleep had been discovered. Arguably the most important discovery in sleep research, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep was first observed by Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman and described in their short Science paper ‘Regularly Occurring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, During Sleep.’605 Within this                                                                                                                 604

Ancient civilizations believed in a divine nature of sleep, in which the dreamer “was a passive recipient of an objective dream reality rather then an active in the dream’s creation” Joseph Barbera, "Sleep and Dreaming in Greek and Roman Philosophy," Sleep Med 9, 8 (2008), p. 907. 605

Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman, "Regularly Occurring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, During Sleep," Science 118 (1953).

 

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study, Aserinsky and Kleitman reach the cautious conclusion that this sleep state, accompanied by particular physiological phenomena such as higher respiratory and heart rate, was associated with dreaming.606 To answer the great question — what is the essence of sleep — scientists tried to measure different aspects of sleep states. From early times they aimed at understanding effects of sleep depravation,607 tried to measure depth of sleep,608 and looked into the ability to control the body’s internal clock.609 They studied sleeping disorders, investigated the role of dreaming, and explored the possibility of manipulating dreams. In the last 50 years or so, sleep research showed promising progress. Scientists identified a succession of different sleep stages with specific physiological properties, provided information about the activation of cortical areas at different sleep stages, described the chemical activity that regulates circadian rhythms, and were able to characterize the electrophysiological correlates of sleep states. However, most of the knowledge about sleep spurs out of multitude of theories and hypotheses, which are yet to be substantiated. It remains unclear if sleep has any relevance in learning and memory consolidation, or rather has a role in removing unimportant connections and ‘making room’ for new information. Other theories propose that sleep is essential in brain development and suggest that extensive sleep during one’s first years vs. little sleep during old age — support this theory. The most reasonable ideas about sleep fall roughly into two categories: theories of restoration (we sleep to rest, recover and prepare to be awake again), and theories of adaptation (we sleep to hide from predators

                                                                                                                606

Ibid., p. 274.

607

First ‘controlled’ sleep depravation study is recorded in the 1890s by Patrick and Gilbert who observed the consequences of a 90 hours sleep depravation in three male subjects, discussed in Stanley Finger, Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 245. 608

In 1862 Kohlschuetter studied one subject’s sensibility to sound at different times during sleep over a period of 8 days. Summarized in Mark W. Mahowald, Carlos H. Schenck, and Kevin A. O'Connor, "Dynamics of Sleep/Wake Determination-Normal and Abnormal," Chaos 1, 3 (1991), p. 287. 609

In the 1890s George T. Ladd and Mary Calkins carried out studies investigating the ability of their subjects to wake from the sleep at a desired time, and observed that a high number of their subjects would wake within 10-15 minutes of the target time, without understanding how.

 

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and conserve energy).610 Despite the extensive research in sleep science, scientists are yet to reach an understanding of what exactly is the function of sleep. In neuro art, the investigation of sleep and its aesthetic and intellectual possibilities started in 1994, when Janine Antoni presented to the public for the first time Slumber611 (Fig. 159) — a sleep performance of great conceptual complexity. Sleeping in museums around the world, for several nights at a time, Antoni uses an electroencephalograph (EEG machine) to document her brain activity while asleep. During day time, as a resident of the same museum, the artist reproducesd on a blanket, through the means of weaving, the EEG pattern of her REM sleep cycles. She did so by using, as a weaving yarn, strips of cloth torn from the nightgown she wore as she slept the night before. The ‘dream blanket’ thus obtained is further used by the artist at night, to cover herself as she sleeps. Antoni started from the simple idea of creating an art piece about sleep.612 Searching for new possible ways of representing sleep and dreaming, and exploring the physiological approaches to sleep, the artist stumbled upon the polysomnograph. With the purpose of studying sleep states or diagnosing certain types of sleep disorders, scientists and medical staff use polysomnography to simultaneously record multiple613 physiological processes in a sleeping person. In the context of the artist’s interest — to transform everyday activities into sculptural processes — the polysomnograph turned out to be the perfect machine. Out of the many possible recordings the instrument allows, Antoni’s choice was, not surprisingly, the electroencephalograph. The EEG measures the voltage fluctuations between pairs of electrodes placed on the scalp, which in turn record the synchronous activation of many thousands of                                                                                                                 610

Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience, p. 599.

611

At the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London (2 March - 15 April 1994) http://www.doffay.com/ (accessed July 21, 2011). 612

From EGG the Art Show Online, "Interview with Janine Antoni," http://www.pbs.org/wnet/egg/205/antoni/interview.html, (accessed July 21, 2011). 613

 

Including electroencephalograms (EEG) and electro-oculogram (EOG) activity.

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neurons. It has been observed that different EEG rhythms correlate with certain wake or sleep states: fast Beta rhythms are signs of an activated cortex, slower Alpha rhythms are associated with quiet waking states, and slow Delta rhythms correlate with a state of deep sleep. The function of brain rhythms is yet unclear, but it provides valuable base for sleep observation. What Antoni is searching for in her EEG sleep recording is a unique REM brainwave pattern, characterized by fast beta rhythms,614 similar to those observed in the waking brain. Occupying about 21-25% of the sleeping time of a human adult, and occurring cyclically (four to six times throughout the night) at roughly 90 minutes intervals,615 REM sleep presents certain fascinating features. One of them is the ability to dream. Even though dreaming states have been reported outside REM sleep,616 vivid dreaming and the ability to recollect dreams are still believed to be characteristic of REM sleep.617 During REM sleep, the dreaming brain creates a remarkably credible simulacrum of the world by integrating disparate images into a seamless reality, notwithstanding its illogical and bizarre features. It seems that large parts of the brain — including many subcortical and neocortical areas that are active during waking are inactive during NREM sleep and are reactivated during REM sleep618 — are believed to generate dreams. Brainwave recordings during REM sleep are proof of intense brain activity. Another interesting feature of REM sleep is the brain’s capability to stop the dreamer from physically performing their dreams. Although brain activation in the motor cortex has been detected during REM sleep, all skeletal muscles, except for the

                                                                                                                614

Bear, Connors, and Paradiso, Neuroscience, p. 296.

615

John S. Antrobus and Erin J. Wamsley, "REM/NREM Differences in Dream Content" in The Neuroscience of Sleep, ed. Robert Stickgold and Matthew P. Walker (Academic Press, 2009). 616

Tore A. Nielsen, "A Review of Mentation in REM and NREM Sleep: 'Covert' REM Sleep as a Possible Reconciliation of Two Opposing Models," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23, 6 (2000). Antrobus and Wamsley, "REM/NREM Differences in Dream Content." 617

John A. Hobson, "REM Sleep and Dreaming: Towards a Theory of Protoconsciousness," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, 11 (2009). 618

 

Ibid., p. 808-809.

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extra-ocular,619 are inhibited causing a complete muscular paralysis.620 The brainstem, studies have shown,621 inhibits spinal motor neurons, in its successful attempt to prevent the dreamer from acting out the dream while sleeping. Therefore, while motor and sensory experience is simulated by the cortex, allowing thus a veridical experience of dream reality, the brainstem makes sure the dreamer stays immobile and asleep. Corroborating the ingenuity of the brain in stopping us from playing out our dreams with the observation that vision, for example, is ‘magically’ restored in dreams,622 we get a better understanding of why the ability to dream becomes more fascinating to artists and scientists than the actual content of the dream. Janine Antoni is most likely the first artist to explicitly apply herself to the scientific investigation of sleep. Many features of this performance/installation — the loom as a symbol of feminine activity, the labor-intensive aspect of her work, and the use of body as an object on display — are rooted in a post-modern spirit and permeated by a feminist sensibility. Although it might seem that Slumber is one of the recurrent feminist performances in which the body is employed as a toot to explore gender issues, the intricacies of this project invite the beholder to reflect far beyond that. In fact, in Slumber, more than the body it is the brain that becomes the main actor, a creative tool expressing itself through the EEG pattern without conscious control, and giving thus a visible representation to an invisible unconscious process. Antoni engages in an unusual creative dialogue with her brain, a creative loop of sorts, in which the artist mainly replicates, during the day, what the ‘brain’ draws throughout the night. Thus the loom and the EEG are, symbolically, tools in the same artistic process, used by two ‘different’ entities one working at night, one during the day. While asleep, the brain creates a graphic pattern which, although initially aesthetically rather uninteresting, becomes relevant both conceptually and aesthetically once the                                                                                                                 619 620

This is the muscle responsible for the actual rapid eye movements. See for example: John A. Hobson, The Dreaming Brain (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

621

Ottavio Pompeiano, "Neurophysiological and Neurochemical Mechanisms Involved in the Regulation of Posture," International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience 3, 4 (1985). 622

This is due to the activation of the visual cortex beyond its sensorial component, see Hobson, "REM Sleep and Dreaming," p. 809.

 

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artist consciously integrates it in the artistic process. Furthermore, by paralleling the process of weaving with that of the EEG — visible also in the way the blanket and paper fall in folds on the floor in a similar manner — the artists brings forth the mechanical and repetitive nature of the weaving, yet at the same time suggests the idea that unseen dreams and thoughts might be accompanying the process. The choice of visually recreating only the pattern of the REM sleep is guided by the intention to depict the dreams, which are known to be there, but whose content is incidental. The ‘dream blanket’, now tens of meters long, is thus an artistic expression of the physiological processes responsible for dreaming. In contrast to traditional sleep performances623 — in which sleepers are subjected to acts of endurance, by fighting their biological clock to conform to a gallery schedule — Slumber only challenges the traditional rhythm of the museum. Placing the bed in the museum, but sleeping outside visiting hours, the artist questions the internals rules and systems of the institution that hosts her.624 It does not interfere with the circadian rhythms, but with the conventional sleep location and setting. While being watched only by the museum guards, it is not the sleeping experience in itself that makes the object of the performance, but the aftermath, the visible traces of sleeping and dreaming. In an elegant play between materiality and immateriality, the artist gives new life to objects, dreams, and thoughts. Through a morphing process, a dream becomes a line, an EEG recording becomes a decorative pattern, a nightgown becomes a blanket, and the blanket keeps the body warm while another dream becomes a line.

* * * * *

                                                                                                                623

I have in mind here: Geoffrey Hendricks’s Dream Event (1971), Chris Burden’ Bed Piece (1972) and White Light/White Heat (1975), Cornelia Parker’s The Maybe (1995), and Chu Yun’s This is XX (2006). 624

Jennifer Fisher, "Interperformance: The Live Tableaux of Suzanne Lacy, Janine Antoni, and Marina Abramovic," Art Journal 56, 4 (1997), p. 32.

 

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Laurie Frick’s latest work series, Sleep Patterns, has the same conceptual premise as Slumber, namely, to give visual form to the sleeping experience. The artistic process Frick engaged in and the aesthetic solution she proposed are, however, very different. For a very long time, sleep was believed to be a passive state of rest in which the body and the mind ‘shut down.’ However, since the invention of EEG machine in the 1920s, it became evident to scientists that sleep is in fact active, and that there are patterns of brainwave activity, of eye movements, and of muscular activity that can be followed throughout the period of sleep. If in Slumber, Antoni follows the pattern of brainwave activity, Frick’s art is inspired by a different pattern altogether. Through a new machine — a commercially available sleep-tracking device — Frick records the alternating pattern of REM and non-REM sleep stages. The gadget that allegedly measures accurately these sleep patterns,625 displays graphic charts corresponding to the change in brainwave activity during sleep. These graphs, which are the visual base for Frick’s work, differ greatly from the output of the EEG machine. Although the tracking device identifies oscillations in brain activity — the amplitude and frequency of the oscillations are not visible in the graphic output, as they would be in an EEG recording. Instead, the sleep tracker extrapolates data from the brainwave recordings and displays, in the form of bar graphs, approximations about the duration and succession of different sleep states. An example of this graph (Fig. 160) illustrates a month of the artist’s EEG sleep data, captured using the sleep-tracking device. According to the artist, different colors represent different sleep stages: purple is deep sleep, yellow is REM sleep (dreaming), orange is awake, green is light sleep, and red is up and active.626 At the onset of the project, the artist collected sleep data over several months. Following the data collection, the project developed in several stages consisting of                                                                                                                 625

The artist uses Zeo Sleep Manager. Details about the device can be found online at: http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/ (accessed June 4, 2012). 626

Laurie Frick, Artist Webpage, http://www.lauriefrick.com/category/blog/ (accessed July 25, 2011). It might also be relevant here to point out that Frick’s artwork was inspired by Ben Lipkowitz’s life loggingproject. Since 2005, Lipkowitz carries out a daily quantitative diary in which all activities were recorded in chart form and marked by using a color-coded category system. The sleep graphs Frick starts from are very similar to Lipkowitz’s daily log entries. (See: http://fennetic.net/)

 

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small drawings and aquarelles that reproduce the sleep chart — as for example Inbetween Sleep (2011) (Fig. 161) — and of wall collages made of many small wooden pieces some of which are of monumental proportions — such as Initial Sleep Study (2010) (Fig. 162), 35 nights in Charlotte (2010), and Language of Sleep (2010). Eventually, the project takes the form of site-specific gallery installations covering entire walls.627 Even though the artist refers to her artistic investigations as being an experiment in search for an understanding of biological rhythms, the accuracy and validity of the scientific method is in fact of no relevance to her. The correlation between the data and the artwork is flexible, the sleep graphs serving only as a loose reference point for the final artwork. The overall impression of the final image does not evoke its scientific roots. Similarly to Antoni’s quilt, Frick’s art pieces translate, in aesthetic language, the graphic output of a sleep-tracking machine, but unlike Antoni’s art performance, the sleep process precedes and remains outside the artwork. Although the artistic result is inspired by sleep, the experience of sleep does not become an internal part of the artistic performance. While the connection with neuroscience is explicit in the evolution of the artistic product, in the final result the reference to the neuroscience of sleep is possible only through theoretical support.

* * * * *

Fernando Orellana’s Sleep Walking (2008) (Fig. 163) is a kinetic sculpture628 which questions and expands the possible ways humans and robots interact. Sleep Walking, the artists suggests, acts as a way to ‘play-back’ dreams. Its movements are                                                                                                                 627

Texas Biennial at Box13 Artspace in Houston 2011.

628

Amy Van Vechten, "Call It Kinetic Sculpture or Robotic Art: Fernando Orellana’s Work Is Truly Moving," Flyp, 10 (2008), available online at: http://www.flypmedia.com/content/machine-dreamsrobotic-art (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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metaphorically enacting the dreams during REM sleep — dreams which the sleeper himself is unable to enact. The artist spent a night at the Albany Regional Sleep Disorders Center629 having his sleep monitored and the brainwave activity and eye movement recorded. Together with Brendan Burns,630 he then used the EEG data patterns to program the activity of the humanoid robot KHR-2HV.631 The brainwave activity and eye movement recorded while asleep determine the behavior and head movements of the aluminum figure such that the REM activity is associated with dynamic behaviors commonly experienced in dreams such as flying or running, while deep sleep is manifested through small gestures and looking around.632 Following the EEG pattern, the software determines when the robot should be enacting dreams or remain in a ‘contemplative’ posture. By asking the question “what will humanity’s relationship be to the robot in the future?,”633 and proposing a robotic figure which plays out dreams according to brainwave activity, the artists guides our imagination towards a futuristic world in which dream reading could be plausible. Sleep, in Orellana’s, case is also a pretext in exploring the relationship between man and robot. In regard to this relationship, the artist goes further to investigate a peculiarity in the human perception, namely the ability to readily endow objects and creatures with anthropomorphic features. He observes that by setting the robot to simulates certain movements, the human mind will immediate make associations and even react emotionally. Consequently, he concluded that robots that are most anthropomorphic are most accepted and appreciated by the human spectator.                                                                                                                 629 630

Ann Landi, "Brain Waves," ARTnews, June 2009 (2009). Professor of computer science at Union College, Schenectady, New York.

631

About the humanoid robot KHR-2HV see: http://www.kondo-robot.com/EN/product/khr-2hv.html (accessed May 28, 2012). 632

See Landi, "Brain Waves," and Fernando Orellana, Artist Webpage, http://fernandoorellana.com/projects/sleep-waking/ (accessed May 28, 2012) for details and for video recordings of the performance. 633

Fernando Orellana, Artist Webpage, http://fernandoorellana.com/projects/sleep-waking/ (accessed May 28, 2012).

 

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In fact, Orellana’s conclusion is in agreement with recent studies in neuroscience, which investigate the neural correlates of anthropomorphism.634 In a neuro-imaging study, Gazzola and his team demonstrated that the perception of movement of an anthropomorphic robot are supported by the same neural networks that support the perception of actual human movement. Their argument, that mirror neuron systems are strongly activated by the sight of both human and robotic action,635 supports Orellana observation that emotional reactions are involved in the human interaction with a human-like robot.636 It is perhaps interesting to point out that further studies have not only shown that people effortlessly attribute human-like features to robots, but they also appear to apply similar social conventions when interacting with robots as when interacting with other humans.637 Sleep Walking, is a rare example in neuro-artistic approaches to sleep in that it connects REM activity back to the content of the dream. It is however, not the description of a personal dream experience of the artist-dreamer, or the fantastic dream imagery in a surrealist manner, but the enactment of movements frequently encountered in any dream experience. It is the musical accompaniment, more than the robot’s movement, which endows the performance with its dream-like quality. By programming the ‘sleep walker’ to suggest running, flying, sitting, and crouching as if to protect itself, Orellana plays on the idea of universal dreams. At the same time, the familiarity of the movement makes evident the impossibility of actual dream enactment. Little robots cannot, and most likely will never be able to transform brain wave activity into dream content. Nevertheless, the metaphors suggested by this work, the invitation to reflect upon the fascinating world of dreams and the mechanism behind it, along                                                                                                                 634

Lasana T. Harris and Susan T. Fiske, "Brooms in Fantasia: Neural Correlates of Anthropomorphizing Objects " Social Cognition 26, 2 (2008). 635

Valeria Gazzola and et al., "The Anthropomorphic Brain: The Mirror Neuron System Responds to Human and Robotic Actions," Neuroimage 35, 4 (2007). 636

See also: Adam Waytz, John Cacioppo, and Nicholas Epley, "Who Sees Human? The Stability and Importance of Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism," Perspectives on Psychological Science 5, 3 (2010). 637

See for example: Clifford Nass and et al., "Can Computer Personalities Be Human Personalities?," International, Journal of Human–Computer Studies, 43 (1995), and Waytz, Cacioppo, and Epley, "Who Sees Human?"

 

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with the elegant anthropomorphic gestures of the robot, make Sleep Walking a fine neuro-kinetic sculpture.

* * * * *

Developed over the past two years at the Perth Institute of Sleep Behaviour as part of a Masters of Biological Arts with SymbioticA,638 Lisa Carrie Goldberg ‘s Structuring Somnolence (2010) (Fig. 164) is art-experiment using sleep science technology “as a medium for drawing with the body at rest.”639 The interest in the graphic aspect of the histogram recalls Antoni’s Slumber installation. In contrast to Antoni, however, who transposes the graphic output of the EEG machine into weaved cloth, Goldberg’s aim is to use the sleeper’s body to influence the outlook of the polysomnography. It is not the recordings of the EEG that are transposed artistically but the histograms themselves become art pieces through the intervention of the artist. The artist manipulated the histogram result by using the sleeping participant as a drawing tool. At certain intervals throughout the night, the position of the sleeping body would be changed by the artist in such a way that the histogram resulted creates a predetermined shape. The artwork plays on the concept of ‘sleep architecture.’ The term ‘sleep architecture’ is defined as measuring “how much time is spent in REM and NREM sleep, the duration of sleep cycles, and how sleep is organized and distributed across the daily cycle”640 By moving and waking up the sleeping volunteer, the artist aims at producing a histogram contour which reflect a                                                                                                                 638

At The University of Western Australia. See http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/ (accessed June 4, 2012). 639

Lisa Carrie Goldberg, "Structuring Somnolence," Project Webpage, http://structuringsomnolence.tumblr.com/page/5, (accessed July 24, 2011) 640

Isabella Capellini and et al., "Ecological Constraints on Mammalian Sleep Architecture," in Evolution of Sleep Phylogenetic and Functional Perspectives, ed. Patrick McNamara, Robert Alexander Barton, and Charles L. Nunn (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 17.

 

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preselected architectural or landscape image. Initially performed in sleep laboratories, Structuring Somnolence was on display in January 2011 at the Science Gallery in Dublin, as part of the Visceral: The Living Art Experiment exhibition. One volunteer from Dublin Trinity College slept the first night of the show in the gallery while the artist and a sleep technician reposition his body in such a way that the sleep architecture measurements would visually echo the architectural setting of buildings across the street. Although set up after opening hours, the performance was available to the public through the gallery windows. Structuring Somnolence is an art-experiment in which artistic investigation is more important than scientific relevance. As the artist points out, “unlike a traditional scientific experiment this research is not attempting to solve a problem; there are no health benefits to an experiment of this sort. It is not about calculating sleep efficiency; in fact, the sleep of the subject will be disturbed for the sake of this research.”641 At the same time, the artist, which by working at night mimics the role of a sleep scientist, challenges her own sleeping patterns. Body movement as a source of artistic creativity is nothing new. Twentieth century visual arts, along with performative arts, have placed a great emphasis on gestures and body movements in the creative process. Jackson Pollock’s action painting, Yve Kleins use of ‘human brushes’, and Marina Abramovic’s performances are only a few of the most known examples. Goldberg’s Structuring Somnolence is an untypical way to use the body to generate shape. It gives a new dimension to the body’s ability to create form: while asleep. In fact, as Antoni already pointed out in Slumber, by having your brainwave activity and body movement polysomnographically analyzed, the brain and the body are able to create graphic marks on paper without conscious control. By supervising and altering the body movements to create specific architectural outlines, Goldberg re-instates the artistic agency, thereby minimizing chance and taking control of the final artistic result.                                                                                                                 641

Structuring Somnolence, Performance Review, www.sciencegallery.com/visceral/structuringsomnolence (accessed, May 22, 2012).

 

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* * * * *

Luke Jerram brings a new approach to dream and sleep experience. Several of his works since 2003 investigate in an artistic and scientific way the effects of sounds on sleep and consider the use of sound to alter dream content. His projects — Sky Orchestra (since 2003) (Fig. 165), Dream Concert (2004), and Dream Director (2006) (Fig. 166) — are all created in collaboration with musicians642 and scientists,643 and were initially inspired by one of Jerram’s own sleep experiences. “I first had the idea for a sky orchestra,” Jerram explains, “when I experienced the call to prayer at 3am in Tunisia. The voices calling from many different areas of the town simultaneously created a sculptural kind of map in my head. This inspired me to make a sculptural piece of work that would be located on the edge of people's sleep.”644 All three projects are based on the same concept: to create a particular kind of music or sound experience to be performed or broadcasted to a sleeping audience, and which, was hoped, would contribute to shaping their dreams. Sky Orchestra is a soundscape installation consisting of seven hot air balloons, flying over various locations at dawn645 and playing dream-related music compositions by Dan Jones. Most sounds evoke natural elements — the forest sounds, the calls of whales, or the sound of waves. One musical piece “inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream, has snippets of the spoken word recited by actors Janet Suzman and Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard in Star Trek). The character Demetrius asks, ‘Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.’”646 Posing this question, the artist initiates an inquiry                                                                                                                 642

Composer Dan Jones contributed the music and sounds for all three projects.

643

Sleep psychologists Chris Alford and Jennie Parker from The University of the West of England helped formulate the music scores for Dream Concert and collaborated with the artist in the production of Dream Director. 644

"Sky Orchestra," Information Webpage, on Axis, The Online Resource for Contemporary Art, http://www.axisweb.org/pbComm.aspx?SID=16230 (accessed May 28, 2012). 645

Performed in Bristol (2003), Birmingham (2003, Stratford-upon-Avon (2007), Sydney (2007) and London (2011). 646

 

Claire Scobie, "Arts Review: Sky Orchestra," The Sydney Morning Herald (2006), available online at:

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into the nature of dreaming and the place of separation between dream reality and awake reality, in a way that recalls Chuang Tze’s celebrated butterfly dream. The Sky Orchestra, like the Chinese story, makes us wonder about the limits and interconnections between the dream world and what we call reality. Dreams often feel surprisingly real, while reality sometimes feels dream-like. While attempting to influence dreams, Sky Orchestra has certainly conferred a dreamy quality to reality. Part of the experimental stage in the Sky Orchestra project, Dream Concert took place in Birmingham on the 28th of April 2004 in front of about 120 sleeping participants, who upon awaking were asked to complete a dream report. Dream reports were then further analyzed by a sleep psychologist and communicated to the audience.647 The performances of Concert took Jerram’s interest in sleep research further. In 2006, an Arts Science AHRC research grant, enabled the artist to initiate the Dream Director — an immersive sleep installation exploring, yet again, the potential of dream manipulation through sounds. For this project, Jerram created a multi-user sleep installation which provides sleep conditions tailored to each participant’s individual sleep rhythms. The Dream Director art-experiment invites a maximum of twenty visitors per night to sleep in the gallery space within specially designed sleeping pods. While sleeping, the participants are required to wear an eye mask that records the sleeper’s eye movement. When the sleeper reached REM sleep, the eye mask detects rapid eye movement and causes ambient sounds to be played inside the sleep pod. Each pod is allocated a set of different sounds — river water, sea side waves, forests sounds, joyful giggles, children’s laughter, far away train or typewriter sounds — which can interfere with the dream experience in different ways. “These sounds,” the artist points out, “may be incorporated into the dreaming content altering the narrative of the dream. Alternatively, the sound may lift the dreamer into the space on the edge of sleep                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts-reviews/sky-orchestra/2006/12/18/1166290450876.html (accessed May 28, 2012). 647

 

Luke Jerram, Artist Webpage, http://lukejerram.com/projects/dream_concert (accessed May 28, 2012).

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allowing them to explore this creative and illogical perceptual location. Lastly, the sound may partially wake the participant allowing them to become aware that they are dreaming and potentially take control of their dream (lucid dreaming).”648 The possibility of stimulating dream content has been investigated — with different degrees of methodological validity — since the 19th century. In 1861, Louis Maury conducted what seems to be the first noteworthy experiment on the effects of external stimulation on dream content. While he was asleep, Maury had an assistant pinch him, tickle him, expose him to various fragrances, make sounds or sprinkle water on his body, and concluded that such stimuli do tend to be incorporated into the dream narrative.649 Contemporary scientific experiments and particularly behavioral studies provide evidence to support the idea that it is possible that internal stimuli and external sensorial information are incorporated into dreams.650 At the same time, however, other research groups have concluded that both external and internal stimuli in the pre-sleep phase or during sleep have no substantial effect on dream content. Despite evidence suggesting that some analysis of the external world remains possible during sleep651 more often then not, dream content seems to be surprisingly independent from all kind of stimuli. Jerram and his team point out that the analysis of the participants’ dream content did not reveal nightmare reports. This observation suggests that, even though the content of the dream might have been unaffected by the sounds played, a change in the dream mood might be noted.652 If this is the case, the Dream Director could have                                                                                                                 648 649

Luke Jerram, Artist Webpage, http://lukejerram.com/projects/dream_director (accessed May 28, 2012). Finger, Origins of Neuroscience, p. 259.

650

William Dement and Edward A. Wolpert, "The Relation of Eye-Movements, Body Motility, and External Stimuli to Dream Content," Journal of Experimental Psychology 55, 6 (1958); Michael Schredl et al., "Information Processing During Sleep: The Effect of Olfactory Stimuli on Dream Content and Dream Emotions," Journal of Sleep Research 18, 3 (2009). 651

Perrine Ruby and et al., "Odd Sound Processing in the Sleeping Brain," Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20, 2 (2008); Hélène Bastuji, Fabien Perrin, and Luis Garcia-Larrea, "Semantic Analysis of Auditory Input During Sleep: Studies with Event Related Potentials," International Journal of Psychophysiology 46, 3 (2002). 652

A similar observation is recorded in studies of olfactory stimuli effect on the dream experience: Schredl’s study reports that “The olfactory stimuli affected significantly the emotional content of dreams: the positively toned stimulus yielded more positively toned dreams, whereas the negative stimulus was

 

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clinical potential in, for example, combating frequent nightmare episodes in subjects with post-traumatic stress disorder. Jerram’s instillation differs in several radical ways from other REM sleep projects. To beginning with, as an art-experiment, the project tilts the balance away from the aesthetic towards the experimental. Secondly, the dream adventure is left to the audience, while the artist only providing the tools for stimulating creative dreaming. While using his own sleeping experience in a preliminary experimental stage, to verify and adjust certain technical features of the Dream Director (the sensibility of the eye sensor, the intensity of sound, etc.), during the actual performance the artist’s participation is peripheral. His role is to provide the context for the audience’s immersion in dreaming, to set the stage on which the dreams will be played. The artist is rather an external observer, a ‘director’ of a sleeping crowd. As of the dream stories of those involved, they are relevant for this project only in as much as they confirm or contest their correlation with the sound stimuli. Lastly, while Antoni and Frick were interested in giving visual form to dreams and sleeping, Jerram’s aim is to actually shape the dreaming experience. Seen from the perspective of the Dream Director, a dream is no longer the access to the subconscious, but, possibly, a form of entertainment. If through the manipulation of the sensorial information during sleep, dream guidance is or could be possible, artists might hope to use dreams as a space for generating aesthetic experience. Inscribed in the same artistic predisposition for sleep investigation, SpaceBaby (2006) (Fig. 167), an art project by Jo Joelson and Bruce Gilchrist of London Fieldworks, merges art with science and science fiction. A collaborative performance-installation, SpaceBaby is the first in a series of three projects about hibernation, which questions the possibility of induced human hibernation and studies its implication for space travel. During the performance, along with scientists, the artists probe into the genetics of sleep and test the correlation between disruptive sleep pattern and health. In                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         followed by more negatively toned dreams. Direct incorporations, i.e. the dreamer is smelling something, were not found.” Schredl et al., "Information Processing During Sleep."

 

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collaboration with the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, Joelson and Gilchrist performed SpaceBaby in 2006 in London, at Space Soon: Art and Human Spaceflight. This curatorial project invites artworks which challenge space exploration and rethink the human desire to leave the cradle of the Earth.653 Four days in a row Joelson and Gilchrist reversed their sleeping pattern, working at night and sleeping during the exhibition opening hours in tube-like sleeping chambers they called hibernacula. The performance installation, the artists point out, is at the same time a ‘lab-in-action’. A team of geneticists collects blood samples at regular intervals and processes them within the installation through gene-chip arrays.654 By this they aim to understand the effects of sleep and sleep disruption upon gene expression.655 The artists are displayed in their tubular sleep containers for the visitors to examine. The beholder’s attention is redirected, however, towards the active performance of the in situ scientific laboratory. Brainwave patterns and REM sleep are replaced with another scientific parameter: gene expression. However, the hypothesis of a hibernating human traveling through space involves not only understanding the consequences of reduced metabolism on the body’s vital organs, but also estimating brain’s functions and the status of mental activity during hibernation. The later stages of the project involve a film, SPACEBABY: Guinea Pigs Don’t Dream (2008), produced together with writer Ken Hollings and composer Dugal McKinnon.656 “In the finished script,” Holling describes the film, “we examined how time and the rhythms of the body influence consciousness and our sense of identity. Footage from earlier experiments conducted by Jo and Bruce at St Thomas’s Hospital was also included, along with some weird scenes shot in a Yotel, some disgusting sequences

                                                                                                                653

The Arts Catalyst, "Space Soon: Art and Human Spaceflight," Press Release, http://www.artscatalyst.org/images/uploads/files/Space_Soon_Press_Release.pdf (accessed August 3, 2011). 654

A technological tool for the simultaneous measurement of the expression levels of large numbers of genes. 655

London Fieldworks, "Spacebaby," Project Webpage, http://www.londonfieldworks.com/projects/spacebaby/index.php (accessed July 26, 2011). 656

A video stream is available at: London Fieldworks, "Spacebaby," Project Webpage, http://www.londonfieldworks.com/projects/spacebaby/video.php, (accessed July 26, 2011).

 

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featuring rats (on loan from the London Dungeon) scrabbling around in a maze, plus some neatly choreographed laboratory procedures captured in the genetic research labs at Leicester Hospital as they processed the Roundhouse blood samples.”657

The 26 minute film invites the viewer to reflect upon sleep difficulties in zero gravity and the linearity of time in space, or about the coincidence of time duration — 90 minutes — between one REM sleep cycle and the time a space station needs to orbit the Earth. Hoping to engage the public, the artists give a poetic form to the scientific data. Rather than explaining scientific information, the project incites a creative approach to thinking about sleep and space travel. “Beyond Earth’s orbit,” the movie narrates, “time ceases to be cyclical. No seasonal, no circadian return; journeys occur along straight lines, time becomes linear […].”658 In the light of the examples discussed in this section, several conclusions can be drawn about sleep representations in neuro art. To begin with, is seems that sleep — as subject of artistic interest for many centuries — continues to reflect the cultural values and scientific understanding of the time. One important neuro art characteristic in regard to sleep is the abandonment of dream representation. Interestingly, however, although finding dream content of little significance, artists show great interest in the exploration of REM sleep — the one sleep stage that is believed to generate the most vivid and easily recalled dreams. This suggests that dreams are still important to artists, but not in terms of dream narrative and dream interpretation. In neuro art, the question of what we dream is replaced with the issue of how is a dream possible. In this sense, sleep is emphasized as biological process, and one in which the brain displays surprising levels of neural activity. The artists’ interest in neuroscience is manifested through curiosity for sleep patterns (particularly the recurrence of REM sleep) and fascination for the technologies that permit its study. Using electroencephalograms, eye movement reading, and muscular activity recordings, artists have transformed scientific tools into artistic instruments.                                                                                                                 657

Ken Hollings, "Spacebaby Screening at Less Remote," Information as an Art Form, no. http://kenhollings.blogspot.com/2008/09/spacebaby-screening-at-less-remote.html (accessed May 28, 2012). 658 A video stream is available at: http://www.londonfieldworks.com/projects/spacebaby/video.php, (accessed July 26, 2011).

 

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Within these art Experiments, artists function either as sleep subject or as an investigator. As participants, they subject their own sleeping bodies to artistic experimentation. They all record their brainwave activity and sleep patterns in quite similar fashion. What differs in each case is the way they employ the data thus obtained to generate creative art projects. As experimenters, by playing sounds to an audience to inspire positive dreams or by repositioning the sleeper to generate a particular form, artists attempt to manipulate someone else’s sleeping experience. Moreover, like sleep researchers, they reverse their sleep patterns for the sake of science/art. Furthermore, they observe the body asleep; they investigate its waking threshold; and use tools to measure different aspects of the sleep experience. In neuro art, scientific validity seems to be only marginal. Although Luke Jerram suggests that his projects might be clinically relevant, whereas the London Fieldworks team inquires into the relationship of sleep to health, in most cases, the scientific information is masked in a poetic form or absent altogether. Lastly, it might be important to point out here that sleep disorders are not, at least yet, part of neuro art’s repertoire. This omission reinforces the observation that artists generally approach positive and promising aspects of neuroscientific research rather than negative or controversial ones.

 

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Chapter VI: Neurology and Neuro Art Neurology is a field at the intersection of neuroscience and medicine that investigates, diagnoses, and aims to treat diseases of the nervous system. In the world of art and art history, neurology usually steps in to address changes in artistic creativity and aesthetic perception, which have been determined by dysfunctions of the neural system. Neurology of art is a direction of inquiry, which could perhaps be inscribed in the program of neuroaesthetics. In most instances, the objects of interest for neurology of art are artists, who, as a consequence of a neurological impairment, express specific changes in their creative process.659 Such studies place an emphasis on those artists whose neurological deficit — be it a stroke, an onset of dementia, epilepsy, visual neglect, or autism — brings about a positive aspect in the creative or receptive process, such as increased expressivity, striking ability of accurate reproduction, or an increased predisposition to create art. Based mostly on what Chatterjee labels ‘anecdotal observation,’660 the neurology of art evaluates a history of personal artistic style in the light of the neurological impairment of the artists in question. Neurology is of little interest to this thesis when concerned with the minds of neurologically impaired artists. Although several artists whose work was considered so far, did have a direct experience of neurological disease, it was not the manifestation of these diseases that was of relevance, but their choice to explore neuroscientific issues in their artistic practice that makes their creations relevant to this thesis. This chapter is concerned with artworks, in most cases created by healthy artists, which openly address neurological issues, and are therefore directly inspired by neurology. A few artworks discussed in previous chapters have already addressed neurological aspects. This is the case with Andrew Carnie’s reference to epilepsy, Susan                                                                                                                 659

See for example Dahlia W. Zaidel, Neuropsychology of Art: Neurological, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Perspectives, (Hove: Psychology Press, 2005) and Clifford Rose, Neurology of the Arts: Painting, Music, Literature (London: Imperial College Press, 2004). 660

 

Chatterjee, "Neuroaesthetics: A Coming of Age Story," p. 55.

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Aldworth’s investigation of schizophrenia, Katharine Dowson’s experience of dyslexia, Alex Wright’s illustration of the phantom limb syndrome, or Karen Ingham’s artistic comments on Alzheimer’s disease. The reason these works have been addressed elsewhere has to do with a stronger relevance of the works in question for the chapters they have been discussed in. In these particular cases, the neurological content was perhaps not as important as other aspects of the work. The reason for this last chapter is to investigate those artworks which are primarily concerned with and focus on illustrating or problematizing specific neurological impairments. Mapping Perception (2002) (Fig. 168), for example, is an art project — in the form of a film and an immersive installation — which explores a rare genetic disorder, called Joubert syndrome. This condition affects the cerebellum causing coordination and balance issues, affecting speech, eye movements, and respiration. Funded by institutions like the Wellcome Trust and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Mapping Perception was a collaboration between curator and producer Giles Lane, director Andrew Kötting, and neuroscientist Mark Lythgoe. Andrew Kötting’s daughter, Eden — who suffers from the Joubert disorder — inspired and participated in the project. The aim of the work was to explore the limits of movement and perception as imposed by the syndrome; to present an alternative world as experienced under such a handicap; and to make the audience aware of different modes of perception. Andrew Carnie’s installation, Seized: Out of this World (2009) (Fig. 169), just like few of his previous works, explores the condition of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. The work was created under the guidance of neurologists Paul Broks and Adam Zeman and with the support of several epilepsy patients. If previous works, addressed epilepsy in a symbolic way, making use of contorted tree images to suggest turbulent neural activity, Seized is concerned with exemplifying, in a more specific way, the symptoms of this condition. Describing the conceptual context of his work, Carnie refers to the implications of temporal lobe epilepsy on creativity. Calling into discussion artists like Vincent Van Gogh and Fydor Dostoevsky, who are known to have suffered from this condition, Carnie addresses the effects of the condition on their creative processes.

 

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“The electrical storms associated with this condition,” Carnie explains, “are considered to cause a kind of cross-pollination of ideas between different functional areas of the brain, giving the artists extraordinarily insightful visions, which feed into their creative practice. Much of the work and research that exists is visual leading to a goldmine of information for an artist like myself interested in the visual and the underlying neurological condition. The sequences within the time-based work ‘Seized Out of this World’, deal with particular elements of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as described in Geschwind Syndrome which is a personality syndrome consisting of symptoms such as circumstantiality, excessive verbal output, hypergraphia, writing or drawing a lot, altered sexuality, often hyposexuality, but it can be hypersexuality, an intensified mental life, deepened cognitive and emotional responses, hyper-religiosity and or hypermorality.”661

Like Magic Forest — a slide dissolve installation of large proportions — Seized: Out of this World consists of three sets of three voile screens each, on which images are projected from three pairs of slide projectors. Images of human bodies are overlapped with images of drawing hands and dendritic forms which concomitantly recall the form of the neuron and the idea of electric storm. An artistic exploration of epilepsy, Seized: Out of this World illustrates in a collage like manner various symptoms of epilepsy — from actual seizures and out of body sensations to increased creative activity and déjà vu experiences. Epilepsy was also of concern for Susan Aldworth and was expressed artistically in her Transition (2010) (Fig. 170) series. Three of the works in the series, Transition 1, 3 and 5 have been displayed as part of a recent exhibition entitled Trauma at the GV Art Gallery in London. Created as part of an artistic residency in the neurophysiology department at the Saint Thomas Hospital in London, the Transition series is based on the artist’s dialogue with patients living with epilepsy. In these works, patterns of electrical charges are combined with visual depictions of shapes and colors epileptic patients have described as experiencing. In this case, Aldworth’s technique of choice is lenticular printing — a technology that produces multilayered images such that each image is available to the viewer from a different angle of view. While the viewer moves in front of the work, the images are changing, giving an impression of movement. This technique allowed the artist to create the suggestion of electrical activity in the brain. Here again, dendritic structures — based both on EEG images and on photographs of                                                                                                                 661

 

Andew Carnie, Artist Website, http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/Seized.htm (accessed May 28, 2012).

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electric charges — are layered such that as the viewer walks by, an impression of flashing electrical activity is created. In the same exhibition, Susan Aldworth displayed another artwork with relevance to neuropathology. Apoptosis 6 (2009) (Fig. 171), from the Apoptosis series, explores — as the artist explains — “the strange and ambiguous beauty of the concept of apoptosis.”662 Apoptosis is a type of cell death, which, in contrast with necrosis — a traumatic form of cell death resulting from cellular injury — can be advantageous to an organism’s development. A well-known example of positive apoptosis is the formation of an embryo’s toes and fingers as a consequence of the death of cells between the toes and between the fingers. On the negative side, neural apoptosis might have a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In Aldworth’s work, this dichotomy is expressed visually through the contrast between the elegance of form on the one hand, and the idea of a dying cell on the other. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, Neural Notations, one of the first exhibitions interested in thematizing neuroscientific issues, was inspired by Oliver Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, and had a main emphasis on neurological issues. In this exhibition, Donna Schumacher displayed Brain Dolls (2001) (Fig. 172) — two voodoo-like dolls of small proportions made of red velvet fabric. Pins with different tablets instead of a pinheads, are stabbing the dolls in the area for which the respective tablet was prescribed. On the wall behind, prescriptions document the pills’ name and describe their side effects. If Schumacher’s Brain Dolls draw attention to the potential harmful implications of prescription medicine, Gail Wight’s work displayed in the same exhibition, makes direct reference to pain. The First Evolutionary Occurrences of Pain (1998) (Fig. 173) displays three diagrams of the common land snail’s nervous system, laced with copper. “The copper,” the artist explains, “carries electricity to miniature scenes from human existence (an imminent mugging, a car crash, a desolate civic center), powering street                                                                                                                 662

Cited in: Robert Devcic, The Art and Science of Trauma, Exhibition Catalogue (London: GV Art, 2011), available on-line at: http://www.gvart.co.uk/press/GV-Art-Trauma-Catalogue.pdf (accessed May 18, 2012).

 

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lights, radio, telephones, as a means to illuminate and amplify our inherited ability to sense pain and its strange permutations when that ability enters the realm of human experience.”663 The name of the work refers to the idea that common land snails were the first organisms to develop pain receptors. Thus, it illustrates pain by drawing a parallel between painful incidents and the simplest neurological system that could perceive them as such. Annie Cattrell’s Pleasure and Pain (2009) (Fig. 174) takes a more positive stand to the translation of pain into visual art by coupling it to its opposite — pleasure — and investigating the relationship between the two. Conceptually similarly to her previous work, Sense, Cattrell’s Pleasure and Pain was created in collaboration with Morten L. Kringelbach. In terms of technique, in this work, just like in Sense, the artist used rapid prototyping to render brain patterns of neural activity. Kringelbach’s research, which directly inspired the work, addressed the subjective experience of pain and the possibility of altering it. In research with chronic pain patients, Kringelbach’s team found ways to successfully alleviate chronic pain by applying deep brain stimulation to a small region in the upper brainstem, called the periaqueductal gray.664 Cattrell’s Pleasure and Pain models this structure of the brain as reconstructed from fMRI scans and digital information obtained by diffusion MRI — a process that records the direction and the amount of diffusion of water molecules in a tissue, and thus traces neural pathways and their communication. The elegance of the white coral-like shape of Pleasure and Pain along with the positive results in alleviating pain through deep brain stimulation suggest an overall bright perspective on the subjective experience of pain. Pain is also explored by Helen Pynor in her photographic series Red See Blue Water (2008) (Fig. 175). This work consists of several organs depicted photographically as if floating in water. Traditional remedies, specific for the organ in question,                                                                                                                 663

Gail Wight, Artist Webpage, http://www.stanford.edu/~gailw/artdocs/pain.html (accessed May 21, 2012). 664

See for example: Morten L. Kringelbach and et. al., "Deep Brain Stimulation for Chronic Pain Investigated with Magnetoencephalography," Neuroreport 18, 3 (2007).

 

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accompany the image. Out of this set of works, Headache (2008) presents a mesmerizing image of the brain on a turquoise background accompanied by a folkloric advice on pain relieve for headaches. “Press brown paper soaked in vinegar against the forehead,” one reads above the ethereal brain image. The text, written in an ink-like handwriting stile, seems to be dissolving in the water surrounding the brain. The image of the naked brain is delicate and the usual feeling of disgust one experiences at the view of organs is dissipated. An uncanny elegance and sense of magic healing envelop the image. A slightly different feeling accompanies Katharine Dowson’s Memory of a Brain Malformation (2006) (Fig. 176), a work based on her cousin’s cerebral angiogram showing an arteriovenous malformation — an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins compressing the surface of the brain. The work is an illustration of a medical condition, an abnormality which in this particular case was successfully corrected through laser surgery. The twist of this project lies in the means of its creation. Being laser etched in glass, Memory of a Brain Malformation, draws attention to the laser device, which made possible, at the same time, the creation of this work as well as the actual removal of the malformation. As such, Memory of a Brain Malformation serves as recollection not only of the malformation itself, but also of the process of its removal. For the 2008 Euroscience Open Forum, which took place in Barcelona, a team of young Italian artists from the Albertina Academy of Art in Torino created an exhibition on diseases of the nervous system.665 Under the title At the Edge of Consciousness (Ai confini della coscienza), Donato Canosa, Valentina Gamba, Samantha McMillan, and Sara Zampedri brought together artistic interpretations of four neurological syndromes. The idea of the project was to give visitors an immediate sense of what such pathologies entail. Donato Canosa, a video artist, investigates artistically the experience of split-brain patients. Split-brain is a term used to describe patients who underwent a radical kind of brain surgery which involves slicing through the corpus callosum — the bundle of neuronal fibers connecting the two sides of the brain — with the aim of                                                                                                                 665

The exhibition was further displayed at Grand Palais de Paris in 2008 and in Torino at Castello del Valentino in 2009.

 

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limiting the electrical storm in epileptic seizure to one side of the brain.666 The neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, who extensively studied patients who had their corpus callosum severed, describes his initial observations about split-brain patients in the following way: “It became clear that visual information no longer moved between the two sides. If we projected an image to the right visual field — that is, to the left hemisphere, which is where in formation from the right field is processed — the patients could describe what they saw. But when the same image was displayed to the left visual field, the patients drew a blank: they said they didn't see anything. Yet if we asked them to point to an object similar to the one being projected, they could do so with ease. The right brain saw the image and could mobilize a nonverbal response. It simply couldn't talk about what it saw.”

Canosa’s video installation (Fig. 177) aims to suggest to healthy exhibition goers the experience of holding two non-communicating brain hemispheres. Consisting of monitors divided by see-through curtains, the video installation depicts — in black and white — common actions, like tying one’s shoes, buttoning one’s shirt, or combing one’s hair. The manner of filming and displaying the videos allude to cerebral hemispheres that keep two similar but slightly different perspectives, being unable to integrate the two visual fields into a unitary perception. Canosa’s video rendering is only a metaphorical interpretation. In fact, many split-brain patients display unity in perception and everyday behavior. In spite of having more than 200 million nerve fibers cut, Joseph Bogen points out, in ordinary social situations the patients are indistinguishable from normal ones.667 Stories of conflict between the disconnected hemispheres, neuroscientist Michael Corballis argues, are rare, and possibly apocryphal.668 Only particular situations, when, for example, objects are exclusively presented to one visual field, while the participation of the opposite brain hemisphere is required, the problem of integration becomes apparent. Canosa’s installation is thus not an illustration of a neurological symptom, but a conceptual play of the idea of split perception. Although not an accurate representation of actual split-brain vision, the                                                                                                                 666

David Wolman, "The Split Brain: A Tale of Two Halves," Nature 483 (2012).

667

Joseph E. Bogen and Glenda M. Bogen, "Split-Brains: Interhemispheric Exchange in Creativity," in Encyclopedia of Creativity, ed. Mark A. Runco and Steven R. Pritzker (San Diego, London: Academic Press, 1999), p. 572. 668

 

Michael C. Corballis, "Visions of the Split Brain," New Zealand Journal of Psychology 39, 1 (2010).

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work brings attention towards this pathology and invites further reflection on brain functions, perception, and consciousness. The other three artists participating in the exhibition have presented installations pertaining to three other neurological disorders. Samantha McMillan’s project looks at a syndrome known by the name of anosognosia, which is manifested as the inability to recognize a condition the patient suffers from.669 Sara Zampedri pathology of choice was the syndrome called prosopagnosia. As a consequence of brain lesions to a cortical area in the temporal lobe — called the fusiform gyrus — a prosopagnosic patient is unable to recognize faces. The installation Zampedri proposes (Fig. 178) consists of portraits of vaguely familiar faces, covering the entire wall surface of a dark room. Through graphic means, the unique features of the portraits on the walls have been removed or altered such that, although seemingly familiar, the faces are in fact unrecognizable. In this process, the artist hopes to create a sense of alienation simulating a prosopagnosic experience. To further emphasize the confusion a prosopagnosic person feels, in the center of the room, on a circular white surface, Zampedri projected video recordings of faces reflected on a water surface. For a matter of seconds the water seems to come to a still, and the physiognomic features seem to come into focus, but only to be disturbed again by a water drop that makes the portrait disappear into the waves. The last project in the exhibition is a work by Valentina Gamba entitled Theater (2008) (Fig. 179) and which addresses the symptoms of the visual neglect syndrome. Visual neglect is condition in which perceptual stimuli on one side (typically the left side) of the body or the environment are ignored. A person suffering from this condition would be unaware of the food on the left side of the plate, leaving it untouched, and would sometimes accidently run into objects in the left visual field. To represent this syndrome, the artist chose a theater stage, whose left hand side was missing. The poster in the background, the table in the middle of the stage, and the stage itself are — on the left hand side — inexistent.                                                                                                                 669

 

For example a paralyzed patients is unable to recognize his or her paralysis.

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In a unique exhibition, through their projects and the information that accompanies them, the artists have created an environment which challenges perception, questions normality, and depicts the brain as an apparatus ready to play tricks on us. Accompanied by simplified scientific explanations, these artworks are close to being scientific illustration. However, what makes them interesting in this context is the fact that they do not illustrate a scientific concept per se, but instead depict the subjective experience of an impaired brain.

 

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Conclusions Artists have been incorporating knowledge and images about the brain in their art for more than a decade now. In parallel, art historians too have approached neuroscience in their academic field, making use of knowledge of the brain to speculate on emotions, aesthetic experience, and artistic creativity. In spite of this, however, art historians, even those with an interest in neuroscience, have almost completely ignored the emergence of neuro art. The aim of this research has been to compensate for this absence by initiating the history of neuro art. Born out of the observation that more and more art historians, curators, and artists find interest in neuroscientific research, the main goal of this thesis was to prove that there are grounds to talk about neuro art as a new artistic phenomenon. The question of whether one can talk of neuro art was, I should hope, positively answered in the course of this research. Once it became clear that the body of work inspired by neuroscience justifies the investigation of neuro art, a number of questions guided this research further. I wanted to find out when neuro art started and what were the historical and conceptual roots of this artistic phenomenon. In other words, I wished to trace the factors that made this artistic phenomenon possible. The second dimension of this research was aimed at finding the characteristics of neuro art. Looking at the most prominent examples of neuro art, I wanted to observe which aspects from neuroscience are most commonly chosen by artists and to understand what these choices tell us about neuro art. I also aimed to observe how artist encounter neuroscience and how do they engage with it. Although these questions have guided this research and their answers can be inferred throughout the thesis, not all of them have been explicitly answered. It is

 

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therefore the goal of this conclusion to provide straightforward answers to these questions. * * * * * Several assumptions advanced in the proposal of this thesis turn out to be erroneous. Two of them refer to neuro art’s relationship to neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory. The first assumption was that neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory could provide an appropriate methodology for the investigation of neuro art. I was naively hoping to initiate a ‘neuroarthistory of neuro art.’ However, the goals of these two disciplines were pointing in a different direction from what I was hoping to achieve in this research. From the perspective of neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory the subject of an artwork and the historical emergence of an artistic phenomenon are not particularly relevant. Therefore, they could not provide any essential strategies for the historical scrutiny of neuro art. The second assumption was that since neuroaesthetics and neuroarthistory emerged as discipline in the early 2000s, and since they were establishing links between art and neuroscience, they must have been instrumental in the evolution of neuro art. This however, does not seem to be the case either. Artists were not informed by the works of their contemporary art historians writing at the intersection of art with neuroscience, but rather by their contact with scientists, doctors, or the popular media.

* * * * * Another initial expectation of this research was to find the historical and conceptual roots of neuro art within Surrealism. It seemed only intuitive that an art movement which manifested great interest in matters of the mind and curiosity towards contemporary science, would be attracted by brain studies. At the same time, one could have speculated that neuro art itself would find elements of inspiration in an art imbued with psychological and psychoanalytical reference. In fact, it turns out, neuro art has nothing to do with Surrealism. Surrealism was not inspired by ideas and

 

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imagery about the brain, nor was neuro art inspired by surrealist ideas. The roots of neuro art are to be found instead in the work of conceptual artists and in technoscience art. Already in the 1960s and 1970s, in parallel with the emergence of neuroscience as a discipline, conceptual artists and artists with a curiosity for technology used, for the first time, the electroencephalograph as an artistic tool. Recording the impulses of their own brain, or the brains of others, artists like Robert Morris or Nina Sobell used EEG recordings both as visual material (Robert Morris’s Self-Portrait EEG of 1963) and artistic performance (Nina Sobell’s Interactive Brain Wave Drawings started in 1974). The 1960s were also the decade in which some artists already started exploring neurological phenomena and their role in perception. Others drew inspiration from the brain-computer comparison and created a few cybernetic artworks that addressed the brain. The same decade also witnessed the first model of the brain as an art-andscience installation. All these artworks, timidly addressing brain knowledge, testify that neuro art’s first manifestations are identifiable in the cultural ambience of the 1960s. It can therefore be concluded that neuro art materialized at the coalescence of conceptual art with technoscience art. Although signs of artistic interest in the brain existed already in the 1960s, it has only been since the late 1990s that neuro art truly emerged. A significant turning point in the history of neuro art was the moment of its institutional recognition in the form of neuro-art exhibitions. Neuro art exhibitions have been particularly relevant in this research, as they have provided the main source of artworks and artists while at the same time illustrated the overall interest in neuro art. The Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind exhibition of 2002 was particularly relevant in its commission strategies. By inviting artists to create works of neuro art and providing them with direct access to scientific laboratories and contact with neuroscientists, the organizers of this project had a twofold catalytic role in the emergence of neuro art. While they promoted ideas that artists were likely to respond to, they also supported, through funding, the creation of some of the first neuro art projects. It can be argued perhaps that the successful development of neuro art had as a

 

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consequence the disappearance of artistic commissions. Curators of later neuro art exhibitions paid less attention to their role as initiators of artistic projects and instead constructed their curatorial projects on the basis of already existing artworks. * * * * * The information from neuroscience entered the art-world through several paths. Quite commonly, neuroscientific ideas and images were found by artists in popular newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet. Another way artists encounter neuroscientific knowledge and imagery is when they themselves, or their close family member have been exposed to neural diagnostic investigation. Such personal experiences are translated in art either as explorations of the specific neurological deficiency, as investigations of brain mechanisms in general, or as simple appropriations of brain imagery. Other artists, particularly those with a background in the sciences, encounter neuroscience in science labs, original sources (like the texts of Cajal), or through dialogue with neuroscientists. Most artists are not interested in accurately reflecting the scientific argument when they transpose it in art. Few artists however, such as Will Burtin, Oron Catts of SymbioticA, and Timothy Senior consider the implications of artistic creativity for neuroscience. Their works look deeper into the scientific process. In the SymbioticA works, for example, the artistic process mimics scientific investigation, and the creators hope their artistic experiment would yield results with relevance to science. The works of Senior and Burtin provide a symbolic representation of carefully considered scientific knowledge. Their works serve as illustrations of biological structures or scientific processes, aiming to communicate consistent scientific knowledge in an engaging way. One of the disadvantages of such scientific aspirations in art is that they are imbued with heavy theoretical content. The reception and appreciation of such works require substantial neuroscientific knowledge. Quite often, long texts accompany these artworks and the immersion in their reading arguably diminishes the immediacy of their aesthetic experience. More often then not, however, the artists’ presence in science laboratories is

 

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justified by the curiosity and desire to find new topics suitable for artistic exploration. Imagination and metaphorical thinking transform the scientific observations in artistic projects, which then, in almost all instances, lose scientific relevance. Neuroscience represents for artists a conceptual playground in which ideas are often taken lightly and in a playful way. One aspect that seems to characterize neuro art, in great contrast with genetic art, for example, is the favorable, progressive, and celebratory attitude towards neuroscience. Artists hardly ever address neuroscientific research critically. Although neuroscientific knowledge and stories about the brain have the potential of being disturbing, sad, or controversial, these aspects are not what attract artists to neuroscience. By involving neuroscientists in theoretical dialogues, doing their own experiments in laboratories, or just observing the process of neuroscientific research, artists have typically explored the beauty of the brain, its complexities, its metaphorical potential, and the intricacies inherent in self perception, awareness, consciousness, memory, and emotions. * * * * * The most common element of interest for artists is the imagery neuroscience provides through scanning, microscopy, photography, or illustrations. Although in most instances the artistic representation goes beyond the visual display of brain related images — creating much more complex aesthetic objects — the staring point of many neuro artworks are images of neurons, brains, and brain scans. The way the brain is interpreted by artists varies considerably. Artists see the brain as a functional wonder, an inanimate object, an environment to walk in, an individual portrait, or a work of art. They admire its shape, the multitude of folds, and the patterns of activity it generates in the scanner. They address the spectacular effort the brain makes to cope with and compensate for deficiencies, and marvel at its power to create vision, store memories, and generate consciousness. The ‘brain in the vat’ argument and the notion of ‘brain as a self’ are equally considered. Visual metaphors are often used to parallel brain images with other forms in order to enhance the metaphorical potential of the work. The parallel of the neuron

 

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with other dendritic forms (particularly the tree), and the metaphor of butterflies in the brain are the most commonly encountered visual metaphors. * * * * * From what has been stated so far, it can be argued that art’s involvement with neuroscience remains often at a superficial level. Art’s relationship with neuroscience can be labeled as superficial for three reasons: (1) artists are generally not interested in the scientific validity of their work; (2) they seem to mostly resort to appropriating neuroscientific imagery; and (3) in most case they do not address the social, political, or ethical implication of neuroscience. These aspects, however, are not detrimental to the artistic, conceptual, and aesthetic aspects of neuro art. Even in the absence of neuroscientific relevance, artists address issues with artistic relevance and present ingenious artistic solutions. Many times, in spite of predominantly using brain and neuron images to express the reference to neuroscience, artists choose to investigate profound relations, such as the connections between brain and identity, or the idea of the brain as an art object. Furthermore, the artistic engagement with the senses, emotions, sleep, memory, and neurological issues presents deeper connections with neuroscientific research, which go beyond the simple use of neuroscientific imagery. Many artists approach aspects from neuroscience that concerns them directly, as individuals. Dealing with a disability and questioning perception and its limits are perhaps the most common in this regard. Questions related to self-identity and the manner in which scientific knowledge influences the way one perceives oneself are also of interest to artists. Lastly, by presenting the brain as an artwork, artists encourage questions not only about the brain but also about art and its ontological status. In this regard, it seems that neuro art brings into discussion classic questions that have preoccupied artists and art historians for generations. These old questions — about the nature of representation, identity, and art — are given new frames, which takes into consideration new knowledge about the brain. In terms of media and artistic tools, it must be noted that sometimes artists use neurotechnological tools in generating their image or employ the latest technological

 

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inventions — like rapid-prototyping. Biological tissue is sometimes employed, but in rather exceptional situations. In many cases, however, artists remain within conventional means, which range from painting and sculpture to graphic art, serigraphy, and slide projection. Performance art and immersive installations are also present. It is therefore quite clear, given the diversity of means employed, that hardly any generalizing conclusions can be drawn in this regard. * * * * * Whether or not one can talk about neuro artists is another question that tagged along this research and it is the time to briefly address it here. I have purposefully been avoiding the term ‘neuro artist’ as I believe this construction is misleading. Although many artists dedicated a substantial part of their artistic career to exploring the brain and the nervous system, hardly any of them could really be considered a neuro artist. Their artistic practices involve other preoccupations as well. For a large majority, it is not neuroscience, but science in general that attracts their creativity. Artists like Suzanne Anker, Andrew Carnie, Helen Chadwick, Steven Miller, Oron Catts, and others display an artistic career dominated by scientific explorations among which neuroscience is only one. Other artists encounter neuroscience accidently and engage in singular artistic projects about the brain. Their works are of relevance to the history of neuro art, but the artists themselves are not neuro artists. Perhaps, the term neuro artist could be used in relation with those artists, like Pablo Garcia Lopez and Timothy Senior, who have so far dedicated their artistic work exclusively to neuroscience. Their academic background in neuroscience and their exclusive focus on neuroscientific ideas would qualify them as neuro artists. However, using this term to designate a very limited number of scientist-artists and excluding everyone else makes the actual category of neuro artists marginal to the history of neuro art. It can therefore, be concluded that the term “neuro artist” was not applicable or necessary in the study of neuro art. * * * * *

 

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It is hard to foresee what the course of neuro art would be in the decades to follow. It can be speculated that, in the anticipation of a century of neuroscience, neuro art should thrive and develop further. New discoveries in neuroscience and further developments in neurotechnology are very likely to inspire further artistic creativity. It is possible that, as neuroscience transforms, neuro art would tag along. Depending on neuroscience’s direction, artists might be expected to engage with this field more critically and participate in social, political, and ethical debates. However, It is also possible that neuro art will soon reach its creative limits. It is questionable how much longer images of brains and neurons will be of interest in art and how far the metaphoric potential of these images and ideas can be stretched before they reach a point of saturation. Regardless of the further development of neuro art this research has the great potential of either documenting a short lived but very interesting artistic phenomenon before it falls out of fashion, or recording the early stages of an artistic tendency of great proportions. It is hoped that this research would eventually contribute, even if only modestly, to furthering the phenomenon of neuro art by inviting artists and historians to find inspiration in and further explore art’s dialogue with neuroscience.

 

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Illustration sources   Figure 1: Rowland Emett, The Honeywell-Emett ‘Forget-me-not’ (pachyderm computer)(1965) from: Reichardt, Jasia, ed. Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts. London Studio International Special Issue, 1968. p. 46. Figure 2: Will Burtin, The Upjohn Brain (1960) (Source: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr- blog/2007/november/will-burtin-forgotten-master-ofdesign) Figure 3: Robert Morris, Brain (1963-64) (Source: http://www.artnet.com/) Figure 4: Robert Morris, Self-Portrait EEG (1963) from: Schmitz, Colleen M., and Ladislav Kesner. Images of the Mind: Bildwelten Des Geistes Aus Kunst Und Wissenschaft Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2011, p. 134. Figure 5: Nina Sobell, Interactive Brain Wave Drawings (since 1974) (Source: http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/3/3c.html) Figure 6: Nina Sobell, Video Telemetry Environment (1975) (Source: http://www.cat.nyu.edu/parkbench/portfolio/4/4e.html) Figure 7: Dan Graham, March 31, 1966 (1966) (Source: http://www.meessendeclercq.be/exhibitions/past/2010/march-31-1966) Figure 8: Dan Graham, Time Delay Room 1 (1974) (Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/time-delay-room/) Figure 9: Markus Sixay, Conclusions that logic can not reach (2005) (Source: http://www.kulturonline.net/files/exhibition/Sixay_conclusions_that_logic_can_not_reach.jpg) Figure 10: Todd Siler, Cerebreactors (1980) from: Siler, Todd. "Neurocosmology - Ideas and Images Towards an Art-Science -Technology Synthesis." Leonardo 18, 1 (1985): 1- 11, p. 4. Figure 11: Todd Siler, Cerebreactor Drawing (1980-81) (Source: http://www.feldmangallery.com/) Figure 12: Andrew Krasnow, Core Text of the Mind (1988) (Source http://www.yargerfineart.com/) Figure 13: Andrew Carnie, Complex Brain (2004) (Source: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/complexbrain.htm) Figure 14: Pablo Garcia Lopez, The Cortical Garden (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/artwork/1071001_The_Cortical_Garden_II_Photovideo.html) Figure 15: Pablo Garcia Lopez, The Brain Sculpture Gallery (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/artwork/1069073_Brain_Sculpture_Gallery.html)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 16: Katherine Sherwood, Cajal’s Revenge (2007) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com) Figure 17 Seal of Marquize Cimeies, form the The Lesser Key of Solomon (Source: http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Mathers-Goetia/pages/066-Seal-of-Kimaris/) Figure 18: Santiago Ramon y Cajal, Camera lucida drawing of a Purkinje cell in the cat cerebellar cortex, 1917, Instituto Cajal (CSIC), (Source: http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/ retreived May 29, 2012) Figure 19: Katherine Sherwood, Water Snake (2008) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/) Figure 20: Katherine Sherwood, Golgi’s Door (2007) (Source http://www.katherinesherwood.com/) Figure 21: Katherine Sherwood, One in 100 Billion (2008) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/) Figure 22: Mike and Dough Starn, Structure of Thought 6a (2001) (Source: http://www.starnstudio.com/) Figure 23: Mike and Dough Starn, Structure of Thought 6b (2001) (Source: http://www.starnstudio.com/) Figure 24: Mike and Dough Starn, Structure of Thought 13 (2001-2006) Starn, Mike and Doug. "Absorption - Transmission, March 18, 2005 – July 15, 2005." edited by National Academy of Sciences, 2005, pp. 5-8. Figure 25: In vitro live tadpole neuron images, from Dr. Hollis Cline Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Starn, Mike and Doug. "Absorption - Transmission, March 18, 2005 – July 15, 2005." edited by National Academy of Sciences, 2005, p. 3. Figure 26: Mike and Dough Starn, Structure of Thought 16 (2001-2007) (Source: http://www.starnstudio.com/) and from: Starn, Mike and Doug. "Absorption - Transmission, March 18, 2005 – July 15, 2005." edited by National Academy of Sciences, 2005, p. 17. Figure 27: Roxy Paine, Impostor (1999) (Source: http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/roxypaine/#) Figure 28: Roxy Paine, Neuron (2010) photo Bill Hatcher (Source: http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/roxy-paine/#) Figure 29: Roxy Paine, Distillation (2010) (Source: http://www.jamescohan.com/exhibitions/2010-10-16_roxy-paine/selected-works/) Figure 30: Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest (2002) (Source: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/magicforest2.htm) Figure 31: Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest (2002), Installation view, (Source: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/magicforest2.htm) Figure 32: Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest (2002), details – installation view during Landscapes of the Mind: Contemporary Artists Contemplate the Brain exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art (Source: http://wcma.williams.edu/blog/page/9/)

 

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Illustration  sources  

Figure 33: Andrew Carnie, Irrigate (2009) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/andrew_carnie4.html) Figure 34: Andrew Carnie, Refraction (2009) (Source: www.global-eye-art.com/images/AC_Refraction.jpg_big.jpg) Figure 35: Andrew Carnie, Ways of Seeing Three (2009) (Sourcehttp://www.global-eyeart.com/images/AC_Ways_of_Seeing_Three.jpg_big.jpg) Figure 36: Andrew Carnie, What Did You Expect (2009) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/andrew_carnie13.html) Figure 37: Andrew Carnie, Twisted Cyclone (2010) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/andrew_carnie.html) Figure 38: Andrew Carnie, TLE 2 – Swirl (2009) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/andrew_carnie19.html) Figure 39: Andrew Carnie, Echo Perl Delta (2010) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/press/brainstorm_press_release.pdf) Figure 40: Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Falling Garden (2003) (Source: http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_giardino.html) Figure 41: Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Brainforest (2004) (Source: http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_brainforest.html) Figure 42: Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger, Vegetative Nervous System (2006) (Source: http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch/eye_dasvegetativenervensystem.html) Figure 43: Elizabeth Horowitz, Dentate Gyrus II (Source: http://www.elizabethjhorowitz.com/content/neuros/neuroLargePages/dentateGyrusIIlarge.html) Figure 44: Gyorgy Buzsaki and Attila Sik, Subnetwork (1995) (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/11/29/science/20101130-brain-5.html) Figure 45: Laura Splan, Reflexive (2004) (Source: http://www.laurasplan.com)Figure 46: Laura Splan, Thought Patterns (2003) (Source: http://www.laurasplan.com) Figure 47: Philip Vaughan, Scintillating Synapse (2001) Collection of Yuri Futumura (Source: http://www.philipvaughan.net/draw.html) Figure 48: Pryor Callway, Synapses (2011) (Source: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13361/pryor-callaway-synapses.html) Figure 49: Kim Ye, Synapse (2009) (Source: http://alphonseberber.com/berkeley/artists/Kim_Ye/index.html) Figure 50: Kim Ye, Axon B/Synapses(series)(2009) (Source: http://alphonseberber.com/berkeley/artists/Kim_Ye/index.html) Figure 51: Phillip Stearns, Artificial Analog Neural Network (AANN) (2007) (Source: http://art- rash.com/pixelform/projects.html)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 52: SymbioticA, MEART The Semi Living Artist (2002) (Source: http://www.fishandchips.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/artbots.html) Figure 53: SymbioticA, Silent Barrage (2006) (Source: http://silentbarrage.com/gallery.html, retrieved May 29, 2012) Figure 54: Elizabeth Jameson, Emerging I MRI: coronal view of the neo-cortex (2009) (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 55: Elizabeth Jameson, Brain Bird I (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 56: Elizabeth Jameson, Brain Bird II (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 57: Elizabeth Jameson, The Good Egg (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 58: Elizabeth Jameson, The Sun and the Moon (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 59: Elizabeth Jameson, Valentine I & II (Source: http://www.jamesonfineart.com/) Figure 60: Madeleine Strindberg, Medulla Dance — Central Nervous System (1998) (Source:http://madeleinestrindberg.typepad.com/photos/central_nervous_system/17medulla danceacrylic acotate_on_canvas18.jpg) Figure 61: Suzanne Anker, Butterfly in the Brain (2002), Universal Concepts Unlimited (Source:http://www.cpw.org/exhibitions/2003/divining_lightning/lightning/SuzanneAnker.ht m) Figure 62: Suzanne Anker, The Butterfly in the Brain, 2002, Installation view (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=4&wppa-photo=265&wppaoccur=1) Figure 63: Suzanne Anker, Total Recall (2002) (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=4&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1) Figure 64: Suzanne Anker, Seahorse (Hippocampus) (2002) (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=4&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1) Figure 65: Suzanne Anker, MRI Butterfly (2008) (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=16&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1) Figure 66: Suzanne Anker, MRI Butterfly (1) (2008) (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=16&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1) Figure 67: Suzanne Anker, MRI Butterfly (7) (2008) (Source: http://www.suzanneanker.com/artwork/?wppa-album=16&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1) Figure 68: Pablo Garcia Lopez, PET Soul Butterflies (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/section/280860_PET_series.html) Figure 69: Pablo Garcia Lopez, Golden PET (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/section/280860_PET_series.html) Figure 70: Pablo Garcia Lopez, Butterfly Bats (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/section/280860_PET_series.html)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 71: Pablo Garcia Lopez, Spinal Cord Butterfly (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/artwork/1107969_spinal_cord_butterfly.html) Figure 72: John Baldessari, Brain/Cloud (Two Views): With Palm Tree and Seascapes (2010) (Source: http://www.alessandracolucci.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/JohnBaldessari.JPG) Figure 73: Durs Grünbein and Via Lewandowsky, The Artist’s Brain (1998) (Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/des-kunstlers-hirn/, retrieved May 30, 2012) Figure 74: Pablo Garcia Lopez, Brain Sculpture Gallery (2009) (Source: http://pablogarcialopez.com/section/280833_Brain_sculpture_gallery.html) Figure 75: Pablo Garcia Lopez, Brain Sculpture Gallery (2009) Exhibition view Foto: Oliver Killig, (Source: http://dhmd.de/index.php?id=1911) Figure 76: Jun Takita, Light, Only Light (2004) (Source: http://juntakitaartworks.blogspot.de/) Figure 77: Dustin Wenzel, Right Whale Endocranial Cast (2007) (Source: http://www.dustinwenzel.com/brain-cavity_castings.html) Figure 78: Dustin Wenzel, Sperm Whale Endocranial Cast (2007) (Source: http://www.dustinwenzel.com/brain-cavity_castings.html) Figure 79: Veronika Bromova Views (1996) (Source: http://www.veronikabromova.cz/english/instalace_pohledy1.html) Figure 80: Helen Chadwick, Eroticism (1990) Tate Images (Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chadwick-eroticism-t07411; available online http://www.imageofsurgery.com/surgery_history_art.htm) Figure 81: Helen Chadwick, Self-Portrait (1990) (Source: http://dhmd.de/index.php?id=1911) Figure 82: Joyce Cutler-Shaw, The Anatomy Lesson: Memory Picture with CT (1992) (Source: http://joycecutlershaw.com/anatomy/al_memory.php) Figure 83: Joyce Cutler-Shaw, The Anatomy Lesson: Memory Pictures (1992) (Source: http://joycecutlershaw.com/anatomy/al_memory.php) Figure 84: Steve Miller, Portrait of Pierre Restany (1993) (Source: http://stevemiller.com/paintings/portraits/) Figure 85: Steve Miller, Portrait of Jacques and Veronique Mauguin (1993) Mauguin Collection, Paris. (Source: http://stevemiller.com/paintings/portraits/) Figure 86: Steve Miller, Dr. William Frosch (1993), (Source: http://stevemiller.com/drawings/portraits/) Figure 87: Steve Miller, Self-Portrait Vanitas (1997) (Source: http://www.neuroculture.org/GalleryOne.html/) Figure 88: Steve Miller, Self-Portrait Vanitas #25 (1998) (Source: http://stevemiller.com/drawings/vanitas/) Figure 89: Steve Miller, Self-Portrait Vanitas #48 (1998) (Source:

 

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Illustration  sources   http://stevemiller.com/drawings/vanitas/)

Figure 90: Annie Leibovitz, Laurie Anderson MRI (1994) from: Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann. Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997, p. 295. Figure 91: Justine Cooper, RAPT II (1998) (Source: http://justinecooper.com/images/probe600.jpg) Figure 92: Justine Cooper, Trap - self (2000) (Source: http://justinecooper.com/trap.html) Figure 93: Justine Cooper, Reach (2000) (Source: http://www.pkfimagecollection.org/html/ArtistResults.asp?offset=0&artist=520&artistname=Justine%20Coo per) Figure 94: Marilène Oliver, Family Portrait (2003) (Source: http://marileneoliver.com/portfolio/portfolio2003/2003family_port1.html) Figure 95: Marilène Oliver, Radiant (2006) (Source: http://www.marileneoliver.com/portfolio/portfolio2006/2006radiant1.html) Figure 96: Angela Palmer, Robert Harris, (Source: http://www.angelaspalmer.com/nggallery/page-577/album-2/gallery-7/) Figure 97: Angela Palmer, Self-Portrait, Crouching, (Source: http://www.angelaspalmer.com/wp- content/gallery/self-portraits/dsc_0629.jpg) Figure 98: Angela Palmer, Self-portrait 11 (Source: http://www.waterhousedodd.com/angela- palmer) Figure 99: Angela Palmer, Double Self-Portrait (Source: http://www.waterhousedodd.com/angela-palmer) Figure 100: Angela Palmer, Brain of the Artist (Source: http://www.waterhousedodd.com/angela- palmer) Figure 101: Susan Aldworth, No Ghost in the Machine (2004) (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/no-ghost-in-the-machine/) Figure 102: Susan Aldworth, Brainscape 18, (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/brainscape18- 2006/) Figure 103: Susan Aldworth, Location Drawings (2005–06) (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/location-drawing-27-11-2005/) Figure 104: Susan Aldworth, Cogito Ergo Sum 1 (2002) (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/cogito-ergo-sum-1-2002/) Figure 105: Susan Aldworth, Cogito Ergo Sum 2 (2002) (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/cogito-ergo-sum-2-2002/) Figure 106: Susan Aldworth, Cogito Ergo Sum 3 (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/cogitoergo- sum-3-2006/)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 107: Katharine Dowson, Self Portrait (2005) (Source: http://www.katharinedowson.com/gallery/view/8) Figure 108: Katharine Dowson, Brain Bricks (2004) (Source: http://www.katharinedowson.com/gallery/view/10) Figure 109: Katharine Dowson, My soul (2005) (Source: http://www.katharinedowson.com/gallery/view/10) Figure 110: Katherine Sherwood, Shape of People (2006) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_08/07.html) Figure 111: Katherine Sherwood, Transports Instantaneously (2007) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_08/10.html) Figure 112: Katherine Sherwood, Firmer Spirit (2006) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_08/05.html) Figure 113: Katherine Sherwood, Mansur Healer of the Yelling Clinic (2010) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_10/04.html) Figure 114: Katherine Sherwood, Belly’ s (2010) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_10/03.html) Figure 115: Katherine Sherwood, Blue Girl (2010) (Source: http://www.katherinesherwood.com/sherwood/art/files_10/06.html) Figure 116: Daniel Margulies and Chris Sharp, Untitled (2008) (Source: ttp://www.neuroculture.org/GalleryFour.html) Figure 117: Marta de Menezes, Functional Portraits, Patricia Playing the Piano (2002) (Source: http://www.martademenezes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Funct-Portraits-AMinima.pdf) Figure 118: Marta de Menezes, Functional Portraits, Martin analyzing a painting (2002) (Source: http://www.martademenezes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Funct-Portraits-AMinima.pdf) Figure 119: Marta de Menezes, Functional Portraits: Self-Portrait Drawing (2002) (Source: http://www.martademenezes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Funct-Portraits-AMinima.pdf) Figure 120: Adi Hoesle, Pingo Ergo Sum (2012) (Source: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/malen-mit-gedanken-hirn-an-rechner-bittemehr- blau-a-726767.html / http://www.startnext.de/brain-painting-ausstellung/) Figure 121: Nicole Ottiger, Portrait of An Artist: The Mind's Eye (2010) (Stills from: http://fora.tv/2011/11/10/swissnex_Art__Neuroscience#fullprogram) Figure 122: Alexa Wright, After Image (1997) (Source: http://www.alexawright.com/afteriimages.html) Figure 123: Jeanne Dunning, Me not Me (2009) (Source: http://www4.uwm.edu/psoa/inova/archived_exhibits/dunning_jeanne.cfm)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 124: Todd Siler, Thought Assemblies (1979-82) (Source: http://www.toddsilerart.com/artworks.html) Figure 125: Todd Siler, Cerebrarium – Model for Interpreting Human Brain Dynamics (1983) (Source: http://www.feldmangallery.com/media/siler/cerebreactor_01.jpg) Figure 126: Amy Caron, The Waves of Mu (2008) (Source: http://www.wavesofmu.com/Waves_of_Mu/Photos.html) Figure 127: Daniel Canogar, Synaptic Passage (2010) (Source: http://www.danielcanogar.com/) Figure 128: Yaron Steinberg, Brain/City (Source: http://yaronart.com/object.html) Figure 129: Katy Schimert, The Woman’s Brain (1995) (Source: http://wcma.williams.edu/exhibtions/heavenly-bodies-woven-inside-ourselves/) Figure 130: Annie Cattrell, work Sense (2001-2003) (Source: http://www.kringelbach.dk/skulptur.html; http://www.wellcomecollection.org/fullimage.aspx?page=417&image=sense-detail) Figure 131: Helga Griffiths, Turbulent Souvenirs I (2002) (Source: http://www.helgagriffiths.de/biennials/turbulent_souvenirs_memories.html) Figure 132: Helga Griffiths, Turbulent Souvenirs II (2005) (Source: http://www.helgagriffiths.de/projects/turbulent_souvenirs_II.html) Figure 133: Anna Perry, Fog (Source: http://www.blueoyster.org.nz/archives/2010programme/light-sensitive-perry/) Figure 134: Daniel Canogar, Time Release (2002) (Source: http://www.danielcanogar.com/) Figure 135: Helga Griffiths’s Eye Topia (2011) (Source: http://www.helgagriffiths.de/projects/2011_eyetopia.html) Figure 136: Jill Scott, The Electric Retina (2008) (Source: http://www.dusseiller.ch/labs/wpcontent/uploads/2008/03/electric_retina_web.jpg) Figure 137: Andrew Carnie, Eye: Through the Mirror Darkly (2004) (Source: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/eye.ttmd.htm) Figure 138: Osi Audu, The Seeing Mind (2002) (Source: http://www.osiaudu.com/works.html) Figure 139: Osi Audu, Outer/Inner Head (Ori ode/Ori inu)4 (2011) (Source:http://www.osiaudu.com/works/outerinner4.jpg) Figure 140: Robin Hawes, Private View: The Nature of Visual Process (2007) (Source: http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/hawes_hodgson_details.html) Figure 141: Rune Peitersen, Observer Effect: A Tree in the Forest (2011), from Saccadic Sightings series (Source: http://www.runepeitersen.com/2011/11/a-tree-in-the-forest/) Figure 142: Rune Peitersen, Peripheral Panorama (2007) (Source: http://www.runepeitersen.com/category/peripheral-panorama-2007/)

 

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Illustration  sources  

Figure 143: Naho Taruishi, Eye|Eye (2007)Figure 144: Naho Taruishi, Close your Eyes (2007) (Source: http://www.nahotaruishi.com/NAHO_TARUISHI/Close_Your_Eyes_in_viewing_box.html) Figure 145: Ivana Franke, Seeing with Eyes Closed (2011) (Source: http://www.ivanafranke.net/artworks/257) Figure 146: Luke Jerram, Retinal Memory Volume (1997) (Source: http://www.lukejerram.com/projects/retinal_memory_volume) Figure 147: Jaewook Shin, Mind Frame (2002-2006), from Afterimage I series (Source: http://www.leonardo.info/gallery/gallery431/shin.html and http://jwook.com/afterimage/ai2_project.html) Figure 148: Deborah Sperber, After Mona Lisa 2 (2005) (Source: http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html_and_2x2s/mona2.html) Figure 149: Deborah Sperber, Six Eye-Centered Portraits_ After van Eyck (2006) (Source: http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html_and_2x2s/6_portraits_index.ht ml) Figure 150: Helen Storey, Eye and I (2005) (Source: http://www.helenstoreyfoundation.org/pro5.htm) Figure 151: Eva Lee, Discrete Terrain: Windows on Five Emotions (2007) (Source: http://vimeo.com/4399448) Figure 152: Nene Humphrey, The Plain Sense of Things (2008) (Source: http://www.nenehumphrey.com/projects/the-plain-sense-of-things/view/1) Figure 153: Deborah Aschheim, Neural Achitecture 1 (2003) (Source: http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/neural-architecture/1) Figure 154: Deborah Aschheim, On Memory (2006-2007) (Source: http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/on-memory/on-memory) Figure 155: Deborah Aschheim, The Forgetting Curve (2007) (Source: http://www.deborahaschheim.com/projects/on-memory/forgetting-curve) Figure 156: Karen Ingham, Seeds of Memory (2006) (Source: http://kareningham.org.uk/portfolio/theatres-of-the-mind/seeds-of-memory) Figure 157: Karen Ingham, Drink to Remember (2009) (Source: http://kareningham.org.uk/portfolio/theatres-of-the-mind/drink-to-remember) Figure 158: Timothy Senior, Towards the Memory Tower (http://www.art-sci.info/) Figure 159: Janine Antoni, Slumber (1994) (Source:http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/janineantoni/) Figure 160: A month of Laurie Frick’s EEG sleep data. (Source: http://www.lauriefrick.com/sleep- holds-secrets-night-rhythms-not-so-different-than-wakingrhythms/)

 

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Illustration  sources  

Figure 161: Laurie Frick, In-between Sleep (2011), from Sleep Patterns (Source: http://www.lauriefrick.com/sleep-drawings/) Figure 162: Laurie Frick, Initial Sleep Study (2010), from Sleep Patterns (Source: http://www.lauriefrick.com/sleep-patterns/) Figure 163: Fernando Orellana, Sleep Walking (2008) (Source: http://fernandoorellana.com/projects/sleep-waking/) Figure 164: Carrie Goldberg, Structuring Somnolence (2010) (Source: http://structuringsomnolence.tumblr.com/) Figure 165: Luke Jerram, Sky Orchestra (2011) (Source: http://www.skyorchestra.co.uk/gallery) Figure 166: Luke Jerram, Dream Director (2006) (Source: http://www.ica.org.uk/18395/Live-and-Media-Arts-Archive/Dream-Director.html) Figure 167: Jo Joelson and Bruce Gilchrist of London Fieldworks, SpaceBaby (2006) (Source: http://www.londonfieldworks.com/projects/spacebaby/gallery.php) Figure 168: Andrew Kötting, Mapping Perception (2002) (Source: http://proboscis.org.uk/mappingperception/sciart.html and ) Figure 169: Andrew Carnie, Seized: Out of this World (2009) (Source: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk/Seized.htm) Figure 170: Susan Aldworth, Transition 1 (2010) (Source: http://susanaldworth.com/transition/) Figure 171: Susan Aldworth, Apoptosis 6 (2009) (Source: http://www.gvart.co.uk/press/GVArt-Trauma-Catalogue.pdf, p. 35) Figure 172: Donna Schumacher, Brain Dolls (2001) (Source: http://xaa.net/art_curatorial_neural3.html) Figure 173: Gail Wight, The First Evolutionary Occurrences of Pain (1998) (Source: http://www.stanford.edu/~gailw/artdocs/pain.html) Figure 174: Annie Cattrell, Pleasure and Pain (2009) (Sources: http://www.kringelbach.dk/skulptur.html and http://www.artandscience.org.uk/catalogue/) Figure 175: Helen Pynor, Head ache (2008) (Source: http://www.helenpynor.com/headache.htm) Figure 176: Katharine Dowson, Memory of a Brain Malformation (2006) (Source: http://www.katharinedowson.com/gallery/view/10) Figure 177: Donato Canosa, Split-Brain (2008) (Source: http://www.moebiusonline.eu/fuorionda/Mostra_coscienza.shtml) Figure 178: Sara Zampedri, Prosopagnosia (2008) (Source: http://www.moebiusonline.eu/fuorionda/Mostra_coscienza.shtml)

 

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Illustration  sources   Figure 179: Valentina Gamba, Theater (2008) (Source: http://www.moebiusonline.eu/fuorionda/Mostra_coscienza.shtml)

 

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List of Artist’s Websites: Susan Aldworth: http://susanaldworth.com Suzanne Anker: http://www.suzanneanker.comJanine Antoni: http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/janine-antoni Deborah Aschheim: http://www.deborahaschheim.com Osi Audu: www.osiaudu.com John Baldessari: http://www.baldessari.org Veronika Bromova: http://www.veronikabromova.cz Will Burtin: http://library.rit.edu/gda/designer/will-burtin Pryor Callway: http://www.pryorcallaway.com Daniel Canogar: http://www.danielcanogar.com Andrew Carnie: http://www.tram.ndo.co.uk Amy Caron: http://www.amycaron.com Annie Cattrell: http://www.anniecattrell.com Helen Chadwick: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253 Justine Cooper: http://www.justinecooper.com Joyce Cutler-Shaw: http://joycecutlershaw.com Katharine Dowson: www.katharinedowson.comJeanne Dunning: http://www.art.northwestern.edu/programs/faculty/dunning-images.html Ivana Franke: http://www.ivanafranke.net Laurie Frick: http://www.lauriefrick.com Pablo Garcia Lopez: http://pablogarcialopez.com Carrie Lisa Goldberg: http://structuringsomnolence.tumblr.com Dan Graham: http://www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/dan-graham/works Helga Griffiths: http://www.helgagriffiths.de

 

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List  of  Artist’s  Websites:   Robin Hawes: http://www.robinhawes.com Adi Hoesle: www.retrogradist.de; http://www.pingo-ergo-sum.com Elizabeth Horowitz: http://www.elizabethjhorowitz.com Nene Humphrey: http://www.nenehumphrey.com Karen Ingham: http://kareningham.org.uk Elizabeth Jameson: http://www.jamesonfineart.com Luke Jerram: http://lukejerram.com Andrew Kötting: http://proboscis.org.uk/mappingperception Andrew Krasnow: http://www.krasnow.net Eva Lee: http://www.christiansonlee.com/elee_new/index.htm Via Lewandowsky: http://www.vialewandowsky.de Gerda Steiner and Jörg Lenzlinger: http://www.steinerlenzlinger.ch London Fieldworks: http://www.londonfieldworks.com Marta de Menezes: http://www.martademenezes.com Steve Miller: http://stevemiller.com Robert Morris: www.artnet.com/artists/robert-morris Warren Neidich: http://www.warrenneidich.com Marilène Oliver: http://www.marileneoliver.com Fernando Orellana: http://fernandoorellana.com Nicole Ottiger: http://artistsinlabs.ch/portfolio/nicole-ottiger Roxy Paine: http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/roxy-paine Angela Palmer: http://www.angelaspalmer.com Rune Peitersen: http://www.runepeitersen.com/2007/05/texts Helen Pynor: www.helenpynor.com Katy Schimert: http://katyschimert.com Donna Schumacher: http://xaa.net/art_curatorial_neural1.html Jill Scott: http://www.jillscott.org Katherine Sherwood: http://www.katherinesherwood.com

 

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List  of  Artist’s  Websites:   Jaewook Shin: http://jwook.comTodd Siler: www.toddsilerart.com Markus Sixay: http://www.sieshoeke.com/artists/markus-sixay/bibliography Nina Sobel: http://www.brainwavedrawings.com Deborah Sperber: http://www.devorahsperber.com Laura Splan: http://laurasplan.com Mike and Doug Starn: http://www.starnstudio.com Phillip Stearns: http://www.art-rash.com/pixelform/projects.html Yaron Steinberg: http://yaronart.com Timothy Senior: http://www.art-sci.info Helen Storey: http://helenstoreyfoundation.org/pro5.htm Madeline Strindberg: http://www.madeleinestrindberg.com SymbioticA: http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au Jun Takita: http://www.juntakita.com Naho Taruishi: http://www.nahotaruishi.com Philip Vaughan: http://www.philipvaughan.net Dustin Wenzel: http://www.dustinwenzel.com Gail Wight: http://www.stanford.edu/~gailw Alexa Wright: http://www.alexawright.com Kim Ye: http://kimye.com

 

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List of Relevant Exhibitions 1994/5:

Art & Brain, Forschungszentrum Jülich and Deutsches Museum Bonn, Curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

1999:

Conceptual Art as Neurobiological Praxis, Thread Waxing Space New York. Curated by Warren Neidich.

1999:

Searchlight, Consciousness at the Millennium (1999), California College of Arts and Craft, San Francisco. Curated by Lawrence Rinder.

2000:

Neural Notations, Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery Santa Cruz; The Physics Room, Chrischurch (2001). Curated by Donna Schumacher.

2002:

Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind, Wellcome Collection, London. Curated by Caterina Albano, Ken Arnold and Marina Wallace.

2003: Nowlin.

Neuro, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Curated by Stephen

2006:

Neuroculture: Visual Art and the Brain, Westport Art Center, Westport. Curated by Suzanne Anker and Giovanni Frazzetto

2008: Ellen Schön

MINDmatters, Laconia Gallery, Boston. Curated by Georffry Koetsch and

2008:

Brainwaves: Common Senses, Exit Art, New York. Curated by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo.

2011:

Images of the Mind: Bildwelten des Geistes aus Kunst und Wissenschaft, Das Deutsche Hygiene-Museum Dresden/ Moravian Gallery in Brno, Curated by Colleen M. Schmitz and Ladislav Kesner

2011:

Brainstorm, GV Art Gallery, London. Curated by Robert Devcic.

2011:

Fundamentally Human, Pera Museum, Istanbul. Curated by Suzanne Anker.

2012:

Brains: the Mind as Matter, Wellcome Collection London, Curated by Marius Kwint and Lucy Shanahan.

 

 

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