Art, Science and the Sublime: 3 questions with Anna Dumitriu » IAI TV Is the Romantic idea of the sublime still relevant? Yes, says Anna Dumitriu, and not just for art, but for science too. Anna Dumitriu is a Brighton-based contemporary artist best known for her work in bio-art. Her practice encompasses installations, interventions and performances, often incorporating diverse materials such as bacteria, robotics, digital projections and embroidery, Dumitriu seeks to blur the boundaries between the arts and the sciences. Dumitriu is founder and Director of the Institute of Unnecessary Research and lead artist on the "Trust me, I'm an artist: towards an ethics of art/science collaboration" project working with the Waag Society in Amsterdam. Nature has always been one of the most powerful ways of accessing the sublime. Science is a means of study the natural world, in all its forms, and for making predictions about it. Is science is encroaching on art’s territory, or vice-versa? The sublime an experience somewhere between terror and awe.
Empathy for others’ pain rooted in cognition rather than sensation, CU-Boulder study finds | News Center The ability to understand and empathize with others’ pain is grounded in cognitive neural processes rather than sensory ones, according to the results of a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers. The findings show that the act of perceiving others’ pain (i.e., empathy for others’ pain) does not appear to involve the same neural circuitry as experiencing pain in one’s own body, suggesting that they are different interactions within the brain. “The research suggests that empathy is a deliberative process that requires taking another person’s perspective rather than being an instinctive, automatic process,” said Tor Wager, the senior author of the study, director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU-Boulder. A study detailing the results was published online today in the journal eLife. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided funding for the study.
Our Brains on Art | Patricia Leavy, PhD I am a sociologist by training. I come from academic world, reading scholarly articles on topics of social import, but they’re almost always boring, dry and quickly forgotten. Yet I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to a movie, a theater production or read a novel and been jarred into seeing something differently, learned something new, felt deep emotions and retained the insights gained. I know from both my research and casual conversations with people in daily life that my experiences are echoed by many. The arts can tap into issues that are otherwise out of reach and reach people in meaningful ways. This realization brought me to arts-based research (ABR). The turn by many scholars to arts-based research is most simply explained by my opening example of comparing the experience of consuming jargon-filled and inaccessible academic articles to that of experiencing artistic works. Natalie Phillips (2012) used the fiction of Jane Austen in a study about how reading affects the brain.
Hz #17 -"FEELTRACE and the Emotions (after Charles Darwin)" Rapid changes in science, technology and new media will lead to more sophisticated ideas about what it means to be human, in thought, body, emotional response and artistic expression. New relationships will form between humans, machines and animals with the human functioning as a networked resource that can be accessed globally over the internet. Genetically emotionally or otherwise enhanced individuals could become the fashionable norm; synthetic biology could replace plastic surgery, with the further complication of not knowing where those genetic modifications will take them as individuals or us as a species. This paper documents both the technical and theoretical development of the collaborative interactive new media video project "The Emotions (after Charles Darwin)" which explores some of the above concepts. Keywords Donald E. "No Longer is human existence defined by its unique temporal and spatial coordinate; one body, one life in a specific space and time. Testing at the BMI Lab
Man Missing Most Of His Brain Challenges Everything We Thought We Knew About Consciousness Yet miraculously, the man was not only fully conscious, but lived a rich and unhindered life, working as a civil servant and living with his wife and two kids, blissfully unaware of the gaping hole in his brain. His ability to function without so many of the key brain regions previously considered vital for consciousness raises some major questions about existing theories regarding how the brain works and the mechanisms underlying our awareness. For example, neuroscientists have often asserted that a brain region called the thalamus, which relays sensory signals to the cerebral cortex, is indispensable for consciousness. Similarly, researchers have shown that it is possible to cause people to lose consciousness by using electrodes to manipulate the activity of a brain region called the claustrum, which receives input from a wide variety of brain areas and communicates extensively with the thalamus.
The Science of Stress, Orgasm and Creativity: How the Brain and the Vagina Conspire in Consciousness “The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’” philosopher Alain de Botton argued in his meditation on sex, “the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.” But in his attempt to counter the reductionism that frames human sexuality as a mere physiological phenomenon driven solely by our evolutionary biology, de Botton overcompensates by reducing in the opposite direction, negating the complex interplay of brain and biology, psychology and physiology, that propels the human sexual experience. That’s precisely what Naomi Wolf, author of the 1991 cultural classic The Beauty Myth, examines in Vagina: A New Biography (public library) — a fascinating exploration of the science behind the vastly misunderstood mind-body connection between brain and genitalia, consciousness and sexuality, the poetic and the scientific. Wolf writes:
Harvard’s Biovions vs. Sandra Bullock’s Gravity: Should We Use Art to Teach Science? If you haven’t seen the mesmerizing video, “The Inner Life of the Cell” produced by Harvard University in 2007, take a moment to watch it below. The video is fascinating. With beautifully choreographed animation, the stunning visuals and music will captivate any audience. The video makes science not only enchanting, but approachable. If you didn’t feel like you knew how cells lived and worked before, watching this video would put you right in the cells’ world and teach you first hand. Harvard University has used this video to teach undergraduate and medical students about cell biology. Perhaps no surprise, the videos produced by the Biovisions project have won several awards. Why am I so amazed? In the Biovions videos, we see very realistic, albeit artistically rendered, animations that are intended to represent—to mimic—the life of a cell. Recently, Warner Brothers launched an equally mesmerizing film starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock: Gravity. Help spread visual literacy.
mcb80x On the Origin of Truly Innovative Ideas Last week, I wrote about increasing innovation in your company. This week, in Part 2, we'll talk about how to create the right environment and incentives for innovation to flourish. Today's post outlines a few key ideas and strategies I've found to be extremely effective. Fear of Failure = Fear of Innovation The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. But few companies actually try crazy ideas — especially the most successful ones. Fear of failure paralyzes creativity, stops risk-taking, and ultimately slows innovation down to a halt. Why do people fear failure? Three principal reasons… Fear impacting their reputation: “If I fail, I won’t get the promotion.”Fear of losing time: “I’ve invested two years of my life, we can’t fail now!” How do you minimize fear of failure? The right environment and the right incentives. The 5-5-5 Program Here's the basic idea: Teams of 5: Break your company (division, group, etc.) into teams of five people. Why 5 people? Peter Diamandis Dr. Dr.
Art and Neuroscience: a State of the Union To prepare for Thursday’s This is Your Brain on Art panel at 3rd Ward, in Brooklyn, NY, I outlined several distinct approaches in the current conversation between art and neuroscience, a field of inquiry often dubbed neuroaesthetics. The following outline is most likely incomplete. It is an attempt to quickly organize the many strains of research and thought on these issues, so please post any additions you think of in the comments section below. I tried to identify a few lines of inquiry into the relationship between art and the brain, and to describe the angle of each line’s approach to that relationship. Here are three approaches: 1. This is the approach that studies what happens to art when it enters the brain: how our brains reconstruct, assess, and fasten judgement to works of art. This approach can focus on any artform as it enters the brain, such as: Visual art. 2. Some further thoughts on these parallels, specific to film. 3.
Your Brain Has A DELETE Button And Here's How To Use It! There’s an old saying in neuroscience: “neurons that fire together wire together.” This means the more you run a neuro-circuit in your brain, the stronger that circuit becomes. This is why, to quote another old saw, “practice makes perfect”. The more you practice piano, or speaking a language, or juggling, the stronger those circuits get. Scientists have known this for years. However, nowadays researchers learn another part of the truth: In order to learn something, even more important than practicing is the ability to unlearn, or to break down the old neural connections. This is how it works: Imagine your brain is a garden, except instead of growing flowers, fruits, and vegetables, you grow synaptic connections between neurons. “Glial cells” are the gardeners of your brain—they act to speed up signals between certain neurons. This is how your brain makes the physical space for you to build new and stronger connections so you can learn more. This is why sleep matters:
Don’t Scan So Close To Me: Scanning Sting’s Musical Brain – Neuroscience News Summary: New imaging technology allowed researchers to map how Sting’s brain organizes music. Source: McGill University. What does the 1960s Beatles hit “Girl” have in common with Astor Piazolla’s evocative tango composition “Libertango”? Probably not much, to the casual listener. The paper, published in the journal Neurocase, uses recently developed imaging-analysis techniques to provide a window into the mind of a masterful musician. “These state-of the-art techniques really allowed us to make maps of how Sting’s brain organizes music,” says lead author Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist at McGill University. Lab tour with a twist The research stemmed from a serendipitous encounter several years ago. So it was that McGill students in the Stewart Biology Building one day found themselves sharing an elevator with the former lead singer of The Police, who has won 16 Grammy Awards, including one in 1982 for the hit single “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” Unexpected connections Abstract
The Dense Microcosmic Worlds of Painter Robert S. Connett Since he was a child, Robert S. Connett was fascinated by nature. And not just any type of nature, but the tiny worlds that quietly exist without being discovered. They thrive under rocks and under microscopes and Connett was the kid who went out looking for them, bringing home everything from spiders and earwigs to snakes. This perhaps explains the self-taught painter’s equally fascinating worlds he conjures on a canvas, often in painstaking detail. These “underworlds,” as Connett describes them, are often comprised of densely populated organisms. The organisms are a combination of accurate depictions based on scientific observation, as well as plucked from the artist’s own mind. detail of “MICROVERSE II” (2015) “MICROCOSMIC GARDEN,” detail Sea Flowers (2014)
Scientists Surprised to Find No Two Neurons Are Genetically Alike The past few decades have seen intensive efforts to find the genetic roots of neurological disorders, from schizophrenia to autism. But the genes singled out so far have provided only sketchy clues. Even the most important genetic risk factors identified for autism, for example, may account for only a few percent of all cases. Much frustration stems from the realization that the key mutations elevating disease risk tend to be rare because they are less likely to be passed on to offspring. Accepted dogma holds that—although every cell in the body contains its own DNA—the genetic instructions in each cell nucleus are identical. A paper published on April 28 in Science by a group founded two years ago—the Brain Somatic Mosaicism Network (BSMN)—outlines a research agenda for using new technologies to explore the genetic diversity found in each cell and to investigate what links, if any, tie such mutations to a variety of neurological conditions.