Event overview
Goldsmiths Psychology Department Seminar Series
Abstract
Recent years have seen a growing interest among neuroscientists and vision scientists in art and aesthetics, exemplifying a more general trend towards interdisciplinary integration in the arts, humanities and sciences. However, true art-science integration remains a distant prospect due to fundamental differences in outlook and approach.
As an artist who has long collaborated with neuroscientists and vision scientists, I see two great challenges for any project designed to explain the role of the brain in art appreciation. First, scientists and artists need to identify common ground, common questions, and a shared motivation for inquiry. I argue this does not currently happen, at least to the extent necessary for success. Second, neuroscience must transcend its current goal of correlating brain functions and behaviour and begin to explain how the physical activity of the brain causes the phenomenology of art appreciation — assuming it does.
In this article, I propose that both challenges can be approached using an energy based or ‘energetic’ framework of analysis. The concept of ‘energy’ is clearly of central importance to the physical sciences, and to neuroscience in particular. Meanwhile, energy is a concept that artists and art historians have consistently referred to when trying to articulate how artworks are made and appreciated.
I briefly survey the role of energy in both neuroscience and art, and then present reasons why this approach could help to further integrate art and neuroscience in a way that both disciplines could contribute to equally.
Biography
Robert Pepperell PhD is Professor of Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art and leader of the Fovolab. He investigates the nature of the conscious mind and visual perception through painting and drawing, scientific experimentation, and philosophical inquiry.
As an artist, he has exhibited internationally and as an academic he has published several books, including The Posthuman Condition, and The Postdigital Membrane (with Michael Punt) as well as articles, reviews, and papers in the fields of art history, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and perceptual psychology.
The Fovolab research team is attempting to capture the experience of looking at objects in the world using a new form of ‘natural perspective’ based on the structure of human vision. The aim is not to record what is in the world, but the experience of seeing the world from an embodied point of view.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Mar 2018 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm |
Accessibility
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