Related news and
events:
• First International
Conference
on Neuroesthetics, exploring "The
Pleasure of Art as Sensed by the Brain," on
Saturday, January 12, 2002, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the University of
California,
Berkeley.
• Art and Cognition: Winter
Symposium 2001
• 2002-2003 Fellowship Program in Art and Cognition at the Italian
Academy for Advanced Studies in America
Talks and
Events:
Introductory Informal
Gathering:
Monday, 3 September, 2pm, Café
Borrone. Use this map.
(Do not be fooled by other maps on the web, which give the wrong location
for 1010 El Camino Real.)
Café Borrone is in the southeast corner of the intersection of Santa
Cruz Avenue and El Camino Real in Menlo Park,
south of Oak Grove Avenue and north of Menlo Avenue,
next to Kepler's Books, and close to both
the Menlo Park Caltrain station and the Menlo Park library.
1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (650) 327-0830.
5 September,
Wednesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Francis Steen. "An adaptationist framework for a cognitive theory of
art." Followed by discussion at lunch.
Steen offers a preprint of a related article on the web:
Steen & Owens. In press. "Evolution's
Pedagogy." Culture and Cognition.
6 September,
Thursday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Stephen Murray. "Looking at The Cathedral." Followed by discussion
at lunch.
12 September,
Wednesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Per Aage Brandt. "Art, Language, and Evolution." Followed by
discussion
at lunch.
18 September,
Tuesday, noon,
Lunch meeting with Marc Perlman, a scholar at the Stanford Humanities
Center.
19 September,
Wednesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Francis Steen. "Part II: Cognitive Functions of Paleolithic Art."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
21 September,
Friday, noon.
Lunch meeting for members of the group.
15 October, Monday, 11am-noon, main meeting room.
Marc De Mey. "Exploring the Mind of Jan Van Eyck." Followed
by discussion at lunch.
19 October,
Thursday, 3:00pm-4:30,
main meeting room.
Marc De Mey. "Exploring the Mind of Jan Van Eyck. Part two: Beyond the
Ghent Altarpiece."
13 November, Tuesday, 11:00am-noon, main meeting
room.
Terrence Deacon. "Symbols, virtual computation, and abduction:
speculations
about a semiotic neuroscience."
12 January 2002,
Saturday,
8am-6pm,UC Berkeley.
First International Conference on Neuroesthetics, exploring "The
Pleasure of Art as Sensed by the Brain."
18 January 2002,
Friday,
11am-1pm.
Meeting of members and visitors with two guests, Marco Casonato from the
University of Milan and Edward Slingerland from USC.
29 January 2002,
Tuesday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Semir Zeki. "Neural concept formation in art: Dante, Michelangelo,
Wagner."
31 January 2002,
Thursday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Art viewed in the context of human prehistory."
4 February 2002,
Monday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Semir Zeki. "The neurology of suprematism."
11 February
2002, Monday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Art and cognitive engineering." Followed by
discussion at lunch.
13 February
2002, Wednesday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Stephanie Rayner. "The Eden Contract." Followed by discussion at
lunch.
4 March 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Bob Scott. "How relics work: Force dynamics in the Medieval cult
of saints."
5 March 2002,
Tuesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
V. S. Ramachandran. "Neurology of synesthesia, art, and the evolution
of language."
7 March 2002,
Thursday, 9am-10am,
main meeting room.
V. S. Ramachandran. "Brain and Art."
18 March 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Lawrence Zbikowski. "Conceptualizing Music"
Followed by discussion at lunch.
19 March 2002,
Tuesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
David Freedberg. "Painting and Emotion: The Problem of the
Modes."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
19 March 2002,
Tuesday, 2:30-3:30,
main meeting room.
Mark Turner. "Conceptual Compression and Art."
20 March 2002,
Tuesday, 10:30-11:30am,
main meeting room.
Merlin Donald. "Origins and Mechanisms of
Role-Playing."
21 March
2002, Thursday,
11-12, main meeting room.
Anna Maria Busse Berger. "The Role of Memory in Medieval Music
Composition."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
25 March 2002,
Monday,
11am-noon, main meeting room.
Shweta Narayan. "Comic Art and Cubism are in the Eye of the
Beholder."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
26 March 2002,
Tuesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Lawrence Zbikowski. "Modeling the Groove"
(Readings: Zbikowski, "Modeling the Groove: Conceptual Structures in
Popular Music," typescript to be circulated soon.)
Followed by discussion at lunch.
1 April 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Terrence Deacon. "Mnemes, schemas, blends, and bisociations: Why we
need
an evolutionary
semiosis." Followed by discussion at lunch.
9 April 2002,
Tuesday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Terrence Deacon. "Emergence and symbolic cognition: The neurological
novelty of cognition about
value, aesthetic experience, and ethics, and the place of the arts in
developing this." Followed by discussion at lunch.
15 April 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room.
Steven Pinker. "The Blank Slate: On Art and Human Nature."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
6 May 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room
Terrence Smith. "Problems in the Processual Structures of Vision in
Art:
e.g., the problem of the emergence and then the persistence of the great
pictorial
organising structures in Western art since the Renaissance."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
13 May 2002,
Monday, 11am-noon,
main meeting room
Tennie Matlock. "Fictive motion in language and thought".
Followed by discussion at lunch.
22 May 2002, Wednesday, 7:30pm, main meeting room
Gloria Pinney. "Architectural Space as Metaphor: The Case of the
Ancient
Greek Sanctuary." Wednesday evening seminar.
29 May 2002, Wednesday, 11am-noon, main meeting
room
Ilavenil Subbiah. "Bookart, Science, and Design are the three threads
thatrun through my professional and artisticlives. Having been trained in
all three disciplines I have been able to draw on the tools each has
provided.
Not surprisingly, I have found much overlap among the three areas in
approach,
process, execution, and end product. I will discuss the intersections
between
book art, science, and design thathave defined my workand thinking."
Followed by discussion at lunch.
Getty-CASBS symposium,
"Brain,
Cognition, and Art." We held a three-and-a-half day symposium at the
Getty Museum in Brentwood, California Wednesday-Saturday, 3-6 April 2002 to
unite several of the Fellows and Visitors of the CASBS Special Project on
Cognition,
Brain, and Art with the Fellows of the Getty Research Institute for 2001-2002.
The Getty Fellows will had as their theme that year "Perception, Experience,
Judgment."
Program
The Getty Research
Institute
in collaboration with
The Center for Advanced Study in
the Behavioral Sciences
presents a
Symposium
'Frames of Viewing: The Brain, Cognition, and Art'
DATES: SYMPOSIUM & PUBLIC LECTURE
Wednesday, April 3, 2002 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 4, 2002 9:15 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday, April 5, 2002 9:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 6, 2002 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Symposium Opening
Public Lecture: Wednesday, April 3,
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Jonathan Miller, author, theater and film director, neurologist
“The Gaze: Looking as It Appears in Pictures”
Location, Harold M. Williams Auditorium, The Getty Center
Reservations required (310) 440-7300 (note: reservation made for lecture
automatically
with symposium registration)
For more information about this lecture go to:
http://www.getty.edu/research/programs/public/miller.html
6:15 – 7:00 p.m.
Reception: Auditorium Lobby
Symposium
Day One: Thursday, April 4
8:45 – 9:15 a.m.
Coffee and Registration
Morning Session
9:15 – 10:45 a.m.
Overview of the year’s activities in relation to the themes
“Frames
of Viewing: Perception, Experience, Judgment” (GRI), and
“Cognition,
Brain, and Art” (CASBS).
Thomas Crow, Director Getty Research Institute
Douglas McAdam, Director Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences
General Discussion
10 minute Break
11:00 – 11:50 a.m. (Museum Lecture Hall)
Special Multi-Media Performance Presentation
Semir Zeki and Per Aage Brandt, “Vermeer, Wagner, and the Neurology of
Ambiguity”
12:00 – 1:50 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session
The roundtable sessions are 110 minutes each, including: a 20 minute framing
presentation on the topic; 10 minute respondent comments; 40 minute
roundtable
panel discussion; and 40 minute general roundtable discussion.
2:00 – 3:50 p.m.
Roundtable Session I: Perception and Aesthetics
Presenter: Semir Zeki
Respondent: John Hyman
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Marc De Mey, Dennis Sepper, Ladislav
Kesner
The study of the neural basis of artistic creativity and aesthetic response
has had its most direct beginnings in the scientific investigation of
elementary
perceptual processes, particularly those related to vision. This session
begins
the symposium discussions with the perception and aesthetics domain of
research,
partly to review it and partly to explore whether it can serve as a model
for other branches of research into the cognitive roots of art.
20 Minute Break
4:10 – 6:00 p.m.
Roundtable Session II: Affect & Memory in Art
Presenter: Antonio Damasio
Respondent: Martin Kemp
Roundtable Panel: Charles Harrison, David Freedberg, Barbara Stafford,
Robert
Scott
Within cognitive neuroscience, affect and memory count as two of the core
aspects of mind. At the same time, within art history and indeed in the
general
reception of art, two of the most abiding and unquestioned effects of art
are its emotional power over us, and its role in remembrance. These aspects
are often inseparable. In this session we examine why art can have such power
over human minds, and how art history can contribute to specific
understanding
of the cultural engineering accomplished by art in social life.
6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Dinner: Getty Center, Resturant, East Area
Day Two: Friday, April 5
9:10 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
Morning Session
9:30 – 9:40
Welcome and Speaker Introduction
9:40 – 10:20 a.m.
Special Presentation
Marina Wallace and Martin Kemp, “Head-On: Art with the Brain in
Mind”
10 minute Break
10:30 a.m. –12:20 p.m.
Roundtable Session III: Form, Brain, and Art
Presenter: George Lakoff
Respondent: Thomas Crow
Roundtable Panel: Deanna Petherbridge, Lawrence Zbibowski, Terence Smith,
John Hyman
From time to time, we experience an unusual perceptual shift in which we pay
attention to the formal nature of an ordinary content of consciousness. In
those moments, we are particularly attentive to our experience of form in
space or time, rather than states of affairs in the real world. Such shifts
are associated with religious experience, stress, depression, erotic arousal,
and the perception of "beauty." But artists are able
voluntarily
to make these formal shifts and to communicate these formal perceptions.
This
session examines how it is that the mental brain of our species lets us have
both an ordinary register of content-oriented perception and, occasionally,
the extraordinary register of form-oriented perception that we experience
in art.
12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session:
2:00 – 2:30 p.m.
Special Presentation
V. S. Ramachandran, “Perception and Form” (title may be revised
by the presenter)
2:30 – 4:20 p.m.
Roundtable Session IV: Dynamics of Completion: Gaps, Blanks, and
Improvisation
Presenter: Shirley Brice Heath
Respondent: Deanna Petherbridge
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Francis Steen, David Antin, Per Aage
Brandt
Art opens us to interpretation, but how do resources of memory, experience,
visual acuity, and language work together as artists and viewers "fill
in" for what is not there? Neural networks that enable literacy play
a central role in helping us gain a sense of completion when we view a work
of art. Images previously stored unconsciously also come to mind and
supplement
any verbal interpretation to extend the boundaries of line, color, and
motion.
This session will consider several current attempts to explain the brain
processing
behind the dynamics of art.
20 minute Break
4:40 –6:30 p.m.
Roundtable Session V: The Evolved and Cultured Brain: Diversity and
Communality
in Art
Presenter: Terrence Deacon
Respondent: Jerry Moore
Roundtable Panel: Kajri Jain, Merlin Donald, Martin Kemp, Steven Pinker,
Charles
Harrison
Art is a product of culture, and as such its forms and expressions
vary—locally—across
time and place. Yet cultural diversity is itself made possible by the
universally
shared cognitive capacities of the human brain. This session will explore
the cognitive and evolutionary roots of artistic creativity and diversity
by asking questions about the evolutionary history of the artistic mind, the
possibility of universally appealing art, and the cognitive bases for local
variation and innovation.
7:00 –8:30 p.m.
Dinner: Getty Center, Trustee House
Day Three: Saturday, April 6
9:10 – 9:30 a.m.
Coffee
Morning Session
9:30 – 9:40 a.m.
Welcome & Speaker Introduction
9:40 – 10:30 a.m.
Special Presentation
Janet Sternburg, “Phantom Limb: Pathways Between Memoir and
Neurology”
10:30 – 10:40 a.m.
Break
10:40 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Roundtable VI: Individual and Collective in the Interpretation and Creation
of Art
Presenter: David Antin
Respondent: Gloria Ferrari Pinney
Roundtable Panel: Tom Crow, Mark Turner, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Stephen
Murray,
Jonathan Miller (invited)
Art, like language, is a human singularity that depends upon individual
capacities
and group interactions. From the earliest paintings, the capacity to make
images visible made possible a new form of communal or distributed
cognition.
The content of art may be drawn from and make manifest a preexisting
collective
vision, in which the personality of the artist is placed in the background.
But equally, the act of creation may be thought of as an individualistic and
even private endeavor, one that the community should approach as a
revelation.
What are the factors—aesthetic, cognitive, historical—that
regulate
the complex dynamic of the relations between artists and their
audiences?
12:30 – 1:50 p.m.
Private Lunch
Afternoon Session
2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Special Presentation
Barbara Stafford, “Devices of Wonder Exhibition”
3:00 – 3:10 p.m.
Break
3:10 – 4:30 p.m.
General Session: Closing Discussion
Led by: Thomas Crow and Mark Turner
4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Closing Reception, Getty Center, Private Dining Room
SUMMARY ROUNDTABLE
PANELS
Thursday, April 4
Roundtable Session I: Perception and Aesthetics
Presenter: Semir Zeki
Respondent/Chair: John Hyman
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Marc De Mey, Dennis Sepper, Ladislav
Kesner
Roundtable Session II: Affect & Memory in Art
Presenter: Antonio Damasio
Respondent/Chair: Martin Kemp
Roundtable Panel: Charles Harrison, David Freedberg, Barbara Stafford,
Robert
Scott
Friday, April 5
Roundtable Session III: Form, Brain, and Art
Presenter: George Lakoff
Respondent/Chair: Tom Crow
Roundtable Panel: Deanna Petherbridge, Lawrence Zbibowski, Terence Smith,
John Hyman
Roundtable Session IV: Dynamics of Completion: Gaps, Blanks, and
Improvisation
Presenter: Shirley Brice Heath
Respondent/Chair: Deanna Petherbridge
Roundtable Panel: Lawrence Kruger, Francis Steen, David Antin, Per Aage
Brandt
Roundtable Session V: The Evolved and Cultured Brain: Diversity and
Communality
in Art
Presenter: Terence Deacon
Respondent/Chair: Jerry Moore
Roundtable Panel: Kajri Jain, Merlin Donald, Martin Kemp, Steven Pinker,
Charles
Harrison
Saturday, April 6
Roundtable VI: Individual and Collective in the Interpretation and Creation
of Art
Presenter: David Antin
Respondent/Chair: Gloria Ferrari Pinney
Roundtable Panel: Tom Crow, Mark Turner, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Stephen
Murray,
Jonathan Miller (invited)
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