Mariale Hardiman - Article from Americans for the Arts

New Reasons to Teach and Learn Through the Arts - An Article by Mariale Hardiman

James Murray-White - Projects Since Salzburg

Dear all: article on the conference

Firstly, I'm very jealous of the upcoming meet in NY - such a lovely bunch of folk and a stimulating event might just entice me on a plane again, possibly.....

Secondly, those on FB might know I pitched an article about the conference to an online collaberative journalism site, contributoria.com (which is owned by the Guardian Media Group),

and got the green light, so I've a month to write up some reflections upon the experience of us all being together for that week, and probably more importantly, what has been coming out of that coming together and how we are all taking it forward in our different ways.

I'm bound by the Chatham House rules agreed on by us all, so won't go into too much detail about the drinking and the table-tennis, but I would love to include quotes from anyone who would like to reflect upon it, or to allow me to quote from any of the pieces here on the blog. I'm aiming at an upbeat feature/public engagement. Nothing technical, but curious, shining the light upon such an inspiring group of dispirate folk. Please do email me to chat about this or just to send me some thoughts.

And an update on my MEG AND ME (MEG scanner) project here in Cambridge:

So we did the final public engagement session at the Cambridge Science Festival - a sold-out session to 100 people in a lecture theatre in Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge (and in the week before to my old 6th form, Hills Road, where we wowed the students with poetry & brain images): some of the results of the experiments need further analysis, and we will be able to make a further final film looking at some of this and reflecting upon the PE process. Cambridge University PE people want us to take it further and have offered to build a flashy website, and we've been invited to present it (as well as my work in dementia) at the Folkstone Festival of the Brain in a few weeks.

On top of that I'm immersed in another Wellcome Trust application on behalf on new Cambridge TV channel to make a series of 6 science documentaries about Cambridge research from the lab to the real world application, some of which will of course feature neuro's....

my best to all of you,

James

Event: Rick Kemp: Play-Action-Metaphor, the Holistic Voice

RICK KEMP: PLAY-ACTION-METAPHOR, THE HOLISTIC VOICE

Sat 11 April - Mon 13 April 9.30am, The Performance Centre, Falmouth University

Rick Kemp - Stimulus and Cascade? A response to Anna's questions

Stimulus and Cascade? A response to Anna’s questions

Hi Anna - great! Thank you for posting these very stimulating questions. Some thoughts in response to your first two, which I hope might complicate them in useful ways:

Blending

I think it’s really useful to conceive of creativity as involving the juxtaposition or merging of previously unrelated concepts, as you propose. Are you familiar with Fauconnier and Turner's theory of Conceptual Blending? If this is an accurate model, then we are able to maintain a sense of the features of source domain concepts at the same time as being aware of a new mental space that is formed which associates them. With this in mind, I think it’s useful to begin thinking of creativity in a networked or continuum sense (multi-dimensional, not linear) rather than as a binary (creating art  / receiving art). Of course, one of the challenges that I'm facing in thinking about this is the question of 'scale'  - observable behavior and its relation to brain activity.

A collaborative act of imagination

In theatre, I like to think of a successful performance as one in which audience members collaborate with performers in an act of the imagination. While audience members may appear to be passive, for the performance to be successful, they need to be active mentally and emotionally - and this engagement also leads to physical changes (heart rate, galvanic skin conductance, level of muscular tension, breathing patterns …).

'What happens next?’

Indeed, one of the precepts of performance is that we want to stimulate the audience to ask 'what happens next?’ and to provoke conjecture about this. The conclusions of this conjecture are sometimes confirmed, sometimes contradicted, sometimes modified. An effective balance between these three potential outcomes over the course of the drama is an essential ingredient of engaging the audience in the fiction - the pleasure of ‘I knew that was going to happen’ pales if it is not sometimes disrupted by 'Wow! I didn't see that coming!'

Mental initiatives in the blend

So we are seeking to stimulate active mental initiatives in audience members (narrative engagement) as well as to prompt emotional arousal.

Evidently, in one set of mental spaces the audience is aware of the 'paramount' reality of the performance space, other audience members, the biographical identities of the actors. In another set of mental spaces are the fictional environment, circumstances and personalities of the characters. The experience becomes a 'blend' of reality and fiction in which the audience members' imaginative activity takes place.

Engagement through empathy

I think you're right to point to emotional arousal as a prime pathway to ENGAGEMENT with these fictional circumstances. This principle would hold true in your airport/mother example (daily life) and also in an actor/audience member relationship. This then leads me to think of some of the strands of thought in embodied cognition, particularly those regarding mirror systems and empathy. I know that there is much debate over the nature of mirror systems ...  from a phenomenological perspective as an actor and director it is congruent with my experience that empathy can be aroused autonomically.

Behavior, categories and prototype

We get in to some deep philosophical waters when we talk about establishing authenticity in reality. In thinking about theatre, I prefer to use the term  'daily life,' instead of 'reality,' since actors' bodies are just as real when they are on stage as when they are doing their shopping. I think a big feature of establishing authenticity in both sets of circumstances is to do with perceived behaviors, and expectations of a 'normal' range of behaviors for a particular person, and for categories of people in differing environments. Emotional arousal ensues not only from visual triggers  (remembered face and associated memories) but also from movement patterns (posture, gesture, facial expressions). In this regard, I find Lakoff and Johnson's use of 'categories' and 'prototypes' helpful.  

Multiplicity of meanings

The creative 'activity' of an audience responding to a performance is indicated by the multiple interpretations that audience members can have of the same events, their varying perceptions of motivations and even outcomes. And perhaps we could say that one of the ways to distinguish between 'art' and 'entertainment' in broad terms is the potential for multiplicity of meanings in the former, and the tendency towards singular meaning in the latter...

Stimulus and cascade

So perhaps it might be useful to think of degrees of proportionality between stimulus and cascade rather than thinking of 'active' and 'passive'? Then the question might become -not only what differentiates, but also what are the commonalities.

Alina Von Davier - Neuroscience, Art, and Measurement

A few weeks after the immersive intellectual and cultural experience at the Salzburg Global Seminar, I find myself looking at my work differently. It is as if I got an additional pair of eyes that give me a different insight in the world around me.

I am writing today to share with you the points of connection to your work that I identified and on which I worked far.It is astonishing how many possibilities I found, despite the fact that I am neither a neuroscientist nor an artist. I guess I was the lucky sponge amidst the highly-strung creative folks that you are.

Anyway, here are my "news." 

1. Together with a group of brilliant individuals (psychologists, neuroscientists), yesterday I submitted a proposal on the measurement of individuals and teams processes using neurodata, multimodal data (eye-tracking, face-tracking, body language), behavior and cognitive data. This proposal was planned before the Salzburg seminar, but working on it after the seminar made quite a difference to me.

2. Together with two other researchers I've been working on a book chapter on the issues related to the assessment of language and educational competencies of second-language learners. After the seminar, I realized that I can include a perspective from neuroscience and I reached out to you. Manuela Macedonia and Siyuan Liu sent me helpful references. Thank you! Now, our chapter in an assessment book will have references to neuroscience. Who knows whom it will inspire?

3. I am planing to visit Siyuan Liu's lab in DC. We are actually planning it. Maybe one of my data scientists will go. I am interested in working with the neuroscientists on language assessments, using our language tests.

4. I am also happy for my new FB friends. Their posts give me new perspectives. 

5. I also have plans for reaching out to other participants. One step at a time.

THE KAL PRIZE

Cartoon by KAL

Announcing... THE KAL PRIZE

The Goal: To encourage reflection, collaboration and action after Session 547: The Neuroscience of Art. In three months time we will ask for updates - What collaborations have occured? What new projects are are you working on or planning as a result of the conference? Have you developed any ways to engage with the public about art and neuroscience? 

The Prize: An original KAL drawing

The Date: Three months from the end of the conference (approximately)

The Judges: Members of the Public Engagement Focus Group

Ben Ehrlich - Definitions

Reading over my notes from the session, I remembered my criticism of the conference. When I say criticism, I am thinking of a book by George Steiner called Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, whose first line is: “Criticism should arise out of a debt of love.” I loved, and I owe. However, I have to report that at a conference called “Neuroscience and Art,” we never defined neuroscience or art.

I have Charles on the record saying that “creativity is simply the generation of something new.” At the time, I thought about Ecclesiastes, the Biblical wisdom text: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Also, isn’t every thought arising my head technically new? Charles also said, and I copied down, that art is “a homogenous form of total creativity.” If I have that wrong, please correct me immediately. I really appreciated that Charles would attempt to define his terms, but then these terms were never formally challenged, and so we could not have a debate. There were many implicit assumptions, which I will try to falsify here, at least enough to demonstrate a need for more work.

What is art? There is widespread disagreement about what constitutes art, even within the art world. We have the avant-garde, expanding the territory, not always earning recognition. How would we treat Duchamp’s “Fountain” or John Cage’s “4’33”, to name two important examples. There is also art brut, or outsider art, which can include work by psychiatric patients and children. Does intention matter? Or is the art the product? A masterpiece American poem, frequently taught to children in school, can also be described as a domestic apology note, written by a doctor. If you encountered William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” on the refrigerator in the kitchen, would this be a poem? In an interview, William Faulkner once said that what the artist is trying to do is essentially scribble “Kilroy was here” on some wall. Would bathroom stall graffiti be considered art? Can we scan Kilroy’s brain? Most of Faulkner’s books were out of print during his lifetime. Was he still an artist when no one was reading his books, or did he only become an artist in 1949, when he won the Nobel Prize? What motivated the first cave drawings? Was that another Kilroy? Should we treat ancient Greek religious artifacts the same way as a giant Rothko canvas? The other day, I read about poets who use Google algorithms to completely determine their language. Scanning their brains would tell you nothing. Sometimes nobody creates a work of art, sometimes more than one person creates a work of art, and sometimes a robot can create art. You will probably disagree with a lot of these categorizations, which is exactly the point. We need aesthetic philosophy and critical theory. At least, we can’t pretend as though the work in those fields has not happened. or at least we can’t forget that these fields also exist and have contributed work. There are stakes when we say art.

What is neuroscience? At this point, I understand neuroscience to be an umbrella term for different ways of studying the brain. People have warned me not to call Santiago Ramón y Cajal “the father of neuroscience,” because he was only an anatomist, and there are other important branches (have a look at the Wikipedia list of “major branches” in the page on neuroscience). I used to know a neuroscientist who worked in the psychology department at a university, but who did not want me to call her a psychologist, because of the implications. Neuroscientists will say that there is “hard” and “soft” neuroscience. Incidentally, “soft” is the same term that one would use to insult an athletic opponent, in certain macho sports. Recently, a prominent cognitive neuroscientist was upset at his marginalized role within the Human Brain Project. Some neuroscientists do not respect the work of others. At a workshop, a theoretical neuroscientist once admitted that he wasn’t even sure that he believed in the efficacy of models! Is the neuroscientist who doesn’t think he is a neuroscientist a neuroscientist? Then there are computational neuroscientists, who speak in binary code. Obviously, that is not true, but their language is different. Neuroscience is less one than many. How would a molecular neurobiologist talk with a developmental neuropsychologist? Are artists and scientists always further apart than scientists and scientists? Here let me reveal that the term transient hypofrontality has been a resonant lyric for me. This is probably the most accurate way to describe my current state, traveling from place to place, with my guard down.