For this extra event I was able to attend the lecture by Mark Cohen, who is a neuroscientist, inventor, entrepreneur, engineer, and creates things with his hands literally. It was interesting to see an MRI movie that he showed explaining the fluctuation of the activity of the back side of the brain that is responsible for visual perception. I love that I learn not only art in this class, but also science. It fascinated me how our brain responds to the blinking light or any other stimulus in fact.
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| Image of a brain while during different tasks |
Another thing that struck me is the idea of idealism that states that we cannot know things as they actually are, and how many people believe that they know the truth just by using our senses. Our senses are very limited, for example we see only a small portion of a light spectrum and hear only a small range of sound waves. This is disturbing and fascinating at the same time because it made me think that each creature was designed to do specific tasks, live in specific environments and be adapted to those conditions. People do not really need to have an ultrasonic hearing ability to hunt or navigate - we have eyes, and we do not need to have vision like an owl as we are mostly diurnal.
However, it was very interesting to know that we need only a small portion of information to draw a picture in our head and draw a conclusion. A great example that Mr. Cohen gave is Picasso's painting “Donna che dorme” where he used only 29 lines to convey some information like a sleeping woman. Our brain does a remarkable job at reconstructing and finishing the bits and pieces that were provided to create a clear picture in our heads.
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| Picasso "Donna che dorme |
I recommend this lecture to everyone who wants to know more about our brain, how we interpret incoming information and how the brain functions.
Sources:
Sleeping woman poster print by Pablo Picasso (16 x 20). Fruugo. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://www.fruugo.co.uk/sleeping-woman-poster-print-by-pablo-picasso-16-x-20/p-25553782-55660457
Center, A. S. (2022, June 10). Desma 9: The brain + art with Mark Cohen. Vimeo. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://vimeo.com/713795455
Humans vs. animals: Who has better vision? Eyesite. (2018, January 24). Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://www.eyesite.co.uk/news/humans-vs-animals-who-has-better-vision/
Animals hearing abilities. hear.com. (2021, September 21). Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://www.hear.com/useful-knowledge/animal-hearing-abilities/
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. (2019, November 14). Image reconstruction from human brain waves in real-time [video]. SciTechDaily. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://scitechdaily.com/image-reconstruction-from-human-brain-waves-in-real-time-video/