What Art Can Tell Us about the Brain

Speaker:
Margaret Livingstone, Harvard University

Highlights

• Vision is information processing, not just image transmission.
• Some of the most basic and evolutionarily old parts of our vision are color blind.
• Artists have empirically discovered how to create visual effects that take advantage of how the visual system works.

Artists as scientists

Throughout the ages, artists have discovered emprically much about how the eyes see and how the brain perceives images. The earliest known cave-paintings, for example, are effective because our brains fill in the details around a simple line drawing. As observed by Margaret Livingstone, professor of neurobiology at Harvard University, "Artists have been studying how we see a lot longer than us neurobiologists. The disciplines of art and science converge at the biology of vision."

What may come as a surprise is that the visual system does not simply transmit a fully formed image to the brain, the way a camera might capture an image. Light from an image travels into the eye and strikes the retina, where it activates the rod and cone photoreceptors that convert light into a signal to be sent via retinal neurons to the brain.

"The function of the visual system is information processing, not image transmission," said Livingston, reminding the audience, "There is nobody up there to look at an image."

A key to understanding how we see was the discovery that the visual system is optimized to perceive sharp contrasts in the amount of light coming from an image, while ignoring subtle changes in light, which are usually less biologically relevant. Retinal neurons are patterned in what is known as "center-surround organization." The neurons fire when light hits the center of the cell's visual field but firing is inhibited when light hits the surrounding portion of the field. The center-surround effect optimizes the visual system to detect discontinuities, or edges. "Essentially, center-surround cells convert an image into a line drawing," said Livingstone.

Artists have developed techniques that take advantage of our preference for contrasts to give paintings a three-dimensional appearance. Before the Renaissance period, painters often used luminance in a piecemeal manner across the painting. Leonardo da Vinci and others of his period realized that they could enhance the illusion of depth by placing dark colors next to hues with high luminance. Luminance (also called "value") describes how much light comes from an object, and when high-luminance colors such as yellow are placed next to low-luminance colors such as dark blue, they create a strong contrast that the visual system interprets as a change in depth. The center-surround effect is also responsible for the optical illusion that colors look different depending on the color of their surroundings.

Artists have known for a very long time that color and luminance can be treated in an artistic sense quite independently. Picasso said, "Colors are only symbols. Reality is to be found in luminance alone."

Claude Monet. Impression, Sunrise (1873). Musée Marmottan, Paris. Monet's sun has equal luminance with the background.

It is possible to have a color contrast that has no luminance contrast. One artist to explore this effect is Monet. In his painting Impression, Sunrise, the sun is quite bright and shimmers in a peculiar way. Livingstone measured the luminance and found that there is no luminance contrast between the sun and the background, yet you would expect there to be one because in real life the sun is quite a lot brighter than its surroundings. "It is this use of equal luminance that gives the sun its very peculiar and fascinating quality."

The what and where systems

The visual system can be divided into two areas that are distinct both in location and function. One pathway, located in the temporal lobe of the brain, is responsible for face and object recognition. It tells you what you are looking for, so it is sometimes called the "What" system. This part of our visual system is evolutionarily recent and common to primates only, said Livingstone.

The other major subdivision of the visual system is located in the dorsal region of the brain, and it processes motion, depth perception, spatial organization, and figureground segregation. This part of the visual system is evolutionarily older, and we share it with other mammals. Neuroscientists call this the "Where" system.

The What and Where systems of the brain.

The evolutionarily old part of your visual system—the Where part—gets its input from the evolutionarily old parts of your retina, which are not sensitive to color. "There is a whole subdivision of your visual system that is color blind," said Livingstone. Luminance is interpreted by this color-blind part, so color is not required to see luminance differences. Nor is color necessary to see depth. Depth can be created using shading, perspective, figureground segregation, and luminance contrast, but color is not required.

Luminance is one of the primary cues that make you realize you are looking a a three-dimensional object.

Luminance is one of the primary cues that make you realize you are looking at a three-dimensional object rather than a flat picture. In his paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, Monet used luminance to achieve the effect of depth. Shadow or shading is an important cue as well, but the color of the shading doesn't matter. In Matisse's The Woman with a Hat, the shape of the face is to be found in luminance alone.

Moving pictures

The ability to see motion is carried by the color-blind part of your visual system too, said Livingstone. Inducing a sense of motion in a painting is something quite powerful, and artists have been painting things that move for centuries. While some artists became experts at catching the body angle and musculature of people engaged in action, these paintings can look strangely static compared to some of the Impressionists' works depicting movement. Monet achieved the effect of motion by using black, blue, white, and yellow patches in his water. The black and white are higher contrast than the yellow and blue, which introduces a timing difference in your visual system that is interpreted in brain as motion.

Akiyoshi Kitaoka, Rotating Snakes (2003). This picture by psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka appears to move due to the luminance contrast between the black, blue, white, and yellow.

Livingstone's research on dyslexia has revealed that dyslexic people have trouble with the timing of the Where subdivision of the visual system. To people with dyslexia, text looks like as if it is jumping about on the page. Dyslexics also have trouble discerning motion, depth, spatial organization, and figureground segregation. "The symptoms of dyslexia are similar to those of people who are cross-eyed." Dyslexic people also are often very talented artistically.

In living color

It may come as a surprise that the color system (a subdivision of the What system) is comparatively low-resolution. The color processing cells in the brain have rather large receptive fields. Because each cell can fire off just one signal at a time to the brain, overall there are fewer signals and thus lower acuity. Because your color resolution is so low, your visual system doesn't use color to define contours, it just lets color spread until it hits a border. Or as Livingstone put it, "Artists figured this out long before neurophysiologists—you do not have to color inside the lines."

The television industry took advantage of this low resolution when it created color TV. Because color images did not need to be as high in resolution as black-and-white images, broadcasters could fit both color and black-and-white signals into the segment of the broadcast spectrum allotted to them by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Out of focus

Our central vision has high acuity, but our peripheral vision has lower acuity. Our peripheral vision is slightly out of focus, a fact we don't notice because we shift our gaze several times a second. Livingstone thinks low peripheral acuity may explain the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. Her expression seems to change depending on whether you look at her eyes or her mouth. Livingstone believes this is because as you look at her eyes, her mouth seems to smile more than it does when you look directly at it. "You see her smiling almost behind your back; when you try to catch her smiling, she stops," said Livingstone.

In the slide above, filters have been applied to make the painting look as if it had been viewed by the peripheral, near peripheral vision, and central vision. The Mona Lisa looks like she is smiling more in the image generated by the peripheral vision.

This low-resolution trick is employed in photomosaics such as those created by the American photorealist Chuck Close. Your low-resolution peripheral vision helps you piece the entire portrait together. As you move your eyes around one of Close's canvases, you notice that different parts pop in and out of high resolution. "This is another way in which artists have figured out how to get a dynamic quality from a static image, said Livingstone."

Stereopsis

Artists can also make more realistic images by taking advantage of stereopsis, the perception of depth generated by the natural horizontal offset between the two eyes. The visual system uses the offset between the eyes to calculate depth, along with other cues, including perspective, shading, occlusion, and relative motion.

Even a painting with all these cues can look flat if it lacks stereoptic clues. These clues can be added, as the painters of the Impressionist era seemed to realize. "The Impressionists said they could paint the air," said Livingstone. "And I think they did that using false stereo cues."

A remarkably high proportion of famous artists have eyes that are not lined up, limiting their ability to see depth.

Some artists lack the ability to see stereopsis, a trait which may help them capture the world on a flat canvas. Gustav Klimt, for example, could not see three-dimensionally because his eyes were misaligned. "If your eyes are not lined up, you cannot see stereopsis because the connections from the two eyes don't end up in the same part of the brain," said Livingstone.

Livingstone reviewed the portraits of famous artists and found that many, including Rembrandt, appear to have had misaligned eyes. "A remarkably high proportion of famous artists have eyes that are clearly not lined up."

Artists clearly have a head start over biologists when it comes to understanding many aspects of how we see. As biologists learn more about the biology of vision, artists may uncover a new trove of techniques for creating compelling and realistic images.

Synesthesia and the Universal Principles of Art

Speaker:
V. S. Ramachandran, University of California, San Diego

Highlights

• Synesthesia may be more common among artists and poets than in other people, and at least one form of synesthesia arises from cross-wiring between the color center and the number areas of the brain.
• Studying synesthesia and other "quirks" of the brain can yield insights into the biology of metaphorical thinking, language, and other fundamental brain activities.
• Universal principles may govern our appreciation for art, and these principles may have underlying evolutionary significance.

The mingling of neuroscience and art

V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist based at the University of Calilfornia, San Diego, offered two mini-presentations, one on the neurobiology of a sensory eccentricity called synesthesia and another on the universal principles that govern our appreciation for art.

Synesthesia is defined broadly as a mingling of the senses. People with the condition may see a color when they look at a number, or hear a tone when they see a color. First described in the 1800s, synesthesia has long been dismissed by neuroscientists as a quirk that occurs in a few individuals. The condition has variously been ascribed to drug use, residual memories from childhood, the overuse of metaphor, or a belief that synesthetes are just plain crazy.

None of those explanations is satisfactory, said Ramachandran. The fact that drugs exacerbate synesthesia could in fact suggest that it is caused by a mechanism in the brain. The "memories-from-childhood" theory fails to explain why synesthesia is hereditary. Couching synesthesia in terms of metaphoric thinking doesn't get you very far because we don't understand how the brain produces metaphors. "In science, you can't explain one mystery with another mystery," he said.

The science behind synesthesia

Ramachandran and his colleagues have discovered that synesthesia is a sensory phenomenon with a definable neuronal basis. They conducted clinical tests on synesthetes that conclusively ruled out the possibility that synesthetes were simply "making it all up." He found that the condition is far more common than originally thought, occurring in perhaps one out of every 100 people. Studying this condition may yield insights into how the brain functions, he said. "Synesthesia may give an experimental foothold for understanding more elusive aspects of the mind, such as what is a metaphor."

Synesthesia may give an experimental foothold for understanding more elusive aspects of the mind.

To uncover the neurological basis of synesthesia, Ramachandran and his colleagues tested synesthetes who see numbers as having distinct colors—5 might be identified as red, or 6 as green. When nonsynesthetes looked at numbers, the only area of the brain activated was the area that processes numerical symbols. However, when a synesthete viewed a number, the area that processes color, known as V4, lit up too. Both the number area and the color area are located next to each other in a part of the brain called the fusiform gyrus. "These people appear to have some accidental cross-wiring so that when they see a number it activates the color area."

For these types of synesthetes, termed "lower synesthetes," it is the numerical figure, or grapheme, that triggers the color, not the numerical concept. A Roman numeral "five" (V) has no color, Ramachandran and his team discovered. That fits with the cross-wiring theory, he said, because the grapheme, not the higher numerical concept, is what is represented in the fusiform gyrus.

Another piece of evidence for the cross-wiring theory comes in the discovery of a color-blind synesthete. Because of a disorder in the eye's color-detecting receptors, this individual could not see the colors of the real world. Due to cross-wiring, however, he could see colors in his mind's eye whenever he looked at numbers.

Ramachandran believes there may be a genetic basis to cross-wiring because synesthesia runs in families. It may be, he hypothesized, that something goes wrong with a gene that governs pruning of neurons during fetal development, although this has yet to be proven. Synesthesia is eight times more common in artists, poets, and novelists. Is it possible that the cross-wiring in their brains makes them more prone to metaphorical thinking?

Higher synesthetes

Not all synesthetes see graphemes as colors. Some see days of the week or months of the year as having colors. There may be a region of the brain responsible for abstract sequences, and it may be that this area is cross-wired with the color region. Crucially, in these "higher synesthetes," it is the numerical concept, not the grapheme, that induces color.

We are all synesthetes but we are in denial about it.

Synesthesia offers a window on how the brain functions in typical people. We all have synesthetic properties, Ramachandran suggested. Synesthesia-like abilities may allow us to relate two seemingly different aspects, such as shape and sound. In one experiment, Ramachandran and his colleagues showed that people associate round-shaped letters with undulating sounds such as in the nonsensical word booba and angular letters with sharp sounds such as in the word kikki. This cross-modality abstraction indicates, said Ramachandran, only perhaps half in jest, that "we are all synesthetes but we are in denial about it."

What is the purpose of associating rounded images with undulating sounds, and angular figures with sharp sounds? After all, said Ramachandran, the images are just a bunch of photons hitting the eye, whereas sound is simply the excitation of hair cells in the ear. The tongue is a muscle. These things appear to have nothing in common, he said.

Yet our brains can perform cross-modality abstractions instantaneously, combining sound, vision, and other sensory inputs. Research shows that these inputs are processed in the angular gyrus, a part of the brain that may be involved in the coordination of physical activity, such as tree climbing, which would have been essential for survival during our evolutionary past.

Ramachandran theorized that once the angular gyrus developed, humans started to use it not only for tree climbing but for abstract thought. People with defects in the angular gyrus experience problems with arithmetic and are horrible with metaphors, said Ramachandran. "These are people with intact comprehension, but they cannot understand [a phrase like] 'all that glitters is not gold,'" he said.

The universal principles of art

Turning to what he called the more speculative part of his talk, Ramachandran ventured a list of universal principles that he believes define what art "is." These principles transcend cultural boundaries and tap into behavioral tendencies with roots deep in our evolutionary past. His list of "laws of aesthetics" consists of nine elements, of which he described three in the remainder of his talk.

• Peak shift
• Grouping
• Contrast
• Isolation
• Perceptual problem solving
• Symmetry
• Visual rhythm / repetition
• Balance and harmony
• Metaphor

Bronze sculptures from the Chola period in India a thousand years ago are revered because they express the epitome of feminine poise and grace, charm and sensuality. But the Victorian art historians of the 19th century judged the statues appalling because they were not realistic: the waists were too narrow, the breasts too big, the posture provocative. But art has nothing to do with realism, said Ramachandran: "It is about producing pleasing effects in the brain."

Yet an artist cannot simply randomly distort a human figure and expect to generate a pleasing result. There appear to be some principles that cut across cultural boundaries.

"Art has nothing to do with realism. It is about producing pleasing effects in the brain."

One of these principles, he suggested, is that exaggerated forms invoke a greater response than the natural form. This phenomenon may be explained by studying animal behavior. If a rat learns that a rectangular shape connotes that he will soon be fed, he is likely to prefer shapes that are even more rectangular, longer, and skinnier. This "peak shift" is used in art to create caricatures. Take Nixon's craggy brow and big nose, amplify them, and the result looks more like Nixon than he does! Similarly, the Chola artists of India amplified certain aspects of the female form, such as the curves and posture.

Animal behavior studies may also shed light on how to explain how peak shift can account for the appeal of abstract art. Herring-gull chicks are born with the urge to peck at the red beak of their mother to beg for food. But research by Niko Tinbergen has shown that if a stick with red stripes is substituted for the beak, the chicks peck even more insistently for the food. The striped stick appears to hyperactivate the chick's neurons even more than a red beak. Ramachandran thinks the same thing happens with abstract art. These works carry clues that activate subconscious emotions of evolutionary significance. "Human artists, through trial and error, intuition and genius, have discovered the figural primitives of human vision," said Ramachandran. "They are producing for your brain the equivalent of a stick with red stripes."

Another universal principle of art is the principle of isolation, commonly phrased as "less is more." Picasso's three-line drawing of a female derriere is more sensual than a Playboy pin-up, and so why would a line be more artistic than a full picture? The answer is that your visual system contains bottlenecks, said Ramachandran. You can only attend to one parameter at a time, so when you view a detailed picture your brain actually has to do more work to process it. "What the good artist is doing is saving you all that labor," said Ramachandran.

The good artist may be using these techniques quite unconsciously. It may be that certain parts of the brain are active when using different artistic techniques. For example, the part of the brain that allows the drawing of proportion may be strong in an autistic child who drew a surprisingly lifelike horse but who is mentally challenged in other ways. "What artists do through years of training, the child is able to do ... spontaneously," because he is able to isolate and focus on the most important details.

The lifelike horse on the left was drawn by a six-year-old autistic child. This is compared with drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and by an eight-year-old normal child.

As we view art, we fall prey to another universal principle known as grouping. We seem to have an innate preference for grouping together like colors, as when you match the colors in your tie to those in your jacket, or when you match your drapes to your sofa. Similarly our brains seem to enjoy assembling parts into a whole. When you look at psychologist Richard Gregory's famous picture of a Dalmatian dog, at first it looks like a bunch of splotches, then suddenly it all clicks, you glue together parts and have an "Aha!" feeling. Why do you feel such satisfaction?

Art "is visual foreplay before the final climax of object recognition."

Our penchant for grouping colors and shapes reveals much about the evolution of the brain, said Ramachandran. "Our visual system evolved to read camouflage and to segregate and find objects," he said. "If you see some patches of yellow behind green foliage, and the brain glues the patches together and discovers a lion, there is a jolt to the limbic system saying, 'Pay attention!'"

As one looks at a camouflaged image, said Ramachandran, the brain is working overtime to decipher it. Neuroscientists now know that the brain does this in an iterative fashion, providing partial solutions before arriving at a conclusion. "Art involves producing multiple visual 'Ahas!,'" said Ramachandran. "It is visual foreplay before the final climax of object recognition."

Getting You to Look

Speaker:
Felice Frankel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Highlights

• The process of thinking about how to represent science visually clarifies the scientific concepts for the person making the representation.
• Visual communication should be taken more seriously when scientists talk to each other in the laboratory. Moreover, thinking about how to visually represent a concept in science should be an approach to teaching science, and communicating with the public.
• Scientists need to put more emphasis on producing clear visual representations of their work.

Scientific images: more than pretty pictures

Photographs can spur the imagination.

Left: Water on a surface patterned by a technique called "soft lithography." The image was made by researchers in George Whitesides' lab.
Right: The same soft lithography discovery, this time illustrated by using dyes of different colors and a more interesting pattern.

The visualization of science has become increasingly important as science becomes more interdisciplinary. Photographs, diagrams, and other visualizations are an excellent way to engage students in science. But perhaps the most important role for visualization in science is as a way to expand the public's understanding of science.

But creating a good scientific visualization is not necessarily intuitive. Scientists can easily become so familiar with a subject that it becomes difficult to place oneself in a nonexpert's shoes. Felice Frankel, a science photographer and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offered some suggestions on how to create captivating images that can invite an understanding of the underlying scientific concepts.

One suggestion is to put some distance between one's research and the image. By placing yourself in the position of looking at your research for the first time, said Frankel, you will produce a more communicative image.

Getting the audience to participate in a photo or other visualization is also essential. One way to do this is by creating a visually pleasing image. As an example, Frankel showed one of her photographs that appears to be a black and yellow flower but on closer inspection is a dusting of black iron filings over a drop of motor oil, illustrating the magnetic qualities of ferrofluids. "I'd like to think you are curious about it because of the way I photographed it," said Frankel. "My hope is that you are going to want to ask questions about it."

Such photographs can spur the imagination. A microscopic picture of transparent adhesive tape, for example, could start the viewer making free associations about adhesion in other contexts, such as when cancer cells metastasize and adhere to other organs. "The visual realm allows us to make connections," said Frankel. "It is a place where we can get a handle on something and not be embarrassed to ask questions."

Frankel sees part of her goal as convincing researchers that, to communicate their work, they need to create images that tell a story in a compelling way. She did just that with an MIT researcher who had used a new technique called soft lithography to create small patterns on surface capable of holding water into particular shapes. For her photos of the patterns, she asked the researcher to create a symmetric design and drop upon the surface colored water so that the viewer could easily see that there was no mixing between the squares. "I am trying to get researchers to produce images that are better than good enough," she explained.

Tricks of the trade

Frankel offered other suggestions for heightening the impact of scientific images:

• Simple adjustments in the placement of objects in the photo can draw the viewer's attention to the important part of the picture or discovery. For example, when imaging yeast colonies, Frankel noted that "by moving my camera just four inches [I] get a completely different image."
• Making comparisons between objects, such as two Petri dishes side by side, can help emphasize the newness of a result.
• Using visual metaphor can be a powerful way to describe ideas in science. For example, one might describe the binary code in a CD-ROM by comparing it to the roll in a player piano. "There is something innate in us that allows us to understand metaphors," said Frankel. "We just need to come up with better ways to use them."

Putting it all together

The act of making a visual representation of one's research requires a person to go through the process of thinking how to visually represent it; and that process clarifies the science for the person making the representation. "I asked a student to use Photoshop to demonstrate polymer deposition," said Frankel. "And just the act of making the layers in Photoshop made her think more about the way her experimentation was going."

If you alter an image, it is essential that you describe your method and that the information remains accurate.

Altering images so that they speak volumes is important, but it is equally important to make sure that visualizations remain accurate. For example, is it okay to remove a tiny crack on the agar in a Petri dish, when the crack has nothing whatsoever to do with the science? Frankel argues yes, it is allowed, as long as the scientist informs the viewer of what changes were made. "Scientists and the artists they work with must maintain the integrity of the science when we visually represent ideas."

Ultimately, science should also be about communicating with the public. "Visualizations allow scientists to shout from the rooftops how incredibly beautiful science is," said Frankel. "It is a place where the biologist and the physicist can talk to each other, in the visual representation of their work." Getting students and teachers to think about how to express ideas visually becomes an incredible learning tool, said Frankel. "My hope is that visually representing science is one way of getting you to look."

The Butterfly in the Brain

Speaker:
Suzanne Anker, School of Visual Arts, New York

Highlights

• Images can change their meaning depending on contextual arrangement and can act as aesthetic devices to stimulate thought and emotion.
• Scientific images, or icons, can be liberated from their context and incorporated into works of art that explore, through metaphor, novel poetic possibilities and associations.
• Artists are not bound by the logical thinking inherent in science, so artists are free to manipulate scientific icons such as the Rorschach inkblot test to assess new meanings.

Science as the basis for art

Suzanne Anker is one of a cadre of artists who draw on scientific concepts within an artistic context. In her presentation at CUNY, she discussed a 2002 body of work collectively called "The Butterfly in the Brain," which explores the imagery and metaphorical similarities of butterflies, the brain, and chromosomes.

Anker draws inspiration from the scientific disciplines of neurobiology, genetics, lepidopterology (the study of butterflies), and psychology. Through her art, she investigates symmetry as an underlying morphology in natural forms such as the brain, the butterfly, and the chromosome.

Two of the foundational issues that Anker wants to address are, What is an image, and how do science and art rely on the efficacy of images? The answers, she said, lie somewhere between illusion, proof, and cognitive projection.

"The Butterfly in the Brain", installation view, 2002. Universal Concepts Unlimited, New York City.

"Images often traverse contested territories, situated somewhere between fact and fiction," said Anker. "They can change their meaning, depending on contextual arrangement. As aesthetic devices, they activate thought and emotion by the salient powers of communication and circumscribed belief."

In contrast to science, progress in art is not about eliminating contradiction, said Anker. "Art has the capacity to hold two different ideas in its realm simultaneously. Art compounds metaphors, compresses information, deals in sensory and affective experience—it essentially has a very difficult time being defined."

In addition to their artistic context, Anker said the Butterfly works have a personal meaning. "'The Butterfly in the Brain' is my answer to the way in which we think about butterflies in the stomach when we feel nervous," said Anker. "This was a way in which I could make art about the anxiety that I experience in the unpredictable world and was my first body of work after witnessing the events of 9/11."

Butterflies set free

Detail from "The Butterfly in the Brain." The butterfly exists in this Golgi stain of brain tissue.

In "The Butterfly in the Brain," scientific iconography is recontextualized into the cultural domain, thus expanding through metaphor the novel poetic possibilities and associations inherent in scientific images. Anker uses three scientific icons: the butterfly with its wings outspread as if pinned, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of the brain, and paired chromosomes.

Upon entering the installation, the viewer is greeted by the unexpected and vulnerable sculpture of a brain seated on a velvet pillow in the entranceway. "Image the surprise of someone coming in and tripping over a brain," said Anker.

To the left is a 14-foot hovering butterfly bat painted on the wall, reinforcing the notion of spatial experience as an alteration in iconography itself. "By taking the butterfly bat image out of a textbook, scaling it up to a large size, and putting it in a site-specific environment, one turns the image into an entirely new and other kind of affective entity," she explained.

In another piece, a silkscreen print of the symmetrical structures in the chromosome, brain, and butterfly emphasizes nature's fondness for symmetry and repetition. "Both the chromosome and the butterfly shed their bodies and are reborn as other creatures; the chromosome is a form of generational offspring," said Anker. "Does the brain undergo a metamorphosis as well? Where do memories go when the brain dies?" she asked.

Artists are not bound by the logical thinking inherent in science.

Artists are not bound by the logical thinking inherent in science, and in a work called Total Recall Anker employs magical thinking, drawing comparisons between images of the brain ventricle (the inner cavity located at the base of the brain deep within the skull) and paired chromosomes. "The brain ventricle is one of the hidden dimensions within our body," said Anker.

In metaphorical thinking, all sorts of possibilities can exist. Another work called Incarnation of a Stationary Carnivore takes as its theme the brain coral, a carnivorous sea animal. Yet, why should this animal be shaped like a brain? For Anker, "The work explores the way in which nature's repeat patterns may or may not have to do with form and function."

A Rorschach test in three dimensions

Another work in the collection involves the use of the Rorschach inkblots. Although their use is controversial in psychology, the images are widely recognized among the public. The term "Rorschach test" has entered the vernacular as an expression of taking the opinion or underlying meaning of a situation.

Gossipers. This structure in plaster and resin resembles a pelvis, as well as two gossipers chatting away while cooking over a fire.

To explore the extended meanings of inkblots, Anker used a three-dimensional modeling system to turn an inkblot into a three-dimensional (3-D) structure. A computer program converts the flat image into a three-dimensional model, and a machine then produces the object using plaster and resin. "Looking in 3-D," Anker argued, "one begins to assess new meanings: bones, sea creatures, body parts. These are surrogates for the imagination itself, opening up a dialog between the mind and body. What happens when you can pick up a psychology test in your hand? The mind essentially has been embodied." The technique itself is exciting because it is a process that can model deep recesses, something that cannot be done in traditional sculpture.

Art goes beyond categories of rational and irrational and thus is free to explore scientific iconography for novel metaphoric meanings. In Anker's world, nature's penchants for symmetry and redundancy (brain coral resembles the human brain) provide a departing point for the exploration and manipulation of imagery to provoke reflection and awareness.

Interactive Art and the Exploration of Movement

Speaker:
Nell Breyer, Massachusetts Institute for Technology

Highlights

• Interactive art installations allow us to explore different ways of perceiving motion, shifting our attention from object to action.
• Movement can be visualized as change. Stand still, you disappear. Move, and you see the difference between where you are now and where you were just now.
• Breyer's installations help us gain a deeper understanding of how we interact with each other in space and time, collectively and individually.

Defining movement

Artist Nell Breyer's work explores how we perceive motion. She investigates the inherent contradiction between how we perceive movements—physically, in an instant—and how we conceive of them—constructing our understanding through the varied forms, modalities and abstract memories of the mind's eye. These constructs can be different when drawn from our different individual backgrounds, instincts and daily actions. For example, an athlete might feel and imagine movement differently from an accountant.

How do we perceive, conceive, and experience movement?

Through interactive art installations, Breyer attempts to activate different ways to understand and experience movement. Her installations allow the viewer to interact with recorded and live video, cueing both the kinetic and the visual imagination. The goal is to shift our attention and, therefore, our experience of what movement really is. "I am trying to draw viewers into the work, using actions, not just images. What you do helps to create what you see" says Breyer, "so that a passerby actually physically draws out his or her own movements by moving him or herself."

Nell Breyer, i:move (2003). Software captures the background as revealed by the dancer's moving body. All images courtesy of the artist.

One of her works, i:move, strips movement down to its most essential element: change. "I began trying to isolate what it is to see just a change in space." Change is the difference between Time1 and Time0. If everything but change is taken from the picture, the bodys movements reveal a changing space.

To explore this concept, Breyer wrote software that could process images in such a way that the viewer sees only changes between frames, not the moving object itself. She then used the software to capture the movements of a dancer. The resulting video revealed the vibrant, glowing, evocative images of movement. "The dancer starts to reveal what is behind her rather than her form embodying a standard human body," says Breyer.

Skateboarders and professors

i:move (2003). Movement is captured on the campus of MIT. People walking through the plaza are videotaped and become part of the projection.

One aspect of motion that intrigued Breyer was the difference between individual versus group behaviors. To explore the random and predictable passage of pedestrians, Breyer set up cameras on the top and sides of an archway designed by I. M. Pei that connects the east and west sections of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus. The archway funnels a variety of people, from skateboarding students to professors and tourists, engaged in all types of movements and patterns. "I wanted to capture the tempo, the type of chaos, the weaving in and out that happens every moment in that space."

The images were collected during the day and during the evening were projected against the MIT Media Lab building, which runs alongside the arch. The software was further developed with MIT colleague Jonathan Bachrach, isolating not only what changed from frame to frame, but additional kinetic characteristics in order to capture what Breyer calls "the residue of movement."

The installation explores different degrees and time-scales of movement and interaction. "As nighttime pedestrians pass by, they are suddenly integrated into what had happened earlier that day," said Breyer. "You might walk by and see yourself in real time and as you were at 10 a.m. that morning. The assumption here is that our movements and activities actually give a place meaning and identity."

The many definitions of movement

In addition to its role in interaction, movement can be conceptualized in a variety of ways, as Breyer explored in her installation at the Dance Theatre Workshop gallery in Chelsea. Each day, dancers who frequent the theater joined with random passers-by to explore a different way of thinking about movement. A new visualization for each day of the week helped redirect if not reinvigorate the public's way of seeing movement.

She worked with colleagues Jonathan Bachrach, Goran Bogdanovski, and Dejan Shroj to develop a daily variation for seeing movement. One day was devoted to the concept of movement as notation. Breyer used a live video stream of pedestrian crossings to reveal prerecorded text from dancers, explaining why they move. Another day, she explored how we can see the "volume" of space that is displaced through moving. On the next, she examined the peripheral edges of movement—the shape of our outline. Live image processing revealed not the full human figure but only the leading edge of the body as it moves through space. "The concept explores contours which encompass movement, drawing a dynamic edge as you walk past," said Breyer.

Morning commute

Unlike dancers, most people don't think much about how they move as they make their way to work in the morning. New York commuters became the subject of Time Translations, an installation that Breyer created at the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan in 2005.

She placed cameras and video monitors inside a walkway that runs alongside Ground Zero. Partially destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the walkway was rebuilt of corrugated metal, exposed to the elements and lit with dim fluorescent light. Breyer recorded the types of pedestrian flow through this space and then developed software with MIT engineer, Aleksander Zlateski, to combine pre-recorded material with live dynamics. The resulting images were projected back into the bridge along floors and ceiling, as well as overhead on the plasma screens that play throughout the World Financial Center. A set of six large-scale light boxes installed in the South Bridge displayed visualizations generated by daily WFC foot traffic.

Time Translations (2005). New York commuters become part of an art installation.

As a person moves along the walkway, the projections change according to his or her momentum. In peak traffic time, the flow of pedestrians looks like a white-hot streak, whereas in low-traffic periods it is cooler and softer. Every second, the projected graphic is refreshed using information about the pedestrians' movement, the number of people, the character of their movements, and the scale of movements. "An individual can shape the pattern to some degree but cannot dictate the whole thing," said Breyer.

Time Translations examined the bottleneck of human passage along the South Bridge. It folded live motion into architectural surroundings, drawing a kinetic history of the bridge. The image patterns transformed human reactions into a two-dimensional shadow play. Through the interactive nature of the work, pedestrians become performers. Passers-by create and perform inside their own motion projections.

In all of Breyer's work, she uses interactivity and live video to enhance our kinetic and visual imagination. She seeks to bring different modalities together in the representation of human movements. In this way, our inner eye, our sensorimotor skills, and our motor and visual memory all come to bear on what we understand as movement. Our own passage plays a critical part, while an individual's idiosyncratic gestures might contrast or flow into a group dynamic. "The work is an effort to celebrate the personal and collective movements of each day."