What Happens When Artists Look at the Brain?

Science and art stem from the same intuitions: experiment, discover and comprehend. At their cores, both science and art navigate the complexity of the world, and both are motivated by the marvellousness of that world. The entities eventually fork as they funnel their similar intuitions so as to achieve different intentional ends.

Scientists and artists both carry the spectator through an imaginative path that mines through our world. Their intuition for experimentation, discovery and comprehension are equivalent: scientists hypothesise and experiment, artists hypothesise and contemplate. Scientists though will ultimately direct the spectator to an analysis that explains a phenomenon of the world in a testable and unambiguous manner. Artists on the other hand, leave the interpretation of a phenomenon open-ended, letting the spectator dabble with her own deductions. While one attempts to answer, the other attempts to ponder. The end-effect? An equal sense of wonder about the world.

If those two entities can express sense a feeling of wonder, then imagine what they can do when they both intertwine their intuitions—when they embrace their roots together. Even more fascinating: how would brain science, which attempts among other things, to explain our brain as it deciphers art, mix with brain art, which showcases the legacy of neuroscience in eclectic, unconventional fashion?

An exhibition that opens its doors today at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, US, explores this precisely. The Subjective Resonance Imaging exhibition features 14 established and emerging artists who ask "timely questions about the borders between art and science, subjective and objective images, and the source of self-knowledge." Interestingly, in what is perhaps an illustration of an increasing willingness to embrace the similar roots of science and arts, the exhibition is coinciding with the 2013 Human Brain Mapping conference, also in town.

I emailed Subjective Resonance Imaging's curator Noah Hutton to ask him a few questions about the exhibition, also pricking his mind (pun intended) about the apparent schism between science and art as well as the role neuroscience might play in that regard.

Why do you think art/science exhibitions, such as Subjective Resonance Imaging, are important? What can they achieve?

These exhibitions are important to me because I like the way of quietly observing and contemplating what happens in a museum or gallery space. And because of the content of these art/science exhibitions, I find that shows like this can open up worthwhile meditations on questions of the origin of thought, selfhood, and identity, as embodied in a human, because they are filled with a variety of visual representations of brain structure, organization, and function, sort of like mirrors of your own inner, living mirror that is looking out at it all. So it's a sort of pondering of science and the implications of its findings. I think it's important to step back, no matter whether you're an artist or scientist, and exist for a bit of time in this realm.

Now, regarding the question you ask as to what these shows can achieve, it might be that nothing known with immediate certainty comes of these shows. The highest achievement of a show like this might be that it affects you, even if in an uncertain way: taking it all in and asking some of the questions it presents could unknowingly lead to a new question being asked in what it is you're working on, and this could be helpful.

What is the state of the perceived schism between art and science today, in your opinion?

If minds accept the ways and teachings of art just as readily as they accept those of science, and vice-versa, new things can happen: it's always valuable to include more points of observation in any field of view. But I do still notice these schisms you mention. From what I observe, it often results from limitationist or rejectionist stances. I see people in the humanities sometimes feel unnecessarily (though sometimes very practically understandable, if funding cuts are at stake) threatened by a perceived forceful injection of neuroscience into their disciplines, and as a result they try to take a snapshot of the current, very limited knowledge about the brain and use it as proof that the future of the discipline is very limited as well: that we will never approach insights on certain phenomena through the tools of neuroscience. This attitude prevents even the endlessly fascinating basic knowledge about the brain from being integrated when studying anything subjective, like art or religion. This can happen from the other direction too, where art and artists' worthiness or tangible demonstrations of the sort of truth that science tries to reveal is questioned.

These schisms might linger for some time, and tracing their fault lines continues to stir worthwhile debate, but I see more and more work that feels highly integrative, and non-schismatic, and this feels more progressive to me: embracing and responsibly using what's out there, rather than limiting or rejecting based on the narrow breadth of our early understanding. Check out Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra's work on neuroscience and cinema, for example [an article about their work].

How is neuroscience affecting that schism? We know that neuroscience is increasing our comprehension of art and that art is helping neuroscientists understand our brain better...

That last part is the key: neuroscience is affecting the schism because it is the process of observing and gradually understanding more about the brain: its structure, and how structure relates to function. If you believe in a fully material mind, then anything that tells you more about that space that sees art, conceives it, and then goes about making it in rich interaction with the outside environment—anything new to be observed about the structure of this place is an interesting thing to consider and critically think about, or just be aware of. But the schism remains: there is a feeling, which I completely understand, that these sorts of insights from neuroscience are limiting, reductionistic, overreaching in what they're trying to explain. But what I feel is that this feeling requires an interpretive leap, one made too often by overhyped popular science journalism: the overreach is often at the hands of the messenger, not the message. There is a gentler way to interpret what neuroscience gives us. You can think of it like lighting candles, rather than turning on all the lights.

Image credits, from top to bottom:

Empire State of Mind by Julia Buntaine

Purkinje by Katherine Sherwood

fabricMRI: Bill's Brain by Marjorie Taylor