administration’s own hidden objectives. It
deliberately referenced the well-known Simons
and Chabris animation about inattention blindness, Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional
blindness for dynamic events, but with significant
differences, involving politics and emotion. My
experience has been that most viewers do not
see the disappearing antiquities on first viewing.
I found it instructive that a few people were
able to perform accurate counting and also see
the antiquities disappear. They attributed this
ability to their training in art, and my take is
that art can play a significant part in the process
of informal learning.
PS: You were involved with the Pratt Institute’s
“Sleuthing the Mind” (2014), an exhibition wherein
artists showcased works that engaged neuroscience.
How did your work as curator and showcasing artist
in “Sleuthing the Mind” fit into your oeuvre?
granted. Aesthetic considerations were a priority.
PS: What should the sciart community expect from
you in the near future? Are there any new ideas, interests, and concepts that have piqued your attention?
EKL: My recurrent pursuit is how we see the
past in the present. I am in the initial stages of
work with a software programmer to create an
interactive environment and continue with the
same themes in both static and dynamic media. New Niches—it might also be called Strange
Bedfellows—focuses on the changing of traits as
nature and technology co-exist and are mutually
transformed.
I tend to look at art works in terms of what
they might add to the world. As George Kubler
showed in The Shape of Time, artists invent new
conventions and modify old ones, revealing art
itself as an adaptive process. For me it is more
to the point to look for meaning in the vertiginous treatment of space, remixes, and reconceived contexts and forms rather than search
for formal purity. I think that the creative ability to imagine things and situations that do not
yet fully exist has survival value.
EL: Pratt invited me to curate an exhibition
about art and neuroscience; it followed upon
my being part of a small art and neuroscience
workshop spearheaded by Marina Abramović
and Robert Wilson. One of the questions raised
was whether and how art can provoke a change
of behavior through self-reflection. The artists
explored the mind’s many facets through video,
performance, human-computer interface, and
View more of Levy’s work at:
virtual reality along with traditional approaches
http://complexityart.com/
that offered an expanded field
of artistic practice informed
by current neuroscience. The
artists constructed experiences, many disorienting, in
which we might intuit what it
means for minds to be divided, aroused, recalibrated, or
rewired. The minimal criteria
for inclusion was, since well
over 90% of the processes
that are in our brains are
automatic, to locate art works
that might raise them to
conscious awareness. In this
sense the exhibition functioned like an informal experiment, although no data was
collected. Visitors interacted
with a number of the works,
and some became aware of
Installation of “Sleuthing the Mind.” Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC. September 16 - Nov.
processes normally taken for
5, 2014. Photo Credit: M. Alexander Weber. Left to right: works by Nene Humphry, Hans
Breder, Michael Metz, Patricia Olynyk, and Nicole Ottiger. Image courtesy of the artist.
SciArt in America February 2015
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