The 7th Annual Conference on Neuroaesthetics

The 7th annual conference on Neuroaesthetics was held on January 19, 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley. It was a one day program consisting of 8 speakers. It was an open conference so independents such as me were able to attend.

What is Neuroaesthetics? The term was coined by Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist in his book "Inner Vision" published in 1999. Zeki studies the human brain primarily by using fMRI scanners. To perform experiments with these scanners subjects are shown visual stimuli, such as flashing words or rotating stripes. The brain activities the scanner detects are studied for predictable correspondence between the nature of the stimuli and regions of brain activity. It is a rapidly growing research technique that is very new and yielding interesting insights. Zeki's argument is that if scientists create stimuli designed specifically to activate the brain in particular ways under laboratory conditions, and if artists are creating art to trigger a particular response in the viewer's mind, then artists are in a sense proto-scientists, or proto-neuroscientists. Zeki has urged his fellow researchers to look at art for inspiration and ideas for their own research.

What can artists take from this? Zeki's program is extremely ambitious. At the very least it requires straddling two disciplines, neuroscience and the history of art. It requires imaginatively inhabiting two (or even more) distinct traditions of inquiry. It requires making some broad conceptual inferences to link the two sufficiently grounded in each so as to be plausible to each. In a world of segregated disciplines, where will recruits for this program be found? Zeki writes that artists have their own particular ways of pursuing knowledge which is tantamount to saying artists have their own tradition of inquiry.

The inspiration for this kind of conference comes from a scientist, and the programming was dominated by scientists. In other words, we were treated to descriptions of tests and the data collected from them showing the statistical behavior of biological mechanisms. This can only be interesting to an artist who is committed to exploring perceptual questions. One argument for how artists could respond is in Zeki's book, especially his argument claiming that black and white kinetic art is most satisfying because it selectively stimulates area V5/MT in the visual cortex, an area generally regarded as responsive to motion but not to color. I take this argument as intuitively plausible but not justification for the creation of some kind of rule. The only rule for artists is to be wary of rules!

My own interest in neuroaesthetics has been due to the occasional sense of faint intuitions validated. Here and there in the books and literature I see my perceptual hunches born of subjective observation, training and experience translated into language and math, the sine qua non of science. It is more often than not the case that we see what we know. Perhaps if more is known more will be seen.