Is this not a rather Cartesian, mind/body split way of seeing
things. Please refer to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Philosophy
in the Flesh, or Francisco Varela's The Embodied Mind: Cognitive
Science and Human Experience, or Maurice Merleau-Ponty's
Phenomenology of Perception, or...
All the best
David
On 3 Oct 2009, at 16:59, Simon Biggs wrote:
> It could be asserted that exploring extreme states of mind (as
> opposed to
> the brain) is standard operating artists procedure (SOAP). The mind is
> arguably an imagined thing and artists routinely seek to imagine it
> in its
> strangest or most extreme state, whether as something isolated
> (mind as
> location of the individual) or networked (the mind as instantiation
> of the
> social being). As an artist I consciously seek to do this,
> imagining myself
> into a mental state. When it starts to feel dangerous that's when I
> think I
> might be getting somewhere.
>
> There is also a long history of artists who have been regarded as
> rather
> mad. Whether they were so because they were ill (in conventional
> medical
> terms – John Martin, for example - which is deeply problematic for
> anyone of
> a Foucauldian or Langian persuasion) or pushing their ideas to
> extremes
> (such that people thought them mad) or simply taking too many drugs
> (that
> seems to render other people mad).
>
> Turning back to extreme environments, artists have similarly
> explored these,
> even when the places they visited were either not that extreme or were
> actually imaginary. Here I am thinking of the Romantics, with
> Caspar David
> Friedrich or Beethoven seeking to evoke what they felt to be the
> sublime
> (extreme) in nature and the (extreme) states this transported them
> to. There
> was no need for them to go to the Moon to achieve this – although
> perhaps in
> our over-stimulated society this is the reason artists are seeking
> to do
> this. They are simply exhibiting our shared symptoms of environmental
> disassociation.
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
>
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs@eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
>
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>
> simon@littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
>
>
>
> From: roger malina <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>
> Reply-To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 17:15:19 +0200
> To: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr>
> Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] artists workng with scientists in
> extreme
> environments
>
> yasminers
> here is another thought- are extreme environments only
> physical/geographical
> exploration- or can one also explore extreme mental states ?
>
> yesterday i was with christian xerri who is a neuroscientist in
> marseille
> and
> jim gimzewksi
>
> were were discussing the work that xerri does with alzheimers
> patients
>
> christian's work includes looking at ways the brain re organises
> itself after trauma
>
> *Curre*
> *Research topics *
>
> 1. Experience-dependent malleability of somatosensory cortical maps
> during development and maturation.
> 2. Postlesion remodeling of somatosensory maps after brain damage.
> 3. Spatio-temporal coding of tactile inputs within cortical
> networks.
> 4. Biochemical and morphological mechanisms involved in
> somatosensory map
> reorganization.
> 5. Elaboration and recognition of haptic and visual forms: a
> fMRI study.
>
> christian's son your is an artist and art therapist and they are
> working on
> art science collaborations
>
> xerri's lab has developed interactive software tools that are used
> to help
> patients with impaired
> memory etc
>
>
> a related connection is how humans in extreme environments have
> modified
> percetion
> , i heard a talk by michel marcelin who mentioned that at high altidue
> vision is affected ( see for instance
> http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/cgi/pdf_extract/140/3/354 )
>
> so for the discussion i thought i would introduce the topic of
> modification
> of mental states
> in extrement enviroments, but also extreme zones of mental states
> themselves
> as part
> of this discussion
>
> roger
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David Haley BA(Hons) MA FRSA
Senior Research Fellow
Director, A&E [art&ecology] research unit
MA Art As Environment Programme Leader
SEA: Social & Environmental Arts Research Centre
MIRIAD
Manchester Metropolitan University
Righton Building, Cavendish Street,
Manchester M15 6 BG
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