Final cling film installation

Cling film test 2. 

Using the cling film technique I test before in a barn set up, I have created another version. To develop it further I have used projections of photographs of my previous installation to light up the cling film and to create the sense of another dimension within the installation space. I experimented with projecting images of faces and photographs to portray memories, however I felt this was too literal as we do not know what form memories take with in the mind. Therefore to present them as direct images is assuming that what we already perceive to be reality in the mind is correct however as the mind is a great mystery, to be this seemed too much of an obvious answer. 

Perhaps, like colour, photograph like memories are manufactured by our brains to allow our conscious mind to reach logical explanations. However we can not make assumptions about our subconscious as this is a unknown territory. 

Therefore for my installation works I have chosen to take influence from a quote from a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche "Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -always darker, emptier and simpler." With this in mind I aimed to create a installation which was uncluttered and simple to allow simplification and free space to create your own interpretations and your mind to fill in the gaps and rationalize what you are seeing. Through this sparking the mind to process you are able to become aware of the experience of being in and owning a human mind. 

Light Box presentation and project reflection

 Thought.

To present my pieces made during this project I have worked towards establishing a range of objects which I feel represent the mind. I began by considering how I think and what it means to be a human with such a high functioning brain. During this stage I questioned the internal dialogue which occurs within the mind verbalizes thoughts and emotions. Researching into this I was intrigued by the mystery behind the brain and how limited the knowledge about it is compared to other organs within the body. This was reaffirmed to me personally as I have suffered long term with migraines until recently being prescribed beta blockers to help these. Upon being prescribed them the doctor told me that it is not certain why they work and why the affect the brain. The brain remains a mystery of which the questions that can be asked of the brain are endless and what is more puzzling is the simply fact that the questions we think of to ask about our brains are in fact entirely manufactured by our own brains. 

Even the consciousness in our brain is not yet explained. 

''An explanation of consciousness is one of the major unsolved problems of modern science. It may not turn out to be a single phenomenon; nonetheless, by way of a preliminary target, let’s think of it as the thing that flickers on when you wake up in the morning that was not there, in the exact same brain hardware, moments before.'' http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/unsolved-brain-mysteries

Influenced by my research into the brain, which has drawn heavily upon Buddhist ideas of the mind as a separated entity from the body, I have created work which I feel represents my interpretation of the mind. Moving away from the literal work produced in my past projects in which I explored the physical forms of the body I have attempted to create abstract personifications of the mind and thoughts. I have chosen to present these using a light box to draw upon past research into the role of light in the mind. 

To represent the organised structures which naturally occur in the biological structures within the body I have set up my 'thought' experiments into a structured museum like set up. 

All of the pieces are entirely unique as they have been created using unpredictable methods due to the mediums of melted glue and wax in liquid form being fast flowing and then setting quickly. To me this was important to represent the randomness of thought and how emotions and feelings are unique and ever changing from person to person. However the glass jars and bottles I have used I felt created different connotations due to their shapes and patterns. 

At the front of the glass thoughts are broken glass pieces sculptures. I have presented these as the front to represent hurtful and traumatic memories as these are usually those which are most prominent and create the most stress within the brain. 

 At the very front of the presented I have presented glass photograph slides collected from an antique center. I wanted to include these to represent the idea of memory and the sentimental. I collected these during visits to antique centers as visiting antique centers as a way of entering the minds of other people by reading into the sentimental value behind objects which have been purposely collected and kept. 

''The great secret of memory is that it mostly encodes the relationships between things more than the details of the things themselves. When you memorize a melody, you encode the relationships between the notes, not the notes per se, which is why you can easily sing the song in a different key.''

Behind all the objects I have made and collected I have placed a mirror. This is the signify the idea of 'the self' and self awareness. I feel this plays a major part in the functioning of the mind as this awareness shapes our personality and creates the uniqueness of human beings as individuals. Furthermore our own perception of our physical and emotional form hugely impacts our mental state and can spark a wide range of mental disorders such as anorexia and body dis morphia. 

Humans of New York

Humans of New York

 http://www.humansofnewyork.com/tagged/featured

The humans of New York blog documents the inhabitants of New York city. From following these images and the stories told by the people it inspires me to continue to explore the mind.

The photographs taken for HONY show the diverse range of personalities and human emotions. However to me it always intrigues me into the diversity of the human mind. Though as humans we are all biologically the same our complex brains allow us to think, remember and express individual personalities. Due to a strong interest into mental health and psychological development I find the Humans of New York images extremely interesting. Furthermore the stories that are told to Brandon, the photographer, show the minds ability to process language, communicate and recall memories. All choices we make and the integral parts of our personalities such as sexuality come down to our brains.

All in all, I find the prospect that I have a brain which is manufacturing my interest a intriguing prospect and find myself constantly questioning how it works.

Bill Smith Sculpture

Bill Smith. 

Bill Smith's sculptures inspire me due to their intricate and beautiful representations of natural biological structures. Smith has a background in sculpture, microbiology, chemistry, and mechanics. This is evident in his sculptures as they accurately represent biological cell structures and offer a interesting insight into the complex workings of microbiology. 

''Smith creates art inspired by disciplines outside of the humanities where the aesthetic beauty of Smith’s creations is a byproduct of his process. By understanding the way nature works on a microcosmic level, he mimics nature’s growth characteristics and inherent beauty. Smith sees the celebration of the human condition as being overrepresented in contemporary art and believes that, by focusing on the universe at large, art can attain a broader significance.''http://www.worldchesshof.org/exhibitions/exhibit/bill-smith-beyond-the-humanities/

Fading Memories

Memory is all we are.

 “Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.” Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

To represent lost memories I have cast a paper doilie in wax inside a metal disc. I used a paper doilie to represent the sentimental memories we hold in our mind. However brain diseases such as alzheimer's disease can destroy these memories. By casting a sentimental object in wax and then burning a hole in the middle I wanted to represent how memories can become stuck in the back of the mind and begin to degrade as these diseases spread through the brain. 

Pareidolia.

These wax sculptures are casts of a male face done by first making covering the face with cling film (Leaving breathing holes of course) before making a modrock cast over this. With the modrock cast which was lined with a new sheet of cling film which had no holes in, I coated the inside with melting wax, building it up untill it made thicker forms. 

Once removing the wax casts and peeling away the cling film I was left with these abstract face sculptures. The cling film smooths out any features leaving only the contours of the face. This was the affect I wanted to create as I wanted them to represent the phenomena of Pareidolia which leads to us to see faces in objects. 

"Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misconception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. [...]

 Under ordinary circumstances, pareidolia provides a psychological explanation for many delusions based upon sense perception. For example, it explains many UFO sightings, as well as the hearing of sinister messages on records played backwards. [...]

Under clinical circumstances, some psychologists encourage pareidolia as a means to understanding a patient, e.g., the Rorschach ink blot test.

Astronomer Carl Sagan claimed that the human tendency to see faces in tortillas, clouds, cinnamon buns, and the like is an evolutionary trait. He writes:  

As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains. Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper. These days, nearly every infant is quick to identify a human face, and to respond with a goony grin." (Sagan 1995: 45)."

This is another example of the complex workings of the mind and it's ability to make connections and thoughts within the mind. Furthermore these wax sculptures lead to the idea of how the brain manufactures images in the mind known as our imagination.  

drawing with wax on glass- the sudden thought

Further wax experiments; Brain prints

 By the time I was born, more of me had died than survived.' Lewis Thomas 

Using the same Idea as used for the jar experiments I made another wax test to patterns and affects I could make using wax. With this test once the wax had set to create more brain print patterns I then used a match to melt away a section. I did this to represent degenerative brain disorders such as strokes and dementia. 
As the flame heated a section the wax began to melt wax, as the melted wax dripped down it left tracks. 
I felt this represented how brain disorders spread through the brain, affecting other areas such a memory and motor responses. 
In this piece the melted area signifies the trauma site, where a stroke may begin and the ripples of melted wax around it and drips demonstrated its affect on other areas in the brain. 

" After a stroke, even unaffected areas of the brain are at risk – depolarization waves arise at the edges of the dead tissue and spread through the adjacent areas of the brain. If these waves are repeated, more cells die. [...] After the stroke, circulation in the tissue surrounding the affected area of the brain is initially poor, but it can still be saved,” explained Dr. Christian Dohmen of the Neurology Department at Cologne University Hospital. The spreading depolarizations additionally impair the metabolism of the weakened nerve cells. “The more frequently such waves occur, the longer the nerve cells require to recover, until finally they die off entirely,“ says the main author of the study. To what extent the brain is damaged after a stroke depends thus on the number of these spreading depolarizations. This correlation is becoming apparent in humans as well."University Hospital Heidelberg

Wax Nerve tissue representations

“If you're thinking of the brain as a computer, the neuron is the transistor.” — Carl Schoonover

 Experimenting with wax led me to finding interesting patterns which could be created by dripping melted wax and spreading it into thin layers. This lead me to creating this glass jar experiment to attempt to represent patterns of brain nerve tissue. Using a dim light behind a sheet I was then able to illuminate this and use the light passing through the wax coating to highlight the patterns created. 

I was found this reminded me of Susan Adlworth's 'Birth of thought' drawing series. As a part of GV galleries art and science artists, I have followed her work for some time always finding the delicate patterns she draws fascinating. The patterns appear to creep out and in of the darkness. The use of black for the background of her drawings emphasizes the infinite space within the mind. I also find her drawings using white on black or blue backgrounds again emphasizes the importance of light in the mind. 

"What is the mind? It is a phenonmenon that is not body, not substantial, has no form, no shape, no color, but, like a mirror, can clearly reflect objects." Lama Zopa Rinpoche

"What is the mind? It is a phenonmenon that is not body, not substantial, has no form, no shape, no color, but, like a mirror, can clearly reflect objects." 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Buddhist teachings describe the mind as separated from the body and physical form. From this I was inspired to further develop a sculpture I had previously made with clay and plaster. I made the lung cast by making a clay lung form which I then made clay box around before filling with plaster. Through this I wanted to explore the negative space of the clay sculptures to create a imprint of the body. Leading on from this, informed by Buddhist ideas, I wanted to expand this by making a cast of a brain and face to aim to continue this process and ultimately make a whole body out of these block sculptures.

This will make a 'negative' of a body to represent death as a inevitable part of human life. This will go alongside my works on the mind to reflect Buddhist ideas of the mind being a separated entity which is free outside of the confines of the physical body.

“My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.” Shakespeare

 After researching lights affect on the brain, I tested projecting light patterns and images onto a plaster cast of a brain which I made. I did this to show brain activity and wanted to use the light projected as a simile for neurons in the brain. 

Light and the brain

Light and the brain. 

" It has long been known that light exerts powerful effects on the brain and on our well-being. Light is not only required for vision but is also essential for a wide range of "non-visual" functions including synchronization of our biological clock to the 24h day-night cycle. Light also conveys a powerful stimulating signal for human alertness and cognition and has been routinely employed to improve performance, counter the negative impact of sleepiness or "winter blues." University of Liège. "How light affects our brain's performance: Photic memory for executive brain responses."

The significance of light for human life and brain activity is extremely importance. Light controls how we see the world around us, allowing our brain to process it and create colour which is a phenomena created by the mind. Colour does not actually exist, but what does is light. This article explains how colour is manufactured by the mind.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14421303

The astounding affect of light on the brain is demonstrated through Optogenetics which allows the brain to be controlled with light. A MIT press video explaining this can be seen herer: http://mit.tv/A1bkSr