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.
No comments:
Post a Comment