Jill Scott Esther Stoeckli Editors. Neuromedia. Art and Neuroscience Research

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2 Neuromedia

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4 Jill Scott Esther Stoeckli Editors Neuromedia Art and Neuroscience Research

5 Editors Jill Scott Institute for Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdk) Zurich, Switzerland Esther Stoeckli Institute of Molecular Life Sciences University of Zurich Zurich, Switzerland ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Cover: Jill Scott s Eye. Design by Karin Schiesser Layout: Amelia Meares Copy editor: Robert Atkins Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (

6 PREFACE Neuromedia is an innovative examination of shared territories in neurobiological anatomy, physiology and media art. It reveals how scientists investigate perception and behaviour at the molecular, cellular and systems level. It demonstrates how interpretative forms of media art can help to demystify these complexities for diverse audiences. Under the reflective headings of inspiration, construction, challenges and reactions, it offers deep insights into the processes of art and science production. Assisted by essays from a museum director and an art historian, Neuromedia provides the background for readers about an exhibition of the same name at KULTURAMA in Zurich (2012) and suggests an alternative approach to scientific communication. A collaboration between: The Institute for Cultural Studies, The Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) KULTURAMA Science Museum Zurich The University of Zurich (University Hospital, Molecular Neurobiology, Artificial Intelligence) Authors: Robert Atkins, Oliver Biehlmaier, Mitchel Paul Levesque, Stephan Neuhauss, Rolf Pfeifer, Claudia Rütsche, Jill Scott and Esther Stoeckli v

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8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the essayists for their insightful works and to all the collaborators who made this series of Neuromedia works possible including: Marille Hahne for her solid emotional support, Robert Atkins for his careful reading and copy editing of the texts, the labs at the University of Zurich for their interest in the interpretative potentials of art as a new way to explore the scientific research process, and to the funding organizations for their financial support and the graphic designers for their patience. vii

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10 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTIONS... 1 a. Art and Science: Reflections on Strange Bedfellows by Robert Atkins b. Neuromedia: A Dialogue Between Media Art and Neuroscience by Esther Stoeckli and Jill Scott c. Understanding Science in the Museum by Claudia Rütsche CHAPTER TWO: NEURAL DEVELOPMENT a. Looking at the nervous system of chicken embryos to learn about the wiring of our brain by Esther T. Stoeckli b. Somatic Reflections: an artistic interpretation of neural tube development by Jill Scott CHAPTER THREE: VISUAL PERCEPTION a. Behavioural Genetics in Zebrafish to Understand Vertebrate Vision by Oliver Biehlmaier & Stephan C.F. Neuhauss b. The Electric Retina. Your eyes are the eyes of a fish! by Jill Scott CHAPTER FOUR: TACTILE PERCEPTION a. Neural Networks and Artificial Skin Rolf Pfeifer in interview with Jill Scott b. «eskin» exploring touch and sound: three stages of a work-in-progress by Jill Scott CHAPTER FIVE: SKIN AND ENVIRONMENT a. More than skin deep: the science of cutaneous pigmentation from development to disease by Mitch Levesque b. Dermaland: drawing analogies between our human skin and the skin of the earth by Jill Scott CONCLUSION: NEUROMEDIA Talking into the future. Esther Stoeckli and Jill Scott GLOSSARY CONTRIBUTORS ix

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12 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTIONS Abstract: In this introduction the perspectives on neuromedia are shared from the editors (an artist and a scientist) as well as an art historian and a museum director. It provides the reader with a background to this transdisciplinary research and its communication potentials. Fig 1. Design for the costume of the dancer based on the anatomy of the nervous system. Scott J. Scott and E. Stoeckli (eds.), Neuromedia: Art and Neuroscience Research, DOI / _1, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

13 Introductions a. Prologue: Art and Science: Reflections on Strange Bedfellows Robert Atkins There have been artist-scientists since the Renaissance (at least). Consider Leonardo da Vinci, Western culture s original renaissance man, or Samuel Morse, the nineteenth-century, American history painter and inventor of the telegraph. Neither of them managed (nor attempted) to merge art and science into some new fusion; their myriad accomplishments remain individually recognizable as belonging to one distinct disciplinary category or another. Even in the case of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings that embodied the new optical theory of the mid-nineteenth century, comprehension of these artists intentions today seems nearly lost in the foggy haze of history. History, of course, is always (re)written in service of the present. As modernism waned in the 1960s, conceptualist artists and theorists posited a new and complex identity for art that contradicted the prevailing formalism of the day. It reflected new and expansive artistic interests in non-object formats such as photography, video and performance, and in previously non-art areas of concern such as architecture, politics and science. (This meant that conceptual artists interested in architecture were more likely to design and construct a building informed by what might be termed visual art thinking, than to utilize an existing building as subject matter for a painting or photograph.) Advocates of the fusion of art and science frequently cited similarities between twentieth-century artistic and scientific processes: experimentation is valued in both studio and lab, where illumination or inspiration might occur in a flash. The best-known scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century were formulated by Albert Einstein and famously derived from his powers of imagination and ability to picture the operation of physical 2

14 Robert Atkins forces, rather than through lab-based experimentation. Although art in the aftermath of World War II is widely regarded as a vessel of feeling well suited to a traumatized global citizenry, this is an over-simplification based on the novelty and notoriety of expressionist, usually abstract painting. But this sort of emotionally-expressive art was not the only game in town. Despite atomic-age anxieties, the modern idea of science and technology based progress strengthened its hold on the Western imagination as the 1960s approached and reached its euphoric culmination in 1969 with the manned lunar landing. This technophilia was expressed in the post-war art world as early as 1957 with the founding of the ZERO group in Düsseldorf. But it wasn t until a decade later that artists in the U.S. made the crucial connections with scientists that characterize the art-and-technology phenomenon: two milestones of 1967 were the founding of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art s Art and Technology Program and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. This is the late-1960s moment when Jill Scott began to study art at college in her native Australia. (Bear in mind that art departments are hardly bastions of the international avant-garde I ve described above.) During the mid- 1970s, Jill and I were graduate students (unknown to one another) in the San Francisco Bay Area. My first glimpses of her took place at a number of sometime-potent works she performed in on San Francisco streets or in basements and alternative spaces. They were an unexpected blend of antithetical elements: on one hand there was the neo-dadaist playfulness that offered respite from the array of alternately overly emotive or insufficiently reflective post-war styles of art. (Jasper Johns s on-canvas allusions to chance and accident were translated by Jill and others into more clinical in-gallery audience participation enacted through actions as simple as deciding whether to turn right or left to enter a space.) On the other hand, Jill s performances were also suffused with something entirely and stunningly her own: an earthy theatricality put at the service of an appreciation really a near veneration of nature. Paradoxically, this poetic side of Jill s sensibility was presented within her performances in unadorned documentary-style projected photos or video footage of the Australian landscape or of aboriginal culture (including 3

15 Introductions scenes of Scott herself playing the didgeridoo, a traditional reed instrument requiring circular breathing.) Prior to moving to San Francisco, Scott had been an undergraduate landscape painter, ceramicist and devotee of the theater. Her interests in the topography, flora, fauna and first-nation cultures of Australia animated and unified these works in varied media, as well as those she produced in San Francisco a few years later (and described above.) Still, the initial impression from the biographical data about Jill, the fledgling artist, doesn t seem to predict the current Jill Scott: that is, an artist capable and desirous of conducting innovative scientific research marrying biology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence, complemented by a sophisticated understanding of the technological and intellectual requirements for utilizing tools and producing models and prototypes. (She gained experience in these realms during stints at the re-opened Bauhaus University in Weimar and at the Center for Art and Media-Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, where she was an early artist-in-residence/staff member at the premier media-art museum.) And yet Scott s deep Australian roots and backgrounds in landscape painting, ceramic art and theatre are central to the recent science-related works, as well. Art is cumulative and Jill s artistic trajectory over these decades is direct, upon contemplation even logical: the lab-derived works are, after all, built on a foundation of imaginative metaphorical connections between photosynthesis, soil, skin, and bio-themes such as ecological sustainability, predation and the like. Scott s medical history and that of family and friends also enters her research. All of these varied elements provide a sort of subtext what actors call a back story that deepens her art and offers a variety of approaches by which audience members can gain access to it, although sometimes only by reading between the lines. The nuanced contextual layering that may enrich the work of mature artists like Scott is also a (partial) cause of the difficulty some viewers have understanding contemporary art in general (although this would not seem to be the case for Scott s science-based works which are intended for very broad audiences.) Yet why is it that difficult-to-appreciate contemporary poetry or musical composition rarely elicits the misunderstandings and rancor that often arise in visual art controversies? How did art become so 4