In the Week 6 lecture, guest lecturer Christina Albu talked to us about the connection between art and brain waves. Her presentation, which was titled “Vibratory Fields: Artists as Neural Orchestrators, Cartographers, and Translators,” provided a very comprehensive look at various artists and artworks that utilize data from brain wave frequencies. One such artwork that Albu mentioned was the EEG Kiss, which was a performance exhibit that used the EEG data from brain waves to turn kisses into quantifiable data, which was in turn superimposed onto their artwork.

I found Professor Cristina Albu's talk very fascinating because I'm always curious about the brain and brain waves that stimulate and enhance brain power. Dr. Albu introduced her favorite book from Dr. Grey Walter - The Living Brain - and quoted a sentence in his book that sparked my interest.

I find Cristina Albu’s research on the interconnection of the brain and art to be very fascinating. Last week, when deciding on a midterm topic, I wanted to pick something that would pay homage to my major, psychology. In the end, I chose to focus on reactive fear of the unknown, but I was very close to choosing something related to the brain. Throughout this process, I found several artists with related works.

It was a pleasure listening to the comprehensive and fascinating guest lecture by Dr. Cristina Albu in class on Tuesday. While each of the sub-topics and art pieces were interesting in their own right and exposed me to works I previously was completely unfamiliar with, I was specifically struck by the discussion surrounding Juan Downey's Plato Now (1973) piece. Learning about Plato Now was a serendipitous moment, as I based my midterm project around Plato's landmark work Republic, reimagining it for the present day.

After Christina Albu’s seminar this week, I was interested in exploring modern artwork centered around capturing brain wave dynamics. In my search, I came across the artwork of Greg Dunn, a trained neuroscientist who artistically depicts real-time neural circuit dynamics in the human central nervous system at 22X scale. 

    This week, we were joined by Christina Albu. What stood out to me most from her presentation was when she discussed the idea of interpersonal connection through aligning vibrational energy and brain waves.

I really enjoyed Professor Alba’s lecture this past week because of the way that she discussed the cognitive science behind emotional responses to artwork, a subject we’ve considered but not really discussed. It’s interesting to think about not only why art makes us feel a certain way but also *how* (in terms of literal human anatomy and physiology).  

This week in class we heard from Christina Albu who described the connection between the brain and art. I wanted to explore the topic of meditation more, one of the topics she mentioned in her talk. 

It was such a pleasure to have Cristina Albu speak to the class about brainwave art! Though all the different artists and artworks she presented were very interesting, I was most fascinated by the examples she provided of artists who created musical works based on brain signals. Growing up, performing violin as part of an orchestra was such a huge part of my life, and I was very curious about other performance pieces that involved using brainwaves to create unique compositions.

This week we heard a very interesting guest lecture from Christina Albu on electroencephalography (EEG) and art based on brain imagery. My favorite part of the lecture was when she talked about brainwave duets, particularly the pieces Mutual Wave Machine by Suzanne Dikker and EEG Kiss by Lancel/Maat. Both these pieces seem to examine the neuroscience behind human connection and trust, whether that is between friends and family or romantic partners.

Last week, when conducting research for my Midterm on artists who use manipulations of the body to send a message in art I had stumbled across the artist Stelarc. Although I ultimately chose to go a different direction with the organization of my midterm that did not include his work, I was very intrigued to hear him included in Christina Albu’s fascinating presentation on neuroscience and art. This inspired me to take a deeper dive into this artists’ work.

I really enjoyed Cristina Albu's lecture last week on art related to neural networks and their behavior. As a communication major, I was particularly interested on her discussion of Richard Lowenberg's 1976 work The Secret Life of Plants. I decided to look into this work further, and the rest of Lowenberg's work on interspecies communication. (I had actually touched upon this topic briefly in a previous blog post, so I was pretty excited she talked about this and I can write a post about it!)

This week our class had the pleasure of meeting Professor Christina Albu as our guest lecturer and had the opportunity to listen to her presentation on “Vibratory Fields: Artists as Neural Orchestrators, Cartographers, and Translators.” Professor Albu’s lecture discussed various types of artists and exhibits that used brain imagery and data to create art.

I thoroughly enjoyed Cristina Albu’s presentation last Wednesday. I learned about how neuroscience, art, and meditation are connected. For this week’s blog, I decided to talk about Telepathy, the concept of mind-mind communication. I have been fascinated by this concept from the time I learned about it.