Conference on Neuroaesthetics at Goldsmiths

For Immediate Release:

NEUROAESTHETICS

Organized by Warren Neidich, ACE-AHRB Fellow, Goldsmiths College with assistance from Charlie Gere, Institute for Cultural Research, Lancaster University.

IAN GULLAND LECTURE THEATRE, GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY MAY 20 AND 21ST FROM 9:30 am-7:00 pm daily

Art is increasingly bound up with knowledge production and information distribution. As of this trend, artists have begun to investigate the brain and Neuroaesthetics is a means by which they are accomplishing it.
Neuroaesthetics is a dynamic process through which the questions of neuroscience are made “ready-mades”. Concepts such as sensation, perception, memory and recently networks, plasticity and sampling operate within philosophical, cultural, sociological, psychological,historical and economic milieus and are concurrently inciting artistic experimentation.
Neuroaesthetics describes new conditions for the production of a new population of objects, object relations and non-objects which in the end can be differentially sampled by the plastic brain providing a means by which culture may play a role in sculpting neural networks. As such the importance of art in the larger bio-political contexts should not be over looked.

Goldsmiths College and the Arts Council of England have assembled a distinguished group of artists, curators, scientists and philosophers to explore the following topics: 1. How curators explore notions of the Neuro-Sensorial-Cognitive. 2. How new optical technologies create altered subjectivity. 3. The meaning of the term “The Cultured Brain”. 4. The brain as the new site of bio-political interactions. 5. How drugs and altered states of consciousness influenced Minimalism and Post-Minimalism.
6. How notions of Brain influence Architectural forms and processes 7. Art praxis and artist Interventions in the late twentieth Century.

Speakers will include: John Armleder, artist, Geneva; Armen Avansien, Researcher, Freie University Berlin; Paul Bach-y-Rita M.D, Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Lionel Bovier, Publisher, JRP Ringier, Zurich; Jules Davidoff, Professor, Goldsmiths College; Diedrich Diederichsen, Contributor, Texte zur Kunst; Olafur Eliasson, Artist, Berlin; Kodwo Eshun, Lecturer, Goldsmiths College London; Margarita Gluzberg artist, London; John Gruzelier, Professor, School of Medicine, Imperial College London; Deborah Hauptmann, Associate Professor, Technical University Delft, Holland; Joseph Kosuth, Artist, New York/Rome; Scott Lash, Director, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College; Bo Lotto, Lecturer, University College London; Brian Massumi, Professor, University de Montreal Montreal; Johannes Menzel, Senior Publishing Editor Neuroscience, Elsevier Press; Paul Miller a.k.a. D.J. Spooky, Artist, New York City; Isabelle Moffat, Independent Critic, London; Marcos Novak, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara; John Onians, Director of the World Art, University of East Anglia; Andrew Patrizio, Professor, Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh; Philippe Rahm, Architect, Principal Decosterd & Rahm Associates, Lauzanne; Andreas Roepstorff, Professor, University of Aarhus, Denmark; Israel Rosenfeld, Professor, City University of New York, New York City; Barbara Maria Stafford, Professor, University of Chicago, Chicago; Lucy Steeds, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College; Chloe Vaitsou, Independent Curator, Low Fi Collective London; Martina Wicklein, Research Fellow, Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London; Charles Wolfe, Boston University and Co-editor Multitudes, Paris.

To register please contact Theresa Mikuria, conference administrator at [email protected].. Information can also be found at www.goldsmiths.ac.uk or www.artbrain.org. Registration fee:25 .