Neuroaesthetics Symposium

The Symposium entitled “Neuroaesthetics” will take place at the ZKM | Karlsruhe from the 22nd to the 24th of November as part of the collaborative project between the ZKM and the Akademie Schloss Solitude, which was initiated by the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg in 2007. The symposium, which was designed together with the non-profit Hertie Foundation, focuses on the subject of creativity and innovation and seeks to establish a connection between current developments in neuro-science and art.

Today, with the rapid development and interconnection of innovative media, technical media as an extension of human sense organs establish a new kind of networking between various sense organs. What influences are exerted on creativity and, more especially, on art by these new chains of associations? What is the relationship between art and science?

The symposium focuses on the question as to the influence of culture on brain activity and the function this has in science and art. The concept of neuroplasticity is thematized, and is a central issue of the symposium: whereas in classical synesthesia one sense organ partly takes over another, the new technical media alter the relationship of sense organs to each other.

Expanding knowledge in the neurosciences about the working methods of the brain, and thus on the processing of sensory data, demands an understanding of artistic judgment and the processes of origination involved in creativity. Thus, the concept of neuroaesthetics comprises creative processes as an expression of brain functions and, on a neurobiological basis, attempts to understand aesthetic experiences.

As the synaesthetic program at the turn of the twentieth century (from Scriabin to Kandinsky) of abstract painting and the 1920s and 1930s avant-garde film opened the new chapter of “Seeing Sound”, the symposium, which forms part of the IMATRONIC extended | Festival for Electronic Music, will also focus on the processing of music.

Unlike any other process, the most diverse areas of the brain are involved in the processing of musical information. The active interpretation of stimuli, the identification of melodies and chords, and neurological research on emotions in their connection to music, are only a few of the aspects covered by the symposium. Through its collaboration with the Hertie Foundation, the largest sponsor of neuroscience in Germany, the ZKM seeks to open new paths for art and sciences: art offers access to new inspiration in the field of the neurosciences, and these, in turn, offer the possibility of articulating results both socially and artistically.

Symposium speakers include: Joan Y.Chiao, Shihui Han, Shinobu Kitayama, Peter König, Fiona Newell, Georg Northoff, Shinsuke Shimojo, Julia Simner, Peter Weiss-Blankenhorn, Olaf Breidbach, Thomas Grunwald, Alva Noë, Patricia Pisters, Helga Griffiths, Arijana Kajfes, Warren Neidich, Reto Schölly, Eckart Altenmüller, Udo Dahmen, Israel Nelken, Benjamin Staude and Tim Otto Roth.

Collaboration partner: Non-profit Hertie Foundation

The first part of sponsoring innovation and research on creativity in the arts was the “Molecular Aesthetics” symposium (July 2011), which, like “Neuroaesthetics” also aimed to initiate an interdisciplinary exchange of approaches and ideas, which could lead to a new definition of aesthetic experience.

See program: http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/stories/storyReader$8185#program