When Yas Crawford began to feel the effects of her chronic illness, she said that she felt like she was at war both physically and mentally. “When you are sick for a long time, your body will take over,” she said. “Your brain wants to do one thing, and your body does another thing.”
Crawford suffers from myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. She said that her illness made her meditate on inner feelings, that is, the perception of the internal state of the body. People with this disease, especially those who have suffered for a long time, report that they have a higher awareness of the inner workings of their bodies-such as their heartbeat and body temperature.
We usually think of five senses-sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste-we also have a sense of balance and body posture. But the inner feeling can be called the “eighth sense”, Crawford believes that he has a background in geology and microbiology and a master’s degree in photography. This title inspired her to make an artwork of the same name. Cognition nine, A picture in the series that recently won 2021 Neuroscience Art Competition Depend on Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience.
Now in its 11th year, the art of neuroscience shows the intersection of art and neuroscience through multimedia. Static images include works recognized early in the competition, but recent submissions include videos, sculptures and even interactive online poems.
Cognition Nine A black and white seascape image that approximates the shape of a brain shows Crawford’s experience in film photography and digital editing. From the rough area where the brainstem meets the thalamus—the structure that transmits sensory signals to the cerebral cortex—the individual fibrils seem to explode outward. The image is ordered and disordered in equal parts: the fibers entangle with each other on the outside of the bean-like shape and shoot out almost in parallel near the center.
Crawford said her art is designed for those who resist the chronic diseases they define. The interweaving of a person’s inner and outer life is the theme of her works.
The honor award of the competition represents a variety of formats and media: sculptures, mini documentaries, surveying and mapping installations and scoring videos.
sculpture Change heart (변심)Recently, Davidson College graduate Adrienne Lee used metal and paper to solve the subject of neurodegeneration. Purkinje cells are special neurons that play a role in coordination, learning, and movement. Li wrote in her artist statement that degenerative diseases “similar to betraying the beauty of life experience accumulated by oneself.” The metal products that form the dendrites of Purkinje cells are fused with Hangul letters to pay homage to Lee’s personal history.Her studio art degree and neuroscience minor also inform her other work, including Steel brain sculpture Large enough to surround the viewer’s head.
Another commendable work is Brainwave plan, Author: Chen Qi, a lecturer at Wuhan Textile University, explored the artist’s project, which is to stimulate the brains of people in the lowest state of consciousness and convey the results to their families through artworks. She created a device that can convert brain waves into images and allow onlookers to access and meaningfully read otherwise boring readings. Chen integrated her process of designing and testing equipment in a five-minute documentary, calling it the integration of “functional art and art therapy”.
Independent artist Lu Guihan’s creation Self-evolution, A device that projects images recorded from brainwave kits and slowly turns them into a recognizable form of expression for the audience to interact with dramas and self-portraits.She said she was inspired by the 16th-century Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius, who created the modern atlas, which he named World theater. Lu’s project, Self-evolution, Was awarded an honorary award and transformed the inner workings of the brain into immersive videos and performances-an observable spectacle.
Sarshar Dorosti, affiliated with the Tehran University of Arts in Iran, created a section titled Fractal brainA fractal is a mathematical figure whose pattern repeats on smaller scales—in other words, it is a never-ending pattern. Fractal geometry can be seen everywhere in nature, in objects such as fern leaves and Roman style stigmas. Fractal brain Shows stills and animations of fractals covered with weird metallic hum. In February, Dorosti was the first author of a preprint study that investigated The brain’s response to fractal animation.