Neuroaesthetics

I’ve just discovered the site artbrain.org courtesy of Morgan Meis at 3 Quarks Daily. There’s a lot of stuff there, including the Chaoid Gallery and the Journal of Neuroaesthetics.

Here’s the final section (5) from an article in the journal, Lev Manovich, From the Externalization of the Psyche to the Implantation of Technology (Cinema and the Brain 2000-02):

I have traced different ways in which the mind was externalized in the last century and a half. Abstract ideas and the process of condensation were equated with composite photographs (Galton and Freud respectively); mental functions such as attention and memory — with cinematic devices of close-up and cut-back (Münsterberg); the process of thinking – with montage (Eisenstein). More recently, Lanier and Friedhoff similarly have linked mental processes with VR and scientific visualization techniques (and Benzon). And finally, cognitive scientists have described mental processes and functions in terms of operations only possible with computer imaging systems.

The overall trajectory which I followed is from the inside to the outside, from the private and inaccessible mental states to the public, external, technologically generated visual forms or the latest imaging technologies themselves. One can even say that to a large extent it is this very desire to objectify the psyche which gave birth to modern imaging technologies such as photography, cinema and VR. Indeed, is not the whole idea of photography to objectify private memories and private mental images?

This trajectory still continues. In fact, the advances in electronics, computers and neuroscience now allow us to externalize mental process in real-time. One example of this which I mentioned is medical imagining of brain activity. Another is the recent work to control computers by thinking commands. The 1993 issue of a computer journal reports: NTT Researchers in Japan have created methods to use brainwaves to determine which direction a person will move a joystick; University of Illinois psychologists developed a system that types when words are spelled out mentally; and the New York State Health Dept. devised a system that lets users take a cursor up-and-down or side-to-side by visualizing the moves. However, the same technological advances (as well as work in nanotechnology and neural networks) also make it possible to take the next step: to go from the outside to inside, to internalize external technologies by putting the machines back into the brain. We are now witnessing the birth of neurotechnology: complete computers the size of neurons which can be implanted under the scull or tiny neural network circuits which can be merged with real neural networks.

We may only guess how far such research has already advanced in military labs (is it possible that much science fiction in this century is not about the future but simply an accurate description of contemporary military research?). For now, futuristic movies provide us with the best examples of how such implants could function. Two such movies are Hollywood’s Terminator 2 and Robocop. In both films the main character’s vision is enhanced by a sophisticated computer imaging circuitry. The circuitry functions as combination of a video camera and a robotic vision system. It allows both heroes to zoom on the objects, to see in the dark, to record and to play back what they see, to bring up stored images which can be compared with what they presently see and so on.

We used to dream of flying carpets and magic castles; now we dream of tiny video recorders implanted in our retinas and computer RAM inside our sculls supplementing our own short-term memory. In short, we dream of becoming neuro-cyborgs.

We used to flock to movie houses where our mental mechanisms were projected on a huge screen. Soon each of us will be able to put back this screen inside her or his head.

Carriage return. End of file.