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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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LOL salmon scan nabbed from prefrontal.org
What does it mean when an fMRI scanner reveals activity in the brain of a dead fish?
A: dead fish can still think about thingsCraig Bennett, the guy who put the dead salmon in the scanner, would say B, would definitely not say A, and probably would not say C. (update:Craig Bennett has clarified his stance in the comment section : he would say no to 'A', yes to 'B', and always to 'C'. - thanks Craig!)
B: time to do some more better math
C: time for those of us who aren't neuroscientists to exercise some healthy skepticism when it comes to claims being made in the popular press for non-research-based fMRI applications (eg: lie detection)
* The goal of the Salmon poster was to encourage the minority of researchers who report uncorrected statistics to move forward and begin using basic multiple comparisons correction in their research. The Salmon doesn’t add anything to the technical discussion of how multiple comparisons correction is performed, it is simply a salient reminder of why proper correction is always necessary.I respectfully take his points. But I was already leaning towards C before this salmon data and I'm still kind of going with it.
* None of the authors intended for the Salmon to go public in such a big way, especially before the commentary was reviewed and published. We were actually quite content to publish our editorial in a neuroimaging journal and be done with it. We feel that, fundamentally, this is an internal debate within the field of neuroimaging.
note: almost every story I've seen about this says that some people took the data to prove the existence of the ethereal soul. After a fair amount of searching, I still haven't found any such person.
another note: the best part of this story is that — in order to keep their variables consistent by running exactly the same kind of experiment as they always do — the researchers showed the dead salmon pictures of human people doing things and asked it what emotions it thought the people were feeling.
(thanks to Rob for the tip)
Luke Hart - Walking With Synthetic Being Seven (Peg Leg)
Performance at CAFKA.09
Kate Wilson (assisted by Gareth Lichty) installing her piece for CAFKA.09 in Kitchener, ON. Running until Oct. 4, 2009
Kate is so brave and her hair is so shiny.
Special performance by Ethel and the Mermen with guest Merman C.'Conga' Cesta for the opening of
CONQUEST at Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W., Toronto
Friday Sept. 25, 6 -10pm. Band at 9pm.
We're still discussing Sally's paper on the The Affect of Animated GIFs.
BGL – POSTÉRITÉ/POSTERITY at Parisian Laundry, 3550 St.Antoine Ouest Montréal QC Sept. 26 – Nov. 21, 2009
POSTÉRITÉ/POSTERITY 2009 editioned print
Balint Zsako - Old Master Paintings at KATHARINE MULHERIN CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS 1082 + 1086 Queen Street W., Toronto, ON.
Until Oct.18, 2009 (Interview with Balint Zsako by Marissa Neave)
untitled (drapery gods) collage
untitled (pointing in the forest) collage 5.6 x 4.3 in.
Untitled (lamb) collage 8.5 x 7 in.
Reconstruction images for Going Through the Notions & Reconstructed Futures - The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion
at the Art Gallery of York University.
Luke Painter - Flash Animations
screen shot from Malibu
screen shot from Windsor
screen shot from Babel
(found)
Jason McLean What Goes Up Come Down, 2005, Acrylic ink on hockey gloves, 27.9x17.8x12.7 (each) currently showing as part of Arena:Road Game at MOCCA
"Artforum and e-flux are pleased to announce the launch of the Art & Education Papers archive, a new global platform for sharing and distributing research and knowledge in the field of contemporary art."The Art & Education Papers archive has published an academic-style essay I wrote on the Affect of Animated GIFs, featuring work by Tom Moody, Petra Cortright and Lorna Mills. Check it out here.
Arena: Road Game at MOCCA 952 Queen Street West, Toronto, until November 1, 2009
with Roderick Buchanan, James Carl, Scott Conarroe, Michael Davey, Thierry Delva, Greg Forrest, Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, Wanda Koop, Tim Lee, Craig Le Blanc, Jason McLean, Leah Modigliani, Charles Pachter, Graeme Patterson, Ron Terada, Diana Thorneycroft, and Colleen Wolstenholme
Chris Hanson + Hendrika Sonnenberg Zamboni, 2005 Polystyrene Collection of Nyehaus, New York © Chris Hanson + Hendrika Sonnenberg
Michael Davey Gusher and Spin 2008 mixed media with working technical assistance of Alastair Dickson
General Idea The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion re-opening September 15, 6pm to 9pm at the Art Gallery of York University
Accolade East Building, 4700 Keele Street Toronto. Until Dec. 6, 2009
General Idea Reconstructing Futures 1977. Courtesy: General Idea
General Idea, installation views of Going Thru the Notions at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery, October 18 - November 6, 1975 Photo: Henk Visser. Courtesy: Carmen Lamanna Estate
it's too late...
Sunday Devotional: Sparks
This Town Ain't Big Enough for The Both of Us
Dick Around
From the movie 'Roller Coaster'
(posted by VB via SM).
Kristan Horton: Orbits, Sept. 12 - Oct. 10, 2009 at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, 1450 Dundas Street W., Toronto
Orbit: Red Plate Tokyo and Orbit: Styrene 2009 44 " x 57.3 ", colour print
Orbit: Disposible Gloves and Orbit: Doorknob 2009 44 " x 57.3 ", colour print
Orbit: Dark Center and Orbit: Zen 2009 44 " x 57.3 ", colour print
Ed Pien at the Tree Museum, Gravenhurst, Ontario
Psycho 2009 one of 12 polished metal disks, 2.5 feet in diameter
Tempest 2009
False 2009
Heidi Schaefer - elevation at Stantec Window Gallery, Spadina Ave and Wellington St., Toronto until September 20, 2009
Notes on making value judgements and empiricism vs universality...
I'm reading neuroscientist Semir Zeki's new book, Splendours and Miseries of the Brain (2009). Zeki is the guy who basically founded neuroaesthetics with his influential 1999 book, Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. I'm digging the new one more. He's been engaging seriously with artists and art historians over the past ten yeras and he's refined his theory in a good direction.
As I mentioned in a recent post, one of the problems with neuroaesthetics is the tendency for people to focus too much on the autonomic systems. It makes sense, because the unconscious processes are the ones that can be isolated and studied with the technologies (fMRI and monkey experiments) available to neuroscience. Most neuroscientists make it very clear that their experimental findings do not address the whole picture of human consciousness. But some art folk, like historian John Onians, have been taking up this focus on unconscious brain activity with unbridled enthusiasm and layering it with dubious meanings.
read more...
Dyan Marie 2009 Billboard installation at the tree museum, Gravenhurst, Ontario
Attached to the choo-choo train of history the angelic aspect of Pollock's use of line was, for Clem, registered in the flight it could take, the statement it could make against the realm of matter and substance, and thus the sublimation it could perform.I have been reading Rosalind Krauss' The Optical Unconscious (1993) and enjoying it very much. The above quote (from pg.290) made me laugh. Choo-choo train of history? Ouch! The way she argues with Clement Greenberg is highly charged. She's mean, and I suspect that was one way of getting through to the man, speaking his language. Of course, her arguments are not really addressed to Greenberg. Her goal isn't to convince him (she's not delusional), nor even, ultimately, to taunt him, but to assert her own paradigm for assessing works of modern art. Not only does she dissemble his theoretical positions with cogent argument, but she does so on his rhetorical terms. If one can talk of "owning" when it comes to shared cultural ideas, Greenberg is widely understood to "own" high modernism. But Krauss would beg to differ. Modernism isn't Greenberg, it's an historical era and Krauss has her own compelling version of events.
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eeek! A leopard.
Brain Science is everywhere these days. If you're interested, you can study neurocomputing, neuromarketing, neuroeconomics, neuromusicology, neuroaesthetics (which is what I'm studying) and more.
As I complained recently to Joester, its getting a little ridiculous with all the neuro-this and neuro-that, as if everything we've ever produced as a species wasn't influenced by our brains. That prompted Joester to coin a useful new term: neurobrains. Joester didn't define his term, but I'm going to take a stab at it. Neurobrains refers to the state of the human brain in a heightened mode of disassociation. It's a cognitive state in which all of the autonomic systems (the ones that regulate physiological activity without us having to think about it) are intentionally and theoretically isolated from thought and intention. Human volition and free will are treated like a pretension — a myth that needs de-bunking — while the autonomic systems are welcomed like long lost Moms and Dads ("tell us what to do!"). Neurobrains is a theoretical and scientific mode of analysis, obviously reliant on higher-order processing and cognition, but, ironically, it devalues higher order processing and cognition in favour of unconscious behaviour.
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Shelly Bahl
International Woman of Mystery October 23 – December 6, 2009 at Bronx River Art Center, NYC
