Art & the New Biology of Mind

If you are in New York and can make you may be interested in attending this - it sound fantastic. I wish I could go:

Columbia Forum on Art & the New Biology of Mind

THE ITALIAN ACADEMY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
presents:

Columbia Forum on Art & the New Biology of Mind

FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2006
9:30am-6pm

New York, NY - February 15, 2006 - The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University is proud to announce the first Columbia Forum on Art and the New Biology of Mind which will be held in the Academy's Teatro on March 24, 2006. This forum will be the first major gathering of neuroscientists, philosophers, art historians, and artists with the specific purpose of establishing the foundations for understanding the potential of the relationship between the visual arts and the neurosciences.

Speakers will include the leading experts in the neurosciences from around the world: Antonio Damasio, Vittorio Gallese, Raymond Dolan, Margaret Livingstone, Joseph LeDoux, V.S. Ramachandran, and Semir Zeki. The forum will be led by the Italian Academy's Director, art historian David Freedberg, along with Nobel Laureates Eric Kandel and Richard Axel. A panel of distinguished artists, including Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson, George Condo, Robert Irwin, Neil Jenney, Richard Meier, Joan Snyder, David Salle, Philip Taaffe, and Terry Winters with the participation of Arthur Danto will respond.

Recent studies of the brain have begun to make an enormous difference to our understanding of art. Neuroscientists have made a number of remarkable discoveries about vision, recognition of faces, places and
bodies, emotional responses, memory, and a whole variety of sensual responses to the world around us, including to works of art. The scientists who will participate in the Academy's March 24 forum have done important, original work on subjects ranging from the emotional brain to mirror neurons, empathetic responses, the study of vision,
luminance, and color, synesthesia, and scanning techniques. The forum promises to be a landmark event in which an assessment will be made, in the most rigorous way possible, of the prospect for a newly-enriched understanding of our complex relations to visual art.

The Louise T. Blouin Foundation is a co-sponsor of the forum, as is the Columbia Center for Neurobiology and Behavior. The Italian Academy's Teatro in Casa Italiana is located at 1161 Amsterdam Avenue between 116th and 118th Streets. All seats for the forum must be reserved by contacting Rickhitaker via email at rw2115@columbia.edu.