This week we have our last guest speaker Elsa Limbach who has brought us an amazing class on Brian dance. It is one of the guest lectures that I enjoyed the most because Mrs. Limbach has involved us with fun activities and made my body move. When thinking of the importance of the brain we always neglect the part of how the brain is linked with our body and limbs, because the brain is always considered spiritual yet the other parts of the body are considered physical. However, I think Elsa has brought everything together, and I did realize that brain dance not only made my body relaxed but also a break for my brain from the intense schoolwork of the day.
We started with some simple movements, from the arms to the legs. The music was rhythmically energetic, which I think also helped with our dance a lot too. Our gestures are not like conventional dances. The movement I like the most is Elsa told us to use our fingertips to tickle our neck and arms and feel it with relaxation. I think when feeling the fingers, the touching of the fingers made on my skin makes me feel itchy yet relaxing, and it was a magical feeling to me.
Elsa also teaches us how to create our own brain dances, and by categorizing the movements in “flow” and “weights”, and all the subcategories such as space and time, direct and indirect, we are able to develop tons of gestures each with different feelings or moods. Our group created our gestures based on a body exercise that we used to do in China when we were young. It is called the pupils’ broadcast exercises. Since it is designed to invigorate students in the morning, our gestures are considered heaving in “weight” and bounded in “flow”.
This week’s guest speaker Dr. Alice Powers gave us a talk on turtles. I was first confused about why the human brain is related to the turtles because in my impressions turtles are considered slow and lower intelligence. However, later on, I learned that they are actually smart, and according to Dr. Powers through learning about the brains of the turtles we humans can take a glance at how our brain has evolved over time. Turtles are amphibians and they are the divergent state between reptiles and mammals during the evolution process, so it is valuable to study their brain and how it differs from the human brain.
According to Dr. Powers, the turtles that were studied and experimented with are painted turtles. They are one of the most common species, and we also have them in Roth pond. They have cheeks with funny looks and patterns. Painted turtles also have really good visions, yet their hearings and smelling abilities are highly limited. I remember that in class we watched the video of the turtle doing the experiment of lighting up the horizontal stripes. Since the turtles like beef baby foods, they are rewarded by pressing the light that makes horizontal stripes. This experiment not only proved the good eyesight of the painted turtles but also that they have the learning abilities and brain functions.
Then Dr. Powers brought up the process of neurogenesis, which means the process of neurons is produced in the brain. Through studying the brain of the turtles, Dr. Powers concluded that the process of adult neurogenesis has probably involved plasticity since before the advent of mammals. To me, this is fascinating because knowing how different are human species are differs from the turtles and our brain has endured such a long period of evolvement, and we still shares similarity with our “ancestors of evolution.”
This week’s guest speaker is John Pollock. He gives a lecture on Sleep and how it has evolved over time along with neurology. Dr. Pollock according to his bio is emphasizing his research on a health base, and sleep is a big part of health. Through researching his background, I also interestingly found he won EMMY Awards for broadcasting a health channel for children.
Dr. Pollock started his presentation by showing how human beings’ sleep has evolved over time. In the time of human beings living in the caves and hunting for food, people actually sleep more like animals that takes naps whenever is needed because sometimes we still needed to hunt during the night. There were murals on the cave walls that were discovered by the historians that prove it. And then everything changed after the invention of the light bulb—a hallmark of alternating human sleep routines. Also, today’s society is more complex compared to the past, and there are many other factors that affect the sleeping quality of humans.
It reminded me of my mother saying when she was young, she lived in underdeveloped villages without electricity and lightbulbs. She could only use kerosene lamps, but still expensive to afford. Therefore, they usually sleep quickly after the sunset. The old saying “work as sunrise and rest as a sunset” symbolized the farming culture and the lifestyle that old Chinese people have. However, compared to my mother, I have a more messed-up routine. I am more productive during the night so I like to stay up late — thanks to the invention of the lightbulb. Since I want to look more at the surrealist side of sleep, I want to look more into the fact that how people’s sleeping patterns are changing over time.
Ancient Chinese Painting on the Farming Culture in mid-plains area
My final project continues the photo series that is composed of images from the real world like my other three previous projects. This time, I want to examine the more recent social events, and appropriate different images from the news, propaganda, and historical records. I also put myself into others’ perspectives, specifically people who are in a different group yet also living in our fucked-up world. I imagined myself as Mr.P in Oliver Sacks’ book, and autism, and schizophrenia. These are three conditions that have left me with the most impressions. Incorporating what I have learned, and how I have experienced past living years, I re-designed images that are familiar and in my memories. However, I surprisingly found another fun world to explore where things become simpler and purer. Also, I get the artistic inspiration from the Chinese artist Wang Guangyi, who used the familiar imagery of propaganda from the Great Revolution to address on the political excess and the left out imageries. I used this concept of imagery appropriation, which is also from the sources that are easily accessible and imported into the collective memory of people of today’s time.
Image 1:
“I can’t recognize the face of those politicians. They repeat the same words every day and everywhere, and make the same promises that they will never fulfill. What has made this world beautiful are the tulips, not them.”
I selected two screenshots from the news, with the famous politicians that I am familiar with. They are Mao, Xi, Trump, and Biden. To me politics are noisy, and it tears the society apart. After immigrating to the US I found that politics here are also excessive, just in a different way. In China, the two leaders are similar in an extreme way; In US, the two presidents are different in an extreme way, too. Their faces are everywhere on social media and in public spaces. However, remembering Dr.P’s syndrome, I found it is way easier to deal with excessive politics by just not recognizing faces.
My third project evaluates how dreams have an effect on human beings and the realm of surrealism is mirroring the real world that we live in outside of sleep. Surrealism has always been my field of interest, and the Belgium surrealist artist Rene Magritte has been my favorite of all time. I want to dive into Rene’s concept of representations of images and dreams surrogating the physical world, and how that has reflected our psychological conditions. In my series of works, I have used representations of Rene Magritte’s famous works, Son of Man, and Golconda as tribute. I also used his idea of reflections from the mirror implying the paralleling self that is active while my physical body is sleeping. I want to romanticize the process of our brain activity with real experiences, stories, and memories that have happened in the real world.
I remember in an old Chinese saying, that what’s on your mind during the day goes into your dream at night, and people give dreams all sort of spiritual intepretations. However, a scientific way of explaining the dream is boring.
The least glamorous explanation for any dream is that it serves as a sort of data dump — a clearing of the day’s useless memories and a caching of the valuable ones. Researchers had long suspected that that process, if it exists, plays out between the hippocampus — which controls memory — and the neocortex, which governs higher order thought.
I like the romantic way of explaining dream, which are also widely shown in Surrealism. I remember when I was young and if I dream of something bad, my grandparents will confort me by saying that dreams are always opposite to what happens next. However, as I grow up, that romanticism slipped away, and always, they are just determined by the reality.
I Kept Digging, Digital MediaRene Magritte, 1953, Golconda.Quarantine on the Moona section of Son of Man, by Rene MagritteIn the Dream of A College Student
Dr. Maffei is a professional in neurology with a concentration in the in inhibitory neural transmissions and how it would effect, change, and shape our behaviors. “The taste in our Brian” is our topic for the day, and Dr. Maffei’s lecture on the inhibitory neurons has given me some insights on my daily behaviors, and caused me to think in another way of my obsession to sweets and sugar.
First we talked about the mechanism of the sensory process from our mouths to the brain, that when the substance fall into our tastebuds on our tongue, neural transmitters are released through the neurons to the brain, and then our brain would interpret the taste as sweet, sour, bitter, salty etc. With sweet taste, dopamine will then be activated and travel to our cortex, and thus we gain pleasures. Such pattern is very similar to the pleasure mechanics of drug using. Notably, according to Dr. Maffei, the maturation of inhibitory synapses and the association of PV neurons modulate the duration of the sensitive window for the development of sweet preference. Which means, I was not born with my sweet preference, but more like trained to be a sweet-lover. And the way I am consuming sweet is far exceeding my need, and I am just trying to acquire pleasure through eating a lot of candies. The source of such pattern can be traced far back when I was still a child. I dislike the congee my grandmother made me, and she would then put a big spoon of sugar in it so that I would eat the food properly. Looking back at that, it really caused me some problem nowadays. I never drink plain water which has no flavor, and I drink beverages on daily basis whenever I feel thirsty.
I think it is important for us to understand our brain, in order to look at behaviors in scientific and objective ways. Before learning this lesson, I once thought my preference to sweet is just as same as other people’s preference in salt or spice, but now I understand that my preference is probably shaped since I was very young. Therefore, if now I add that big spoon into my congee, I should have a second thought.
My second project want to continue on the old photograph series in the first project, but this time is based on the stories about the perceptive abilities of our family.A person with a sounded sensational ability are usually hard to understand the other person’s inability of sense, even they are family. We shared the same memory and sadness, yet we don’t feel, and do not understand each others feelings. We are so different that we are not able to perceive through each others brain, and sensational receptors; and that is why misunderstands and prejudice had occurred. My project evaluates the question: what does it mean by having these disease as a human being? What kind of side effects might that condition brings besides physical sufferings.
Story1:
My fathers’ younger sister, my aunt was diagnosed schizophrenia when she was still a young girl. She used to have hallucinations, and couldn’t help herself from hurting the people around, even during my mom was pregnant. My mother’s resentment to her was insoluble, the family was ashamed because having a “psychopath” in family is very humiliating back in the days. Several years after not seeing my aunt, I tragically was told that she committed suicide during one of her onset, it again became a more unspeakable family taboo. I have no access to her photographs because they were all locked up so that my grandparent will not be heartbreaking while looking at them. But I know my aunt was just having a brain illness which just like many others physical illness a person can have.
My brother had a corneal transplantation surgery three years ago. He was diagnosed with keratoconus, a rare disease that can completely blind the patient’s eyes. My whole family drooped into a deep melancholy, because at the time the organ resources were scarce in the hospitals in China. Finally through friends and connections, my brother finally got two pieces of corneal from a young donor(as heard). From the moment my brother has regained his sight, things changed. He became more sensitive, which I mean mentally, about his eyesight. He will always depressed if he sense a small change in his eyesight. This thing also changed my mind. I became a donor as I register my new license at DMV. I understand that we should not take our perceptive abilities for granted, as how our family has treated our aunt or me to myself.
Since I was very little, I was constantly bothered with otitis media, which is a inflammation in the middle ear. It caused me a lot of pain, and I wished that one day I can replace my ear with a metal ear so that it won’t be painful anymore. The disease also caused constant hearing loss, and tinnitus with low-pitched drumming sound, or high-pitched beeping sound. Having otitis media is like having thousands of ants crawling and biting in the ears, and bugs humming inside your head. After curing from otitis media, my ears are still irritated, yet I seemed get used to such hearing defects which I do not know is caused by psychological or physiological reasons.
The lecture given by our guest speaker Dr. Leung last Tuesday is about the visual perspectives and cognition. Visual as a large part of arts and designs, it is no doubt important for us as visual artists to learn about. It also correspond with some of the information that I searched for my “Something Neuron” Project, about visual tricks when the miscommunication happens between optical cells and the brain.
Dr. Leung started the lecture with talking about the mechanical functioning of the optical cells, or the neurons called photoreceptors, are stimulated by light and then send the electric signals through the optic nerve and then into the brain. The visual signals, then is transmitted to a certain area inside the brain, just like how memory functions, it will then be stored in that certain area. What interest me is the part of the visual illusion. How I understand that part is that, many of the times, our brain have a superior power over the eyes. She also mentioned the famous image of the blue and black dress that has been circulating on the internet and caused netizens argued back and forth, which I also haven seen years before. It is also a common visual effect that is generated by our brain, which is called color constancy. It is when you perceive an object will unknown light source, your brain will interpret the color remains constant with its original color no matter what color it is appearing with. But when you extract the color solely out from the context, surprisingly the color you actually see is unexpected. Therefore, brain do play a large role in color perceptions.
“judgment is the most important faculty we have. An animal, or a man, may get on very well without ‘abstract attitude’ but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first faculty of higher life or mind—yet it is ignored, or misinterpreted, by classical (computational) neurology. And if we wonder how such an absurdity can arise, we find it in the assumptions, or the evolution, of neurology itself.” —- Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
In the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks narrated several fun little stories about his patient who suffers in different and strange mental deficiencies. There are 24 of them, including the the patient Ray with Tourette’s Syndrome, or the face blindness with Dr.P, or Mrs. S who can’t understand the concept of left. I think inclusiveness and understanding is the most valuable thing that I get from this book, besides these funny little story that has made me laugh and feeling warmed.
The most inspiring section of the book is how Sacks has discussed about the medical bias and preference in studying the left brain, and right brain are always recognized as primitive and not as important as the left brain which has the control over logic, reasoning, and sensations. However, Oliver has challenged such saying through the case of Dr. P. Human beings do not just simply translate their vision into informations through the logical left brain, but many times such translation is highly personalized with abstracted temperament, which relies on the right brain, too. That reminded me of myself. As an artist, or a person like to perceive and intuitive, I always remember people through intuitions and associations. I just met a friend today in the bathroom who I only met once in a gallery event. Since we were all wearing mask, I was recognize her immediately, but she recognized me and talked with me. After talking, I suddenly recalled all her information— her name, her ancestry, her major. She looked much like a stranger to me, but I still could recognize her through my feeling about her while having a conversation.
But still, even for me after reading these stories, it is still hard for me to fully understand their circumstance, because not like our feelings, people’s sensational ability are hard to empathize with. For example, I can feel others feeling, but I can never resonance to ones’hallucination because I can’t perceive through a different brain. That has caused people’s prejudice toward the patients having mental illness. In Oliver Sacks book we see how these people are finding a way out to live their life. For Sacks himself, helping his patients to cope with their brain is more important than curing them, when curing is scarcely possible. For us, we should be mindful of taking our perceptive abilities for granted, and take more compassionate care for these groups.
When I was little, I have heard of stories been told by my mother and grandmother about me, themselves, and their parents. I still remember some of them, and else I have forgot. Some of the stories were being told again and again, and with the languages I create a image inside my mind and that image sometimes become too real to forget. Even I have never really seen those people, or places, I have created them as scenes and images and stored them inside my brain. They twisted my memories, but I am not mad, because they made my childhood more vivid, and those imaginations to me was precious. When these semi-false memory segments flashes into my mind, and I want to create an image series to really visualize the stories. I can’t even tell if they really happened, or were stories being told by the grownups, or even the stories that I have made up in my mind and now assumes they are told by the others. I will try to search for these fragments, and make a drawing of collages from different sources, such as the old photographs, images online, or even my own drawings.
Project Images
Image 1:
My Grandfather in the 60s
I haven’t seen my grandfather for a long while. He lives in the rural hometown whereas I lived in Shenzhen at the age of six years old, the great city in the southern part of China. My grandmother visited my family, and told me stories about my grandfather. Both my mother and my grandmother had told me the story about the era of People’s Commune. However, that social system clearly failed because my mother and her siblings were almost starving to death. With no other choice, my grandfather woke up 3 in the morning to steal the sweet potatoes from the farmland, which were illegal because all land was owned by the the People’s Commune at the time. Suddenly I created such imagery of my grandfather in mind: an old man in gray Mao suit and trousers with a flat cap. He(or his image that I imagined) looked so familiar to me at the time, and I realized he looked like Van Gogh to me, who was the only artist I knew at that age. So that self-portrait image of Van Gogh become image source of the “first-impression” of me imagining my grandfather. It is confusing, and I am also confused by this. If I did not repeat this story to my grandfather few years after I met him, and finally remember what he really looked like, I would still recognize that imagery as a real impression of my grandfather. However, at the present moment, I could not even remember what that image looked like when I was six, or if the image that is inside my 23 years-old brain is also twisted by the later on impression of my grandfather’s appearance. All I that I can do right now is to credit this image as the first impression of seeing my grandfather.
My Grandfather in the 60s digital media “Long live the proletariat! Long live the Cultural Revolution!”
Image 2:
Me at the Tiananmen Square Massacre 1982
In the summer of 1982, my mother was still a college student studying in Zhengzhou University. When she knew she gets a free train ticket to go to Being in order to join the student movement at Tiananmen, she was excited by the idea of student activism. She when to Beijing, and witnessed the students protest in front of the Tiananmen Square. What she never knew is that few days after her return to Zhengzhou, the activist protesters, primarily composed by college students and teachers, were brutally shut down by the government. This happened before I was born, even before the time when my mother had met my father. Surprisingly, this memory is totally erased in my generation. I had no access to what happened in that summer, expect the story that was told by my mother repeatedly in the 4th days of June every year. My visual imagery selection is from the Army Day emblem (the day of celebrating the People’s Liberation Army.) But on June 4th 1982, the Army fired the weapons toward the people. I always have this image inside my mind, which I don’t want to let it go.
“Me” at the Tiananmen Square Massacre 1982
Image 3:
Grandpa Deng 2004
Anyone who enters the Shenzhen city will see this gigantic mural of Xiaoping Deng, the second Chairmen of People’s Republic of China. He is also the father of Shenzhen because it was his decision to open free market there. Shenzhen now has grown into a metropolitan city and has provided millions of Chinese chances and opportunities; my parent were one of them. My parent were born in rural villages, but after they went to the universities, they decided to pursue their dreams in Shenzhen, which they did. I remember every time sitting in my fathers car and passing by his mural, his smile to me is always kind and amiable. I also liked to fly kite at the park nearby. Shenzhen to me is my hometown, I had lovely childhood experiences there, and I was happy. If it were not Xiaoping Deng, China would still be very under developed, and I will never have the opportunities as I get at this moment. I appreciated his contribution indeed, and in schools we used to call him dearly as “Grandpa Deng.” But as I grown up, I realized that it was also Deng has commanded for the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Therefore, I made this image to juxtapose my feeling toward this leader, and visualizing my childhood memories.
Grandpa Deng 2004 Digital media “Follow the path of the communist party forever and ever.”
