Thought Patterns by Monica Aissa Martinez
I went to see a fascinating art exhibit at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. I actually heard about this exhibit on the PBS Newshour earlier last month and I wanted to see it before it leaves on January 19th. The full title of the exhibit is "Brains & Beauty: At the Intersection of Art and Neuroscience".
Red Mask by Rufino Tamayo
The exhibit used a series of artworks to emphasize how different things about a piece activates the aesthetic triad referring to sensory-motor, emotion-valuation and knowledge-meaning neural systems. In the painting above our visual cortex takes in the color. Our eyes can detect more than 10 million colors. The color red is especially effective in stimulating our brains in different ways.
There were two places in the show where the viewer interacts with a piece that contains cameras. The one above is a camera that distorts what it is seeing into fragmented pieces but I could still make out me, taking a photo of me. The other piece used two cameras on each side of a person showing a split screen version of me from angles that I cannot see in a normal mirror.
It was a fascinating exhibit that gave me lots and lots to think about. I love viewing art and I think this exhibit might enhance the way I look at different pieces of art. I might end up staring at different pieces even longer than I do now.