Curriculum
| ____ "Being understood is so essentially important" (Richard Wagner, 1859) |
| ____ I am interested neither in higher primates, nor in money. I am only interested in perfect maps. THIS MAKES THE DIFFERENCE. |
Oliver Elbs
5.9.1972 According to the birth certificate and (Austrian) ‘parents‘ ‘born‘ (together with a twin sister) in Lucerne (Switzerland); living in Rothenburg (near Lucerne)
1976-79 Regularly (nearly daily) seeing the alps aligned on the horizon from Rothenburg (i.e., from Emmenbrücke Sprengi towards Lucerne ([1]); then moving to Lucerne; here regularly (weekly) seeing big stained glass windows ([2]) in the church of St. Anton (1954 AC, [3]).
12.4.1981 Important experience at Auf Hirtenhof (Lucerne); everything brutal shocks me (e.g., pictures and stories of executions, daily news, etc.), that means: nearly everything (all stupid things happening on this planet) threatens and upsets me... (including cars, car doors, loud noise, chatting, imprecise terms, languages, etc.).
1985-92 Attending the Grammar School of Lucerne (Alpenquai-Tribschen), and Abitur (first prize); teachers: Peter Koch (Geography, Art History), Josef Huber (History), Edgar Stahel (Mathematics).
4.1986 Seeing a photo of the abbey church of Sénanque (in: Décotte, A. / Bruggmann, M. (1983): Provence und Camargue. Zürich, Abb. 27 [4] ) and one of Le Thoronet (in: Tetzlaff, I. (1985): 3000 Jahre Provence. Köln, Farbtafel 19 [5]) in the library at my Grammar school
11.1986 Important hypersensitive acoustic and multisensorial experience on a late evening on the Eisfeldstrasse in Lucerne in November (when the föhn was blowing...): for a few minutes, I am seemingly able to map all (slightest!) shifts occuring on this planet...
4.1988 First lecture on "Evolution" (Darwin, Wilson, Gould...) at Grammar School (teacher: Josef Bucheli, Biology).
1992-94 Studying Physics and Mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (both pre-degrees)
1995-96 Working at a farm and at a benedictine monastery in the Southwest of France
1997-2002 Studying Religious Studies, History of art, and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen, and working at the Print Collection of the Institute for Art History, University of Tübingen
2001 M.A. in Religious Studies and Art History
12.4.1981-2003 Educating my Self by myself (i.e., NOT ONLY by "conspecifics": cf. also EPLEY et al. 2008!) with the ultimate goal of developing a total ("smooth", "hypersensitive") spatio-temporal map (or potential landscape) without any cracks and gaps between maps... (while not only blindly using "my inherited" maps, but also while "self-consciously" trying to map my own maps and "biases" in turn...)
2004 Doctorate (ph. D.) in Art History
2005 Giving a Seminar on “Neuro-Esthetics” at the University of Tübingen (non-paid)
2005/2006 Giving a Seminar on “Neuro-Esthetics” at the Free University of Berlin (paid)
2006, Feb-May Organization, redaction, and catalogue texts for a multidisciplinary exhibition at Tübingen University (Exhibition catalogue: “38 Dinge – Schätze aus den natur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Sammlungen”, Tübingen) in only three months
2006, Oct Organization, poster, and brochure for a small exhibition on 100 years of Alzheimer Research at the University Clinic for Psychiatry Tübingen, November 2-4, with Prof. Mathias Jucker, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Tübingen in only three weeks
2007, May-August Collaboration in creating the multidisciplinary Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT - covering nearly all scientific subjects and disciplines) in only four months
2008, Feb 21 Giving a non-paid (!) lecture (*) at the first CAA conference on "Neuroarthistory" in Dallas (USA) following a personal request by Prof. John Onians (see [6])
2008, July Moving back to Switzerland (at last!)
1997- Giving (until 2008: under-paid!) private lessons (*) (especially in Mathematics [7], which may be the only non-arbitrary [i.e., non-natural and hence well-defined and stable] "science"...) to about three hundred pupils or map-makers (including groups) of age 10 to 50 (Mathematics, Physics, French, German, History, Geography, etc.). (And thanks to all these poor pupils, I have been ABLE to become aware of nearly all primal-primitive-primate biases, errors, mistakes and shortcomings of "our" quite primitive "societies"... In fact, in this very interesting role, I may have become a kind of "psychoanalyst" knowing myriads of different individual Potential landscapes or Selves, and hence myriads of different map-makers and maps...).
??? (The only thing I do not know yet:) According to the death certificate died in… (after having seen millions of cars, only one single beautiful architecture, but no perfect map-maker to talk with -- and after having lost my fight against stupidity everywhere... -- "ENDLICH - ABER ALLES UMSONST!")
Books and Publications (non-trivial ones) >> [8]
(“Non-trivial papers” means papers funded and written by myself as a first author only (*)).
Language skills: German, French, English, Italian (reading), Spanish (reading), Latin (reading), Greek (1 year only), Hebrew (1 year only)
Computer skills: Adobe InDesign, Adobe-Illustrator, Adobe-Photoshop, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Wiki, Flash…
Websites: this (including the short – and Oliver’s most important – text: “[9]”)
Address: e-mail: oliver@elbs.org
Map-makers I am connected with (mostly rather loosely, i.e., in a non-corrupt manner (*)...):
Prof. John Onians, Art history, Norwich UK, J.Onians@uea.ac.uk
Claire Bonney, ph.D., art historian, cbonney@bluewin.ch
Gerard Caris, artist, Maastricht NL, caris.gerard@gmail.com
Prof. David Freedberg, Art history, Columbia University NY, daf5@columbia.edu
Prof. Jean-Pierre Changeux, Paris, changeux@noos.fr
Prof. Olaf Blanke, Neuropsychology, EPFL Lausanne CH, olaf.blanke@epfl.ch
PD Dr. Hansjörg Baezner, Neurobiology and Clinical Art History, University Clinic Mannheim, baezner@neuro.ma.uni-heidelberg.de
Prof. Semir Zeki, Neurobiology, University College London, zeki.pa@ucl.ac.uk
Prof. Rafi Malach, Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute, Israel, bnmalach@wisemail.weizmann.ac.il
Dr. Anette Michels, Art history, Print collection of the University of Tübingen, anette.michels@uni-tuebingen.de
Armin Elbs, Mechatronics (and my webmaster >> Impressum), Bregenz (Austria), armin.elbs@eec.at
Young students of Neuro-Esthetics (and even Mapology (*)):
Martin R. Boyer, Neurobiology and Art history, martinrboyer@gmail.com
Lettie McGuire, artist, Neurobiology and Art, lettie_mcguire@mail.harvard.edu (*)
Nina Zschocke, Art History, zschocke@khist.uzh.ch
Helen Coleman, Archaeology and Neurobiology, h.coleman@uea.ac.uk
Judita Koziol, Art History, she.walks.in.beauty@windowslive.com
Sabine Weis, Art History and Anthropology, veruweis@yahoo.de
Kajsa Berg, Art History, k.berg@uea.ac.uk
Sara Martinelli, Art History, zazumartin@gmail.com
Andrei Ionut, Philosophy and Art History (graduating on Malevich's square), andrei_ionut30@yahoo.com
Pupils
Jens Oliver Gutsfeld, Reutlingen and Münster (D)
Ludwig K. Mayerlen, Haigerloch (D)
Dominik Quarthal, Rottenburg (D)
____________________
What is life? – (My last joke as usual!) – Here some definitions:
Exporting (and publishing?) ever more waste ___ Schrödinger, Thermodynamics
A free electron looking for a quiet place ___ Szent-Györgyi, Biochemistry
Two-legged featherless existence ___ Plato, Philosophy
A permanent flight from cars, noise, pain, and i... ___ OE, Mapology
(*) Please note:
Most things that are payABLE (i.e., that CAN be paid) are extremely arbitrary and non-stable and (hence) may have no value and no sense, and therefore there may be at least two ABILITIES which you MIGHT never be ABLE to pay (pace some primitive "neuro-economists"!):
1. A perfectly educated map-maker ("brain", "teacher", etc.).
2. Unconditioned (i.e., "erotic"? "esthetic"?) "love" (which automatically excludes some quite primitive-primal "parental love", "marital love", "romantic love", "bindings", "bondings", etc. etc. etc.).
Unfortunately enough, both these "personality traits" (i.e., ABILITies of a map-maker or "brain") seem to be EXTREMELY RARE, and nor have "we" been ABLE to map (pace some primitive "neuro-economists"!) the neurobiological underpinnings of both these RICHEST ABILIties and capacities...
And: in contrast to today's media and the internet, face-to-face communications (e.g., when giving private lessons) CAN NOT be faked (yet)... Hence the extreme value and preciousness of real-presence dialogues between four (perfectly educated) eyes...
But I strongly suppose that everything I have done, written, taught, and spoken in the past is ultimately in vain, because no body may be able to understand (i.e., to map...) my brain (or better: my rich Potential landscape), where all the slightest shifts (e.g., all shifts in the History of Art and in the History of "human" thinking...) had had become imprinted and mapped...