Future Projects
Contents |
The Droodle-Project
Since 2006, I try to find (and to convince) neuroscientists for making an fMRI experiment entitled "The Droodle Project". But a lot of scientists (Olaf Blanke, Andreas Bartels, Moshe Bar, Joydeep Bhattacharya, Thomas Petermann, et al. et al. et al. ...) didn't show any interest.
But this small project would be likely to solve the main problems of Art History in a single run (including Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, etc.)...
If you are interested in this project as well, you may download a small PDF here for further details
The Lustre-Project
Throughout the ages, people have always been fascinated by shining and glittering objects (lustre-effects): shining coins and medals, bright eyes, pearls and lips, oiled and “pure” bumpy (healthy, young, lustful...) skins & green leaves, water- and light-reflections, golden god-idols, shimmering jewellery, glazed paints, glittering stars, highlights in photos, “glow effects”, etc.
And the famous art historian Gombrich always pointed out that ”if anything can be called a universal human trait, it is this delight in splendour and glitter” (Gombrich 1999: 89).
However, despite these illustrous art historians, no neuroscientist (Olaf Blanke, Melvyn A. Goodale, Andreas Bartels, Ute Leonards, ...) showed any interest for making an fMRI-experiment entitled "The Lustre-Project".
If you are interested in this project as well, you may download a small PDF here for further details
The Ganzfeld-Project
A simple combined fMRI/EEG Ganzfeld experiment (in the wake of METZGER 1930, HOCHBERG et al. 1951, LEHTONEN & LEHTINEN 1972, MAHER & SWIFT 2002, GOLDMAN et al. 2002, and James Turrell's "Gasworks" installation of 1993) has already been proposed by me in my dissertation (ELBS 2005 : 114, Footnote 91; cf. also my Seminar-Script, S1 Figure 24, and S4 Figure 40 f. ) – but no neuroscientist showed any interest in this simple but extremely interesting experiment (for studying fMRI-correlates of Alpha-oscillations in the EEG by converting an fMRI-scanner into a small Turrellian installation...).
The Hall-Effect Project
Contrary to MARR's reduced 2.5-D visual space, only the auditory sense (via reverberations) is capable of generating the impression and power of a 360-degree and 3-D "whole surrounding space", i.e., some "big sound" – see the neolithic caves (and MITHEN 2005 on the singing neanderthals), the abbey church of Le Thoronet [1], and today's concert halls, sound effect managers (AC97), and extremely expensive B & O loudspeakers (sub-woofers) for "our" "home environments":
“Reverberations ... are relatively rare in nature, and our brains have not evolved a special mechanism for overlooking them. Like musical sound itself, reverberation is a minor aspect of our natural experience that we have magnified into art. Much music becomes lifeless without reverberation. Early recordings lacked reverberation and they sound off kilter, as if the music were played in the wrong style. Indeed, some Late Romantic music simply doesn‘t work outside halls with long reverberation times, where hundreds of reflections add up to the ‘big sound‘ such music requires“ (JOURDAIN 1997: 49), and: “In the late 1980s, French archaeologists explored prehistoric caves in southwestern France in a unique way – by singing. They discovered that the chambers with the most paintings were those that were the most resonant. This startling insight suggests that caves were the sites of religious ceremonies involving music“ (JOURDAIN 1997: 305). -
Cf. also Rothko: “in the evenings he [Rothko] would lie on the couch for hours saying nothing, just contemplating or looking at one of his pictures that was hanging up and listening to music. ... Nietzsche‘s orphic, dithyrambic prose makes reading him like stretching out on the couch and listening to a Wagnerian opera. ... ‘He [Rothko] wanted that music‘, said Stanley Kunitz, ‘to saturate the room, to diffuse it in the same way that his paintings were diffused through a room‘“ (BRESLIN 1993: 173, 176, 279). For Rothko‘s (platonic? prehistoric?) feel of the cave see also ANFAM 1998: 99.
But today's neuromusicologists (including Stefan Koelsch, Marc Schönwiesner, Lucas Spierer et al.) have shown no interest in this project...
The "Mapping Shifts" Project
This is my most important -- but most difficult and very last -- project. Everything in cognition may boil down to "surprise" (see Karl J. Friston‘s -ln(p(s/m)) function in FRISTON 2010), i.e., when shifts (i.e., discrepancies and differences between some expected map and actual map) are detected (i.e., mapped) by some brain or map-maker.
This neural processing I called in my dissertation "the mapping (detection) of shifts". For Daniel E. Berlyne and Leonard B. Meyer long before 1980, this "mapping of shifts" and "surprise" was the critical variable in all aesthetics, but is especially easily seen in music and listening (auditory shifts and the discrepancy between some expected-predicted tune or tone and some actual auditory input).
However, mapping this process will not be easy, because it will require some fine spatial and temporal resolution mapping of individual neurons and spines, which will probably only be possible in zebrafish, fruit flies, or mice.
But if this process is understood in detail, then everything in neuroscience will have become clear and understood. Because all other cognitive processes (including some "conscious" maps mapping maps, i.e., the awareness of a map-maker that he is actually playing with fast shifting maps...) will depend on this "mapping of shifts". -- See also What is Mapology?