 |
| Xanax |
 |
| Nitrous Oxide |
 |
| Hash |
This week's material reminded me of an article I read a while ago about an artist named Bryan Saunders, who created self portraits under the influence of different drugs. His purpose was to search for experiences that would "profoundly" affect his self perception. The art of understanding how our minds and perception work was something I never really thought much of until now. The fact that people can dream or experience surreal-like and varying perceptions in a way that is inexplainable is so fascinating, and I feel that this week's resources gave me some insight into this.
 |
| Project MKUltra Victim |
After Timothy Leary's contribution to "counter culture" in the 60's with LSD, all kinds of people joined to study pharmaceutical mind control via Project MKUltra. It is surprising that LSD was given to many without knowledge or consent. In the end LSD was concluded to have varying effects on different people. I think self perception is so artistic because everyone's memories affect their perception and imagination in different ways. It is said that people dream of things they subconsciously think about/ remember, and shown by the results of Project MKUltra, this even causes varying pharmaceutical experiences.
 |
| Phrenological Phacts |
This leads to an interesting thing that I learned about memory. One being that smell and taste produce uniquely intense memories. I have definitely had a moment when I smelled an old perfume and was stimulated intensely of the days I would wear it. It was also really interesting to learn from Mark Cohen that our brains adapt extremely quickly after inverted perception. This was proven via an experiment using inverted goggles. Cohen also spoke about Franz Gall's creation of phrenology and how Gall believed that studying the bumps of our heads could even lead us to recognize criminals easily. I think that the continuation of art and neuroscience could eventually lead to us to find simple definitive methods of analyzing the complex brain of certain profiles.
Resources:
Neuroscience pt 3. Dr. Victoria Vesna. Youtube. Uconlineprogram, 16 May. 2012. Web. 17 May. 2015.
Neuroscience- Mark Cohen. Dr. Victoria Vesna. Youtube. Uconlineprogram, 16 May. 2012. Web. 17 May. 2015.
"Phrenology Chart." Phrenology Chart. Web. 16 May 2015.
"Project MKUltra." Sometimes Interesting. 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 May 2015.
"Swann’s Hypothesis." The New York Times. The New York Times, 3 Nov. 2007. Web. 16 May 2015.
"Under the Influence." Bryan Lewis Saunders. Web. 17 May 2015.
Hello Eunice (: First of all, I really enjoyed your posting overall. It was very thought-provoking and interesting. I really like Saunders's paintings that you have attached because it shows his self-perception under the influence of drugs. Your way of thinking about self-perception is also profound. I was also surprised that LSD was completely legal for the use in experiments. As a psychology major, I have learned various things about human memory and brain functions, but Cohen's experiment made me think in a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI really liked what you had to say about Bryan Saunder's work. I had not heard of his art before but after reading your blog I looked up some of his work and it was all very interesting. I really like what you said about memories also, because I feel the same way. It is so interesting how the brain works and how that is combined in art to form so many different pieces that impact both the art and science communities.
ReplyDelete