Art

Recently I have begun to engage with art as a way of communicating scientific ideas. Recent projects include:

Collaborating with Theatre Re on "The Nature of Forgetting", a powerful piece that explores the experience of progressive memory loss.

Spin Glass - a sci-art collaboration with glass artist Jenny Walsh and sound artist Jeremy Keenan.

The glass artwork (top movie) is a network of neurons, each one of which activates when the mouse's head faces in a particular direction. The neurons are made from blown glass encased in thick copper wires, and lighted by LEDs that are controlled by wifi. The whole ensemble is suspended in a mirrored cabinaet to give them impression of a vast network of neurons.

The bottom movie is the one I made to accompany the installation and which plays alongside the glass work. It shows a stylised exploring mouse, and the soundtrack, which matches the light pattern, plays the activation of the neuron converted to an endlessly rising scale. This scale was made from so-called Shepard tones, converted to chords made from samples of rubbed crystal glass. The overall effect is that the sound continuously changes without apparent discontinuity, similar to the "attractor dynamics" of real head direction neurons.

I have also become an amateur glass artist in my own right- specialising in cast glass pieces that reflect aspects of neuroscience. To the right is shown a piece called “Brain waves” that was inspired by brain signals taken from this paper by Somgyi and colleagues. Below is a rat brain cast in clear glass.

“Brain waves” on display at the Parndon Mill Glasshaus XIII exhibition, Sept-Oct 2018.