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October 2016

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ON TOPIC
Educating Art-Scientists and Science-Artists at Lafayette College


You go at it with an attitude of solving problems. You’re very much like a scientist.
​You don’t believe in inspiration... inspiration
is for amateurs. The rest
of us just show
​up and get to work.

—Chuck Close 

Picture
Above: by Megan Llewellyn, Illustrator-in-Residence.
By Nestor A. Gila & Luis F. Schettinob
a) Art Department, Lafayette College
b) Psychology Department and Neuroscience Program, Lafayette College 


A common pursuit
As people with interests beyond our disciplines, we often, in our conversations, intuit a commonality between our fields. We notice that both science and art share an interest in experimentation and process as a means to generate new information. Moreover, we perceive value in applying some of the techniques from one field to the other.

In this article we describe our efforts toward a truly interdisciplinary “Art and Neuroscience” course designed to provide students with a view of what it is like to tackle issues in each field and techniques employed to support the investigation of new ideas.

First we describe two of the insights that gave us a framework for the ideas and methods covered in the course, and then we address what we feel have been the most successful projects for providing an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation.

Insight I: Motivation and Attention
The first issue that became relevant in our course was the now well described notion that digital media may have the effect of reducing our capacity for long periods of attentional focus.1,2 Cognitive research has shown that there are two types of attention: the first is bottom–up attention, a system that selects particular streams from the glut of our sensory information and is mostly a pre- conscious process.3 For example, I may enter a market with a general sense of needing food. Peaches may grab my attention. This attention depends on memories I have of previous experiences with peaches. The other type of attention, top–down, is voluntarily directed attention. It is the process that I deploy when looking at the peaches and considering whether they look good enough to buy. This effortful process is something that humans learn and practice during their early years, particularly in schoolwork. 
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Much of the information we take in today depends on skills using the Internet and touchscreens. But as efficient and useful as these skills may prove to be, they also appear to be unpropitious1 for the type of information processing that has, so far, been the bedrock of education: deep processing to develop “deep” knowledge (see below).

Our first insight was that in order to attend you need memories, but you can only create memories if you at- tend. One objective in the course is to help students recognize the importance of paying close attention to the world and to understand that in order to find value in things they perceive, they must take the time to engage with them.

Insight II: “Junk” memories
Our brain–minds are information processing systems built around a network of memories created through the interaction of our bodies with our life experiences. These memories, or conceptual representations, allow us to recognize objects, plan actions, and communicate thoughts.4

​Throughout our lives we add associations to our earlier memories. Many of those associations are created and reactivated through social exchanges and
therefore are also associated with emotions. This massively interconnected set of long–term associations is what we have come to call “deep knowledge” or “junk memories.” 
We use the term junk memories in an ironic way, making a parallel to junk DNA, the large fraction of so–called non–coding DNA in our chromosomes which at first appeared to be just “extra padding” but has now been recognized as the source of the regulatory mechanisms that orchestrate genetic processes.5 Similarly, we consider the deeply encoded and interwoven memories within our brain–minds, which sometimes are disparaged as trivia, as integral to our perspective of the world and our behavior.

Much research has suggested that the sources of our behavior are often unconscious. When we experience art, junk memories are activated, priming us for behavior. Research findings have shown that our intuitions regarding metaphorical associations are correct. For example, figurative associations such as warmth and closeness will activate in our minds the concepts for social proximity.6

Our second insight, therefore, was that junk memories shape our interpretation of new experiences and guide our behavior. A second objective of the course is to engage students in the investigation of their own knowledge and the processes that give rise to it. It is our contention that this allows them to pursue their own knowledge production and expansion.7,8 
Method
A critical issue we set out to prevent is using art as a neat addition to scientific projects, what the art chair of Lafayette College Ed Kerns has described as “inviting artists to come in and paint the rocket.” We wanted the students to ask instead: What is the rocket? What does the rocket do? How do I perceive it? How can I move from looking at the rocket to really seeing it?

We chose to avoid the use of one discipline simply to illustrate or demonstrate an idea from the other. We used art and neuroscience to discuss how we currently understand our world and investigate how scientists and artists go about shaping that understanding.

Our method as teachers was to engage in conversations with our students and one another, modeling the curious attention we were asking them to exhibit. We asked questions of one another, commented on and challenged one another’s assertions, and encouraged our students to do the same.
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Importantly, we insisted that students should struggle with understanding and mastery of the materials used in art production as a means to shed light on the nature and value of experimentation. We placed particular emphasis throughout the course on pointing out how investigation and discovery can yield further understanding and generate new opportunities for curiosity. Kelly Goff, an artist and professor at Wheaton College, says that “good work is work that leads to more work.” This idea captures well the endeavors of artists and scientists. It is in this light that we sought to encourage our students to engage with experimentation and wonder as process. 

THE PROJECTS
I: The Focus of Attention
Beginning with a pair of readings about paying attention,2,9 we entered into a discussion with students about the speed at which we experience our lives. Looking at objects and works of art in a society where images pass before our eyes at a continuous rate becomes particularly challenging.

Our first exercise was based on artist Tom Friedman’s Ingredients, a method of investigating an object. Students brought an object to class of personal significance and used Friedman’s method to record observations about it. Students conducted research to gain a deep body of knowledge about objects that in many cases they had carried daily for years without actually getting to know them.

Multiple ways of knowing a thing emerged. Students came to understand their objects as props in their own narratives and as discrete objects with narratives of their own, effectively enriching their conceptual networks through the process. In keeping with our proposed method, the project demanded a protracted engagement on the part of the student, as completing Friedman’s Ingredients is no small feat. To fully respond to its prompts requires a large investment of time and a willingness to pursue answers from clues that are often quite lacking. 

For our second project, following the lead of Roberts2, we visited a campus exhibition of work by Gail Skudera. Upon entry into the gallery, we gave the class 15 minutes to look around at the work. Students then stood before the image of their choice in silence for 30 minutes with only a pencil and notebook to record their observations. The progression of their observations from what is this a picture of? to what is this picture made of? to what does this picture mean? to how does this picture mean? revealed a kind of knowing that can only be accessed through commit- ted observation.

In a pair of observational drawing assignments that closely followed, students further saw that the operative word in observational drawing is not drawing. This extended observation of an artwork called on them to ask questions of the work and provided time to build connections between their own experiences and memories and the art work they observed. 
II: “Amazings”
In order to mirror a more attentive method of inquiry in the lab and studio, we provided each student with a small accordion notebook and instructions to record each week something they came across that amazed them. If, as we propose, junk memories inform how we perceive, understand, and act in the world, then there is a benefit to engaging with the world in an active way, intentionally seeking out information and knowledge, effectively strengthening the scaffolding upon which we experience our lives.

This practice also echoes the process by which many scientists and artists arrive at the ideas that inform their work. The creative process is not linear. Much of what a creator does is informed by experiences and perceptions outside the studio or the lab.

III: Conceptual Networks
During this last iteration of our course, we included a semester–long project built from our notion of junk memories. The goal of this experience was to explore the space created by our memories and to let students realize the powerful influence of those associations on our behavior.

We provided students with a large sheet of paper and asked them to represent on them their “conceptual net- work” (CN), the network of associations reflecting the contents of their individual brain–minds. In essence, the task was to produce a visualization of their junk memories. We shared our own CNs with the class as examples and for critique.

Though we used the term conceptual network in class, we also made it clear that we had no preconceived idea of what form the representation might take.

While most students produced interesting and novel representations of their associations, a few struggled with the procedure of systematic, extended work. In some cases, the struggle appeared as sparse CNs or overemphasis on particular topics. This suggests to us that we could develop exercises to facilitate the kind of introspection that is required for this project. 

Nonetheless, a few students produced outstanding works that brought together compellingly the main theoretical points of a CN, namely, the notions of association, interpretation, and reconstructive memory. 
Picture

IV: Visual Experience
The visual system is the dominant sensory input in humans and much of art relies on vision as the main con- duit for its appreciation. Due to this, we dedicated two projects to visual processes: the Camera Obscura Room and a group project, the Hockney Joiner.

Our eyes are essentially a camera obscura, a dark space where a projection of the outside world is “read” by the retina. While this knowledge is widespread, few of our students have had the opportunity to see a camera obscura in action. Following a discussion of the optical processes in vision and the use of optical devices by early European masters,10 we asked students to transform their living space into a camera obscura and to capture the projection in a photograph or drawing. Our objective was to encourage experimentation and experience. Students lived with their rooms as cameras for several days, experiencing the changes in focus and clarity brought on by daylight, cloud cover, and weather. The immediacy of this experience, its direct relation to physical conditions in the natural world, is a departure from the reliably consistent conditions of experience mediated through screens and even in laboratory exercises.

David Hockney provided us with an interesting exercise with his “joiners” collage technique. Continuing with the notion that our experiences owe much of their background and interpretation to our memories, we wanted our students to experiment with how the brain– mind puts together our episodic memories. Though we feel that we can recall some of our life’s experiences as a seamless movie, we now know that our brains reconstruct such recalls by integrating multiple bits of information into a sensation of a lived experience.

Hockney has suggested that single photographic images seldom convey the sensation of the passage of time.11 In order to bring back this sensation to photography, he collaged several views in time and space of the same event.

We decided to add two handicaps to the exercise:
1) we asked students to use cheap lomography cameras to limit their control over the resulting images and to lead them to experiment with light and movement and
2) before we introduced the idea of the joiners, we simply asked them to document one or two events with the cameras—students did not know that they would have to bring the images together.

This prevented them from carefully planning the events, which would have reduced 
their freedom by, for example, encouraging them to keep consistent light and point of view for an event.

The results of this exercise were compelling. While trying to integrate the pictures into the joiner, the students had to reinterpret their photographs, allowing them to produce a more playful and interesting image. This is not unlike what our brain–minds do when reconstructing our memories: we use whatever information we have about an event (including past similar events and even the present) to reconstruct the past. 
V: Tactile Experience
We approached tactile perception and knowledge by first designing projects meant to bring attention to the fact that humans can perceive three–dimensional objects through their sense of touch. We produced a group of abstract, handheld forms and placed them in cloth bags with drawstrings into which students placed one hand. We then asked students to use their free hand to draw a picture of the object in their cloaked hand, making as close a rendering as possible. Students were able to grasp and manipulate the objects, but not look at them. Without the sensory experience of sight, students had to devote a more concentrated effort to understanding and knowing the objects through touch in order to accurately represent them. The accuracy with which they were able to represent the objects took some students by surprise.

We followed this project with an experiment in which students were blindfolded and presented with a series of small, everyday objects mounted on the end of a stick. Students held the stick in one hand and presented the object to their other hand for exploration. In order to prevent direct “scanning” of the objects, the movement of their fingers was restricted by a wooden cutout. The experimental question was whether the participants would find the optimal way to move the stick in order to obtain the type of information needed to reconstruct the three–dimensional shape of the objects and recognize them.

Most participants took at least 30 seconds to identify each object. Interestingly, they tended to present the object to a single digit, typically the index finger, while moving the object so as to scan in it. When asked about their strategies, they indicated that this process allowed them to create in their minds a three–dimensional image of the objects which they then supplemented with textural information.

​
Our pedagogical objective was to show students that the great advantage of vision (quick identification and categorization of what we experience) is also one of its challenges. The speed and resolution at which we can perceive through our eyes makes us capable of seeing a great deal while at the same time excusing us from taking the time needed to really know and understand the qualities and details of what we see.

Like attempting to draw with the non–dominant hand, trying to “see” with the sense of touch necessarily slows the perceptual process and allows time for more details to emerge and more questions to be asked. The extend- ed duration also allows more time for new associations to be activated and made, enriching our junk memories.

CONCLUSION
In all, our class projects endeavored to make apparent that scientific process and artistic process are at their foundations, methods of observation. When students come to understand drawing, for example, as an act of looking rather than an act of rendering, their imaginings of the artist’s method become more aligned with how they imagine the scientist’s method. This de–siloing of disciplines is not a forgone conclusion whenever two fields are placed side by side; it is as likely that each discipline will hold up its own conventions and practices as an antidote for perceived errors or misguided ideas in the other. Our goal was not to cut windows in the wall between these disciplines; nor did we wish to tear the wall down. Instead, through this course, we are attempting to uncover the reality that, when considered in light of basic methodologies such as imagination and experimentation, the wall simply does not exist. Recent calls for bringing fluid thought and strong observational skills back into scientific training by way of artistic practice buttress this notion.12,13

We have come to understand this course as one engaged in acts of resistance. In the course title we set out to resist the compartmentalization of disciplines. Furthermore, the course resists the method that posits instructors as experts with a particular body of knowledge to impart to our students. In place of these conventions, we endeavor to model the struggle that we wish to engender in our students. This begins with the realization that if we appear expert, we may make the course material easy for our students to digest; but we fail to reveal the challenges and shortfalls we each face in our areas of research and practice.

The course therefore resists becoming set in stone, for the very reason that we would never want ourselves to lose that fluid sense of inquiry. In order to model a process of investigation, some possibilities must begin undiscovered, and room must be made for the pursuit of those possibilities when they do arise. In education we often hear about the need to encourage students to take risks and to embrace failure as a step in the process of learning. In practice, too often, such ideas are abandoned in the interest of making sure course content is sufficiently covered or out of concern that the kind of learning that comes from risk/failure is not as easy to contain or as pretty to regard as the kind that involves regurgitation of important facts, figures, or data.

We believe courses such as this are essential to the liberal arts ideal. While a course in neuroscience or in art might bring a more specialized perspective and indeed the kind of work that has evident value to the discipline, courses that encourage hybrid thought and exploration shift the center of emphasis from pure content to learning opportunities and challenges at the interstitial spaces that unfold between them.

To our minds the biggest risk we take as instructors is when we design learning experiences to be risk–free for our students. 

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References
1. Carr N (2008) Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic 301(6).
2. Roberts JL (2013) The Power of Patience. Harvard Magazine (November-December),40-43.
3. Dijksterhuis A, Aarts H (2010) Goals, Attention, and (Un) Consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology 61:467-490.
4. Kiefer M, Pulvermüller F (2012) Conceptual representations in mind and brain: Theoretical developments, current evidence and future directions. Cortex 48:802-825.
5. Hall SS (2012) Journey to the Genetic Interior. Scientific American 307 (October), 80-84.
6. Bargh JA, Schwader KL, Hailey SE, Dyer RL, Boothby EJ (2012) Automaticity in social-cognitive processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16:593-605.
7. Gruber MJ, Gelman BD, Ranganath C (2014) States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron 84:486-496.
8. Kang MJ, Hsu M, Kraibich IM, Loewenstein G, McClure SM, Wang JT, Camerer CF (2009) The wick in the candle of learning: epistemic curiosity activates reward circuitry and enhances memory. Psychological Science 20:963-973
9. Scudder, S. H. (1874) Look at Your Fish! retrieved from: http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/Look-At- Your- Fish-By-Samuel-H-Scudder.htm
10. Hockney, D. (2006) Secret Knowledge (New and Expanded Edition): Rediscovering the lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Avery, New York.
11. Joyce, P. (1988) Hockney on Photography: Conversations with Paul Joyce. Harmony, New York.
12. Ainsworth S, Prain V, Tytler R (2011) Drawing to Learn in Science. Science 333:1096-1097.
13. Scheffer, M., Bascompte, J., Bjordam, T. K., Carpenter, S. R., Clarke, L.B., Folke, C., Marquet, P., Mazzeo, N., Meerhoff, M., Sala, O., Westley, F. R. (2015) Dual thinking for scientists. Ecology and Society 20:3

All images courtesy of the authors. 

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