How the brain invents what we perceive

With Israel Rosenfield one of its invitees, Station 6 looked into the functioning of the brain and the individual’s connection with the world. The primary focus was on the phenomena of the construction of the world by the brain: firstly as a biological system whose sensory perception is conditioned by sensors and receivers, but also, in a given cultural context, by each individual’s pre-perceptual awareness of his environment. Thus the world as it is made visible to us, and our memory of it, spring from a cerebral process of permanent, dynamic reconstruction.

Work under study

bazile-brillance.jpg

Bernard Bazile, Brillance, 2011.
Black granite stone from Forez, 50 x 100 x 90 cm.
Production Institut d’art contemporain © Blaise Adilon

Guests

Catherine Beaugrand
artist in charge of the research group DatAData, École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon DatAData website
Charles Lenay
professor of philosophy and cognitive sciences at Université Technologique de Compiègne. Charles Lenay is the director of the interdisciplinary research unit COSTECH.
Yannick Prié
lecturer at Université Claude Bernard, Lyon 1, researcher at LIRIS, Laboratoire d’InfoRmatique en Image et Systèmes d’information
Israël Rosenfield
doctor of medicine at New York University, and doctor of philosphy at Princeton University, he teaches neurosciences and history of ideas at City University of New York
Elinor Vernhes
as an artist, she’s interested in perception phenomena; she currently works on Francisco Varela’s concept of enaction

Participants

Elisa Brune
writer (novelist and essayist) and science journalist
Denis Cerclet
anthropologist, lecturer at Université Lumière - Lyon 2
Arnauld Pierre
art historian, professor at Université Paris IV - Sorbonne
Jean-Louis Poitevin
doctor in philsophy, writer and art critic

Work under study

Bernard Bazile, Brillance, 2011.
Black granite stone from Forez, 50 x 100 x 90 cm.
Production Institut d’art contemporain

Study day

Thursday, June 30, at IAC Auditorium

Lecture

Israël Rosenfield “Comment le cerveau invente ce que l'on perçoit” [how the brain invents what we perceive]
Israel Rosenfield is doctor of medicine and philosphy, he teaches neurosciences and history of ideas at City University of New York. He wrote several books, such as The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten: An Anatomy of Consciousness (1992), The Invention of Memory: A New View of the Brain (1988), and DNA: A Graphic Guide to the Molecule that Shook the World (2011)

Audio recordings of the study day (French - mp3):