AN ANATOMY OF PASSION
BACKGROUND For the first decade since reaching a final position at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro during conclusion of my PhD, by the end of the nineties, my investigative fronts concentrated in intercellular communication and developmental neuroscience. Ahead of a mounting developmental neuroscience laboratory, formal training, formal thoughts lead to a period of intense battle for low cost and creative methodologies to address experimentally the hypothesis that low resistance pathways between neural cell types, including neurons and glial cells, were co-players in neural circuit formation and early brain development in model rodents. Papers in specialized journals, invited reviews, lectures in scientific meetings, organization and coordination of national and international courses, graduate students formation in traditional Master and PhD Programs, all marked this period, as expected from regular choices in the scientific scenario.
THE EMERGENCE OF AN ARTSCI PROPOSAL Since 2008, nevertheless, I have been impacted by the expression and consolidation of a turning point in my intellectual and research interests. What one would arguably classify as a new sight to science has its roots on strong personal experiences in my private life, together with remarkable lessons extracted from mine and lab colleagues joint efforts in reductionist science. My direct involvement with undergraduate teaching of the human functional anatomy of the ear and speech systems to students in Phonoaudiology, since the early 2000s, was marked by two apparently non-related, albeit worthnoting, evidences: the great difficulties imposed by complex technical, descriptive scientific objects and the conflicting (usually hidden) existential link between the individual and scientific objects, specially those experienced in the day-by-day of a Laboratory of Anatomy, where practical classes are developed onto human pieces, in this case including preserved faces.
It became more and more appealing to me the idea that both cognitive and non-cognitive brain processes, the latest in the category of rejected experiences in the scientific methodological foreground, were in fact indelibly linked for the benefit of science creation and scientific findings. These undergraduate laboratory tours became metaphors of the human condition I recognized in science, in that not only cognitive, but also affective-emotional processes might have much more to do with conceptual creation, apprehension and theoretical/experimental evaluation in science than ever assumed. I did not fully realize, in these early years, I was enthrapped into a new critical platform for consideration of epistemological and ontological basis that presumably anchors science. From a field of truth findings to a field of argued consensual creations, science was re-meant for me. A point of no return.
Boosted by the reconceptualization of the meaningfulness of scientific knowledge, by the end of 2007, I decided to create an inter- (I would risk 'trans') disciplinary team, called Anatomy of Passion, a poetic reference to the human nature of science (http://anatomiadaspaixoes.blogspot.com/), and the corresponding Laboratory of Experimental Epistemology. The hypothesis claimed by my group, including neuroscientists, a team of academic and independent contemporaneous artists, researchers from humanities, engineers and philosophers, is that aesthetical valorization in science paradigms would lead to optimization of its cognitive handling, as expressed as scientific conception and intellectual insight. We have began to address this possibility both theoretically as well as experimentally, by electing one of our biological sensory apparatus as model system, in a convenient attempt to explore the filters that mediate our perception of the objective world and of the objective science, while revealing an undeniable individual, subjective character of sensorial experience.
The intricate anatomical organization of the human auditory system, from its peripheral stations to central nervous system associative areas, was the scientific object of choice in many theoretical and all experimental fronts held by the group during those first four years. The emerging hypothesis was that subjective access, qualification and signification of the perceptual experience would be fostered or emphasized by direct artistic interference on anatomical aesthetics. Moreover, that morphofunctional appreciation and problematization would be favored this way. With this hypothesis in mind, I was faced to the
challenge of re-creating a referential collection of artsci pieces concerning the human ear anatomy. Pieces comprised both
concrete objects and conceptual figures strongly framed and/or conceived with
artistic impregnation, as to establish a model system. This enabled us to test
our claims about putative benefits of an artsci
combination on the cognitive handling of science, in our experience represented
by the human auditory functional anatomy.
During these last years, punctuated by great efforts in order to create an almost complete collection of artsci experimental pieces (by the end of 2011, summing up around 50 individual and a series of artsci pieces, and growing), we have been actors of the emergence of a new laboratory, and implicitly, a new autoscopic paradigm for human cognitive evaluation, in which a metaphor of cognition, as applied to science, turned out to be the investigative object of choice. Post-mortem anatomical pieces of the human auditory system are contextualized in contemporaneous artistic anatomy. For such, a first, funding step was the development of novel technoartistic illumination tools, based on LEDs, negro lights and tungsten microlamps, as contributed by Alan Verissimo Azambuja, enabling us an innovative exploration of biological tissue transparency, explored with a miriad of light incidence effects and photographic resources. Our collection also includes anatomical preparations, sculptures and sculptural supports for anatomical positioning of biological pieces, anatomical design, video art, techno art, and artistic photography, software development for experimental perception (audiovisual pseudosynesthesia evaluation – in course), poetics (literary and musical), scenography projects and particular scenotechnical solutions, digital 3D projection maps, design and performance, all centered in human audition at anatomical and neurobiological standpoints.
In 2007, the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program of Morphological Sciences, to which I was credited as researcher and advisor since 2000, declared non textually my withdrawal, claiming my new research interests and my production were not technically and conceptually fitted to the excellence criteria advocated by the graduate program. The remaining two students I had under shared-advisory at this moment had their academic doctoral (2009) and master conclusions unaffected (2008). In two consecutive rounds (between 2008 and 2009), selected artsci fronts were contemplated by emerging Institute of Biomedical Sciences grant programs, in the categories of outreach and undergraduate relevant activities. The investment in my interdisciplinary research into the limits of my Institute emptied out, while grants were consistently raised at recognized research funding agencies, and this paralleled my own proactive movement out of its walls.
Our artsci initiatives have then been gradually and coherently displaced from the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, gaining intercentric academic collaborators and students, accompanied by increasing local academic, regional and national recognitions, as attested by more than 15 thousand access to web material of the group (from lectures and interviews to exhibitions and art pieces; refer to ANATOMIA DAS PAIXÕES as keyword), together with several articles in magazines as exemplified by Scientific American Brain and Mind (Brazilian edition Aug 2009 and 2011), online journals, printed national circulation newspapers, interviews and native language national research publications, contributions to international neuroscience congresses and interdisciplinary meetings. During this while, our group productions have been stamped by broaden interdisciplinary programs and institutions, in UFRJ and beyond, as evidenced by my present affiliations (refer to Summary above) and attested by renewed concession of grants from university outreach programs, as well as federal and state outreach and experimental research grants provided by the Ministries of Education and Culture, CAPES and CNPq, and FAPERJ.
Culminating these interdisciplinary and intercentric expansion, my affiliation as a permanent member of the interdisciplinary Graduate Program of History of Sciences and Techniques and Epistemology (UFRJ), a joint Program involving the Centers of Technology, Math and Natural Sciences and Philosophy and Human Sciences, with master and doctoral students under my advisory, and recently my new permanent position as Professor and Research Director at the Tercio Pacitti Institute of Computational Applications and Research (CCMN/UFRJ).
This laborious phase involved, until 2012, 26 undergraduate scholar students from Fine Arts to Engineer, from Biophysics to Chemistry, under my direct academic advisory and institutional responsibility, for instance co-oriented by colleagues in the corresponding fields of origin. Students were trained in public outreach, artistic, technological and scientific investigative fronts of our interfacial project. Mostly due to artistic treatment, our artsci growing collection turned out to be easily exploitable and aesthetically impacting, motivating us to contextualize it in outreach activities of the group. These included four exhibitions for a macro-category of general public, which took place at museums of science (Casa da Ciência, Rio de Janeiro 2008 and Espaço Ciência Viva during the 2010 Brain Awareness Week at Rio), and arts (Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro 2010 and Centro Cultural Galpão da Ação da Cidadania, Rio de Janeiro 2011). Exhibitions were also held in neuroscientific meetings, including audiovisual presentation at the international interdisciplinary Symposium Art and Science: exploring the limits of human perception (Benasque – Spain 2009), and an integrated scenographic artistic exhibition as part of the satellite artsci event organized by our team during the Brazilian Society of Neuroscience and Behavior Meeting (Caxambu 2010), which results were recently summarized and presented in SfN 2011, gaining the referential indication as a 2011 SfN Hot Topic. In addition, two consecutive selections (2010 and 2011) in the honored category of Special Projects granted by the main scientific funding agency of the state of Rio de Janeiro, FAPERJ, a major contributor during this five year period (10 grant approvals). Some minor exhibitions were also held, mainly restricted to academic public.
In addition to exhibitions, and mostly reflecting an intellectual demand for emergence of a critical inspirational and theoretical mass aimed to feed this emerging problematization field, which I refer, tentatively, as experimental epistemology, we have also conceived, coordinated, produced and organized interdisciplinary events in the period, including the first two editions of the biennial SCHOOLS OF PERCEPTION (2009, 2011), one artsci Satellite Meeting (MAIS QUE A RAZÃO DO BELO: UMA SENSÍVEL CIÊNCIA/MORE THAN REASON IN BEAUTY: A SENSITIVE SCIENCE, Caxambu 2010), a honor meeting including history of science (entitled ANATOMIA DAS PAIXÕES: UM REENCONTRO DAS ARTES E DAS CIÊNCIAS NAS FORMAS PLÁSTICA E MUSICAL/ANATOMY OF PASSION: A REENCOUNTER OF ARTS AND SCIENCES IN PLASTIC AND MUSICAL FORMS, Rio de Janeiro 2008), and a permanent discussion round table (HIGHTECHLOWTECH collective) adjoining, once a week, professionals of the society (artists, engineers, system analysts, designers, producers, physicists) with neuroscientists and educators of the academy, to explore technological and artistic creative boundaries. More recently, our team has conceived, produced and coordinated an unusual artsci program, as an intervention for artsci epistemological problematization at the Vth Congress in History of Sciencies and Epistemology - Scientiarum Historia V/UFRJ - and a Symposium in Digital Arts and Media: Transdisciplinary Bits, which consisted in arts and technological digital embraces as signified at neuroscientific, computational theoretics, epistemological and artistic forced horizontal crossboundaries. In next September 2013, an artsci experimental workshop proposal, SBNeC . UFMG . artsci 2013 will enhance our list of provocative models for scientific inspiration, critics and innovative creation.
Always conceived as epistemological provocations, meetings included lectures, courses and forum, especially designed to discuss interfaces between arts, (neuro)science and philosophy, and combined, whenever possible, hybrid artsci practical modules, including immersive exhibitions (mentioned above), as well as interferential performing executions. All activities have in common their convergence to the conceptual complexity of human perception, onto biological, cognitive, philosophical and artistic grounds. In alternative formats, marked by interactive conferences, debates and workshops, researchers, artists and general public are usually invited to force innovative sights to human perception as well as to deepen, update and broaden the interdisciplinary discussion concerning the epistemological, artistic and scientific predictions of perception and cognitive handling, hypothetically involved in science creation itself.
Always conceived as epistemological provocations, meetings included lectures, courses and forum, especially designed to discuss interfaces between arts, (neuro)science and philosophy, and combined, whenever possible, hybrid artsci practical modules, including immersive exhibitions (mentioned above), as well as interferential performing executions. All activities have in common their convergence to the conceptual complexity of human perception, onto biological, cognitive, philosophical and artistic grounds. In alternative formats, marked by interactive conferences, debates and workshops, researchers, artists and general public are usually invited to force innovative sights to human perception as well as to deepen, update and broaden the interdisciplinary discussion concerning the epistemological, artistic and scientific predictions of perception and cognitive handling, hypothetically involved in science creation itself.
By the end of 2009, provided with an incomplete, albeit substantial collection of artistic material and immaterial ear and sound related pieces, a first round of three consecutive, replicated and complementary experiments started, through which cognitive gain in groups of volunteers was evaluated, making use of technical questionnaires and scales in response to two modeling classes of the human ear anatomy: traditional (classical anatomical aesthetics and formal presentation) versus experimental (artistic aesthetics and non-formal presentation). Experimental classes were completed in the late 2010. We are presently analyzing the statistical significance of our data, which partial results have been presented at local and national neuroscientific meetings.
