This immersive derivative of my original ~4’ x 4’ x 6’ sculptural projection lives in the digital realm.
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fMRI image reconstruction studies are attempts to empirically represent our most personal experiences: mental perception and representation. After observing a representational, “ground truth” image in an fMRI machine, participants' neural signals are linked to the image. An artificial neural network compares these image-signal links with images that only have semantic labels, seeking common features in both categories. Its output resembles a rough visual vocabulary of the mind.
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The imagery of this piece comes from stock photographs of animals and reconstructed imagery based on measuring neural signals from different parts of the visual cortex. By modeling a physical terrain from these visions, I aimed to manifest a conceptual, future environment of the mind that maps to its perceptual rhythm.
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“Neuroimaging helps us to understand the connectivity of the brain. But… fMRI… [doesn’t tell] us anything directly about how information flows through the brain. A single experiment can tell us which brain areas are simultaneously active while subjects are performing a particular task, but it does not tell us, for example, about the order in which the areas are active. The diagrams that present the results of neuroimaging experiments only show which areas “light up together….” But they really only identify correlations….” (José Bermúdez, “Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind”)
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This disconnect in understanding ourselves, and each other, is frightening and awe-inspiring. We may eventually find a way to reach Ground Truth, perhaps to find that we have simply recreated what we already are.
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Watch the documentary on this project's production:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CQMAFgzH8TR/
