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Nov 13
La Bohémienne endormie  (The Sleeping Gypsy – ...

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Brain stimulation for a healthy brain can come in many forms - for the past couple days it has been touring NY city and visiting museums. I visited the MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) today as part of my final art plunge brain stimulation activity in NY city.

What struck me was one of the audios in which at 19th century artist said something to the effect of: the 19th century artist sees a thousand times more in a lifetime than an artist from the 18th century and that obviously this difference will require new art forms to convey the new reality.

I assume he meant that most 18th century artist didn’t travel much but also didn’t live in such big cities with a high density of people (therefore see less life/lives in a given day) and hence overall sees less ‘new things’ in a lifetime. This notion of taking in more information (seeing) than the previous generation somewhat struck me, but also made me jump to the 21st century.

Think of what the average 21st century kid will see in their lifetime. Not only traveling a great deal and many living in gargantuan cities but the big difference is the TV/movies (traditional media) and the internet. Think of the hours of video information that are taken in over a lifetime (even a year) and the endless number of web pages. If the artist thought there was a big change from the 18th to 19th century – well then I would really expect a new art form for the 21st century. Of course the question is in what form it will take? I will suggest that it, being the product of the information age, will involve petabytes of information. The question is how to present this massive load of info. You cannot use a traditional canvas (a human cannot pain that high of density), might the art actually take the form of the net ? Is the new art form just plain and simple the net?

Will an artist of the 21st century by linking various sites (both personally made and other sites) to form an ‘image’, a feeling, an experience, a story? In reality of course this is being done today (and done in the past). Will there be new and better ways to perform this? Do we call this art today, will we call in art in a hundred years, will some form of this new art hang in art galleries of the future - or will we all be using the net to view the new art?

Okay - enough of my art musings, off to society for neuroscience annual meeting tomorrow where 30,000+ neuroscientist descend to view all the latest and greatest neuroscience.

What did you do today to stimulate your brain?

One Response

  1. JI Says:

    maybe blogging is the new art form :)

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