Neural Imaginings: experiential and enactive approaches to contemporary psychologies, philosophies, and visual art as imagined navigations of the mind

Neural Imaginings is a Masters of Fine Arts project that culminated in this research paper, which accompanied the Post-Graduate Show held in December 2014 at Sydney College of the Arts Gallery, University of Sydney, Australia. The cluster of large ceramic sculptures presented a network – Mind Labyrinth (visceral ingress) – on which sat various conical objects – Mind Flowerings. A wall-mounted sculpture accompanied the installation, titled Cosmic Dance of the Dendrite. This paper asked, Why does art move us? This trans-disciplinary paper and my creative process-led practice examine the contemporary role of the art object, first-person perspective as the reality of the Virtual, and the dialogic functioning that occurs during an art encounter. An art encounter is an engagement of audiences aimed at invoking an individual’s bodily sense experience and concomitant emotions and thoughts. Artists may harness these somato-sensory communications to activate a viewer’s awareness of their own self-agency and dialogic encounter with sculpture, that are self-evident in a viewer’s visual, tactile, somatic and/or kinaesthetic responses. The art work employed aesthetic means to activate sensorial engagement from a viewer’s art encounter, to enact perceptual responses as part of a self-authenticating, meaning‐making process. Neural Imaginings is both a presentation of, and a metaphor for, individual agency – in sculpting oneself into existence, within one’s own mental space. This paper draws on the work of contemporary theorists from art, science and philosophy, striking at the core process of consciousness. A trans‐disciplinary approach pivoted around a neuro‐physiological paradigm, including the following theorists: American philosopher Alva Noë; American neuroscientist Antonio Damasio; New Zealand art theorist Gregory Minissale; and professors on Gilles Deleuze theory, Brian Massumi and Peter Gaffney. Symbiotically, the paper’s explanation and art themes oscillated between intrapersonal and disciplinary narratives in art and science, in the pursuit of current approaches of trans‐disciplinary confluence about the functions of the mind. This paper references artworks by contemporary artists from Australia, including Julie Rrap, Stelarc, Bill Henson, Helen Pynor and Jill Orr. Contemporary international artists included: from Taiwan, Hsu Yunghsu; New York, Marc Leuthold, and Mexico, Gabriel Oroszco