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Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
Conjectures on music, artistry and the brain
Date: Tuesday, October 13th
Time: 12:05 pm
Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Russell Gardner, UW Department of Psychiatry
Abstract: George Steiner tells that &quot;... we write about books or about music or about art because 'some primary instinct of communion' would have us share with and communicate to others an overwhelming enrichment...&quot; He felt this in 1959 with his first major writing and it remained his conviction. I find it resonates, yet how does it work? What does &quot;instinct&quot; mean in terms of the brain? I am not a musician and though always finding music a pleasure and most interesting challenge, I have felt the reasons mysterious ones. Why do people perform? Why do people listen? Where and how in the brain does art generally and music specifically gain its place in humans? What I will say hinges on various recent readings and on communications for the past two years with fellow members of the Arts Immersion (AIm) group. Plus, present some ideas on the medial temporal lobes that bear on performance issues and on evolutionary biology as these bear on human communication. I hope to address how do &quot;artistic&quot; people - including musicians - compare and contrast with other people? How does the musical communication share features of other communications and how may it stand unique? How does it compare/contrast with other means of artistic expression? How does sound production and appreciation in non-human animals bear on the subject? <br>
<br>
Gardner, Howard: In search of the Ur-song. In Gardner, Howard: Art Mind &amp; Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1982. <br>
Levitan, Daniel J. This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. NY: Plume Penquin, 2006. <br>
Mithen, Steve: The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. <br>
Sacks O: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain. NY: Knopf, 2007. <br>
Steiner, George: Introduction, A Reader. OUP, 1984, p.7.
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