Designed to Hesitate: Consciousness as Paying Attention

CED 50th Anniversary - Visualizing the Future of Environmental Design: Designed to Hesitate: Consciousness as Paying Attention

Barbara Maria Stafford, Department of Art William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor, Emerita, University of Chicago

If we look at how human beings behave when they involve themselves in more complex activities (thinking, communicating, investigating, observing) we observe that they slow down, even hesitate. This talk seeks to open the door onto a dialogue between the mind-science of the humanities and the brain-science of neurobiology, through the development of a typology of looking based on neurological research and different art formats.

Barbara Maria Stafford is at the forefront of a growing movement that calls for the humanities to confront the brain's material realities. In Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images (University of Chicago Press, 2007), she argues that humanists should seize upon the exciting neuroscientific discoveries that are illuminating the underpinnings of cultural objects. In turn, she contends, brain scientists could enrich their investigations of mental activity by incorporating phenomenological considerations — particularly the intricate ways that images focus intentional behavior and allow us to feel thought.

http://www.ced.berkeley.edu

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