Thinking Inside the Black Box: Automatic Drawings of Celestial Bodies as Memory Metaphor

Even though memories may seem like snapshots of the past stored in our minds,; modern Cognitive Neuroscience has revealed that our memories are more closely; related to fiction than autobiography. We use this fiction to create an idea of ourselves; and a conception of the world we inhabit. Yet every day we awake and rarely think to; question that what we believe as reality is an elaborately constructed elusion in our; minds. Each of the many thousands of mental processes that occur every second are; working to shape the flawed information collected by our senses. The collection of these; fictions becomes what we understand as memories. The artwork presented in this paper; attempts to unpack what memories are and how they change over time. Throughout the; process of art making, I attempted to understand a single memory, in doing so engaging; an extensive body of scientific research. This paper chronicles what I have come to call; a memory cycle. This cycle begins in a moment and is processed in working memory,; stored in long-term memory and retrieved for use, with much debate along every step of; the way. My artwork attempts to follow and document this process both artistically and; conceptually.

Thinking Inside the Black Box. Automatic Drawings of Celestial Bodies as Memory Metaphor By Lace Padilla 1 Thinking Inside the Black Box. Automatic Drawings of Celestial Bodies as Memory Metaphor Even though memories may seem like snapshots of the past stored in our minds, modern Cognitive Neuroscience has revealed that our memories are more closely related to fiction than autobiography. We use this fiction to create an idea of ourselves and a conception of the world we inhabit. Yet every day we awake and rarely think to question that what we believe as reality is an elaborately constructed elusion in our minds. Each of the many thousands of mental processes that occur every second are working to shape the flawed information collected by our senses. The collection of these fictions becomes what we understand as memories. The artwork presented in this paper attempts to unpack what memories are and how they change over time. Throughout the process of art making, I attempted to understand a single memory, in doing so engaging an extensive body of scientific research. This paper chronicles what I have come to call a memory cycle. This cycle begins in a moment and is processed in working memory, stored in long-term memory and retrieved for use, with much debate along every step of the way. My artwork attempts to follow and document this process both artistically and conceptually. 2 Automatic drawing was selected as the process by which I attempted to document and explore my memories. The technique of Automatic Drawing was first popularized by the Surrealists and is a process that is intended to allow the artist to connect to the unconscious mind. During the 1900s unconscious exploration was considered cutting edge psychology. The work of Sigmund Freud founded the theoretical underpinnings for what is understood today as System 2 1 processing. In Freud's classical theory, the mind is comprised of three levels; the conscious, preconscious and unconscious. Within these levels the Ego, Superego and Id reside. The Id is founded upon conception and is a manifestation of a baby's instinctual drives, such as pleasure and is only concerned with having its needs met. The Id lacks the ability to use logic or assess morality. Furthermore, Freud attributed sexuality and aggression with the Id. Around the age of 2 or 3 the baby's Id becomes modified by experiences of the outside world, which forms the Ego. The Ego functions as a mediator between the Id and the outside world, deciding which desires the Id will express and when. It uses logical deduction to make conclusions about the environment and make decisions about appropriate actions. Unlike the Id that resides exclusively in the unconscious, the Ego extends to all three levels. Lastly, around the age of 5 the Superego develops. The Superego is much like a conscious, which defines the child's morality. It is comprised of social mores and moral standards that have been collected by experiences. The Superego punishes the Ego with guilt when immoral decisions are made and rewards it with pride. According to 1 System will be defined later in this paper. 3 Freud the Ego is highly functional in a healthy adults and maintains homeostasis between the Superego and Id (Freud, 1990; Jacobi, 1973; Hall, 1999). Surrealist artist such as Andre Masson, Joan Mir6, Salvador Dali, Jean Arp and Andre Breton were influenced by Freud's theory of the unconscious and attempted to find ways to subvert the rational mind (Durozoi, 2004). Their primary idea was to access creativity that was located in the unconscious mind, and in doing so question a concept of time which was formulated by the Superego. Automatic drawing was understood to functi_onlike an involuntary process, such as those of the nervous system or breathing. The artists did not have a specific image in mind when they began drawing. Instead the art was in the process of connecting to the Id and exploring the levels of consciousness (Sayer, 2013). I adopted this technique not to access the unconscious (for Freud's original theory has been expanded to memory and attention theory) but to explore how the act of drawing can help to access lev~ls or stages of memory. I began by using Andre Masson's process as described in Drawing: A Contemporary Approach, which included three steps. "The first condition is to free the mind and enter into a trancelike state; second, to abandon oneself to "interior tumult"; and third to begin rapid mark making or, as the Surrealists called it, "writing"(Sale and Betti, 2008). I adapted this approach by including, the practice of "Memory Meditation". Memory Meditation centers on holding and exploring past events through multiple pathways in the brain. This form of Meditation has been studied widely most notably by researchers at the University of 4 Santa Barbara, that showed and increased working memory capacity up to 10% (Mrazek et al. 2013). The resulting work is a series of 38 graphite drawings on 24" x 30" arches white watercolor paper. The reflectivity of bright white paper engages the viewer's optical neuroreceptors. This activation directs or focuses attention to the reflective objects and results in additional cognitive resource allocation. Many studies have shown that directed attention leads to the activation of System Two processing (See Kahneman and Tversky, 1982 for full review), which is attributed with advanced introspection and reasoning among other complex computational processes. These cognitive states are optimal for fine art viewing, that of which are not directly facilitated in an off-white paper condition. Rectangular paper was used in this size and format in order to allow the drawings to be the elements of highest contrast. The right angles and straight sides of the paper paralleled the architecture of the room. Had the work been drawn on circular paper then the paper itself would be in contrast with the room taking away some of the emphasis from the circular drawings. Additionally, the drawings where centered in the paper from left to right and placed in the upper portion of the page. In this way, I was attempting to use the composition to make the drawings feel elevated or lifted up. Had they been placed lower on the paper than they would have felt more grounded to our own planet's gravity and less like celestial bodies. Finally, the size of the drawings was selected based on my own body size. As will be discussed in great detail later in this paper, the drawings are intended to function as a pseudo-record of my body state. 5 Therefore, the diameter of the drawn elements are the size of my widest dimensions, in order to reference my physical body. The number and ordering of drawings were formatted in chronological order. Previous versions of the show design specified the number of drawings in relationship to days in a planetary cycle. However, upon installation it was clear that my memories and the cycle would never actually be complete. Instead, I decided to depict the passing of time as the memory changed and selected the drawings that were completed every 5 days, ending with the time I began installing the show. This unit of time was sufficient to have the memory develop from drawing to drawing but not be utterly different from the previous drawing. This effect allowed the drawings to visually appear to be linear and show the passing of time. Due to the non-regular time interval I used when creating these drawings, 21 drawings that did not fit into the 5-day cycle were excluded from the show. Additionally, an open white wall was placed after the final drawing suggesting that the drawing cycle is continuing by allowing space for future drawings. Finally, viewers were allowed to take handouts, which included the name of the show, the date and title of each piece, and artist statement. The artist statement read as followers: Even though memories may seem like snapshots of the past stored in our minds, modern Cognitive Neuroscience has revealed that our memories are more closely related to fiction than autobiography. We use this fiction to create an idea of ourselves and a conception of the world we inhabit. Yet every day we wake up and rarely think to question that what we believe as reality is an elaborately constructed elusion in our minds. Each of the many thousands of mental processes that occur every second are working to shape the flawed information collected by our senses. The collection of these fictions becomes what we understand as memories. The artwork presented attempts to unpack how memories change over time. 6 Automatic drawing was selected as the process by which I attempted to document and explore my memories. The technique of Automatic Drawing was first popularized by the Surrealists and is a process that is intended to allow the artist to connect to the unconscious mind. Each planet-like drawing was created by meditating on a single memory and using drawing to document my perception of that memory, at that moment in time. The differences between the drawings represents how my memory changed over time. Planetary imagery was used to elicit notions of celestial cartography, which forms a visual metaphor for my exploration of cognition. In many ways, the method of attempting to map distant planets is similar to forming an understanding of the brain. For example, psychologists famously describe the brain as a "Black Box". Meaning that we can put information into the box and see what it looks like when it comes out, but we know very little about the box it's self. In a similar fashion we combine disparate forms of information about planets without ever having any actual interaction with them. The design of the show was intended to allow the viewers to navigate the space and have the opportunity to read the relevant information at their own pace. My objective was to keep the viewer's body following an orbital path, which was enforced by the placement of a larger sphere in the center requiring viewers to walk around it. While they were allowed to view each piece I didn't want text anywhere on the walls or floor that would artificially stop their movement. Additionally, the lighting design was created to suggest the passing of days with regular intervals of light and dark spots, which alternated between warm and cool lighting, all of which radiated from the center. This approached allowed the show to feel like the drawings changed over seasons and didn't allow viewers to see all the work in bright lighting, which was intended to suggest to the viewer that the over all show and cycle was more important than any individual piece. 7 For each drawing I began in the same manner, meditating on the memory and then practicing automatic drawing. My automatic drawing process differed from the Surrealist in a few important ways. The primary difference was that I chose to tape off a circle in the center of the page and engaged the practice exclusively with in the boundaries of the circle. My intention for this choice was to create a controlled environment in which the spontaneity of automatic drawing would appear intentional and not as random marks. In this way, I was visually trying to communicate to the viewer that the drawings inside of the circles where beholden to a specific structure. Conceptually, the containment functions as a way to unite all the pieces by appearing as a snap shot or cross-section of a single element. This may suggest to the viewer that the show is comprised of 38 depictions of a single entity. The second deviation from the Surrealist's method was to allow the drawings to resemble planetary spheres. After each automatic drawing was completed I worked in to each piece and emphasized the elements that made the circles appear to be spherical. Both visually and conceptually, I was attempting to make the pieces appear to be representations that occurred at different times throughout a cycle. In doing so, I created spheres that seemed to contain large bodies of water and continents that are represented at varying times in the orbital cycles. I selected to draw only bodies of water and land, to depict the surface structures of a planet that could be seen from space. Large structures such as the Great Wall of China and cities are only visible at Low Earth Orbit (Anderson et al. 2002). This intentional absence of man-made structures suggests that these planets maybe viewed from a great distance. The inclusion of H2O also 8 suggests that they may be able to support life. All of these choices were intended to allow the viewer to feel as if these planets were relatable, and not abstractions of Earth. In this way, I wanted the viewer to not necessarily feel compelled to try to identify the continents; instead to make comparisons between the novel representations of some unknown planet, that shares traits with our own. Finally, atmospheric elements were not drawn due to their temporal nature. For example, the average viewer would be familiar with changing weather patterns, such as hurricanes, which are visible from space. We expect these systems to change; therefore there is nothing unexpected about this phenomenon. Continents on the other hand do not have discernable movement from day to day. Ideally when a viewer compares these drawings and notices changes in the large landmasses. In combination with the artist statement, this idealistically would suggest not a changing planet but a changing perception of this planet. This celestial metaphor was inspired. by conversations with members of the STKO Lab in the Geography Department at UCSB. This group helped to identify that the current visual model for memory theory is now and has always been coupled with the newest technology of the day. For example, when dual-processing computer systems began gaining popularity in the 70s, the Dual Processing Model for memory systems was also introduced (Lockhart and Craik, 1990). Likewise, today the widely cited memory model is that of complex dynamic networking systems. Unfortunately and unavoidably, these models are fads at best. Therefore, I attempted to formulate a different model, which functioned more as a metaphor and would reference the mental mapping literature. The initial idea was to create maps that would function as a visual 9 representation of epistemology. Research has shown that we encode spatial information as allocentric mental maps (Tolman, 1948). Furthermore, the way in which traditional topographical maps are designed is similar to how our mental mappings are encoded. For example, in order to create its widely used mapping system, Google employs 13 satellites that continuously take images of the earth. These images are then stitched together and updated about twice a month (Bearman and Appleton, 2013). In a similar way, our minds collect data that is stored temporarily in working memory. Once enough connections are made then the information is passed into long-term memory and our mental map is updated. While the metaphor of mental mapping is appealing, what it neglects to consider is how little we actually know about the brain. For example, psychologists famously describe the brain as a "Black Box" (Neugebauer, 2008). Meaning that we can put something into the box and see what it looks like when it comes out, but we know very little about the box itself. Even with advanced technologies, such as fMRI imaging, the brain is still experimented upon ~y exposing participants to stimuli and interpreting the output. In contrast, we have mapped every crevice of the earth and have a vast body of updated knowledge about the geography of our planet. In this way, a more direct metaphor would be the way in which we gain information about celestial bodies. For example, astronomers have to piece together disparate images, data, and computational models to create inferences about the planets they study. This is a parallel process to the current state of Cognitive Psychology, which makes the depiction 10 of planet-like objects an appropriate metaphor to explore a conversation about the memory cycle. Accompanying each sphere is the date in which the drawing was completed and a word. The date is intended to trigger neurological connections associated with the viewer's own experience of the date and evoke their own memories. The intention is to both illustrate the idea of revisiting a memory over time and create the experience of remembering in the viewer. Finally, in the center of the gallery floor a 1Oft x 1Oft black square was placed. The piece is a literal interpretation of a black box, the namesake of the show and the widely used metaphor for the brain. Within the square, a final sphere was drawn with a combination of baking soda and chalkboard chalk. The size of the sphere was chosen by calculating the mathematical sum of the volume of the other spheres and is intended to represent a greater epistemology conglomerate of memory; an epi-memory. This memory sphere unlike the static graphite drawings changes over time due to it chemical composition, which represents the way the memories are constantly changing and developing. In this way, the small sphere can be understood as a snapshot of a memory in a single moment and the large sphere is the holistic memory in flux. Chalk was chosen as a material for its ability to utilize the sense of smell to elicit memories of academia. Due to the location and route of the neurotransmitters employed in smell, this sense has the greatest ability to bring back memories (Zucco, Herz, and Schaal, 2012). The motivation for using olfactory academic memories, was to insight contextual priming. When a scent that is associated with academics is perceived, the 11 viewer is then more likely to retrieve memories related with education and learning. This effect is used to encourage viewers to look beyond the aesthetics of the work and possibly engage in it from an academic standpoint. Furthermore, I added baking soda to the chalk, which will chemically react to the water I added in the drawing process. The concept is that over time the baking soda will brown in response to the water and the drawing will remain in flux. This larger planetoid is intended to represent the combination of all the smaller drawings and therefore must change over time. OURPERCEPTUAL SYSTEM At the deepest level of this work, it calls to question the validity of the information we perceive and store as memories. By suggesting and depicting how a memory changes over time the work highlights the fallibility of our perceptual system. Current cognitive science suggests that there are two primary ways that our minds do not perceive information accurately. The first being, cognitive illusions and second are perceptual illusions. Cognitive illusions are created by the way our minds distort information. For example, these types of distortions are to blame when examining how football referees are more likely to hand out misconduct penalties to players in black uniforms (Webster, Urland, and Correll, 2012), or when judges are more likely to feel more forgiving after lunch (Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso, 2011 ). The second category of illusions is perceptual illusions. Artists like M.C. Escher and Felice Varini create optical illusions that trick the optical system by creating unexpected orientations of architectural structures (Mikkonen, 2004). However perceptual illusions are not limited to the eye and included all the senses, often times 12 creating a disconnect between two or more senses. The artwork and research presented in this paper considers both cognitive and perceptual illusions to form the foundation of memories and shapes the trajectory by which memories changes over time. The visual art created, is a document of how my rendering and remembering changes with the passing of time. In this way this work traces a memory cycle, and the following sections will describe the perceptual, cognitive, and neurological mechanism that underlies the cycle. THE SENSES On the onset, the information that we gather to form memories should be suspect. As the process of creating these drawings progressed it became increasingly clear that I might not be able to trust the information I originally collected. At the time when the memory was made another person was present. I had not spoken to this person about the memory until March at which time there was a court date to present evidence pertaining to the night when the memory was formed. While the courts found my version of the memory to be correct the other person had a completely different memory. I don't believe this was a lie or misrepresentation of the night but I think our perceptual systems where acting and reacting differently. The current perceptual research supports this finding, stating that we perceive the world through our sensory organs. On the most basic level we have 5 senses: sight (optical), touch (haptic), smell (Olfactory), taste (Gustatory), and sound (auditory). Most people remember learning this in primary school. However, what modern Psychology has discovered is that these senses are completely intertwined, or dynamic. You can 13 think about the senses as a network of connections that is constantly sending information and updating (Goldstein, 2009). Updating forms an important part of one of the most advanced theories about sensation, known as Embodied Cognition and Perception (Bridgeman and Tseng, 2011 ). The idea of embodiment will be discussed through-out this writing but for now you can think about embodiment as the way your body and senses interact with the environment. For example, imagine standing still, and then walking forward. Embodied Cognition and Perception states that your perception of the event changes when you are in motion. As you move through the space your sensory systems are updating with additional information about sights that you couldn't see before. Embodiment means that your very perception of the world changes as your bodies state changes. Embodied Cognition and Perception introduces the first illusion; what you see is all there is (WYSIATI) (Kahneman, 2013). One of the most famous examples comes from the researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, and is the namesake of a New York Times best selling book "The Invisible Gorilla". In this experiment a viewer is shown a video in which two teams of basketball players are throwing around a ball. One team is dressed in black and the other in white. The viewer is then prompted to count the number of passes that the black team makes. This task is very hard as both teams are passing the ball quickly and running around in all directions. Midway through the video a man in a gorilla suit walks past the teams, beats his chest and walks way. After a few more minutes of passing the viewer is then asked how many passes he or she counted, and if anything out of the ordinary happened. Reading the description of the 14 experiment it seems impossible that anyone could miss the gorilla in the video but over 50% of the participants do not report seeing the gorilla. What's more, Daniel Memmert, the primary investigator, then went on to record where viewer's eyes were tracking during this video. It turns out that 90% of the viewers stare at the gorilla for over a second even though only 50% remember seeing the oddity (Chabris and Simons, 2011 ). This experiment is just one example of how seeing is not the same as perceiving and perceiving is not the same as remembering. SELECTIVE ATTENTION Additionally, one of the reasons why my memory and the other person's may have been different is from a cognitive state called selective attention. Why do only half of the participants perceive the gorilla? The answer is selective attention, and the next cognitive illusion that forms our memories. Selective attention is a biological construct that has aided homo sapiens to direct attention to only the specific stimuli that is necessary for survival (Driver and Frackowiak, 2001 ). Take for example the complex task of driving. For the driver there are an infinite amount of distractions; phones, children, spouses, bad drivers, lost directions, etc. However, we are able to focus our attention on specific tasks that must be performed in an explicit order. What's more, there are many distracters that we deliberately ignore and even more that we do not perceive at all. For example, try to remember the paint color of every car you passed on your way to work. It is impossible to remember, and why would you want to? Why would we need to store additional information in our minds that are not central to the task at 15 hand? This is how 50% of participants can miss the gorilla in the room. The task of counting the basketball passes is hard and requires full attention. The gorilla was novel and not important to perceive when performing the counting task, therefore a large number of people never perceive it at all. The statement that counting the passes requires full attention brings up the next important cognitive illusion that manipulates memories, which is cognitive load also referred to as cognitive resources (Van Dillen, Papies, and Hofmann, 2013). Cognitive load is the over arching term for all the elements that require you to do mental work; those which require cognitive resources. For example the cognitive load required for the gorilla task was twofold. You had to attend to the players in black shirts and ignore the players with white shirts, count the number of passes and update that number as another pass was made. Each requires cognitive resources and once we have used all the resources then we no longer have reserves to dedicate to unexpected events, such as gorillas sightings. MEMORY THEORY Now that the basics of attention and perception have been discussed I can detail the current state of Memory Theory that was used to generate my art. Endel Tulving founded the theory of episodic semantic and procedural memory, which formed the foundation of memory research that has given insight to conditions such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease (Tulving, 1985). This theory controversially separated three systems, noting that each should be considered special. In addition, he helped to define how each of these memory systems relates to different parts of the brain. 16 Episodic memory is the capacity to recollect a specific event that occurred in one's life. It is activated consciously and employs a concept of time that can be traveled in by a conscious awareness of self. This ability to conceive of a time in terms of subjective past and present is expressed as autonoetic and noetic consciousness, and has the ability to distinguish the difference between remembering and experiencing an event. This concept of time evolved to create an evolutionary advantage that allowed humans to retrieve episodic memory from a perceived past and project learned experiences to future tasks. Episodic memory possibly evolved after semantic memory as an "embellishment". Because of its complexity this system develops after the age of four (Tulving, 1985). One example of evidence that supports this model is the distinction between temporal amnesia which is the loss of episodic memory and categorical amnesia which is the loss of semantic memory. K.C. is a very famous and widely studied example of an amnesic that suffered from brain lesions as a result of a motorcycle accident. K.C. has completely lost his episodic memory. His anterograde amnesia is both for episodic and semantic memory. However, his retrograde amnesia is only for episodic memory. This suggests that at least the episodic system is separate from the other memory systems and it can be isolated and damaged. Interestingly, he is able to access episodic memories if they happened in the last few minutes, which might be argued that they are accessible because they are in use by procedural memory. His ability to conceive of time was not damaged; instead his concept of his self-system was harmed. He 17 understands conceptually what time is and how if functions but when asked to place himself in relationship to time he can't do it! (Tulving, 1985) Procedural memory is similar to working memory but focuses on stored connections or memory traces between stimuli and one's behavior. Actions are stored as blueprints or the probability of using one blueprint over another, but not as episodes or scenes (Tulving, 1985). In contrast the semantic system is virtually the opposite of procedural memory. It is a memory system that stores the facts of the world without relationship to action or event. It can be thought of as a catalog of information that has no connection to the selfsystem, like general knowledge about the rules that govern the physical world. The three systems are bound in a "monohierarchical" relationship where episodic memory depends on semantic memory, and semantic on procedural but not necessarily the other way around. Tulving made a distinction between these three systems both conceptually and empirically. Some of the compelling evidence for the separate systems was based on brain imaging research where he was able to isolate each system. In doing so, he showed that there is a difference in availability and accessibility of information in memory (Tulving). FALSE MEMORIES These theories give light to understanding how false memories can be generated. False memories are those that have never occurred whatsoever but are common in eyewitness accounts and memories that are retrieved by hypnosis and are widely controversial. One of the elements that might support the notion of false memories in 18 Tulving's view is that episodic memory was the last system to develop and is an "embellishment" to the semantic memory system. Possibly the episodic system is less developed and more susceptible to manipulation, such as leading questions and false memory implantation. Furthermore, because episodic memory is dependent on semantic memory, the constructs of the episodes may be full of holes or false information from the semantic that can be filled or altered by false information, meaning that there are many places along the information chain where the episodic memory can be corrupted. Or maybe, because episodic memory is one of the few systems that must be encoded in relationship to two abstract concepts (time and the self-system) the additional connections to non-concrete elements could be more vulnerable to outside manipulation. PERCEPTION AND ART My interest in the fallibility of perception and memory evolved out of my previous work in painting; beginning with the time I spent as a child apprenticing with a photorealistic oil painter who taught me how to trick the eye and stimulate emotional responses. For my undergraduate and the beginning of my graduate program I continued my exploration of perception in artwork. My focus was on developing work that created visual models, which illustrated perception, memory, and attention theory. By using the language of cartography, I created hand-drawn maps that incorporated body based data, such as heart rate and blood pressure, to design physical representations of a subject's mental map. My drawings (see Documentation Section) are intended to detail the way in which our memories are manipulated by our body 19 states. Research unequivocally shows that what we understand as reality is in fact an altered state of perception, in which our bodies filter and modify information in order to make memories that serve an evolutionary purpose, as was the case with the invisible gorilla study cited earlier. The inspiration for this work began with a study of modern cartography. Cartography, has the ability to display vast amounts of information on a small scale. However, as I began to understand how these images are made and the history of cartography, it became increasingly clear that the images I understood as factual were distorted, misused, falsified, and used as forms of propaganda. What surprised me most was the inappropriate usage of distortion. In order to convince a viewer that a map depicts the truth of a situation, cartographic agencies like Google Maps use selection, simplification, displacement, smoothing, enhancement, graphic association, abbreviation, aggregation, area conversion, dissolution, segmentation, point conversion, old images, and clone stamps (Monmonier and Blij, 1996). Furthermore, distortions are widely integrated within maps to try and catch people committing copyright infringement. In 1983 for example the US attempted to invade Grenada and accidentally destroyed a hospital. The map the Air force used was an intentionally distorted tourism map designed by a local surveying company to catch other surveyors stealing their information (Monmonier and Blij, 1996). Historically, cartography has been influenced by cultural and political factions just as much as environment factures. My maps referenced cartography's questionable past in addition to creating a dialogue about the accuracy of all information. The subjectivity 20 of information, specifically that used in geographic representations, is a reoccurring concept in all of my work. These works allowed me to use the language of maps in order to further investigate and research the nature of our information processing systems. Artists like Mark Lombardi, Atelier Van Lieshout, and the Yes Men, who share a similar interest in the subjectivity of information, greatly influence my work. Mark Lombardi's Global Networks use the aesthetics of information to captivate and educate his viewers. Similarly, by calling to question the authenticity of information and the subsequent affects of misinformation, I hoped to ask the viewers to reassess the data that their perceptual systems are offering as facts. ~---~· --· {.~----:--a..,. ..~ n ,._- ...- ...-..., ....-,.. ..- """..-r.,,,•- ,_i..__.,_._!'lo,,.-• ..-----lli,.-, • nc-_ U:.. ...- ..... ....,.__ __, .... .. - k~--~~~-..•~.Jo l-..1~""':=::-....~. r,.. _,,._ocu~ IJ,! _.._.,..tu ..,. _u---~~-_,_._ ..._.. If~:·.:.:.. :--- -··a-··--:,. __ .i,;,-.'::::::,!:;:':"..::-"'--· IJ•-~-- (.; ....-"""·-:t:n~~-=:~--=-~-b :~i:~£~~-----~~ (rl, -- :2~~~~-:".e .... _,... ~ :=,~'::.,.n,-- ......... ,._ ~ =:=_~~:.:~~., --·-· ~=--.-:;.-: ..-:-... iM:'.==--~~==-=-~ g-..::::~----•--~~:·t--:: ..~-=-~~~;.:--""'~---.,_ ..._,.. ...__ ..... ~~--:::~--......,.,~u._ ~-:-!..~"'i.:-·"- ..--. t-~-•-.1~...,Jr,-.l,l'tll•-ll' ...-ii,,, ... _,.,"'" ~~ ~~~~_...-.:.~oo:-•4'-•- Figure 1: Think for Yourself I With Anna Jones and Mona Del Hirst, screenshots 21 In the Fall of 2012, I completed an artwork that I had begun in 2008 titled, Think for Yourself I With Anna Jones and Mona Del Hirst (Figure 1), which was indented to provide insights on how perception functions. This work was a combination of interests in perception and laboratory research I was conducting on virtual environments. In an age where public identity is formed and exists primarily virtually, the notion of self extends beyond one's physical body to encompass avatars as an extension of the human form. One's Facebook persona is essentially an avatar of the real person it represents. With this in mind, virtual interactions present unique problems that rise from computer-mitigated relationships. In contrast to the spontaneity of physical interaction, virtual communication requires a deliberate action, which allows for a greater level of control of relationships formed and the information processed. Research suggests that this ability to acutely self-select media has given rise to hyper-self censorship. In this state of hyper-self censorship the media is given incentive to produce self-affirming, extreme, and divisive content, which serves to confirm and solidify polarizations. The online performance character "Anna Jones" was designed to investigate the alarming propensity for divisive media on both sides of the political spectrum. The objective of this work was to highlight mainstream media's hunger to provoke hatred and fear, which is not representative of the public at large, whom have the capacity for compromise and altruism. In 2009 Anna Jones was created to be a caricature of a Republican woman and Tea Party activist. The only picture of her was posted on Facebook and was created by morphing the faces of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Elizabeth 22 Montgomery (of Bewitched fame) using computer-morphing software. All of her characteristics were designed to specifically appeal to the Tea Party, including her intense religiosity and strong demonstrations of patriotism. She was intended to be seen as a fake from a quick glance by the shear outlandishness of the caricature. Instead her visual affect and nature made her wildly popular. By simply posting patriotic slogans such as "God Bless America," and "Don't tread on me" Anna quickly gained 5000 Facebook "friends" and at this writing, continues to receive 30 requests a day. A second performance caricature, Mona Del Hirst, was then conceived, and designed to be Anna's liberal counterpart by appealing to the artistic activist community. She was created with the same attention to detail as Anna and was equally well received. Mona's identity was hidden to play to the cultish love of anonymous artists such as the Brittish graffiti art phenomenon, Banksy. To further emphasize her underground status, her events were accompanied by an obscure DJ from the Berlin underground: Gombi. On March 22 nd an actress playing the roll of the fictional character Mona Del Hirst hosted an (actual, realtime) art opening in which she invited unsuspecting viewers-primarily a sampling from an artistic community leaning toward the political left-- to post on the Facebook wall of Anna Jones. The participants were told that Mona Del Hirst had hacked into Anna's Facebook page and she (Mona) was offering them the opportunity to speak their minds to 5000 Tea Party members through unsuspecting spokeswoman, tea party activist Anna Jones. Going into the gallery, the participants were unaware that either Mona Del Hirst or Anna Jones were fictitious. Interestingly, the comments of the 23 participants were more comical than mean-spirited or intentionally harmful. Given the opportunity to hurt one of their supposed political enemies, the participants instead chose to tease her a bit. Not all of the attendees were in agreement with the event. several participants tried to shut down the experiment; one man was even ready to fist fight to stop the show. In spite of how drastically different their political views were from Anna's supposed views, the participants met her primarily with empathy and a bit of humor. After the fake hacking, Anna Jones asked all of her Facebook friends to contact the media about the story. The idea was to see how the media would spin the harmless course of events for their own benefit. One media outlet of undisclosed political affiliation 2 , began reporting on the piece. A reporter contacted Anna Jones and began asking questions about the piece. Anna responded with clues to help the reporter discover Anna's true identity. When the reporter finally discovered the author was an art student by the name of Lace Bassett the reporter provided the perfect example of how some in the media use fear and intimidation to repress freedom of expression. The reporter sent threatening emails and phone calls to the artist including; "Right now, things aren't looking good for Lace Bassett ... " In addition, he called and sent many emails to her employers, personal friends, former bosses, and random contacts with equally threatening and hate filled messages in an attempt to compromise her employment, 2 The Daily Caller is of undisclosed political affiliation, however, its questions seem to be inclined to support the Tea Party and the National Republican Committee. 24 education and personal relationships. The reporter crossed the line of harm)ess creative expression into vindictive harassment. The reporter and his attempt to inflict emotional and mental harm on the artist (keep in mind that this is all over a few funny and artistic posts on Facebook) are now an integral part of the project. This reporter has made himself a performer in an artwork that is a reflection of his own destructive acts. My intention for this work is to expose the general public to ideas about cognition that would inspire them to evaluate the impact of perception on their own lives. I hoped to communicate with audiences that may not have the exposure, resources, or desire to access such research. While conducting this artistic exploration, I began work for the Visual Perception Spatial Cognition Research Group, the Perception and Computer Graphics Research Group, and the Uncertainty Visualization Research Group at the University of Utah. In these groups, we conduct laboratory research using immersive virtual environments, concerning visual perception and spatial cognition. This work allowed me to employ rigorous scientific method, which supported the exploratory nature of my artistic practice. The work we conducted is interested in the way our minds understand space and location. We used virtual environments to modify space and test how participants react to the modifications. The primary method for testing a participant's mental map is through a process termed "Blind Walking". Blind walking is where the participants are presented with an object that is a set distance away from them. Then they are blindfolded and asked to 25 simulate how far away the object was by walking with out vision. In some experiments they are also asked to turn 30, 60, or 90 degrees from the object before walking. This is done so that they are forced to make a distance judgment as apposed to a location judgment. They are blind folded because the research shows that there is a difference between perception and judgment. That is to say, that when we are attempting to perceive the relative location of an object we often under estimate its distance. Previous experiments have shown that blindfolding increases accuracy suggesting that the act of visual translation manipulates distance judgments. There is over 15 years of research dedicated to understanding why these distance compressions occur. Some of the newest studies found that a possible issue maybe that in the virtual world we have no bodies which creates and effect disembodiment. In the physical world, we exist as a permanent reference point for distance, size and location. In the majority of research and virtual base art pieces no physical representation of the human form is present (Mohler). Research suggests that the inclusion of a static avatar reduces the judgments and perception errors, and inclusion of an articulated avatar that moves with the participant is even more successful. Interviews have been conducted with participants concerning their perception of location from both long-term and short-term memories. These verbal accounts were collected in Sarah Creem's perceptual research lab. Participants also performed blind walking tasks in the Virtual environment at the lab using a head mounted display and triangulated location, to test variance of their perceptions in the form of body based 26 measurements, that are industry standard for embodied cognition research. These measurements have been found to be more accurate than verbal accounts or scale judgments. In addition, motion capture data was collected about their head position and orientation. This extensive research in perception of spatial memory and historical background forms the foundation for Thinking Inside the Black Box, Automatic Drawings of Celestial Bodies as Memory Metaphor. Throughout a process of immersion in the artistic process and a commitment to academic rigor I have created a body of work that is both grounded in aesthetics and empowered by the scientific method. The interdisciplinary approach that informs my perspective is deeply wedded with a belief in the value of collaborations. My objective for the future is to create bridges between the sciences and arts, and in doing so , propel both fields in a meaningful way. 27 DOCUMENTATION View 1: Chalk and baking soda on black flooring, 1Oft x 1Oft. 28 -- View 2: Chalk and baking soda on black flooring, 10ft x 10ft. Selected Works: 31 graphite drawings on 24" x 30" Arches white watercolor paper 29 Title: 11.05.2012 I Locus Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 30 Title: 11.10.20121 Converge Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches - 31 e: 11.15.20121 Origin phite on Paper 30inches 32 itle: 11.20.2012 I Glide raphite on Paper 4x30inches - 33 Title: 11.25.2012 I Disk Graphite on Paper 24x3Qinches 34 itle: 12.05.2012 I Slice raphite on Paper 4x3Qinches 36 Title: 12.10.2012 I Delta Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 37 Title: 12.15.2012 I Hole Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 38 Title: 12.20.2012 I Chord Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 39 Title: 01.01.2013 I Vinculum Graphite on Paper 24x3oinches 40 rtle:01.05.2013 I Model raphite on Paper 4x3Qinches 41 Title: 01.10.20131 Arctan Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 42 Title: 01.15.20131 Cis Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 43 Title: 01.20.2013 I Domain Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 44 Title: 01.25.2013 I Resonance Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 45 Title: 02.01.2013 I Damp Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 46 Title: 02.05.2013 I Satisfy Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 47 Title: 02.10.2013 I Convection Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 48 Title: 02.15.20131 Ray Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 49 Title: 02.20.2013 I Flex Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches so Title: 02.25.2013 I Dilation Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 51 Title: 03.01.2013 I Surd Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 52 Title: 03.05.2013 I Solid Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 53 Title: 03.10.2013 I Inertia Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 54 Title: 03.15.2013 I Conjecture Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 55 Title: 03.20.2013 I Impulse Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 56 Title: 04.05.2013 I Torus Graphite on Paper 24x30 inches 57 Title: 04.10.2013 I Luminosity Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 58 Title: 04.10.2013 I Quanta Graphite on Paper 24x30inches 59 Works Cited Bearman, Nick, and Katy Appleton. 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