How terror Hijacks the Brain

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/16/how-terror-hijacks-the-brain/

Perceptive Interactions

The objective of this study was to challenge the conception of space through the use of color, value, and light.  This interrogation began with a set of isometric color studies. These studies employed color and value to perceptively define dimensionality. Flat renderings were given an implied 3-dimensionality while 3-dimensional forms perceptively skewed to differ from their actual shapes.  These relatively simple illusionary studies helped to define a set of architectural principles which were then used to create a series of spatial relationship models. Within these models, depth, closure, and connections dynamically shift due to relationships between color, value, light, and orientation. These subtle nuances enable a dynamic conception of space simply through perceptive interactions.

- by Jason Askew

Inside the Bubble

by Johanna Brummer

Inside the Cube

by Burçe Karadag

The perception / deception / interpretation of space.

The perception / deception / interpretation of space.

Exploring the possibilities of spatial interpretation through hard lines by manipulating spacing, weight, and length. The conflicts between perception and conception are tested. 

...leading to a drawing series revealing parts of a whole - leaving the whole undefined
Conception taking control of perception.

by Chris Ardoin

Place Neurons in the Hippocampus

Place Neurons are located in the Hippocampus. These cells store information about spatial relationships from experience. The information is gathered and stored into a built network of storage spaces that are developed as the information is obtained. This scaffolding is manipulated and adjusted by the information that occupies it. 

Line : Edge

This study began with a series of x-ray perspectival drawings constructed through revealing only edges. The process of layering various edges begin to construct a spatial condition where edges can appear to move around, behind, through, out, or into the surface upon which they were drawn.

The notion of edges (lines) moving through space to form boundaries can be explored in three dimensions. By pulling the lines made from graphite out of the drawing plane into the z-direction with a stiff wire we have now another edge condition that exists without a normal surface background. When moving around the model, we experience the wire edges in fluctuation allowing several ways to perceive implied surfaces and depth.

This idea is then expressed in model form with wire, graphite and paper planes. Edges are moving through space, onto and through surfaces of this small environment.

- by Allison Johnson

Depth Perception

- Sama El-Saket

Invisible Cube

by Sijie Chen

Mindscape

Mindscape by Jai Bunnag

Shadow Construction

A project based on a series of studies diving into both two dimensional and three dimensional elements of shadow and object. This study works in the arena of ambiguity or in the arena of architecture, where both language and visual syntax play a large role. Our perception of space and depth can be developed in both three dimensional and two dimensional worlds, working back and forth, based on each other. How can shadows distort our perceptions of space? What do we expect from the information that shadows give us? How is space defined by shadows?

by Daniel Kim

Color Perception - is your red the same as my red?

What Our Brains Can Teach Us

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/opinion/what-our-brains-can-teach-us.html?smid=pl-share

New York Times article mentioned during our lecture today by Psychiatrist/Neuroscientist Ben Greenberg.
image by Kristina Collantes

Can we use our brains to directly control machines without requiring a body as the middleman?

selective attention test

Course Introduction

Brain Institute
Instructor: Christopher Bardt

What is reality? How is our mind formed from a 3 lb. organ? What constitutes our sense of self? How do learning and memory happen?

The human brain is the new frontier in science and medicine. Our capacity to probe its functions has reached a point where we can now emulate brain processes to design software, such as speech recognition. Great strides are being made on the mysterious mind/brain relationship. As perhaps the most complex organizational entity we know, the brain may give insights into the way we think about ordering space, program, and the architectural organization of cooperative work environments. It can be argued that architecture itself is an action of the brain extending and modeling itself into the world.

"A key aspect of creativity is the process of finding great metaphors-symbols that represent something else…..The metaphorical leaps that we consider of significance, tend to take place at the interstices of different disciplines. Working against this essential force of creativity, however, is the pervasive trend toward ever greater specialization in the sciences."   Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind

Brown University has created the Brown Institute for Brain Science (BIBS) bringing together researchers from the Departments of Neuroscience, Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Physics, and the Division of Applied Mathematics.  BIBS is joining forces with the Norman Prince Neurosciences Institute (NPNI) at Rhode Island Hospital, which brings in the clinical neuroscience departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. The decision to bring together theoreticians, experimentalists and clinical researchers was made in the belief that such an interdisciplinary (brain-like) approach will yield breakthroughs, despite risks of failure.

John Robson and John Davenport, representing BIBS and the NPNI, will be working closely with the studio class, on the subject of the brain and the institute; giving informal talks; organizing relevant tours of Brown University laboratories and hospital clinical space; and participating in reviews of proposals. The hope is that the class will in turn propel the conversation, spark new design thinking and conceptualization about the new institute.

This studio will explore the brain; through direct experiments and demonstrations, analogous modeling and presentations by prominent brain researchers. Based on these investigations, each student will design a new Brown Institute for Brain Science (BIBS), reimagining architectural possibilities for cooperation, public and research interaction, and organized collaboration within a dense program of research laboratories, clinical and teaching facilities and conference center.