Perception, Vision and Consciousness:

Artist and BU professor, Lucy Kim and PEM Neuroscientist, Tedi Asher

March 2, 2022, 7-8pm
Boston University
Catalyst Conversations in partnership with Boston University College of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts and Peabody Essex Museum

Tedi Asher and Lucy Kim are both fascinated by perception and have been in conversation about it for a long time. They both move from speculation to experimentation to visualization in their respective practices and seek to find common ground between art and science. The notion of perception has long intrigued scientists and artists alike. Leonardo da Vinci who was both an artist and scientist as well as a designer and engineer studied the human eye for twenty years in pursuit of that understanding. In this program, Asher and Kim continued that conversation with the audience!

Tedi Asher, PhD, is the neuroscience researcher at the Peabody Essex Museum. She joined PEM in 2017 after completing her doctoral degree in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School. Her training as a basic biologist has lent Tedi an appreciation of how mechanistic understandings of living systems can meaningfully inform our lived experience. Her current work explores ways to couple understandings of the human nervous system with caring curiosity to connect across differences and build new understandings of individuals, communities, and human experience more generally.

Lucy Kim is a visual artist working in painting, sculpture and biological media, and is an Associate Professor of Art in the School of Visual Arts at Boston University. Through an aesthetically and materially wide-ranging practice, she explores the many naturalizing mechanisms that structure day-to-day visual experiences. Using a broad range of materials such as oil paint, silicone rubbers, resins, and live bacteria cells, Kim’s focus is on developing forms that are visceral, tactile, and less vision-centric. She works as a way to better understand and challenge photographic authority, and the biological and socio-cultural systems at work to produce visibility. Kim was born in Seoul, Korea, and is based in Cambridge, MA. She received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art. She is the recipient of many awards including most recently, a 2022 Creative Capital Award.

Boston University School of Visual Arts is a professional art school within a major urban research university. We educate the eye, hand, and mind of the artist and foster new forms of arts-based research on campus and beyond. We value community, inclusion, diversity, and dialogue. Learn more at: https://www.bu.edu/cfa/visual-arts/

PEM's Neuroscience Initiative assesses how emerging neuroscience research can enhance the museum experience. Led by Dr. Tedi Asher, the program seeks to gain deeper insight into emerging brain science findings -- including the nature of perception, information processing and attention systems -- in order to create new interpretative and design strategies that foster indelible, transformational museum experiences. The initiative, which is a first among art museums, has two main goals:

Goal #1
Harness existing neuroscience research and generate new findings to inform the design of art experiences in the museum setting.

Goal #2
Observe visitor responses to art to inform our understanding of the neuroscience of aesthetic experience.
Learn more at: https://www.pem.org/neuroscience-initiative/

Image: l. Lucy Kim, credit: Lucy Kim, r. Tedi Asher, PhD, credit: PEM/Bob Packert