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Research: The Eye and the Brain

As I want to explore the relationship between the eye and the brain I thought it best to further what I already understand with some reading. From Biology lessons I always remembered how the brain is basically a great matter of electronic pulses sending messages to the correct areas of the brain directing our actions, emotions, senses. After reading parts of the book "Eye and Brain the psychology of seeing" by R. L Gregory,  I began to understand more in depth about their relationship. From what I read the brain is a system of nerve cells consisting of cell bodies each having an axon. An axon is a "long slender projection of a nerve cell" an it basically is what conducts electrical pulses from the cell. This obviously interested me as it is provoked memories from biology and started making a rough picture in my own mind of what happens inside my brain. I found it ironic as I was reading about a brain and how it conducts electrical pulses to send messages, how my brain would be sending information about itself, making me understand more, how I was reading information that made me understand how I work as a machine.
As I read on and found out more about the electrical pulses it made me think of different ways I could produce this in a piece. Using light in darkness, light drawing on slow shutter speeds and dragging the light across the frame of the image to show a lightning bolt of thought. These electrical pulses are created when the eye sees something stimulating and there is an "alteration in the ion permeability of the cell membrane". So, in layman's terms before we see something that stimulates the eye for example a flash of light the center of the fibre of the cell in your brain is negative, after we see a light flash it turns positive initiating a flow of current which continues down the nerve. I read that this pulse is slower than electricity, which is interesting as when I was told about the impulses at school the first thing you do is relate it to something you already know, electricity. We cannot see these impulses or touch them so you are left to your imagination to break down what it would be like in your brain. Something that interested me and helped me in deciphering the relationship between the brain and the eye is this statement in the book:

"The Brain has been described as the only lump of matter we know from the inside"

It interested me because its like trying to work out a puzzle without ever seeing what you are trying to solve. With the brain, neurosurgeons are only allowed to access and touch specific parts of a live brain otherwise it would cause damage to that person. I found it quite beautiful that we aren't allowed access to certain places of the brain and mind, its curious and inspiring to investigate it further as you aren't allowed to see it all when it is still active. It interested me because in my piece I will be demonstrating what it would be like inside the brain, but in art there is a free rein as to how I interpret it as it is exactly that, an interpretation. And no-one knows precisely what it looks like when a brain is active and stimulated. There are endless charts and readings that can tell you the amount of current flowing and activity within a cell or group of cells in the brain but no footage or visual evidence of the scene itself. Again, it makes the subject more curious as it could be anything. To further my research I will look at perception and the way the eye perceives events and interprets them in the brain.
I was so inspired by the idea of electrical light pulsing through brains I experimented with a torch and a dark room, slow shutter speeds with my SLR digital camera and a tripod.  Below are some of the results.



I have used this kind of technique before in previous work and I really like the outcome. Its surreal, and unusual almost dream-like. I can imagine when a few are manipulated together it being quite slow and calming because of the blackness behind. To carry on the project I will do more research and try my ideas out through photography to get a better understanding of what I want.

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