Cloud-brain thought-bubbles float like hot air balloons. An impulse zips through – a chasing marquee – neuron to neuron, racing across the picture plane of the brain.
At the microscopic level we look closely into one mind, as to see a daydream. Then the scale shifts, we stand back and view a discussion between many. This work presents a conversation for our observation. The piece itself also looks out at us looking in, a specimen at the zoo, unselfconsciously chattering. We, the viewer, are simultaneously an observer and a participant.
We see the materials and craft traditions worked by hand for centuries. I am a maker, in a world in which the handcraft has essentially been swallowed by the assembly line and in which we place less and less value on the actual, replacing it instead with the virtual. There is a wistful playfulness – perhaps a sense of loss, a dreamy remembrance, or imagined hopes for the future – in the fragile globes and the fluttering patterns of lights. There is also a resilience, a claiming of space, in a work that determinedly flashes on, built in part from a material that lasts forever.
Anchored firmly in the past, this piece also has itself evolved, marrying old technology with new, connecting makers across the millennia. An integral part of the work, LEDs and Arduino computer components are paired as partners with the glass. The virtual world is an additional key player, connecting makers across physical space, with the internet and instant messaging enabling collaborators Kristina Arnold in Bowling Green, Kentucky and Austin Lundeby, in Denver, Colorado to develop the project.
Portrait of the artist(s), beta: Neuron Cloud examines neuroanatomy, with specific references to the brain. My interest in this area is personal and long-standing: as the member of a family with a still-not-understood, likely heritable, degenerative brain disease, I have been exploring the biology, psychology and sociology of the aging brain through my work for several years.
My pieces hope to offer an alternative paradigm beyond that of fear and loss, asking us to collectively imagine a new way of considering the aging individual. I hope these works provide an entry point for a fresh conversation. Specifically, with neuron cloud I wonder: with a loss of brain function, can you make a thinking machine? How far are we, really, from a prosthetic mind? And if offered, is that what we would want?
This work introduces a multi-layered project under development that asks us to consider science, self, and the intersection of the two. My hope is that it also inspires inquiry, begins a conversation and establishes – in real space and real time – a meditative, contemplative place for our community to play with these ideas.
Kristina Arnold is a Professor and Department Head of the WKU Department of Art & Design. Austin Lundeby is a software developer in Denver, CO.