neuroscience is like Pink Floyd laser show night at the planetarium.
…You are trying to get at some true vision of the basic material, but there isn’t one. – Antonio Damasio
Rocking light show, for sure, but the most significant thing about Bruce Adolphe’s composition, “Self Comes to Mind” — which was inspired by Antonio Damasio’s neuroscientific research on emotions, creativity, and the brain — is that it is not reductionist.
This is your brain on music.
“I think the topic of neuroscience,” Adolphe told NPR, “is like nature has been in a more traditional way.” To Adolphe, science can serve “like the inspiration of mountains or looking at the sky full of stars.”
This is a better way to think about the relationship between the arts and sciences, which we often place in opposition when in fact they have much in common if we think of them as deepening our sense of wonder rather than solving questions once and for all.
In Adolphe’s composition, there is a sense of mystery, complexity, and celestial fullness to the music. As the brain lights up the screen behind the musicians, we see the brain as representation and the thing itself, all at once. It is simultaneously material and it is filled with abstraction. The music wanders, meanders, unsure of itself. With each note, you lose yourself and, at the same time, grow more mindful.
You can hear the composition on NPR’s website.
Image: Hanna Damasio / Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, USC