As artist in residence at the Bee Research Unit, University of Bremen, the artist Elisabeth Weissensteiner developed an installation of selected sculptures and projected images – MIRROR BRAIN. The installation permits visitors to fathom some of the complexity of cognitive research by experimenting with art objects.

Two Brain Shells await the visitors in a black tent, the laboratory, set up in the Cognium foyer. The concave sculptures are meant to be lifted and moved to catch the projected images. These images are complex and need interpreting. Never are they static and thus they cannot be retained. The viewers look into the Brain Shell in their hands wondering: Can there be understanding of Thinking?

Additional objects will be shown in conjunction with the laboratory. They depict the human head as sculpture on the boundary between cognition and perception. They, too, lead viewers into the mirror chamber of scientific inquiry following Varela insofar as self-perception and perception of nature are like mirrors turned on each other.

MIRROR BRAIN not only builds on a dialog between art and science but also turns it into a media of discourse meant to be continued by the viewers – the experiment’s participants.

Elisabeth Weissensteiner was born in Vienna, Austria, and is based in Melbourne, Australia, since 2003. She holds a PhD in German Philology and Art History. Since her studies she has been working in the visual arts, often in close cooperation with universities (University of Bremen, RMIT University, Melbourne, University of Applied Arts, Vienna). Elisabeth Weissensteiner is member of the Künstlerhaus Wien. Her work is represented by galleries in Australia and Austria, and by public collections and institutions.

Francisco J. Varela: Kognitionswissenschaft – Kognitionstechnik, 1990, S 16

Inauguration:
October 20, 2011, 5:00 pm by Manfred Fahle (BGCN Bremen)

Invitation for download.

Venue:
Cognium Building
Center for Cognitive Sciences
University of Bremen

Further information:
University of Bremen
Center for Cognitive Sciences
Dr. Dorothea Brückner
Tel     +49 421 2183459