An illustrated lecture with MIT researcher and choreographer Nell Breyer
Date: Friday, February 11th
Time: 8 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by the Hollow Earth Society

What does it mean to perceive motion?

Nell Breyer is interested in the confluence of visual, sensory motor, and memory representations that create what we understand as human motion. In this lecture, Breyer will review current scientific findings on the neural underpinnings for seeing and understanding actions (Zeki, Damasio, Sinha, Rizzolatti, “Mirror Neurons,” parallel distributed processing models, and more) and consider these findings in relation to interactive and live art, providing examples from her own work, which explore the many ways we understand motion. She’ll finish with presentation of a recent work-in-process—performed in December on Sol LeWitt’s “Bars of Color Within Squares (MIT)”—that considers the relationship between motion, color, and depth perception.

A subtext in this talk is one that proposes science serves as a model for art while art acts as a precursor to science.

Nell Breyer was a research affiliate at MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology and CAVS between 2002–2010; her work focuses on the intersection of dance, new media, and visual art.

Since 1997, Breyer has created numerous digital media, performance, interactive video and public art works that explore how we perceive motion. She looks at contradictions between how we perceive movements—physically, in an instant—and how we conceive of them—constructing our understanding through the varied memories, modalities and representations formed in the mind’s eye.