Panel Statement

Panel:  Interart / Intersensorium. On the Interrelation of Media and the Senses

Sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ences, which have not been amend­able to ex­per­i­men­tal mea­sure­ments in the past can now be mea­sured in terms of brain ac­tiv­ity and re­lated to the in­ten­sity of the de­clared ex­pe­ri­ences. This in­flu­ences a new chap­ter in the study of the brain and its ac­tiv­ity in re­la­tion to ex­pe­ri­ences such as love, hate, de­sire and beauty in ad­di­tion to the study of per­cep­tion, which is it­self a sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence

• Pro­fes­sor Semir Zeki is now Pro­fes­sor of Neu­roes­thet­ics at Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don, UK, after hav­ing served for many years as Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy there. He pi­o­neered the study of the higher vi­sual areas of the brain, and dis­cov­ered, among other things, its colour and mo­tion cen­tres and hence the func­tional spe­cial­iza­tion within it.  More re­cently, he has ex­panded his work to en­quire into the neural cor­re­lates of aes­thetic and artis­tic ex­pe­ri­ence. In ad­di­tion to his pub­lished sci­en­tific pa­pers, he is au­thor of A Vi­sion of the Brain, Inner Vi­sion: an ex­plo­ration of art and the brain, and Splen­dours and Mis­eries of the Brain, and co-au­thor with the late French painter Balthus of La Quête de l’es­sen­tiel and with Lu­dovica Lumer of La bella e la bes­tia: arte e neu­ro­scienza.  His artis­tic work is cur­rently on ex­hibit at the Luigi Pecci Mu­seum of Con­tem­po­rary Art in Milan: Bianco su bianco: oltre Male­vich (White on White: Be­yond Male­vich). He is a Fel­low of the Royal So­ci­ety and a For­eign Mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal So­ci­ety. He was awarded the King Faisal In­ter­na­tional Prize in Bi­ol­ogy in 2004 for his work on the brain, and founded the In­sti­tute for Neu­roes­thet­ics in Lon­don and Cal­i­for­nia.