SELECTED LECTURES & CRITIQUES
2020
International Lecture: “Weighty Shadows/ Stained Screens,” at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, February 19, 2020. I will also serve as critic at the Bartlett Ph.D Research Project Conference, February 18, 2020.
2016 to 2019
“Seizing Attention: Devices and Desires,” Oxford Art Journal, special issue on Art and Technology in Early-Modern Europe [39/2/ April 2016], Coda.
Keynote, Crossing Boundaries Symposium: Technology in the Arts, University of Lethbridge, Ontario, Canada: October 29, 2016.
Keynote, “Creation Unbound: The Revolution from Matter to Stuff”, Brown Symposium XXXVIII, Art & Revolution, Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas: March 1-3, 2017.
Presentation, “Genealogies of Excessive Screen,” Sawyer Seminar, Yale University, April 20, 2017. The main task of this Mellon-sponsored Seminar is to analyze current screens [movie, computer, hand-held, mobile] in light of the long line of objects [not always optical devices] called “screens.]
Lecture, “Turning Wild: Embodied Mind and the Environment” : Part of a series of of events titled Turning the Mind Inside Out, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, April 2017.
2015
Lecture, “Whatever Happened to Selective Attention,” University of Minnesota, Moorhead, October, 2015.
Lecture on “Technology and BioArt,” Fondation Fyssen, Paris, December 2015.
2014
“From Observant Eye to Non-Attentive “I”: The Camera as Cognitive Device,” in Britt Salveson, editor/curator, ext. cat. See the Light. Photography, Perception, Cognition [ Munich, London, New York: Los Angeles County Museum/ Delmonico/Prestel, 2014], pp. 205-208.
2013
Lecture, “Attention/Attentiveness,” Drake University,” Sioux City, Iowa, October 2013.
2010
Advisor and Panelist for Online Symposium, “Evolution and Culture”, The office of Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC), USA, March, 2010
Plenary Lecture, Sixth Annual Life Sciences & Society Symposium, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo., March 12, 2010.
Keynote Address, “Methods: Visual , Technological, Narrative, Social,” for 50th Anniversary Celebration of College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley, February 5, 2010.
2009
Plenary Lecture, for Habitus in Habitat II. Other Sides of Cognition, organized by the Center for Literary and Cultural Research in cooperation with the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, the Berlin Museum for Medical History and the Association of Neuroaesthetics , Berlin, November 19-21, 2009.
“From Wonder to Insight: Uncommon Arrangements and Smart Things,” A Conversation with David Wilson, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH, USA, November 23, 2009
Invited Speaker, The Image in Science, Lunds Universitet, Lund, Sweden, November 6-7, 2009
Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, University of Melbourne, Australia, November, 2009
Keynote address on Cognition in Conference on The Super Human: Revolution of the Species (presented in partnership with Re:live, the 3rd Media Art Histories), at the Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT), Melbourne, Australia, November, 2009
Lectures on the “Future of Art History,” for Department of Cultural Studies in conjunction with Department of Cognitive Sciences, Lund, Sweden, and Department of Art History , University of Copenhagen, October 7-13, 2009.
Keynote Address on “Reciprocity and Neural Darwinism,” Conference on Reframing Dawin: Evolution, Art, and Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, October 22-25, 2009.
Keynote Address, for FAll Faculty Conference, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Ga. September 14, 2009.
Presenter [along with Peter Galison and James Turrell] in Public Symposium on Art/Science/Spectacle, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA, September 12, 2009
Closing Lecture: “Olafur Eliasson’s New Devices of Wonder,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, September 12, 2009.
Invited Fellow, Collegium Budapest, Hungary, June 2009
Invited Lecture, Department of Art and Art History, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, April 27, 2009
Invited Speaker, Culture and the Humanities Conference, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA, USA, April 3, 2009
High Strangeness: Making Richard Meier’s Museum Strange Again, Seminar/ Conversation with the Faculty of the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, High Museum of Art, AL, USA, January 15, 2009
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Humanities Institute, SUNY/Buffalo, USA, January – April, 2009
2008
Lecture Series as Templeton Fellow, “Crystal and Smoke: Facets of Cognitive Aesthetics,” University of Southern California, Los Angeles, January 28-February 10, 2008.
- Lecture 1: “Skeletal Figures: The Emotional Intuition of Form”
- Lecture 2: “Cold Intimacy:/Hot Entanglement: Meaning in Combinations”
- Lecture 3: “Motor Mirroring: Recognition as the Performance of Other Minds”
- Lecture 4: “Inner Sky: Cave Vision or the Topography of Sensory Deprivation”
- Lecture 5: “T he Miscellaneous Subject: Episodic Personhood from Mosaic to Bar Code”
- Lecture 6: “The Long Conscious Look: Towards a Pedagogy of Attentiveness” “Whatever Happened to Conscious Attention? Why the Brain Sciences Need the Aware-Making Visual Arts”, Dialogues inArt and Architecturelecture series, Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla CA, Tuesday, February 12, 2008Invited Lectures, The Bar-Hillel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, 27th Annual Series, sponsored by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, The Cohn Institute for the History and philosophy of Science and ideas, Tel Aviv University, the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, March 23-29, 2008.
Special Panel on Echo Objects, International Meeting of Society for Science, Literature, Society, and the Arts, Berlin, Germany, June 6, 2008
Plenary Speaker, Consciousness Reframed, The Planetary Collegium’s IXth International Research Conference, Vienna, Austria, July 3, 2008
Invited Speaker, on the Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Indianapolis Museum of Art: Its Dedication to Interdisciplinary Thought, Indianapolis, USA, October 2008
Keynote Speaker, “Gazing into the 21st Century”, Goettweig, Austria, October 16 – 18, 2008
Invited Speaker, The Culture of Evolution, Rethinking evolutionary theory from the perspective of cultural studies, “Order: Schematic Forms and the Intuition of Emotion”, the Annual conference of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin (ZfL), October 30 – November 1, 2008
Invited Speaker, on the Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Indianapolis Museum of Art: Its Dedication to Interdisciplinary Thought, Indianapolis, USA, October, 2008
Bonner Lecture and Bonner Prize Recipient for Echo Objects, Academy of Scholars, Wayne State University Detroit, MI, November 5, 2008 University of Michigan, the Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture, “Jumping the Distance. Visual Formulas and the Acting/ Associating Brain”, Ann Arbor, MI, November 6, 2008
Plenary Lecture, “Where is Language/ Where is Culture?” Colloquium in Honor or the Bicentenary of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 14, 2008
Invited Speaker, “From Wonder to Insight. Uncommon Arrangements and Smart Things”, for Columbus Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition Objects of Wonder from The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, November 23, 2008
“Controversial Bodies: How to View Plastinated Corpses:”, Invited Speaker, Center for Practical Bioethics, Kansas City, MO, December 4 – 5, 2008
2007
Invited Speaker, “Visual Formulas, Schema, and How They Mean,” Seminar, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, January 16, 2007.
Speaker, “Narrative or Episodic Self-Consciousness: The View from Neuroaesthetics” for Art and Psychoanalysis: Theoretical Perspectives from Antiquity to the Comic Strip, Annual College Art Association Conference, New York, February 14-17, 2007.
Burke Lecturer, “The Return of Grammars of Expression: Schematizing Nature and the Body,” for the Symposium on Human Nature: Future Worlds, Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March 1, 2007.
Inaugural Lecture, “Neuroscience and the Art Museum: What’s Left of Selective Attention?” for the Lecture Series on The Future of the Art Museum, at High Museum, Atlanta, March 22, 2007.
“Narrative or Episodic Self-Consciousness: The View from Neuroaesthetics” 23rd Annual Meeting of ASECS, Atlanta, GA, March 23, 2007.
Invited lecture,”Compounding: Emblems and Neural Synchrony”, SUNY-Buffalo, April 11, 2007.
Lecture, “Grammars of Expression and the Encapsulation of Thought,” in Conference on Humanities and Neuroscience, Bucknell University, April 20-22, 2007
Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination (New York): participant with Vittorio Gallese and David Freedberg in a roundtable “The Eye of the Beholder” exploring how and whether the discovery of mirror neurons can give some insight into the way art is perceived, what is perceived as art, and how art is understood and responded to, April 23, 2007, New York, NY.
Plenary Speaker, for “Image Processes, Imagination and the Imaginary in Exchange between Cultural and Natural Sciences” at ZKM (Center for Art and Media Technology), Karlsruhe, Germany, May 3-5, 2007.
Plenary Speaker, for Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations, Theory, Culture, & Society 25th Anniversary Conference, Tokyo University Hongo Campus, Tokyo, Japan, July 13-16, 2007.
Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitor in the Arts, Reed College, Portland, Oregon, October 1-5, 2007.
Dayton Visiting Artists Program, “Technologies of Interiority: Instrumentalizing Subjectivity,” Connecticut College, New London, Oct. 17, 2007.
Invited Speaker, NSF Workshop on Nano-Imaging, University of South Carolina Nano Center, October 25-27, 2007.
“The New Attention Disorders and the Limitations of Autopoiesis,” Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, 21st Annual Conference: CODE, Portland, Maine, November 1-4, 2007
Plenary Speaker, Representations of Invisible Worlds, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, November 5-9, 2007.
Invited Speaker, “Philosophy and Ethics” Conference [Species of Origin Project], “Moral Grammar: Towards an Evolutionary Biology of Images,”University of Glasgow, Glasgow, December 13-14, 2007
Templeton Research Fellow, Creativity: An Inquiry into the Nature of Innovation in Science, Art, Philosophy, and Religion, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 2007-08.
2006
Plenary lecture, “The Return of Autonomy: From the Aesthetic to the Cognitive Object,” Freie Universität Berlin, February 6, 2006
Keynote Address, “Beyond the Atomistic Aperture: The Spiritual History of Apparatus,” International Society For Photographic Education, Chicago, March 25, 2006.
Address on the Occasion of the Rededication of Buttrick Hall (dedicated to Humanistic and Interdisciplinary Knowledge), Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, April 20, 2006.
University Lecture for Depts. of Art, Art History, Film, Media Studies, Philosophy and Neuroscience,”No Pictures on the Inside: From Representation to Mental Representation,” University of Edinburgh, May 6, 2006.
Lecture, Einstein Forum, Potsdam, June 6, 2006
Lecture, “On the Impossibilities of Self-Consciousness: From Representation to Mental Representation,” in Conference on Representations of Impossibility, Institute for Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion, University of Zurich, July 7, 2006.
Plenary Speaker, “Putting Images Back in Mind: From Representation to Mental Representation,” University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, November 7, 2006.
2005
“A Cognitive Aesthetics of Human Interiority”, University of Southern California Workshop on Visualizing Science, February 25, 2005
“‘Mirror Neurons’: Looking at Face Painters from the Vantage of Brain Dynamics,” Session: “The Face”, Annual Meeting of the American Eighteenth-Century Society,” March 31-April 3, 2005. Las Vegas, Nevada.
Plenary Lecture, “Recapturing the Complexity of Mimesis: Mirrors and the Optical Technology of Subjectivity,” Narrative: An International Conference, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY, April 8, 2005.
Plenary Lecture, “The remaining 10%: The Role of Sensory Knowledge in the Age of the Self-Organizing Brain”, International Conference on Visual Literacy at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, April 14-15 2005.
Plenary Lecture, Neuroaesthetics Conference, Goldsmiths College, London, May 20-21, 2005.
Commentator for “Field Works: Art/Geography,” at UCLA’s Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, May 5-6, 2005.
Keynote Speaker, “Artificial Intensity: The Optical Technologies of Personal Reality,” Gender, Perfomativity and Technology, Institute for Women’s Studies and the Institute for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK, June 8, 2005.
Invited Presenter, “Orientation: on the Pre- and Post-History of the Sublime.” at Image and Meaning 2: Discovering New Visual Expressions for Science and Technology: A Participatory Forum, the Getty Center, Los Angeles, June 23-25, 2005.
Invited Speaker at Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomenon Conference, June 26 – July 1, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago, IL.
Plenary speaker, “Synchronizing the Local with the Distant: What Compressive Emblems Reveal about Oscillatory Brain Dynamics,” Triennial Meeting of the International Society for Emblem Studies, Champaign-Urbana July 24-30, 2005.
Organizer and Speaker, Plenary Panel: Image Science and “Representation”: From a Cognitive Perspective; Refresh! First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science, and Technology, Banff New Media Institute, Banff, Alberta, Canada, September 28 – October 2, 2005.
Chair of Plenary Panel: Feeling Thought: Reimaging Interiority in Light of Recent Cognitive Research, at Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, Chicago, IL, November 10-13, 2005.
Cognitive Forum with Gerald Edelman, Warren Neidich, Katherine Hayles, Cary Wolfe, Eduardo Kac, Joseph Tabbi, at Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, Chicago, IL, November 11, 12, 2005.
2004
Invited participant, ACLS inaugural workshop to articulate future needs and opportunities in the humanities with respect to digital technology and infrastructure, New York, NY, February 9, 2004.
Commentator on session “Visualizing the Past”, conference on History and Geography: Assessing the Role of Geographical Information in Historical Scholarship, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, March 25-27, 2004.
“Techniques of Epiphany” (at The University of Georgia) and “Technology, Instruments, and the Amplification of Reality” (at the Georgia Museum of Art), Lamar Dodd School of Art Visiting Artist/Scholar Program, University of Georgia, Athens, Ga., April 12-14, 2004.
“Beyond Productivity,” Responses to the National Research Council (NRC) Report, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Seedbed Initiative for Transdomain Creativity, April 16-17, 2004.
“Sir William Hamilton’s ‘Shadow-Shews’: Theurgy and the Media Origins of Art,” Inaugural Speaker for Nicholson Center for British Studies, University of Chicago, April 22, 2004; Workshop: “Techniques of Epiphany,” April 27, 2004.
Visiting Scholar Series, “Art and Technology”. Department of Art and Art History, DePaul University, Chicago, April 26, 2004.
“Public Health as Public Art. The Role of Images in a Time of Epidemic,” for the “Gender Science and Anatomy” Series Workshop and Public Lecture, Northwestern University, Chicago, May 3, 2004.
“Projection and Epiphany : on the Forgotten Media Theory of the Origin of the Art”, Colloque international, “L’histoire de l’histoire de l’art en France au XIXe siècle”, Paris, France, June 3, 2004.
Co-chair (with Bridget Elliott), Panel, Mapping the Body, International Congress of Art History (CIHA): Sites and Territories of Art History, Montreal, August 22-27, 2004.
Symposium Speaker, “Outside In: Exploring the Human Genome Project from Across the Disciplines,”Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, October 2, 2004.
Keynote Speaker, “Interplay,” Midwest College Art Association Conference, Minneapolis, October 7, 2004.
Faculty-Graduate Student Seminar, Art History Department, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, October 6, 2004.
Chair, panel on “Scientific Mappings,” at annual Science, Literature, and Society Conference, Durham, N.C., October 14-17, 2004.
Paper,in same session :”Hedonics: Pleasure, Pain, and the Neurobiology of Feeling.”
“Optical Technology & the Construction of Subjectivity”, The 2004 Dale Lecture, The University of Western Ontario, November 8, 2004.
Invited Lecture, “Transcendence Machines: Nanotechnology’s Romantic Vectors,” Symposium: Das Bild in der Wissenschaft (Image in Science), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, December 15-17, 2004.
2003
“Artificial Intensity: Images, Instruments and the Technology of Amplification”, SEMINAIRE RE/MIX, “Recherches/Mixités” Arts – Sciences – Technologies, IRCAM 1, Université de Paris, Paris, France, Jan 21, 2003.
Lecturer, Annual Goldberg Lecture, Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN, Jan 29-30, 2003.
“Techniques of Epiphany: Theurgy and Enlightened Apparatus,” speaker at the College Art Association 91st Annual Conference, panel: “Sacred and Profane in Enlightenment Culture,” New York, NY, Feb 19-22, 2003.
Invited Speaker, “The Dialogic Image: Readapting and Rebuilding the Visual Tradition of Telling Stories,” Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, March 14-15, 2003.
Harn Eminent Scholar Lecture, University of Florida, Gainesville, March 26, 2003.
University Lecture for the Program in Complex Systems, Guest Lecturer, University of Alaska, Anchorage, April 17-18, 2003.
“Artificial Intensity: Images, Instruments, and the Technology of Amplification”, Public Lecture, Center for the Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado-Boulder, April 24, 2003.
Towards a Cognitive Image History: From Iconic Turn to Cross-Sensory Pattern, Felix Burda Memorial Lecture: Iconic Turn, Munich, June 26, 2003.
“Analogy: creating a logic of reconciliation”. Keynote Speaker at the “Art and Human Rights Conference,” The Humanities Research Center, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, August 7-10, 2003.
‘Genetic Perspective or Biohistory”: Ambiguous view from Below, Across, and Beyond’, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, August 15, 2003.
“Art in the Domain of Ambiguity”, MacGeorge Fellowship Lecture, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, September 19, 2003.
“Public Health as Public Art. The Role of Images in a Time of Epidemic,” keynote address, Symposium on the Visual Media of Public Health, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, October 16, 2003.
“What Light Can the Neurobiology of Pleasure and Pain Shed on the Picturesque ( and Vice Versa)? Conference on Pain, Wellcome Institute, London, October 29, 2003.
“Techniques of Epiphany: Theurgy and Enlightened Apparatus,” Conference on Instruments in Science and Art, Freie Universitat Berlin, Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften, November 1, 2003.
Featured Speaker at Exhibtion, “Genesis: Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics,” University of California Berkeley Art Museum, November 9, 2003.
University Lecture for the Visiting Artist Program, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, November 18, 2003.
“Creation without Concept,” panel speaker in the series: Bild des Wissens, sponsored by the Zentrum fur Literaturforschung Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, December 9, 2003.
2002
Seminar on the “Devices of Wonder” Exhibition for Media Studies Group (members from USC, UCLA, Cal Arts, Sci Arts), Los Angeles, Jan. 18, 2002.
“Perspectives on an Exhibition (Devices of Wonder)”, Arts Club of Chicago, January 21, 2002
“Presentation on ‘Devices of Wonder'”, University of Chicago Visual Arts Visiting Committee, February 25, 2002.
“The Hermeneutics of Reconciliation”, invited speaker, symposium entitled “Aesthetics, Hermeneutics, and Neurosciences” honoring Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heidelberg, Germany, March 1 and 2, 2002.
“Amplifying Reality: Sensory Technology and the Continuum of Desire,” University of Iowa, Humanities Program, March 11, 2002.
“The Dynamics of Completion: Gaps, Blanks, and Improvisation,” in a Symposium on Frames of Viewing: the Brain, Cognition and Art. Getty Research Institute in conjunction with the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Los Angeles, April 3-6, 2002.
“The Romance of Technology,” invited paper for conference Collection, Laboratory, Theater–Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, Freie Universitat Berlin, May 23-May 26, 2002.
“Artful Science/Ingenious Apparatus,” paper for conference Images and Ideas: Exhibiting Science in Museums, University of Chicago, June 17-18, 2002.
“Image in the Middle: Analogy as Media Theory,” .Inaugural Lecture, Berlin Thyssen Foundation, Lectures on the Iconology of the Present, June 26, 2002.
“Artificial Intensity,” Rudolf Arnheim Torgespräch, Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, July 5, 2002.
“Leonardo’s Bridge,” inaugural lecture lecturer, an interdisciplinary art-engineering crossover work, University of California, Irvine, CA, October 3, 2002.
“Artifical Intensity (AI): images, instruments, and the technology of amplification,” Northwestern University Center for Art and Technology Colloquium, October 18, 2002.
“Undoing Forgetfulness: Re-membering Media’s Past,” keynote address for the 16th Annual National Conference on Liberal Arts and the Education of Artists, New York, NY, Oct. 23, 2002.
Panelist in “Matters of Mind: The Archive as Memory Bank,” School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, Oct. 24, 2002.
“Polyopticality and the Limitations of the Hockney Debates”, plenary lecture, History of Science Society 2002: “Crossing Borders”, November 7, 2002.