Phosphenes of Qualia
March 2017
Xavier White presents ‘The Phosphenes of Qualia’, a glass, fine art exhibition that brings together a lived experience of health and social care (as a head injury survivor) that has borne an ongoing fascination with how our brains influence who we are as human beings, through neural structure and the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. Phosphenes of Qualia are progressive processes occurring in the brain as a series of repetitions as neural Long Term Potentiation, which is an essential part of craftsmanship and skill.
Go to the LSBU research open website to download the Exhibition Catalogue: http://researchopen.lsbu.ac.uk/806/1/Phosphenes%20of%20Qualia%20Catalogue%20Final%20version%20April%202017.pdf
Go to the LSBU research open website to download the Exhibition Catalogue: http://researchopen.lsbu.ac.uk/806/1/Phosphenes%20of%20Qualia%20Catalogue%20Final%20version%20April%202017.pdf
PHOSPHENES OF QUALIA: A glass art exhibition exploring the brain structure and our mind’s activity
The School of Health and Social Care’s first Artist in Residence, Xavier White is presenting ‘The Phosphenes of Qualia’; a glass fine art exhibition that brings together a lived experience of health and social care (as a head injury survivor) that has borne an ongoing fascination with how our brains influence who we are as human beings, through neural structure and the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness.
Phosphenes of Qualia are progressive processes occurring in the brain as a series of repetitions as neural Long Term Potentiation, which is an essential part of craftsmanship and skill. Xavier’s working practices used in producing new art inspired by his residency are on display. The collection and aesthetics form an auto-ethnographic exploration of the processing of his working practices and offer up an artistic expression of neurological and historic revelations in the areas of neuroscience and psychiatry. Using a palette of stored memories and observations mixed with acquired working practices, aspects of each are exhibited throughout the University campus.
Xavier writes:
“This has been a cathartic process, an accumulative expression of my thoughts, findings and feelings drawn together as part of the residency, pulling my craft into an ordered representation. Realising years of acquired selected objects and observations forms this series of glass pieces; influencing their shapes, expressions moods and emotions.
Phosphenes are unseen lights of our brains. In this new exhibition I am attempting to expose works of individual subjective conscious experience. This is a theme I have been thinking and working with for a while, as the hard problem of consciousness, (i.e Qualia) and its impact on mental health. It’s like a bridge between neurons and our ideas (internal) coming to fruition in my art pieces or in our day to day actions and decisions (external). My previous research around cognitive aesthetics led to the Verrelic Spires and installations deepening my fascination with neurology and cognition.
The ‘Blessed’ pieces are central to the exhibition. Beginning with complex structures taking my craft through Long Term Potentiation I moved to a distilled representation, more ethereal like thoughts”
Philosopher, Daniel C Dennet says of Qualia - ‘it is an unfamiliar term that could not be more familiar to us, the way things seem to us’. I work with this in my images and materials to create the pieces for the exhibition, enhancing viewer’s perspectives and understanding of how the brain works and interacts with our minds.