Perception as controlled hallucination: on how we construct reality
Montag, 28. Mai 2018 - 19:00 Uhr
Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien
Chair: Vera Bühlmann Technical University Vienna, Institute for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technology
How do we perceive the world around us? One view holds that stimuli are first registered by our sensory organs and then submitted to further processing to reach an accurate representation of the world. In this view, the mind just passively mirrors what is out there. What if this view was incomplete? Time and again, it has been shown that we are subject to perceptual illusions, where we see or hear things that are not out there. In this view, perception appears to be more of a story teller, always interpreting, transmuting, and actively anticipating what is out there. Thus, what we expect or believe becomes what we see or hear. In this account, perception is a form of ?controlled hallucination?, whereby the mind injects its own interpretations based on previous experience into perceptual processes. In this talk, I will review evidence for this view of perception, called predictive processing, and discuss how it can account for perceptual phenomena such as illusions, for interindividual differences, as well as psychiatric and neurological conditions.
Lucia Melloni is a cognitive neuroscientist and a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and at New York University School of Medicine. She investigates memory and consciousness, with a special interest in the question whether these functions can be trained and expanded, or even re-gained in case they are impaired, e.g., after stroke or in epilepsy. Her studies have demonstrated a remarkable degree of perceptual plasticity in adulthood, including that conscious perception can be expanded through specific training and other practices like meditation. Currently, her group investigates which factors control this plasticity, how it affects brain function, and the mechanisms that subserve those plastic changes. To this end, her group uses a combination of invasive (electrocorticography) and non-invasive techniques (functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography).
Vera Bühlmann was appointed as professor in architectural theory at Technische Universität Wien in 2016. She earned a PHD from the Faculty of Philosophy at Basel University, with a thesis in media theory entitled »Genealogies and Topoi of Media Architectonics« (summa cum laude) in 2009. Her Bachelor and Master studies (Lizentiat) were at Zurich University in English Language and Literature, Philosophy, and Media Science (2002). Between 2002 and 2008 she worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Art Academy in Basel, Switzerland, before she co-founded the applied virtuality lab at ETH Zurich (at the Chair for Computer Aided Architecture CAAD, Institute for Technology in Architecture ITA), which she has been directing together with Ludger Hovestadt since 2010. From 2012-2013 she was a guest researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory at NUS Singapore.
She is co-editor of the applied virtuality book series (Birkhäuser, since 2010), author of Die Nachricht, ein Medium: Städtische Architektonik, generische Medialität (ambra 2014), co-editor with Ludger Hovestadt of the Metalithikum books (Printed Physics 2012; Domesticating Symbols 2013, Coding as Literacy 2015, Symbolizing Existence 2016), with Ludger Hovestadt, Diana Alvarez-Marin, Miro Roman and Sebastian Michael of A Quantum City, Mastering the Generic (2015), with Martin Wiedmer of pre-specifics. some comparatistic investigations on research in art and design (jrp ringier, 2009), as well as author of many articles on media culture, technology, philosophy, and architecture.
WHAT BEINGS ARE WE?
IKA Lecture Series Summer term 2018
Curated by Christina Jauernik and Wolfgang Tschapeller
Platform Analogue Production Digital Production