Action Research Project

The Thinking Eye is excited to collaborate on a community-led action research project at Dulwich Picture Gallery, which aims to discover new ways for Old Master paintings to connect and speak to contemporary society. The project seeks to build connections with audiences by training the local community in paid researcher roles and working with them to run research sessions to better understand and amplify local, diverse voices. The Thinking Eye will train the community researchers in the VTS facilitation techniques so that they can use VTS in their community engagement activities. The research findings will be used to develop a series of commissions to put the findings into action, presenting new insights into key themes that have been unexplored in the permanent collection of Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The project is lead by Shortwork and funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

New Publication in Frontiers in Neuroscience

Front. Neurosci., 25 February 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.738865

More Than Meets the Eye:

Art Engages the Social Brain

Janneke E. P. van Leeuwen 1,2*, Jeroen Boomgaard 3, Danilo Bzdok 4, Sebastian J. Crutch 1 and Jason D. Warren 1*

• 1 Dementia Research Centre, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

• 2 The Thinking Eye, ACAVA Limehouse Arts Foundation, London, United Kingdom

• 3 Research Group Art and Public Space, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Netherlands

• 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, ON, Canada

*Corresponding authors

Abstract

Here we present the viewpoint that art essentially engages the social brain, by demonstrating how art processing maps onto the social brain connectome—the most comprehensive diagram of the neural dynamics that regulate human social cognition to date. We start with a brief history of the rise of neuroaesthetics as the scientific study of art perception and appreciation, in relation to developments in contemporary art practice and theory during the same period. Building further on a growing awareness of the importance of social context in art production and appreciation, we then set out how art engages the social brain and outline candidate components of the “artistic brain connectome.” We explain how our functional model for art as a social brain phenomenon may operate when engaging with artworks. We call for closer collaborations between the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics and arts professionals, cultural institutions and diverse audiences in order to fully delineate and contextualize this model. Complementary to the unquestionable value of art for art’s sake, we argue that its neural grounding in the social brain raises important practical implications for mental health, and the care of people living with dementia and other neurological conditions.

Closer collaborations between artists, (arts) educators and social cognitive neuroscientists are needed to investigate the materiality and experiential dimensions of art production and engagement and unpack big concepts like “aesthetic response” and “creativity”—to get at their neural building blocks so we can better understand them. But alongside the deconstruction and reductionism that neuroscience seeks, this process also needs reintegration, to capture our experience of art in the world at large. VTS, for example, offers a non-directive method to engage audiences with art from their personal perspective in a social setting and is ideally placed to further elucidate how art engages the social brain.

Link to article:

https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2022.738865

Art Seeking Understanding Seed Award

The Thinking Eye’s founder Dr Janneke van Leeuwen is part of the international and interfaith research project ‘Art, Empathy, and Justice: an exploration of cognitive aesthetics’ that will take place between 06/2022 - 11/2023. The project is co-led American philosopher Dr Kelly James Clark, the Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, and Istanbul’s Moral Intuitions Laboratory, Turkey.

Project summary:

The bulk of research related to empathy, justice, and aesthetic experiences has been conducted in WEIRD nations (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), with a corresponding loss of relevance and depth. Relatedly, studies of empathy and justice are often dominated by the Christian tradition, latent Christian values, or Christian scholars, with Jewish and Muslim voices considerably less well heard and integrated. In addition, empirical investigations of empathy and justice have been insufficiently informed by theological and philosophical reflection, perpetuating a lack of context and nuance that could inform and affect constructions and perceptions of these phenomena. Finally, research regarding art’s effects on cognition, particularly across sociocultural difference, is in its infancy; however, a surging multidisciplinary interest in art’s effects on cognition, mental health, and social connection indicates a window of opportunity for highly interdisciplinary research aimed at collective impact.

This 18-month, interdisciplinary, multi-faith, multi-culture and multi-country project will examine the cognitive influence of the arts on empathy and justice, with a focus on how these concepts can be understood and applied across social, cultural, political, and religious difference.

With institutional homes in Johns Hopkins International Arts+Mind Lab and Istanbul’s Moral Intuitions Laboratory, the project will bring together philosophers, theologians, psychologists, artists, and neuroscientists to listen to and learn from one another, in order to co-develop conceptually richer empirical studies of the cognitive influences of the arts on empathy and justice. The project will aim to conduct preliminary trial studies in the USA, Turkey, and Israel. We also aim to set a course for future research on effects of the arts on empathy and justice—developing white papers that reflect on the role of philosophy and theology in such projects, and completing a refined follow-up proposal for continued interdisciplinary study of aesthetics and understanding.

Importance:

While the study of art, empathy, and justice is valuable in its own right, recent turns toward tribalism, nationalism, parochialism, and isolationism lend an existential urgency. There is a need to find the most effective and scientifically informed ways to build bridges of empathy and justice, within and between traditions and beliefs.

UCL Grand Challenges Award

The Thinking Eye has been awarded a UCL Grand Challenges grant for 'Culture Connections: supporting psychological wellbeing and healthy ageing through online art conversations', in collaboration with Dr Mine Orlu, founder of the CelebrAGE initiative and Prof Seb Crutch, who leads the UCL Rare Dementia Support study.

Summary project:

Research has shown that engaging with art activates the same brain networks as complex social behaviour. It is also known that different dementia syndromes specifically affect these social brain networks. Furthermore, having an active social life has been shown to protect against dementia. The Culture Connections project will develop and pilot a novel online art conversation workshop within the broad University College London (UCL) community, which aims to engage the social brain networks to promote psychological well-being and optimal cognitive functioning. The workshops will be designed for small groups, with 15 participants max, and will be tailored to different adult age groups and diverse cultural backgrounds. A cross-disciplinary approach, combining art, psychology and social neuroscience, will be used to explore how art conversations affect (neuro)psychological wellbeing in a social context. The aim of the pilot workshops is to i) scope public interest, ii) test the content, structure and delivery and iii) measure the impact of the online art conversations on psychological wellbeing. This project is a spin-off from the UCL I&E-funded CelebrAGE network, and will expand on a successful working relationship with the social enterprise The Thinking Eye, while simultaneously developing a new cross-disciplinary collaboration with the UCL Rare Dementia Support study.

Commission for Real Creative Futures - Digital

Real Creative Futures - Digital has commissioned The Thinking Eye’s Founder Dr Janneke van Leeuwen to create two videos around visual thinking and the relationships between art, social behaviour and our brains.

The VTS method is particularly relevant for (arts) educators, but will also be of use to artists and therapists or anyone interested in developing their own critical thinking, visual literacy and collaborative communication skills.

Anti Thesis

TOWARDS A DOCTORAL FRAMEWORK OF EMBODIED ARTISTIC RESEARCH

Janneke van Leeuwen, 2020

ABSTRACT

The traditional model of knowledge transfer in academia has for centuries been a written thesis. Embodied experiences have been discarded as an unreliable source of knowledge acquisition in Western societies.

In this essay I will argue the case for the inclusion of other dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transfer that artistic methods can tap into par excellence.

I will set out how embodied artistic research can engage with multimodal neural knowledge systems, drawing on novel insights from my research on the intersection of social neuroscience and visual art. Different elements of embodied artistic research will be contextualised in the Social Brain Atlas, which I have drawn based on the largest meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on social cognition to date by Alcala-Lopez et al. (2017).

Using the ‘Creator Doctus’ pilot by the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam as a guiding example, I will discuss the unique requirements and challenges of creating a European doctoral framework for embodied artistic research programmes.

Especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, investigating and redefining our deep entanglements with the physical world will be more urgent than ever. Advanced embodied artistic research could lead the way in these endeavours, counterbalancing the progressive shift towards the immaterial.

The essay can be downloaded here for free:

Wellcome Trust Hub Residency 2016-2018

The Thinking Eye's Founder Janneke van Leeuwen is part of the Created Out of Mind consortium that will take up the next prestigious 2-years Wellcome Trust Hub residency at the Wellcome Collection, between October 2016-2018. Bringing together a rich network including scientists, artists, clinicians, public health experts and broadcasters, the group has been awarded £1 million to examine and challenge perceptions of dementia through scientific and creative experimentation.