MRI Art Exhibit Captures The Beauty Of The Human Brain

Paula Crown -- Inside My Head- a contemporary self-portrait 1920x1080

from Paula Crown

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Despite the ongoing right brained v left brained debates and endless "where does creativity come from" dialogues, we still somehow know relatively little about the genesis of artistic inspiration in the human mind. While we can't with scientific certainty understand how our synapses fuse to form art, we can, however, now watch these sparks come together to actually make art. For Paula Crown's MRI-inspired exhibit Inside My Head: A Contemporary Self-Portrait, currently on view at Dallas Contemporary, Crown used two large convex screens to display the inner workings of the artist's own brain--captured via real MRI scans.

The images used in the exhibit, as well as in the short at the top of the post, have all been tweaked and manipulated by the artist through multiple points of perspective, sfumato, and three-dimensional imaging. As part of an overall project to reinvent the self-portrait, Crown hopes to explore 'the intersection of the internal and external, allowing the record of the data to physically build the environment.'

Created in her studio designed with MacArthur Genius Jeanne Gang in Chicago, the musical score was composed by Todd Reynolds and Ben Rubin to reflect Crown's search to 'amplify and monumentalize personal physiology' and provide insight into the human experience.

Paula Crown is a multimedia artist whose work expands many reaches, fully utilizing art and technology in her practice. In the past Crown has worked on commissioned special projects by Jaume Plensa, Mikyoung Kim, and Walter Niedermayr, among many others. Currently Crown is working with artist Theaster Gates on her sculpture series entitled PERforations, based on punctured materials.

Inside My Head: A Contemporary Self Portrait will be on view in Gallery 5 at the Dallas Contemporary until April 13th 2014.