Research and other interests:
Cognitive Science, Philosophy of
Art, Philosophy of Mind. My research in cognitive
science utilizes artworks to
explore how memory, attention, sensorimotor processing,
and affective processing are used
in ordinary contexts to tune the content of perception
and conscious experience to local
task demands, instrumental needs, and the apical
goals of organisms in a dynamic
environment. This is methodological strategy within
cognitive science that has been
fruitfully deployed by neuroscientists who use expert
dancers and novice viewers to study expertise effects in
perception, psychologists who employ elements of film studies to explore
the relative influences of memory, attention, and environment on the
structure of perceptual experience, and psychologists who study the
crossmodal foundations of our capacity to recognize and understand
emotionally expressive behavior in social contexts. I argue that the
strategy generalizes to other media and can be used to address a range
philosophical questions about crossmodal perception, evaluative perception,
affective perception and the nature of emotions, the ontology of art, and
the normative dimension of artistic appreciation.
My collaborators Dr. Catherine Buell (Mathematics,
Fitchburg State University) and Rick Sethi (Computer Science, Fitchburg
State University) and I in the Visual Stylometry Research Group recently
received an NEH grant to develop digital image analysis software to explore
the nature of artistic style. I am also currently working on a book titled Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory
of Art.
I am also a sculptor. My sculpture has been exhibited in
New York City, Tokyo, The Addison Gallery of American Art, and Yale
University. More recently I have been experimenting and collaborating with
my philosophy of art students, exploring automatic and chance procedures in
drawing and dance. I have also collaborated with colleagues in dance,
choreography, and computer science to develop an automatic scoring
technique for multi-media performances
Once upon a time I was an avid wilderness canoeist. I had
hitched a ride 75 kilometers down Lac Mistassini with Tommy Voyageur to the
Cree village of Baie du Poste in the picture above. I wanted to check on
the location of a forest fire blocking our way up the Wabissinane River. We
were five weeks from James Bay and looking for a route around the
conflagration.
There are some stories that once
upon a time or twice I played guitars with some folks in New York City.
None of the muddy porch players have been booked for a garage band hoedown
in a while (CBGB's, Brownies, and The Lakeside Lounge are closed - only
Arlene Grocery survives). I do, however, currently have aspirations to remember
how to play my mandolin and learn how zydeco goes on an accordion.
