Peter Anders (US) - Conversions of neuroscience and magic

Trondheim - November 1, 2010

An interview with Peter Anders was recorded on the occasion of Biennale for art and technology Meta.Morf in Trondheim, Norway.

Peter Anders talks about his paper on the conversions of neuroscience and magic presented within the Biennale for art and technology Meta.Mor. He points out the problems that the scientists will not be able to get through if they consider a magic for being a kind of science- they might be looking at one particular element, something that happened in the brain about a certain trick, but they might mistake the trick for being just a mechanism of the trick and not the theatrical performance of the trick. Obviously, the theatrical art form is much more complex. Later on, he presents very particular point of view to the architecture – we have an environment that is increasingly responsive to us. We walk into the room and the light goes on or we walk up to a door and the door opens and it has been a fixation of architects, cyberneticians and the people that are involved in mechanization of buildings to make the building a kind of servant to the human. And he thinks we should change the perspective – that the human is magical. The the doors that opens for us are not opening because the building made it open, but because we have a presence that push the door open.

Tags:
• architecture
• cognition
• magic
• neuroscience
• scientists
• theatrical art
• trick