MIMM event a success
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/MIMMconcert08.jpg” caption=”Laurel Trainor, director of MIMM, spoke at the integrated lecture and concert. Photo by Wendy Hostein. “]The McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind (MIMM) continued its tradition of pairing innovative research and a great display of the arts with an integrated lecture and concert titled “A Colourful Appetite for Music: How the Brain Connects Music to Colour and Pleasure,” held on Friday, Sept. 26.
The event opened with Steven Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist working in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour. Brown is one of the world's experts on neuroscience of the arts. He discussed how the brain processes aesthetic experience. To illustrate Brown's lecture were performances by acclaimed Ontario musicians – Brett Kingsbury and Cecile Desrosiers on piano, Mark Whale on violin, David Gerry on flute and tenor David Holler.
The second half of the evening also featured these performers in conjunction with a lecture from Daphne Maurer, professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and a world-renowned researcher of perceptual development in infants and children. Maurer explained how colour becomes linked to music, especially in some people with synesthesia – those who literally see colour when they hear music.
Drawing a crowd of over 200 people, the event consisted of students, community members, music and art enthusiasts, and attendees of the 7th Annual National Conference of the American Synesthesia Association. The Conference took place Saturday and Sunday with participants from all over the continent.
On Saturday, Sept. 27, the “Synesthesia: Art and the Mind” exhibit at the McMaster Museum of Art also had its official opening, creating an overall weekend of art, music and the mind at McMaster.
The art exhibit continues until Nov. 15 and features the art of known synesthetes, David Hockney, Joan Mitchell, Marcia Smilack and Carol Steen, and works by artists thought to be synesthetic including Charles Burchfield, Tom Thomson, Wassily Kandinsky and Vincent van Gogh.
For more information on the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, as well as upcoming events, please visit http://mimm.mcmaster.ca/.
Special thanks to Laurel Trainor, director of MIMM; John Capone, Dean, Faculty of Science; Steven Brown; Daphne Maurer; the very talented musical performers and to everyone who helped make the integrated concert and lecture a great success.
