Woven Faces Project: Mapping the Emotional Brain
In this presentation I will discuss the work I have been doing in collaboration with neuroscientists to investigate the nature of the emotional response to physical, tactile quality of woven faces. Using the imaging tools of the neuroscience laboratory and direct behavioral studies, I am interested in both the scientific answers (neuroaesthetic experience of art) and my own artistic response to the research process.
I will speak about several specific collaborations and residencies nationally and internationally. The most recent collaboration is currently being conducted at the University of Vienna, with Marcos Nadal in the Department of Basic Psychological Research comparing the woven and the photographic face.
I find the experience of working with scientists, who have many capacities similar to artists but often have a very different working process, both challenging and invigorating. This experience acts as a spring board to my own artistic projects. One current project uses data collected from participatory behavioral study conducted within the exhibition space itself and uses data visualization to weave the information back into the source using digital handloom.. Often the unexpected and the tangential are incorporated into my own artistic practice as well such as images of the "Fiber Tracts" or neural connections in the white matter of my brain.
Professor Emeritus
California College of the Arts
Lia Cook works in a variety of media, combining photography, weaving, painting, and digital technology. Working with neuroscientists, she explores the nature of the emotional response to the tactile quality of woven faces using the tools of the neuroscience laboratory.
A professor of art at California College of the Arts, Cook exhibits her work nationally and internationally, most recently in Liege, Belgium; Chicago; and Hangzhou, China. Her works are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institute; the National Collection, France; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum Bellerive, Switzerland; National Gallery of Australia; and Zhejiang Art Museum and the National Silk Museum, China.
