Empathy Machines

There have been scientific studies which determine that ‘mirroring’ can contribute to empathy awarenesss within an organism. In my practice I’m focused on creating a mirrored experience thru visuals that audioreactively respond to sound.

What is Mirroring & Mirror Neurons?

“The discovery of mirror neurons illuminates the neural underpinnings of the frequent but hitherto unexplained feeling of physical reaction often in apparent imitation of the actions represented within a work of art or suggested by the implied movements involved in its making.” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011)

The 'physical perceptive' results of my experiments with audioreactive art led me to dive deeper into scientific studies that try to quantify this phenomenology.

In one study I found the researchers discovered a link between Mirror Neuron Activity and the 'Audiovisual' aspect in an opera performance. In a case-control study they measured mirror neuron activity in the brain of trained opera singers with an audio only opera performance vs an audio/visual performance.

They 'detected mirror neuron activity' when the participants watched the performance. 'In the auditory condition, however, the alpha-band power did not change relative to the resting condition' (Tanaka, 2021)

‘This study illustrates that the audiovisual perception of an opera performance engages the mirror neuron system in its audience. Audiovisual perception of stage performance is the primary inducer of mirror neuron activity’ (Tanaka, 2021)

I'm not so much interested in extracting the data from an EEG study on viewers of my audioreactive artwork. The physiological context of these studies do however provide additional space for thought exploration so that the observer might reflect more deeply on the effects of viewing of these pieces.

Citations 

Tanaka, S. (2021). Mirror Neuron Activity During Audiovisual Appreciation of Opera Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.563031

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2012). Movement and mirror neurons: a challenging and choice conversation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11(3), 385-401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9243-x