Long before blockbuster art exhibitions, crowds were awed by traveling shows called phantasmagoria, in which stories were performed with the use of magic lanterns and rear projections, creating dancing shadows and frightening theatrical effects. From September 3 through November 8, the USC Fisher Museum of Art will present the exhibition Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence, which will draw on forms of representation linked with traditions of fantasy and magic, reframing them around contemporary issues.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Irving Biederman, the Harold W. Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at USC and author of over 200 scientific publications, will explore the neural basis of aesthetics. Long a mystery, recent research in cognitive neuroscience has begun to shed light on the biological events that lead us to seek out novel but richly interpretable experiences. Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence will provide a test case for such an account by leading us to experience novel interpretations under conditions in which the dimensions that normally accompany pleasurable perceptual interpretations are reduced, if not eliminated. Think Mary Poppins, noir.

Irving Biederman is a faculty member in the departments of psychology, computer science and neuroscience and director of the Image Understanding Laboratory at USC. Biederman has developed a comprehensive neurocomputational theory of real-time human object and scene recognition that posits that recognition of objects and scenes is based on a representation that specifies simple viewpoint-invariant shape primitives, known as geons. The theory, implemented as a neural network, is widely regarded as the premier account of shape recognition. Biederman has received the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and has been identified as one of the most influential cognitive psychologists in the world.

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu