Lectures

CoDesign 2017 features outreach initiatives aimed public dissemination, as well as a communicating its scientific agenda with a broad-based scientific audience. An advanced lecture, and public lectures have been scheduled.

• DELMENHORST
  
  Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK)

• BREMEN CITY
  
  Haus der Wissenschaft

• Institute for Advanced Study
• House of Science

HWK LECTURE

The Origin of Ideas:
Blending, Creativity, and the Human Spark
MARK TURNER \ CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, UNITED STATES

Other species have abilities we do not—they can fly, spin webs, photosynthesize. But human beings are the heavyweight champions of extremely rapid creativity. We are the origin of ideas. We invent and disseminate new ideas constantly, often ideas that range across vast expanses of time, space, causation, and agency—expanses that go far beyond human scale and that leave other species in the dust. Why are we so innovative? How can our little brains hold onto new ideas once they are formed? Professor Turner explores the ways in which advanced human cognition, often profoundly conservative, is remarkable for its ability to blend old ideas to make new ones, with emergent meaning arising in the blend. Advanced blending, a basic mental operation for human beings, is a constant, everyday mental activity, not costly and not reserved for special effects, even though it is almost entirely unnoticed. It appears to operate according to uniform principles and under uniform constraints, underlying mathematical insight, scientific discovery, advanced social cognition, art, music, religion, fashion, decision-making, grammar, and the rest of the performances that distinguish cognitively modern human beings.This talk will provide an introduction to conceptual blending, with emphasis on blending in communication.

Professor Turner is the author of The Origin of Ideas (2014), Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science (2001), and a many other books and articles. He is Founding Director of the Cognitive Science Network; Co-Director of the Distributed Little Red Hen Lab; recipient of the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises from the French Academy; recipient of an Anneliese-Maier Research Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Founding President of the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts; Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University, the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for the Science of Origins; Extraordinary Member of the Humanwissenschaftliches Zentrum der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität; and External Research Professor of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study in Cognitive Neuroscience.
@speaker   @schedule   @venue : hanse-wissenschaftskolleg (hwk)

PUBLIC LECTURES AT THE HOUSE OF SCIENCE, BREMEN

Minds. Movement. Moving Images.
PERSPECTIVES FROM THE COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES
MEHUL BHATT \ JAMES CUTTING \ DANIEL LEVIN
University of Bremen \ Cornell University \ Vanderbilt University

Three mutually complementary public lectures will addresses the theme of moving image studies at the interface of cognition, computation, and psychology:

What is it that attracts most attention while watching a movie? Why do filmmakers "cut" a scene in specific ways? What is the influence of certain kinds of sounds and audio effects on audience attention? What kinds of new interactive film platforms seem likely to emerge in the near future? What is the future of storytelling? Learn more of these topics, and how they are being addressed by interdisciplinary research at the University of Bremen and beyond.

The public lecture features lectures by three researchers, and a Public Exhibition with hands-on demonstration and exhibition by students from the University of Bremen. The exhibition will immediately follow the lectures. Exhibition participants will have the opportunity directly engage and interact with the lecturers and students inan informal setting with interactive demos and installations.
Everyone is Welcome to Participate.

Minds and Media Studies:
Possibilities for AI, Spatial Cognition, and Design Research
Mehul Bhatt \ Human-Centred Cognitive Assistance (HCC Lab)., and DesignSpace Group., University of Bremen, GERMANY

Abstract.
A emerging and outward looking impulse of my recent research addresses the confluence of computationally-driven analytical methods (e.g., in artificial intelligence) with empirically-based qualitative research in the cognitive and psychological sciences (e.g., visual perception). In this talk, I shall position the potential of this confluence in the service of communications, media, and human behaviour research. With a particular focus on film and architecture, the talk will demonstrate early results characterising the synergy of specific methods from artificial intelligence, visual and spatial cognition, and design studies.
Examples of (digital) narrative media and their recipient effects in their several varieties and characteristics will be used: from the use of symmetry and cinematographic staging patterns in narrative film, to the use the moving image as an operative artefact in the design of building architecture and the built environment.

The evolution of popular movies, and its
underlying psychological principles
James E. Cutting \ Susan Linn Sage Professor of Psychology, Cornell University, UNITED STATES

Abstract.
How do popular filmmakers engage us? Over the course of the last 80 years and more filmmakers have gradually altered at least ten variables of film style that affect our attention and emotions. I explore these and their effects through an analysis of over two hundred English-language films released between 1930 and 2015.

From art to trash:
What the best and worst of filmmaking can teach us
about how the brain sees
Daniel Levin \ Professor of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, UNITED STATES

Abstract.
At the start of the 20th century the eminent Harvard scientist Hugo Munsterberg argued that the art of cinema could reveal important clues about the fundamental nature of seeing. Recently, this promise been fulfilled as researchers have begun to explore how filmmkaers divide actions into small segments and recombine them to create integrated visual experiences. In this talk I will discuss how the very best filmmakers know quite a lot about vision, and how recent vision science can help us understand great filmmaking. However, it is also instructive to observe what happens when filmmaking goes awry because mistakes can be equally revealing of the principles that organize vision. So, this talk will include some of the very best films that will uplift you along with some of the very most horrible films that will make you cringe, and I will use both to illustrate how cinematic art and trash can reveal the brain’s fundamental strategies for turning raw perceptual information into an understanding of meaningful events.


@mehul @james @daniel   @schedule   @venue : hause der wissenschaft bremen