Seeing instruments, learning bees and a 'mind chair'

Read a transcript of the video of the day's events. You can also read film-maker Martha Henson's blog post about filming the event, and download the free 'Musical Images' iPhone app that Beau mentions in the video.

When we look out into the world we see trees, buildings and fast-moving cars. We see faces and emotions displayed on those faces. We even 'see' such abstract concepts as beauty. We see all this though none of these objects, emotions or concepts actually exists in the light that falls onto our eyes.

So how do we actually see things? The answer is that our brains learned to see, which makes us an essential part of the process of 'making sense' of the world. At 'Seeing Myself See' visitors witnessed this process first hand and experienced the visual world in a completely new way...in sound. They heard the 'sound of colour', and the 'music of clothes' played by an ensemble of seeing instruments and watched an experiment where bumblebees were trained to solve colour puzzles that our most sophisticated robots cannot - like a modern day flea circus.

Developed by Beau Lotto

Some of the afternoon's activities included:

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  Bee Matrix

  Real bumblebees are trained to see colour by landing on Perspex flowers, showing the role of experience in shaping behaviour and the fundamental relationship between mind and ecology.

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  The Seeing Instruments

  Three wooden instruments contain a camera that you can hold and use to scan yourself, creating "rhythms of colour". Software translates the light patterns seen by each camera into sound. See what the camera sees, and hear the sounds the instruments create. These instruments were made by Nick Kary and the sound produced by Loh Humm.

   

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  The Mind Chair

  The Mind Chair translates the patterns of light from simple objects into vibrations played on your back. As you sit in the chair, you will be asked whether you can differentiate one object from another based on these novel sensations. The Mind Chair was made by Beta Tank.