swath of data and imagery he has access to and
transforms this information in a way that makes
brain and neural imagery easier for the common
person to navigate and understand.
For Brain City, the three-minute Times
Square film was just one of three parts of the
project Hutton worked on. Another part involved printing images on construction banners in Times Square that comprised one-half
landscape imagery and one-half brain imagery
(“Like where a highway would turn into a cell
membrane”). The last part was an interactive
website where users would click on a region of
the brain and be connected with a related landmark or location in New York City (“You click
on the auditory cortex, and you’d be redirected
to a music venue, or you click on stress regions
in the brain, and you’d get a listing for accountants”).
But Hutton is already tied to an even more
ambitious project. He has been working for six
years now on a documentary about the European Union–funded Human Brain Project (originally the Blue Brain project). Every year, he flies
out to Europe for a week or two to get exclusive
access to footage and interviews for the documentary—as well as conversations with some
of the project’s sharpest critics, who deride the
whole endeavor as a pipe dream. The project is
slated to finish in 2023, and Hutton hopes by
then to have a film that’s ready for screening as
well. “For me, their success is just as interesting
as their failure,” says Hutton. “They have such
ambitious goals to understand the human brain
and simulate it. If they can’t do it, it will still be
exciting to look at as well.”
nity to make those images huge.” In projecting
those visuals on such a grand scale, it was an
opportunity to connect the “feeling of awe and
wonder with the night sky, with the complexity
of the brain. That visceral effect can really only
be achieved when you feel smaller than the image you’re looking at.”
Moreover, in working with a moving medium
like film, Hutton believes he can get viewers to
feel “like their moving through a landscape. It’s
immersive.” Hutton likes to visualize the imagery as a travel through a dense setting, suspending the viewer’s disbelief for a moment. “That’s
something video can do in a way that a still
image of the brain couldn’t.”
“At its best,” Hutton says, “this kind of work
can provide an emotional connection to the imagery. And once you have that connection, you
might interact with the science in a new way.
For me that’s the reason this work is important—to share that feeling of awe and wonder.”
For Hutton, mapmaking is a perfect analogy
for what these neuroscientists are doing in their
work. “The loftiest goal I can hope for with
the way I use imagery in my work is to show
people new landscapes,” he says. “To remind
people that these are physical structures, and
that these are maps—with aesthetically chosen
colors” and other creative decisions being made,
“just like in cartography.”
The role of scale is also something that Hutton is conscious about when it comes to visualizing neural imagery. “We’re so used to watching
any kind of videos on small little screens,” he
says. “The Times Square piece was an opportu-
SciArt in America April 2015
Courtesy of artist Julia Buntaine.
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