Catalogue for 'Extreme Imagination - inside the mind's eye', an art exhibition produced by the 'Eye's Mind' research team at The University of Exeter College of Medicine and Health.
Detailed Description
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition 'Extreme Imagination - inside the mind's eye', presented at Tramway, Glasgow, and RAMM, Exeter, in 2019.
We live much of our lives in our heads — looking forward, recollecting, yearning, regretting, day-dreaming. For most people this inner life is frequently visual: they can conjure up an image of something in their ‘mind’s eye’ that is a little like looking at it. However, around 3% of the population - those with the condition aphantasia — lack imagery altogether, while for another minority — with hyperphantasia — imagery is so vivid that it resembles ‘real seeing’. 'Extreme Imagination: inside the mind’s eye' considers the impact of these phenomena on making art. How can someone make anything without being able to imagine what they want it to look like? Is there a distinctly hyperphantasic kind of art? Aphantasia and its opposite teach us about human diversity: the easily-missed, potentially startling differences between how individuals go about their inner lives. The work of the participating artists — and designers, architects, and writers — demonstrates the diversity of means by which things come to be made, and challenges long-held beliefs about what it means to be ‘creative’.
The catalogue contains interviews with the artists alongside their work, plus essays on the art, science, and philosophy of 'extreme imagination' by Adam Zeman, Fiona Macpherson, John Onians, Crawford Winlove, Matthew MacKisack, and Susan Aldworth. Edited with an introduction by Susan Aldworth and Matthew MacKisack
