Mind Blow Gala

This piece was commissioned by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its foundation. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem stands as one of the best and most innovative research institutions in the world. The University is home to such institutions as the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, which aspires to revolutionize current neuroscience research.

The video performance is a collaboration between Kreëmart and Oursler, with the expertise of neuroscientist Idan Segev. Segev is the David & Inez Myers Professor in Computation Nuerosciences, a member of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC), Head of Department of Neurobiology at the Hebrew University and Head of the Drahi Brain Computation and Communication Lab.

Tony Oursler is best known for his innovative integration of video, sculpture, and performance. Oursler was influenced by John Baldessari, who taught him, Mike Kelly, John Miller, and Jim Shaw the importance of the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language. A pioneering figure in new media since the 1970s, Oursler has since explored diverse methods of incorporating video into his practice, breaking video art out of the two-dimensional screen to create moving three-dimensional environments with the use of projections.

Idan Segev is Professor in Computational Neuroscience and former director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation (ICNC) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research team utilizes computational and theoretical tools to study how neurons, the elementary microchips of the brain, compute and dynamically adapt to our ever-changing environment. In recent years, his group worked jointly with several experimental groups worldwide in an endeavor to model a whole piece of the mammalian cortex with the ultimate goal to unravel how local fine variations within the cortical network underlie specific behavioral function and may give rise to certain brain diseases or to a healthy and ‘individual’ brains. Professor Idan Segev is an active participant in the Human Brain Project.

Marco Anelli © 2018

Raphaël Castoriano is an artist and entrepreneur based in New York City. He has been working in contemporary art for over 20 years and is connected with a range of artists, collectors, and notable museums worldwide. In 2009, Castoriano founded Kreëmart, a collaborative artistic entity that takes contemporary artists out of their typical creative process by providing the medium of sugar as the ultimate provocation. Kreëmart guides the artists’ vision toward the creation of unique ingestible editions presented in the form of public and private art Happenings.