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Visual Effects: Looking at Seeing

Dana Clancy and Margaret Livingstone

February 20th, 2014

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Margaret Livingstone and Dana Clancy discussed what is known about visual illusions from the point of view of both science and art. Livingstone had recently been investigating the role that depth perception and its lack might play in the work of various artists. She and her team collected evidence that a number of well known artists, including Rembrandt, might have been stereoblind, and discussed what this means from the point of view of neuroscience. Clancy discussed the way that her work “cultivat[es] the viewer’s awareness of shifting points of view in relation to both the paintings and how one experiences real space.” Together, these two thinkers and practitioners discussed what art and science can tell us about some of the ways in which we experience and process the visual world.