SEMINAR: SymbioticA Friday Seminar

Box jellyfish have no brains. Cubomedusae have 24 eyes many with sophisticated lenses, but no brain that science can see. As some sort of brain is considered indispensable to sight their need for all this sensory hard-ware confounds conventional neuro-scientific logic. Their eyes are not the problem; they fit the standard ocular definition (more or less). The problem is vision without cognition, sight without a central processing unit. To address science’s empirical ability to perceive life according to the capacity of the human brain, Meredith is attempting to develop a perception of the jellyfish’s brain for which biological science currently has no concept.

Meredith Walsh is currently undertaking her second residency at SymbioticA. She has an ongoing interest both philosophically and practically in perception and thought as it relates to the empirical power of scientific practice to define the material living world. Her research has explored this theme through a number of residencies, including SymbioticA, the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific Research Organisation) and iVEC (the hub of advanced computing in Western Australia), and her writing/presentations for interdisciplinary audiences such as ICAD (the International Conference of Auditory Display).