As Da Prato points out, Lloyd’s theory implies an aesthetics of perception: not only that acts of perception can be rendered musically, but that perception -- as an aspect of consciousness -- may be musical in structure.

Da Prato is making a feature-length documentary film, Music of the Hemispheres, which lent its name to the concert. In the film Da Prato analyzes and plays with the aesthetics of scientific information. Her goal is to create a film that documents as well as embodies and responds artistically to Lloyd’s work. It will exemplify as it explains Lloyd's theories by bringing out the poetic nature of nonfiction scientific information. She combines narrative and conceptual sequences, sonifications, and interviews as various modes of storytelling. She explores the question "what is consciousness," but at the same time she explores the question "what is music" -- not only in terms of timbre, pitch, rhythm, tone, and harmony, but also in terms of the way the brain functions and communicates information. "At its core," Da Prato says, "it is a film about consciousness, and what it means to think about cognition" musically (2012a). 

Comment on this page