By Nicole Gencarelli
In 12th grade my A.P. English Literature professor asked my class to open our notebooks and write down what we thought consciousness was. While many of our answers, including my own, were toured and long-winded ramblings of consciousness, what would strike me many years later is how uniquely varied everyone’s answer was. Throughout the year, we were asked several more times to define this question, and for me I have taken up this definition through my art. Starting in my junior and senior year of college, I started to research and attempt visual answers and questions for what consciousness is, how it works, when it doesn’t work, and how we as humans understand our own minds.
In 12th grade my A.P. English Literature professor asked my class to open our notebooks and write down what we thought consciousness was. While many of our answers, including my own, were toured and long-winded ramblings of consciousness, what would strike me many years later is how uniquely varied everyone’s answer was. Throughout the year, we were asked several more times to define this question, and for me I have taken up this definition through my art. Starting in my junior and senior year of college, I started to research and attempt visual answers and questions for what consciousness is, how it works, when it doesn’t work, and how we as humans understand our own minds.
In the beginning, I focused mainly on the work and theories of science (neurobiology, cognitive theories, etc.) and analytical philosophical exercises to understanding the mind. However, I soon realized after trying to explain and discuss my work with various individuals (mostly friends and family) that they were totally lost. I remember those days in AP lit class, and how no one gave explanations anywhere near the authors and scientists whose work I had been reading. I wanted to address this duality of consciousness, thoroughly defined through reason and logic to the more poetic and deeply personal experiences of individual people. My series of work I am currently working out deals with what I think of as a visual stream of consciousness series, in which I take images and combine them to make complex and varied webs of thoughts, ideas, or doodles.
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