9.72 Vision in Art and Neuroscience is offered each fall by the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and taught by Professor Pawan Sinha, Seth Riskin and Sarah Schwettmann.

As humans shape sounds into units of meaning in constructing language, the brain builds upon the elemental light information that falls on the retina in constructing a visual world in experience. Vision is a system of learning and communication between human brains and light and between people.

Informed by neuroscience principles and artistic methods for working with light, the projects in this class exhibit were designed to foreground the brain’s contributions to what we see. In viewing these works, we catch ourselves in the creative act of perception, the generative force behind the language of human vision.*

* Language of Vision by György Kepes (published in 1944, two years before he joined the MIT faculty) was a seminal book that advanced mutually-productive exchange between visual art and design practice and vision psychology.