BRAINLAND

In this podcast we give the brain a rest and take an excursion into the music world. Trevor Ford, Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, talks to Stephen Brown about his journey from the East End of London to a career as a professional flautist, organist and choir master (an organiser of the annual 'Messiah from Scratch' at the Albert Hall) alongside, accountancy, business management and editing. They discuss the benefits he and Stephen gained from the free music tuition available to children of working class families in the East End in the 1960s and the importance of giving the next generation musical opportunities, but also survival skills necessary for a life in the music jungle.

Participants:

Trevor Ford, professor, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/staff/trevor-ford

Stephen Brown, cellist, composer http://cornwallcomposers.com/stephen.htm

Music (with the permission): Handel's Messiah were sung by the Really Big Chorus accompanied by the English Festival Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in 2014.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by Ken Barrett.

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'The Vital Spark' is an occasional series exploring different facets of creativity.

Hugh Rickards, in conversation with Stephen Brown and Ken Barrett, talks about Tourette's syndrome, including a suggested association with increased levels of creativity. After outlining why he was first attracted to Neuropsychiatry (Oliver Sacks' fault) and to do research on this condition, Hugh goes over what we mean by Tourette's, it's overlap with OCD and the little we known about it's causes. We unpack possible links to creativity, performer Tourettes Hero gets a mention (see link below), Hugh and Ken share their own experience of tics.

Participants: 

Hugh Rickards, Consultant and Honorary Professor of Neuropsychiatry, National Centre for Mental Health, Birmingham, UK. http//:www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/clinical-sciences/Rickards-Hugh.aspx

Stephen Brown, cellist, composer and retired professor of neuropsychiatry: http://cornwallcomposers.com/stephen.htm

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

More about Tourette's is here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tourettes-syndrome/

and here: https://www.tourettes-action.org.uk/

Tourettes Hero : https://www.touretteshero.com/

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown. 

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by KB.

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In this podcast Ken Barrett is in conversation with Professor David Redish. David explains what is meant by ‘computational psychiatry’ and the concept of ‘computational breakdown', with a great falling bridge analogy, before going on to outline how this approach is being applied to addiction and depression. Our discussion ranges over aspects of memory, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) and sleep, and much else, before considering possible pitfalls of the approach.

Participants: 

A David Redish, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota. https://med.umn.edu/bio/david-redish

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired clinical neuropsychiatrist. http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Sketch by Ken Barrett.

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In this podcast Ken Barrett is in conversation with Marcello Ienca, professor of the ethics of articicial intelligence. We discuss the ethical challenges of new neurotechnologices, including brain-computer interfaces and other wearable and implanted devices. Are our brains about to be at risk of being ‘hacked’ or ‘jacked’ and what steps should be taken to safeguard us? Marcello outlines and unpacks four human rights he believes should be protected: the right to cognitive liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity and psychological continuity. 

Participants: 

Marcello Ienca, Professor of Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience.

Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine, Technische Universität München. 

Group Leader - Intelligent Systems Ethics Group - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

https://www.professoren.tum.de/en/ienca-marcello

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired clinical neuropsychiatrist.

http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

An interesting article by Marcello Ienca on this subject: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/marcello-ienca/

Music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: https://www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk/

Portrait sketch by Ken Barrett

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In this podcast Professor Jonathan D Moreno, author of the book Mind Wars, is in conversation with Ken Barrett. Their chat ranges from human experimentation, in the US in World War 2, to fears of mind control in the intelligence community in the 1950s and related experiments with LSD and mescaline, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and various specific projects up to the present day. On the subject of bioethics, we speak about the Nuremberg Code, the surprising origin of informed consent and much more, ending on an optimistic note.

Participants:

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist

http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

https://pikprofessors.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2021-10/moreno-cv.pdf

Musical extract is from Act 1, Scene 2 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown

Portrait by Ken Barrett

Discussed on the podcast:

DARPA: https://www.darpa.mil/

MIND WARS: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Wars-Science-Military-Century/dp/193413743X

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In this podcast Professor Phil Husbands is in conversation with Andy Platman and Ken Barrett. The chat ranges over a number of topics presented in Phil’s excellent book Robots: What everyone needs to know, including his views on the current media hysterics regarding the immediate dangers of AI, the surprisingly long history of robotics, ethical challenges of AI and autonomous robots now and in the future. He also reads an extract from his book, part of a vignette imagining robotics 600 years in the future.

Participants:

Phil Husbands, Research Professor of Artificial Intelligence (informatics) at the University of Sussex ( https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p1334-phil-husbands/about)

Andy Platman, writer and retired medic.

Ken Barrett, artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist (http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/)

The book we were discussing is Robots: What everyone needs to know. OUP, 2021. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robots-What-Everyone-Needs-Know%C2%AE/dp/0198845391

Music: Prologue to Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by Ken Barrett

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In this podcast contemporary artist Susan Aldworth is in conversation with Ken Barrett. Susan has worked on collaboratively with neuroscientists and clinicians for over twenty years following a health scare. We speak about her projects based on brain imaging, epilepsy and sleep, her interest in embroidery as a story telling medium, combined with old garments, and her novel appraoch to print-making. We also take a dive into her most recent work, created in response to current political rhetoric regarding migration, exploring her own migrant, Italian, heritage.

Participants:

Susan Aldworth, artist. https://susanaldworth.com/

Ken Barrett, artist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Music: Prelude to Act 1 of Brainland, by Stephen Brown http://cornwallcomposers.com/stephen.htm

A film about Illuminating the Self, the extraordinary epilepsy proejct we discuss is here:

https://susanaldworth.com/exhibitions/illuminating-the-self/ 

Animation of the toposcope images :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhH1XYALLPg

Brainland the opera:

https://www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk/

Portrait sketch by Ken Barrett.

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In this podcast Professor Philippa Levine, formerly Walter Prescott Webb Professor in History and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin, is in conversation with Andy Platman and Ken Barrett. We discuss the British origins of eugenic ideas and the worldwide movement that followed. Nazi eugenics, from sterilisation to euthanasia are explored, but also how these ideas took off and were applied, in different forms, worldwide, most enthusiastically in the USA but also in Scandinavia, Australia, Latin America and beyond. But that doesn't entirely capture the depth and range of subjects covered in this extraordinary conversation.

Participants:

Professor Philippa Levine,

Dr Andy Platman, writer and former GP.

Ken Barrett, artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist.

Eugenics: A very short introduction by Philippa Levine https://academic.oup.com/book/825?login=false

Musical extracts are from the opera Brainland composed by Stephen Brown https://www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk/

Portrait of Philippa Levine by Ken Barrett.

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In this episode Raymond Tallis, philosopher, poet and one time professor of geriatric medicine is in conversation with Stephen Brown. Their chat moves from the metaphysics of quantum mechanics to the definition of art and the language of music. Goethe's view of poetry and Scruton's thoughts on music get a mention before moving to the art of medicine, the difference between philosophical enquiry and artistic creativity and the philosophy of free will.

Their conversation concludes with Ray admitting to being a philosopher of optimism before reading his poem 'Meta-sonnet for the Dark Lady' followed by Steve Brown's setting.

Meta-sonnet for the Dark Lady

Or shall I live your epitaph to make,

 Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.

 There's nothing of you lives in these his lines

 - they did not lift you clear of death in pain.

 Long since, beneath the air that heard his rhymes,

 you flowed away, dissolved like him in rain.

 Your ghost shook off the flesh, its thrilling dark,

 those evening tones his fluent verse acclaimed.

 What's saved of you?

 The tetchy question mark of rival experts

 squabbling when you're named.

 Your smooth white neck was lost to red-lipped lust

 when Night reclaimed the sable from your hair.

 Dark Lady, arid footnotes, learned dust,

 your absence, wide and sexless as the air,

 behind the word-webbed nothing of your face,

 makes these his sonnets crypts for empty space.

Contributors:

Stephen Brown, composer, http://cornwallcomposers.com/

Raymond Tallis, philosopher and poet, http://www.raymondtallis.co.uk/

Music: All the music was written by Stephen Brown.

“Meta-sonnet to the dark lady” was sung by Maria Heseltine (mezzo-soprano) accompanied by the Corineus String Quartet. There is a very brief orchestral extract from a piece by Stephen called “Fear no more” performed by the Orchestra of St Mary’s, Penzance.

Other musical extracts are from a forthcoming suite that will combine two Shakespeare sonnets with the meta-sonnet.

Portrait of Raymond Tallis by Ken Barrett.

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In this podcast writer Alex Frith and illustrator Daniel Locke provide fascinating insights into the creation of their book Two Heads, produced in collaboration with Uta and Chris Frith. This is a deep dive into their creative process and a wider discussion about telling science stories using the comic format. The conversation ranged from Tintin to Dave Gibbons via Peanuts, Micky Mouse and Spider Man and the links between scientific and artistic creativity.

Contributors:

Alex Frith, writer. https://www.pewliterary.com/author/alex-frith

Daniel Locke, illustrator http://www.daniellocke.com/

Ken Barrett, artist, writer and illustrator http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Music: Prelude to Act 1of Brainland, by Stephen Brown. www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

We also discuss Dan’s graphic novel ‘Out of Nothing’ created with David Blandy and Adam Rutherford.

http://www.daniellocke.com/out-of-nothing/

The illustration is based on an original by Daniel Locke.

A review of Two Heads is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/29/two-heads-by-uta-frith-chris-frith-alex-frith-and-daniel-locke-review

We also discussed ‘Logicomix’ a great graphic novel about Bertrand Russell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix

and discussed - Dave Gibbons book ‘How comics work’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySWlFbxUK0g

https://www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk/

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