Julia Buntaine

Our work is mapping out the brain but touching it and images appearing on the screen. One inspiration was the brain sculptures  by the bio-artist Julia Buntaine. She maps out the brain by using different colours and subways maps showing the vast space within the mind.  I want our model brain to be see through, but with in you can see all the wires to show the network of neutrons in which the electrical signals carry out there journey, similar to the electrical current carried down electrical wires. The actual mapping aspect will be projected onto the screen. 

"Bio-artist Julia Buntaine’s work juxtaposes the familiar with the unfamiliar - playful colors, subway maps, model high-rises, and simple wooden blocks. But look again and you see a world designed around aspects of biology and neuroscience. For Buntaine, this began as a fascination with psychology and mental illness that was broadened by studying biology in college. Her work aims to draw in those interested in the aesthetics of colors, maps, and shapes, but leave them with the same colorful and bright interest in neuroscience that Buntaine, herself, began with.

Her works have been inspired by fMRI images, circuit diagrams, and anatomical structures. One particular inspiration is the Brodmann map – a way of mapping the sections of the brain using color and numbers, making the brain look like a topographical surface that could potentially translate into a large space of land. Buntaine’s work brings this potential to life in her brain-city sculptures. Her pieces, such as those shown here, often use a biological shape made from diagrams depicting cities, thus symbolizing vast space inside the body and mind, and human-made achievements."