Jackson Pollack or The Mammalian Neocortical Column
When I saw this I was sure it was yet another generations attempt to re-envision the genius of J. Pollack. To my great delight, it is in fact a ridiculously complex computer model of the cerebral cortex of the human brain. Fabulous, right? Because the connection is uncanny; Pollack and his AbEx cronies were all about the dissolution of filters between the mind and the work of art. You know, painting the ego or even id. It was all about the inner workings of these guys and now, fifty years later we get a (nearly)working model of the actual organ they were metaphorically representing and they look nearly identical! Damn!
"A visual representation of a mammalian neocortical column, the basic building block of the cortex. the representation shows the complexity of this part of the brain, which has now been modeled using a supercomputer. the visualization is part of an ambitious project to create a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer.
"the visualization of the neurons' shapes is a challenging task given the fact that a column of 10,000 neurons rendered in high quality mesh accounts for essentially 1 billion triangles for which about 100GB of management data is required. simulation data with a resolution of electrical compartments for each neuron accounts for another 150GB. as the electrical impulse travels through the column, neurons light up and change color as they become electrically active."
[link: technologyreview.com & epfl.ch & epfl.ch (movie)|via visualcomplexity.com]
Comments