How to hack your happiness levels in 20 minutes
Sunday Morning Colour Talk with Catherine Borowski and Lee Baker
*Update: recording at the end of the post
On Sunday, January 28, our guests are Catherine Borowski and Lee Baker, on a mission to improve quality of life through nature inspired public art. In their talk Hack your happiness levels in 20 minutes they explain why neuro-aesthetics, a combination of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and the arts, can help us understand why and how our brains respond to aesthetic experiences.
There will be time for Q&A at the end and we invite you to join the conversation.
Places are limited to 100, so ensure your virtual seat by registering early.
"Beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder, it’s in the brain," argues Lee Baker, Co-founder and Curator at SKIP Gallery and Lead Artist at Graphic Rewilding. In his talk Hack your happiness levels in 20 minutes, Lee explains why he believes that neuro-aesthetics, a combination of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and the arts, can help us understand why and how our brains respond to aesthetic experiences.
Studies have shown that we feel happier simply from looking at pictures of wildlife, a result of our brain’s natural ability to process images of nature better than urban images. Looking at these pictures stimulates the reward centres of our brains more effectively, leading to a sense of relaxation and contentment. It’s this belief in artists as unknowing neurologists that inspired Baker to co-found the Graphic Rewilding project, which aims to transform city centres with floral murals - and, he explains, make us all a little happier.
ABOUT
Lee Baker and Catherine Borowski are on a mission to improve quality of life through nature inspired public art. For 20 years they have each brought delight to unexpected spaces with their work as public artists and curators but in 2017 they began SKIP Gallery together, a project dedicated to creating much needed space, funding and advocacy for emerging artists by turning skips into public artworks.
SKIP Gallery has subsequently developed into an international, collaborative, multi-disciplinary public art project with 24 shows under it’s belt and has shown around the world from metropolises such as London, Milan, New York and Rotterdam, to remote towns on the Scottish Borders and Greek Islands.
But their latest venture, Graphic Rewilding takes Baker’s artworks, inspired by a passion for nature paintings, print, manga, anime, tattoos, tv, social media and even video games, and uses them to create vast, flower inspired, positivity inducing public artworks and immersive environments in often-overlooked spaces. Though these could never provide the same benefits as real nature, they want to inspire people to connect and empathise with the natural world. In London alone they have covered nearly 4.5 square km with their artworks, giving building facades floral makeovers, adding meadows to billboards and entire streets, but also reaching into the digital realm with AR experiences enhancing their work.
SKIP Gallery | Graphic Rewilding | Produce | Instagram
Here is the recording of the event:
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