BRAIN EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

Cérebro – mais vasto que o céu

GALLERY

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

DESCRIPTION

This exhibition is a unique journey around the brain: its origin, the complexity of the human mind, the challenges of artificial minds. It shows a brain 500 million years old, a modern brain, a giant interactive synapse, fragments of an Egyptian papyrus, a painting by the artist Bridget Riley, an orchestra of brains, robots… Interactive activities, historical and paleontological documents, painting, three-dimensional models and infographies combine to produce an exciting exhibition for all ages.

Starting with Emily Dickinson’s poem, The brain – is wider than the sky, the exhibition opens by presenting the brain without any recourse to scientific information, using stunning images from Greg Dunn’s Self reflected piece.

The origin and complexity of the brain, and what we know of the way it generates some of the characteristics we identify as human – memory, perception, language, emotions – along with diseases that arise from the malfunctioning of different components of this system, are explored in the first two modules. The third module of the exhibition deals with brain-machine interface technology and its applications, artificial intelligence and robotics.

Brain – wider than the sky also wants to build the necessary bridge between us and animals – so that we can understand our place in nature. It is this permanent relationship that, throughout the exhibition, allows the visitor to build a narrative that extends from the natural and social sciences to Philosophy, Arts and Humanities.