I think the way our brain uses mind models is our most fundamental characteristic. So, if you want to make art about anything, I think it should be about this. But, I am still puzzling how to express mind models in art, how to transform the notion of mind models into artworks that bring joy from beauty.

So, sometimes people ask me “Case, what exactly do you mean by ‘mind models‘? Is it fantasies? Daydreams?”

No, it is none of that. It is simply about perceived realities. A mind model, your mind model is what is reality for you. It is your reality. Reality the way you experience it, subjectively.

Your mind model is your reality

So why not just call it reality? Ah, very good point! Because apparently we live in different ‘realities’. Just a few random examples:

• Some people are sure the earth is flat, other people are sure it is not.
• Some people know God exists, other people know God does not exist.

The interesting thing is, that almost always mind models are a simplified version of a very complex reality. That is interesting, because it is a result of how our brain works. We often think the human brain is a miracle – and, relatively speaking, it is – but it is still very clumsy in comprehending the complex reality around us. It already starts with the fact that our observation through our five senses is limited: we do not see, hear, etc everything that exists in the universe. Eg. a dog and a bat hear much more that we do, a snake sees much more that we do, but also 95% of the universe consists of black matter and black energy, which we cannot observe. So, what comes into the brain is already incomplete.

We live in our own simplification of reality

But in evolution, the brain found a clever trick. It reduces the complex reality around us into a simplified version that feels consistent for us. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato already sensed this. Our brain interprets – weighs, ie. attaches a degree of importance to – incoming information in very specific ways. And the brain uses the simplified version for its evolutionary purpose: survival. The brain makes its own model of reality: a mind model. We all live in our own simplification of reality. You could say, we already live in our own metaverse. Sometimes, I call it “coloring outside the lines of reality“. The brain selects out what it deems not crucial for survival. But it does something else too. It also filters out realities that are not in our interest, or that we dislike. We see through pink glasses.

We see through pink glasses

And here it gets tricky, because sometimes the brain does create a downright wrong model of reality, that leads us to faulty conclusions and actions. Sometimes things turn out to be shockingly different from what you were totally convinced of. That is what psychologists sometimes call ‘reality testing’: how correct is your mind model, ie. to what degree does it overlap with ‘reality’ – whatever reality is exactly (‘universal reality’). So, the better your reality testing, the better our the chances that your brain achieves it’s ultimate purpose: your survival and the survival of your species. So, ‘the art of living‘ is to create a mind model with the highest reality testing, hence the highest chances of survival. The brain is a prediction organ. The better you can predict events, the better you can anticipate opportunities and risks, the higher your evolutionary chances of survival.

We color outside the lines of reality

I wrote about this in an earlier story. UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman calls it ‘naive realism‘. It has a huge impact on our world and society:

Naive realism may be the single most underappreciated source of conflict and distrust across individuals and groups, Lieberman said. “When others see the world differently than we do, it can serve as an existential threat to our own contact with reality and often leads to anger and suspicion about the others,” Lieberman said. “If we know how a person is seeing the world, their subsequent reactions are much more predictable.”

Now, you see similar acts of reductionism in science – with general ‘theories of everyting’ – and art – impressionism, expressionism and abstract painting. Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel wrote a great book about it: Reductionism in Art and Brain Science. Reality in all its dimensions is way too complex for our simple brain. So, we simplify reality. It makes scientific theories more elegant and more easy to comprehend (by our brain!) and it makes art more beautiful, but also more mysterious, hence more attractive. So, it is probably more than just loose acts, it is a movement, a culture, a group habit. Or maybe even more fundamental, it is how we function.

So what for my art

I think the way our brain uses mind models is the most fundamental characteristic of human beings – and maybe of all living creatures. So, if you want to make art about anything, I think it should be about this. About the way we see reality and the different realities we see, the most fundamental mechanism that determines how we lead our lives.

That is why my art is about mind models. Using mind models, living in a simplified reality, looking through pink glasses, coloring outside the lines of reality … all are basically expressions for the same phenomenon.

Mind models in science

In science this idea is used all the time. It is a foundation of the philosophy of science: falsification or falsifiability. The idea – coined by Karl Popper – is very simply, that – in my words – any scientific theory is true until it is proven to be untrue. This is what I call ‘scientific reality’. Thie underlying assumption is, that we, humans, have limited understanding of – what I call – ‘universal reality’. But in order to make scientific progress we just assume theories are true, until we gain new insights that prove the theory untrue, or at least incomplete. A historic example in physics is Newton’s laws which were long deemed true, until Einstein came with his simple relativity theory showing that a high speeds (v~c) Newton’s laws were wrong.

Mind models in art

In art, mind models play a very important role. Art, of course, is the domain of imagination. As you probably know, I often say: “Art is the meeting place of reality and the realities that we create to shape ourselves”. The realities that we create to shape ourselves, obviously, are our mind models – with high or low reality testing, hence the ‘meeting place’. The realities that we create to shape ourselves are what I call ‘group reality’ (if shared with others) and ‘personal reality’ (if not shared), be it in the physical or in the digital world. And ‘shaping ourselves’? Well, isn’t that ultimately what all art does? Trying to find out who we are, trying to create a consistent self-image that our brain can live with and that has sufficient reality testing to avoid the canny feeling that we are fooling ourselves.

One specific idea, that I want to express in my art – using the term ‘our cosy rabbit hole’ – is the understanding, the mind model, that our brain is really a very, very limited instrument to understand reality. Combined with the notion, that we live in a vast, extremely hostile universe, and on an extremely vulnerable planet, called Earth, ‘the pale blue dot’, this should lead to extreme modesty in believing our own mind models but also in extreme care for ourselves and our species. Ultimately, all we have is each other!

And, yes, I am still puzzling how to express mind models in art, how to transform the notion of mind models into artworks that  bring joy from beauty, and affirmation of who we are – identity and meaning through narratives, both individually and as human beings.