Hannah Addario-Berry: Brain Food/Music

Hannah Addario-Berry

Cello Bazaar, the cello-centric monthly music series founded and directed by BAASICS.3: The Deep End performer and presenter Hannah Addario-Berry, is named after its principal venue, Bazaar Cafe. The Richmond District coffee shop and event space is not far from Hannah's home, and Selene and I met her there on a particularly warm San Francisco morning to discuss her contribution to The Deep End program.

Hannah describes herself as "a fierce advocate of the music of today," and, like Selene and me, she is passionate about exposing a wide audience to that which she cares about; in her case, that's music and food. Along with Cello Bazaar, Hannah founded and runs Locaphonic, an organization dedicated to "connect[ing] Bay Area residents with our local musicians, food, and culinary artists, promoting sustainable livelihoods for artists and farmers and uniting our community through food and music."

When It All Comes Together

Christopher Reiger
"Brewer's blackbirds"
2013

I recently promised this blog's monthly email digest subscribers that I would begin sharing updates about BAASICS (Bay Area Art & Science Interdisciplinary Collaborative Sessions), the non-profit organization that I co-founded and co-direct. Indeed, most of April's Hungry Hyaena posts are synopses of conversations had with some of the artists and scientists participating in BAASICS.3: The Deep End, our upcoming program on neurodiversities, mental illness, and creativity. (Readers can expect more of these vignettes in advance of the Monday, May 6 event.)

I've come to regard BAASICS as an important arm of my creative endeavor; it's a long-term project that provides me with a platform to help make contemporary art and science relevant and exciting to a broad audience. In many respects, BAASICS is a descendant of Synoddity, the cross-disciplinary organization I co-founded with my friend Michael McDevitt during our undergraduate years at The College of William & Mary. Synoddity made a case for conversation and interaction across professional boundaries and was, like BAASICS, animated by curiosity and wonder, something both Michael and Selene Foster, my BAASICS collaborator and co-founder, have in spades. Working on a project you're passionate about is invariably a good thing, but it's a particular pleasure when you team up with fantastic people.

Leeza Doreian & Creativity Explored

Leeza Doreian at work in her West Oakland studio

A few weeks ago, Selene and I met BAASICS.3: The Deep End presenter Leeza Doreian at her home in West Oakland. She and her partner, John, an artist, furniture maker, and contractor, have lived in the house for three years, and are remodeling it in their limited spare time. Shortly after moving to the Bay Area from Brooklyn five years ago, Leeza began working at Creativity Explored, a Mission-based non-profit organization dedicated to "provid[ing] artists with developmental disabilities the means to create, exhibit, and sell their art."

We sat around Leeza's dining room table, chatting, admiring reproductions of artwork, and sipping coffee in a brightly lit room that opens to her backyard; the liquid warble of a House finch punctuated our conversation. Leeza suggested that Creativity Explored and similar organizations -- Creativity Explored, Creative Growth, and NIAD Art Center are all Bay Area organizations dedicated to working with artists with developmental and/or physical disabilities, and all three were founded by Florence and Elias Katz -- aim to help people "access their own abilities."

Dr. Walter Freeman III's chaos and creativity

Dr. Walter J. Freeman

"One profound advantage chaos may confer on the brain is that chaotic systems continually produce novel activity patterns. We propose that such patterns are crucial to the development of nerve cell assemblies that differ from established assemblies. More generally, the ability to create activity patterns may underlie the brain's ability to generate insight and the 'trials' of trial-and-error problem solving."

- Walter J. Freeman
On a sunny Tuesday morning when most of the University of California, Berkeley student body was away from campus for Spring Break, Selene and I had the pleasure of visiting Dr. Walter Freeman in his Donner Lab office. He provided us with a simple introduction to neurodynamics -- brain waves are a "special kind of noise," he explained -- before expounding on the theoretical outgrowth of his neuroscience research. Many of Walter's conclusions about the workings of the brain have an unexpected antecedent, the philosophy of the 13th century theologian, St. Thomas of Aquinas (Walter prefers the Italian formulation, Tommaso, so I will use it here).

Dr. Indre Viskontas and the reshuffled brain

Dr. Indre Viskontas with the the "Painted Ladies"

A couple of weeks ago, Selene and I met Dr. Indre Viskontas for coffee in the Fillmore District. Although Indre's BAASICS.3: The Deep End presentation, "Release from Inhibition: The creative impulse in patients with dementia," draws primarily on her neuroscience research experience, she is a scientist and an artist. She earned a PhD from UCLA as well as a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she now serves on the faculty.

In the course of our conversation, we learned how Indre's experiences as co-host of OWN's Miracle Detectives buttressed her commitment to secular humanism, and about several exciting art and music projects she's currently working on. Mostly, though, we learned about the research Indre did into the workings of creativity in patients with frontotemporal dementia.

Seeing Through the Story

Six paintings of cats by Louis Wain, shown as a group to illustrate their increasingly abstract and electric nature, attributed to his suffering from schizophrenia

When I was eighteen, I had a passionate argument with my father about my life's priorities. I insisted that producing good art mattered above all else. Because I was a teenager who still boiled down everything to causative choices, I declared that I would happily die destitute if doing so meant I'd produce a few revelatory works in my lifetime. My father angrily dismissed my stance as romantic and foolish, but I held my ground (as is the wont of eighteen-year-old ideologues), and proclaimed that I'd sooner kill myself than create artwork for money or popular acclaim.