Brain-Art Special Interest Group at OHBM 2022

Xinhui Li, Lena Oestreich, Aman Badhwar, Sridar Narayanan, Gladys Heng, Robin Gutzen

On behalf of the OHBM Brain-Art Special Interest Group

The OHBM Brain-Art Special Interest Group (SIG) is an initiative to promote the exchange between Art and Science by fostering the dialogue between artists and members of the OHBM community. We aim to encourage artistic approaches and perspectives to understanding human brain function, facilitate the development of novel approaches for the visualization of scientific data, and provide a model of interaction between disciplines while enhancing the public outreach of OHBM. We achieve these goals through annual activities such as the Brain-Art Exhibition and Competition at the OHBM conference.

In 2022, we participated in multiple events at the OHBM Annual Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. Read on to hear about our Brain-Art Exhibition, Competition, and much more!​

Brain-Art Exhibition and Competition “The Connected Brain” in the Poster and Exhibition Hall
From June 19th to 23rd, 2022, we held a successful Brain-Art Exhibition and a Brain-Art Competition under the overarching theme “The Connected Brain”. The exhibition showcased selected artworks from professional artists while the competition accepted all submissions from the public and the winners would be selected through judge and public votes.

The Brain-Art Exhibition featured original works (see images below) from 12 artists which explored connections with self, with others, and with environment and nature. This year the featured artists were Anne Sikora, Can Buyukberber, Erin Lottes, Haiz Webb, Kendra Oudyk, Laura Vavassori, Nicholas Luchenbill, Paméla Simard, Robin Gutzen, Tyler Wishard, Virgilio Voges, and Zsófia Morvay.

For the Brain-Art Competition, we received 79 high-quality submissions from the public spanning 5 different categories: the connected brain, still images, videos and animations, beautiful mistakes, and sustainability and connection with nature. Winners  were selected for each category through professional judge votes and public popular votes, and were announced at the student and postdoc party (see below) and the closing ceremony.

Our exhibition and competition attracted a lot of attention and received positive feedback from the community. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the wonderful exhibition and competition this year!

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OHBM Brain Art Competition Winner Announcement @ Student and Postdoc Party
On June 20th, the Brain-Art team members joined the student and postdoc party hosted by the Student–Postdoc SIG and announced the OHBM 2022 Brain-Art competition winners. A slideshow of wonderful Brain-Art competition submissions was played during the party. 

Around 11pm, our Secretary, Désirée Lussier, gave a brief introduction of the Brain-Art SIG, then our Art Exhibit Manager-Elect, Robin Gutzen, and Website and Communication Manager-Elect, Xinhui Li, announced the competition winners for each category: ​

Category	Judge Vote Winner	Popular Vote Winner
The Connected Brain	The Connected Brain Mid Journey by Jeff Mentch; The Great Ape Within by Zaki Alasmar	Represent Connect Empower by Mia Rose Coutinho
Sustainability and Connection with Nature	Obser Inter by Maria Misiura	Frida Kahlo by Vesna Prčkovska, Marc Ramos
Still Images	The Limbic Orchid by Shahryar Khorasani; Adaptation by Matha Holmes	Purkinje Panorama by Stefanie Bradley
Beautiful Mistakes	Neural Turing Patterns by Alberto Vergani ​	Neural Turing Patterns by Alberto Vergani ​
Videos and Animations	Neurotrip by Dan White	The Swirl Brain by João Duarte

We had a lot of fun at the party!

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OHBM Leadership Reception @ The Clydeside Distillery

Also on June 20th, the chairs were invited to a leadership reception. By now, most attendees had a chance to visit the Brain-Art Exhibit and expressed their appreciation for how diverse the different pieces of art were and how much the exhibition has grown over the past couple of years.

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Diversity and Inclusivity Round Table Discussion: Best practices for promoting diversity and inclusivity across OHBM organization

Finally, on June 21st, the Diversity and Inclusivity Committee organized a roundtable amongst leaders of the Diversity and Inclusivity Committee, Communications Committee, Student-Postdoc SIG, Open Science SIG, SEA-SIG, BrainArt SIG, and OHBM Chapters, to discuss what we have learned in terms of best practices for promoting diversity and inclusivity. The roundtable was a great success! Aman Badhwar talked about the many ways the Brain-Art SIG has contributed to initiatives for promoting diversity and inclusivity in the past. We discussed ways that the SIGs can contribute to making future meetings more accessible for individuals from diverse communities, ethnicities, and groups (For more on this topic, see the Diversity and Inclusivity Committee’s recent blog post on best practices for ensuring conference presenter diversity). ​

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Thank you to all of the artists and scientists who contributed to our 2022 Brain-Art events! We can’t wait for you to join us at the 2023 OHBM Annual Meeting in Montreal.