COPY CATS

My interpretation of the work of Hieronymus Bosch

Firing away in the frontal lobe of your brain, amongst the billions of their friends and associates that make up your brain cells, are little chaps (or chapesses) known as mirror neurons. Some neuroscientists believe they hold the key to our creativity and ability to learn.

Although our knowledge of these is mostly evidential (a little like black holes in space) and it’s still virtually impossible to study single neurons in the human brain, there is much indirect information about the role they play in our ability to learn and create. Scans of active brains indicate that these little beasties increase their activity when a person is observing and executing actions.

Researchers in Italy first predicted the existence of mirror neurons in the last decades of the twentieth century. They are different to motor command neurons which fire when we do something. A subset of motor command neurons – about 20 % of them – also fires when you’re looking at someone else performing a function. It’s almost as if the neuron is adopting the other person’s point of view; that is, performing a virtual reality simulation of the other person’s action.

There’s still a great deal of argument about the function of mirror neurons, but there’s little disagreement about the role of imitation as a fundamental contributor to human learning.

Other Point of View

About 75,000 years ago, scientists believe there was a sudden emergence of rapid development – a Great Leap Forward – in the number of skills that were unique to human beings. For example, tool use, fire, shelter, language and the ability to ‘read’ someone else’s mind and interpret that person’s behavior or actions. Skills could be retained and could therefore spread rapidly – horizontally across groups of people and vertically down the generations.

So, what does all this have to do with art in general and photography in particular?

Imitation learning is critical to all forms of art: music, painting, sculpture and other such tactile arts require us to learn motor skills, which we imitate from watching and experiencing the actions of other people who already have those skills. But in helping us enter the mind of another artist, imitation also teaches us about creativity itself, hence the speculation about their relationship to empathy. In this way, imitation provides an artistic launching pad for our own work. Our minds are programmed to learn this way.

Of course, mirror neurons don’t hold the answers to all the questions about how we learn, or about the complexity of our emotional and cultural lives. But they do remind us of the importance of learning by watching, imitating and even feeling the actions and responses of others. Much of our learning goes through our conscious brains, but beyond that, the vast, mysterious subconscious continues the process in ways we only dimly understand.

Appropriating Learning

This process of imitation and development should not be confused with plagiarism. It is rather an integral part of learning and developing as an artist.

So how might it work for the photographer?

You learn your craft more quickly by watching a good photographer use his/her tools. Our mirror neurons help us experience how an action feels even when we’re not performing it. So, watching another photographer at work is a critical part of perfecting a skill. Beyond that, we learn to see differently by seeing how others view the world. Painting and photography are essentially visual interpretations of our world and how we feel about it. Other artists’ interpretations help us to refine our own visual skills and enhance our understanding of the world.

Copying hides an intimate diary. It is a kind of present-day witness to the original work and the canvas of the copy contains the mental and emotional record of the time spent in the company of the original. When we invoke the powerful capability of imitation, we dig back to a fundamental ability that helped us develop the attributes that make us human – language, motor skills, the appreciation of beauty around us. We reconnect to a greater wisdom and creativity that generously shares itself across communities and centuries to make our civilization what it is.