Art history nerds, your time has come anthropeum.com

Anthropeum

A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artifact was made. See how you rank.

anthropeum.com

How does an #artwork come into being? 🎨🖌️ I'm researching creative processes - specifically, the relationship between #imagining and #making. If you're a visual #artist and have a spare 15 minutes, I'd love your input. More info & take part here: forms.gle/PXHqaWGQ3Pa6... Feel free to share 🎨🖌️

Exploring artists' imagery experience

You are invited to participate in an online survey about visual artists’ mental imagery. Background Mental imagery is perception-like experience of an object or scenario, without that object or scena...

forms.gle

Had a lovely chat with the fine folk at Aphantasia Network about all things #art, #imagination, and #aphantasia, and now it's on their YouTube channel, where I appear agreeably enhanced aphantasia.com/video/art-of...

The Art of Seeing Differently: How Aphantasic Artists Challenge the Myth of the Visualizing Genius

Art historian Matthew MacKisack's research reveals that aphantasic artists create stunning work through external composition—challenging centuries of assumptions about creativity and imagination.

aphantasia.com

Very happy to be co-convening, with Prof Whitney Davis, and presenting on Friday morning at #AAH2026. We're talking 'Images and Pictures': what are they, what's the difference, and who decides? forarthistory.org.uk/session-imag...

Association for Art History@forarthistory.org.uk · 4mo ago

AAH Conference 2026: Discover Our Sessions ✍️ Text, Language & Writing 📍University of Cambridge 📆8–10 April 2026 🔗 https://loom.ly/6Dt-NdI #AAH2026

I'm going to be giving a talk on #art and #aphantasia on Tuesday 16th December, for the fine folk at Aphantasia Network - you can watch online here: aphantasia.com/event/019a92...

Live Science Talk with Researcher Matthew MacKisack - Aphantasia Community Event

Join researcher Matthew MacKisack as he discusses his study examining how aphantasia (absence of mental imagery) and hyperphantasia (extremely vivid mental imagery) influence artistic creation—and why...

aphantasia.com

Very glad to have talked to Larissa MacFarquhar for this beautiful piece on extremes of imagining. Goes deep into the experiences of artists Clare Dudeney and Sheri Paisley; more on their and others' practices in our research article here medicine-vet-medicine.ed.ac.uk/sites/defaul...

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 9mo ago

Mental imagery is associated with a bewildering variety of human traits and capacities: a propensity to hold grudges; a vulnerability to trauma; emotional awareness; ways of making art; memory of one’s life. What happens if you can’t see it?

#callforpapers I’m co-convening a session at The AAH 2026 Conference with the wonderful Whitney Davis. If you're interested in the relationship between images in the head and in the world, what constitutes a picture, etc, drop us a proposal! forarthistory.org.uk/images-and-p...

How can you describe something if you can't visualise it?Fascinating insight into creative writing with #aphantasia by author Dustin Grinnell www.youtube.com/shorts/DAB-E...

Aphantasia: How to Write Without a Mind’s Eye

YouTube video by Dustin Grinnell, Sci-fi With Heart

youtube.com

Love this. Another poke in the eye of the genius/hero/human template of creativity. aeon.co/essays/did-a...

Enjoying Adam Zeman's takeover of New Scientist this week with all things imagination #scicomm #psychscisky

New Scientist@newscientist.com · last yr.

Your imagination isn't just one thing. The latest neuroscience is untangling just how diverse this faculty really is, says cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

Very happy to declare that 'Global Culture after Gombrich: Art, Mind, World', is out! Published by Intellect: www.intellectbooks.com/global-cultu... Launch at the Warburg Institute on the 24th of June: warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/tradi... #ArtHistory #Art #History #Culture

On imagining and its varieties, e.g. #2: Individuals who hoard use objects as receptacles for memories; hoarding tendencies are associated with reduced visualising ability; so, 'visualisation difficulties may promote a reliance on objects to facilitate recall' www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

no hugging, no learning Seinfeld's rejection of the formula providing 'opioid reassurance in the form of redemption and the simultaneous restoration of normality: the hero always achieves self-optimisation within the acceptable confines of bourgeois respectability' aeon.co/essays/why-d...?

Why does every film and TV series seem to have the same plot? | Aeon Essays

The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?

aeon.co

There's so much great work on imagining and its varieties at the moment. E.g. ‪@eazanon.bsky.social‬, @kerblooee.bsky.social‬ and others' introduction of #prophantasia: the ability to project mental images into the external world osf.io/preprints/os...

An interesting and provocative find regarding aphantasia and reading - but still find non-conscious imagery hard to believe in

hakwan lau@hakwan.bsky.social · last yr.

new preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... aphantasics reported to feel less 'absorbed' as they read stories, but they dwelled just as much on words that typically evoke imagery. so perhaps they just didn't realize they have (non-conscious) imagery too Ali Moharramipour's 1st paper as senior author 🧠📈

Sounds just like a review AI would give 🧐 ... www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

‘OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving’ | Jeanette Winterson

I think of AI as alternative intelligence – and its capacity to be ‘other’ is just what the human race needs

theguardian.com

Here's a translation of @hnirom.bsky.social's article on aphantasic art-making - I sound so much more profound in French, but there you go artimescience.org/updates/f/ce...

Ces artistes qui créent en l’absence d’images dans la tête

- A translation of Hervé Morin's 2024 article in Le Monde

artimescience.org

Here's a wee blog post, wondering if Michelangelo really did see angels in blocks of stone artimescience.org/updates/f/vi...

Visualising genius

Try this thought experiment. Michelangelo - Michelangelo Buonarroti, the Renaissance genius who created the statue of David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling – claimed,

artimescience.org

On oldie but a goodie

Well this is nice. I've also gone and made a website with a blog (!) where I update on the book project and other things art, science, and imagining artimescience.org

ARTIMESCIENCE

artimescience.org