January 20, 2012
Lost Lectures: Jelly Brain Dissection
Panacotta and raspberry swirls set in the shape of our marvelous cerebrums.
We were delighted to be part of the launch of the Lost Lectures, a new night of (in their own words) “enchanting talks from secret locations”. Or, as founder Julian Kosicki described it, “a bit like TED meets Secret Cinema“. Each of the six speakers per evening has just twelve minutes to distill their ideas into one unforgettable talk – full details here.
Coming from the worlds of science, art, tech, music, entertainment, design, business, and the environment, speakers included Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of the best selling Cloudspotter’s Guide and winner of The Royal Society Best Science Book award for his new book The Wavewatcher’s Companion, David Barrie, a social entrepreneur and the creative brains behind The People’s Supermarket, and Regine De Batty, author of We-Make-Money-Not-Art.
For the interval, we served up Jelly Brains: vanilla panna cotta and raspberry jelly cerebrums prepared by GS Creative Director Jenny Wong. UCL neuroscientists and cortex-carvers Dr Zarinah Agnew and Dr Becky Lawson were on hand to explain the function of each part of the jiggly (and tasty) specimens as we diced them up.
Who knew the most complex object in the known universe could taste so good.
January 18, 2012
Lost Lectures: Jelly Brain
Our first Jelly Brain of 2012! The wonderful Dr Zarinah Agnew of University College London will dissect panacotta and raspberry swirls set in the shape of our marvelous cerebrums as part of the brand new series, The Lost Lectures.
Full details of the night here.
September 20, 2011
Dirty Brains
Neuroscientist Dr Zarinah Agnew came to the Secret Garden Party this summer to teach us about the coital corners of the cortex in her new lecture, Dirty Brains. Here, she gives us the goods on how neuroscientists have probed our privates.
Trying to make science sound interesting whilst balanced and educational is somewhat of a challenge, but one that I consider to be a central part of being a scientist. I have been working with Guerilla Science for the last few years; we have done a number of events, festivals and parties and it’s been a pretty good ride. This year the theme from their funders the Wellcome Trust is “Dirt” and given that my (very general) theme is brains, I put in a proposal to talk about Dirty Brains: mapping out how the erogenous zones arerepresented in the brain.
Zarinah, introducing us to the "dirty" bits of the brain at the Dirt Banquet at the Secret Garden Party this summer.
The idea stemmed from a couple of lectures I saw at a conference in the US a few years ago: in light of the fact that most of what we know about genitals in the brain has been drawn from studies of men, researchers had decided to instead go to great lengths to map out the female genitals in the brain using real women. Of course my talk (done in conjunction with Dr Aidan Horner of UCL) was accompanied by a fairly long and drawn out description of what these experiments entailed: “mechanical self stimulators” and so forth.
August 15, 2011
SGP: Dirt Banquet
Working in partnership with chef Joe Gray we brought a feast of filth to the Secret Garden Party, each course inspired by the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political and temporal dimensions of dirt.
Starter: Earth. Turf Cross Section: Wild Mushroom Risotto, Cress & Edible Grasses w/ Stilton Stones
Desert: Sex. Yonic Vanilla Pannacotta with Phallic Shortbread
Eminent experts accompanied each course, feeding guests with ideas about the nature of dirt, with scientists Zarinah Agnew, Rachel Edwards-Stuart, Aidan Horner, Elizabeth Pisani, and beatboxer Yasson. All pics on our Flickr site.
The second and last time we hosted this utterly original event – read more about the first on New Scientist’s Culture Lab blog and on the Guardian’s science blog.
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