(2023/24) for string quartet - No.5 in the Cycle "Brains" -
First performance: January 18, 2025, Quatuor Diotima, Radialsystem V, Festival Ultraschall, Berlin
Duration: 6 minutes
How is the brain related to the mind?
Experiments have shown that the brain can be triggered to respond by electrical stimulation, but the mind does not at all. The mind is capable to remember without memory in the brain. In other words, the two are separate mechanisms, and the mind appears to be higher in rank than the brain.
According to a research, the highest level of brain mechanism is the organ that acts as an intermediary between the mind and other brain mechanisms (the executor of the mind), and the mind is the one that directs the programming of all mechanisms in the brain. The mind is said to function as a single unit, as if the mind = a program and the brain = a computer (with spontaneous activity).
By the way, the results of an experiment called the “double-slit experiment” revealed that different realities beyond theory and common sense occur depending on whether human consciousness intervenes or not. Theoretically, or when humans are observing, electrons passing through the double slit leave two particle-shaped tracks on the wall set up at the end of the double slit, but when they are not observing, they leave two or more wave-shaped tracks. In other words, the human consciousness (mind?) creates and determines the “reality” of this world… It reminds me of Hippocrates' statement that the brain is an organ that acts as a mediator between consciousness and the outside world. So, what is the mind after all? What does it mean to have / not have consciousness? The piece vaguely reflects these propositions…
Misato Mochizuki