Wandering Minds: An Artistic and Scientific Exploration of Attention and Consciousness

The relation between art and science is not new. It dates back to prehistoric era. The paper attempts to explore the relation between art and science and tries to look at one of the important phenomena of science i.e. Mind –Wandering from an artistic point of view. Mind-wandering is a very banal activity of human mind. It tends to occur during driving, reading and in other activities where vigilance is low. In these situations, people do not remember what happened in the surrounding environment as they are pre-occupied with their thoughts. Hence, the attention decouples from the external environment to the internal train of thoughts. The art work depicts the consequence on external environment when the attention shifts from external environment to the internal thoughts. The mind is engaged in wandering about half of its waking time. In extreme cases mind-wandering concludes to neurological disorders, such as depression. On the other hand, it helps in decision making, creativity which is the beneficial nature of it. Is mind wandering a blockage or a new vision? The paper explores the concept of mind wandering, and through artistic exploration it aims to investigate its positive side as well as negative part, thus raising the question to viewer about the direction of their thoughts.