Giacomo Bignardi born in the humanities, with a degree in Drama, Art and Music Studies from the University of Bologna. He was then raised by scientists while doing a minor in Brain and Mind, leaving home to research at the Complex Trait Genetic department at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. After, he tried to grow up in London, studying Neuroaesthetics at Goldsmiths, University of London, and collaborating with the NTR, at the Biological Psychology Dept. (which is still in Amsterdam, he loves that city). He finally started to work as a research assistant at UCL, this time back in London, in the Laboratory of Neurobiology. It was 2020. He is now following the natural accademic pathway, by doing (or by trying to do) a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience with the amazing Max Planck School of Cognition. All grown up, he is interested in aesthetics, what aesthetic means, and its underlying sources of etiological variation. Especially the genetic ones.
This website is about the wanderings in the science and the art that surround the term aesthetics.
Here you have a glimpse to what is important-ish (pinned tweet) for me at the moment:
Check this out! Also in it: our abstract on the work in progress on the etiology of visual aesthetic appraisal 😊 https://t.co/NohivBiPpn
— giacomo bignardi (@GiacomoBIgnardi) November 13, 2020
VisNA Lab, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Germany
September 2020 - December 2020
INTERN
Project: Partitioning the phenotypic variance of aesthetic appraisals. Supervised by Edward Vessel & David Poeppel
Role and things done: Pre-Doctoral Student
Division Biosciences, University College London, UK
October 2019 - July 2020
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
Project: neural correlates of aesthetic experiences under conformity bias. Supervised by Tomohiro Ishizu & Semir Zeki
Role: Data analyst, Lab assistant, fMRI, online studies
Dept. of Biological Psychology, Amsterdam, Netherlands
June 2019 - July 2019
INTERN
Project: Heritability of individual differences in the propensity of feeling aesthetic Chills. Supervised by Rebecca Chamberlain & Dorret I Boomsma
Role: data analyst, twin study
Complex Trait Genetic Lab, Amsterdam, Netherlands
March 2018-July 2018
VISITING RESEARCHER
Project: Genetic influences on individual differences in the intensity of visual aesthetic experiences. Supervised by Tinca JC Polderman and in collaboration with Dirk J Smit
Role & skill: data analyst, twin study
Max Planck School of Cognition
September 2020-ongoing
PH.D. (candidate) IN THE NEUROSCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF COGNITION
Courses: Functional neuroanatomy and neurophisyology, Philosophy of minds and ethics
Internship: VisNA Lab, Department of Neuroscience, Frankfurt, Max Planck Institute for for Empirical Aesthetics
Goldsmiths University of London
September 2018-September 2019
MSC IN PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ARTS, NEUROAESTHETICS AND CREATIVITY (DISTINCTION)
Courses: Advance Quantitative Method in Statistics, Aesthetic Science, Creativity, Creative Computing, Multivariate Statistics, Neuroscience, Research Design & Analysis, Research Skills
Thesis: Dissertation on behavioural genetics studies of aesthetics: Putting genetics into aesthetics. Etiological Sources of Variation in Aesthetic Chills. Under the supervision of Rebecca Chamberlain and Dorret I Boomsma
Internship: NTR, Dept.of Biological Psychology, VU Amsterdam
Extra:
~ One day workshop
on data visualization: Visual Storytelling with Valentina D’Efilippo
~ Conference VSAC 2019 (Leuven)
~ Master Class on Musicality and Genomics, organized by the the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, Amsterdam)
~ One day workshop in Philosophy of Art for Cognitive Scientist, by Joreg Fingerhut (Goldsmiths, London)
~ Summer School in Neuroaesthetics, Vienna Doctoral School of Cognition, Behaviour and Neuroscience (UCL/City/Goldsmiths/Senate House, London)
~ Editor and creator
of the student website neuroaestheticsandcreativity.net
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
September 2016-February 2017
MINOR IN BRAIN AND MIND
Courses: Brain in trouble, Cognitive Neuroscience, Mind and Machine, Nature vs Nurture, The Developing Brain
University of Bologna
September 2014-July 2017
BA IN DRAMA, ARTS AND MUSIC STUDIES
Courses: Psychology of Art, Psychology of Music, Philosophy and Aesthetic of Music, Semiotics, Phenomenology of Styles, Film analysis, Theory and Technique of New Media, Film History, History of Photography, History of Theater, Contemporary History, Italian Literature, Calculus I, Calculus II, Chemistry, Physics’s Laboratory, introduction to HTML
Thesis: Dissertation in psychological studies of the arts: Why We Like What We Like. Genetic Influences on Individual Differences in the Intensity of Visual Aesthetic Experiences. Under the supervision of Stefano Ferrari, Tinca JC Polderman and with the collaboration of Luca Ticini
Internship: Center for Neurogenomic and Cognitive Research, CTG lab, VU Amsterdam
Extra:
~ Conference Worlding the Brain 2017, (UVA, Amsterdam)
~ Conference VSAC 2017, (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)
~ Conference Media Mutation 8 (UNIBO, Bologna)
SKILLS a Chord Diagram that should kind of represent my skills. Arches represent the relative weight of one skill onto the other. All data used for this graph has been made up by me and further investigation is needed to prove their validity. Graph made using the R package Circlize. Color palette from the RothkoViz project, No.12, 1954. ’cause I cried once in front of it.
BGA 2020, worldwide
June 2020
SPEAKER
Short talk: On the etiology of the intensity of visual aesthetic appraisal and preferences
VSAC 2019, Leuven, Belgium
August 2019
PRESENTER, SPEAKER
Poster Presentation: Putting Genetics in Aesthetics: Etiological Sources of Variation in Aesthetic Chills. Winner of the best poster award.
Talk: Degrees of Freedom: Genetic, Environment, and Generative Art
Art and Science Relationship Conference, Oxford, UK
May 2019
SPEAKER
Talk: Neuroscience of aesthetics and Art of Science: Degrees of Freedom. Interrogating the Art-Science Relationship Conference. Visual art and neuroscience section
VSAC 2018, Trieste, Italy
August 2018
PRESENTER
Poster: Genetic Influences on Visual Aesthetic Preferences: Towards a New Etiological Perspective in Visual Empirical Aesthetics
MA Workshop in brand and fashion design, Roma, Italy
September 2017
SPEAKER
Talk: Cognitive science and aesthetics, insights between boundaries;
VSAC 2019, Leuven, Belgium
August 2019
BEST POSTER AWARD
ERASMUS Plus
2016 - 2017
SCHOLARSHIP
Mind & Machine, Amsterdam, Netherlands
February 2017
BEST POSTER AWARD
2020
~ Bignardi, G., Ishizu, T. and Zeki, S. (2020). The differential power of extraneous influences to modify aesthetic judgments of biological and artifactual stimuli. Psych J. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.415
~ (Preprint) Bignardi, G., Ticini, L. F., Smit, D., & Polderman, T. J. (2020). Domain-Specific and Domain-General Genetic and Environmental Effects on the Intensity of Visual Aesthetic Appraisal. 10.31234/osf.io/79nbq
2019
~ (Thesis) Bignardi, G., Chamberlain, R., Kevenaar, T., S., Tamimy, Z., & Boomsma, D.(2019). Putting Genetics in Aesthetics: Etiological Sources of Variation in Aesthetic Chills. Research Gate. Link HERE
~ Reviewer for the Empirical Studies of the Arts, SAGE Journals
Generative Art
January 2019 - ongoing
EXHIBITION
Exhibition: During my spare time I fool around, by doing some generative art. This is a video of on installation I did back in the day:
Degrees of Freedom from giacomo bignardi on Vimeo.