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International Virtual Mirror Studies Conference (IVMSC) is organized by Mirror studies project with support of Capital Normal University in Beijing, China. The conference theme is Mirrors: an interdisciplinary approach. This is a conference especially for students (BA, MA, Ph.D) and early stage researchers.
The main topic of this conference is mirrors and interdisciplinary approach. Mirrors as objects have been important in the plenty of academic fields: arts (sculpture, pictures, photography), literature (Perseus and Medusa, fairy tales Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, children’s book Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carrol), humanities (Archimedes and his mirror during siege of Syracuse, written sources about mirrors, folk tales about mirrors), science (physical tests of lightness and waves, chemical reports of texture and materials, metallurgical or glass analysis), social sciences (mirrors as social expression or tool used in rituals, religion festivals and funerals), political sciences (mirrors as gifts, political plans of sharing and spreading mirrors), psychology (mirroring, mirrors and soul, self-reflection), psychoanalysis (Lacan and mirror phase, Jung and symbolic mirrors, Freud and mirrors), philosophy (Foucault and heterotopia, Derrida and deconstruction, Wang Minan and mirrors), popular culture (movies, comics, journalism) and archaeology (mirrors within archaeological context).
The conference will be held through Tencent Meeting, in every session there will be two technical assistants to help with the online issues. Because of the prevalence of Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) and the relevant policy of Chinese government, the committee of IVMSC regret that the conference cannot be organized in one united offline site for participants who are from Beijing. In the following pages, there is an introduction for presenters to use the online software, please refer to “software introduction”.
We wish that the conference will be held successfully.
The International Virtual Mirror Studies Conference (IVMSC)
Committee
Hi
About 10 years ago (Toward A Science of Consiousness Arizona) I proposed that Mirrors – particularly Hand Held Mirrors gave rise to human consciousness by rewiring the brain. In particular through changing connectivity in the somatosensory cortex. (Which I think has since been postulated to mediate consciousness ) In particular connecting hand to eye in a very specific way – placing the self image as central – creating the ‘self’.
Prior to this I suggested ‘Self’ was suppressed due to the requirement of ‘team work’ for species survival. This reflected in the lack of human images in early parietal cave art and the lack of faces on ‘Venus Figurines’
So that reflections in water were not sufficiently useful or meaningful to act as sources of ‘self’ and so ‘self image’ -(also the image disappeared when touched) so were ignored becoming a part of ‘a priori’ existence.
I suggested this spread of mirror use in the age of metals to give rise to the inception of consciousness as described by Julian Jaynes – suggesting that his observations tracked the increasing use of mirrors through the age of metals.
In respect of the latter. One might consider that the first use of a hand held mirror corresponded to ‘mirror neurons’ – seeing themselves, and copying their own behavior for the first time. The feedback loop so created is seen in the extreme behavior and response of monkeys given hand held mirrors for the first time. One might consider this feedback to create a new phenotype in the brain which had ‘self’ at the center. (probably requiring the continued use of the mirror – in a quasi-addictive manner).