Study Program: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
VISI also hosts a research component, where cognitive scientists will study Song as a phenomenon of human communication — the merging of two forms of language, speech and music — and its vast spectrum of expressive purposes from lullabies to laments to laudations.
A concurrent symposium at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (June 21-23) will convene some of North America’s top experts in the fields of linguistics, music neuroscience, and cultural anthropology as well as poets, philosophers and musicians for an interdisciplinary convergence of ideas.
In conjunction with the symposium there will also be a special lecture, “Homo Musicus: Where Song Begins” on the morning of June 23, presented by Ellen Dissanayake, internationally renowned author of “Homo Aestheticus”. Professor Dissanayake has lived travelled around the world studying the role of artistic expression in diverse cultures.