Join philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë for a conversation about Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, which examines the notion of art, and our most basic instinct to create and consume it. Joining Alva in conversation will be New Yorker staff writer and critic, Lawrence Wescheler, who writes of Strange Tools: “every page seems to open onto fresh vantages, crisp aperçus evocative of how art endlessly affords us all new ways not just of seeing, but of being.”

Alva Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Center for New Media. A graduate of Columbia College, he holds a BPhil from the University of Oxford and a PhD from Harvard University. The focus of his work in recent years has been on the nature of mind and human experience, with particular emphasis on perception and consciousness. In addition, he is a weekly contributor to National Public Radio's science blog 13.7: Cosmos and Culture.

Lawrence Weschler is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker and is a contributing editor to McSweeney's and the Threepenny Review. He is the author of numerous books, including Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. Fred Tomaselli based in Brooklyn, New York. His work resides in many international collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Sintra Museum of Modern Art, Portugal.

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