What is consciousness, Werner Herzog asks in new film that poses tough questions to scientists about where our thoughts and feelings come from
- In Theatre of Thought, documentary maker enlists neurobiologists to help him question scientists about how thoughts and feelings arise in the brain
- He covers topics including bioethics, privacy, controlling robots by means of brain sensors, and influencing mice actions by firing light beams at their brains
The issue of consciousness is one that scientists have vowed to crack in the 21st century – defining what it means to be conscious, and then figuring out how the phenomenon arises from our physical brains.
Theories abound, with some neuroscientists claiming that consciousness is an illusion, or a by-product of our brain’s physical processes.
In the intriguing Theatre of Thought, eccentric German filmmaker and documentarian Werner Herzog focuses on how consciousness comes about.
In the future, will audiences for his movies be able to read his thoughts, he wonders - saving him the time and expense of making a film.
“How can we read thoughts? Can you implant a chip in your brain and in my brain, and see my new film without a camera? Sometimes mice even prefer invented cartoon worlds, so who is the ghostwriter of our mind, of our reality?” Herzog asks in his notes to the film, screened at the DOC NYC festival in New York this month.
Herzog was a towering presence on the international film scene in the 1970s and 1980s when he was the enfant terrible of the art-house circuit.
