Wednesday 8 February 2012
Royal Northern College of Music, 7pm

Tuesday is Pink and Seven Tastes of Sherbet:
The Intriguing World of Synaesthesia

Dr Jamie Ward
Reader in Psychology, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science:
University of Sussex

Although our eyes, ears, tongue and other sensory organs are separate from each other, the information ceases to be fully segregated when it enters the brain. People with synaesthesia experience an extraordinary form of sensory mixing where letters and numbers may be perceived as coloured, music may trigger vision and words may elicit tastes. Dr Ward will consider how this way of experiencing the world might affect other functions such as memory, empathy and creativity.

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Wednesday 15 February 2012
(provisional) the new MMU Business School, All Saints Campus, Oxford Road, Manchester   7.00 pm
(if this venue is unavailable, an alternative will be advised to members with appropriate prior notice)

Members Only

PERCIVAL LECTURE
How Environmental Sustainability is Leading the Transformation of the Manchester Metropolitan University
Professor John Brooks
Vice Chancellor, Manchester Metropolitan University

Higher Education is in a state of transformation.  MMU is responding to the ever increasing interest in environmental sustainability from its student body through a new build and refurbishment programme which is at the leading edge of environmental technology.  The lecture will describe how world leading architects and contractors have worked with the university to achieve reductions in energy, carbon, water and waste.

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Monday 20 February 2012
MANDEC, 7pm

Matisse/Picasso
Michael Howard
Programme Leader, History of Art and Design
Manchester Metropolitan University

A comparison of the work of Matisse and Picasso reveals them as two heavy-weight contenders, battling it out to win the title of the most significant artist of the twentieth century. In the process they created some of the most beautiful, powerful and most challenging art ever produced and left to us a compelling record of the vagaries of human creativity operating at its highest level.

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Tuesday 28 February 2012
Royal Northern College of Music, 7pm

Nothing Matters: A Philosophy of Nothing
Ronald Green

Why should nothing matter? If anything matters, why should nothing matter? And yet it does, for there isn’t anything, it seems, that nothing does not touch, or anything that does not touch nothing. History, philosophy, religion, science, art, literature, music – all look towards nothing at some point, stimulating questions that would otherwise not be asked.

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