Hippocampus · the Show
A 42-minute immersive performance about the hippocampus, the part of the brain most associated with emotion and memory, melding visual art, neuroscience and an original score. It premiered at Adelaide Fringe 2022.
HIPPOCAMPUS is a sensory, immersive experience exploring the beauty and wonder of the human brain. Melding visual art, neuroscience and technology with an original score, it was designed to "speak" and "spark" the mind.
Gill was Creative Director, and the show was produced by her company, Music Art Discussion. It premiered at Adelaide Fringe 2022 with eight performances at The LAB Adelaide, part of The Light Cultural Foundation, between 18 February and 3 March.
The original music was composed by Julian Ferraretto and written and sung by Gill, Julian, Dr Fiona Kerr and Anthony Leppa. Dr Kerr, founder of The Neurotech Institute, brought the science. The large-scale video was captured by visual artist Mike Worsman and edited by Max Brading of The LAB.
The music was released as HIPPOCAMPUS the Album, with the title track out on 7 February 2022. The show's site carries essays on the science behind it and invites schools, groups and organisations to arrange their own exclusive session.
The album1
Ideas9
The Hippocampus
Each of us is a wonderfully complex and beautiful work in progress, and deep in the brain the hippocampus is where the marvellous alchemy of neurogenesis, the building of new brain, occurs. It is both measurable neuroscience and something deeply enchanting. We allow this alchemy when we are curious, involved, creative and collaborative, and when we summon the courage to engage and learn. So fire up your hippocampus: ask questions, seek, explore, collaborate, become. You are a work in progress.
Think
Why make a performance about a piece of the brain? After surviving the July 2005 London attack and losing both legs, Gill became obsessed by our utter brilliance, in both design and function. Learning to walk on prosthetics, her physiotherapist told her that 90% of the ability to balance and walk is in the mind, only 10% the physical state of readiness. The realisation: if she could THINK it, she could DO it. The brain is the control centre.
Memory
The hippocampus is the transfer centre for early storage of information, with long-term storage happening during sleep, when information is encoded and consolidated into memories. It connects emotion to memory, emotions become hooks, which is why strong emotional memories stay vivid, more richly encoded and faster to retrieve. Memory is plastic: each recall subtly alters it, so we can shape recollections to hold less pain or even greater joy. We can manage the way our memories are made.
Learning
Our neurons act as novelty detectors and delight in being stimulated by the new, and the hippocampus is one of the only areas where neurogenesis occurs, we can build new brain all of our lives. When we pay attention we change the way our neurons synchronise, taking in more information to build networks of related data and concepts. Learning transcends memorising facts: it is about using them to test our values, attitudes, self-talk and emotional reactions. Learning is a major way that humans adapt.
Emotion
Part of the limbic system, the hippocampus is involved in our pain and pleasure, memory, mood, appetite and motivations, forming and re-forming our emotional reactions and combining with memory to make emotionally-regulated, long-term memories. These frame our world, it is not what we look at, but what we see, that informs how we feel and act. The hippocampus helps us orient, regulate and navigate our emotions, maintaining balance, agency and choice. We can change the way we see and feel.
Knowledge
Knowledge grows through a wonderful process fusing insight and information with learning and memory, the hippocampus collaborating with other brain areas, interconnected webs wiring and firing together. Connecting with others and ourselves allows self-reflection, key to wisdom, letting the hippocampus test our biases and helping us change and grow as part of our moral brain. The fostering of wisdom turns understanding into action for the common good. When knowledge becomes wisdom, we care. We act.
Rest
A mindfulness of hands, offered by Annie Harvey as a simple way to rest the mind. The hands contain over a billion nerve endings and make an excellent anchor for present-moment awareness. The practice moves through resting the hands and noticing sensation, tingling, air, temperature, and reflecting on how the hands have served across a lifetime: rest not as passivity, but as deliberate attention. Drawn from The Little Book of STILL.
Spatial
Alongside navigating emotions, the hippocampus helps us orient and navigate our physical space, coding, storing, recalling and decoding our environment and attaching memory to it to construct a cognitive map of our world and our place in it. The more we exercise spatial memory and navigation, the better it becomes, and the grey matter where the brain stores it grows larger. When we look up, pay attention and expand our awareness, we construct the world and our place in this world.
Neurogenesis
Neurogenesis is the building of new brain, and it occurs in the hippocampus throughout our entire lives. Five evidence-based ways to promote it: MOVE, exercise releases dopamine, endorphins and BDNF, best with music; SLEEP, the brain clears toxins and consolidates memories, the reason we wake with ideas and solutions; NOVELTY, novelty detectors release dopamine when we learn the genuinely new; DIET, your gut is your second brain, shaping mood and inflammation; CONNECTION, direct connection releases oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and endorphins, and synchronises our brains.
The people7
Gill HicksCreative Director
Dr Fiona KerrNeuroscience · Narrator
Julian FerrarettoComposer · Jazz Violin
Mike WorsmanVisual Artist
Max BradingDigital Artist
Anthony LeppaMusician
Annie HarveyWellbeing · RestRecognition1
For schools and groups1
For Schools & Groups
Bring your school, group or organisation along for a shared and yet personal journey, exploring the potential and possibility of each and every human mind.
Merch3
Hippocampus TeeWe are a work in progress. Hippocampus merch, proceeds support the ongoing creation of original art.
Hippocampus ToteCarry the work. A Hippocampus tote bag, with proceeds supporting the ongoing creation of original art.
Work in Progress BadgeA small reminder that we are all a work in progress. Proceeds support original art.