In her lab, where she works with flies, Rudy Behnia focuses on how the human brain sees the world and distinguishes colors and emotions, revealing complex sensory information. One of the metrics she uses is the flicker fusion rate, which is the frequency in which we perceive flicker. If we're looking at a screen, we don't see the flicker, but a fly has a higher flicker fusion rate than ours and sees the screen flickering in frames.

In my paintings, I think of perception in terms of hue, color or tone, yet I hadn't thought of it in terms of speed. After spending time with Rudy,I started a video piece that plays with the perception of image intensity and velocity, incorporating this fracturing, a speeding up or slowing down of shutters. When discussing the evolution of fly vision, Rudy explained how an insects eye perceives color during the day and black and white at night, and how the transition between these two states falls at dusk and dawn.

Ive also been focused on dusk and dawn for a largepublic project Im doing at LaGuardia Airport. The work tracks time through images of the sky, and is framed at either edge by images of dusk and dawn. Where night is, the work disappears.

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Artist Sarah Sze on Working With Neuroscientists - Columbia University