Before and Beyond the Bachelor Machine

Philosophy

This paper will examine the importance of Marcel Duchampâs La Machine CÃ©libataire (The Bachelor) on Art and Technology in the 20th and 21st centuries

Arts 2018, 7, x; doi: FOR PEER REVIEW www.mdpi.com/journal/arts Essay Before and Beyond the Bachelor Machine Joseph Nechvatal Independent Artist, 93, Blvd Raspail, 75006 Paris, France; firstname.lastname@example.com Received: 28 September 2018; Accepted: 15 October 2018; Published: 17 October, 2018 Abstract: This paper will examine the importance of Marcel Duchamp's La Machine Célibataire (The Bachelor Machine) on Art and Technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Keywords: art theory; bachelor machine; sexual politics; identity; gender studies; cultural studies; art; machine aesthetics; 20th century art history; generative art; post-conceptual art; Marcel Duchamp 1. Bachelor Machines Dada's liberation of mechanamorphic sexual imagery has long been tarnished by the fact that male artists have historically been licensed to explore the rapid repetitions in lust and love, while women, for the most part, have inspired and represented them. Central to this naïvely gendered démodé dialogue is Marcel Duchamp's flamboyant and sexually subversive suggestion of onanistic machine célibataires (bachelor machines, Figure 1), with which he converted the principle of autoeroticism into one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art. Figure 1. The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) by Marcel Duchamp, 1915–1923; 2nd version 1991–1992. Oil on lead sheet, lead wire, dust and varnish on broken glass plates, glass plates, aluminum foil, wood, steel, 277.5 cm × 175.9 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. © succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris 2014 and used by permission. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 15 In this paper, I view early Duchamp as essentially a provocative dandy: a self-conscious, self-constructed young man who dedicated himself to the resistance of convention by trafficking in elegant indifference and cool ascetic aloofness. Through his attitude of depersonalization, he freed himself of hackneyed artistic good 'taste', and in so doing deconstructed the concept of romantic sexual roles, replacing them with something much more frenetic, technological, phantasmagorical, and impersonal. I will additionally investigate the young bachelor Duchamp's mechanical sex machine, as its resistance to the needs of procreative insemination have moved both Art and Technology well beyond his male gaze towards complex and ambiguous hermaphrodite-like conceptions of biand pansexual cyborg bodies and a-sexual artificial life. Indeed, imaginary pansexual bachelor machines will be theorized here as a philosophical space of transversal viral contamination obsessed with examining conceptual linkages, connectivity, and the intersection of genders. My contention is that cultural identity-politics practitioners and other gender theorists today would do well to put themselves in the fancy pants of algorithmic bisexual artificial lifeforms that ebb and flow between fluid understandings of masculine and feminine and the a-sexual viral (Parikka 2007). Such a sexually ambivalent art theory, based in sex farce, could be valuable to "all those interested in the question of dual-sexuality, whether in the domains of psychoanalysis, gay, or gender studies, the history of medicine or zoology, the history of ideas, or even the history of art" (Brisson 2002, p. xiii). 2. Marcel Duchamp: The Large Glass Marcel Duchamp first made reference to the machine célibataire apparatus in 1913, when he wrote notes in preparation for La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), also known as Le Grand Verre (The Large Glass) (1915–1923), now permanently displayed in the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Though well-known, The Large Glass, made of two large panes of glass, seems inexhaustible in terms of its larger meaning and thus infinitely mysterious and useful (Henderson 2005). Conceiving it as an eroticized corpulent machine, Duchamp in his notes used such terms to describe its parts: 'sex cylinder', 'desire gear', 'reservoir of love gasoline', and 'general area of desire magneto'. Within the notes, Duchamp also identifies the specific bachelor machine's component parts as a water paddle, scissors, a chocolate grinder, a sledge, and nine malic molds. Technically, he employed a toy cannon to shoot paint-dipped matches at the glass ground of this work to determine the positions of these nine malic molds that were intended to represent nine job types, into which males are molded as men (all middle class or lower): a priest, a delivery man, a gendarme (military police), a cuirassier (cavalry soldier), a police officer, an undertaker, a go-fer sycophant, a busboy, and a railroad stationmaster. Any prurience aroused by the title is not gratified by looking at either the bride or the bachelors, who are linked together, like a daisy chain of mechanical implements or schematic diagrams. They sit well below the looming bride (who scarcely looks naked and hardly looks female), hovering wasp-like in the upper panel, sealed off by a segmenting metal strip. Duchamp imagined in the lower Bachelor Apparatus section these nine bachelor bootlickers cock-blocked: trapped in a chain of repetitive emotional states that flutter between hope, desire, and fear. I find this emotional chain (or cycle) prescient, as this fearful-hopeful-yearning state has now become emblematic of Art writ large, due to the rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) internet condition of art as spectacle, endlessly flowing in attention-seeking circularity (Debord 1976). Like the net, Duchamp's Large Glass as a mental masturbation machine contains the two great mythic spaces so often explored by western imagination: space that is rigid and forbidden-that requires a circular quest and return (for example, the trail of the Argonauts)-and the space of polymorphic confused borders, of strange affiliations, of magical spells, and of symbolic replacements (the labyrinth space of the Minotaur). While waiting for the bride's gratifying attention, the sexually frustrated bachelors below are enacting an enigmatic fantasy drama of competing passion (or aggression), suggested by the phrase "stripped bare" in the full title of the piece. All the bachelors hope and strive to bed the bride, but fear of vague consequences holds them back in a state of frustration, which introduces the important Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 15 psychosexual function of the chocolate grinder, that nearly dominates the Bachelor Apparatus zone. This important form was transferred to The Large Glass from Duchamp's delicious painting Chocolate Grinder (No. 1) (1913). The grinding machine in the Bachelor Apparatus area signifies how the bachelors, frustrated with their inability to mate with the bride machine, may achieve some sweet satisfaction by repeatedly sexually stimulating their own genital apparatus, thus demonstrating a sort of faux dual-sexuality that can be described as the "simultaneous or successive possession of both sexes by a single individual" (Brisson 2002, p. 1). This feverish theme of onanistic dual-sexual circularity in The Large Glass presents us with a model of gender grandeur: a theoretical imaginative bisexual machine that functions independently of "the other", thereby pulling faux dual-sexual passion into a developmental logic of its own, leading to a transcendental infinite. It is here, in the faux dual-sexual self-pleasuring chocolate grinder, where I detect some spiritual implications of the nine male types, who Duchamp has virtualized and sprayed into their discrete zone of remote presence. Their endless faux dual-sexual self-pleasuring (that smoothly shrivels into asexuality or explodes into pansexuality) implies two polymorphic viewpoints: that of asexual and pansexual bachelor machines. Crucial to the imaginative fantasy powers of a pansexual bachelor machine is the implementation of a theory of the variegated virtual (Shanken 1997). This theory assumes the existence of preposterous and imaginatively configured subjects able to ford human anthropocentric sexual frontiers. Duchamp's use of post-humanist chance in the making of his bachelor machine implies that the artist relinquishes, to a greater or lesser degree, the power to close down the final interpretation of a work, i.e., keeping it open to interpretation (Eco 1989), which facilitates all sort of imaginative and fluid mental processes in the viewer. Thus, for me, a spiritual implication of The Large Glass is the denial of sexual determinism in favor of the potency of apparent pansexual fluidity in circularity ad infinitum. This means an implicit refutation of the assumption that the 'neutral' body is always white and straight and masculine. Thus, the circular implication of faux dual-sexuality has directed my focus in theorizing and coding post-bachelor hermaphrodite, artificial life, and viral art projects as early as 1992 (Gruson 1993), as well as computer-robotic painting pansexual bachelor machine images (Lewis 2003), with Duchamp's male bachelor machine as starting point. 3. Marcel Duchamp: The Bride The cold impersonality of technology and the heat of dual (or dueling) sex is a curious alliance. Prior to The Large Glass, Duchamp produced a few cherished images depicting mechanized sexuality. Among them the drawing Vierge, No. 1 (Virgin No. 1) (1912), and the paintings Le Passage de la Vierge à la Mariée (The Passage from the Virgin to the Bride) (1912) and La Mariée (The Bride) (1912, Figure 2). Intriguingly, he painted both of these the year he proclaimed the end of painting, the same year he visited an aeronautical exhibition with Fernand Léger as they were admiring an elegant airplane propeller. Particularly in the wonderful Bride, who appears as the bride in The Large Glass, the elaborateness of her repeatedly pumping machine gear suggests an excess of sexual bliss attainable through circular, auto-sexual, and faux bisexual autonomy. Such body politics contains an admixture of romantic ideals and auto-mechanical sensations, where the psyche may become lost in a throbbing spiral of labyrinthine extensions, duplications, and repetitions. Although arrived at by chance (twenty-five notes randomly picked from a hat), Duchamp's first musical endeavor, the 1913 Musical Erratum: La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (for piano) (Duchamp 2008) makes the same circular point by stubbornly repeating only two up-and-down notes for the first 43 s. Listening to these masturbatory repetitions in Musical Erratum while contemplating the pumping mechanics of The Bride introduces a trance element into Duchamp's aesthetic and casts his bachelor machine into the dizzying activities of the impersonal but ingenious dandy (Huysmans 1973). However, I also think of this pumping trance-state as Duchamp's definitive desire when he is in an uninhibited bachelor machine mode: a detached, depersonalized, and mystical state of being (Stace 1960). Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 4 of 15 Figure 2. La Mariée (The Bride) by Marcel Duchamp, 1912. Oil on canvas, 89.5 cm × 55.6 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Succession Marcel Duchamp and used by permission. It is curiously true that this depersonalized dizzying circularity is comparable to how algorithms now run automatically behind the technological scene (Johnston 2008). Thrusting away in cellular automaton artificial life is something so astoundingly pregnant with auto-bachelor machine circularity that it excites and stimulates creativity, as I discovered with my cellular automaton-based Computer Virus Project 2.0 (2002) (Nechvatal 2011, p. 252), a resultant series of pansexual paintings created in the early-2000s (Lewis 2003). In art, the patriarchal construction of woman as other and the female body as object, though contested (Betterton 1996), is deeply rooted in the supposed duality (opposites) of the (two) sexes. Most feminist theory questions this patriarchal construction of sex and gender, suggesting that sex is expressed through a continuum, rather than as an opposing couplet based on heterosexist male/female polarities (Butler 2004). Accordingly, within dual-sexual hermaphroditic auto-bachelor machines, containments designed for womanhood/manhood are subverted by the mutable image of pansexuality. Gender here is theorized as an act of becoming. Consequently, art fails to sustain sex oppression in culture by ceasing to draw the boundaries of the Other. Going a step further, hermaphroditic-sexual bachelor machines are a provocation not only to male/female constructions of heterosexuality, but also to homosexual constructions of identity. I discovered this while working on my hermaphroditic painting series for the New York City exhibitions ec-satyricOn (2000), vOluptuary: an algorithic hermaphornology (2002), and Real Time (2004). For all three shows I melded images of the sex organs of both sexes into a chimera field of virtuality that went under viral attacks scripted in C++ as artificial life. The results yielded many quixotic transformations, where all sort of pan-sex orders arose (Nechvatal 2011, p. 246). But as digital bachelor machines are immaterial pure information spaces, it is neither surprising nor coincidental that the immense perspective of algorithmic auto-bisexual bachelor machines requires a questioning of the legitimacy of common sexual organ arrangements and familiar forgone conclusions concerning theoretical issues around sexual politics, gender studies, and the farther-reaching heterogeneous philosophical critique of the cultural mechanisms of representation (Foucault 1970) that have preceded it. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 5 of 15 Of course, Duchamp set the stage by countering bourgeois ideals of masculinity. Duchamp considered himself to be counter-type, un artiste désoeuvré (an idle artist), after he temporarily abandoned the production of traditional art objects. While the 19th century dandy was a masculine figure, his masculinity had a lot in common with artificial and constructed femininity. Indeed, in late-19th century French culture, the dandy was often considered decadent and effeminate in a vague way that verged on the homosexual. Regardless, the travestying heterosexual Duchamp staged himself in bisexual dandy drag as Rrose Sélavy for a series of femme fatale photos done in 1921 by Man Ray. When read out loud pronouncing both "r"s, Rrose Sélavy can sound like Eros, c'est la vie (Eros is life). In an artwork called Belle Haleine. Eau de voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water) (1921), Duchamp first incorporated his Sélavy drag portrait on the label of a perfume bottle, effecting a bisexual metamorphosis into a cross-dressed alter ego seemingly lost in the scent of gender-masked maneuvers. But what are some earlier dandy-era precedents of self-transcending pansexual bachelor machines avant la lettre? 4. Raymond Roussel and Auguste Rodin Along with Guillaume Appollinaire, Francis Picabia, and Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia, Duchamp attended a 1912 performance of Impressions d'Afrique (Impressions of Africa), a wacky play by Raymond Roussel based on his 1910 book of the same name (Roussel 2001), which was written according to formal constraints based on homonymic puns. This play was a revelatory intellectual experience for Duchamp, to the extent that he would credit it with helping inspire The Large Glass (Henderson 2005). Clearly, its punning delirium pushed Duchamp's bachelor machine idea towards celebrating exhaustive circularity and its effects of intransigent obliqueness and mechanical dizziness. For this reason, Duchamp's faux dual-sexual self-pleasuring grinding machine is always a potentially transgressive proposition, as regards to bourgeois ideals concerning the difference between the sexes. Salient to this circular connection is Michel Foucault's analysis of Roussel's invention of dreamy language machines, which produced texts through repetitions and combination-permutations. Foucault explains how a machine-like logic provides Roussel's writing with a seemingly endless variety of textual combinations, flowing in grinding circular form. Roussel's technique of endless grinding lent itself to the creation of unforeseen, automatic, and spontaneous invention, which gives the reader a feeling of being pulled into an onanistic eternity. By grinding and grinding, and through his use of labyrinthine extensions, doublings, and duplications, Roussel transmits to the reader the sense of an altered, circular, and exalted state of mind (Foucault 1986). Foucault's revealing analysis of Roussel's final deliriousness book, Comment j'ai écrit certains de mes livres (How I Wrote Certain of My Books) (Roussel 2005), contains and repeats all the mental-machines Roussel had formerly put into motion, and by doing so, evidencing the master-grinding-machine that produced his text-machines. Here I grasped the stylistic mood of grinding gamesmanship associated with Duchamp's bachelor machine-an extravagant, intricately hermetic, elaborate, and mechanical-morphism that is conceptually consistent with Duchamp's exuberant and preposterous faux dual-sexual desires. Like Duchamp's dazzling bachelor machine, Roussel's themes and procedures involved isolated and frustrated stereotypes that were reflected in his writing method, with its inextricable play of double images, repetitions, and impediments, all of which created a feeling of an altered, exalted, and orgasmic state of mind. But I discovered another self-stimulating onanistic bachelor machine precedent in Auguste Rodin's well known sculpture Le Monument à Balzac (The Monument to Balzac) (1898, Figure 3). Duchamp's bachelor machine, like all bodies, is inscribed with the values and beliefs of the culture from which it emerged. As evidenced in Rodin's Balzac, second nude study F (1886, Figure 4), the sculptor secretly formed an autoerotic bachelor machine model of artistic self-stimulation. The finished work that stands on boulevard Raspail (also at the Rodin Museum, at MoMA, and elsewhere) replicates the pose of the Balzac, second nude study F to a tee, with the cloak covering the busy bulge. The backward lean in this study is the definitive posture of the Balzac monument. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 6 of 15 Rodin's objective for this bachelor machine was to depict a ballsy Balzac at the moment of conceiving the idea for a work of art through onanistic imaginative gazing. That Rodin chose to furtively depict Balzac as an onanist is far from ludicrous, as Balzac used masturbation (without climax) to intensify his writing sessions, drinking many cups of coffee, again masturbating just short of orgasm, halting, writing, and repeating, like a well-oiled machine. Figure 3. Monument to Balzac by Auguste Rodin, 1898. Bronze, 282 cm × 122.5 cm × 104.2 cm. Photo by the author. Figure 4. Balzac, second nude study F by Auguste Rodin, 1886 (detail). Bronze, 93.1 cm × 43.5 cm × 35 cm. Musée Rodin, Paris. Photo by the author. In his 1954 book, The Bachelor Machines, Michel Carrouges points out that all bachelor machines share the signification of such autoerotic circularity (Carrouges 1954). All bachelor machines are Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 7 of 15 mental sex machines, the imaginary workings of which suffices to produce real movements of mind-body. Although curator Harald Szeemann revisited and expanded Carrouges's argument in a 1975 traveling exhibition, also entitled The Bachelor Machines (Clair and Szeemann 1975), he left out some historical Modern figures that I would like to add here before moving on to theorize the current complex pansexual bachelor machines of the mind. 5. Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, André Masson and Oskar Schlemmer Gender-fluid bachelor machines are already detectable in some of Fernand Léger's earliest artworks. What particularly interests me about Léger is how his imagery enters the oily slipstream of the bisexual cyborg, where distinctions between sex, the body, and robotics blur in the density of speeding political networks (Terranova 2004). We see this in the best painting Léger ever made: his rich, velvety textured, pre-war composition, La Noce (The Wedding) (1912, Figure 5), completed the same year Duchamp painted The Bride. Figure 5. La Noce by Fernand Léger, 1912. Oil on canvas, 206 cm × 257 cm. Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée National d'art Modern, Paris. Donation of M. Alfred Flechtheim in 1937. Used by permission. The Wedding is so jam-packed with crunchy cubist incident that it is difficult to decipher at first glance. It has a nonchalant, silky, falling feel to it. Like a fine, nuanced, and balanced wine, this painting exhibits the bachelor machine intensity without metallic heaviness. It draws the eye to the full rhythmic structure of the kaleidoscopic space where smaller, interlocking elements lure the gaze into deeply opulent repetitions of machine-like (and implicitly sexual) exploits. The painting's male and female couple fuse into gyrating repeats in a complex and cryptic way, lending the work a vivacious and sleek visual texture that is delightfully seductive. The couple and surrounding multitude procreate into a repetitive orgy-machine, pulling the mind into an infinite mechanical pan-logic that is almost transcendental. Their post-flesh machine unanimity is set flowing in jerks and spasms across the surface of the canvas. Léger has imposed on gender here a vibrating restlessness of Rousselian proportions. Again we fall into a labyrinthine of repeats, extensions, and stutter doublings. In The Wedding, Léger paints the idea of gendered flesh undergoing a cascade of annihilation. Yet the composition's flickering staccato repetitions create the impression of a rolling bacchanalia, where human forms also transcend that annihilated fleshiness and extend themselves through motorized re-embodiment into Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 15 a kind of pan-transubstantiation. With The Wedding, Léger seems to suggest that the glory of artificial life is to be found in the technological apparatus of mixed bodies, tumbling into a field of circuits (Weibel 1990). Likewise, in his painting Le Cirque Medrano (The Medrano Circus) (1918), exuberant performing figures are put through Léger's mechanical meat grinder and expelled into the hyperreal dominion of entertainment simulacrum. Léger, though not himself a Dadaist, would, like the Dadaists, make much of the machine; unlike them, however, he would make little of sex farce. He did not mock sex as machinic the way Francis Picabia did during his machinist period, when he too blended a machine aesthetic with representations of the human-machine body, as in Parade amoureuse (Love Parade) (1917). Still, both artists paint the interface between sex and the machine. Undoubtedly, when in his Dada tecnomorphic period, Picabia illuminated such spatialized sexual paradigms by mixing implied human bodies with mechanical schematics. Again, like in Léger's The Wedding and Duchamp's mental-mechanical sex machine, the sexual body is endowed with ecstatic transcendent capabilities through the endless repetitions of oiled machinery. So it is not surprising that Picabia, like Léger, was also a member of the Section d'Or (Golden Section) group that was associated with Marcel Duchamp and his brothers. Like Duchamp and Picabia, Léger also distributed and blurred disparate body parts and mechanical elements in his paintings, in what looks to be a turbulent and haphazard fashion, challenging the 'humanist' conceptions of 'man', similar to Duchamp's man-mechanical approach. This is most evident in Léger's paintings of the mustachioed Le mécanicien (The Mechanic) (1918) and the L'Homme à la pipe (Man with Pipe) (1920), with their tin man-like volumes. In these two proto-robotic tour de forces, Léger clearly sets up Picabia-like tensions between the human narrative and the mechanical spectacle that points in the direction of neuro-computing wetware, bio-robotics, and all of the AI-charged automatization humming away in the space between the mechanic, the digital, and the organic. This humming is why these Modernist bachelor machines sing to us as a mythic oracle. But the other great construct of tipsy bachelor machine automatization, and I think Léger's paramount work, features Kiki de Montparnasse. Léger co-directed her, with American film director Dudley Murphy, in their nourish flicker-film chef-d'oeuvre, Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet) (1924, Figure 6), where Kiki is cast fluctuating between figuration and abstraction. Mechanical Ballet is a Dada masterpiece of early-experimental film, stringing together a reeling mechanic-mental river of sensations both flashy and frustratingly repetitive. Like Duchamp's bachelor machine, The Large Glass, which was declared definitively unfinished the year before the film was made, Mechanical Ballet is a bid at eliminating our sense of linier time. Through the construction of its repeats, the film gives me the fantastic feeling of prolongation into an erotic eternity. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 9 of 15 Figure 6. Le Ballet mécanique by Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924 (two stills showing Kiki de Montparnasse). 19'50" 35 mm black & white film acquired 1997, inventory number AM 1997-F1388. Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art modern, Paris. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Service de la documentation photographique du MNAM/Dist. RMN-GP © Adagp, Paris, 2017 and used by permission. Mechanical Ballet, much of it shot by Man Ray, smartly transmits an altered, exalted, and orgasmic state of mind that is perfectly complimented by George Antheil's noise music soundtrack: his 30 min long Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet) (1924). This pummeling composition recalls the beginning of Duchamp's Musical Erratum for piano, and was originally conceived of as the musical accompaniment to the film, but due to length differences, eventually the filmmakers and composer chose to let their creations evolve separately (although the film credits always included Antheil). Nevertheless, Antheil's Mechanical Ballet premiered as concert music in Paris in 1926 and is majestic in and of itself. But when included in the film, as it now is, everything is permutated with a pulsating and flickering energy of go/stop/go/stop/go/stop/go-depicting a hyperactive current of techno machine forces on the body. The film, with an insistent flicker, is flush with discontinuous, fragmented, and kaleidoscopic sensations that remind me of The Wedding. The screen pulsates with the hot energies of modern life and its dull repetitions. Mechanical Ballet is a stunning spasmodic display of stutter-and-flicker-and-looped concentration, where relationships between the protoplasmic body and mechanical repeats invite meditation on the self-prosthesis of pansexual bachelor machines. In this flickering metamorphic ballet, the human body is at the center of traditional narrative subjectivity and again undone by a visual noise it cannot contain. Made the same year as Mechanical Ballet, and relevant to auto-sexual bachelor machines, is the speeding, automatic, ritualistic, and revelatory mode of iconographic mark-making André Masson devised for Automatic Drawing (1924, Figure 7). In this jittery automatic drawing, a conflict or antagonism is set up between the 'feminine' litheness of curves and the 'male' hard angles. Up against the supple curves of a centered naked woman, aggressive lines cut through her like a knife. Slow looking reveals that the image calls to mind not only Mechanical Ballet, but Marcel Duchamp's Nu descendant un escalier n° 2 (Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2) (1912). Beyond that, there is at work an automatic artistic method, which plays in the area of chaotic control/non-control, aiming towards constructing a capricious alliance that associates discourses of mechanic grinding with organic sexuality, an association that opens up both notions to mental connections that enlarge them. Here the coming cyborg woman of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927, Figure 8) and Donna Haraway (Haraway 1991) are already undone by overwhelming complex disturbances they cannot contain. That immersion into visual noisy disturbance (Nechvatal 2011) is essential to theorizing pansexual bachelor machines. Masson's likewise intense Dessin automatique (Automatic Drawing) (1924–1925, Figure 9) strikes hard as an example of the divinatory practice of finding subconscious desires within vague cues. It is Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 10 of 15 a neurotic network of bachelor machine lines that seem fluid but hectic, and, at times, staccato-like. In what seems to appear gradually is a standing, plugged-in burial casket, surrounded by phantasmagorical figure motifs that may include object parts merged with anatomical fragments typical of bachelor machines. The sum total gives off a feeling of occultist ferment and whimsy that alludes to potential auto-sexual bachelor machines. Figure 7. Automatic Drawing by André Masson (1924). Ink on paper. Photo courtesy Galerie Natalie Seroussi and used by permission. Figure 8. Robot by Walter Schulze-Mittendorff from Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, 1927. Copy created by the Louvre in 1994, painted resin, 190 cm × 74 cm × 59 cm. Cinémathèque française and used by permission. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 11 of 15 Figure 9. Automatic Drawing by André Masson (1924–1925). Ink on colored paper. Photo courtesy Galerie Natalie Seroussi and used by permission. Moreover, Oskar Schlemmer's paintings, drawings, choreography, and costume/set design flamboyantly depict the mechanic post-flesh. The coming asexual bachelor machine is most obvious when Schlemmer inserts his dancers into svelte geometric-based outfits and puts them to work, repeating spectacular sequenced motions machine-like in their repetitions (Figure 10). Again, we have entered the sexually ambivalent android realm. Figure 10. Danse des batons by Oskar Schlemmer, 1928. © 2016 Oskar Schlemmer, Photo Archive C. Raman Schlemmer and used by permission. Schlemmer theorized a serene, classical, and monumental approach to the human form based on the tensions between anthropological narratives and mechanical simulacrums, a tension typical of our period's electronic contours. His personal-impersonal amalgamate may have even predicted the spectacle of moral aridity we have come to expect within certain technological elites today. Schlemmer's flair for an asexual robotic approach in the automated figure embodies the theorized notion of aesthetic synthesis, which is intended to symbolize social synthesis within a benevolent emerging techno-society. As such, he attempted to depict the human form as pansexually spiritual through an abstract geometric consistency of form, in service of a social totality. This idea led Schlemmer to create a proto-robotic pansexual art by virtue of a relocation of Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 12 of 15 body/machine/consciousness, typical of the telematic embrace (Ascott 2003). Following this theoretical thread, as can be seen in his Tanz Figurinen sketchbook, Schlemmer points the mind towards churning pansexual bachelor machines: that is, cyborg sequencing merged with dematerialized flesh. This is most obvious in Schlemmer's Les signes de l'Homme (Dématérialisation) (Signs of Man (Dematerialization)) (1924/1986, Figure 11), where he raises the hyperreal issue of virtual dematerialization as interface between the human body and an abstracting, universalizing machinery. This is also obvious in his extremely delicately drawn lithograph Figurenplan (Figure Plan) (1919), which offers up an index of his costumes within a grid scenario. As with his choreography of repetitive simple motions, it is a telltale hint at what American Minimalism will successfully create in the 1970s with Einstein on the Beach, a four act opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson. The opera features task-based, quasi-robotic choreography by Lucinda Childs, where dancers' bodies seem already spliced into a cybernetic-technomorphic circuit. This spliced sense is enhanced through the use of stiff repetition and a dismemberment of traditional narrative subjectivity. Here, the notion of the human body receives a strange, almost ecstatic, capability through trance-like, pansexual bachelor machine repetitions. In the brilliant costume Le Ballet triadique, Figure de fil de fer, Série noire (The Triadic Ballet, Wire Figure, Black Series) (1922)-made for his masterwork The Triadic Ballet-Schlemmer seems interested in moving robotic-like trans-crystalline bodies in space towards the formational effects of pansexual bachelor machines. He does so by constructing a space of imaginative accommodation for an intensely connected and immersed circulate (Nechvatal 2009), suggestive of biomorphic machines as an artistic source of self-transcendence. Figure 11. Les signes de l'Homme (Dématérialisation) by Oskar Schlemmer, 1924/1986. © 2016 Oskar Schlemmer, Photo Archive C. Raman Schlemmer and used by permission. 6. Pansexual Bachelor Machines and Oögenesis The conceptual pansexual bachelor machine theory I am sketching out while dropping historical precedents is re-configurative and trans-figurative in intention. Based on the capacity of connected electronic media's immeasurable intermixture, it nudges the current cultural context away from a biologically determinist reading of femininity and masculinity. The point is that within pansexual bachelor machines, all sexual signs are subject to boundless semiosis. This is to say that these signs are translatable into other signs of other sex arrangements, in order for art to articulate new sexual combinations. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 13 of 15 Certainly, the male Modernist bachelor machine propositions mentioned above-sleek, coolly impersonal, and sexually confused-point towards needs to expand on the range of current slippery situations between fleshy embodiment and connective circumvention. By mixing abstracted bodies with mad mechanical repeating geometrics, Modernist bachelor machines suggest to me a pansexual robotic sensibility that at least temporarily refutes the sour feeling that we are living in an epoch of identity click-bait art fueled by predatory virtual capital. At least it challenges the imagination of many current cultural producers whose work has been looking dismally identity-reductive, parochial, and ethnocentric. Privileging pangender conceptual machines suggests that we cannot be satisfied with identity-based vanity culture as art lauded by chatting memes that repeat and repeat themselves in search of bigger and bigger audiences. Clearly theorizing pansexual bachelor machines as a form of virtual art (Popper 2007) cracks open representational boundaries between human beings and other human beings and their digital machines. These leaky boundaries-or schematas-are the reason that ideas of phantasmagorical bachelor machines (or butch machines, if you like) are interesting as art today. The creation of mad mental sex machines has to do with an abiding conviction that cold code may be brought to a-life through the correct application of art and programming. While learning is a property almost exclusively ascribed to self-conscious living systems, AI-based a-life computer programs can now learn from past experiences and improve their operative functions to the point of surpassing human capabilities. Such post-human transcendence raises both aesthetic and ethical concerns for Art and Technology. Much art, whether machine art or media art, has become almost indistinguishable from popular cultural commodities. Freaky a-life pansexual bachelor machines stand out as a reasonable alternative, a comparatively unpopular art approach that values farcical camp humor, transcendental metaphysics, conceptual construction, and clandestine mysticism over common human-centric assumptions for art as entertainment. The concept of a self-churning pangender machine suggests ways to think of life outside of the normal longwinded explanations and closer to Speculative Realism's anti-anthropomorphic transcendental materialism (Meillassoux 2008). That is why, from beginning to end, I have appreciated avant-garde interests in an artistic-philosophical spirituality of bachelor machines (Clair and Szeemann 1975). The idea of mad a-life pansexual bachelor machines points art away from the humanist niceties of a human-centric world and towards non-humanist modes of pangender expression that is both flamboyantly poetic and technologically terse, evoking an aesthetic that is simultaneously alchemical, cosmic, ancient, and uncannily new as artificial life. Undoubtedly, past art theories have been unequivocal in their urge towards closure, embellished with a sort of self-significance, and, often, fallacious universalism, which I wish to avoid. If what I have said about pansexual bachelor machine theory sounds metaphysical (or a parody of metaphysics), it is so only in so far as it is early pre-memory-which takes us to oögenesis. Oögenesis is a moment of bisexual or a-sexual development of the pre-fertilized human egg cell where both female and male potentiality exists simultaneously. It is the place and time prior to the differentiation of the ovum into a cell capable to further develop and divide as fertilized by the male seed. This moment of sexual potentiality exemplifies the transcending pansexual bachelor machine concept brilliantly, and it suggests the truth that in life somethings can be both one thing and its opposite at the same time. Two opposites can exist simultaneously and not cancel each other out. Such peacefully sustained conflict is the agent of transformation that can engage art ideas in a play of contradictory excess (Bataille 1985), encouraging pleasurable critical creativity (Drucker 1996). That is why I myself have made post-conceptual generative art based on an a-life viral model as connected to the subject of the hermaphrodite (Lewis 2003). After establishing a coded viral project in 1992 (Gruson 1993), I became interested, around the year 2000, in oögenesis (Nechvatal 2009, p. 66), a hermaphroditic-like pre-bifurcation moment in human development. Pansexual bachelor machine theory investigates, through the imaginative powers of art, ways in which our sense of one-gendered self has a fluidity that defies spatial containment. As such, it opens gendered thought up to new spaces of malleable and combinatory sites, hence a perpetual Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 14 of 15 multiplication of significance. Meaning in art (and in life) then advances by seeing more clearly into its own underlying assumptions of superfluity, by facing up to the radical implications of those oögenesis assumptions, and by purging itself from conventional ways of thinking by making no recourse to imagined exterior principles or a priori assumptions. What is important in auto (or pan) sexual bachelor machines is their intentional enigma. They need to be obscure to the degree that their gender codes cannot be easily discerned (and politically used). This oögenesis obscurity (and mystery) is increasingly desirable in a world that has become progressively data-mined, identity-mapped, and sex preference quantified, in a straight-forward matter-of-fact way. To be sure, each era has its own redundancies and compliances, so the chaotic excess of oögenesis bachelor machines works well with today's connected cravings for unlimited information and access. Which is as it should be: the definition of artistic activity occurs, first of all, in the fields of seduction and social distribution. With pansexual bachelor machines hovering above common distinctions, conceptual transmission is already the endpoint. Fitting to today's reality of globalization-digitization, the non-linearity of pansexual oögenesis bachelor machines propose a space of visual hyper-thought where the encountering of contradictory realities is bound only by the next thought and driven by the last. Funding: This research received no external funding Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Jane Prophet, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Genesis P.-Orridge, Association pour l'Étude de Marcel Duchamp, Bill Seaman, Bradley Eros, L. Brandon Krall, Elena Filipovic, Juan Antonio Ramírez, and Divine for their additional inspiration during the writing of this essay. He also acknowledges the sagacious encouragement of Hrag Vartanian's Hyperallergic and especially thanks Yves Fall and Françoise Gaillard for graciously lending their bungalow on the Mediterranean Sea where the final writing ensued in August 2018. Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflicts of interest. References (Ascott 2003) Ascott, Roy. 2003. Telematic Embrace, Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Bataille 1985) Bataille, Georges. 1985. Visions of Excess. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Betterton 1996) Betterton, Rosemary. 1996. An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body. London: Routledge. (Brisson 2002) Brisson, Luc. 2002. Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Butler 2004) Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge. (Carrouges 1954) Carrouges, Michel. 1954. Les Machines Célibataires. Paris: Arcanes. (Clair and Szeemann 1975) Clair, Jean, and Harold Szeemann, eds. 1975. Le Macchine Celibi/The Bachelor Machines. New York: Rizzoli. (Debord 1976) Debord, Guy. 1976. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red. (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Drucker 1996) Drucker, Johanna. 1996. Critical Pleasure. In Joseph Nechvatal: Retrospektive. Edited by Frank Berndt and Caroline Fuchs. Köln: Galerie Berndt, pp. 10–13. (Eco 1989) Eco, Umberto. 1989. The Open Work. London: Hutchinson. (Foucault 1970) Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things. London: Tavistock. (Foucault 1986) Foucault, Michel. 1986. Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. New York City: Doubleday. (Gruson 1993) Gruson, Luc, ed. 1993. Joseph Nechvatal: Computer Virus Project. Arc-et-Senans: Fondation Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. (Haraway 1991) Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. (Henderson 2005) Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. 2005. Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the "Large Glass" and Related Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Arts 2018, 7, x FOR PEER REVIEW 15 of 15 (Huysmans 1973) Huysmans, Joris-Karl. 1973. Against Nature. Harmondsworth: Penguin. (Johnston 2008) Johnston, John. 2008. The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI. Cambridge: MIT Press. (Lewis 2003) Lewis, Joe. 2003. Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited. Art in America, 21 February–27 March. pp. 123–24. (Meillassoux 2008) Meillassoux, Quentin. 2008. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. London: Continuum. (Nechvatal 2009) Nechvatal, Joseph. 2009. Fast and Beautiful: The A-Life Undeadening of Painting. In Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993–2006). New York: Edgewise Press. (Nechvatal 2011) Nechvatal, Joseph. 2011. Immersion into Noise. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. (Parikka 2007) Parikka, Jussi. 2007. Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses. New York: Peter Lang. (Popper 2007) Popper, Frank. 2007. From Technological to Virtual Art. Cambridge: MIT Press. (Roussel 2001) Roussel, Raymond. 2001. Impressions of Africa. London: John Calder. (Roussel 2005) Roussel, Raymond. 2005. How I Wrote Certain of My Books. Cambridge: Exact Change. (Shanken 1997) Shanken, Edward. 1997. Virtual Perspectives and the Artistic Vision: A Genealogy of Technology, Perception and Power. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Electronic Art. Rotterdam: ISEA 96 Foundation. (Stace 1960) Stace, Walter. 1960. The Teachings of the Mystics. New York: The New American Library. (Terranova 2004) Terranova, Tiziana. 2004. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto Press. (Weibel 1990) Weibel, Peter. 1990. Virtual Worlds: The Emperor's New Bodies. In Virtuelle Welten. Edited by Gottfried Hattinger, Morgan Russel, Christine Schöpf, Peter Weibel. Linz: Veritas-Verlag Linz, pp. 9–38. © 2018 by the authors. Submitted for possible open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).


Philosophy

Electrical brain activity modulation in terms of changes in its intensity and spatial distribution is a function of age and task demand. However, the dynamics of brain modulation is unknown when it depends on external factors such as training. The aim of this research is to verify the effect of deductive reasoning training on the modulation in the brain activity of healthy younger and older adults ( (mean age of 21âÂ±â3.39) and  (mean age of 68.92âÂ±â5.72)). The analysis reveals the benefits of training, showing that it lowers cerebral activation while increasing the number of correct responses in the trained reasoning task (). The brain source generators were identified by time-averaging low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) current density images. In both groups, a bilateral overactivation associated with the task and not with age was identified. However, while the profile of bilateral activation in younger adults was symmetrical in anterior areas, in the older ones, the profile was located asymmetrically in anterior and posterior areas. Consequently, bilaterality may be a marker of how the brain adapts to maintain cognitive function in demanding tasks in both age groups. However, the differential bilateral locations across age groups indicate that the tendency to brain modulation is determined by age.

Research Article Evidence Linking Brain Activity Modulation to Age and to Deductive Training P. Álvarez Merino , C. Requena , and F. Salto Department of Psychology, Sociology and Philosophy, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, s/n, 24071 León, Spain Correspondence should be addressed to P. Álvarez Merino; email@example.com Guest Editor: Junichi Ushiba Copyright © 2018 P. Álvarez Merino et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Electrical brain activity modulation in terms of changes in its intensity and spatial distribution is a function of age and task demand. However, the dynamics of brain modulation is unknown when it depends on external factors such as training. The aim of this research is to verify the effect of deductive reasoning training on the modulation in the brain activity of healthy younger and older adults (N = 47 (mean age of 21± 3.39) and N = 38 (mean age of 68.92± 5.72)). The analysis reveals the benefits of training, showing that it lowers cerebral activation while increasing the number of correct responses in the trained reasoning task (p < 0 001). The brain source generators were identified by time-averaging low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) current density images. In both groups, a bilateral overactivation associated with the task and not with age was identified. However, while the profile of bilateral activation in younger adults was symmetrical in anterior areas, in the older ones, the profile was located asymmetrically in anterior and posterior areas. Consequently, bilaterality may be a marker of how the brain adapts to maintain cognitive function in demanding tasks in both age groups. However, the differential bilateral locations across age groups indicate that the tendency to brain modulation is determined by age. 1. Introduction Brain activity adapts in time to the cognitive needs of an organism, altering its intensity and its distribution which can be measured through modulations in electrical brain activity [1]. Scientific literature offers two different approaches to the complex phenomenon of the electrical brain signal's modulation. One explicative strategy focuses on overactivation of brain activity as a function of the demand of tasks [2], while a second perspective explains modulation in terms of age and focuses on the idiosyncrasy of brain aging [3]. Many studies have verified how brain overactivation correlates with better performance in cognitive tasks. For example, the performance of older people who participated in a digit span task was better if they exhibited a bilateral pattern of brain activity compared to those who did not show such bilaterality [4]. Another memory study involving older adults with high and low memory capacities and younger adults reported that both the older adults with low memory capacity and the younger adults showed prefrontal asymmetry with greater activity in the right hemisphere [3]. While the performance of the younger adults was the most successful, that of the older adults with low memory capacity was the least. In the older adults with better memory, a pattern of bilateral activity was evidenced with similar results to those of the younger adults. When the task is more demanding for these older adults, the left prefrontal cortex is also activated. That is, a supplementary activation reflects the additional effort that these older adults make in order to access information [5]. On the other hand, the approach based on the difficulty gradient of the task describes the increment in brain activation and the involvement of wider brain areas as an adaptive strategy for functional performance both in older and in younger adults [6]. In this regard, an investigation in which younger and older adults had to resolve memory tasks of different complexity levels found that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was overactivated in older adults in order to achieve a performance similar to that of younger adults. In addition, Hindawi Neural Plasticity Volume 2018, Article ID 1401579, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/1401579 as the difficulty increased, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in younger adults activated as well [7]. The second perspective attributes brain activity modulation to age [8]. Namely, the cerebral plastic behavior in older adults makes it possible for them to relearn a new activation mode which is manifested in a deactivation of posterior regions along with a higher activation in previous regions [9]. For example, in tasks requiring the intervention of basic cognitive operations such as visual perception, the highest activation is not located in the posterior cognitive regions of older adults. This brain behavior is associated with age, but it does not necessarily involve cognitive decline [10]. In this regard, an extensive research study tested age-related cerebral changes using an episodic memory task (high complexity) as well as a visual perception one (low complexity) [11]. The results showed that regardless of the complexity of the task, a higher activation was localized in the prefrontal cortex. In addition, this activation correlates with better cognitive function, as opposed to an inverse correlation between performance and activity in the occipital region. Other studies have also shown age-related changes in the brain and cognitive strategies to solve executive control tasks [12]. In particular, the experiment was carried out with younger and older adults who faced a task with consecutive pairs whereby the first one constituted a cue and the second one a target. Subjects were instructed to respond to the target whenever it was preceded by the same cue. Otherwise, they should omit or refrain from responding. The results showed that, with age, the executive control strategies shifted in temporal distribution. That is, they were proactive in younger adults during the presentation of the cue and reactive in older adults in response to the target presentation. In addition, the neuroimaging analysis showed that only younger adults displayed higher activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left hippocampus when the cue appeared rather than when the target was presented. On the other hand, it reveals an idiosyncratic behavior of cerebral aging in the amount of cognitive resources that are activated by the demand of a cognitive task. There seems to be a ceiling effect linked to how high the difficulty of the demand is in older adults, since brain activity lessens if the task is too hard [13]. An investigation in which younger and older adults had to resolve memory tasks of different complexity levels found that the prefrontal cortex was overactivated in both younger and older adults to achieve performance success [7]. However, beyond a certain level of demand, in older adults as opposed to younger adults, brain activity decreased, and so did their performance [14]. All in all, there is evidence of both task-dependent and age-dependent factors in brain activity modulation. Demanding tasks modulate brain activity both in younger and in older adults. However, simultaneously beyond the task demand, there is also idiosyncratic aged brain behavior. The state of the art includes two basic results: (1) when older adults face a demanding task, they require more brain activation than younger adults to obtain a similar performance level [6] and (2) when the task is demanding for all age groups, younger adult brains manifest an increased activation while older adult brains tend to diminish their brain activity [15, 16]. However, there are no known experimental studies that analyze the effect of training on the modulation of brain activity which in turn would help to clarify the relationship between the two explanatory approaches to brain modulation. The current study is aimed at examining the modulation of EEG brain activity in a highly demanding cognitive task in younger and older adults before and after a reasoning training. In particular, the following hypotheses were tested experimentally: (a) baseline EEG activity will show a bilateral overactivation in younger adults rather than in older ones, (b) the posttraining evaluation will show bilateral overactivation in the older adults while it will disappear in the younger ones, and (c) the effect of training improves deductive reasoning performance by increasing the number of valid responses and decreasing the reaction time in both age groups. 2. Materials and Methods 2.1. Participants. Eighty-five subjects, divided into two age groups, voluntarily participated in this study. The group of younger adults consisted of 47 subjects with an average age of 24.21± 3.39 years. These subjects were students from the University of León whose participation was rewarded with 1 academic credit. On the other hand, the group of older adults consisted of another 38 subjects with an average age of 68.92± 5.72 years. These subjects were contacted through the senior center of León Council. All participants were screened to be right-handed with normal or corrected vision and not currently under any stress (i.e., exams, job interviews, and grief). Additionally, older adults were screened to be cognitively intact (Mini-Mental Status Exam≥ 28) [17]. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of León in 2017, and it was carried out following the deontological standards recognized by the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (as revised in the 52nd Annual General Assembly in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 2000), the standards of Good Clinical Practice, and the Spanish Legal Code regulating clinical research involving human subjects (Royal Decree 223/2004 about regulation of clinical trials). 2.2. Procedure. The experimental design consists of 99 deductive reasoning tasks that are presented in a time window of 3.5 seconds which includes the presentation of the task and the response time. There was an interval of 200ms between tasks. Tasks were presented through the Mind Tracer (Neuronic S.A., Havana) on a 23-inch NEC screen. Subjects were requested to minimize their blinking as well as their postural movements. The program also provides conductual information about the number of correct and incorrect answers and reaction times. For the basal evaluation and for posttraining evaluation, 99 deductive tasks were designed corresponding to the three types presented above. 33 items for each type of tasks were randomly distributed. In the basal evaluation, subjects were instructed to mandatorily respond to this instruction: "If the item follows a rule based on properties regarding figures, colors, number, shape, or shading, press the 'Ctrl' key; 2 Neural Plasticity otherwise, press the 'spacebar' key." Notice that in the basal evaluation, the subject had no information or hints about the contents of the rules. The task was new and highly demanding, since the subject lacked any hints and did not know the rules of the task. For the posttraining, the subjects followed this instruction: "If the three cards have two or more properties in common, then (and only then) they form a set." In this case, subjects would respond by pressing the "Ctrl" key and otherwise by pressing the spacebar. The initial registration lasted about 40 minutes: 20 minutes to prepare the EEG system (cleaning, placement of the electrodes, etc.) using MEDICID (Neuronic S.A., Havana) and another 20 minutes to run the test. After the initial recording, subjects undertook behavioural training of reasoning in a single session followed by a posttraining recording, with an approximate duration of 70 minutes: 30 minutes for the training itself and the remaining time for EEG data recording. 2.3. Stimuli. The paradigm used during the EEG acquisition was based on a subset of the cards that compose the deck of the card game set. The game was unknown to all participants, and it was instrumental in the training and evaluation of elemental logical deductions. This kind of task was chosen because human deductive abilities are known to be, under certain specific conditions, rather invariant with respect to age, culture, and education. In particular, the reduction of cognitive resources accompanying aging does not impede the preservation of elementary deductive abilities [18], specifically if inferential conclusions are relevant to their premises [17, 19]. Even if the cultural context partially determines reasoning, elementary deductive inference remains invariant across cultures [20] and education levels [21]. Additionally, deductive inferences occur both in linguistic and in visual support [22]. That is, there are deductions which are not sentential sequences of premises and conclusions but logically valid visual inferences such as those present in diagrams or geometrical proofs. Finally, an interesting peculiarity of deductive reasoning is its easiness to produce new tasks with simple instructions where it is easy to measure and control both the logical complexity (number of instances of employed rules) and the relational complexity (number of variables). In this research, these measures offer an objective demand gradient. The deductive tasks presented and evaluated in this study are elementary logical (first order) inferences realized over a subset of the card game set. The cards presented items with certain characteristics: shape, color, number, and shading. There are three shapes, two colors, two numbers, and two shadings. Each item presents a trio of cards which shares zero, one, two, or three of these characteristics. By definition, any trio is a set if and only if the three cards share at least two properties. Determining whether an item (trio) is or is not a set is a purely deductive task, namely, a finite sequence of inferences which can be developed in a logically valid way and follows a recursive procedure which computes the truth values of the premises. Given that the subject perceives the properties of each card, the exercise of computing or deducing if the trio is a set is an elementary logical task. In the simplest scenario, it is enough to apply the definition of a set to verify that in fact, the cards in the trio share two properties. This situation automatically applies the rule of modus ponens (deduce B from {A, if A then B}). In the more complex scenario, instead of directly applying the definition after positive cases, we have counterexamples. In this case, the rule of modus tollens (deduce notA from {notB, if A then B}) can be used. To elucidate the experimental design, we show an example of each of the three kinds of items presented to the subjects in the evaluation tests. Only in the first kind of case (see Figure 1) do the three cards share at least two properties, and consequently the trio satisfies the definition of a set. The three cards in Figure 1 share the same shape and color; therefore, they are a set. From the only presentation of the trio and the application of negationless deductive rules, the reasoner may deduce that the item is a set. Observe how the reasoner may deduce the conclusion without going through all the properties of all objects in the cards: once form and color are shared, there is no need for further verifications. The second type of case is a trio which shares only one property (see Figure 2). The three cards share shape, but no other property. Therefore, this item is not a set. The inference behind this conclusion contains an application of the modus tollens rule, since by this rule the subject can refute each of the other properties (color, number, and shading) one by one. Finally, Figure 3 shows the example of the third type of case in which no properties are shared by any card of the trio. The subject may easily verify property by property that a characteristic is not shared in the trio, deducing by modus tollens that the trio is not a set. Note that in the three types of cases, the whole inference is elementary and deductively valid. Moreover, it is remarkable that the second and third Figure 1: Case 1 type. 3Neural Plasticity types of cases have a slightly greater logical complexity than case 1, but their relational complexity is identical. 2.4. Training. All subjects received a personalized one-onone training, which took place in the same session as the postevaluation. The point of the training was to produce valid deductive inferences by means of recursive or computable logical procedures which would prove whether a given item was (or was not) part of a set. In its first stage, the training focused on identifying sets and practicing at least 15 exercises of type 1 tasks with items that were not present in the basal evaluation. In its second stage, the training made the subject explain her deductive process out loud to the researcher who then corrected her as necessary. Since several logically equivalent procedures are equally acceptable, the personalized training adapts to the heuristical strategies proposed by the subject in case they are logically valid. Remarkably, the deductive training does not purport to teach the subject to reason logically but to bring into explicit conscience the logical properties of the inferences she already makes. For example, the conjunction operator (logical operator for "and") allows the subject to go over several cards to accumulate available conclusions. This initial training phase ends when the subject says she understands the task of identifying positive cases of a set and does not commit two consecutive errors in type 1 trials. In the third training phase, the subject herself proposed examples of items that would be a set and described her reasoning out loud. Once her proposals were adequate, the training for types 2 and 3 began, which consisted of making the subject aware of the use of modus tollens to infer counterexamples to sets. For example, if one card did not share a property with another one in a given item, it was deduced to be a counterexample to a set. The training finished when the subject expressed her cognizance of the task and did not commit any errors. The standard duration of the personalized training process was between 20 and 30 minutes for each subject. 3. EEG Recording and Analysis The EEG was recorded with a 64-channel amplifier (Neuronic System, Havana) and specific acquisition software (Neuronic EEG/Edition EEG Software). Reference electrodes were placed on the earlobes. In addition, electrooculography (EOG) was registered using three pairs of external electrodes in order to record the horizontal and vertical movement of the eyes. Electrode impedance was set for each subject before data collection but always kept below 5kΩ. The recording was carried out using an Electrocap with Ag/AgCl electrodes, which made it possible to analyze the active scalp areas of the subjects. ERP signals and stimulus markers were continuously recorded at a sampling frequency of 200Hz during the 20-minute presentation of the task. The signals were filtered using a band-pass finite impulse response filter with a Hamming window between 1 and 70Hz. In addition, a 50Hz notch filter was used in order to remove the power line artifact. Finally, a three-step artifact rejection algorithm was applied to minimize oculographic and myographic artifacts [23]: (1) components related to eye blinks, according to a visual inspection of the scalp maps and their temporal activations from independent component analysis (ICA), were discarded [24], (2) segmentation of each 3.5-second trial into one 1.5 s length trial ranging from 200ms before stimulus onset to 1300ms after stimulus onset, and (3) the thresholding of amplitude in each trial was established in five standard deviations of the signal. That is, trials in which at least five channels contained two samples that exceeded the threshold were taken out. Only correct answers were considered for further analysis. Next, a sliding window approach was used Figure 2: Case 2 type. Figure 3: Case type 3. 4 Neural Plasticity for the localization of the major activation of each trial. Windows of 150ms with an overlap of 90% were selected for measures of brain activity before and after training. Peak amplitude measurement took into account the most negative peak value within the temporal window of 400 to 550ms after the stimulus. 3.1. Source Localization. This technique has been widely used to study the neural correlations of cognition, because it combines a high temporal resolution of the EEG technique with a reasonable spatial identification of the electrical signal of the cortical sources [25] (see http://www.uzh.ch/keyinst/ NewLORETA/sLORETA/sLORETA.htm). The sLORETA software divides the brain into a total of 6239 cubic voxels with a resolution of 5mm and estimates the density of the current sources [26]. In the current investigation, the source localization was estimated with the analysis of 64 electrodes located in the frontal, medial, temporal, and bilateral parietal regions. The subjects were registered using the International 10-20 system. The sources were calculated for every subject and each age group at the temporal window of 400 to 550ms with the Brain Cracker (Neuronic S.A., Havana) which used the low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA implemented in sLORETA [26]). sLORETA source current density is calculated from the scalp-recorded ERP using a realistic head model from the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) [27], in which the 3-D solution space was restricted to only the cortical gray matter [28]. The ERP voltage topographic maps were made by plotting color-coded isopotentials obtained by interpolating the voltage values between the scalp electrodes in specific latencies. Voxelwise nonparametrical statistics as implemented in sLORETA were used. 4. Results EEG records were processed using the "EEG edition" software (Neuronic S.A., Havana). Descriptive analyses for each group were calculated using a toolbox from MATLAB R2015a, which was developed in the laboratory of the researchers. Statistical analyses were performed using Statistica (Statistica 10). Brain Cracker and sLORETA software were used to determine source localization [26]. 4.1. Correct versus Incorrect Responses. In relation to the number of correct responses in the basal evaluation, the younger adults obtained an average of 32.08± 12.29 whereas the group of older adults obtained an average of 31.05± 15.86. Regarding the number of correct response evaluations posttraining, the younger adults obtained an average of 74.79± 14.45 whereas the older adults obtained an average of 55.13± 16.94 (Figure 4). To evaluate the effects of this training, a repeated measures model was used. The difference in the number of correct/incorrect responses between both age groups was significant (F1,84 = 24 186, p = 0 001), just like in postevaluation (F1,84 = 188 596, p = 0 001). It shows that the interaction between groups and postevaluation is significant (F1,84 = 14 674, p = 0 001) and the level of confidence was 0.95. Post hoc analysis using the Tukey test revealed significant differences in the pre-postevaluation, both in the group of younger adults (p < 0 001) and in the group of older adults (p < 0 001). The training had a greater effect on the group of younger adults (Table 1 and Figure 5). 4.2. Reaction Times. The average reaction time in the basal evaluation was 1869.33± 608.79ms for younger adults and 2097.89± 1046.77ms for the older ones. The same parameter posttraining was 2898.50± 917.93ms for younger adults and 2275.42± 635.92ms for older adults (Figure 6). To evaluate the effects of this training, a repeated measures model was used. The difference in reaction times between both age groups was not significant (F1,84 = 1 700, p = 0 195). However, the posttraining shows significant differences (F1,84 = 40 920, p = 0 001), especially in the group of younger adults. This is verified in the effect of the interaction, which is also significant (F1,84 = 20 410, p = 0 001), because the level of confidence is 0.95. Post hoc analysis using the Tukey test reveals significant differences in the pre-postevaluation in the group of younger adults (p < 0 001) but not in the older adults (p < 0 780) (Table 2 and Figure 7). 4.3. Analysis of Source Localization with sLORETA. The descriptive analyses show that, in the basal evaluation of younger adults, there is activity in the right hemisphere Correct vs incorrect responses_pre ev. Outliers Extremes Correct vs incorrect_post ev. Outliers Extremes Younger adults Older adults Groups 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 Figure 4: Mean and SD of correct and incorrect responses in younger and older adults. 5Neural Plasticity gyrus: orbitofrontal, superior temporal, and postcentral, as well as in the insula; there is also activity in the left superior, middle, and inferior temporal gyri. After training, that is, in the postevaluation of the group of younger adults, the activity was observed in the left hemisphere gyrus: angular, middle temporal, superior, and middle frontal (Figure 8). In older adults, the activity in the basal evaluation was observed in the left superior and middle frontal gyrus, right parietal superior lobe, and right postcentral gyrus. In the group of older adults, the activity in the postevaluation was observed in the left postcentral gyrus and in the right lateral orbitofrontal gyrus (Figure 9). 5. Discussion To the best of our knowledge, this is the first cerebral study assessing a reasoning training task in younger and older adults. The results confirm the effects of cognitive training on the brain and behavior, since the posttraining evaluation showed less brain activity and a better performance in the proposed cognitive task in both younger and older adults. On the other hand, the results confirmed hypothesis (a) of greater activation in younger adults during the basal evaluation compared to older adults. However, the results do not confirm hypothesis (b) since there were no increases in brain activity in older adults after training. In addition, hypothesis (c) on the effects of training on psychological variables is partially verified. The number of correct answers increased in the posttraining tasks; at the same time, reaction times grew unexpectedly. Globally considered cerebral results show that older adults may have less efficient cerebral resources for cognitive processing. Posttraining performance among older subjects is comparatively poor with respect to younger subjects, evidencing older adults' reduced cognitive capacity to buffer high demands. In addition, the trend of lower brain Table 1: Repeated measures analysis of variance for the number of correct and incorrect responses preevaluation and postevaluation in younger and older adults. Effect Repeated measures analysis of variance with effect sizes and powers (data_saveMeanxTask_repeated measures) Sigma-restricted parameterization Effective hypothesis decomposition SS Dgr. of freedom MS F p Intercept 395255.1 1 395255.1 2105.690 0.001 Groups 4539.9 1 4539.9 24.186 0.001 Error 15767.5 84 187.7 Correct vs. incorrect 47302.5 1 47302.5 188.596 0.001 Correct vs. incorrect ∗ groups 3680.4 1 3680.4 14.674 0.001 Error 21068.3 84 250.8 Younger adults Older adults Groups 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 Pre_post correct vs incorrect_pre Pre_post correct vs incorrect_post Figure 5: Significant differences between correct/incorrect responses preevaluation and postevaluation, within age groups. TR_pre_evaluation Outliers Extremes TR_post_evaluation Outliers Extremes Younger adults Older adults Groups 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 6000 Figure 6: Mean and SD of reaction times in younger and older adults. 6 Neural Plasticity activation and worse performance in older adults, in both the baseline task and posttraining, may be interpreted as an agedependent phenomenon rather than as a result of the demand of the task. Through the psychological behavior of the participants, it is observed that both the number of successes and the reaction times increased after training in the two age groups. However, after training, the number of correct answers in younger adults reached almost 75% compared to the number of correct answers of the older ones that reached a little more than 50%. These results are consistent with an extensive body of information that supports a greater neurobiological decline that accompanies aging and explains why older adults obtain worse results than younger adults in cognitive performance tests [13, 29]. However, aging studies reveal large interindividual differences in cognitive performance where older adults' cognitive performance may equal that of younger adults with training and practice [30]. In this sense, the ACTIVE longitudinal study shows that older subjects who receive cognitive training maintain an improved capacity to reason above the baseline for ten years [31]. The increased reaction times after training, specifically in the younger group, contradict the hypothesis stated in the present study, which was based on the usual assumption that training an ability implies the diminution of the time required for its processing. However, when the peculiarities of the type of trained reasoning are taken into account, the increase in processing time is an index of robust cerebral consequences of training. The reasoning process applied by subjects after training is a computational step-by-step procedure which is fully explicit and compositional. That is, subjects must first process the cards composing the items, then combine them and apply the definition of a set. This is a well-known recursive or computational task [32] which consumes time as a linear function of its logical and relational complexity. In neuroscientific literature, there are only some initiatory studies on neural realizations of compositional processes in the brain [33, 34]. Therefore, while, in the untrained (basal) evaluation, the subject induced which rules could be applied without clues, in the trained version, the subject computed or applied deductive rules in a recursive and compositional way. Trained subjects did not need to grope for heuristic shortcuts as they had to in the basal evaluation. In this case, increased time is consequently an evidence of the effect of training. The results in the source localization show a greater cerebral activation in the basal evaluation (which is more demanding) in both age groups. Bilateral cooperation is present in the realization of the basal evaluation, but the activation in the group of younger adults is located in the frontal areas, while in the group of older adults, the activation affects posterior as well as anterior areas (see Figures 8 and 9). In this case, the reviewed literature [35] attributes this kind of overrecruitment to a compensatory activation that allows a task to be successfully carried out. It is important to note that in the basal evaluation, the subject must discover the rules that fit the elements of each item. Therefore, the basal evaluation involves a greater use of cerebral and cognitive resources than if the instructions of the task are already known. In the case of older adults, both perceptive resources and more complex abstract resources are used in the basal evaluation, which contradicts the results of the reviewed literature [36]. In particular, some investigations found that due to the loss of sensory acuity, there was a decrease in the activation of anterior areas in favor of the activation of posterior areas [10, 37]. This loss means that basic cognitive operations and familiar tasks become more complex for older adults, and they have to relearn new modulations of brain activity and cognitive resources. However, the fact that the task of the study is visual explains in part why there is brain activity in the anterior areas. Table 2: Repeated measures analysis of variance for the reaction time preevaluation and postevaluation in younger and older adults. Effect Repeated measures analysis of variance with effect sizes and powers (data_saveMeanxTask_repeated measures) Sigma-restricted parameterization Effective hypothesis decomposition SS Dgr. of freedom MS F p Intercept 885743564 1 885743564 921.6854 0.001 Groups 1633924 1 1633924 1.7002 0.019 Error 80724353 84 961004 TR 15492871 1 15492871 40.9207 0.327 TR ∗ groups 7727593 1 7727593 20.4106 0.195 Error 31802969 84 378607 Younger adults Older adults Groups 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 3200 3400 TR_pre_evaluation TR_post_evaluation Figure 7: Significant differences between reaction times preevaluation and postevaluation, within age groups. 7Neural Plasticity The localization of sources of brain activity after training in younger adults goes from being bilateral to focal. In particular, activation is now focused on the left medial angular gyrus, the temporal and frontal areas, and the left superior frontal area. Other investigations also related these cerebral areas to deductive reasoning [38]. Therefore, the results show that the estimate of the demand of the task posttraining in this group has decreased with respect to the baseline task. In the case of older adults, the training does not cause such remarkable brain activity changes, and the strategy of bilateral activation of anterior and posterior areas is maintained. In particular, the parietal and fronto-orbital areas are activated, which again produces a wide overlap between the perceptual and abstract resources also used in the basal evaluation. The surprising lower brain activation posttraining with respect to the basal evaluation contradicts hypothesis (b) about older adults. One explanation could be a ceiling effect linked to high levels of demand in older adults [1]. That is, when older adults face a demanding task that is beyond their capacity, their performance level and brain activity both decrease [13]. However, the better cognitive results and the fact that the activation in the two groups is lower after training are proofs of the effect of training on cognitive and cerebral activity. In summary, bilaterality may be a marker of how the brain adapts to maintain cognitive function in demanding tasks in both age groups. However, the differential bilateral locations across age groups indicate that the tendency of the brain to modulate is determined by age. One limitation of the study concerns the fact that all tasks are visual, thus restricting the possibility of verifying if posterior activation in older adults is due to the visual tasks. The high demand of the tasks and the short training period of the study may explain why older subjects improved 20% less than younger adults. Future research should replicate these results with nonvisual tasks and longer training periods to profoundly understand the benefits obtained from practice and training at a neurological level. Data Availability The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. Pre-evaluation. Younger adults 127,470 -51,124 127,470 -51,124 127,470 -51,124 52,685 -0,252 52,685 -0,252 52,685 -0,252 Post-evaluation. Younger adults Figure 8: Analysis of source localization pre-postevaluation in younger adults. Pre-evaluation. Older adults 16,627 -41,184 16,627 -41,184 16,627 -41,184 68,650 -76,572 68,650 -76,572 68,650 -76,572 Pre-evaluation. Older adults Figure 9: Analysis of source localization in basal and posttraining evaluation, within age groups. 8 Neural Plasticity Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. References [1] J. R. Rieck, K. M. Rodrigue, M. A. Boylan, and K. M. Kennedy, "Age-related reduction of BOLD modulation to cognitive difficulty predicts poorer task accuracy and poorer fluid reasoning ability,"NeuroImage, vol. 147, no. 1, pp. 262–271, 2017. [2] F. Grandi and J. 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