My career has ranged from cognitive science, through art, music, and the web. In 2001 I published a book on music, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture, which has recently been translated into Chinese and Japanese.
I am currently Associate Director at the World Development Endowment Foundation, where I am helping to plan and organize an effort to create a educational, cultural, and economic development resource center on Governors Island in New York City's harbor. Prior to this I was a Senior Scientist with MetaLogics, Inc., where I worked on knowledge representation and information design for web-based health services. In the past I have worked as a consultant and freelance writer and have taught on-line with Connected Education. I developed a web-based tribute to Martin Luther King that was recognized by Publisher’s Weekly and a tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk that was recognized in Esquire magazine. I have been a consultant to NASA, the U.S. Air Force, New York State, and private sector corporations.
I have taught in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and have published scholarly articles, reviews, and technical reports on African-American music, literary analysis and theory, cultural evolution, cognition and brain theory, visual thinking, and technical communication. In conjunction with Richard Friedhoff, I published a book on computer graphics and image-processing entitled Visualization: The Second Computer Revolution (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989).
As a jazz musician, I play trumpet and flugelhorn and have shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie, B.B. King, Frank Foster, Al Grey, and Nick Brignola. I am cofounder of the AfroEurasian Connection, a musical ensemble which has been supported by the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and I have exhibited computer art in the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island.
Online work:
PSYART
Talking with Nature in "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, November, 2004, URL: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2004_benzon03.shtml
“Kubla Khan” and the Embodied Mind, PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the Psychological Study of the Arts, November 29, 2003, URL: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2003/benzon02.htm
First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction, PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts, August 21, 2000, URL: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2000/benzon01.htm
Buffalo Report
Salvation and Democracy, or How One's Personal Relationship with Christ Underwrites Governmental Legitimacy, 15 March 2005 http://buffaloreport.com/2005/050315.benzon.christ.html
Ghost Dancing in the USA, 1 March 2005 http://buffaloreport.com/2005/050301.benzon.ghost.html
Chicago's Millennium Park, July 2004 http://csac.buffalo.edu/cwp/millennium/park.html
Ghee on a Saturday Evening, 20 August 2003. http://buffaloreport.com/articles/030820benzon.html
Riffing at the Demo, 24 march 2003 http://buffaloreport.com/030324benzon.html
Counterpunch
The Door is Open: Scorsese’s Blues 2, October 11/13, 2003: http://www.counterpunch.org/benzon10112003.html
Scorsese’s Blues, October 3/5, 2003: http://www.counterpunch.org/benzon10032003.html