#muarts

This is a late post and imported from the MuArts website about our performance at the “Brave New World | Has the Future Arrived to Soon? {Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal}”

We had the pleasure to be invited to present a joint project with NERRY (Neuro-Enchancement Responsible Research and Inovation) at the "Admirável Mundo Novo" (Brave New World Conferences) hosted by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos at Casa da Música (House of Music) here in our hometown, Porto. The conferences were about how the new hera of technology would shape the world in the future making reference to the well known book written by Aldous Huxley. The panels ranged between themes such as: the digital me; intelligent life; economy 2.0; the digital republic. This project was a collaboration between our group and the artist Maria Manuela Lopes (ID+; IBMC) as part of her Post-Doc Research project: Memory of me. "This project aims to develop cross-disciplinary relationships and encompass their evolving research to interrogated societal, artistic and ethical attitudes to neuro-enhancement, memory and the preservation of the body, exploring the potential of neuro-stimulation sound waves and EEG for artistic research. I intend to produce a series of Drawings following a neuroscientific/ psychological guideline for psychological assessment on identity and sense of self (i.e. The TST – twenty statements test protocol is to complete the 20 times in a row the sentence I am …). The drawings are produced by writing in graphite sentences starting by I am and after 20 sentences I interrupt the flow and erase partially the resulted drawing. Immediately after that effacing action I counteract enacting the procedure of writing another set of 20 sentences. The whole event will be performed while listening to memory stimulating sound tracks and while having my brain being sensed for the different waves it produces (through the technology of electroencephalogram - EEG - brainwave detecting sensor. EEG measures frequencies of my brain activity (Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Theta) relating to my state of ‘consciousness’ while wearing it. The data collected from EEG is translated in real-time to the computer and I can choose to record video images of it or using software programs to perform other actions (such as sending information into Processing or Arduino, which is linked with Max/MSP to receive data and generate sound or video or even controlling an embroidering machine that will produce further drawings). The EEG records in a video file the ‘drawings’ that my brain is producing while thinking who I am, and the whole set is recorded with an external video camera. The drawings will endure until exhaustion of either the material surface, my memory, the length of the soundtrack or other unpredictable enforcement." Spaces, places and objects hold presences, experiences, wishes and memories that are constantly reshaped. By interweaving metaphors of memory along history, with personal archival elements, site experience and public engagement, as well as scientific instruments/technics and notions of memory/identity in neropshychology understanding, my work responds into creating a suspended moment were simultaneously memories and images are both creating and evanescing. As this opportunity will represent a first time in Lithuania the myth of myself will be enriched with the formation of fresh memories as I experience As an artist or a designer, it can be challenge to express a certain narrative or feeling in your designs. But what if you could translate your emotions directly into an object as a memory of a certain moment? The idea behind Enhancing the Mind’s I is to design with the mind (both metaphorically and literally!) by using my brainwaves as tools for a new humanistic arts based-approach. The I is metaphor for an allegorical inverted Cartesian Theatre with neurons illuminating a search for the self." By Maria Manuela Lopes

Technically, the project consisted in translating the brain activity of the artist wile drawing analogically into a color projection of the same draw. Basically, the artist was drawing with the hand and painting with "the mind".