Bling Toy Project – Inauguration and premiere party | neo-norwegian experiments in art and technology

jackin in

The time had come to try the EEG-machine for real. The recipe:

raw brain data

– a new powerful Macbook straight out of the box
– a new IBVA machine
– installing the software for the first time
– setting up the electrodes and headband

This part was a one hour rush. Then the problems started:

– the Bluetooth connection, as a first time user this took annoyingly long time
– understanding both the interface and the data and at the same time presenting it

We stared at the 3D representations of the brainwaves. And nothing happened, there was nothing there. The water was calm. So was this the result of the process? 150 years of electrical extensions of our central nervous system, finally led us to the mind and when you look inside there is nothing there.

the big calm

We started giving the brain stimuli of course, playing our favorite songs, watching football. But no. Moving the body was the thing that stimulated the brain. (This is a 1 – 0 to physical theatre.) At first I thought it was the cables interfering, but the machine even registered small movements with the fingers. And it’s fast.

The rest of the time we played around with the built-in brainwave to midi synthesizer. It is all to abstract this early in the process. The fun starts when you get these signals into to max and other applications and when you start becoming familiar with this representation.

Some Japanese guy is already that…