Reviewing

BCI Art Practices

Artists and musicians have been experimenting with Brain Computer Interfaces or BCIs since the 1960s. Currently a number of consumer and open source BCIs have hit the market for artistic use. At the same time the 10-year Obama and European Brain Initiatives are underway. Half the research funds in the US is going to DARPA (the Department of Defense) and its new sub-agency IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). What are they finding out, and how will this affect BCI devices and artistic practices in the future?

Date : July 13, 2015
Location: Harvestworks 596 Broadway #602 New York NY 10012

Artists and musicians have been experimenting with Brain Computer Interfaces or BCIs since the 1960s. In the past few years a number of consumer and open source BCIs have hit the market used in intriguing ways by a variety of artists. At the same time the use of BCIs has risen, the 10-year Obama and European Brain Initiatives to map every neuron in the human brain is underway. Half the research funds in the US are going to DARPA (the Department of Defense) and its new sub-agency IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity). We will look at past and present artistic use of BCI, as well as current research to see what neuroscientists are finding out. How will this affect new types of BCI devices and shape artistic practices employing BCIs in the future? The implications are both thrilling, and deeply chilling.

BIOS
Ellen Pearlman is Director and Curator of the Volumetric Society of New York, and President of Art-A-Hack(TM). She is a PhD Candidate at The School of Creative Media at Hong Kong City University, and a Visiting Scholar at Parsons/New School. Her thesis focuses on consciousness, surveillance and the posthuman.

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Ellen Pearlman

Ellen Pearlman (PhD School of Creative Media Hong Kong City
University), New Media Artist, Curator, Critic, and Writer is a Research Fellow at
MIT, Director of ThoughtWorks Arts, a Senior Research Assistant Professor at RISEBA
University, Latvia, a Fulbright Specialist in Art, New Media and Technology, a Zero1
American Arts Incubator/U.S. State Department Artist, and a Vertigo STARTS (EU)
Laureate. She created “Noor: A Brain Opera” in a 360 degree immersive interactive
theater as part of her doctoral thesis, which was awarded Highest Global Honors by
Leonardo Labs Abstracts. In February 2020 she premiered “AIBO: An Emotionally
Intelligent Artificial Intelligent Brainwave Opera” at the Estonian Academy of
Music, and showed it at Vertigo STARTS DAYS in Paris, France. Ellen also invented
the Art-A-Hack (TM) creative collaboration methodology and runs rapid prototyping
workshops around the world. Her new work “Language Is Leaving Me: An Opera Of the
Skin” investigating AI, epigenetic memory, biometrics and computer vision is being
developed while at MIT.