Influences
For centuries man has been using a variety of techniques to express emotions. Writing, art, contact, music, and many other mediums are used as a basis to string a message of how you felt to the audience. However, the audience usually makes your artistic piece their own and interpret it at times completely different. They cannot experience it exactly like you hope because they were raised with different memories and values. Nature versus nurture. Even though art is very subjective to whoever is experiencing it, sometime you wonder what exactly the author had in mind, what was going through their mind exactly when they were creating. You want to get to the heart of the art piece.
I once read a neuroscientific book by the name of Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson. In one of the chapters, the author explored the neuroscientific origins of talents; specifically his own as a writer. Steve decided to go inside of an MRI machine and had his brain waves recorded as he focused on writing inside his mind about the experience he was going through. They captured his brain as it was doing this writing, as he was performing his talent. When he came out, he was handed a print out of what his brain looked "forming a writing thought". I was mesmerized. I was also intrigued at an idea ever since: what if this MRI machine could work backwards and induce such a picture in my brain? Would I suddenly become a talented writer? Would I feel the same things the author felt? If nothing else, I wanted to know what it felt like for him, even if it did not induce talent within myself (because of the nurture factor).
Then came along the movie Minority Report. This was quiet something. My mind connected this movie and the idea of reading memories into visuals with the book from earlier and experiencing thoughts in different mediums.
The last straw that connected everything in my mind was watching Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There was a scene when the woman character was incredibly mad at the man. She then used a device to “put him in her shoes” for a short amount of time. The look on his face was of horror, but he then said “Oh, now I understand”. How many problems would this solve in the world!?
Thinking about these influences, I decided to create a machine that would induce feelings. It would gather information from people first, as a system, then using calculations and averages would create groups of feelings that you can choose to experience. I specifically focused on feelings about art, since it is one of the most personal mediums a human can experience, therefore the originality and differences in emotion between people is high, and it would be very intriguing to find out what others feel when they look at a piece of art.
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How it works
There are two parts to this project. The first part involves creating a piece of systems art through interactivity and the second part involves the usage of the created piece to induce interactivity between the participating audience and everyone involved prior to them.
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Part 1 of the Experience
The participant will enter into a room with the Magnetoencephalography device installation the Magnetoencephalography device installation. They will sit down, relax and . They will be asked to punch in their age and sex on the machine taking blood pressure. This will be used as a basic calibration of health and to collect data for research on how a person’s overall being at the time relates to their neuron readings.
This machine and technique is used because there is no direct contact with the electrodes, therefore the subject will not feel any discomfort.
In front of the chair there will be a large viewing screen which will display artwork. After a brief instructional video including directions on keeping their head as still as possible and concentrating on their thoughts and memories generated by different artworks, the slide show will begin. Every slide will be shown for 10 seconds, with different combinations of 18 slides lasting 3 minutes. There will be mixtures of Modern, Renaissance and Abstract art, each piece carefully chosen to evoke certain memories or feelings. For example, the Mona Lisa being such a widely known piece could evoke feelings gained previously from films, from school, from personal experiences, and whatever else, while a dark piece of chaotic abstract art that nobody has seen before can evoke feelings of uncertainty, feeling lost, or perhaps the exact opposite. Each piece will create a unique 10-second magnetic field imprint collected from you brain.
During the readings you will slowly observe the images in any matter you like while the MEG device carefully monitors the magnetic fields your neurons will produce.
Once you are done, the machine will use a program to average your collected brain data and personal information to average into a growing archived system of other readings. The groups will be separated by age and gender. (Male/Female Child 4-12/Teen 13-21 /Adult 21-51 /Senior Over 52)
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Part 2 of the Experience
Then comes the fun part. On your remote control you will be able to play back any of the images and select any particular group of people. The MEG device will then use the gathered data from the group’s magnetic neuron waves to reverse them back and recreate the same magnetic field around the subject’s skull. This will trigger neuron firing and the subject will feel whatever the group in average felt and will be forced to try and figure out why the feelings may be different than hers based on what part of the brain is stimulated.
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Future
Eventually this device may become smaller and less expensive. You may be able to buy it at the story just like an iPod. It would work just like iTunes and you would be able to download different emotions or experiences. You would also be able to have one handy for a purse or pocket to record something during the day, just like you would use your phone to record a video. Imagine being transported into the mind of a teenager who is experiencing a roller coaster ride; or a president giving his first speech; or an astronaut as the shuttle is taking off.
Caveats:Ethical and Biological
It’s a dangerous and unheard of process to induce someone’s brain to feel emotion. When we read the stories about neurobiologists who cut open skulls and poke around in the brain to cause a physical movement, this image is quiet unpleasant. This futuristic MEG technology has many potentials to follow a slippery slope and fall into the wrong hands. Ethically speaking, we will argue whether negative emotion should be induced. Not only negative emotion but It may fall into the hands of war weapons and torture techniques- how far would our government go?
Biologically speaking, obviously not all of us are the same. There is a possibility that these emotional experiences will be too strenuous for some of us and cause light to severe damage in many ways. What if someone else’s memory causes traumatic experiences for you? What if someone’s pleasure is your pain? Would your friends send you files named “awesomeskateboarding.MEG” but once opened, it contains a file of how your friend fell off of his skateboard and broke his leg; he sent you this to get back for last Friday?
However, many a time we wish someone could feel what we feel. This art project will be the beginning to something grand.
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