Some of today’s most inspirational artistic creations might well be entitled “this is your brain on art.” Braintone Art Events said, “As science and technology continue to make advances in what we know and what we can do, the human brain continues to ponder why we want to do it and how.” Now a new breed of artists is investigating creativity’s greater potential by using technology to access the brain’s own fundamental artistry.
In these 5 inspiring art images, each created entirely through the power of brain waves (with a little technological help thrown in to capture them), it is possible to catch a glimpse of why art, music and creative expression have always been and continue to be so much a part of human history, culture and evolution.
Art Image 1: Mind Art
Mind Art is a partnership between the artist’s brain and a piece of technology called the NeuroSky MindWave headset. The body of work was crowdsourced to permit 16 artists, each with some type of physical limitation or disability, don the headset and paint with their brain waves.
Once in place, the headset acted as a remote control of sorts to direct a group of paint detonators to discharge paint onto a set of nearby canvases. Not surprisingly, each artist’s canvases differed wildly from that of their peers. When it comes to art, it would seem the brain has a mind of its own.
Art Image 2: The Creators Project
The goal of The Creators Project is to create musical art using brainwaves. For this art form, the technology of choice comes from an EEG (electroencephalogram), a medical device used to measure electrical activity inside the brain.
The EEG headset is used to translate thought directly into art, bypassing the traditional manual labor required when playing an instrument, singing, noting down a composition, et al of the creative process. Often the resulting compositions are referred to as “sonic soundscapes” rather than “tunes” or “songs.”
Art Image 3: Lia Chavez’s Poiesis/Tumult
Poiesis/Tumult is the result of an intensely technological yet meditative collaboration between New York artist Lia Chavez and Rehab Studio. Chavez, a meditator with more than a decade of practice under her belt, set out to recreate and share the brain wave patterns of her deep meditation sessions for a wider audience.
With a custom-designed device made up of many brain wave sensors that used Bluetooth to transfer brain waves to a strobe light, Chavez was able to recreate visually a variety of inner states as she experienced them in meditation.
Art Image 4: Angela Palmer’s Brain Maps
Who says that magnetic functional imaging (MRI) technology can only be used to recreate the insides of the human body? Certainly not artist Angela Palmer, who is harnessing the power of medical MRI and CT (computed tomography) technology to create art instead.
In Palmer’s case, she takes each brain scan and etches it out onto a glass screen, layering one on top of another to create a three-dimensional snapshot of a moment in the life of the brain.
Art Image 5: Brain Painting by Braintone Art Events
The emergence of brainwave art is challenging the traditional assumption that only certain people have the creative skill to become artists. As it turns out, all brain waves were created equally, and Braintone Art Events’ Brain Painting aims to prove it.
The technology used is an EEG headset which is placed on the forehead of the artist, who then proceeds to do what Braintone calls “painting with the mind” as the EEG headset records the artist’s brainwaves and uses the Braintone Art Imagery Generation Engine to replicate them in color onto a computer screen. The artist can then select a favorite image or series of images to print.
Thoughts and ideas as expressed through brain waves have always formed a big part of the foundation of creative expression, whether through music, artwork, stories, dances and other artistic disciplines. But with this new approach to marrying brain waves with technology, art itself is being stretched to grow, redefine and transform in new directions.
