This article was taken from the September issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online
Luciana Haill wants to peer inside your mind -- but don't worry, it's all in the name of art.In her “neuro-feedback” performances, the 37-year-old from East Sussex uses electroencephalography (EEG) to detect her (or a volunteer’s) brain activity. Her computer then visualises the data as an undulating digital landscape and projects it on to a big screen. At the same time, another program turns it into music, with certain sounds activated by particular wave frequencies.
“The left and right sides of thebrain can independently control eight different tracks,” she says.“It evokes a mysterious atmosphere when you first hear sounds being triggered and controlled by someone's brain. Initially I'll be using another EEG to drive it myself, but once they're settled in they'll experience their own brain waves being sonified.”
And it's not just music: recently Haill has used EEG to live-edit video. “If someone's producing a lot of beta waves then that's quite fast activity -- that would be like the fast-forward. If they slow down into alpha waves, the edge of concentration and relaxation, it will start to pull the film backwards.”
Having become fascinated with brain scans as a teenager while being treated for meningitis, she read about EEG in a 1993 issue of Wired US. That year she was studying interactive art at the University of Wales under tech/cyber-art pioneer Roy Ascott, and decided to use EEGs in her work. But until as late as 2008 many people suspected that her routine was hokum. “Some imagined I was a choreographed smoke-and-mirrors act, so I’d hang around afterwards so they could speak to me,” she says. “I used to get it a lot, but now there is greater discussion of brain-computer interfaces in the media.” See her perform at the Phoenix, Brighton, in September. Listen to her head music on MySpace.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
