Meditation + Technology Exploration
Read about the collaboration in New York Times, Cool Hunting, Protein and PSFK.
Wish you could paint space with sound and light? In this meditation hack with New York-based visual and performance artist Lia Chavez, we continued to explore what can be achieved when using the human consciousness as an art material.
With participants wearing an EEG headset, and Lia guiding them through a meditation session, we could monitor conscious brain activity and via Bluetooth, transmitting the signal to our custom built digital-neurology system. The frequency of the signal mirrored the participant’s brain activity that was intern reflected in the intensity of the colour and sound emitted by the audiovisual system.
The Meditation Nightclub had over 4,000 participants over the course of CES and received international coverage from many notable outlets.
POIESIS / TUMULT
Prior to the meditation nightclub, Lia and myself collaborated on another EEG/meditation installation called POISIS / TUMULT.
Read about the collaboration in Fast Company. Also exhibited at the Frieze Art Fair 2014.
New York-based visual and performance artist Lia Chavez approached us for a one-of-a-kind collaboration. Lia works with multimedia to explore the behaviour of light in a state of meditation, and instead of a still, calm and quiet place, she's discovered that deep meditation can in fact trigger visions of stroboscopic light and cataclysmic storm systems. She wanted to share this visceral experience with others, so she came to me and rehabstudio to help create her next piece: an 8-hour live performance in Dundee, Scotland and the Frieze Art Fair in London.
I created custom code that reads Lia's brainwaves and, via bluetooth, transmits its signal to a strobe light. The signal's frequency and strength adapted, so that when Lia is in a deep state of meditation, the strobe flashes brightly and intensively, and less so when she is in intermediate states. Lia's final performance turned out to be the perfect meeting of technology, science and art that inspired us all to collaborate in the first place.
Project developed at rehabstudio. Working as a Creative Technologist, Codeing and developing the hardware setup myself
