#Scanners

#Scanners is the Brain Child of Artist Richard Ramchurn, who in the year 1999 was asked the question ‘As an artist, where do you want your work to go, what do you want to do?’ he answered  ‘I don’t know, it hasn’t been invented yet.’

In 2013 technology had advanced to a place where it was accessible and affordable. Richard acquired and started tinkering with a NeuroSky Mindwave Mobile EEG brain scanner, recognising the potential to use live brain data to control a series of events in film. Finally it had been invented and #Scanners was born.

http://neurosky.com/

2014

In this, the first prototype film, the film was made up of abstract sequences with that were edited by the viewer, as meditation and attention levels changed.

We were delighted to present the prototype for our new project SCANNERS at the University of Manchester’s School of Life Sciences open day. The audience got to experience our interactive cinema and harness the power of their brainwaves to edit their own movie. Here’s what they had to say about the experience.

Here we presented the Scanners prototype at the w00t Festival in Copenhagen and at the AlbinoMosquito Studio. We conducted interviews with people after experiencing scanners and asked them what they thought.

2015 The Disadvantages of Time Travel

2016 The Spinning Wheel and #Scanners

So I spent a month in New York over Christmas, working with my long time collaborator Baba Israel partly completing The Spinning Wheel theatre show which will be touring the UK in June and also creating an installation at BRIC in Brooklyn.

bric, image: Lesser

The installation was a continuation of the #Scanners project, my artistic exploration of brain computer interfaces. A recreation of New York counter culture icon steve ben israel’s den, a space where he used to hold court, entertain and open peoples’ minds. I designed a piece of interactive art that attempted to elicit a meditative brain state. steve ben said that he was trying to raise peoples’ consciousness I took that as my cue for the motivation for the interaction. Ive been working with the steve ben’s archive since 2014 and it was great to pull out some of the gems in there, his appearance on public access TV, his performance of ‘Attica’ and his recording of his song ‘You’ve gotta get your self a third eye’ are personal highlights for me.

sbi

The installation ran for 20 days in January and was part of the The Spinning Wheel Festival.

2018 The MOMENT