October 2—4, 2010
Workshop overview
The Neuroaesthetics Workshop brings together a diverse group working in the areas of Neuroscience, Social and Critical studies of Science, design and data visualization, new media aesthetic practice, and relational art for a weekend workshop. The workshop pursues, over three days, varied critical aestheticisations of brain waves with attention to their computational logic. The workshop, hosted by (OCADU Professor) Paula Gardner and her mobile lab team at OCADU working on the SSHRC funded project Biomapping: mobile interventions in self-computation and spatial aesthetics.
Plan:
Paula Gardner will address how new media art, and the Biomapping project, aims to push aesthetic representations toward modes of metaphoring scientific discourses and practices. Sean Montgomery will lead inquiries into research practices that create brain waves and name then, and standard scientific practices of representing brain wave data. Rob King will walk the group through analysis of the Neurosky's algorithm and its mode of transferring brain wave data to representations. Science and Technology Scholar Joe Dumit (UC Davis) will present his research on PET scanning practices and neuroexistentialism, to suggest critical ways of thinking about practices of knowing brain waves. Patricio Davila will lead the group through contemporary ways of thinking about data as aesthetics, and the theoretical linkages between the two. The group then will imagine critical pathways into the data—representations of it, metaphors of its practices of becoming, etc— through the creation of aesthetic manifestations over two practical days in the Mobile Lab.
October 8, 2009
You are invited to participate in the first round of testing for our biometric art project, located at OCAD. The project, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, is entitled: "Biomapping: mobile interventions in self-computation and spatial aesthetics."
What are we doing?
We are conducting user testing with some simple biometric devices that measure and visualize heart rate (the EKG) and brain waves (the "EEG"). The tests entail placing 3 stickers to your forearm (EKG) and/or wrapping a thin band around your forehead (EEG). You will then see your heart rate or brain waves visualized on a computer screen.
The "test" itself takes about 5 minutes. Then we will ask you to talk about it with an interviewer and one other participant, and, if you are willing, to fill out a short questionnaire regarding you. The experiment poses no risk, you can opt in or out of being photographed, and all of your data will remain confidential. The entire time commitment will be less than 30 minutes.
What are our research interests?
We are interested in how you experience these devices, and what the visualized data means to you.
Why would you do this?
You will help to move our social science/art research forward. This project is committed to making art/science projects that resonate with your responses to these visuals. This information will help us to design our future experiments, our art projects, and the "findings" will be employed in research articles (where your identity would remain confidential, of course.) There will be pizza and drinks available to participants.
Where and When?
OCAD Mobile Experience Lab, Third Floor (take elevator, not stairs), Room 7314.
30 minute time slots are available:
- Friday Oct 16th, 11am-2:00 pm
- Thursday Oct 22nd, 5-8 pm
Please confirm to the Biomapping team member who contacted you, and we will book you into a timeslot.
Questions?
Feel free to email the Principle Investigator, Paula Gardner at HYPERLINK "mailto:pgardner@faculty.ocad.ca" pgardner@faculty.ocad.ca. Also see our website, mobilelab,ca/biomapping.
Also, feel free to cc this to a friend or colleague, if you think they might be interested.
June 1, 2009
On June 9, Dr. Bill Turkel (University of Western Ontario), will be hosting a Biomapping Hacking Workshop
in OCAD's Electronic Lab space. During the session, participants will learn how to build their own biofeedback
devices by repurposing existing components, as well as employing RFID, Arduino, and WiFi technologies.
April 21, 2009
Associate Professor Paula Gardner of the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) is a recipient of a Research/Creation Grant in Fine Arts for $158,084 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the university announced today.
"One of this research project's main objectives is to create artist-friendly mobile technologies to pave the way for future content-production by other artists," said Gardner, who teaches in OCAD's Faculty of Liberal Studies. "The project's major component allows participants to use mobile and biometric technologies to gather data -- a person's heart rate, eye movement and breathing rate, for example -- develop computing software, and then use it to create a map of one's self."
Entitled "Biomapping: Mobile Experiments in Self-computation and Spatial Aesthetics," the project's unique, interdisciplinary research-creation methodology will combine the skills of a sociologist, ethnographer-documentarian, engineer, sculpture/installation artist, and mobile/interface designer.
The approach merges mobile media and sculptural practices with science and technology studies, phenomenology and space studies. This novel method of art creation will pioneer interactive mobile experiences, and demonstrate, in art experimentation and creation, theoretical questions related to urban space, computational logic, mobile and time-based media and subjectivity.
"Paula is one of the leading researchers in mobile technology and I'm thrilled that she's been awarded a grant that will allow her to pursue her work in this specialized field," said Michael Owen, Vice-President, Research & Graduate Studies. "Paula's success is an excellent example of the knowledge, innovation and research capacity our university provides to the world."
