(Warning: Delightful humor within)
At the beginning of 2011, Jeremy Bailey was approached by InteraXon to create a piece of BCI drawing software using a Neurosky headset. The software was developed, tested, and presented for a performance at The New Museum in June as ‘Thought Controlled Drawing’.
It’s hard to separate Jeremy Bailey’s ‘Peter Parker’ from his performance artist alter-ego. By day, Bailey is an Art Director for a software company. By night, Bailey flies under the radar as a famous new media artist, showcasing his work to audiences and museums around the world. Frequently performing with programs his ‘Peter Parker’ has created, his work humorously discusses the affects of technology, and the often absurd relationship between technology and the body.
‘Thought Controlled Drawing’ takes the challenge of living in a media saturated- and technology obsessed- world, and organizes those experiences for the user through a BCI vector-based drawing program. “I built this software for taking the media of my life, and organizing around my state of focus or relaxation, and that’s the very media that distracts me. I’m really trying to find a way to navigate that.”
To work with the in-flux nature of his brainwaves, Bailey created a digital ‘brush’ that responded to the momentum of his state of focus or relaxation. While wearing a Neurosky headset, the brush would either ascend or descend, depending on his state, and leave a point on the screen as he tried to ‘draw’ with the BCI. Every time Bailey would clench his jaw, the software would talk with the headset, and put a bezier point down on the screen (as seen in the video demonstration above).
“I was more interested in where I was heading, then where I was at that precise point [...] I like to think of programming as an intuitive process, where in the same way as drawing a line, I’m not sure where it’s going to go, I have a general perception, but I allow myself to react to it.”
The unpredictable nature of BCI technology, which is reliant on the state of its human participant, gives way to the assumption that this software is completely unmanageable. Bailey was quick to point out during my trial of ‘Thought Controlled Drawing’, that this is – in fact – very controllable.
The most important message the program conveys is one that can be universal across all those who use it, that “to be creative you have to be comfortable with yourself. Being comfortable with yourself requires you to take control of your thoughts.”
And for InteraXon, that is one example of the multiple possibilities that BCI platforms can offer, as a software that can “help you do that [take control of your thoughts], and create a unique work of art in the process”
