BRAINPALACE
BRAINPALACE
How can art and science promote empathy and social cohesion in times of crisis?
28 May - 26 June 2020
Digital Opening : 27 May 2020, 6:00 pm
here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87912928168
STATE Studio, Hauptstraße 3, 10827 Berlin
Berlin, 20 May 2020
CREDIT: TATJANA BUSCH
BRAINPALACE
The ongoing digitalisation and acceleration of all areas of our lives brings with it the danger of increasing individualisation, fragmentation and loss of community. Our own voice and that of our neighbours echoes in the echo chambers of social media, political radicalisation and populism drive people apart, affects control action and facts lose their power to change. Empathy, the ability and willingness to empathize with the feelings and attitudes of other people, as a cornerstone of functioning communities, is increasingly lost. Could new impulses be conceived in the interplay of art and science to promote empathy, social cohesion and togetherness?
The artistic research project BRAINPALACE by Munich-based light artist Tatjana Busch in collaboration with scientists from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, media artists Christian Losert and Daniel Dalfovo and the Berlin-based exhibition laboratory STATE Studio addresses this question. In the course of the project, an art object will be developed and tested as a light and sound installation, whose appearance will be controlled by the brain waves of participants, allowing them to draw conclusions about their mental states and providing impulses for their control. The participatory experiment focuses in particular on the investigation of collective group experiences in an art context and the testing of new possibilities of neural feedback.
"Light is frequency - frequency is energy - energies are set free and can be felt as qualities", says the artist Tatjana Busch about her approach. "With my artistic concept, I examine light and sound as a material of consciousness, both in physical space and in the perception of the observer, in connection with intuitively bent objects. I would like to dedicate the project BRAINPALACE to an aesthetic perception of compassion and togetherness, giving space to the irrational. Light, sound, colour, form and movement are made tangible within a common feeling in a group. The generated Neurofeedback creates a social sculpture." BRAINPALACE invites visitors to interact with a light sculpture by Tatjana Busch created especially for the project.
The media artists Christian Losert and Daniel Dalfovo see their challenge in first examining the complex EEG signals of the visitors for their synchronicity, in order to then generate an interaction between artwork, space and visitors both sonically and visually. The brain activities generated by the immersive light installation can then be tried and tested by the calibration system developed by Losert and Dalfovo based on Fraunhofer technology. Inspired by the atmospheric effect of the art object, participants can train to expand their perception - individually and as a group - and observe themselves in this process. These interactions give rise to research questions that are being taken up by researchers from two Fraunhofer Institutes, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering and Organization and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics. In the second exhibition phase in autumn 2020, visitors will then be invited to actively control the appearance of the installation using brain waves.
The project is designed as an open experiment, while in a specially designed test environment in the exhibition rooms of the STATE Studio, the interested public is invited to participate in a creative and scientific examination of a neural feedback system. "With BRAINPALACE we are opening up a space in which science, art and society meet in an open experiment in order to jointly address a major challenge of our time. Like every experiment, the outcome is uncertain and requires all participants to have the courage to take risks and to be willing to explore new paths. With this project, we are very pleased to expand our cooperation with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which started in 2018. We are united by the goal of making cutting edge research tangible for a broader public and setting new impulses - in science communication and beyond," says Dr. Christian Rauch, director of STATE Studio.
This ambitious project at the intersection of art and science is supported and financed by the exhibition series "Science and Art in Dialogue" of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft under the direction of Dorothée Höfter: "When I took over the exhibition series in 2003, it was obvious to take up this duality and name it "Art and Science in Dialogue". The confrontation with artists and scientists, as well as the development of new concepts and their implementation, is always an exciting and creative challenge. For me, this is an important element in science communication, making complex research topics relatable and setting new impulses.
Team:
Lead: Dorothée Höfter
Curation and production: Dr. Christian Rauch, Christina Hooge
Artistic concept and realisation: Tatjana Busch
Interactive design: Christian Losert and Daniel Dalfovo
Scientific support and research: Dipl. Math. Hans Trinkhaus (Fraunhofer ITWM), Dr. -Ing. Matthias Peissner (Fraunhofer IAO), Dr. rer. Nat. Mathias Vukelic (Fraunhofer IAO)
Press and Communication:
STATE Studio
Johanna Teresa Wallenborn
jw@state-studio.com
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft e.V., Munich, Germany
Contact person: Dorothée Höfter
Communications Department
Science and art in dialogue
www.fraunhofer.de/events
Background
The project is a collaboration between the Munich-based installation artist Tatjana Busch, the artists Christian Losert and Daniel Dalfovo, the Fraunhofer Institutes IAO and ITWM and the Berlin exhibition laboratory STATE Studio as part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's "Science and Art in Dialogue" exhibition series.
Find out more:
www.fraunhofer.de/events