Documentation of Nina Sobell's Interactive Brainwave Drawings, installations that visualize the brainwaves of its subjects. The first part was produced for the exhibition The Artist and the Computer at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 1982. The second part was produced for an exhibition at the Bronx River Art Gallery in the Bronx, NY, in 1992.
00:32Copy video clip URL Title card: “Electro-Encephalographic Video Drawings.” Voiceover: “Nina Sobell has been intrigued by the idea of being able to capture the emittance of electrical impulses by the brain and transposing them into a graphic image. Since 1973, she began to collaborate with systems engineer Michael Trivich. On the monitor, two people were able to see their physical as well as mental image. They were able to create one composite brainwave drawing in real time. Sobell was determined to devise a non-competitive creative environment geared to home TV viewers who could create an active rather than passive TV viewing experience and enhance their ability to communicate.”
00:56Copy video clip URL Setting up the EEG drawings. The Grass Model 6 Electroencephalography Machine at the Veterans Hospital in Sepulveda, CA, 1974. Sobell and partner David James hooked up to the machine, their EEG readings displayed on a monitor. “Dr. Barry Sterman of the Sepuleda Veterans Administration Hospital in California offered access to equipment as the director of the neuropsychology lab. He was most interested in the psycho-sociological aspects of the piece. Electrodes were attached the occipital region of the brain, the visual cortex of two participants. They sat comfortably in front of a monitor, which displayed their faces and the superimposed composite brainwave information.”
01:40: “The real time pattern changed in accordance with the brainwave activity. When both people put out the same brainwave, it formed an irregular circular configuration. nonverbal communication between the participants was the objective. When one person was distracted, it appeared as distortion horizontally or vertically, depending upon the axis which displayed his or her brainwave pattern. The results were averaged through a PDP-10 computer and proved that two people could influence each other’s mind states non-verbally.” Images of subjects creating BrainWaveDrawings: David James and Nina Sobel, Loren Madsen and Liebbe Madsen, Barbara Burden and Joan Loague, Harry Kipper and Sobel. Images from the exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas in 1975.
02:20Copy video clip URL Footage of the EEG Telemetry Environment’s installation in Houston, where the public could take part.
02:49Copy video clip URL Sobell’s collaboration with Biocybernetics engineer Chris Matthews and the support of Dick Heiser to use computer graphics to “enhance brainwave drawing.” Footage of The Computer Store in Santa Monica, CA, 1979.
03:08Copy video clip URL Images of Matthews’ computer graphics, from Venice, CA, 1980. More about the collaboration and experimentation between Sobell and Matthews.
03:20Copy video clip URL Footage from Matthews’ EEG Laboratory in Venice, CA, 1981. Efforts to “achieve accuracy with the analog to digital device” that incorporated computers. An installation at the Long Beach Museum of Art, 1982 for the show The Artist and the Computer. Using a computer program created by Kong Lu in which “colors were keyed to each different mind state.”
04:57Copy video clip URL Credits: Produced by Nina Sobel and LBMA Video. Editing: Joe Leonardi, Stuart Bender. Camera: John Sturgeon, Harry Kipper, Paul Schimmel, Will Mangan, David Shearer. E.E.G. Design: John Gord. Technical Assistance: Michael Trivich, Tom Nori, NASA, David Dowe, Chris Matthews, Halcyon Shearer, Andree Tracy, Lois Freeman. Funded by: CAPS, N.Y.S. Council on the Arts, SYNAPSE, Syracuse University, The National Endowment for the Arts, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX, Marilyn Lubetkin. Special Thanks: David Ross, Dr. Barry Sterman, Lorraine MacDonald, Hersel Toomin, Pat Cole, David Nichols, Jim Harithas, Marilyn Lubetkin, Paul Schimmel, Dick Heiser, Anita Lerner.
05:54Copy video clip URL Title card/credits: “Interactive Brainwave Drawing. Bronx River Art Gallery; Bronx, New York; December, 1992. By Nina Sobell, in collaboration with Masahiro Kahata, IBVA. Masahiro Kahata, programming and IBVA, Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer; Emily Hartzell, editor.” Voiceover discussion of the exhibition, in which brainwave activity was “fed through a Macintosh computer and displayed as a colored chart moving across the TV screen in real time.”
06:22Copy video clip URL Footage of the interactive installation. Participants sitting on the couch in the installation, with headbands reading their brainwaves. Footage of the output. Sobell speaks in voiceover: “Look at us, we’re on TV! There we are! We’re on TV! We surrender to technology because we need its help. It helps us to feel connected. We command the equipment and we are not at its mercy…. We’re interactive. We communicate. We’re drawn together by electricity and magnetism. This hyper-hightech theater is a rehearsal for our future. We can attain mental intimacy without the equipment. The interactive brainwave drawing installation is an invitation. It provides the stage and the props, which revalidate the activity of communication without words.”
09:45Copy video clip URL Credits: Thanks: Lynn Seeney, director, Bronx River Art Center; Amir Bey, curator, Gods of the Modern Age; James Wintner; Annie Ballard.
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