Projects

The Project

Role: Writer/ Director/ Media Designer

Producers: ASU Center for Science and Imagination; MAC

Developers: Matt Ragan; Tyler Eglen

Designers: Daniel Fine, Jesse Cabrera, David Guerro

Summary: Neuro was a design fiction interactive theatre piece set in an imagined psychotropic cocktail lounge attempting to capitalize on new pharmaceuticals that could control moral judgment. The immersive installation featured 360 degrees of interactive video walls and the development of performative biofeedback machines designed to quantify individual morality. Real EEG scanner and heart rate monitor data was captured from ‘customers’ as they played various games testing levels of religiosity, romantic compatibility, bigotry, racism, greed, and altruism. Each game concluded with recommendations for psychotropic cocktails to fix their moral failings.

The System

Projectors hung from an 18ft aerial rig surrounded the audience with video content mapped to 5 tension fabric walls played back interactively with Modul8.

 

The interactive systems used PulseSensor heart rate monitors, Arduino microcontrollers, and an Emotive EEG reader for biofeedback. The Love Connector {Branch) was developed with Processing and tested the synchronicity of two partners as they observed various imagery, the De Objectifier(Ragan) was also programmed in Processing and demonstrated the emotional intensity behind the natural objectification of others, and the E –Value -Ator (Eglen) programmed in Max MSP used the EEG reader to asses how stated values matched up with cognitive interest when users were shown various imagery.

Neuro

by Boyd Branch

Video sample

Stills