something from the wta-arts y! group

From: Jonathan Standley (standley@rcn.com)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 23:35:22 MST


I posted this a few days ago on wta-arts, I think maybe some here will find it interesting :)

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There's a way to non-invasively suppress or excite arbitrary areas
of the brain; http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/medical-vision/surgery/tms.html

Called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, this device could allow an
entirely new form of art to emerge. The breakneck pace of advance
in neuroscience today shows no signs of doing anything other than
getting even faster; already there are devices which can scan the
brain that have sufficent resolution to roughly identify the
emotional state(s) of a person.

As both scanning and TMS devices improve, it seems inevitable that
machines will be able to pinpoint with ease the exact emotions and
feelings a person is experiencing, in real time.

So you could record the neural activation patterns of a person who
is experiencing emotions, and then play them back in the mind of
another person. That's cool enough as is, but picture this:

you map the various nuances of a single emotion to a musical
instrument. each major emotion-type could be mapped in such a way...
And then you give these instruments to a symphony....

1st, 2nd, and 3rd Cello would become 1st, 2nd and 3rd Love, or
Happiness, or in darker piece, Fear or Anger. Or whatever, really.

taken to it;s logical endpoint, this technology would presumably
allow the activation of individual concepts, images, and memories in
ones' mind...

>

there's a lot of hastily made assumptions and probably errors in the above, but I think the overall idea of "emotional art" is a neat one.



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