Amazing Mental Scope

A public mental beacon for the excitement and fascinations felt throughout the night.

Participants will have the chance to broadcast their inner brain wave activity into the night sky of Santa Monica. Oliver Hess, Jenna Didier and Marcos Lutyens of infranatural, have created "The Amazing Mental Scope", an installation that uses a Neurosky EEG headset to project this experience into a spectacular lighting display at the end of the Santa Monica Pier at the dusk to dawn light and technology art festival.

A new and emerging generation of EEG (Electroencephalography) devices is beginning to help shed light on the brain's unknown regions. With the NeuroSky EEG headset, a device that measures the electrical activity in the brain, infranatural has been able to use the advances in technology for "brain" health spas and video games to externalize the delicate palette of inner emotions through real-time analysis of alpha and beta waves within the brain.

Users will be outfitted with the headset and positioned to look out at the pulse of the night's activity as it unfolds on the pier. The Amazing Mental Scope will capture reactions to the sensational environment, and transform these reactions into an emotive light sculpture in essence creating a public mental beacon for the excitement and fascinations felt throughout the night.

Concept Design Oliver Hess, Marcos Lutyens and Jenna Dider

Produced with the generous help of Martina Dolejsova and Colin Tucker
Prototype EEG by Neurosky
LED systems by Color Kinetics
Fabrication by Flix FX
Hosted by Glow Festival, Santa Monica July 19th 2008.
LA Times Photo
Also shown at Terra-Byte 3, LA Arboretum Sept 14th 2008.
Also shown at East of Eden, Los Angeles Sept 20th 2008.