French philosopher Rene Descartes is credited with the phrase “I think, therefore I am”; now, nearly four centuries later, a young British woman may have taken the idea one step further – I think, therefore I create art. Interactive artist Luciana Haill uses medical electroencephalogram, or EEG, monitors embedded in a Bluetooth-enabled sweatband to record her brain activity, and send the data to a computer that plays it back as audio. Since the human brain operates in the same frequency as sound waves (hertz), it's a relatively simple process to use software to convert the brain's raw data into a sound format. Haill has been honing her craft over the last 14 years, and she now uses Apple's OS X operating system to trigger digital samples in GarageBand with each type of neural activity.
Haill's music has been featured in new music festivals, including Cybersonica 2006 and the recently completed Future of Sound tour, but she hasn't yet brought her music stateside. To hear it for yourself, visit Luciana's MySpace page.