In 2022, the Artist in Residence at the Ars Electronica Futurelab was Roel Heremans. With his team, he developed The NeuroRight Arcades and presented the outcome at the Ars Electronica Festival 2022. Subsequently, a summary installation of the project was on display at the Ars Electronica Center.
Having artists and researchers from all over the globe collaborating with and taking residencies at the Ars Electronica Futurelab is of great importance to the laboratory and atelier for future systems. New forms of artistic expression serve the Futurelab as food for social thought, as an impetus to consider emerging issues, and as an opportunity to take a more multifaceted look at things.
Neuro-wearables and BCIs (Brain-Computer-Interfaces) are already here, and soon they will be everywhere. Because innovation is moving faster than the social and ethical frameworks around it, researchers at Columbia University have developed 5 NeuroRights: Mental Privacy, Personal Identity, Free Will, Equal Access to Mental Augmentation and Protection Against Algorithmic Biases.
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Rachel Gruijters
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Roel Heremans
Inspired by and based on these NeuroRights, Roel Heremans and his team designed a series of five interactive installations to make each NeuroRight tangible for participants. They wanted participants to explore unasked questions about the future of our NeuroRights in a world where BCIs are ubiquitous.
Wearing a real-time BCI headphone in front of a custom made Arcade Machine, participants are guided through an aesthetic experience where their mental state is transparent and malleable. With this, the team hopes to evoke a visceral reaction so participants feel the need for NeuroRights on a personal level.
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
Roel Heremans: The NeuroRight Arcades Photo: Ars Electronica Futurelab / Birgit Cakir
The five installations were developed together with a team of neuro-experts from KU Leuven and Howest – Digital Arts and Entertainment Kortrijk during residencies at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, Kunstenwerkplaats Brussel, Werktank Leuven and C-Takt Pelt.
Read more on the Ars Electronica Blog:
Roel Heremans (BE) is a transdisciplinary artist working with sound, composed introspection & neurofeedback.
In most of his works he composes fragments of audio that trigger the imagination of visitors in order to create immersive group experiences. As a result, the visitors simultaneously become actors, witnesses, performers and reenactors of mental and physical processes of thought and movement, where collective performances encounter individual reactions and vice versa.
By activating people in this way, Heremans generates a simulation of the contemporary world, one in which every individual is part of their own self-mirroring bubble, one in which the visitor, with their experience, remains the artist’s only metaphorical canvas. His varied practice, all deriving from these immersive group experiences, also includes video and works on paper.
Credits
Artist: Roel Heremans
Interactive Design: Tyrell
BCI-Software: Yuhan Zhang, Thai Duong Truong, Maarten Francq
Neurological consultation: Chie Nakatani, Cees van Leeuwen
Artistic consultation: Emanuele Dainotti, Evan Cole
Arcade Design: Rudi van de Kerkhof
This project is funded by the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth and Media.
