BLUE DANUBE
BCI DATABASE for visualizations on the processes of PTSD and depression2023-2024
Concept
Blue Danube is born from the artist’s reflection on their self. The research has has taken space from the body to the soul, stepping through the cracks of anxiety, obsession and the deep insecurities of the human soul. The battle against anxiety has always been long and hard in the artist’s life, but never before they had encountered depression: they were drained of every ounce of life, dragged like an empty sack inside spaces, endless sleepless nights, full of nightmares, never the end was seen except in the release of pain.
The post-traumatic stress increased insomnia, pain. How do you give form to something so extremely complex and nuanced? Something that needs so much detail to be represented? You make it show to who really knows what they have experienced: The Brain. What saves and remembers all the alterations and memories of the nuances.
The project comes to life from the artist’s brainwaves that will be consequently used as input in data visualisation software for a visual ouput.
But why data? Why doesn’t the artist decide to embark on a journey in which they try to explain what it’s like to cope with depression and post-traumatic disorder? Because in this year, the thing that has made they feel sickest is knowing that they don’t have the answers and that they have to fight and search in the recesses of their brain to get them. Even though it is there they don’t know what reality is, which is why in this work they decides to leave the imput of the concept in the brain hands.
“I want to Sleep in the Arms of the Blue Danube”
Realtime visualization prototype on BCI dataset, variable dimensions, monitors, PC
Exhibition view at Ars Electronica Festival, Campus, NOUS, Interface Cultures, Linz, Austria
Ph. Camilla Scholz