Exhibition Opening: Pingo ergo sum – The Picture Emerges from the Brain
Performance by Adi Hoesle and a Live Remote Hookup to Kunsthalle Rostock
Thursday, April 5, 2012 / 8 PM / Ars Electronica Center
(Linz, April 3, 2012) “Pingo ergo sum” (I paint; therefore, I am) is the new exhibition running at the Ars Electronica Center from April 6 to May 27. It features the art of brain painting whereby people can render pictures without using their hands, a keyboard or a mouse. A brain-computer interface (BCI) registers the painter’s brainwaves and transmits them to a computer. By using only the power of his/her own thoughts, the painter can select from among a wide array of brushes, forms and colors and use them to paint pictures. At the exhibition opening on Thursday, April 5 in Deep Space at the Ars Electronica Center, Adi Hoesle (DE) will create just such a brain painting. There will also be a live remote hookup to Kunsthalle Rostock, where brain painting has been the center of attention for a week already. Audience members assembled in Deep Space at the AEC will be able to observe a live demonstration of brain painting in Rostock by a woman suffering from locked-in syndrome.
Try It Yourself
The “Pingo ergo sum” exhibition features time-lapse videos showing how so-called brain paintings come about and offers visitors opportunities to watch live streams of German and Austrian painters including Erwin Wurm, Franz West and Christian Stock using this technique to create images. Anyone who would like try their own hand at brain painting will have the chance to do so from April 6 to May 27. Preregister by calling 0732.7272.51 or via e-mail to center@aec.at. You can also watch a brain painting take shape by logging onto the ping-ergo-sum.de website.
Brain Painting
In the beginning was BCI. This software enables people with locked-in syndrome to interact with their surroundings. BCI was Adi Hoesle’s starting point in developing brain painting, a way for paralyzed people who are unable to communicate verbally or with gestures to paint pictures generated by decoding their brain patterns. Visitors to a small exhibition in 2007-08 were invited to test brain painting. Artists including Neo Rauch and Thomas Ruff were the next to give it a try. This gave birth to the idea of “Pingo ergo sum – The Picture Emerges from the Brain.”
Adi Hoesle
Adi Hoesle was born in 1959. After graduating high school, he received training as a specialist nurse for anesthesia and intensive care, and then went on to study art at the Free College of Fine Arts in Nürtingen. Since the early 1990s, Adi Hoesle has been working with regeneration measures in an artistic & cultural context as well as in R&D and business.
pdf press release “Pingo ergo sum”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/6895271266/
Brain Painting / Michael Kaczorowski / Printversion / Album
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D61ewavGWL8&feature=player_embedded
