York University, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
PhD in Digital Media/Computational Arts
Ilze Briede, ilzeb@yorku.ca
Supervisor: Prof. Mark-David Hosale
Committee members: Prof. Jane Tingley and Prof. Graham Wakefield.

Emergent Feedback Loops: Bridging Human Brain Activity, Cybernetic System, and Spectatorship.

2022 - 2026

Problem statement.
This dissertation interrogates the prevailing mode of knowledge construction. A reductionist approach (deconstruction – I.B.) fragments the world to understand it by looking at its isolated constituent parts. Buckminster Fuller (1979) notably critiqued this as overspecialisation, which has increasingly distanced disciplinary fields from one another until now. In contrast, a more holistic and integrated approach brings together diverse disciplines in conversation to grapple with complex ideas. The interdisciplinary (reconstruction – I.B.) model is not novel but has deep historical antecedents starting from the Ancient Greek philosophers, the Renaissance period, cybernetic systems thinking, and research-creation paradigms - all propagated shared understandings and frameworks to transcend a collective fused idea. I see the benefit of keeping highly specialised knowledge that offers depth in collaboration with other fields (construction – I.B.), not just because it provides a multiple-disciplinary and integrated vantage point. This combination of co-existing while remaining specialised is strictly needed for each discipline to re-evaluate itself through the lenses of other disciplines, thus offering catalytic moments for re-invention, synthesis and fundamental shifts in specialisation itself. To me, that is an expression of emergence. The challenge in working with brain data through artistic and scientific paradigms is to explore quantitative brain data through qualitative experiences and means. There is a gap in constructively engaging with data to explore its shifting meanings continuously. The meaning does not define the object but is merely a projection upon it. As more meanings it can “contain” or reflect, the more profound understanding one can have about a thing. My dissertation aims to produce a scenario where such reflection points and opportunities can be produced and populated through mutual feedback loops between the cybernetic system, the human brain and the audience.

Prototype Diaries.

Bibliography.

Systems and algorithmic thinking

Holland, H. John. 1998. Emergence. From Chaos to Order. Reading, Massachusetts: Helix Books.

Hosale, Mark-David, Sana Murrani, and Alberto de Camp, eds. 2018. Worldmaking as Techné. Cambridge: Riverside Architecture Press.

Iuli, Cristina. “Information, Communication, Systems: Cybernetic Aesthetics in 1960s Cultures.” In The Transatlantic Sixties: Europe and the United States in the Counterculture Decade, edited by Grzegorz Kosc, Clara Juncker, Sharon Monteith, and Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, 226–55. Transcript Verlag, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1wxt2b.12.

Shanken A. Edward, ed. 2015. Systems. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Whitelaw, Mitchell. 2006. Metacreation. Art and Artificial Life. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Schools of Cybernetic Fields

UK School of Cybernetics:

Ashby, W. Ross. 2015. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Eastford: Martino Fine Books. (A re-print of the 1956 original text).

Pask, Gordon. 1961. An approach to Cybernetics. Hutchinson: A Radius Book.

Pickering, Andrew. 2010. The Cybernetic Brain. Sketches from Another Future. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Sloan, Kate. 2019. Art, Cybernetics and Pedagogy in Post-War Britain. New York and London: Routledge.

American School of Cybernetics:

Foerster, Heinz. 2003. Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition. New York: Springer.

Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Post Human. Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Wiener, Norbert. 2013. Cybernetics of the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Eastford: Martino Fine Books. (A re-print of the 1961 original text).

 Cybernetic art

Apter, Michael J. “Cybernetics and Art.” Leonardo 2, no. 3 (1969): 257–65. https://doi.org/10.2307/1572155.

Ascott, Roy. “The Cybernetic Stance: My Process and Purpose.” Leonardo 40, no. 2 (2007): 189–97.

Ascott, Roy. 2003. Telematic embrace: Visionary theories of art, technology, and consciousness. Edited by Edward A. Shanken. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Fernández, María. “Detached from HiStory: Jasia Reichardt and Cybernetic Serendipity.” Art Journal 67, no. 3 (2008): 6–23.

Ilfeld, Etan J. “Contemporary Art and Cybernetics: Waves of Cybernetic Discourse within Conceptual, Video and New Media Art.” Leonardo 45, no. 1 (2012): 57–63.

Reichart, Jasia. 1971. Cybernetics, Art and Ideas. London: Studio Vista London.

Reichart, Jasia. 1969. Cybernetic Serendipity. The Computer and the Arts. New York and Washington: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publishers.

Visual, acoustic and kinetic artworks that utilise Brain EEG data

Ahmedien, Diaa Ahmed Mohamed. “Reactivating the Neural Dimension Role in Interactive Arts.” Leonardo 50, no. 2 (2017): 182–83.

Fedorova, Natalia. "The first neuroopera ‘Noor’: transparent brain and the end of humanistic ethics?." Russian Journal of Communication 9, no. 3 (2017): 310-314.

Gingrich, Oliver, Evgenia Emets, and Alain Renaud. "Transmission–Sonifying, Visualising and Analysing Neural Activity through Telepresence." In Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2014). BCS Learning & Development, 2014.

Lucier, Alvin, and Arthur Margolin. “Conversation with Alvin Lucier.” Perspectives of New Music 20, no. 1/2 (1981): 50–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/942399.

Nijholt, Anton, ed. Brain Art: Brain-Computer Interfaces for Artistic Expression. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019.

Pearlman, Ellen. “Brain Opera: Exploring Surveillance in 360-Degree Immersive Theatre.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 39, no. 2 (2017): 79–85.

W. Joseph, Branden. “Biomusic.” Grey Room, no. 45 (2011): 128–50.

Wakefield, Graham, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Marcos Novak, Dan Overholt, Lance Putnam, John Thompson, Wesley Smith. 2008. “The AlloBrain: an Interactive Stereographic, 3D Audio Immersive Environment.” In Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems Association for Computing Machinery.

Neuroscience and brain data analysis

Fornito, Alex, Andrew Zalesky, and Edward Bullmore. 2016. Fundamentals of Brain Network Analysis. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Elsevier.

Humphries, Mark. 2021. The Spike. An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Marcus, Gary and Jeremy Freeman, eds. 2015. Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Sporns, Olaf. 2012. Discovering the Human Connectome. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Human physiology and psychology

Cacioppo, T. John, Louis G. Tassinary, and Gary G. Berntson, eds. 2017. Handbook of Psychophysiology. Fourth Edition. Cambridge: University Press.

Damasio, Antonio. 2019. The Strange Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books.

Damasio, Antonio. 2005. Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Penguin Books.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2004. Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors That Shape Embryos. Berkeley, Calif: North Atlantic Books.

Radvansky, A. Gabriel. 2021. Human Memory. Fourth Edition. New York and London: Routledge.

Sherwood, Lauralee, Robert Kell, and Christopher Ward. 2013. Human Physiology. From Cells to Systems. Second Canadian Edition. Nelson Education Ltd.

Walter, William Grey. 1961. The Living Brain. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.