Abstract (Short paper)

Keywords: Thought form, mind-machine interface, thought-photography, thoughtography, science fiction, neuroimaging, neuroheadset, digital thinking.

Scientists and artists have attempted to capture thought in the form of images for over a century. In the early twentieth century photographic plates and nitrate film were used by scientists, artists and “spiritualists” to record thoughts or mental energy, including thoughts, feelings and dreams, through the process of making physical contact with fingers or foreheads on light sensitive plates. With the discovery of X-ray photography around the same time, the photographic image played a role in validating claims about the possibility of revealing the invisible. These claims were further extended with the invention of electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924. EEG allowed for new possibilities in the study of neuronal activities and for identifying new patterns of thinking. The formation of these image-making practices, in both art and science, laid the foundations for how we literally and figuratively re-imagine and express images of thought in the 21st century. In this short paper we provide an account of “thoughtography” and how it developed through the twentieth century as a cultural artefact. This account provides a framework to consider the recent trend to crowdfund and mass-produce non-invasive mindmachine interfaces for consumers, ready and willing to measure and directly interface cognitive and emotional relationships with and to our work environments and domestic social lives.

• Kellyann Geurts is a PhD candidate at Monash University and employed at RMIT University, Australia. Through digital imaging, she explores ways to represent thought patterns and mental spaces into two and three-dimensional forms. The project was recently presented at the Digital Subject III: Temporalities symposium, University of Paris VIII. Kellyann’s Master of Arts degree project: A Theory of Error was presented at Goldsmiths College London, UK, and University of Amsterdam, NL. Melbourne exhibitions include Dianne Tanzer Gallery; RMIT Gallery and National Neurosciences Facility, Melbourne University.
• Mark Guglielmetti has a PhD in Visual Art for examining artificial life as a contemporary artifact in image making and not through the domain of computer science. The culmination of this research built on the artists’ studio-led research practice into the digitally mediated reconfiguring human in a Master of Arts degree exploring visual perception, completed in 2004. Guglielmetti has been widely published including in Leonardo, Computers in  Entertainment (ACM), and the Philosophy of Photography, and has presented at numerous conferences in Europe, the US and Australia. Guglielmetti’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including ISEA2011 Istanbul, Ars Electronica 2004, Biennial of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP) 2004, the Melbourne International Film Festival 2001, and showcased at the Architectural Biennial in Beijing, China, 2004 and in “Australian Screen Culture”, at the Barbican in London, UK, 2004 and Centre Pompidou (Paris, FR) in 2003.

Full text (PDF) p. 655-658