[ISEA2020] Artist Statement: Matthew Mosher — Khong Khro

Artist Statement

Tags: Algorithm, Biofeedback, EEG Headset, Interactive Installation

This artwork uses an EEG headset to provide luminescent biofeedback on a participant’s level of focus and stillness. It measures Beta waves, associated with attention, and Theta brainwaves, associated with drowsiness, and motion with an accelerometer [1,2]. This information is visualized on a custom reflected light LED display, and changes color and pattern based on a deterministic flocking algorithm, shown in the included image. Since each LED’s position is fixed, the flock does not progress through XY planer space but through RGB color space. After establishing baseline values, the participant’s Beta and Theta power influence the alignment and separation of the flock respectively. With high focus the color of the display becomes uniform and monochromatic as each LED tries to align its color with its neighbors. When distracted the colors separate as each LED tries to become unique in color.

  • Boston (USA) native Matthew Mosher is an intermedia artist, research professor, and Fulbright Scholar who creates embodied experiential systems. He received his BFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006 and his MFA in Intermedia from Arizona State University in 2012. While in Phoenix, Arizona he co-founded the non-profit [nueBOX] residency program for emerging performance and installation artists. Currently, he is an assistant professor of Games and Interactive Media at the University of Central Florida. Mosher exhibits his work across the United States, and internationally in India, China, Korea, Austria, Finland, and the Netherlands. His research is published in the ACM Computer-Human Interaction, Tangible Embodied Interaction, and New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference proceedings. His public installations, dynamic performances, and experiential systems bridge the physical and digital worlds by mixing new media, sensing technology, computer programming, collaborative practice, and traditional sculpture processes. mosher.art