Published in: Beat Suter, Renè Bauer, Mela Kocher (eds.), (2021). Narrative Mechanics. Strategies and Meanings in Games and Real Life. What do stories in games have in common with political narratives? Transcript Verlag Zürich.
In the following article we will meander. This is precisely the narrative mechanism that is used to outwit complex content. It happens mainly in public space online, in the agora of politics, and physically in the arena of the urban games in our daily lives, which has changed drastically in the times of the pandemic.
Margarete Jahrmann& Thomas Wagensommerer. voice/text: Jahrmann& Martin Kaiser/ Kinshasa
Ludic work, Game und Installation, featured at exhibition AMAZE 2018.
commissioned by Andreas Lange, Computerspielemuseum Berlin/ Hauptstadt Kulturfonds Berlin.
Neuroflow embraces brain wave analysis and meditation as game mechanics.
The game art piece is an emanation of the Neurospace performance-series, staged as research LARP (thanks to Herwig Kopp, Berlin) in 2017 at Computerspielemuseum Berlin, funded by Capital Cultural Fund Germany.
Fly through, Level1
EYE Level
artists brain in resting state
EYE capture/source
A. Lange, commissioner
TEXT/ Voice over used by several Player Avatars, NPCs:
THE CRAB ORACLE: Exploiting the bootstrap method or pre-enactment in space habitats Margarete Jahrmann& Marian Kaiser
Predicting the future is an essential function of the nervous system. (Human physiological measures anticipate what seem to be unpredictable future events by deviating from a baseline before an event occurs, in the same direction that they will continue to deviate after that event occurs. ) Introducing the bootstrap method: The appeal of the bootstrap is that we can use it to make an inference about some experimental result when the statistical theory is uncertain or even unknown. … The bootstrap gives us an empirical approach to estimate the theoretical variability among possible values of a sample… The beauty of the bootstrap is that it can transcend theory: we can use the bootstrap to make an inference about some experimental result when the theory is uncertain or even unknown.
I have been here for a year, now. Watching my decision demons on autopilot. The Simulation: Data for the Bootstrap! Extreme inner states emerge and disappear. I’m my future’s very own electromagnetic material. I eat, I sleep, I train. A movement a day. A different one every day. For 5 days. Then a 2-day recap. The next week, another 5. For 5 weeks, then 2 weeks of recap. After 357 days, I have an arsenal of 255 possible movements.
presentiment More recently, two articles in Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience reported a meta-analysis of experiments on “predictive anticipatory activity” or “presentiment”(Mossbridgeetal.,2012, 2014).
Pre-cogonition. Pre-sentiment. Sure. But what does it mean to pre-enact? There is a German word, I cannot translate. Vorahmung. If there is Nachahmung, there has to be Vorahmung. To anticipate a movement that might be enacted in the future, to pre-serve it. Move like you might have to move, without enacting the movement. Train your body for a state to come in an environment, you can’t yet enter. A potential gesture. A contingent twitch. Minimal.
Déja vecu: to claim to recollect past “experiences” that are actually novel. Disordered memory awareness: recollective confabulation in two cases of persistent déjà vecu. Neuropsychologia- Naurutica?
Two days, before we locked the doors, the examiner told me, how the research had started back in the day. About the famous Israeli dancer, who had invented a notation system that would address every single limb. And how the first American space suits were developed on the basis of her system. The astronauts were the first to train possible future movements for an environment, they could not simulate. But they were still training for a surrounding they could anticipate. These days, you have to be your own environment. Take yourself to the stars. Or where ever. There is no outside.
I watch my brain waves enter future states on the screen and take posture. It’s a bit like method acting. Only, you don’t look for an experience from your past, but one you haven’t yet made. If you substract pattern recognition and the decoding system from your perception apparatus, what remains, is the bliss of the real. Noisy, a rush, everything at once. Plug in and drop out of the world. To prepare for the experiment, we would inject ourselves with a subnarcotic dose of an anaesthetic, originally developed to be used on animals. Once we did, we understood, what an-aesthetic is. To exist in a space without images or structures. In an-aesthetics, all you do, is play. constructive episodic simulation hypothesis: neuroimaging studies have revealed striking overlap in the neural processes that are engaged when people remember past events and imagine future events or novel scene. One of the most intriguing findings from neuroimaging studies that is relevant to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis concerns the robust activation of the hippocampus—a region that has long been implicated in memory—when individuals imagine or simulate future events.
The misunderstanding about oracles has always been, that they might provide an answer. But a movement is not about arriving in a position, but what happens in-between positions. There used to be a common crab oracle on pacific islands. You sit on a stony beach, formations of black rock run into the sea, warped like a manic parking space, consisting mainly of holes. You drop a gleaming white stone into one of the curvy tunnels. Within an instant, thousands of crabs shoot out of the stone, in curves and circles, over one another, into the water. Three days later, you do it again.
Brain hack: What impact will psychometric data have on the financial world? a recent development (8,11–16) that evolved from the jackknife
We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.
thermodynamics suggest a single direction for causality; causes normally precede effects. For these reasons, physiological effects preceding a subsequent cause are not generally assumed to exist, and are therefore not usually examined.
Papers used:
Ruth M.J. Byrne, Counterfactual Thought. School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin. In: Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2016. 67:135–57
Explorations in statistics: the bootstrap Douglas Curran-Everett, Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, National Jewish Health, and Department of Biostatistics and Informatics and Department of Physiology and Biophysics, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado Submitted 20 July 2009; accepted in final form 4 September 2009
Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis Julia Mossbridge1*, PatrizioTressoldi 2 and Jessica Utts3 , In:F rontiers of Psychology, 2012
Daniel L. Schacter, Constructive memory: past and future. 2012 S t a t e o f t h e a r t
Nonparametric approaches to inter-subject correlation analysis at the group level. Gang Chen a,⁎, Yong-Wook Shinb,⁎, Paul A. Taylor a, Daniel R. Glen a, Richard C. Reynolds, Robert B. Israel c, Robert W. Cox. NeuroImage journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ynimg
“Preenaction – Spielbasierte Experimentalsysteme” (Daniela Kuka) und Timothee Ingen-Housz) an der Universität der Künste Berlin, 2013, http://preenaction.de/referenzen/publikationen/
Kuka, D.: Das Spiel als Methode – mögliche Zukünfte des urbanen Raums. … Privatization and the Loss of Urbanity, eds. content.associates, Wien 2013
interactive dynamic brainwave sculpture/3D film game
Margarete Jahrmann & Stefan Glasauer 2021
About 20 min of interactive 3D replay of an online brainwave performance recorded on January 22, 2021.
20 min playtime. Drag over object -> HUD menu appears. Rotate, move, zoom the object – and take screenshots of Your favorite state of mind!
Wirebrain HUD
livewirebrain show 2021
WIREBRAIN was generated through the use of two consumer EEG devices (muse) and a home-brew Matlab App during an online connected remote session with a third EEG user. Watch performance on the Neuromatic youtube channel!
Brain-computer interfaces are increasingly available as consumer versions using a low number of electrodes. Currently, the main use of such devices is in aiding meditation practices via biofeedback using frequency analysis of the measured EEG.
Our alternative approach opens up the use of BCI as “Neuromatic Devices”, as tools that can be used beyond current utilization as instrument for scientific measurement or, in its consumer version, for self-optimizing.
Here we present the “Neuromatic Brainwave Broadcast”, a series of online live performances using consumer BCIs that we have developed over the last year and that has been streamed first daily, then weekly on YouTube. The broadcast works as public experiment in which spectators can interact rather than watch passively, which blurs the borders between experimenter, performer, and test subject, at the same time revealing failures and technical problems and making them part of the experience rather hiding and discarding them.
During the broadcast, raw EEG signals from the consumer BCIs worn by two or more remotely connected participants are sent (via a combination of bluetooth and UDP) together with simultaneously captured video of the participants to a central computer. There, real-time visualizations of the EEG signal (implemented via custom-written Matlab code), the video images, text output of the software, and written instructions for the participants are composed to a final output that is streamed together with real-time sound generated from the signals to the Neuromatic YouTube channel. The stream serves as necessarily delayed bio-feedback for participants wearing devices as well as communication channel for the spectators who can comment and influence the performance via chat. The video streams and snippets from the EEG recordings serve as data trace and documentation of the artistic experiment.
The artistic research approach applied here to brain-computer interfaces resulted in the development of a publicly open explorative method, the Brainwave Broadcast, which allowed investigating the space of possibilities spanned by the use of different media for transforming BCIs into Neuromatic devices that allow a collective critical reflection of intrusive brain technology.
In der Pink Noise Brain Jam Session entsteht ein kollektiver Avatar- aus vier EEG playern.
Das Spiel im Thunderdome — brainwave sound gemixt mit voice samples via vocoder, player triggers soundobjects in brainspace. Die kollektive Avatara (bestehend nicht aus einem sondern aus vier Spieler*innen) ist ein tribute to Tina Turner. Wir sehen sie als goddess of the device mit EEG Brain Stirnband. AVATARA, incarnation of a collective goddess, verändert sich mit den Gedankenmustern aller Spieler*innen. Like Aunty referenzieren wir:
Mad Max, launch part im Jahr 2021.
We don´t need another hero….
Wir vocodern gehen wir weiter im PINK noise. Neal Stephensons The diamond age, or, A young lady’s illustrated primer (1995) dient uns als Bauplan für Welt. Der Blueprint eines drei dimensionalen Netzwerks, in dem sich in jeder Facette alle Verbindungspunkte spiegeln…. ist unser AAA ThP playground.
Jede player*in wird als Diamond dargestellt- in eine Wireframe Bounding Box gerahmt.
GodView
DesctructionOfWorld
DiamondAgeNPCs
BoundingBoxInGameEngine
PlayerAvatar
ConceptDraft
Zum einen bezieht sich die DAMOND Box auf den Realen Sozialen Abstandhalter 2021 — aus Draht gebaut, und als Drahtgittermodell auf die Bounding Box von Avatars in Game Engines.
Zum anderen beziehen wir uns auf das Jewel Net of Indra aus dem Hua-yen Buddhism — zu dem meditation practices der Eingang sind. INHALE/EXHALE:::::::::: run!
Nach dem Login mischen wir uns mit NPCs –
Jede/r erhält eine Acronym aus 3 Buchstaben:
Th_P AAA HUD LOL BRB AFK AFK AKA WAV OGG ALP BET DEL GAM THE Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Theta TPP CPP
EEG
AUX P2P AMP BIT SFX
Angespielt startet eine sich ewig wiederholende, rotierende timeline. Sobald wir mit anderen player+s zu nahe am goddess avatar sind, werden wir nach einer bestimmten Inkubationszeit in den God Mode geworden. Wir fliegen – sehen den Thunderplace mit virtuellem Donnerbrunnen von oben. ….
Der Platz zersetzt sich wird wilder schillernd und selbst zu Facetten des diamond networks…. everything is deeply intertwingled!
References:
Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. By Francis H. Cook. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press (The Institute of Advanced Studies of World Religion Series), 1977. xiv, 141 pp. Notes, Glossary, Index. $ 14.50.
Neal Stephenson: The diamond age, or, A young lady’s illustrated primer. Viking, London 1995, ISBN 0-670-86414-5 (englisch).
Margarete Jahrmann & Thomas Wagensommerer, coop Louise Linsenbolz, Georg Luif, Stefan Glasauer.
An Area7lab production.
generative multiplayer EEG Brainpainting based sound game,
commissioned by and exhibited at the first edition of
CIVA FESTIVAL Contemporary Immersive Virtual Art 2021 civa.at
(opening performance LIVE play February 21st 2021)
Multiplayer environment, EEG generated mind sculpture of 4 live players, generative sound environment, brainwave object, photogrammteric environment for live performance mit EEG interfaces, including a simulation of a model of bounding boxes, pandemic infection, spatial distance and mental closeness — in a disruptive eroding world.
Photogrammetric startscene- Donnerbunnen Vienna.
Beside the performance sessions the environment can be entered, a stored version of a brain data object serves as interactive playground/ multiuser game with the aim to foster an implosion into a de-constructivist experience around the Donner Brunnen as historic Vienna site of social contact, exhibition, and erotic attraction, where a new virtual fountain sculpture is generated live by 4 EEG players. Come and participate in the concert at Thunderdome Donnerbrunnen – we play since the time of the wireframe crinoline in the 17th hundreds till the 3D game engine bounding box into real life social distance and collective avatar framing of social interaction.
Neuromatic Game Art – artistic reflexive documentation of a research question…. With the artistic mission statement on the Project Neuromatic Game Art — Critical Play with Neurointerfaces, we are part of the 2020 edition of the Forum Alpbach Showcase of Die Angewandte Vienna, selected artistic research projects. Thanks for this opportunity! August 2020: Forum Alpbach, Digital Showcase artistic research, Die Angewandte
NEWly found footage: TnX dear friend! Unseen and unpublished videos of the 2020 AIL live performance of different emotional states (Thomas Wagensommerer Sound patch, Stefan Glasauer live data from emotional states, Margarete Performance on examination couch and game mechanics) classified by an Deep Dream AI – “I want to see HAPPY monkeys” ! Tnx to Eva Fischer for the opportunity to show at the Post Digital exhibition… and perform according to Ludic ruleZ!
Predicting the Future is an essential Function of the nervous system. this statement is the starting point of a time space narration and a self experiment with a research game design by Margarete Jahrmann and the neuroscientist Stefan Glasauer. The Game Experiment was performed over a period of time simulating repetitive day and night circles on cognitive processes of decision making . Shot on location of the SHEE Habitat International Space University Strassbourg.(Jahrmann/ Dématraz 2017)
Public Screening at Ludic Ouvroir, Prater-atelier Rustenschacherallee 2-4, at the occasion of the #Ludic Method Series, part2, <Autumn 2019.
Reflexive discussion in the form of a space-time expanded interactive film. The text of the film was developed in a rizomatic writing game in exchange with the dramaturg and writer Marian Kaiser. https://player.vimeo.com/video/241363321
Discussion of the Concept with Space Architect Barbara Imhof: PUBLIC EVENT in the context of AP Angewandtearts science research Practice. November 29, 2017, 6 pm, Heligkreuzerhof, 1010 Vienna.
LUDIC METHOD Example #001: The Space architect Barabra Imhof created the space simulation habitat SHEE, Self-deployable habitat for extreme environments. It was used by Margarete Jahrmann and the Francophone filmmaker Samuel Dématraz to create a duration performance with pre-cognition elements and a pre-formed game experiment at the International Space University Strassbourg.
Barbara Imhof responds to the invitation for the first #Ludic method soirée in Vienna: “Seen from a top view, all my work is a game of many rules applied to topics of terrestrial and outer space design research and development. Designing from the unfamiliar might be a good short description…”
