Project:
We want to build a giant brain into which a small group of people could enter. The outside would be a chicken wire frame covered with wrinkled sheets and signs or symbols (like a giant eyeball) indicating the different areas. On the inside, things get crazy! The ceiling and "walls" are covered in black fabric or trash bags onto which are painted neurons and synapses. Different color-coded pathways indicating different senses (i.e. how music is experienced) are made with blinking Christmas lights.
Audience Participation:
Participants can walk in and around the structure, experiencing both the grey outside and interactive inside. They will be able to "turn on" different pathways and learn in a very abstract way how the brain works. We'll pose a few questions on the outside, like "What does your brain look like?" or "What does Bonnaroo taste like?" and have people respond with any media they see fit on the white outside of the brain, so that by the end, what was once a white surface is covered with people's interpretations of their own minds.
Materials:
1. Structural posts
2. Chicken wire
3. Christmas lights
4. Garbage bags
5. Spray paint
6. White or grey sheets
5 comments:
The first hurdle is to create a good enough representation that you reach suspension of disbelief that this is a brain. I understand the narrative but am not convinced about the execution. The piece has to be really engaging to look at.
I like the idea of this but there are a few things to work out. If the white outside is made of wrinkled sheets, how will people be able to write on it? Maybe you should provide a more usable surface around the areas that ask people to react.
I'm also worried about using plastic garbage bags on the inside. It's going to be really hot in the sun and plastic doesn't breathe. If you want people to chill inside the brain there needs to be some air flow.
I agree with Russ, if your going to make a literal representation of a brain, it needs to be really good. To represent how we percieve music is not simply about a synapse connecting in a line and a light turning on. For every perceptual experience, and music especially, the physical hardwiring of our brain that recieves the sound begins a number of different processes that reach to lots of different parts of our brain. Some sounds result in the physiological impulse to dance or move, some result in the activation of a chain of memories, some result in a logical desire to understand the music.
What is it about the brain that drives this project?
Maybe instead of one big brain, we make a hundred thousand small ones that can somehow be personalized with the experience of the audience members???
one iconic big brain to draw people in with lights - big glowing brain at the middle of the pod, little brians made of pink sponges
Check out the new drawing. John recommended the central brain be a chicken wire, pallet wrap, red spray paint sandwich. Packed between the layers, which are formed like wrinkles in the brain are blinking xmas lights. The synaptic strands spread from the central brain out into the campground with lots of little blinking orbs.
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