REAFFERENCE is the brain child of an interdisciplinary team of artists and scientists with a common interest in embodiment, dance, neurofeedback, brain computer interface and interactive visualisation.

The eponymous performance was develloped during the automn 2020 as a proposal for the EDGE Festival, an art festival focused on the collaboration of neuroscientists and artists. A performer with an EEG (Electroencephalogram) head-set tracking her concentration and relaxation states, interacts with the visuals.

This concentration and relaxation is induced by specific movements created by the performer inspired by therapeutic movement techniques and in continuous coordination with the environment. This included specifically coded visuals, sound and the depiction of the brainwaves themselves. In a live iteration of this piece, the audience and their energy would also affect the performer.

Thus the visual environment becomes an algorithmic visualization of the performer’s cerebral space, simulating the growth of organic bodies driven by the data registered during movement and rest. In an abstract digital space, the neuronal flora flourishes stimulated by behavior, movement and their reflection in the EEG trace, as an allegory of the ever interacting foundations of our cerebral activity. In fact, the more relaxed and focused is the performer, the faster and the more symmetric will be the growth.

REAFFERENCE is the thought that becomes the painting, and the painting that reveals the thought.