Electrical Potential: Mind Reading as Collaborative Action

Mind reading is often characterized as a mechanism of surveillance that ferrets out information against our will; but it can also be collaborative, involving partnerships and networks. Indeed, researchers and artists have been using human electroencephalography (EEG), to produce aggregate data sets for the creation of musical symphonies, city planning, and affective mapping. In this chapter, Littlefield examines two such projects: the “Brainwave Symphony” (2015), a promotional project associated with the Netflix series Sense8, and the work of Multimer, a company whose slogan is “Better Decisions Based on Human Signals.” She argues that both projects illustrate beliefs about the power of aggregating brain-based data for political and artistic purposes, even as each relies on constructions of brainwaves as material objects.