TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Vital signs’: EEG wearables and the nervous system of the city
T2 - EEG wearables and the nervous system of the city
AU - Littlefield, Melissa M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Society for Studia Neophilologica.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Human electroencephalography (EEG) has become a mobile, extra-laboratory technology capable of collecting human brain signals while wearers are on the move. Many of the wearable EEG projects that artists, academics, and companies have undertaken are based around the idea that the technology will grant us ‘instrumental intimacy’, or better access to our own bodies and minds. A related but divergent trend in EEG data projects uses the human as a mobile sensing device whose brainwave data can be collected and aggregated for the purpose of urban planning. Many of these neurogeographic projects encourage city developers to reconsider not only how urban planning data is gathered, but also which data is underrecognized and underutilised. In this essay, I examine two examples of EEG-based projects aimed at altering urban design: #wildcities, Dan Raven-Ellison’s ‘guerrilla’ EEG project that played a role in London’s National Park City status; and Multimer, a company invested in rendering city spaces legible to new kinds of consumerism based on brainwave data. In both examples, the environment (not the individual) is figured as increasingly understandable and malleable via aggregate EEG analysis, while humans are often reduced to instrumental antennae, producing, channelling, and collecting the brainwave data.
AB - Human electroencephalography (EEG) has become a mobile, extra-laboratory technology capable of collecting human brain signals while wearers are on the move. Many of the wearable EEG projects that artists, academics, and companies have undertaken are based around the idea that the technology will grant us ‘instrumental intimacy’, or better access to our own bodies and minds. A related but divergent trend in EEG data projects uses the human as a mobile sensing device whose brainwave data can be collected and aggregated for the purpose of urban planning. Many of these neurogeographic projects encourage city developers to reconsider not only how urban planning data is gathered, but also which data is underrecognized and underutilised. In this essay, I examine two examples of EEG-based projects aimed at altering urban design: #wildcities, Dan Raven-Ellison’s ‘guerrilla’ EEG project that played a role in London’s National Park City status; and Multimer, a company invested in rendering city spaces legible to new kinds of consumerism based on brainwave data. In both examples, the environment (not the individual) is figured as increasingly understandable and malleable via aggregate EEG analysis, while humans are often reduced to instrumental antennae, producing, channelling, and collecting the brainwave data.
KW - bio-mapping
KW - EEG wearables
KW - human signal mapping
KW - Neuroscience
KW - urban planning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106227269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1080/00393274.2021.1916998
DO - 10.1080/00393274.2021.1916998
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85106227269
SN - 0039-3274
VL - 93
SP - 190
EP - 205
JO - Studia Neophilologica
JF - Studia Neophilologica
IS - 2
ER -