From Neuro-potentials to Aesthetic Perception. BCI and the Arts

Abstract

A cup with a straw was on the table in the oversized light-flooded room and several cigarette boxes were randomly lying there. �䀆e artist was sitting besides the table on a mobile o�怆怆ce chair with rests of worn out black leather, slightly leaning his head side- and backwards. �䀆e body was so infirmly and strangely twisted cowering on the chair as if it would fall to ground soon. He had a cigarette fixed between the middle and the index finger of the hand at his le�怇 drooped arm by a young assistant. With an iron will and like a Foucault pendulum he now swung his le�怇 arm, in an angle of about 30 degree against the body, as long back and forth till he got, at the highest amplitude of the arm, the cigarette caught by his mouth an avidly sucked up the smoke. He repeated these acrobatic movements several times till the cigarette was consumed up to the filter. �䀆en he dropped it from the flabby hand to the floor laced with color splatters. Now the assistant reaching with both arms through the armpits from behind the chair skillfully grasped the artist’s right flexed arm by a kind of Rautek-grip, li�怇ed the saggy body up so that it wasn’t any more at risk of falling down, and then brought the cup with the straw to the artist’s mouth. In this situation the artist’s mental presence and alertness seemed to rise, to spread all over the room, to apprehend all and everything. �䀆e resulting electrified atmosphere and mood could almost be felt physically. But the usual lively ado and creative fabricating in an artist’s workshop had given way to an unbearable silence. �䀆e assistants moved slowly, carefully and thoughtful as if time would stop soon. �䀆e pictures, the assistants, the interior, and the room itself appeared in their surreal interconnectedness like the inner of a cocoon irresistibly going to dissolve into pastel colored blurs. In that very moment, in the moment of cessation and immobility, the completely flagged skinny and via a tracheostoma ventilated body merged with the medical machines and gadgets and, from the aesthetic point of view, turned into a sculpture of timeless beauty within his ‘cathedral’. �䀆e encounter with the ALS diseased painter who couldn’t hold a pen with his weak hands any more refers to the question an artist asks the prince in Gottfried Ephraim Lessing‘s play Emilia Galotti: „Or do