Your Brain on Art: A New Paradigm to Study Artistic Creativity Based on the ‘Exquisite Corpse’ Using Mobile Brain-Body Imaging

Abstract

We propose a novel experimental paradigm to investigate the human creative process in artistic expression using mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) technology, which allows the study of brain dynamics in freely behaving individuals performing in natural settings that promote authentic artistic experiences. Our proposed multimodal experimental protocol is based on the ‘Exquisite Corpse’—a collaborative, chance-based game created by the Surrealists in the 1920s. In this protocol, three artists collaborate to create the start, middle, and end of an improvisational piece of artwork, which can be implemented across artistic domains, including the visual arts, dance, music, creative writing, acting and even gastronomic art. Performers are instrumented with wireless scalp electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain activity and inertial measurement units (IMUs) to capture body movement, while video cameras capture the evolving gestures of the participants and the art pieces. Sample adaptive denoising algorithms, computer vision, visualization, sonification and machine learning methods allow for the pre-processing, tagging, parsing, storing, aggregating, analyzing, and sharing of complex containerized multimodal data. These MoBI data and associated behavioral, cultural, demographic, and situational data collected under the Exquisite Corpse paradigm holds the promise of a better understanding of functional (affective, cognitive and motor) and dynamic brain processes, the study of the neuroscience of individuality and group behavior, and the design of robust affective and artistic brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and other diagnostic and therapeutical devices.