The Downloadable Brain Opening Event

About

Join the launch of Cognitive Sensations’ new season ‘The Downloadable Brain’ – a three-month public programme of events, new-media art, and critical essays exploring the biological connection between humans and machines.

Audiences are invited to be the first to experience artist Sarah Selby's new immersive digital artwork, as well as hear more about the work of featured writer Stephen Oram and artists Marcos Lutyens and Ash//Ella, with more artists and writers to be announced on the night.

The Concept:

Decisions, emotions and everyday movements are traced by the technological giants of our society, making personal data the currency of the 21st century. This information is key in the economic and social climate of the digital age. It is mined to profile predictions around an individual’s consumer habits, as well as their online consumption and behaviour. Cognitive Sensations seeks to delve a little deeper into the future of this narrative, drawing upon the central interface of this story; the brain.

'The Downloadable Brain' is a programme that examines the biological connection between humans and technology. It visualises and imagines a foreseeable future of sentient machines and the rise of Artificial Intelligence. It is a world of immense biological and technological innovation. A space where emotional and computational intelligence meet, where the industry of artificial brains and cyborgs is born.

The conditions and rules for this digital future have yet to be determined. Yet the symbiosis between humans and AI draws increasingly closer. Progression in BCI and neural-lace technology enable human thought to be read and stored by machines, and humans, in turn, can nudge screen activity through the power of their thoughts alone. What should we expect as brain-reading technology becomes increasingly embedded within society?