Aoibheann Greenan—The Ninth Muse

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The Ninth Muse speculates the creative and social ramifications of brain-machine interfacing, drawing inspiration from the Nine Muses of ancient Greek mythology. The exhibition navigates the parallels between AI and the muse, a commonly cited metaphor that obscures the corporate influence in our product interactions. The work centers on the 'Muse' headband, a consumer-grade brain-machine interface employing EEG neurofeedback to enhance meditation. Greenan envisions the potential for such technology to infiltrate our unconscious minds, offering feminist strategies to counter corporate entanglements.

Greenan situates 20th-century surrealist techniques for hacking the unconscious as a precursor to the current surge of neurotechnologies in the consumer market. The installation updates Dalí's hypnagogic sleep method by situating the Muse headband above an automated office chair, which drops keys to trigger imaginative material.* Through a process akin to Dalí’s Paranoiac-critical method, Greenan has made a series of collage drawings that provide the gateway to the exhibition's titular video piece.*

A giant, mutable sculpture, inspired by neural architecture, becomes a canvas for performers to probe and manipulate, while its chromakey-patterned surface integrates a stream of AI-generated imagery. The soundscape weaves in an invocation to the ninth muse, Calliope, taking cues from various feminist texts. This script prompts the AI to modify the imagery as a poet recites, resulting in a series of monstrous mutations. Glitches, stemming from the artist's Muse-driven brainwave fluctuations, intermittently disrupt the image, repurposing the headband as a tool for both artistic augmentation and corporate resistance. This invocation will be performed live on the opening night.

*Dalí would nap in an armchair, holding a set of keys above a metal plate, whereupon the sound of them falling would awaken him with imaginative material for his work.

*Dalí  would combine multiple disparate images into one, to stimulate in himself and the viewer ‘a delirium of interpretation’.