Discussion – Chris Buckingham
At the start of the project I had a discussion with Chris Buckingham, one of the PhD students and he was telling me about an experience he encountered whereby he used his brainpower in order to determine the outcome of a film. He explained how he had to place a brainwave sensor device on his head and then sit down and watch a parkour film. Certain outcomes of the film would be determined by how focused or relaxed he was. He told me a funny antidote of how he lost concentration and the actor in the film completely missed the jump and went thumping to the ground.
I found this fascinating as I’d never heard about nor thought of brainwaves actually being measurable and useful to controlling external outcomes unrelated to the body. It almost feels like Sci-fi is coming to life and mind control is no longer in the distant future. Its amazing to me the power of the brain and how majority of society don’t know about it and how I could make them aware of this. And of course it’s always been a child hood dream to have a mind control super power and now I could have the opportunity to bring this to life.
MyndPlay
Looking into the experience Chris had further, I managed to discover a Motherboard article about the interactive mind control experience which gave me further information and a more in-depth understanding of the purpose behind the project.
Refer to Research Folder
Scans of my annotated article notes.
Learnt
- MyndPlay – The name of the device used to record brainwaves
- Parkour Game that is controlled by the players mind
- More concentration = Character will successfully make the parkour jump
- Not concentrating = Character will not make the jump
- High Concentration = High frequency and amplitude wave
- Low Concentration = Low frequency and low amplitude wave
- The wave of brainpower will be shown on the screen for the player to identifying how much they are concetrating
Key Thoughts/ Questions
Thoughts and questions I had from reading through the article
- MyndPlay Technology – Look into more detail
- Tre Azam was the creator – Look into more detail
- Brainwave frequencies – Emotions
- Can the brain control character’s emotions?
- Colours relate to relaxed and focused
- Used to treat stress – Train brain to cope better – Could this be used for other mental or even physical illnesses? – therapy
- MyndGuardian
Plan
- Research more into Mynd Technology and Tre Azam? – What else has it been used for?
- Has brainwaves been used to treat other illnesses?
- Brainstorm Brains – Other areas to look into – Structure, data, neurons etc?
- Mind control – Super powers – Historical Figures
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