Currently, much of my work on the capstone so far has been in concept design and prototyping.

Inspiration

The midterm paper was a chance for me to consciously think about where my inspirations for this project have truly come from. Oftentimes, I find myself passively/subconsciously “absorbing” art and media that I find on Instagram, YouTube, or other online platforms. These subconscious inspirations often show up in my artworks and projects without me necessarily realizing, so forcing myself to pay attention to what inspires me as well as how those artists/artworks inspire me has given me a new way to approach my capstone.

Concept Design

For most of the creative process thus far, I have felt that the visual identity of my piece isn’t quite as developed as I’d like it to be. Even with the wide variety of inspirations I have access too, my main difficulty has been translating the underlying themes of my capstone into a meaningful yet visually-appealing installation. Usually, my creative process is highly-reliant on hands-on experimentation and countless iterations to reach a satisfactory end result. For this project, however, I decided to try drafting concept designs using 3D rendering to try to figure out the visual language of the capstone.

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Prototyping

Since I currently don’t have access to any IM lab equipment or resources, I have bought an Arduino kit and soldering iron to get started on basic prototyping. I also found a Mindflex headband to tinker with and figure out the process of repurposing it for reading brain activity. Documented below is my process of wiring the Arduino to the headband circuitry.

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Unfortunately, this prototype failed to work because the battery compartment was defective. I am waiting for another Mindflex headband to arrive in the mail so I can make a second prototype that (hopefully) works.