Yarncrafting and Cognition

This was a commissioned artwork exhibited at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum.  Part of Creativity and Cognition conference, 2017.

Materials

Arduino

BCI

Custom Yarn Sculpture

Description

The popularity of knitting and crochet, or yarncraft, is on the ascent. As more people discover its pleasures, enthusiasts and neuroscientists are also realizing that crafting with yarn elicits soothing and therapeutic effects. The meditative aspects of knitting and crochet are already familiar to the legions of yarncrafters, but recognition of the neuroscience of yarncraft is a relatively recent phenomenon. This work embodies the relationship between yarncraft and its neurological benefits with a physical art project. This project takes the form of a large crocheted e-textile brain sculpture with embedded LEDs whose illumination is controlled live by a brain-computer interface worn by a yarncrafting practitioner. This sculpture visualizes the changes in the neurology of the yarncrafter.

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