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DXARTS Receives Inaugural Bergstrom Award

Submitted by Arts & Sciences Web Team on April 4, 2014 - 5:30pm

DXARTS has been chosen as the inaugural recipient for the College of Arts & Sciences Bergstrom Award.  The award will fund the creation of a new "Art + Brain Lab" to be housed at DXARTS and intended to foster artistic collaborations arising from investigations at the intersection of neuroscience and digital art. The Bergstrom Award for Art and Science was established for the purpose of supporting projects or activities at the UW that enhance the student experience and bridge the intersection between art and science.

The Art and the Brain Lab will fill a need,  to conduct hands-on research at the intersection of art and neuroscience, as well as attract students with natural science backgrounds to collaborate in art-science research.  The first phase of development will allow the lab to acquire core equipment enabling faculty and students to build EEG data-driven responsive artworks and environments.  These interactive systems will consist of feedback loops between neural activity in users and variations in multimedia output. Changes in specific parameters of a user's brain activity will determine changes in the artwork and, conversely, changes in the artwork may also trigger changes in the user's brain activity.  By studying such interactive systems, the lab hopes to facilitate research with the potential for expanding artistic creation, interaction design, human-computer interface development, and neuroscientific knowledge.

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