NEURO KNITTING - by Mar Canet and Varvara Guljajeva

Neuro Knitting is a project that uses an interface that is becoming very popular inside the new media scene: a brain waves reader. I copy the description from their website:

" We have plotted brainwave activity into a knitted pattern. Using a wearable, non-invasive EEG headset, we recorded users’ affective states while listening to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”, concretely the aria and its first seven variations. The audio was about 10 minutes long and we downsampled each second of the signal coming from the 14 channels of the EEG device. Three main features were measured: relaxation, excitement, and cognitive load.  After recording, those features were converted into a knitting pattern. Hence, every stitch of a pattern corresponds to a unique brain state stimulated by the act of listening. It means the user’s affective response to music is captured every second and memorised in the knitted garment pattern."

This is a nice example on how art can be combined with science and technology. The best thing about it is that the artists created an open source tool that gives a new brain to your knitting machine and makes projects like this one accesible to everyone. The project is called Knitic.