Hey Steem Family. Have you ever wondered what is happening inside of an artist's brain while they are making art? Sure you have, and to answer that question I decided to do a little experiment . I put on my Neuroheadset, that measures real-time brain activity, on and set out to do a little sketch of Gary Vaynerchuk.
I had fun with this, but I really feel like as far as a legitimate experiment goes this was poor at best. There was really minimal design or planning. It seems to be more entertainment than scientific method, but that is alright I suppose for this first run. I got the chance to learn and try out some new video editing techniques and I learned how to do similar projects better in the future.
I also realized that, in the future, if I am going to do this I need another decent quality camera, and more lighting. My Canon 70D was filming me drawing while my crap phone was recording the brain visualizer on the monitor.
The music in this video is something that I put together in Garage Band while experimenting with layering loops. If anyone is interested I might make it available for download somewhere. It is one of a few instrumental songs have put together since I got an Ipad.
It is hard to make out the different frequency bands in the video of the brain visualizer, but there are different colors that represent the different brainwaves. The main wave patterns that show up here are alpha, beta, theta, and some delta. Alpha waves are represented here by yellow and the others are varying shades of purple and orange.
Next time I do this I will try to either have a better camera on the monitor or find a way to record the screen straight from the computer.
So if you study the video you can almost see where I switch between different types of viewing. When I am looking at the measurements and comparisons of how and where things are there is a lot of activity in the frontal lobe and when I am looking in a more intuitive or organic way and the structure through shapes and patterns you can see more activity in the occipital lobe.
I noticed that my occipital lobe only seemed active in the left hemisphere while my frontal lobe was much more active in the right hemisphere.
While I would expect to see a lot of beta waves(Wide Awake State) associated with concentration, they seemed few and far between compared to the Alpha (Awake/Relaxed State), Theta (Relaxed/Light Sleep State), and even some Delta (Deep Sleep State) waves that show up.
I take that as a representation of an almost meditative state that is created in drawing, a flow state. You can really see those delta and theta waves when I am doing the shading. Shading is such a thoughtless repetitive action that it isn't that surprising to see brainwaves that also show up in a trance state. After all, some of the best trance induction techniques are usually thoughtless repetitive acts such as drumming or dancing. I notice I trance out a lot during shading. I sort of just zone out and watch the value appear. It is interesting to actually see the brain switching from periods of concentration to states of flow that are represented by the different frequency bands.
When I do this in the future I am going to play around with different ways of looking and also different types of drawing. Once I get a better system down I will even move onto painting. My next stab at this I will probably do a more flow state improvised drawing, like doodling, just to see the changes that show up after 15 or 20 minutes of a flow state.
I was introduced to brainwaves shortly after getting into meditation. It was kind of the point where two paths crossed, my search for understanding the unique experiences I was having during meditation and my search for relief from migraines. I found that that binaural beats were effective for headaches and studying, but not so much migraines.
If you aren't familiar with binaural beats it is basically a way of using stereo sound to adjust your brainwaves. Let's just say you wanted to adjust to Alpha waves (awake/relaxed state) which has a frequency range of 8-12 hertz. In simplest terms, if you present a frequency of 10 hertz in one ear and 20 hertz in another, after a little time your brainwaves will adjust to 10 hertz which is the difference between the frequency in each ear.
A few years ago I was playing guitar with a friend and she started to complain that she had a headache all day that just kept getting worse. So I asked if she wanted to try something unorthodox. She said why not. If I'm remembering correctly, I had her play a G note on her top string with her guitar held up to her left ear while I played an F note on my top string in her right ear, which is a difference of almost 11 hertz, within the delta range. After about 5 minutes she started noticing a definite relief.
If you all would like to see more content like this let me know. I'm counting on you, and I appreciate all of your comments.
If you enjoyed this post I hope you upvote, resteem, and follow me. Comment with any insights, suggestions, questions, or complaints. If you know someone that needs to see this then send them this way.
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DUDE!!! MY MAN!!!! I believe I commented in reply to you once when you mentioned this neural headset. I am so, so glad that you made this video. That was amazing! Honestly, this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen on Steem. Bar none. So cool seeing your brain activity change when you use different techniques, especially during shading. I want one of these headsets SO BAD. Oh good lord. I am going to have to go see how much they are now, that is terrible. What have you done to me?!?
My mind is blown. Blown, sir. And of course I haven't even said, great drawing! Wonderful portrait. And then to add a cherry on top, your own original music. I am beyond impressed.
Much love - Carl "Totally Not A Bot" Gnash / @carlgnash
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Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad though so highly of this post. I would encourage anyone interested in the brain to own one of these headsets. They are so fun and insightful. Another program I play around with allows you to "make music" it's pretty primitive, but you can alter the tones up or down so it is fun. It also does wonders for your concentration.
Another one of the programs will pick up and tell you what you are "feeling" whether it is a relaxed state or a state of frustration, which was what it was picking up the whole first part of me trying to figure out how to use the device properly.
This and other types of biofeedback instruments will be big in the future. I wouldn't be surprised to see this type technology worked into many different fields.
I want to do more videos like this, and would love to find anybody in the steemit community with knowledge in the field of Neuroscience to help me with deeper insights as to what exactly is going on. As I said in the video I am a little rusty. A few years ago I was all into Neuroscience, but other interests have filled up the space the past bit.
This is a different outlook and did enjoy the video you made Sir! Keep up the hard work..
Thank you.
This was really interesting. Thanks for the attached brain wave explanations, that helped a lot.
You maaayy want to speed up your future video a bit more, or edit it to only show the bits you find interesting or significant and then want to point out later (or something, I dunno) because it is a taaad long and I have to admit I ended up skipping through it. :P
still very cool. also made me immediately want to order one of those things and see what my brain is doing when I draw.
But I bet it has meditational effects on me as well, for sure.
Thanks for this interesting look on an artists brain XD
Thanks for the re-steem and the input. I agree it was too long. That was one of my biggest problems with editing the video was trying to figure out the timing. It took me about 45 minutes to an hour to draw and I was worried if I sped it up too much then the brain visualizer would have turned into a blur.
Ideally I would have liked the video to be 5 minutes or shorter. To solve this, next time I plan on trying to draw it faster, but I am generally a slow poke when it comes to drawing, otherwise my proportions are truly horrible.
I also thought about clipping out certain parts or speeding up just the slow parts which I will probably do a bit of both next time.
pleasure.
hhmm yeah I bet. I don't think you should try to draw faster hahahaha In my experience, that never ends well XD
but you're right it might blur out the brain scan if it's too fast. hmmm
yeah maybe you can cut out a few "not quite so interesting" (tho that term is relative I suppose) parts and sort of crossfade between specific stages of the drawings to show the correlation of what type of brain activity happens with what type of drawing activity?
no idea. just brainstorming here. ... err.. no pun intended... lol
That's a good suggestion. I will see what I can do about making it a little more dense. ......and don't lie..there was pun intended, and that's okay. I like punny people.
accidental pun, my friend. totally accidental 😏
That was pretty fascinating, definitely one of the more interesting "fireworks displays" I've seen for a while. So to make a slightly more valid experiment you need to wear the thing while in a null state (not entirely sure what you'd be doing there) and have heaps of other people doing likewise? Also variables might help? XD
Really appreciated the "what are we looking at" section :) The included brainwave stuff was a bit of a harder slog to get through but worth it.
Really great idea for a video :D
Thank you for your input. You're right. To be a legitimate experiment it would need controls and variables, not to mention some hypothesis. That's why I think this is a bit more of an exploration than an experiment. I will probably end up doing other activities while wearing this as a comparison, like playing guitar, and even different types of drawings and meditation. I don't know where this will go, but it might eventually get more scientific. I'm not sure that I will run tests on more people though simply for the fact that I don't know any other artists in my area yet to get involved.
Whaaaaaat.. how awesome is that??? So cool and such a great idea, I would love to try this once as well :D I also like your interpretation of the waves, it really makes sense! GJ
Thanks. If you are interezted in a NeuroHeadset I bought mine from www.emotiv.com. There are a few different types. I bought mine a few years ago so some of the programs I am using might not be available anymore. It is a lot of fun.
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Wow, this was really cool to watch. Such a unique post. I've never seen anything like this before. Nice drawing too.
Thank You. It was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to taking the idea a little further. It's always exciting to approach new territory.
Hey @plotbot2015 I would love to get some input from the Friendly Neighborhood Neuroscientist on this post, and maybe get some direction for similar projects or other things I should be looking at.
This is bananas! The way some of the brain lights up at certain points of your drawing made me wonder what you were thinking when you were drawing near things like, the top of the eye, or the temple. I'm a righty and have recently started using my left hand to write and draw. Its very difficult for me right now but my brain feels different when I do it. If you're not ambidextrous I would really be interested in seeing this done with your opposite hand. Maybe when you do the doodles you mentioned?
Thanks for the input. When I draw eyes there is a lot going on. Placement and shape of eyes are so important to likeness. There is a lot of referencing other points and really trying to imagine the eye already drawn properly in place. In future videos I will try to find a way to also talk a little bit about what it is I am thinking while I am working on certain parts. I need to find a way to do it without effecting the readings too much.
I think it will be interesting to see how left handed drawing will effect my brain. That is a great idea and probably, like you said, best suited for the doodling bit.