NeuroRight Arcades - Roel Heremans
GUM GALLERY
From 15 May 2023, you can explore transdisciplinary artist Roel Heremans’s 5 NeuroRight Arcades in the Gallery of GUM (Ghent University Museum). Take a seat at one of the Arcade game machines during your museum visit and connect with your brainwaves. Heremans and his team were inspired by the 5 NeuroRights, which researchers at Columbia University defined, to protect the inner workings of our brain against the rapidly-developing neurotechnologies that might be able to ‘decode’ and perhaps even influence our thoughts and emotions.
18 May till 31 August 2023
GUM GALLERY (4th floor of the museum)
part of your museum visit
Innovation is moving faster and often further than we might have ever believed possible. In the future, neuro-wearables and brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) will create a host of new, interesting possibilities, acquiring information from our brain and influencing our thoughts and feelings. But what happens when companies or governments use these technologies for purposes we don’t necessarily agree with, or which cross certain boundaries? The existing social and ethical frameworks have yet to provide an answer to this. To this end, researchers of the NeuroRights Initiative (Columbia University) have defined various ‘NeuroRights’ to protect our brain from undesired, external influences.
They are:
Mental Privacy
Nothing or nobody may look into your ‘head’ unless you consent to this.
Personal Identity
Nothing or nobody may change your self-image, you have control over your mental and physical integrity.
Free Will
Nothing or nobody may influence or limit your free will.
Equal Access to Mental Augmentation
Everyone should have fair access to any device that makes us more intelligent.
Protection against Algorithmic Bias
Nothing or nobody may be subjected to prejudice or discrimination based on their specific profile.
The aim is to have companies and governments commit to ensuring that digital advances do not infringe on these NeuroRights.
In developing the NeuroRight Arcades, Roel Heremans wants to make these NeuroRights more tangible and help visitors better understand how intrinsically important they are. After finishing the game, you can download a printout of your brainwaves.
And in that same moment that you become aware of your own rights, you may get this strange feeling that perhaps the Arcades were doing exactly what they were warning you about…
Co-production: Ars Electronica Futurelab, C-TAKT Pelt, Werktank Leuven, De Kunstenwerkplaats Brussels
Interactive design: Tyrell
Logo design: Johannes Pöll, Nicolas Naveau & Sander Heremans
BCI software: Yuhan Zhang, Thai Duong Truong & Maarten Francq
Narrator: Richard Wells
Neurological advice: Chie Nakatani and Cees van Leeuwen
Artistic advice: Hideaki Ogawa, Angela de Weijer, Emanuele Dainotti, Evan Cole
Arcade design: C-Takt, Rudi van de Kerkhof
With the support of Flanders, State of the Art.
