Artists these days don’t just use paintbrushes and canvas. Spencer Finch, in fact, uses brainwaves, a popular sixties TV show, microwave signals, and the bluest stars in the night sky. Aptly named “Blue (one second brainwave transmitted to the star Rigel),” this piece is actually an early 1990s neuroscience experiment that won’t yield results for almost 2,000 years.
While you hunker down in front of the TV screen, which is showing an episode of Hawaii Five-O, the electrodes behind the orange chair read your brainwaves. Then the antenna sends microwave signals containing your brain waves to the bluest star in the sky. The bluest star in the sky, for those of you who don’t know, is 960 years away. At least according to Finch’s calculations. Let’s hope the ‘waves get there safely without running into alien ships.
Here’s another sky-oriented sculpture by Finch, called Cloud.
Images courtesy of Spencer Finch
