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Brain Web is an interactive new media art installation that
transforms web navigation into a cognitive and emotional
journey, directly influenced by the participant's brain
activity. The project explores the dynamic relationship between
human consciousness and digital environments. Brain Web also
focuses on researching the psychological effects of digital
media consumption while allowing its users to reflect on their
emotional and cognitive well-being.
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Participants interact with the installation wearing a NeuroSky
MindWave EEG headset, which measures real-time brain states such
as meditation, focus, and stress levels. A custom-built system
interprets these signals and selects web content based on the
user's cognitive and emotional state. A Python script processes
these EEG signals, dynamically curating web content based on the
participant's evolving cognitive and emotional states.
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The installation draws from an extensive dataset of categorized
URLs, each corresponding to specific cognitive markers. As the
user's meditation and attention levels shift, the system
automatically selects and displays websites that correspond to
their current mental state and allows the browsing experience to
evolve dynamically; this creates a personalized and intuitive
interaction between brain activity and digital content, turning
web navigation into a reflective and intuitive experience.
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An integral part of the installation is a visual feedback
interface, which demonstrates how participants' mental states
directly shape their digital experiences, deepening their
awareness and curiosity about cognitive processes. A range of
colors (which vary from greens to yellows to red tones) are
displayed on the background and alternate depending on the
stress levels, making a game of the interactive experience in
which the goal is to generate soothing content with a green tone
in the background; the user is encouraged to take a deep breath
while using the headset in order to lower their stress levels.
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Beyond its artistic exploration, Brain Web serves as a research
tool to explore the impact of digital media consumption on
emotional and cognitive well-being. By systematically logging
EEG data, timestamps and real-time geographic location alongside
the visited URLs, the project maps cognitive patterns to digital
interactions. Through the analysis of this dataset, we can
identify correlations between digital interactions and cognitive
states across different cultural and demographic groups, while
giving us the possibility to improve and finetune the project
with the collected information.
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By dissolving the boundaries between human intuition and
algorithmic structures, Brain web shows insights into the
psychological dynamics of digital interaction, raises stress
awareness and points critical questions about human intuition,
algorithmic influence, and mental health.
