Wearing skullcaps equipped with sensors, Moores School of Music faculty members Woody Witt and Dan Gelok and drummer Guillermo “Memo” Reza played a variation of Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative, chance-based game made famous by the Surrealists in the 1920s — but they played saxophones and drums instead of drawing.
Held on March 1, 2016, the event was part of a groundbreaking collaboration between Blaffer Art Museum, Houston-based artists, and the University of Houston’s Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory, seeking clues to what happens in the brain as people create, perform, and contemplate art in a variety of disciplines. For this event, we also partnered with University Career Services (as part of STEM Career Week) and the Moores School of Music.
The demonstration was followed by a discussion of the musicians’ process and the goals of the research — funded by the National Science Foundation (#BCS 1533691) and led by engineering professor Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal — to study connections between the brain and creativity, expression, and the perception of art.
Additional photos available via UH Student Media.