1:00pm-2:30pm on Saturday 9 April
Times shown are in GMT (UTC +0) up to the 26th March. For events on or after 27th March times are in BST (UTC +1).
Lecture Theatre A - University of Cambridge Admissions Office, New Museums site, Bene't Street, CB2 3PT
Mare Incognito: Join live performance art linking brain and cognition with the cosmos through radio waves and sleep.
Mare Incognito explores the gradual dissolution of consciousness and the process of falling asleep. We are especially interested in exploring the moments of the sleep cycle when awareness seems to dissolve, and the self gradually detaches from the continuous life narrative and gets immersed in a new -dreamlike- narrative. Mare Incognito is a project divided in two stages and consists of a Site-specific performance and a Live planetary, participatory performance. As part of the Site-specific work, we will transmit the artist’s brain activity into space during wake and sleep stages and transitions, using the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio antennas from the Mullard Radio Observatory in Cambridge. The second part of the project consists of a live performance streamed on the web and involving participants from around the world who transmit their brain activity into space in real time, while falling asleep as the Earth rotates.
The title of the work hints at a journey into the obscure oceans of inner and outer space.
Mare Incognito is an international collaboration between media artist Daniela de Paulis, neuroscientists Martin Dresler, Jarrod Gott, Cagatay Demirel (Donders Centre for Neuroimaging, NL), Tristan Bekinschtein, Alejandro Ezquerro (University of Cambridge, UK), intellectual historian Thomas Moynihan (University of Oxford, UK), cosmologist Fabian Schmidt (Max Planck Institute, DE), Dutch film maker Mirjam Somers and the Mullard Radio Observatory/SKA (University of Cambridge, UK).
As part of their presentation for the Cambridge Festival, the team will introduce the project through a series of short talks and a clip from the film recording of the performance at the SKA/Mullard Radio Observatory. The public will be guided through a live demonstration of brain activity recording and sonification during sleep and will be able to ask questions and interact with the team.
Thanks to our technical partners and sponsors G.tec, Mullard Radio Observatory, Stimuleringsfonds, Mondriaan Fonds, Die Junge Akademie.
