Setting
An empty room with the lights on. A single large monitor in the center. The performer wears an EEG headband (Muse) that streams brainwave data into TouchDesigner, where it drives what appears on the screen.
Participants walk in and are invited to explore the space according to their gut — physically and verbally, without instruction on how to move or what to say. The piece begins with a long poem playing over the room and ends when the poem ends.
Instructions given to the audience
The human body is a vehicle for information. When we open our eyes, we see; when we open our ears, we hear; when we open our minds, we feel. A lovely bird singing in an early morning does not know she is disturbing a sweet dream; an innocent piece of word does not know it kills a person intangibly.
Your movement is not confined by any means — nothing is permitted. There is no regulation. The space, the people, the rule, the time, the mind: nothing constrains you. Move your body, your voice, your thought, and your heart. You are a free individual.
Ignore me or witness me.
Intruders, please start.
What the piece tests
Every choice the performer makes about her own body — what to reveal, how to move, whether to be witnessed — is being read in parallel by the EEG. The monitor is the performer's mental state, rendered without her narration. Meanwhile the audience has been granted total permission to do anything, which is itself a test: what do people actually do with an unregulated shared space and a person who has yielded all her rights?