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Buzz Aldrin plays BrainBall at Wired's NextFest |
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Sunday, 16 September 2007 |
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NextFest is Wired Magazine's four-day festival of innovative products and technologies. We blogged about MindBall last year, which is the commercialized version of Brainball. BrainBall is a game created by Interactive Institute. Players of the game have EEG sensors connected to their forehead with a strap. The electrodes in the strap read the players' brainwaves.
Brainball is a game that goes against the conventional competitive concept, and also reinvents the relationship between man and machine. Instead of activity and adrenalin, it is passivity and calmness that mark the truly successful Brainball player. Brainball is unique amongst machines since it is not controlled by the player's rational and strategic thoughts and decisions. On the contrary, the participants are dependent on the body's own intuitive reactions to the game machine.
At first glance, Brainball seems similar to a traditional two player game - two people challenge one and other and take their respective positions at each end of a table that is laid out with two goals and a little ball. The rest of the game's equipment is more special. Both players wear a strap around their forehead that contains electrodes and is wired up to a biosensor system. This system, that is used to measure the body's biological signals, is tightly fastened to the frontal lobes and registers the electrical activity in the brain - so called EEG (electroencephalogram). The players brain activity is graphed in a diagram on a computer screen so that the public can easily follow the players mental processes during the match.
Here's a picture of Buzz Aldrin beating Wired Magazine publisher Jay Lauf in a BrainBall match.
Picture taken by Dave Bullock - (Thanks Dave!)
MindBall can be purchased here
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Biofeedback 
