To pick up on some earlier discussions that Jacqui Lipton and I have been having about authorship and art (and some of Bruce Boyden’s comments re: the same): A student who is doing an externship at a local small business incubator told me about a local start-up that seeks to enable people to create art directly from the brainwaves of individuals. Called Braintone Art, the company has created a device which connects thoughts to canvas without the volitional “middle-man.” Through a headset, the software is able to collect brainwave thought patterns and “project [] emotions as abstract artwork on the digital canvas,” which can then be printed onto a regular canvas. If unconscious slips from a clap of thunder may be claimed by an author as his own under Alfred Bell, then perhaps this is not a difficult question. But still, there seems to be something less authorial, and definitely something less creative, about the end product.
Either way, I’m fairly certain there is a perfectly apt quote from Steve Martin’s “The Man With Two Brains” that I’m missing here.
[Thanks to Maya Koyfman for the info.]