This Month's Reading:

Brown, B. B. (1974). New mind, new body: Bio-feedback: New directions for the mind. Harper & Row.

View PDF.

Gray Area is pleased to host a new reading group, the Cybersentics Book Club that will explore the human sensorium through the lens of art and technology.

In the first cycle, Cybersentic's reading list will center key themes related to the bidirectional flow of information between bodies and the environment. The outward perspective examines biofeedback, while the inward perspective focuses on cyborg art.

This book club is a fit for artists, makers, researchers, scholars, engineers, and anyone curious about the integration of technology and art. Join us as we investigate how to enhance our sensory experiences, from biofeedback and sonification to embedding sensors that challenge our perceptions.

Our group's purpose is to cultivate a welcoming community that fosters knowledge-sharing and collaboration. Whether you're seeking to connect with potential collaborators, look for answers to pressing questions, gain critical insights, or engage in peer learning, this is the place for you!

Cybersentics is organized and led by Gray Area Research Fellow Anastasia Chernysheva as part of the Biofeedback Art|Research Network (BARN).

An open-access library that accompanies this book club can be accessed here.

Join us this January at Gray Area's Cybernetics Book Club as we discuss Barbara Brown's "New Mind New Body" (1974), a bestseller that helped popularize biofeedback. In her book, Brown, who pioneered the field of biofeedback research, lays out ways we can learn to control our brain waves, heart rate, and other bodily processes by accessing real-time information about them, in other words, receiving feedback. The idea of self-regulation facilitated by information and technology came decades before the neurotechnology boom. In the times of unprecedented hype around brain-computer interfaces and their commercial uses ranging from life-changing prosthetic devices to biohacking fantasies, we are going to do the important intellectual work of looking into the long history of human-computer interfacing and self-augmentation.

A short film called "Biofeedback: Listening to Your Head" (1970) featuring the author will be shown as part of the book club meeting.

Barbara B. Brown (1921–1999) was a pioneering researcher and psychologist who coined the term "biofeedback" and brought the field to mainstream awareness in the 1970s. She earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Cincinnati in 1950 and conducted groundbreaking research as Chief of Experiential Physiology Research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda, California, while also teaching at UCLA. Brown co-founded the Biofeedback Research Society in 1969 and served as its first president, helping to legitimize biofeedback and neurofeedback as scientific disciplines.