An innovative and ambitious project ‘Mind Art’ allows physically challenged people to use their brainpower to create art using the technological advances of detonators and electrical signals.
Chinese artist Jody Xiong with the help of social media was able to recruit 16 handicapped volunteers to participate in her experimental project in collaboration with acrylic paint supplier Winsor & Newton. The 16 volunteers through sheer mental prowess were able to create extraordinary works of art, reports designboom.com
Attempting to raise awareness and recognition for the daily struggles of the “under recognized and to provide power and self-respect to the volunteers,” Xiong used four large canvases that when put together created an open-air enclosure in which balloons filled with the Winsor & Newton color of their choice and fastened to detonators were lowered. The volunteers were then given a headset that used the NeuroSky processing unit which transmitted the electrical signals from the volunteers to the detonators on the balloons. With intense concentration the volunteers could relay electrical signals that detonated the paint-filled balloons.
What happened next was a great explosion of vibrant colors that splattered the blank canvas with the imagination of the disabled volunteers, allowing them to express their innermost emotions with art.
The immensely successful ‘Mind Project’ was able to tour 22 different cities in China and accumulate an average of 55,000 visitors per week helping it raise 800,000 Chinese Renminbi (over $130,000) in auctioned off paintings to help fund charities for the disabled.
This extraordinary project was able to “[show] that although the bodies of disabled people are handicapped, their minds aren’t.”
