Ed Brown, Brain Burger, 2013. two-channel video, electronic artifacts. 44 min 23 sec. Courtesy of the artist. The 10th Seoul Mediacity Biennale Eu Zên. Seoul Musuem of Art. 2018. Photo: studio SUJIKSUPYUNG (Yoo Yonggi+Hong Choelki)
In the piece Brain Burger the artist successfully lights a barbecue grill with his mind. He then cooks a hamburger and eats it. This was accomplished by hacking a Mattel™ Mindflex™ board game EEG headset and feeding the data packet into a microcontroller and a laptop. The laptop provides a graphic readout of the brain wave frequencies recorded by the headset. The microcontroller listens for the “meditation” value in the data packet to pass a certain threshold for 30 seconds. This event trips the transistors which send electrical currents to three electric matches buried in the charcoal briquettes causing them to ignite.
