now open at Museum of Science until Feb 2026
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now open at Museum of Science until Feb 2026 •
imPRINTING: The Artist’s Brain
A Sonic Self-Portrait by Beatie Wolfe at the Museum of Science Boston
‘imPRINTING’ transports visitors inside the artist’s brain via a retro-future “thinking cap” allowing them to tune into and discover its many channels and sonic imprints including memories, music, conversations, hopes, fears and dreams.
In this sonic self-portrait, art rebel Beatie Wolfe presents a new format for the digital age: a data-encoded “thinking cap” tailored by Mr Fish as a counterpart to their award-winning, wearable Album Jacket. Via retro listening stations, plugged into the hat, the audience will be able to explore the brain’s many channels which include music (limbic system), memory (neocortex), collaborations (medial prefrontal cortex), conversations (Wernicke’s area) with the data related to each “brain channel” ecologically encoded in glass and woven into the cap to be preserved for up to 10,000 years.
Drawing on her music and dementia research work, ‘imPRINTING’ shows us how we can gain a greater understanding of ourselves and of one another in the process.
The Listening Stations
The Thinking Cap
The Brain Channels
The Brain Channels
Each telephone is plugged into Beatie Wolfe’s ‘thinking-cap’ allowing you to listen to the brain’s imprinted channel which is encoded in glass data storage wired into the cap
Featured
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The Thinking Cap
Beatie Wolfe's data-encoded “thinking cap” was designed with the legendary rockstar tailor Mr Fish (tailor of David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix) as a counterpart to the pair's wearable Album Jacket.
The cap features breakthrough ecological data storage technology, with all the imPRINTING audio encoded in glass (see brass circles and squares on cap) to be preserved for 10,000 years without using any energy.
One-off features of Beatie Wolfe’s imPRINTING ‘Thinking Cap’ include:
8 x glass ‘Project Silica’ data discs that will preserve the audio for up to 10,000 years
Made out of copper Faraday Fabric with EMI RFID shielding properties
Custom pouch for Beatie Wolfe’s [NASA] space rocks
Chin strap padded using Wolfe's own vinyl record cuttings
USB-C connection cable
The Listening Stations
Via retro listening stations, plugged into the hat, the audience will be able to explore the brain’s many channels
imPRINTING was unveiled at
Somerset House, London
London Design Biennale, June 01-25 2023
Gallery Room 4, Strand, London WC2R 1LA, United Kingdom
imPRINTING at Somerset House 2023 was made possible with…
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As an active ambassador and founding member of Music for Dementia, Wolfe’s installation is supported by the charity in celebration of ‘Thank You Day’ on July 2nd
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Wolfe’s sonic self-portrait was created from over 500 hours of footage and material in Avid’s Pro Tools using the Carbon interface
The Backstory
“I had been thinking about a version of this idea for quite a long time. Probably about four years” Explains Beatie Wolfe. “I tend to have an idea and it happens very quickly. So, this one was peculiar as originally it started out as something quite different. It started out as a way of taking people inside a radio, which was supposed to be exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020, then Covid happened and so it didn’t happen. I thought that maybe it was meant to be something else.”
Photographers include: Mario De Lopez, CDT Productions LLC, Stuart Nicholls, Manuela Batas, Taran Wilkhu