EMG DRAW BOTS

I spent a week with High School neuroscience students at Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction exploring muscle action potentials and how electricity in the body relates to the sense of touch. The students designed and built drawing tools that translated EMG signals from their hands and arms into abstract imagery using a hacked muscle spiker shield connected to their bodies with electrodes. Micro-controllers topped with the muscle spiker shield drove motors on tiny robotic drawing machines that students designed to create erratic visual imagery when they received voltage. The drawing machines created imagery through muscle activity triggered by various props (squeezing objects, lifting heavy objects, small movements or muscle action potentials in the fingers). Beam Center, 2017.