We found this and couldn’t better it, so here it is in its entirety ... In our competitive society, where person after person is being burnt out, the concept is particularly interesting.
How able are we to relax in a competitive situation? What happens when we start to control physical objects with our thoughts? What is the relationship between the physical and the virtual when the boundary between them starts to dissolve? New technology places demands on us. To answer 100 e-mails a day is no longer a mere possibility; it is a necessity. We need cell phones not to call when we want to, but to be accessible to everyone, all the time ... and so on.
From an anthropologist’s perspective, an object is not only a functional solution to a problem; it also tells a story about the world in which it exists. Every era creates its own environments and objects, and has its own diseases. Today, these are burnout and stress. I cannot help perceiving a connection between all the information and communications we are expected to take in and the increasing stress. We may be able to manage all this information on a rational level, but can we really cope with it on a mental level? What psychological effect does it have on us to read more in one day than people a century ago did in a whole lifetime? The answer is of course, a nice game of Brainball.
Two people are sitting opposite each other at a table. They are playing Brainball. Biosensors are taped to their foreheads and on a screen we can see outlines of their brainwaves. On the table is a ball that is controlled by brain activity.
The aim is to get the ball into the goal on the opposite side of the table. Whoever is most relaxed, wins. A player’s brain activity is reflected directly in the ball’s movement on the table. Beta waves, with a frequency between 13 and 40 oscillations per second, arise when a person is active and stressed. They make the ball remain still. Alpha waves, between 8 and 12 oscillations per second, arise when a person is relaxed but awake, and they put the ball in motion.
The player with the strongest alpha waves can put the ball into the opponent’s goal. Brainball is a game and a research project into new ways of interacting between humans and machines. It appears to be a classic two-player game in which activity is decisive, but it turns the concepts upside down. Here, it is not activity but relaxation that makes a winner.
