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Design

Brainwaves Morph This Wearable 3D-Printed Headpiece Like an Alien Facemask

Designer and architect Behnaz Farahi's 'Synapse' seeks to blur the lines between our bodies and the environment.
Images courtesy the artist

Resembling a helmet worn by an outer space sentry, this 3D-printed headpiece morphs and illuminates according to the wearer’s brainwaves. Synapse “aims to play with the intimacy of our bodies and the environment to the point that the distinction between them becomes blurred, as both have ‘become’ a single entity,” according to Behnaz Farahi, a designer, architect, and Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC).

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Inside of Synapse, a modified Neurosky EEG chip and Mindflex headset analyzes and records different brainwaves that emerge during attentive and meditative states. The flexible soft structure was 3D printed using Autodesk’s Object Connex500. "The main intention of this project is to explore the possibilities of multi-material 3d printing in order to produce a shape-changing structure around the body as a second skin," Farahi told The Creators Project. "It is an attempt to explore direct control of the movement with neural commands from the brain, so that we can effectively control the environment around us through our thoughts."

Below, see the helmet come alive in a video directed by Nicolas Cambier:

Synapse from Nicolas Cambier on Vimeo.

Visit Behnaz Farahi's website to learn more.

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