May 15, 2023-Present, pen on EEG recording paper, Magnetic Helmet (2011)
While magnetically stimulating the language area of the left temporal lobe with the Magnetic Stimulation Helmet (2011), I continued to draw G clef on the EEG recording paper. This was a way of revisiting a peculiar psychosomatic state that I had experienced with confidence in the past.
In my personal experience, I was terrified that I was about to disappear, so I picked up a piece of paper and a pen in front of me and wrote letters as if possessed. The letters gradually became meaningless symbols, and spinning into G clefs.
The Surrealists of the first half of the 20th century, influenced by Freud’s auto-association and the hypnotic techniques of psychology, developed a method of expression called “automatic description (automatism). Believing that language and reason constrained their inherent creativity, they attempted to express the realm of the unconscious before it became conscious by writing at a speed so fast that recognition and comprehension could not keep up.
There appear to be certain similarities between the paintings of people who used tribal society ornaments, hallucinogenic and other substances, and creations by people with disabilities and by people without disabilities who are self-taught and continue to create. For example, there is a tendency toward precision, repetition, strong colors, and compulsive filling of the screen, many of which are not intended to be shown to others, and the act itself seems to have a strong impulsiveness. However, it is in these seemingly purposeless and meaningless acts that the roots of human creativity may be found.
