Stuart Nolan
I have been a professional performer, creative technologist, and artist for the past 40 years and I’m currently an artist-researcher at Lancaster University UK, investigating the cultural history of mind-reading from 19th-century theatrical mentalism to present-day neurotechnological imaginaries.
My practice combines traditional disciplines of deception with innovative and questionable technologies that have included a mind-reading robot bird, an AI that believes in magic, fortune-telling Blockchain, and a device that makes a person’s arm invisible. My work has been featured on BBC Click, The Guardian, US Wired, and at the Venice Biennale. I recently trained a thousand people in how to read minds through touch.
I am a co-founder of the Magic Research Group, Huddersfield University, co-editor of The Journal of Performance Magic, NESTA Fellow in Applied Magic, Emeritus Magician in Residence at Pervasive Media Studio, and was recently awarded the title of Most Exalted Member of The Magiculum.
Supervisors: Professor Charlie Gere and Professor Bronislaw Szerszynski
My practice combines traditional disciplines of deception with innovative and questionable technologies that have included a mind-reading robot bird, an AI that believes in magic, fortune-telling Blockchain, and a device that makes a person’s arm invisible. My work has been featured on BBC Click, The Guardian, US Wired, and at the Venice Biennale. I recently trained a thousand people in how to read minds through touch.
I am a co-founder of the Magic Research Group, Huddersfield University, co-editor of The Journal of Performance Magic, NESTA Fellow in Applied Magic, Emeritus Magician in Residence at Pervasive Media Studio, and was recently awarded the title of Most Exalted Member of The Magiculum.
Supervisors: Professor Charlie Gere and Professor Bronislaw Szerszynski
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to capture images of thoughts from early thoughtography to current neurotechnology. This history reveals the dangerously seductive allure of brain imaging technologies and the thought images they produce. Critical Neuroscience is a recent interdisciplinary initiative that encourages social, historical, and philosophical studies of neuroscience and the implications of recent advances in the field. There has been a call for a ‘Critical NeuroArt’ that responds to the concerns of ‘Critical Neuroscience’. This paper suggests that such a Critical NeuroArt can benefit from art practices that have a quintessentially performative and embodied nature. It argues for utilising previously institutionally excluded art practices with a rich and relevant history of engagement with neuroscience and philosophy of mind.
to capture images of thoughts from early thoughtography to current neurotechnology. This history reveals the dangerously seductive allure of brain imaging technologies and the thought images they produce. Critical Neuroscience is a recent interdisciplinary initiative that encourages social, historical, and philosophical studies of neuroscience and the implications of recent advances in the field. There has been a call for a ‘Critical NeuroArt’ that responds to the concerns of ‘Critical Neuroscience’. This paper suggests that such a Critical NeuroArt can benefit from art practices that have a quintessentially performative and embodied nature. It argues for utilising previously institutionally excluded art practices with a rich and relevant history of engagement with neuroscience and philosophy of mind.