Romy Lorenz

Cognitive Neuroscience & Neurotechnology

Art x Science

Until June 2018, I was the Public Engagement Curator of AXNS, a not-for-profit curatorial collective that explores intersections between art, neuroscience and technology.

We are a London-based collective comprised of three women working across the arts and sciences: Miranda Marcus, a graphic designer and digital anthropologist, Rachel Stratton, an art historian and curator and I.

We programme panel discussions, curate exhibitions, carry out workshops, and commission collaborative projects between artists, neuroscientists and technologist. AXNS has been supported by various funders, amongst them are the Wellcome Trust, the Arts Council, and the Wates Foundation.

Examples of past projects:

  • Sines – an LSD brain wave and sound art hackathon

During an intense hackathon weekend in the Somerset House Studios in London we asked the question: How can a sine wave link neuroscientists and sound artists? For this purpose, we linked up with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris from Imperial College London who studies the effect of psychedelic compounds in the brain. For the hackathon, we wanted to take MEG brain wave data from his seminal study with healthy volunteers on LSD outside of the lab. We invited sound artists to work alongside neuroscientists and data analysts, to explore these brain waves in novel ways and to create mind altering soundscapes from extracted features of the psychedelic brain data.

You can listen to the final pieces here:

The project was entirely crowdfunded – thanks for everyone who contributed!

A blog post about my background and motivations for joining AXNS can be found here.