Various/Artists presents interactive performance, video, and prints by the artist Nina Sobell chronicling her pioneering exploration of technology and human connection across six decades. Proximity Effects surveys Sobell's innovative use of brainwaves as an interactive artistic medium in participatory performances and installations beginning with BrainWave Drawings in 1974 and culminating in the newest version of GammaTime in 2026.

 

Sobell and collaborators Ed Bear and Lucinda Jacobson will perform GammaTime at the opening on June 4, 2026 and twice more throughout the exhibition. GammaTime is Sobell's latest social neurofeedback performance in which four participants wear electroencephalograph (EEG) headsets and headphones while viewing a projected audio-visualization representing their collective brain activity. The image shifts between discrete shapes into a unified whole as participants achieve inter-brain synchrony by watching, listening, and being together in this inherently generative work.

 

A multichannel video installation presents selected excerpts from Sobell's socially engaged neurofeedback works from 1974 to 1998, showing how she adapts her approach to new technologies and collaborations in a way that anticipates the broader adoption of technologies in society. These range from closed-circuit video and laboratory computers with Mike Trivich, personal computers and interactive computer graphics with Chris Matthews, and multimedia and social internet connectivity with Emily Hartzell and others.

 

In each brainwave performance, Sobell devises innovative configurations of neurotechnology and media tools to enable groups of participants to observe their intermingled brain activity. Sobell stresses the artistic importance of teaching participants to connect through her work, including the physical touch involved in helping participants wear hand-stitched and hand-wired EEG headsets, and emphasizes how this moment of interpersonal connection, and the subsequent physical proximity of the participants seated together is essential for achieving inter-brain synchrony. The audiovisual imagery created throughout is not the final product of the work, but a means of constructing social sculpture through the physical involvement of the participants with the artist and each other. 

 

Sobell's brainwave works are presented alongside related work in video and print that similarly examine the convergence of technology with intertwined consciousness. A series of photographs of conté and ink drawings of video static convey Sobell's commitment to the material continuities across media and the people who sense and perceive through them. A pair of video performance works show how Sobell uses video to sculpt intimate social interactions. In the Portapak work Hair Comb (1974), Sobell and performer Susan Krentzman engage in a ritualistic process of mimicry and transformation, while 25lbs of clay / Right Brain Left Brain Investigation of a Creative Process (1990) depicts Sobell engaging in a haptic perceptual challenge of sculpting both a clay figure and a mediated video image of performer Rebecca Yeldham without looking at her workpiece. 

 

Other works, including excerpts from the sprawling Park Bench project begun with Emily Hartzell in 1993, seek connectivity through the development of a public kiosk for early internet access and local community building. Park Bench soon developed into a “NetWork” of over 84 inter-connected online media performances. A selection of these are on display within a new kiosk including a series, Web Seance: Brainwave Drawing from 1999, which addresses the physical disconnectedness of the “information age”.

 

Sobell's work resonates with recent developments in social neuroscience that shows that the human brain is inherently social and always physically entangled with other minds, materials, and forces. Nina Sobell invites you to continue exploring how media technology transforms interpersonal connection and social space with her from June 4 to July 26, 2026. 
 

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– Allen Riley