CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO VIEW AN ANIMATED VERSION OF THE SHORT MUSICAL  PRELUDE TO THE OPERA

ANIMATIONS

Brainland also includes stop motion animations. Others were created as a way of workshopping ideas.

This animation of  Topsy, the toposcope, in action  is based on published images.  Using 1950s radar display technology 22 oscilloscopes provided real time visual display of changing brain electrical activity over the brain surface. These visual messages from the strange world of the brain greatly excited Grey Walter, it's inventor. He expressed  his hopes for it in his 1953 book The Living Brain and spent the 1950 trying to decode and make use of it, not least for the US military who provided funding. In the end it proved too complex and after 1960 he abandoned it in favour of new digital technologies. In the  animation the display changes about 20 times faster than the real Topsy. For more information download the essay Topsy goes to Norway from the story and structure page.



This animation is based on an illustration in a 1949 paper by Walter Freeman in the medical journal The Lancet in which he described his transorbital lobotomy. He carried out the procedure in his office having rendered the patient insensible with unmodified ECT.