Dromos/Autos: The Autistic Ontology as Performance

The essence of this research performance-project is comprised of a transgressive implementation of 'neurofeedback'; a process in which one attunes and self-regulates their own cognitive and emotional functioning via the utilisation of EEG (electroencephalography) to harness their brainwaves and generate external audio and/or visual stimuli, which in turn consecutively modulate their brainwave patterns to desired, often placative results; a feedback loop. The transgressive nature of this performance derives from the conceptualisation of neurofeedback as a process that induces negative cognitive consequences, by means of a 'provocative' audio-visual performance ecology the performer is both a passive mediator and subject to; engendered via cascading digital 'provocative' systems established within Max/MSP. The performance leverages, and assigns primacy towards, the artist/performers autistic cognition; a particularly idiosyncratic and revealing interface for performance and musical expression which can serve to auto-ethnographically evoke and deconstruct the systemically debilitating socio-economic constructs and metanarratives of the social model of disability, represented by the provocative performance ecology, that disempower members of the autistic and wider disability community.