Gallery Entry
100 souls walk with me
By Samuel Lopez-Lago · ES
100 souls walk with me is an image-based art project that uses EEG data as a system of formal constraints. It brings together photography, signal analysis and AI-assisted image transformation to explore how numerical traces of brain activity might be translated into visual structure without claiming that they reveal thoughts, archetypes or a collective unconscious. The project draws on Set A of the University of Bonn EEG database, using recordings from healthy participants in an eyes-open condition. I selected the dataset and defined the analytical approach. Using Python, I analysed the selected material and derived a feature vector comprising relative delta, theta, alpha and beta band power, permutation entropy, temporal variability, recurrence determinism and state transitions. The resulting values were Delta 32.61%, Theta 18.99%, Alpha 26.24% and Beta 21.08%; permutation entropy E = 0.829, temporal variability T = 0.120, recurrence determinism R = 0.580 and K = 3 state transitions. These values serve as formal inputs, not psychological measurements or direct representations of mental content. I made the photographs that form the visual source material. AI-assisted tools were used afterwards to transform them according to rules I designed. EEG-derived features informed colour distribution, fragmentation, repetition, displacement, variation and compositional balance. The work uses four panels, each a distinct but related visual field. I established an interpretive mapping in which band-power proportions influence colour and visual weight; entropy and temporal variability guide irregularity and fragmentation; recurrence and state transitions inform repetition, interruption and shifts between visual states. This translation is deliberately non-literal. No frequency band has an intrinsic colour, entropy does not correspond to a particular shape, and an EEG pattern cannot identify an archetype. These are authored aesthetic conventions that structure visual decisions while allowing ambiguity and variation. EEG functions as a generative score, not an image of the brain or a diagnostic instrument. The process is iterative. I reviewed the AI-assisted outputs and decided which photographic traces to retain, which forms to dissolve, where to crop or displace, what to repeat or recombine, and which results to reject. I removed overly literal or illustrative outputs, reworked elements that weakened the abstraction, and adjusted the balance between recognisable photographic traces and fragmentation, and between repetition and interruption. The final compositions emerge through my selection, direction, editing and curation. The project takes a functional approach to archetypes, considering them as recurring relations or operations rather than fixed images. This offers a conceptual point of departure for exploring repetition, transformation and shared formal patterns. The EEG data do not provide evidence for Jungian theory or test the existence of a collective unconscious. The title names a speculative and poetic horizon, not a scientific conclusion. Python supported numerical analysis; NotebookLM supported synthesis and documentation. Neither tool determined the concept, image selection, visual mappings or final compositions. The project’s authorship resides in the photographs I made, my choice and interpretation of the dataset, the design of the translation rules, and the creative decisions through which source images and data became a visual series. Samuel López-Lago is an artist and permanent official responsible for information technology and communication matters at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. He is an Associate Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and an Ambassador of the Planetary Arts Movement. He holds degrees in art, design, philosophy and psychology. His work has been exhibited in the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, Japan or Spain, amongst others, including at the Reina Sofía and at the World Expos in Dubai (2020) and Osaka (2025). The project sits between computational art, photography and visual research. It treats data as material for composition, using measurement to structure transformation rather than explain an image. Its forms are neither illustrations of neural activity nor claims about hidden mental content. They are aesthetic constructions shaped by explicit constraints and critical artistic judgement. The images remain abstract: fragmented structures, displaced forms and pixel-level repetition make the rules perceptible without turning EEG data into literal diagrams or illustrations.