Can you think about your brain thinking about nothing? This zen like concept has been fleshed out in a new exhibition in Work Gallery London. “Null Object” is a sculpture hewn from portland stone, a physical visualisation of artist Gustav Metzeger's brain thinking about nothing.

The data was captured from an EEG machine, and Metzeger's 'no thought' state was compared against an international brain database. The data was converted to a 3D model using bespoke software, and the brain-like shape chiselled out from a block of portland stone. The uncanny contours can be seen in the software renders below, but visitors to the gallery will perceive the data visualisation as a void within an object, in this case the portland stone.

The project is an inversion of the tried and true process of creating an artwork: here the artist provides the inspiration for a robot to carve out a masterpiece. It's a little bit like the role reversal we saw in Haptic Intelligentsia. Visualising the mental state as an absence is an interesting touch and a fitting one given the neurovisualisation taking place.