Glass, leather, electronics, and steam

11 3/4 x 19 3/4 x 13 3/4" (30 x 50 x 35 cm)

Revital Cohen designs speculative, metaphysical objects that examine the relationship between the natural and artificial. The Phantom Recorder explores the phenomenon of the phantom limb: an amputee’s sensation that a missing limb is still attached to the body and functioning. “The phantom owner is suddenly endowed with a unique and personal appendage,” Cohen explains, “invisible to others and sometimes capable of extraordinary hyperabilities.” This physical hallucination is often treated as a hindrance and corrected through therapy, but Cohen feels that attempts to alleviate it “tend to overlook poetic functions of our body.” What if, she wonders, the sensation could be harnessed and used at will? The conceptual interface Cohen created in response to this inquiry would connect the part of the brain that thinks it is controlling the missing limb to electrodes in a neural-implant device. This device could be activated to record or cause particular sensations. The potential for new ways to understand the communication between mind and body goes further, Cohen says: “Could we use this technology to record illusions of the mind? What if our imagination could be captured through our nerves?”