Hands-on

From Engram to Print: Recording the Brain, Pressing it onto Matter by Mehdi Sicre — a talk at BioClub

#No reservation required

Mehdi Sicre is a neuroscientist at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Tokyo and an artist. His work explores one idea: recording real memory traces, the electrical patterns the brain produces when we feel, think, and experience, and printing them onto physical supports.

Tuesday June 9th, 2026 @ 7pm
FabCafe MTRL (2nd Floor)

Tue, June 9, 2026 UTC+09:00

19:00 – 20:30

No reservation required

What is BioClub Tokyo?

BioClub Tokyo is a community biology lab and bio hackerspace that brings together artists, scientists, makers, and biology enthusiasts for hands-on projects spanning bioart, biodesign, DIY bio, open science hardware, and citizen science. All experience levels welcome.

Every Tuesday, 7–9PM: Weekly talks, study groups, workshops, and open lab time.

This month’s highlights:

Mehdi Sicre will be presenting his work entitled “Emotional Printing”, his ongoing series since 2024 (in collaboration with fine art printer Hiroshi Itami). Through this project he experiments with different papers and printing techniques, in his search for ways to inscribe the invisible activity of the brain into the matter of the world.

The talk will be in English
The talk will be at BioClub and online at Zoom

Work by Mehdi Sicre

From Engram to Print: Recording the Brain, Pressing it onto Matter

Emotional Printing is an art-science project that captures brain electrical activity and prints it onto paper. The idea is simple: our brains constantly produce electrical patterns that carry our emotions, thoughts, and memories, but they remain invisible, locked inside the skull. What if we could pull them out and fix them onto a physical surface?

Work by Mehdi Sicre

Process Diagram by by Mehdi Sicre

The first edition (2024) used deep brain recordings from a single patient to create screenprints where the ink slowly oxidizes over time. The image changes, the way a memory does. The second edition opens the door to everyone: a participant wears a portable EEG headset, watches a short video, and their brain activity is printed in real time, a unique emotional fingerprint they take home. This talk presents the idea behind the project: the desire to make the immaterial tangible, to give a physical body to something as fleeting as an emotion, and to explore what happens when neuroscience meets printmaking.

Work by Mehdi Sicre

Those interested in the intersection of neuroscience and printmaking as artistic practice.
Those interested in how invisible biological signals can be made tangible through art.
Those interested in the materiality of emotion and memory.
Those interested in participatory art-science projects.

Mehdi Sicre

Mehdi Sicre is a neuroscientist at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Tokyo and an artist. His work explores one idea: recording real memory traces, the electrical patterns the brain produces when we feel, think, and experience, and printing them onto physical supports. Through Emotional Printing, his ongoing series since 2024, he experiments with different papers and printing techniques, searching for ways to inscribe the invisible activity of the brain into the matter of the world. He collaborates with fine art printer Hiroshi Itami.

Mehdi Sicre is a neuroscientist at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Tokyo and an artist. His work explores one idea: recording real memory traces, the electrical patterns the brain produces when we feel, think, and experience, and printing them onto physical supports. Through Emotional Printing, his ongoing series since 2024, he experiments with different papers and printing techniques, searching for ways to inscribe the invisible activity of the brain into the matter of the world. He collaborates with fine art printer Hiroshi Itami.