The Art, Science, and Engineering of BCI Hackathons Mario Ortiz, Eduardo Iáñez, Christoph Guger, and José M. Azorín 1 Introduction When people think about hackathons, the first image that comes to their minds is an exhausted young computer fan sleeping over his laptop after a long day of work and fast food eating. However, a hackathon is far away from a pizza LAN party. The hackathon concept had its origin on com- puter programming. It came up as a collaborative experience with the aim to develop a computer application or software in a short period of time. First hackathons were held in the 1999, related to open-source software developers of the OpenBSD computer operating system and Sun Microsys- tems [1]. ‘Hackathon’ is a closed compound word that includes the words hack and marathon. The term ‘hack’ is related to the exploratory aspect of programming, instead of its traditional use in computer security. The second term, ‘marathon’, refers to the intense periods of exhausting work in which the participants need to give a 200% of themselves to carry out a project in a competitive environment. However, why hackathons are becoming more and more popular and are even promoted by different companies? Reasons are multiple. From the point of view of the partic- ipants, the incentives are numerous: the excellent learning experience, the social interaction possibilities, the prizes awarded, and the excitement associated with competition are some of them. Companies have also discovered hackathons as a way to find new talents and launch innovative projects and ideas. As it can be seen, hackathons excel in innovation and competition excitement as well as a learning experience. This is part of the reason for their success. Due to its collaborative nature, hackathons are extending as an excellent learning tool. The participants are distributed by the different groups depending on their qualifications. The learning process is related to the do-it-yourself approach [2]. This way, it is the group of participants who have to carry out a project guided only by some basic restraints using the materials and equipment which they have at their disposal. This favors the transfer of knowledge between the partici- pants and encourages the creativity of the proposed solutions. In the case of the 2017 International Conference of Mobile Brain–Body Imaging and the Neuroscience of Art, Innovation and Creativity (“Brain on Art (BOA) Confer- ence”; http://yourbrainonart2017.egr.uh.edu/), the multidis- ciplinary nature of the students made this aspect even more relevant. As it will be explained later, the teams were formed by one engineer, one scientist, and one artist, and they were able to come up with working prototypes of an artistic Brain–Computer Interface in only three days. The interaction of these three participants enriched their creative thinking due to the contact between areas of knowledge traditionally non-related. This helps to make up new creative ideas thanks to study the process from a different perspective. The first day the teams were settled and have a first approach to the hardware, establishing the initial ideas for their projects. They also started recording some data to ana- lyze it and make the initial adjustments. The second day, the teams went on working on improving their development thanks to the experimental feedback. In the last day, projects were defended against the jury and the attendant public of the conference, with real-time performances in some of the cases. 2 Brain to Art Interfaces (B2AI) The goal of the BOA conference hackathon was to develop artistic Brain–Computer Interfaces. A Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) is a device that captures the electro-encephalographic (EEG) biosignals of the brain and M. Ortiz (&) Á E. Iáñez Á J. M. Azorín Brain–Machine Interface Systems Lab, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 03202 Elche, Alicante, Spain e-mail: mortiz@umh.es C. Guger g.tec Medical Engineering GmbH, Herbersteinstrasse 60, 8020 Graz, Austria © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. L. Contreras-Vidal et al. (eds.), Mobile Brain–Body Imaging and the Neuroscience of Art, Innovation and Creativity, Springer Series on Bio- and Neurosystems 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_15 147