If you hook hundreds of brains up to a computer, capture and play the sounds they make, does that constitute a musical concert? Well according to Wired, it certainly produces some interesting noise. The Cyborg Echoes Deconcert in Toronto recently was described as "a participatory event. Audience members' brains were scanned, the scans were transformed into sounds, mixed with a solid little backbeat from some heart scans, combined and played back to create Music in the Key of EEG."
The process was based on James Fung's biofeedback research. For this event several hundred people crowded into the small gallery space where ominous-looking hooks, cables, suction cups and clamps dangled from the glass ceilings and white walls. Knowing the machinery was going to record your brain activity certainly added an interesting twist to the gallery visit." After a demonstration, audience members were then connected to the concert system by way of electrodes clamped on each ear. Another electrode was attached to headbands and positioned over the backs of their skulls to grab signals from their occipital lobes.FlexComp EEG concentrators captured the brainwaves. FlexComp can grab signals sent from human muscles and brain waves, as well as capture data on heartbeat, respiration and perspiration. That information is fed into a PC and can be presented using a spreadsheet, text file or other application.
Fung used his own software to combine the brain waves and transform them into sound. People then were divided into groups of eight. When each group's brain waves had been captured, the individual sounds were played to the audience, "sort of like an orchestra tuning up," Fung said. During the final set, the sounds created from each group's brain waves were averaged out and then combined into a sort of mind-meld musical overture.
Pictures of the event
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