May 31st, 2014. Premier of Ringing Minds at Mainly Mozart (Mozart and the Mind) festival in La Jolla, California. The first brainwave piece created since 1995 continues the idea of a brainwave quartet first realized in Portable Gold and Philosophers’ Stones (1972). While previously working on brainwave pieces independently, for developing Ringing Minds, Rosenboom collaborated with computational neuroscientist-entrepreneur Tim Mullen and ethnomusicologist-cognitive scientist Alexander Khalil, both then working at UCSD.
The design of the performance included six main components: (1) four participants wearing EEG headsets, (2) signal processing software, (3) visual feedback display, (4) a custom software-based electronic music instrument driven by a hyper-brain, (5) musicians with violin and lithophone and (6) five-channel spatial audio output. Importantly, the EEG headsets used in the performance were designed by Tim Mullen based on the idea developed together with Alex Khalil. The custom-made devices are notable for their flexible design with dry sensors and use of miniaturized bio-amplifiers provided by Cognionics Inc. (Mullen et all, 2015, p. 222)
The novel performance elements and scientific techniques introduced in Ringing Minds include:
Hyperscanning technique – electroencephalograms from four active imaginative listeners wearing EEG devices are analyzed as one hyper-brain (comprised of several elements).
Principle oscillation patterns (POPs) – POPs (deriving from epilepsy research) are extracted from EEG signals to reveal resonant patterns in the hyper-brain, allowing investigation of phenomena of complexity emerging in brain signals concurrently with changes in perceived auditory stimuli. Opportunities to notice the generation of cognitive patterns when subjects/performers are processing incoming auditory signals are enhanced.
Evoked responses – event related potentials (ERPs) are recorded in EEGs averaged spatially across the hyper-brain, rather than temporally, to mark responses to significant changes in the auditory environment.
Sonification of brain activity – music emerges from creation of “a field of ringing” with complex electronic sound resonators driven by data coming from principal oscillation pattern analysis. Concurrently, two musicians playing lithophone and electric violin respond to activity in this sound field, joining the four active imaginative listeners to form an ensemble. In turn, the collective brain responds to sounds created by the improvising musicians – making the resonator field undulate. This reminds of tossing stones of different shapes into a vast sonic lake – allowing us to hear their ever-expanding sonic ripples.
In this interaction, the musical instruments help realize a composition model inspired by the analytical model applied to the EEG signals generated by the performing group. Thus, we have a closed feedback loop.
The technical details and conceptual motifs of the Ringing Minds performance can be found in the article MindMusic: playful and social installations at the interface between music and the brain (2015) included in the book edited by A. Nijholt.
Photo credit: J. Kat
