Soundscapes of the mind

After stumbling through the vegan café, past the gender-neutral toilets, and into a small chapel hidden in a secret garden, I knew that this 30 min installation was going to be unconventional. Aiste Noreikaite and Zoë Dowlen aimed to venture into the realm of science fiction by creating a symphony of music using processed data from EEG recordings in an experimental performance of sound and interpretative dance.

The brain signals collected from two bands placed on the foreheads of two audience members were mapped to a laptop where a monotonous high-pitched squeal was produced from two speakers. Additionally, Dowlen and Noreikaite each wore a band on their forearm that read muscle movements and connected wirelessly with their computers, which randomly fed back prerecorded sounds. On moving the wristbands, the pitch and frequency of the sounds changed. The sounds clashed and scratched, and the shrill from the brain signals eventually turned into white noise; but not before giving the audience a communal headache. The women twisted and contorted their bodies in an almost trance-like state, sometimes syncing their movements together, other times erratically jerking. Unfortunately, there was a delay or lack of technical control over when the noise would come. This haphazard control meant that the interface between sounds and body movement did not match up; therefore, the performance lacked authenticity and the movements sometimes seemed arbitrary.

Noreikaite gave a brief and rushed introduction about the devices, different types of brainwaves, and how these were translated into a different pitch or frequency of the resultant sound in the performance. The science was not convincingly explained and the obvious anxiety of the speaker meant that this vital component of the performance was lost and the audience was left guessing what it all meant.

The artistic team should investigate the premise further but perhaps using more aurally pleasing tones and noises, and provide more detailed scientific explanations behind the different noises produced. To say that this show blurs the lines between art and neuroscience would be an overstatement. Nevertheless, the intentions were playful and the quirkiness of the concept was interesting, but much fine-tuning, in every sense of the word, is needed.