With a simple brainwave scanner, some looping psychedelic footage, and an algorithm for music composition, it turns out you can transform brainwaves into elegant symphonies. In support of their new Wachowski-directed sci-fi series, Sense8, which follows a group of eight characters who suddenly develop telepathic and empathic connections to one another, Netflix made a song weaving eight subjects’ brainwaves into a new kind of song, the likes of which we’ve only heard from in the work of experimental artists like Brian Foo, or the brainwave-based art of Lisa Park, Peter Crnokrak, and Aiste Noreikaite.
Working with creator J. Michael Straczynski, who also created Babylon 5, and technoligist Patrick Gunderson, a team exposed the subjects to psychedelic images designed to cause certain emotional reactions (viewable below), and then assigned musical value to each of the resulting alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and theta waves.
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“There is something musical about the way the brain works,” Straczynski says in video documentation of the process. “It’s a symphony on it’s own terms.” Order still had to be contructed from the raw brain data, as the team rearranged groups of notes into the brainwave symphony you can hear on Spotify here.
Check out full video documentation of the Brainwave Symphony below.
Get more info on “Brainwave Symphony” on the official website.
Related:
10 Pieces Of Music Created With Brainwaves
This EEG Helmet Makes Music From Brainwaves
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A 5-Year-Old’s Brainwaves Power This Synesthetic Music Visualizer
