Brain Music!
I know it’s not Music Wednesday, but this feels more like a Monday than a Wednesday topic anyway. This video contains audio produced from electroencephalogram (EEG) data taken during a seizure:
The recording was produced through the collaboration of Josef Parvizi, a Stanford neuroscientist and neurologist, and Chris Chafe, a Stanford music professor who “is one of the world’s foremost experts in ‘musification,’ the process of converting natural signals into music.” From the article:
[Parvizi] shared a consenting patient’s EEG data with Chafe, who began setting the electrical spikes of the rapidly firing neurons to music. Chafe used a tone close to a human’s voice, in hopes of giving the listener an empathetic and intuitive understanding of the neural activity.
Once Parvizi and Chafe heard the results themselves, they realized that it might do more than produce music:
If they could achieve the same result with real-time brain activity data, they might be able to develop a tool to allow caregivers for people with epilepsy to quickly listen to the patient’s brain waves to hear whether an undetected seizure might be occurring.
Yet more evidence that collaborations between science and art can potentially produce important discoveries.
The composition also raises questions for me about the experience of music. While I generally enjoy sad songs, despite knowing that they might have arisen from the experience of real pain by the artist, something about knowing that this recording arose from suffering, in the form of a seizure, disturbs me, and makes the recording difficult for me to listen to. I suppose there is a haunting beauty to it, but it is a beauty overshadowed by my awareness of its origin. I find this almost as fascinating as I do the composition itself.
[I discovered the article, which is a few months old, while perusing Patricia Churchland’s Twitter feed. Who says Twitter is pointless?]
feels more like a Monday than a Wednesday anyway
Probably because it is Monday?Report
Heh… yeah, that was unclear. I meant the subject of the post, despite being ostensibly about music, felt more Monday than Wednesday. I’ll add the word “topic.”Report
I think part of the reason you found the music unsettling (as did I) is that, not only do you know that it arose from suffering, but the human-like quality of the sound makes it sound disturbingly like a person gibbering/ululating in a chaotic and frenzied manner.Report
That makes sense, and appears to have been in part Chafe’s intention. From the article:
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This was, indeed, deeply unsettling. Limp Bizkit-level unsettling.Report
In a forced-choice situation, I would listen to the plaintive warblings of human brain waves ten times out of ten as opposed to Limp Bizkit.Report
I find it interesting that you refer to the person whose EEG scans are being transformed into music as “the artist.” “Art” to me involves a degree of volition on the part of the artist, an act of will motivating a communication of some nature. A person suffering a seizure has in no way chosen to seize. The person whose brain waves are thus translated strikes me as a “subject” rather than an artist:
This woman, whose name is lost to the fog of history, was not the artist who created this famous painting; the painting is not a portrait of Johannes Vermeer.
So I would say that the artist who created this music is Chris Chafe, not the anonymous patient. Now, I see your issue that the art here is indeed troublesome because it illustrates actual rather than depicted suffering. Prof. Chafe made quite a number of artistic choices in transforming the found information of the EEG scan into music. One of which was to say, “Yes, I know a patient was in distress when this was generated but I shall transform it into a different medium nonetheless.” If we evaluate it as art, instead of data, then that decision is part of how the art comes to us. And I’m not prepared to say that in this circumstance, this origin renders it so troublesome I feel impelled to turn away.Report
(My attempt to embed a small image of one of the more famous portraits out there sadly failed.)Report
Burt, you’re right. That was a bit of a Freudian slip on my part. But I’m going to keep it in there, because you raise interesting points.Report
I refuse to listen to this. I suspect it is similar to the evil computer code in Snow Crash — you know, that sting of ones and zeros that if you gazed upon reformatted and your brain and turned you into a mindless zombie.
I am pretty sure listening to this will do the same to my own brain.Report
Tom: Hello, you’re on Brain Talk. What’s you’re name and where are you calling from?
Caller: This is Kathy and I’m in Minnesota.
Ray: Kathy with a K, or Cathy with a C?
Caller: K.
Ray: I knew it! All the Cathy’s with a C are from the west coast. How can we help you today?
Caller: Well, I was just sitting at my desk today and I sort of locked up… spacing out, you might say. And then, next I remember is my boss asking me if I was all right.
Tom: Has this happened before?
Caller: Maybe a couple times when I was a kid.
Ray: Sheesh… Did you notice any funny noises when this happened?
Caller: Yes! It was something like this. (Caller makes a sort of whooping sound.)
Tom: Sure it wasn’t like this? (Makes slightly higher pitched and faster whoop.)
Caller: Yes! That’s it!
Ray: Did it sound like it came from the front of your brain or more toward the back?
Caller: More toward the front.
Ray: What you describe sounds like a classic case of frontal cortex seizure.
Caller: Sounds expensive.
Tom: (Laughing) Ya got insurance? Cuz this is at least a couple boat payments.
Ray: More like a couple boats.
Caller: Is it dangerous?
Ray: Well, you really need to take it into the shop and have it looked at, pronto.
Caller: Really? The holidays are coming up. I was hoping to put it off for a while.
Tom: No, you need to take care of this right away. It could be dangerous. What if it happened while you were driving?
Ray: Or even just walking down the street. Wham! Right into a light pole.
Caller: Okay. Thanks guys!
Tom: Bye-bye, and thanks for calling Brain Talk.Report
oddly enough, for a seizure that didn’t really grab me.Report
You didn’t follow procedure and do the Search first.Report