The human mind has long been the subject of art and science, both of which are now combined with “Mind Storms: A great disturbance in the sky“, a new live interactive experience with the tunes of Pink Floyd.
The interaction is optional, but memorable. Gallery visitors can sign up (and pay extra) to have their brains recorded while listening to Pink Floyd’s classic album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ – and then have it projected as an enchanting cloud synchronized to the same soundtrack in the very large immersive art gallery room in London. Without frame.
Immersive art spaces have been popping up all over the world, often featuring famous painters whose works blend into the walls, ceilings and floors around visitors. But the combination of concept, music and live element makes “Brainstorms” closer to, say, “ABBA Voyage.”
And that’s not the only thing they have in common: both shows similarly use technology as an enabler, not a linchpin.
This is what makes Brainstorming different from last year’s pioneering experiment that neuroscientists were able to perform Recreate Pink Floyd’s film “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1” uses artificial intelligence to decode the brain’s electrical activity. this time, It’s a spectacle.
While advanced technology is involved behind the scenes, from Emotiv EEG headphones and spatial audio to Unreal energy Visualizations The starting point for the brainstorming project was largely music – more specifically, the music of the late Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright.
Wright’s daughter, Gala, wanted to do something special for the 50th anniversary of the album featuring “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the signature tune composed by her father, with an equally outstanding vocal composition by Claire Torry. “So we started putting together ideas,” composer and music technologist JJ Whistler told TechCrunch during the premiere.
Whistler is the co-founder of Pollen Music Collection, a San Francisco-based creative outlet known for its music and sound design results. With both a music studio and a lab where he works with headsets, phones, VR/XR devices, and more, Pollen is nothing new to experimenting with. “But this is a small change to take to the exhibition world,” he added.
It was Gala Wright who had the idea to focus on neuroscience and the study of the human brain’s interaction with music. This led her and Pauline to partner with Dolby to record the brain activity of 125 volunteers listening to “The Great Gig in the Sky,” in sync with custom software, Wiesler said.
The experiment was conducted last year and forms the basis of the “Northern Lights”, a creation in which the moon casts a glow over the arctic tundra, evolving into the aurora borealis.
“Aurora” takes up the largest gallery of Frameless in its entirety, but there are four in total, which was not part of the original plan. With 30,000 square feet at its disposal, the Brainstorms team came up with more than just filler materials. Keeping ‘great parties in the sky’ as her overarching theme, she took a room of her own with ‘Eclipse’ and enlisted the help of London-based musical artist Imogen Heap for a bird-inspired room.
Get out of my cloud
A musician known for her take on technology, Heap makes a dual appearance on the song “Murmur,” which is set to her ambient track Cumulus, while two flocks of starlings – a murmur – represent her and her daughter’s brain activity as she dances into the sunset.
Perhaps more clearly than in any other room, this visualization gives us a glimpse into how the same music affects different people. This is the science part of the brainstorming: During the visit, participants will learn that perceptions reflect what others felt while listening to Pink Floyd.
In “Aurora Borealis,” interaction creates the red aurora colors, relaxation adds a “soothing blue hue,” and excitement energizes the movement of the aurora borealis, the display panels explain. Meanwhile, in the “eclipse,” raw electrical energy from the brain fuels solar activity, leading to flares and ejections, while regional brain activity is spatially aligned with the activity of the Sun’s surface.
For visitors who opt for EEG readings, it gets even more personal: Two days after their visit, they’ll receive a summary of their brain activity. It comes with scientific explanations about gamma, beta, alpha and theta brain waves and what it says about a person’s state of mind, but it’s arguably the subjective perception that they’ll remember most.
“We created a visualization engine around how clouds form, because Richard Wright was an amateur photographer who took thousands of photos of clouds,” Wiesler said. Combine that with data and neuroscience, and you get a cloud gallery.
“Enjoy your cloud,” the PR person told me before I wandered into the vast room to watch my mind on the screen, moments after Imogen Heap did the same. Due to the steps taken to maintain your anonymity, only you will know which cloud belongs to you, but the look in your eyes may be a clue.
From ASMR to brain-themed museum exhibitions, there’s a growing interest in what music does to our brains, but there’s something about Pink Floyd’s music that makes it well-suited for such a display. “Due to popular demand,” the show’s organizers said, “Brainstorming” has already added new dates for its London residency, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually makes its way to other cities and immersive venues around the world.