Go to the download page for a soundfile (two versions) of What Are You Really Thinking?

Context

What are You Really Thinking? was created as a submission for a concert called "Listening to the Mind Listening", which was part of the International Conference on Auditory Display, held in Sydney in July 2004. Ten pieces were selected for the concert, of which What Are You Really Thinking? was one.

Program note

What are You Really Thinking? is a sonification of brainwave data which was posted as a challenge to artists and scientists in connection with ICAD 2004, the International Conference on Auditory Display, held in Sydney in July 2004. The constraints were that the data had to be mapped in a systematic way into sound, and that the data had to be used at the rate of one second per second (no speeding up, slowing down, or re-ordering). There were 26 channels of brainwave data from 26 electrodes placed on the subject's scalp, and an additional 10 channels of data recording heartbeat, respiration, eye muscle movement, etc.

The subject was listening to a piece of music; the identity of the piece was kept secret until the conference, so was not known to the composers. It was in fact by David Page, a piece called Dry Mud, part of the soundtrack for the Bangarra Dance Company work Fish.

In What are You Really Thinking?, each channel from the scalp was used as a sound source. It was analysed into narrow frequency bands, and activity in a specific band caused a musical note to sound with a frequency 30 times that in the data; for example activity at 10 cycles per second would cause a note with frequency 300 cycles per second.

The sounds generated from the scalp electrode data were modified by the data from the other channels:

• The eye movement data controlled panning of the data from electrodes near the front of the head.
• A high value of the Orbicularis Oculi signal (supposed to indicate "startle") caused the sounds to become noisy.
• A high signal from the jaw muscle channel caused a nasal quality in the sound.
• The respiration signal affected the reverberation.

In addition the heart-beat sound was mixed in, in a way controlled by the skin conductance data.

The piece ends with some sounds from the outside world, as a reminder that despite the large amount of data available in the brainwave recordings, we still have no access to the subject's thoughts.

More information (PDF format, 199 Kbyte)

What are You Really Thinking? is available in several formats:

• as 16 WAV-format files on a CD-ROM (the original specification for the ICAD 2004 sonification: 15 speakers in a dome arrangement plus a subwoofer);
• as 8 WAV-format files on a CD-ROM for 8 speakers in a ring (front centre, front right, right, rear right, rear centre, rear left, left, front left);
• in 5.1 surround sound format on a DVD-Audio disc;
• in surround sound format with either DTS surround or Dolby surround sound on a DVD (with blank video);
• as a stereo mix (this version represents only 7 channels of brainwave data);
• as a binaural mix (this was made by the organisers of the Listening to the Mind Listening event and represents all the channels of the original).
  
  

Post-concert activity

The "Listening to the Mind Listening" concert was billed as a "world-first concert of data sonifications"; the organisers and others subsequently wrote about it in academic contexts. Here are some articles I have come across.

• Review by Edward Childs, Computer Music Journal, vol. 29, no. 1 (2005), 86-89. This is an extensive review, describing the general setup and discussing each piece.
  
  
• Stephen Barrass, Mitchell Whitelaw and Guillaume Potard, "Listening to the mind listening", Media International Australia, Number 118 (February 2006), 60-67. This is a general overview of the event, written by the organisers.
  
  
• Paul Vickers and Bennett Hogg, "Sonification abstraite/sonification concrete: an 'æsthetic perspective space' for classifying auditory displays in the Ars Musica domain", in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Auditory Display, London, UK, June 20-23 2006. A version of the paper is available online here. This is a general discussion of a continuum between pure sonification and algorithmic music composition, with some discussion of examples from the "Listening to the Mind Listening" concert, including my piece.
  
  
• Stephen Barrass, Mitchell Whitelaw and Freya Bailes "Listening to the Mind Listening: An Analysis of Sonification Reviews, Designs and Correspondences", Leonardo Music Journal, vol 16 (2006), 13-19. This article is as much about the review process which selected the pieces for the concert as it is about the actual event and pieces.

Performances, etc. of my piece

• "Disorientation" series (curated by Shannon O'Neill, University of Technology, Sydney), Lanfranchi's, Chippendale, Sydney, 8 April 2004 (stereo version);
• Australasian Computer Music Conference, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 2 July 2004 (5.1 version);
• Played in the ABC Radio National program All in the Mind for 3rd July 2004 (transcript; my name is spelled "Munro"). This program was all about "Listening to the Mind Listening";
• The "Listening to the Mind Listening" concert, 8th July 2004, The Studio, Sydney Opera House (16 channel version);
• Played on CKUT 90.3 FM McGill Radio, Montreal, Canada, 28 July 2004;
• "Live Wires" concert, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 1 September 2004 (5.1 version);
• Harvest Moon Festival on Multi-Speaker Works, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, September 2004 (8-channel version).
• Part of Sydney Conservatorium's contribution to the Discovery After Dark event, 2 April 2005.

Back to the list of pieces

© Gordon Monro 2005-7.       Last modified: January 24, 2007.
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