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A promotional video for On Your Wavelength & Merge Festival 2015

Created by Marcus Lyall, Robert Thomas, and Alex Anpilogov, On Your Wavelength is an interactive installation that generates music and a laser-show as it analyzes the user’s brainwaves in real-time.

In the installation, the user is equipped with EEG brain scanner headseat, which is then analyzed turned into media using Processing and Pure Data for audio generation. The analysis creates a profile of the user and focuses on three possible emotions – joy, detachment, and tension – along with several possible instruments and pitches in order to generate musical compositions specific to the current user. While the generation was up to the program’s analysis, the color choices and compositions, as well as the distinctive emotions that they chose to go by show the distinct mark of the artists who worked on it.

Behind the scenes of On Your Wavelength

Large-scale, immersive experiences like this one have always been fascinating to me, and in this case it’s not just technology taking artistic control, but rather a symbiotic relationship between user and program that’s not only awe-inspiring to look at, but especially to be in the user’s place and see how the program reacts.

On Your Wavelength was first shown during Merge Festival 2015 in London and later in a modified format in Winter Lights 2017 in London.

Additional performances, such as this one, can be viewed on Youtube.

“Lime,” an On Your Wavelength performance