Hear your brain at work
April 26th 2008 22:03
Signature Tune
A piece of music which will allow listeners to hear the human brain at work has won the PRS Foundation New Music Award 2008.
The £50,000 prize was handed to sound artist Jane Grant, musician and physicist John Matthias and Bafta winning composer Nick Ryan. The trio have until September 2009 to create their composition.
The Fragmented Orchestra will mirror the function of the human brain and the way it processes sound. Twenty four 'neuron units' will placed across the UK including a football stadium, cathedral, dairy farm, school playground, motorway crash barrier and a field.
Each solar powered Soundbox contains an artificial neuron modeled on those which fire within the brain's cortex and will be attached to a resonant surface. Inside these devices, the size of a video cassette, is a minute microphone, computer, Feonic FI drive and amplifier, which will capture the huge array of sounds made at each location.
The sounds will be transmitted to Fact museum in Liverpool where visitors will be able to listen via 24 speakers to the collective sounds from each site and their interaction with each other, together with a map detailing all of their locations. The collective audio generated in Liverpool will be simultaneously streamed back to each of the remote units and will also be available to listen to online.
This is a truly intriguing musical adventure. These are outstanding creative musicians using technology to its fullest and exploring the sound of our own consciousness"
This is an extract from an article in Music Week by Anna Goldie
This sounds very weird to me but I'm all for improvisation and it does sound exciting.
But I'm wondering other than curiosity what it will achieve.
Perhaps you have an opinion you'd like to leave. I'd love to hear from you.
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Comment by tlcorbin
Raven
Comment by katyzzz
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MS Paint Art
The only problem with this, as i see it, rather than hear it, is first one must have a brain and secondly it must be working, they seem to have made two assumptions there, let's hope they find some live subjects rather than just some computer programmed ones, such as ourselves.
Comment by tlcorbin
Raven