El passat Sónar 2015, juntament amb David Ibañez, vam participar al Music Hack Day 2015 del Sónar+D. Tal i com explica ell al bloc de Starlab, hi vam presentar una versió de la tecnologia BrainPolyphony.
Aquesta experiència ens va servir en part, per evolucionar el projecte BrainPolyphony, sobretot des del punt de vista tecnològic: és a dir, enllaçar el software EEG amb el patch de Pure Data per tal de poder sonificar les emocions:
Tal i com comenta David al seu blog:
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The hack used Enobio in its 8 channel version for the measurement of brain activity (EEG) via 6 electrodes placed on the surface of the scalp, heart activity in the an electrode placed on the left wrist, muscular activity in an electrode placed on the biceps and head movements using Enobio’s integrated accelerometer. All this information was streamed via Bluetooth to a piece of software constructed over the Enobio API that calculated real-time elctrophysiological features. In the brain electrical activity we computed valence and arousal emotional features. Arousal is a measure of how strong is the emotion while valence tells us if this emotion is positive or negative. Based on valence and arousal measures, complex emotions (fear, happiness…) can be mapped as we can see here. From the heart we detect the heart-rate (how many times the heart beats per minute), the heart-rate-variability (variation in the time interval between heartbeats), and when the heart beats. Heart-rate and heart-rate-variability are also arousal measures. The electrode placed in the arm measures the muscular activity so we can detect when a muscle is active and when it is not. Finally from the accelerometer it is possible to measure head movements and defining a threshold when a large head movement occurs.
All this information is sent via TCP/IP to a PD patch that is in charge of the sonification. When the heart beats a drum is played, depending on the level of the heart-rate and heart-rate-variability the pitch of a tune changes making the tune faster or slower, when the system detects that the muscle has been activated (for example when rising the arm) a guitar solo is played, valence and arousal levels are mapped into complex sounds, the accelerometer into a tone whose frequency is changed and finally when a large movement is detected the bongos are played. If the user wearing Enobio is able to self-regulate his emotions, he will be able to change the music and sounds coming out of his body. If the user wants he also can interact by moving his head or raising his arm. In the following video you can have a look at the presention of our hack: ‘One Man Band’, mixing music coming out of your body!
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