Overview
If I could hear someone else’s thoughts, would I feel more connected to them?
In the extremely remarkable performance “The artist is present”, Marina Abramovic invites the audience for a experience of connection through eye contact, one that could last as long as it the person in front of her was comfortable to stay present.
In a familiar setup, I can hear what you’re thinking is an invitation to an experimental emotional bonding laboratory. How comfortable would one feel knowing someone else is actually hearing their thoughts - thus breaking this elemental safety zone between what separates one’s own inner world and how its interactions in social life manifest them?
Between two people interacting with the piece, a potential of bond is stimulated, even if coming attached with the complex array of feelings that come together with any process of emotional bonding, regardless of its length.
Conceptually, the piece is not beyond the realms of music visualization, but rather one that is translated in human audiovisual reaction - eye contact, body language, voice.
In this environment, an elemental instigation lies, one that question itself how closer and connected I - I as poetic persona, i.e. anyone experiencing it - would feel to someone if they could hear my thoughts, or if I could hear they thoughts, and relying on such level of communication? Would it actually influence what I’m thinking and how it would sound, which is actually what also happens by an affective influence of someone else’s presence in our energetic and perceptive fields?
Embracing this context, another exploration is intended to takes place: (How) Can art bring people together? Inside of a framework of Interactive Art, how is it possible to develop an emotional affective-political interaction within an Interactive Art installation? Should an Interactive Art piece restrain itself to being a sensual stimulation time based piece, even if exploring an emotional and spiritual dimension of such setting, or could it (should it?) also embrace its potential of political agency?
Technical Considerations
On a technical frame, the development of the system is influenced by the Neural-Network Synthesizer developed by pianist and electronic music pioneer, David Tudor, from 1989 onwards. Considering the nature scale of Neurostimulation, a different timescale approach for music is also to be considered. For it, it is to be considered the Micro Timescale of Music, or Microsound, which are Microevents that usually last up to around 100 - 200ms.
One of the pioneer composers to develop compositions with such techniques was the greek Architect and Composer Iannis Xenakis, who also preceded the technique of granulation, or granular synthesis, ever present in electronic music since then; a technique that also works with the music dimension of the Sound Quantum, itself derived from the Quantum Field Theory, from Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty.
In the piece, neuronal stimulation will be musically traduced into sine waves, the most elemental waveform of oscillation. For working on a dimension of the scale of neuronal stimulation, such sine waves are also processed on a Quantum dimension of Microscale in sound, synthesized by a granulation process. Like in our own thoughts, which have different timescales in developing and having a lifespan, sound waves also function likewise when synthesized mechanically. Considering this, each wave will be processed through an oscillation envelope, each with its own ASDR (Attack, Sustain, Decay, Release) character.