The Warren

The Warren is the the first piece of music I composed for brainwave control. It uses the SSVEP eye gazing technique but was pretty bulky to transport for performances.

The video shows me gazing at 4 stimuli flashing at different frequencies. You can see them grow in size depending on the strength and length of my gaze. The icons are connected to different musical events as I play my way through the piece.

The music was inspired both by nature recordings I was making at the time, whilst I was living in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, as well as early electroacoustic pieces I was discovering, such as Valley Flow by Dennis Smalley, and the recordings of Chris Watson.

The system needed a crazy-spec GPU for ensuring the visual stimuli stayed clocked (to ensure strong SSVEP responses), a big electrode amplifier for the brain cap, and a laptop running the musical system via MID, with the screen providing some feedback on the musical arrangement and what was being triggered. I have a distinct memory of the computer power bank dying on me on the day before a performance in Plymouth! Thankfully it wasn’t too bad a fix.

The move towards a more portable, cheaper and accessible system formed the basis for the next piece I made after The Warren, Flex.

Performances

The piece was first performed at the Arnolfini in Bristol in 2011, then at the Peninsula Arts Festival in 2012.

Poster for the Bristol event:

A photo of Rowberrow Warren, the inspiration for the piece, looking beyond the Bristol Channel over to Wales. This was the background image used for my printed performance notes.