Circle Squared is a project that sets out to build further on the hardware and software development of the biofeedback platform “the EEGsynth.” The current project will strengthen the aesthetic and artistic potential of the EEGsynth. The goal is to develop technology that can be used by performers to create work where sound, moving images and light are merged to a whole performative universe. This technology will consist of above mentioned hardware configurations and might include completely new components, as well as custom created software solutions that will enable composition and performance with bio signals as raw material and sonic and visual results as output.
The technology will also be devised to give the performer, whose bio-signals are measured, expanded possibility of more nuanced and long-term precision in artistic expression. Armed with the knowledge of the previous work, the group is now ready to explore more layered levels of expressions; to increase the level of complexity of the instrument. The goal is to create a more virtuoso performances that, while putting a higher demand on the performer, would offer new depths in the material performed.
The project thus sets out to investigate two inter-linked questions:
1a. How can an artistic understanding of the body be increased and diversified through the parallel use of sound, light and image in performances that are based on bio-signals (brain-waves and muscle signals)? How could such a tool be used to get a better understanding of the artistic potential in such signals generated from the body? – By connecting bio-signals to sound, light and image in tandem, create a deeper understanding of the signal and the body that generates it.
1b. How can the synchronised use of sound, images and light be used to create other collective states of trance in the audience than those induced in more traditional musical concerts and artistic performances? In other words, how can the shared experience of “audiencing” a biofeedback performance where sound, moving images and lights are in sync and based on the same source differ from just a single output? And how could such aesthetic expressions lead to other trance states than just having music, images and lights without the bio feedback
1c. How can the use of bio-signals that are synchronised in sound, light and moving images be used to create performances that challenge the contemporary notions about boundaries between performer and audience?
2a. How can bio-signals be used to trigger and, within limits, control more complex musical compositions than has been possible to date? Can the group develop tools (software and hardware) that enables the person(s) being measured to trigger and develop more complex sounds than the immediate signal that the ones the body produces.
2b. How can the long-term use of such tools open for new aesthetic exploration in contemporary performance and music?