Solar Vibration & Flicker based installations and research

Brain Crystal Interactive audiovisual brainwave driven installation / performance 2013

The Brain "Crystal" Mapping is a complete audiovisual, eeg sensor-controlled, non-figurative visual experimental installation, architecturally displayed in physical space, interacting with each other and the viewer, through the spectator’s brain waves. In terms of visuality and architecture, the projected image and the built structure are presented in a stereoscopic form, thus exploiting the property of human binocular vision, or stereolateral vision. The audio environment of the installation is composed of an atmospheric sound mass consisting of an array of speakers surrounding the installation on the one hand, and of binaural sounds received through earphones by the spectator, the intervening viewer, who actively 'uses' the installation.

Crystal sketch in 2011 Oakland, California

Concept, visual software, 3d design, construction by Andrea Sztojánovits

Special thanks in woodworking: Zsolt Hegyi

14 channel sound design: Gábor Borosi

Places: Researchers' Night, 2013, A38, Budapest | Ludwig Museum, 2014

Ambient Music and Binaural Sound

The installation features two different sound source systems. One consists of external loudspeakers surrounding the installation, which can be heard by passive viewers, and the other is internal - earphones applied to the active viewer, which only he or she can hear.
The rear of the installation is the sound system:
The sound outside the installation uses theoretical and practical elements of ambient as a style. Ambient is originally a musical genre that manipulates natural sounds and environmental noises to create a new atmosphere. It is a non-rhythm-oriented branch of musical minimalism, whose fathers include Philip Glass, John Cage and Brian Eno ("Music for Elevators" and "Music for Airports" are subtle experiments in noise structure, that are designed to positively influence people's moods and awaken their own inner psychotherapeutic mechanisms without distracting them or interfering with the musical experience. " (Source: W. J. Bockie and DJ Fever - TECHNO - the future of culture (at least as far as the near future ) - http://www.c3.hu/scripta/scripta0/replika/39/02bockie.htm)
The inner sound of the installation is a binaural sound (Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered in 1839 a phenomenon whereby the brain, using stereo hearing, generates a third sound - a phantom sound - for two sounds (physical stimuli) of different frequencies. (Beneficial subliminal music: binaural beats, hemi-sync and metamusic, 2010 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228370751_Beneficial_subliminal_music_binaural_beats_hemi-sync_and_metamusic) This process is used in meditation and relaxation, mainly by generating frequencies in the 8-12Hz range, known collectively as alpha brain waves, which induce a resting state of the body between sleep and wakefulness.

Light - visual perceptual processes

Audiovisuality - Taking the musical genre outlined in the musicality paragraph - ambient - as its starting point, the installation traces not only musical but also visual paths of subtle transitions, vibrant colour-light-shadow changes, in which the two media are symbiotic through interaction - brainwaves, i.e. the visual space becomes an indirect reactive element of the musical field, essentially becoming an interactive colour organ. The color organ has a long history, as early as the 1700s we know of several scientists who investigated sound images through various built machines, such as Johann Leonhard Hoffmann, who started and claimed to have followed Newton, that the 7 main colours of the solar spectrum equal the Fríg sound scale, or the approach of Moholy-Nagy's Light-Space Modulator from the last century, Raoul Hausmann's Optophone or Spetrophone, or even Mary Ellen Bute, who believed that film was essentially rhythmic light. (Peter Weibel , Gregor Jansen : Light art from Artificial Light as a Medium in 20th and 21th Century art, 2005 dr.Gyulai elemer . Visual Music 1965 Music Publishing Company of Budapest Sons & Lumieres / Une histoire du son dans l'art du XXe Siecle 2004 Centre Pompidou exhibition catalog)
In its visual presentation, the installation is both virtual - through computer-generated stereoscopic animation - and physical - through a built wooden structure ("The term stereos is associated with Charles Wheatstone, who constructed it by combining the Greek words stereos (spatial) and scopein (to look).(Kolta Magdalene : Képmutogatók , A cultural History of photographic vision - http://www.fotoklikk.hu/sites/default/files/fm / kepmutogatok / iii_c.html) A stereoscopic image is one that the eye perceives as spatial through stereopsis. Stereopsis is a visual perceptual process that assembles a third spatial image from two different visual projections of the two eyes.
The Brain "Crystal" Mapping is an audiovisual interactive choral work written for color organs using 21st century techniques. Using the techniques of a new visual movement, so-called architectural mapping, the projected images are projected onto a stereo-three-dimensional wooden structure.

Architecture - the 3D construction

The installation is a 1.7 metre high wooden crystal structure - its elements are triangular irregular "duplicated" gulas. A stereoscopic image is projected onto the installation, which is formally reflected in the structure, i.e. the stereoscopic image is three-dimensional. The space outside the structure contains 14 loudspeakers. A moving image is projected onto a screen stretched across the structure. The structure, consisting of 14 basic elements, has 14 sound. The projected animations and audible sounds perceive the changes assigned to the brain frequencies separately, i.e. the 14 frequency sources change the animations and sounds through 14 signals.
The animations interpret and adapt to the structure within its structure by means of colours and black and white, i.e. light and shade changes and structural variations of these changes.

EEG and audio driven interactivity

In the second phase of the installation, once the structure and the audiovisual system have been built, the brain sensor - the EEG headset - is integrated, allowing the viewer to interact with and 'control' the installation. The EEG - I used Emotiv Epoc EEG neuroheadset - transmits brain frequencies from different areas of the skull via signals measured on electrodes. By transforming these signals, the changes in the animation on the installation can essentially be perceived as a signalmapping, i.e. the overhead position of the electrodes of the sensor applied to the head controls the spatial changes in the installation, thus 'visualising' the different brain activities.

Research background

Experiments with the EEG neuroheadset during the making of the installation

2012 - Crystal Choir AV installation as a model experiment 'Where are the deleted files hidden?', Toldi cinema, Budapest 2013 - Brain waves and MIDI experiments on TRIP experimental concert, Metropol Studio Budapest

With: Gábor Borosi musician, Dániel Sándor sound engineer

Places: Toldi Cinema 2012 | Metropol Studio 2013