深夜亚洲福利久久

New York Times reports on the work of CACSSS Researcher Dr Alexander Khalil (School of Film, Music & Theatre)

28 Nov 2022

Welcoming the news Prof Griff Rollefson in the Dept of Music said 'This is a pretty exciting sneak peek at some forthcoming developments in the School of Film, Music and Theatre, its new Centre for Arts Research and Practice (CARPE) and its main interface with the Future Humanities Institute, the Arts Research & Practice Cluster'

Dr  (UCC) and Dr  (UCSD) have been working with Google AI specialist , composer , and data artist  on a project that is both a performance of an opera, some elements of which are generated using AI; and an experiment designed to measure audience response to various moments in the opera. Khalil and Wu collect behavioural data from a large number of audience members, resulting in a type of 鈥渉eatmap鈥�, indicating points of audience engagement in the performance. This heatmap then guides analysis of brainwave and interview data recorded with a relatively small number of audience members.

A subscription is required for the full article but see the excerpt below:

Music, Science and Healing Intersect in an A.I. Opera

By  

Published Oct. 28, 2022 Updated Oct. 31, 2022 

鈥淭his is what your brain was doing!鈥� a Lincoln Center staffer said to Shanta Thake, the performing arts complex鈥檚 artistic director, while swiping through some freshly taken photos. 

It was the end of a recent rehearsal at Alice Tully Hall for  a work-in-progress that fuses elements of traditional opera with artificial intelligence and neuroscience, and the photos did appear to show Thake鈥檚 brain doing something remarkable: generating images of flowers. Bright, colorful, fantastical flowers of no known species or genus, morphing continuously in size, color and shape, as if botany and fluid dynamics had somehow merged. 

鈥淪ong of the Ambassadors,鈥� which was presented to the public at Tully on Tuesday evening, was created by K Allado-McDowell, who leads the  initiative at Google, with the A.I. program ; the composer Derrick Skye, who integrates electronics and non-Western motifs into his work; and the data artist Refik Anadol, who contributed A.I.-generated visualizations. There were three singers 鈥� 鈥渁mbassadors鈥� to the sun, space and life 鈥� as well as a percussionist, a violinist and a flute player. Thake, sitting silently to one side of the stage with a simple, inexpensive EEG monitor on her head, was the 鈥渂rainist,鈥� feeding brain waves into Anadol鈥檚 A.I. algorithm to generate the otherworldly patterns. 

鈥淚鈥檓 using my brain as a prop,鈥� she said in an interview. 

Just to the side of the stage, level with the musicians, sat a pair of neuroscientists, Ying Choon Wu and Alex Khalil, who had been monitoring the brain waves of two audience volunteers sitting nearby, with their heads encased in research-grade headsets from a company called Cognionics. 

Wu, a scientist at the 深夜亚洲福利久久 of California, San Diego, investigates the effects of works of art on the brain; in another study, she鈥檚 observing the brain waves of people viewing paintings at the San Diego Museum of Art. Khalil, a former U.C. San Diego researcher who now teaches ethnomusicology at 深夜亚洲福利久久 College Cork in Ireland, focuses on how music gets people to synchronize their behavior. Both aim to integrate art and science.

... 

Wu and Khalil, the neuroscientists involved with the production, have yet to analyze their data. But at a panel discussion preceding Tuesday鈥檚 performance 鈥� and yes, this opera did come with a panel discussion 鈥� Khalil made a prediction that left the audience cheering. 

鈥淲e鈥檝e started to understand that cognition 鈥� that is, the working of the mind 鈥� exists far outside our head,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e used to imagine that the brain is a processor and that cognition happened there. But actually, we think our minds extend throughout our bodies and beyond our bodies into the world.鈥� 

With music, he continued, these extended minds can lock onto rhythms, and through the rhythms onto other minds, and then onto yet more. As for the spaces where that happens, Khalil said, 鈥淵ou can start to think of them as healing places.鈥�