Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 12.2
An artistic 3D
rendering of an fMRI scan
each time window lasts for two seconds. The
figure shows 14 planar surfaces, or
slices, from the top to the bottom of the brain, and the respective activity detected in
these areas. Figure
12.2
is an example of an artistic 3D rendition of such an fMRI
scan. It shows different areas of the brain, represented by different colours (that is,
shades of grey), responding in a coordinate manner to the music.
Each scanning session generated sets of fMRI data, each of which associated
with a measure of the second movement of Beethoven
'
is seventh symphony. This is
shown schematically in Fig.
12.3
.
Firstly, the movement was deconstructed by means of MusEng, a piece of
software, which extracted information about the structure of the Beethoven piece.
Then, we programmed MusEng to use this information and the fMRI data to
generate new musical passages.
During the compositional phase, the fMRI information was used on a measure-
by-measure basis to in
uence the composition. This procedure, which is shown
schematically in Fig.
12.4
, involved diverse modes of data processing and trans-
formation of Beethoven
s music. The resulting musical passages bore varied
degrees of resemblance to the original.
Not surprisingly, the fMRI scans differed among the three listeners. Therefore,
brain activity from three different minds yielded three different movements in the
resulting composition that resemble the original in varied ways. The instrumenta-
tion is the same as for Beethoven
'
'
is original instrumentation, and each movement is
named after the respective person who was scanned:
1st Movement:
Ballerina
2nd Movement:
Philosopher
3rd Movement:
Composer
