Sonification refers to the conversion of data into sound. Although the art of sonification has a rich history in experimental music and in sound design, its use in translational medicine is only beginning. In thissymposium wepropose that sonifying EEG data opens up possibilities for diagnosing and managing seizures, as well as for potential biofeedback therapies. We begin with an introduction and review of existing systems in functional and aesthetic uses of EEG sonification.Next we examine different sonification goals, technical pipelines, and creative mapping systems of existing EEG sonification projects around the world.Finally, we offer some future prospects and challenges facing the ongoing development of EEG sonification forneurofeedback and its therapeutic potential, with specific applications for patients with motordisorders and disordered brain activity.
Grace Leslie is an Assistant Professor in the School of Music at Georgia Tech, where she directs the Brain Music Lab at the Center for Music Technology. Leslie’s research uses scientific analysis of EEG, ECoG, and physiological data to understand affective responses to music engagement. Additionally, she uses these experimental methods to engineer new musical interventions for health and well-being, including the development of musical brain-computer interfaces. Leslie was recently a fellow at the Neukom Institute for Interdisciplinary Computation at Dartmouth University, and a postdoctoral fellow in Rosalind Picard’s Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab. She completed her PhD in Music and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, performing research with Scott Makeig at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience.
Thomas Deuel is a neurologist, neuroscientist and musician. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 2006 with a Ph.D. in Neurobiology, as well as an M.D. Concurrently, he studied jazz composition and performance at New England Conservatory for a jazz certificate. After completing neurology residency, he finished two fellowships in Clinical Neurophysiology at Beth-Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, and the University of Washington in Seattle. He is currently a staff Neurologist at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. He is also the Director of the Art and Brain Laboratory at the University of Washington's DXARTS program, and is on faculty with the School of Music at U.W. His research has focused on auditory Brain-Computer Interfaces for the motor disabled, and he developed a musical prosthetic Brain-Computer Interface which he calls the Encephalophone, currently undergoing clinical trials.
Thomas Hermann studied physics (Dipl.-Phys.) and received a Ph.D. in Computer Sciencein 2002 from Bielefeld University. He is currently head of the Ambient Intelligence Group within CITEC, the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology at Bielefeld University. Thomas Hermann initiated and co-organised all triannual European Interactive Sonification Workshops since 2004. He was vice-chair and German delegate of the EU COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design from 2008-2011. He is Guest Editor of four Special Issues on Interactive Sonification (IEEE Multimedia and Springer Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces) and editor of The Sonification Handbook (2011). Publications and sound examples are available at pub.uni-bielefeld.de. His research focus is on sonification, data mining, human-computer interaction and ambient intelligence, with particular interest in biomedical applications such as EEG and ECG.
Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that uses pattern recognition algorithms that enable machines to perform tasks that they were not explicitly programmed to do. Machine learning algorithms are now commonly used for sentiment analysis,document classification, facial recognition, and more recently, predictive policing. Results from machine learning algorithms are often considered to be ‘ground truth’, or empirical insights discovered in a data set. This ‘ground truth’ is now being brought into question by artists using machine learning in ways that are both creative and critical. In the same way that artists working with photography when it was beginning to emerge as a technology for documenting empirical evidence were able to demonstrate that photographic representation was just a new form of rhetoric that could be manipulated for aesthetic or propaganda purposes, artists working with machine learning are beginning to reveal the emerging rhetoric of data analysis.
Ray LC is an interdisciplinary artist and designer who incorporates cutting edge neuroscience research as a foundation for building experiences that create empathic bonds between humans and between humans and machines. He previously published papers on PTSD and creativity at UCLA and Japan's RIKEN institute, and is currently a researcher at Parsons School of Design and Cornell Medical College. He's currently designing an exhibit on computational vision as Designer in Residence at NYSCI: New York Hall of Science. RayLC constructs physical installations, interactive experiences, and narrative works from the multidisciplinary perspectivesof creative technology, art, and science. He works in interdisciplinary teams of collaborative experts like psychologists, software engineers, fashion designers, physical therapists, and creative coders.
Marc Böhlen (RealTechSupport) offers the kind of support technology still really needs. He is currently Professor of Emerging Practices in Computational Media in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo
Jennifer Gradecki is an artist-theorist who aims to facilitate a practice-based understanding of socio-technical systems that typically evade public scrutiny. Using methods from institutional critique, tactical media, and information activism, she investigates information as a source of power and resistance. Her investigations have focused on Institutional Review Boards, financial instruments and, most recently, technologies of mass surveillance. She received her MFA in New Genres from UCLA in 2010 and will complete her PhD in Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo in 2019. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
For centuries, drawing has been essential to the creative work of architects, evident in both travel sketchbooks, design sketches, and presentations to clients. It has also been a language shared across the arts, a common tool of architects, painters and sculptors and designers of all kinds. Over the past 25 years this role has undergone a dramatic shift, with digital technology supplanting many of the traditional functions of drawing in an architect’s training and professional life. This symposium seeks to explore a role of drawing which is difficult to replace, in the creative practice of an architect or artist. It hopes to explore dialogues and productive tensions between hand drawing and mechanical or digital processes; the relation between drawing as an end in itself and in relation to a project; and the question of how to teach drawing as a vital and essential tool at this particular historical moment.
Victor Agran is a lecturer at Yale School of Architecture, and a practicing architect with an interest in 1960s visionary architecture, with a focus on the history, theory, and discipline of drawing. He is currently a senior associate with Architectural Resources Cambridge in Boston. In addition to teaching at Yale, Agran worked with Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, Daly Genik Architects, Selldorf Architects, and taught at the University of Southern California and the New York Institute of Technology. He received a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MArch from Yale University.
Carl Lostritto is Graduate Program Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design. He teaches throughout the architecture programs and in the interdisciplinary Computation, Technology and Culture undergraduate concentration. His recently-published book, Computational Drawing, From Foundational Exercises to Theories of Representation, is published by AR+D. Lostritto recently lectured and participated as a visiting critic at Carnegie Mellon University, UCL Bartlett, and Université catholique de Louvain. After earning a professional degree in architecture from the University of Maryland, he earned a post-professional degree from the MIT Design and Computation Group.
Kimberly Ackert was born and raised in Southern California and earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. She spent two years as an intern in France and Switzerland before relocating to New York City to work in the offices of Skidmore, Owings And Merrill and Richard Meier and Partners.
Kimberly lived and worked in Sydney, Australia and won the Monier Design Commission, a national competition to design and construct a futuristic house. In 1996 she was awarded the Mercedes T. Bass Rome Prize in Architecture and spent one year at the American Academy in Rome researching the design of courtyards, before starting the New York based firm of Ackert Architecture.
She is a registered architect in New York State and has taught design studios and natural day lighting courses at Cornell, Yale and Harvard Schools of Architecture and has been a professor at the Parsons School of Constructed Environments Architecture Program in New York City since 2003.
Her work has been published internationally for its fresh approach to environmentally conscious design and attitudes towards materials and natural light.