The EEGsynth
August 11-13, Uzeste, France Originally Created by Gérard Assayag (IRCAM) and Marc Chemillier (EHESS), Improtech is both a musical festival and an interdisciplinary workshop that brings together actors of research and creation from all over the world around the question of musical improvisation in interaction with digital intelligences, in an assumed approach of human-machine co-creativity. […]
Back around 2010 we first explored open-hardware EEG for some fun, creative uses of real-time EEG analyses and control. At the time, there was not much around in terms of affordable EEG hardware or even real-time EEG analyses software. At the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Nijmegen (NL), Robert was setting up the first […]
We are proud to announce that “LPJ-L” will perform at “Vetenskapsfestivalen” (The Science Festival) in Gothenburg 7pm May 7. The concert is open to the public at free of charge (Göteborgs universitet, Humanisten, Trappscenen, Renströmsgatan 6, 412 55 Göteborg). More practical details here. The group which has been playing under different monikers (e.g. 1+1=3 and […]
On September 17th, Samon and I gave a performative online presentation at the DNArchi conference titled «Conception & Emotion, Physiology, neurocognition» for which we re-activated a dormant artistic research project that Samon started in 1999: The Neurhome. It consists of an imagined future, in which our habitation is able to anticipate and act on all […]
Finally, after a month of waiting for the mail due to Covid-19 restrictions, my Bela arrived. I was made aware of this project by Robert, who has already started experimenting with the Bela. The Bela is a cape (what would be known as a ‘Shield’ in the Arduino world), that expands the BeagleBone Black (a […]
Pretty much since I started acquiring my own modular synth rack, I’ve been wanting to get myself the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator. Now I finally have one, partly after convincing myself it would be so very useful for making brainwave music. Last weekend I created the first EEGsynth patch for this wonderfully sounding module, mapping out […]
The following is a copy from my blog. The OpenBCI Cyton and Ganglion boards are open hardware and maker-friendly biosensing systems. Although there are alternatives, such as Bitalino and OpenEEG and some companies and/or projects are currently working on new hardware (see e.g. EEG.io), the OpenBCI boards are in my opinion at this moment still […]
The OpenBCI Ultracortex headset is a nice piece of hardware, but rather expensive (350-800 USD) and does not always provide a good fit with the subjects in terms of comfort and signal quality. Using loose wires with cup electrodes offers flexibility and attaching a few of them with Ten20 paste to the scalp is not such […]
April 7-9, 2017 For two nights we stayed at the ASTRON radio telescope facility in Dwingelo, The Netherlands to develop the protocols for the COGITO performance envisioned by artist Daniela de Paulis. The primary goal of this meeting was to develop a paradigm in which high quality electroencephalography (EEG) is recorded while the participant is […]
One option for connecting the EEGsynth software to modular synth hardware is though our own open hardware Arduino-based USB to CV/Gate modules. Another option is to use readily available commercial hardware, such as the Doepfer MCV4, A-190-2, A-190-4, Pittburgh Modular MIDI 3, or Kenton USB-Solo. We decided to give it a try with the Shuttle Control from Endorphin.es. The Shuttle Control is […]
We are very excited to meet other EEG hackers at BrainHack, Paris, February 24-26. Here are the outlines of our 5 minute scientific and artistic pitch: EEGsynth: scientific and development pitch Stephen Whitmarsh & Robert Oostenveld (presenters), Per Huttner & Jean-Louis Huhta We are very happy to be able to present to you the EEGsynth […]
We wish you a very happy new year! We had quite a year ourselves, and the future of the EEGsynth looks very promising indeed. I would like to give a short recap of where we are now, and where we will be focussing in terms of hardware/software development in the next couple of months. It […]
To link the digital signal processing on a laptop or Raspberry Pi to the analog synthesizer, I have made two usb-to-cvgate converters. The first one I designed and implemented was a one-channel version that is able to output up to (approximately) 5 Volt. The second one is an improved version with four channels that can be […]
Following testing of the one-channel CV/Gate controller and discussions with Stephen, I moved on and designed a four-channel version. The MCP4725 DAC converter used in the previous version can be combined with another DAC on the same I2B bus by removing a connection on the breakout board. However, the I2C bus won’t scale further. I […]
I completed the first Arduino based controller. It has a single control voltage and a single gate, both directly wired to a male 3.5mm connector. Using serial commands over the USB connection, it allows specifying the control voltage between 0 and 5V(*), and the binary gate value (TTL logic). *) although the design was meant […]
With my first post on the Arduino based CV/Gate controller I implemented a single control channel using a single DAC. Now, using four TI LF398 sample-and-hold ICs, I multiplexed the DAC output into four control channels. I updated the Arduino sketch and managed to control all four outputs independently. However, something that I overlooked is […]
I wrote some code that wraps the serial interface and the control commands of the Arduino CV/Gate into a MATLAB class. I used the following example code in MATLAB to benchmark the speed. a = cvgate(‘/dev/tty.usbserial-AH01DRO4’, 115200); a.voltage = 0; a.gate = 0; c = 0; t = tic; while true a.voltage = 5 * […]
During our work meeting in Athens, we explored and tested the EEG-synth: EEG recordings controlling analogue synthesizers. What follows is a summary of how we solved the main technical and practical issues we encountered and those that still need to be dealt with. More about the output of the meeting will come in the next […]
To record EEG data we will use the OpenBCI project’s 8bit board The OpenBCI board comes with a Bluetooth dongle based on the RFduino. Processing of EEG data will be done using the Raspberry Pi B+ The Raspberry Pi B+ will be connected to an HDMI monitor for the GUI as well a mini MIDI controller (e.g. the Novation […]