The expectation is to see the extent people utilizing and collaborating with the instruments experience unbridled creative abilities, and ultimately how these improvisational interfaces are understood cognitively. This gives users the opportunity to consider the apparatuses akin to working with a musically intelligent being and receptive partner. An EEG scanner helmet with 32 sensors was utilised throughout the process to monitor the brain electrical activity the test subjects.
Amongst the 700 attendees at Future Hospital, over 20 volunteers from different ages and backgrounds completed the interactive circuit. Director of SensiLab, Professor Jon McCormack, highlighted one test subject whose brain waves differed greatly to other volunteers. “She got swept in and was really focused on the music improvisation process. We were only expecting them [the volunteers] to be on that interface for 2 or so minutes, but she was on there for about 15 and her EEG pattern was fascinating,” he said. Albeit the final analysis of the results still underway, McCormack was pleasantly surprised by the overall receptiveness to the quirks of computational designs. “It was just great, everyone just had so much fun playing with the interfaces, and that’s really the point,” he said.