In addition to being a composition, this work is also a neurocybernetic instrument, with which a large domain of organized sonic landscapes may be traversed, always anew. It’s also about listening as performance. To materialize that idea, specific features that can be sensed and analyzed in electrical signals emanating from the brains of two active imaginative, listening performers linked to procedures for generating an electronic sound tapestry. A third performer calibrates a computer system to best follow varying degrees of coherency among particular smooth waves found in the listening performers’ EEGs, which can be associated with various states of consciousness, and which they may learn to influence. In addition, the system detects both individual and synchronous changes in the EEGs that are typically associated with how the listeners’ attention may be shifting among features in the sonic landscape. The analysis and synthesis system adapts and responds to these features in specific ways. The performers listen creatively, noting how their attention moves and any ability to influence the sounds. The computer-electronics performer also interacts with them musically in a live, trio performance. In this performance, THE SOURCE’s performed as reliable and stable biosignal acquisition devices.

This work has emerged from many years investigating how we pay attention to margins of uncertainty near the boundaries of recognizable resonant elements. It also explores how unpredictable transient events may either reinforce or interrupt emerging orders among resonant patterns. All this is carried out within the framework of how we might fuse brainwave patterns and musical forms. In the context of performances like this one, our intentions are artistic and inclusive, melding products of scientific investigation and technology with aesthetic inquiries and speculations about the nature of human awareness and our ability to describe what we perceive as self and universe.

DR 3 January 2026