Musique électronique / sur support / instruments mécaniques (Musique électronique / sur support / instruments mécaniques)

« The signal of the brain activity of a performer was fed into the architecture of a Moog synthesizer’s, thus letting the EEG signal directly modify few sound parameters, while the composer could freely improvise with higher structural decisions. Alpha and beta waves were used for their simplicity to be extracted from the background spectral noise »
[source: Zimmerman, W. (1976). “Interview with Richard Teitelbaum” in Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada Publications, Vancouver, B.C., Canada]

« At the Church [first performance, in 1968] I had one "subject" performer whose heartbeats, breath and brainwaves were amplified. I controlled the levels and orchestrated the Moog sounds using the brainwaves as control signals. They supplied the rhythmic impulses giving intermittent beats around ten times per second which gradually increased in consistency and continuity as the positive feedback effected the subject, who also controlled them by opening and closing her eyes and changing her internal attention states. At the Academy [second performance, in 1969] I had two subjects who performed similar tasks. I also used these signals in the collective improvisations that MEV did together, and gradually added other pieces. In Toronto a few years later I added video synthesis controlled by brainwaves which modulated the image of a Tai Chi performer in real time, accompanied by South Indian Mridangam player Trichy Sankaran. For most of these pieces, Barbara Mayfield was the brainwave performer. Sometimes we also employed several members of the MEV group with different peoples heart, breath and brain signals, exploring non-verbal communication through these channels »
[source: “Interview with Richard Teitelbaum”, blog de ‘Astronauta Pinguim’, 20 Mars 2014, http://astronautapinguim.blogspot.com/2014/03/interview-with-richard-teitelbaum.html]

La génèse de l’oeuvre, son fonctionnement et sa ‘partition’ (schéma électronique) ont été publié dans Richard Teitelbaum, “IN TUNE: SOME EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN BIOFEEDBACK MUSIC. (1966–74)”, in Biofeedback and the Arts, Results of Early Experiments, sous la direction de David Rosenboom, Vancouver: Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada, 1976, pp. 35-56, http://faculty.bard.edu/~teitelba/writings/biofeedback.pdf

(liens vérifiés en Juin 2021).