What happens in the space between the performer and the witness?
Brain Dance is an experimental performance project exploring what happens when brain activity becomes part of a live feedback loop between movement, sound, and attention.
Developed in collaboration with dancer Kaylin Horgan, the project uses wearable EEG to translate aspects of both a performer’s and an audience member’s ongoing brain activity into sound in real time. Rather than treating EEG as a direct representation of thoughts or emotions, Brain Dance works with measurable changes in neural rhythms, movement, and physiological state as material for an evolving sonic environment. Different features of the EEG contribute to distinct musical layers, allowing changes in stillness, movement, attention, and interaction to reshape the sound of the performance as it unfolds.
The project grew out of my parallel lives as a cognitive neuroscientist and musician, and my interest in moving neurophysiological signals beyond their usual role as scientific measurements and into a shared artistic experience. The first pilot performance took place in September 2026 at The Space Upstairs in Pittsburgh, with support from Carnegie Mellon University’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
The video below documents that initial experiment. A narrated version is currently in development; this page provides context for the EEG-to-sound system while that documentation is being completed.
To explore initial dynamics, we conducted four iterations.
+ Rehearsed Choreography, Dancer Wears Device
+ Rehearsed Choreography, Witness Wears Device
+ Spontaneous Movement, Dancer Wears Device
+ Spontaneous Movement, Witness Wears Device
An especially demonstrative one-minute begins at 15:21: https://youtu.be/KO4lBnAwoOE?si=qGX-VXH35g-pvSve&t=921
How the Sonification Works
For the September 2026 pilot, I designed the sonification as a set of independent musical layers, each driven by a different feature of the incoming EEG, optical, and physiological data from a simple MUSE Athena headset. Rather than attempting to translate the EEG literally into sound, I treated the measured signals as control information within a composed system: changes in particular frequency bands, channels, movement, and physiological state altered the presence, behavior, or character of different sonic elements.
The table below shows the mappings used in this first version of Brain Dance. These relationships are intentionally provisional—the pilot was also an experiment in discovering which mappings produce perceptible and musically meaningful relationships between body, brain, movement, and sound.
TO KNOW: Brain activity contains rhythmic patterns at different frequencies, conventionally grouped into frequency bands.
| Delta | Theta | Alpha | Low Beta | Gamma |
| 1 – 4 Hz | 4 – 8 Hz | 8 – 13 Hz | 13 – 30 Hz | 30 – 100 Hz |
THIS PERFORMANCE’S BRAIN DANCE COMPOSITION
| VOICE | WHAT TO LISTEN FOR | SIGNAL |
| Low Drone | A low foundation whose pitch shifts gradually with the signal | Theta – Left Temporal |
| Mid Drone | A second sustained tone that slowly rises and falls | Alpha – Left Frontal |
| Movement 1 | A moving voice whose pitch reacts to change, while its position, register, and texture shift with the balance between signals on the two sides of the head | Alpha – Frontal incorporating Left/Right Balance |
| Movement 2 | A separate voice that jumps to new pitches when the signal makes a noticeable change or changes direction | Alpha – Right Frontal |
| Shimmer | Brief bright events: one signal affects how often they appear, while the other shapes their pitch and character | Theta – Left Frontal shaped by Beta Right Frontal |
| Bobber | Short, lower resonant events whose timing, length, and pitch change with the slow activity | Theta & Delta – Bilateral Frontal |
| Cloud | A diffuse atmospheric layer that becomes denser, brighter, wider, and more turbulent as the optical signal changes | Slower Optical Signal (NIR) Prefrontal |
About left and right: One part of Movement 1 compares alpha activity measured by sensors on opposite sides of the head. That changing balance affects where the voice sits in stereo, its register, and aspects of its sound. It is a musical representation of signal lateralization—not a claim about “left-brain” or “right-brain” thinking.