EEG CONDITIONER MODEL 276
276 EEG Conditioner, module belongs to EMEAPP
Woah, what does this thing do?
The EEG Conditioner was a one-off module that Don Buchla had designed for experimentation in biofeedback. Throughout the timeframe that Don was designing instruments, there was a general uptick in interest in studying Human Biofeedback as a therapeutic means. These experiments and the subsequent papers written about them had inspired a whole new generation of students and academic professionals to start looking inward.
Perhaps it was the cultural shift from outer to inner space that caused this. Many people expanded their minds with the arts and dabbled in better living through chemistry— there is a good chance that this fueled the desire to harness the subconscious mind and electrical impulses within the body to create something new.
A few of the most prominent figures in biofeedback composition were the composers Alvin Lucier, Richard Teitelbaum, and David Rosenboom. While the formers had merely dabbled in the experiments to set the stage, David Rosenboom continued to mine the depths of the biofeedback vein, and became the leading authority on the subject.
NEUROFEEDBACK
There are many types of biofeedback sources. For instance, we have neurofeedback (EEG/brainwaves), GSR (Galvanic Skin Resistance), GST (Galvanic Skin Temperature), electromyography (muscle tension), and even the sound of a heartbeat. David Rosenboom had experimented with many of these techniques.
The first issue with brainwave activity as a source of modulation or a resource of useable data, is that raw and unprocessed brainwave data is akin to white noise. All states of the brain are broadcast in unison, and separating these signals by entering states of mind is very difficult to do without using external filters to process them. This chart outlines the states of mind that correspond with each of the frequency ranges of brain activity.
Different types of brainwave activity and their respective frequencies
Once the unwanted frequency ranges are filtered out, one can focus on one specific state of mind and training themselves to enter that state as means of meditative therapy.
Performers that experimented with biofeedback as a control source, could use this filtering technique to only create musical events based on states of mind, deepening the connection between the performer and the instrument. A popular concept in the 60s was “the artist doing nothing”, a sort of quasi-dadaist stance that sought to further remove the outlines that separated the artist from their output. A concept that Rosenboom had explored in his piece “On Being Invisible”.
EARLY NEUROFEEDBACK EXPERIMENTS
Many of you who find yourselves here are more than likely familiar with Alvin Lucier and his body of work. Alvin’s performance of “Music For Solo Performer” was one of the first compositions to utilize “tremendously amplified brainwaves” as sound sources in 1965.
In “...Solo Performer”, the composer sits alone on a stage, hooked up by electrodes to a high gain amplifier, which is then fed into a series of bandpass filters to output alpha brain waves. The brainwaves are then mixed (by an offstage assistant) to different arrays of prepared loudspeakers, which are connected to resonant surfaces such as drum heads, cymbals, a piano soundboard, an ash can, and many others. These sounds erupt at random in the audience, and in the middle of the din, sits the performer. Motionless, very still. There but not there. Alvin selected alpha waves for this reason, entering a state of deep relaxation and meditation to conceive a din of cacophony in stark contrast. It takes much practice to clear the mind and keep it clear enough to sustain alpha waves.
Alvin Lucier during a performance of “Music For Solo Performer (1965)
ON BEING INVISIBLE
Rosenboom explored the concept of the “evolution” of the performer “evolved” consistently in his work, and On Being Invisible was a high water mark in terms of his solo brainwave-based control composition. It was his most complex performance, utilizing the Buchla as two sources of bio-computing interfaces. Both brainwaves and touch interface were what connected David to the Buchla 200 and the Music Easel.
OBI is less of an organized, linear piece - its very evolution is stochastic in nature. Rosenboom writes: “I wanted to create a situation in which the syntax of a sonic language orders itself according to the manner in which sound is perceived.” He introduces the organization of the composition and the constant attentive changes as something that could be referred to as the “cybernetics of language and cognition”.
Performance schema for On Being Invisible, Taken from David Rosenboom’s paper, Extended Musical Interface With The Human Nervous System, Leonard Monograph
The performer is constantly influencing the piece with brainwaves, and when the resulting sounds are perceived by the performer, they are influenced to create more output. Taken from an excerpt of Rosenboom’s 1972 essay from Biofeedback and The Arts, David expresses that one must stop thinking of humans as only constant creators of output. Instead, he urged that we must view the process as a passthrough system - we take in inputs and then create outputs based on these inputs:
“The scientific method must realize it is about communication of invisible phenomena as if they could be made visible to everyone’s internalized awareness.”
David Rosenboom in a performance still from On Being Invisible, at Western Front, Vancouver, BC 1977. Photo taken from davidrosenboom.com
In short, On Being Invisible can be perceived to be an audiovisual representation of our thought processes and the “program interrupts” that our perceptions can cause. The piece starts out organized and slowly starts to change towards a chaotic string of input and output stimuli. Very much an evolution of syntactical energies between the performer and the performance.
Don Buchla had expressed a lot of interest in On Being Invisible. We spoke briefly to David regarding this, and he had this to say:
“The EEG Signal Conditioner Model 276, as it was known, began with conversations Don and I had in 1978-79 around circuits I had published earlier in my mid-70s book, Biofeedback and the Arts. Don then proceeded to expand on and refine those designs...
…Now, I never saw one of these 276 modules, and I have my doubts that it was ever finalized and built. I never had or used one. It is possible that Don prototyped one of these, though, or something like it, for himself to use. He did perform one of my pieces, which I believe he referred to as "On Being Invisible." I didn't hear it. This should not be confused with the original, authentic On Being Invisible, which I developed earlier, and which is described in my monograph, Extended Musical Interface with the Human Nervous System.
…What I believe Don performed is included in that document as Appendix 1—Study for On Being Invisible. Don and I talked about this "Study" quite a bit, and I'm happy he found it useful. I don't know if anyone else has performed the "Study." Many have asked about it.”
-David Rosenboom, in email correspondence with MEMS
For reference, here is the “Study” for On Being Invisible, which influenced the 276. These pages are from David Rosenboom’s paper: Extended Musical Interfaces for The Human Nervous System.
276 REPLICATION
Since the module has never been reverse engineered in person, we have to create our own circuit boards for the 276. It is also highly likely that the module was built on protoboard since the standoffs are not standard in their placement.
The 276 has three separate outputs for alpha, beta and theta brain activity, in the form of raw audio (or CV output) of the waveform, and pulse and envelope outputs based on the brain activity of the performer. The pulses have the option to be switched in polarity. Each envelope follower has an adjustable control time, for length of the envelope’s decay. Of course the gain of each waveform can be adjusted as well. There is an external box that controls the input gain of the raw, unfiltered brain activity as connected to the performer.
With the module in EMEAPP’s collection, the 276 comes with a sketch of a proposed front panel. We have been able to decipher this sheet to come up with a new panel design so the 276 has a faceplate it can be proud of.
