MindSynth

Inspiration

We were inspired by artists like Neil Harbisson who take sensory data from our world convert into an entirely different medium, his involving sound and color while ours relies on sound and mind.

What it does

Using Max 7, we monitor the OSC stream we are able to get off of the Muse headband. We take the absolute measurements of various brain waves (delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma) and transpose those to instead manipulate values on a basic audio synthesizer (modulation speed, pitch, frequency, filter cutoff, etc).

How we built it

Most of the project involved using Max 7 as a patch bay connecting the data output of the Muse headband to the associated variables of the synth patch, performing basic computations between the two to directly translate the data.

Challenges we ran into

Unfortunately, the Muse 2016 headband uses a different bluetooth technology that makes it unable to connect directly with the latest Macbook Pro. While we were able to use the Muse Direct software to get this connection made on Windows 10, the patches we needed in Max 7 only function on Mac. To circumvent this problem, we can either not do the transposing live, instead recording a meditation session and feeding the data through the synthesizer afterwards, or we can use a third party program on a private network (ie not the Hackathon) in order to gain access to the data on Macintosh.

We will be using the former approach (with previously recorded sessions) to prove our concept today, though the latter approach (a live synthesis of brain activity) is demonstrated in the video above.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The fact that it works at all.

What we learned

That accessing data through provided APIs is never a guarantee and that we should always remain open to the simplest possible hack to get data into a system.

What's next for MindSynth

During the demo today, we plan to allow anyone who wants to hear their mind the opportunity to record 30s of brain activity and have that synthesized through our system. In the future, we would love to combine these recordings into a symphony of hacker minds.