This article is from nytimes about evolution of human consciousness, with word, music and brain imagery.
The composer Mr. Adolphe asked the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who directs the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, to collaborate on a work that would combine text, music and imagery of brain activity to evoke the evolution of the human mind. Mr. Adolphe also invited Yo-Yo Ma, an old friend from his Juilliard School day, for the collabration.
Most composers would shy away from depicting the evolution of consciousness. Mr. Adolphe, who had already written two works based on Mr. Damasio’s writings, plunged right in.
The result was “Self Comes to Mind,” a 30-minute work for cello and two percussionists, with video imagery based on brain scans and with texts by Mr. Damasio.
Just how the human brain works remains one of the greatest mysteries in science. In his program note Mr. Adolphe suggests that music itself may be an expression of our physical minds, though, he adds, composing is never a matter of musical illustration, but of finding “technical and expressive parallels to extra-musical ideas.”
If anything, Mr. Adolphe is too deferential to the scientific concepts in this colorfully scored, skillfully written, though rather tame piece.
The visual element used brain scans from the research of Mr. Damasio’s wife, Hanna Damasio, also a professor of neuroscience at U.S.C. The images were folded into sound-reactive video compositions directed by Diego Miralles, based on an existing video by Ioana Uricaru. Even though the imagery was responding to the music, it was hard not to hear Mr. Adolphe’s obliging music as illustrative of the imagery.
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