Visualizing Beethoven’s music through brain waves

Art Center Nabi and Goethe-Institute Korea will present “Neuro-knitting Beethoven“ on Nov. 27, a telematics performance connecting music and technology in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth.

The performance will feature kinetic art combined with telematics data produced by the European media artist duo Varvara & Mar.

They will select a listener of Beethoven’s music and the listener’s brain data will turn in to fabric art. Beethoven‘s ‘ Piano Sonata No. 8, “Pathetique” and Bagatelle No. 25, “Fur Elise” will be played by pianist Park Jong-hwa and the brain data collected from the performance will be sent live to Varvara & Mar, who will weave the information into fabric by using a knitting machine. Bright and dark fabric colors will represent the empathetic and cognitive reactions of the listener.

The artist duo was formed in 2009. Varvara Guljajeva hails from Estonia and Mar Canet from Barcelona and the duo’s works are often inspired by the impact of technology.

The performance will start at 7 pm at Art Center Nabi’s Tazak Madang in central Seoul, and will be streamed live on the art museum’s official YouTube channel at https://bit.ly/38HAL0n. An artist talk session will follow at 7:30 pm with Varvara & Mar, pianist Park and Melanie Bono, head of the Northwestern Europe culture department at the Goethe-Institut.

Those who want to participate in the event can register at https://bit.ly/3eWxNpZ.



By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)