Dromos (Part 1)

The artist's aim for their research/performance explores how EEG (Electroencephalography) and biofeedback facilitated sensory overload can lead to new performance paradigms, mediated through a particularly idiomatic yet revealing interface for musical expression: the autistic cognition. The research takes an interdisciplinary approach, adopting facets of generative electronic music, psychoacoustics, audio-reactive visuals and performance art. The main body of work for the research encompasses the design of 'provocative’ sounds, i.e. sounds tailored to induce sensory overload specific to the artist's autistic ontology. These sounds are curated towards parameters established via a reflexive autoethnographic research methodology. The artist has then deliberated potential arrangements for the sounds, which then influences the nature of their generative programming in tandem with gathered EEG data to produce an open 'biofeedback' loop; a dynamic sonic and performance ecology in which the artist/performer is subject to.

The artist's performance utilises commercially available EEG and BCI (brain-computer interface) technology to engender the audio-visual performance ecology, in which the parameters of subsequent audio-visual events are determined and modulated by the preceding audio-visual stimuli via biofeedback. The aforementioned events are tailored to stimulate the performers autistic cognition, insofar as 'provoking' it into a cognitive sensory overload. The audio-visual aesthetics (informed by noise, electroacoustic and fluxus ‘danger’ music) compounded with the transgressive performance method (informed by endurance art) is intended to elicit a provocation, reflection, reevaluation and re-contextualisation of the augmentative capabilities of ASD's, in addition to prompt insight into the autistic ontology.