Spotify – Your Brain on Sound

For Goafest 2022, immersive design agency Transhuman Collective utilised cognitive research to produce an interactive installation for Spotify.

Spotify alongside Neuro-Insight, a leading firm in cognitive research, looked at research that found that sound activates all major parts of the brain. They put this into an interactive installation for Goafest 2022 that allowed visitors to see a visualization in real-time of how their brain responded when listening to music.

To understand our cognitive processing of audio signals, Neuro-Insight uses four proprietary metrics: ‘Engagement’, ‘Emotional Intensity’, ‘Long-Term Memory for Global Features’, and ‘Long-Term Memory for Details’. Together, these metrics paint a full picture of our ability to retain information and how we connect emotion to those memories. Using their Steady State Topography technology that measures brain activity in real-time, it was discovered that digital audio is uniquely powerful on the brain thanks to its interactivity and personalisation.

Spotify wanted to showcase this work for Goafest 2022 and turned to Transhuman Collective which translated this research into a cutting edge immersive activation. For visitors who wanted to try the experience, their brain waves were measured using an EEG Sensor, and the data was synced to real-time visuals, which reacted according to the live brain waves. To achieve this, an EEG sensor was connected through Bluetooth to Touch Designer and sent as OSC data to Notch which did all the visualization.

Soham Sarcar, Transhuman Collective co-founder, reported, ‘The audience loved it. They were amazed to see how their brain reacted to sound in real-time.