Audiovisual Content Generation Controlled by Physiological Signals for Clinical and Artistic Applications

While an extensive palette of sound and visual generation techniques have been developed during the era of digital signal processing, the design of innovative virtual instruments has come to dramatic fruition over the last decade. The use of measured biological signals to drive these instruments proposes some new and powerful tools for clinical, scientific and artistic applications. Over the period of one month - during the eNTERFACE’07 summer workshop in Istanbul, Turkey - researchers from the fields of human-computer interfaces, sound synthesis and new media art worked together towards this common goal. A framework for auditory display and bio-musical applications was established upon which were based different experimental prototypes. Diverse methods for the analysis of measured physiological signals and of mapping the extracted parameters to sound and visual synthesis processes were explored. Biologically-driven musical instruments and data displays for clinical and medical purposes were built. From this have emerged some worthwhile perspectives on future research. This report summarises the results of that project.