I would like to share some very cool work that Dave Stringer is doing in the field of measuring brainwave activity and shifts in collective consciousness during the course of a group kirtan/chant session.
For those of you unfamiliar with Dave, he is an amazing musician and visual artist. For the past 10 years he has been recording and performing kirtan around the world…in fact he has likely seen the insides of more yoga studios than anybody on the planet. There is an energy and dynamism to his music that is unlike anything I have ever experienced. Spirit Voyage had the privilege to work with Dave on his last recording, Divas & Devas, and continues to support him as he shares his unique style of kirtan with growing audiences from Boulder, Colorado to Sydney, Australia and all points in between.
Dave is currently working with a team of scientists and technicians to mount an exhibition at a number of prominent art institutions in 2009. He plans to equip a crowd of people who are chanting together with wireless EEG headsets. Summing their brainwaves together, he will obtain a signal that can be said to represent the collective consciousness. He will then use the shifts in that signal to drive changes in various media, with the intention of enhancing the effects of the experience. Essentially, he will create a crowd-driven biofeedback loop.
Specifically, Dave will be working with a call and response form of chanting such as Kirtan. He is particularly interested in changes in the brain activity both during and after chanting and how the brain wave patterns of people in groups tend to synchronize, and what happens subsequent to that entrainment.
From Dave:
“Art has always had the capacity to bring people together in a unified experience. Yoga has always had the objective of knowing and mastering the mind. We are gesturing toward a future in which art will be used explicitly toward these ends, using people’s brainwaves as the medium.”
The Spirit Voyage team is very excited about this project and I will be sure to pass along reports from the field as Dave delves deeper into the experiment.
I would definitely encourage everyone to check Dave out next time he is in your town. I know he will be performing tomorrow night (Friday, July 18th) at Exhale in Venice, California as well as several other cities throughout California later this month. Beyond that you will have to check his tour schedule - the man is constantly on the move.
Ditta
hargobind
Karan
dittakhalsa