Kara: a BCI approach to composition

Kara is a greek word that could be translated as head. In the Kara series of pieces, the musicians wear braincomputer interfaces (BCI) in order to capture their EEG waves while performing. The information from these waves is sent to a computer, where it is processed in order to generate a real-time score, computer generated sounds and a visual display of the data. A closed-loop is formed between the musicians mental activity and the music they generate. As they perform the real-time score generated by their EEG waves, more mental activity is generated, which in turn generates the next portion of the score, and so on. This loop continues for the whole piece, although the score generation algorithms vary along different sections of the musical discourse. This article is presented for the piece+paper modality.