Experimental Electronic Music: The Heart Chamber Orchestra is an audiovisual performance where musicians control a computer composition and visualization environment with there heartbeats.

The musical score is generated in real time by the heartbeats of the musicians. They read and play this score from a computer screen placed in front of them.

It’s an interesting approach to generative classical music – and actually yields some musically interesting results.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

How The Heartbeat Orchestra Works

The musicians are equipped with ECG (electrocardiogram) sensors. A computer monitors and analyzes the state of these 12 hearts in real time. The acquired information is used to compose a musical score with the aid of computer software. It is a living score dependent on the state of the hearts.

While the musicians are playing, their heartbeats influence and change the composition and vice versa. The musicians and the electronic composition are linked via the hearts in a circular motion, a feedback structure. The emerging music evolves entirely during the performance.

The resulting music is the expression of this process and of “an organism forming itself from the circular interplay of the individual musicians and the machine”.

via NoiseForAirports