Harmonic Dissonance: Quartet

Where lies the boundary between our individual and shared identity? How do data generated by our brains, bodies, and algorithms relate to our experience of connectedness? Is there harmony or dissonance between the mind and the body, between us and the people around us, between our sense of connectedness and the data that describe these connections? When we feel in sync with someone, are our brainwaves and bodies literally on the same wavelength?

We will explore these questions during a four-day workshop resulting in series of performances of Harmonic Dissonance: Quartet at the Laboratory Space of Nxt Museum Amsterdam on March 3, 4 and 5, 2022. Harmonic Dissonance: Quartet is an interdisciplinary performance and experiment that explores the measurability of human connectedness from performative, neurocognitive, tech/experiential, and sound design perspectives. Harmonic Dissonance: Quartet is the culmination of the Harmonic Dissonance: Synchron(icit)y series of workshops and performances that we developed and performed nationally and internationally since 2018. With this series of performative art-science experiments we specifically ask how the intuitive, yet elusive, dichotomy between “togetherness” and “simultaneity” can be embodied, conveyed, and measured. In pursuit of this goal, we explore how scientifically rigorous experimentation can be integrated into an immersive performative experience and how an interactive audio-visual environment translates “objective” data streams (brainwaves, heart rate, movement) into intuitive storylines for performers and viewers the like.

Harmonic Dissonance: Quartet is a collaboration between interactive media artist Matthias Oostrik, neuroscientist Suzanne Dikker, performer and dance researcher Suzan Tunca (ICK Amsterdam), new media composers Than Van Nispen and Ivo van Dijk, installation designer Diederik Schoorl, and social neuroscience researchers from VU Amsterdam’s Emotion Regulation Lab.