Composing DEVIANCE: European Platform for Artistic Research in Music: EPARM 26 Oslo

Description

AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) 2026
Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo, Norway)

Research Presentation

Composing DEVIANCE: Creative transformation through neuroscience and AI
Emily Howard & Zubin Kanga

This paper examines the work DEVIANCE (2023) for piano, electronics and video, composed by Emily Howard (with sound design by Bofan Ma and video by Erik Natanael Gustaffson). This work was commissioned and performed by Zubin Kanga as part of his Cyborg Soloists project, supported by a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship. Through examining this piece, we will explore the question: how can a neuroscientific data-driven experiment inform a multimodal artistic language?

DEVIANCE began with an experiment about how the brain perceives unexpected changes in music. Using EEG brain-scanning equipment from Cyborg Soloists industry partner ANT Neuro, Dr Christiane Neuhaus (University of Hamburg) conducted an experiment on how listeners respond to Howard’s music, including her orchestral work, Torus, and piano material derived from it.

Neuhaus’ experiment found that the volunteers heard the music in two parallel ways: one part of the brain perceived the work as a whole, while another perceived the moments of ‘deviance’: any change to a pattern that had been established by the preceding music. Particularly striking were brain responses to gradual shifts in tempi: accelerandos shifting into rallentandos.

Howard decided to explore these experimental results across different media. The live piano is fused with two intermittent deviant trajectories: sound design by Bofan Ma and video design by Erik Nataneal Gustafsson, each offering an alternative response to the original experimental brain data. Ma’s electronics use AI-generated audio (created using PRiSM SampleRNN software in consultation with researcher, Christopher Melen) trained on the same piano and orchestral recordings used in the experiment, as well as the sonification of the brainwaves that were recorded by Neuhaus, creating a rich and complex texture through which the piano weaves.

The paper explores the opportunities and challenges of translating this brain data into different media (including interviews with both Ma and Gustaffson); how the use of brain data alters and extends traditional approaches to composition; how neuroscience facilitated new perspectives on listening to Howard’s previous work which were then artistically manifested in this work; and how notions of “deviance” from science and society intersect with the aesthetic choices embedded in the work.

Period	10 Apr 2026
Event title	European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) 2026
Event type	Conference
Location	Oslo, NorwayShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International