New apps promise to change the way we do things, seemingly every day, for example these 11 apps for making music. Now the Wavepaths app, still under development, is coming to generate an endless stream of original music, kicked into being by what we are like and how we feel. GRAMMY winner Brian Eno was known for his ambient music long before his work producing U2 drew GRAMMY notice. Having worked on generative apps called Bloom and Reflection over the past years, Eno is now developing new soundscapes optimized for drug-enhanced music therapy with Wavepaths.
<iframe width="620" height="349" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4__AGU2AlJU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Eno is working on Wavepaths with neuroscientist Mendel Kaelen of Imperial College London. Speaking about "Music in Psychedelic Therapy" on Oct. 7 at the Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics conference at New York's Cooper Union, Kaelen opened up about the work put in over the last year and the two men's hopes for wider support as Wavepaths moves ahead. An in-depth look by Rolling Stone discusses how Kaelen's research visualizing the brain on LSD suggested that comparable effects of music on the brain could be used to enhance therapy.
"When you allow yourself to be deeply touched and fully moved by music, ... you can see your life from a new perspective," Kaelen said. "What we have learned from both psychedelic therapy research, introspective music therapy formats and deep-listening practices, is the power of fully surrendering to an experience of art." While Kaelen's perspective comes from viewing images of the brain, Brian Eno has been composing and working with collaborators to create the right music, and hopes to attract such younger practitioners of the art as Aphex Twin and Sigur Rós.
Because Wavepaths is being designed primarily as a therapeutic tool, scientific success should lead to new features and discoveries — an important reason to widen the circle of scientists, therapists and musicians collaborating on the project. "Surrendering" to this experience seems likely to lead to much more than infinite-and-automated original music.
