Tinnere. Behind The Tune Dominik 't Jolle Maria Komarova 2020

A crossover project between Overtoon, artist Dominik ’t Jolle, and Jan Ost from BRAI3N, a multidisciplinary centre for brain research.

Dominik has been suffering from ringing in the ears and even sound hallucinations for much of her life. Already as a child she observed vibrations and flashes of light with realistic resonances in the room where she was. She woke up one morning with a deafening, high sine tone that never stopped. As a sound artist, she wants to translate those impressions into an audiovisual project that can be understood by a wide audience, but also by her doctors and researchers in tinnitus research. It will be a work of art with sound and projection that maps its tinnitus spectrum.

Hearing damage is not the only causal factor in the tinnitus complex. The interaction between stress and stored information creates a network of neuronal connections. The hyperactivity of the compounds manifests itself as an acoustic phantom in these patients. The brain wave registration shows links between activity in the different brain areas. Dominik took the drawings of the connectivity analysis (qEEG) as a starting point for sketches, for the design of the installation, for the distribution of a network of transducers and lines throughout the room, in order to give shape to the hypersensitization.

Rather than transposing EEG brain data into sonic or musical elements, Dominik chose to build an immersive environment where static illuminated sculptural pieces relate to a dynamic sound track spatialised over the objects with tens of tiny transducers. The visitor creates his own mix between sound sources as he walks among them. This art-science project aims to re-enact a brain mapping by means of a metaphorical space, rendering a subjective experience of pressures that is mirrored in the tension between auditory and visual perception.

't Jolle collaborates with brain research centre BRAI3N and Overtoon acts as incubator for this project which is made possible by the Flemish Authorities with a subsidy for Innovative Partner Projects.

BRAI3N is Brain Research center for Advanced, Innovative, Interdisciplinary and International Neuromodulation. The aim is to develop new neuromodulation treatments by bundling the common neurophysiological mechanisms of diseases such as the 'thalamocortical dysrhythmias' (tinnitus, pain, Parkinson's, depression, absence-epilepsy) and the 'reward deficiency syndromes' (obesity, addiction, OCD, ADHD, etc ...).