Rustle
for cello, electronics, brainwave and heartbeat data, field recordings, live processing, and video

Composition : Penelope Bekiari
Cello: Semeli Kostourou

Rustle is a live electroacoustic work that unfolds as a dialogue between the human body, its inner states, and its acoustic environment. Rooted in the interaction between a cellist and a responsive electronic system, the piece draws from real-time physiological data (brainwave activity (EEG) and heartbeat rate (HR) data) to shape both the live cello’s timbral spectrum and the structure of its surrounding soundscape.
Rather than functioning solely as a data sonification piece, Rustle integrates affective technology: the performer’s emotional states (pre-mapped and categorized through machine learning algorithms trained in Python) dynamically inform the electronic layer. In this way, the system does not merely translate data into sound, but interprets and responds to affective states; rendering them musically audible and shaping the trajectory of the piece.
Field recordings—captured in locations selected for their emotional or acoustic resonance—form the basis of the electronic material. These recordings are continuously transformed and spatialized in real time, influenced by the fluctuating bio-signals of the performer. The cello, treated through subtle live processing, is not simply accompanied by electronics; it is entangled with them in a complex, adaptive feedback loop. The line between performer and environment dissolves, and sound becomes the medium through which cognition, emotion, and external space converge.
Crucially, Rustle also includes a visual layer: a video projection that evolves in tandem with the sonic and physiological transformations. The visual material—composed of abstract textures, environmental footage, and algorithmically generated imagery—reacts to both the sound and the affective states driving it. This is achieved through real-time processing in Max/MSP, which synchronizes video content with incoming EEG and HR data, allowing the visual narrative to unfold organically alongside the music. As the performer’s emotions shift, the video’s colors, rhythm, and shapes change too, blending sound and visuals into a unified, synaesthetic experience.

Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives—from neuroscience to philosophy and the arts—Rustle transforms the brain’s and heart’s hidden rhythms into sound, revealing how emotion moves through the nervous system and takes form as movement, light, and sonic gesture. The title Rustle evokes the quiet disturbances at the edges of awareness—bodily microstates, environmental whispers, inner fluctuations—that here become compositional material. The piece is presented to its audience as an evolving landscape of perception, where sound and image are not only heard and seen, but also felt, both as internal vibration and as a shared, immersive experience.

"Threading Thoughts" explores the fractal nature of neural architecture through embroidery—a medium that literally embodies the patience and repetitive practice required to build neural pathways. The piece playfully represents larger neural structures through their fundamental components, like the cerebellum rendered as a single Purkinje cell, embodying the recursive nature of biological organization. By employing a traditionally feminine craft to represent an organ often masculinized in scientific discourse, the work reclaims both the embodied knowledge of handwork and the collaborative, networked nature of cognition itself.

The work is a three-canvas work titled "Silence Series." In this series, I experiment with subtracting color by using black, white, and gray tones on a series of acrylic canvas paintings. This work invites you to experience the effects this lack of color has on the human eye. Irregular lines of paint layers in primary colors were added to these colorless paintings. This attempt to create the illusion of color fields in a colorless work. The fact that this aesthetic experience relates to the brain's role in perceiving and interpreting color reveals the work's connection to neuroscience. In fact, this is somewhat reminiscent of the painting practices of art movements such as Impressionism and Pointillism.
It can be argued that this work contains some insights into Color Perception and the Interpretive Role of the Brain. The brain processes light wavelengths and perceives light and the appearance of objects as "color." However, this perception is not absolute; it depends on the context. In this context, the knowledge of Simultaneous Contrast, where a color is perceived differently by being affected by its surrounding colors, is important. Colorful lines added to a colorless surface in a work can cause the entire area to appear colored.
On the other hand, Color Induction is also known to cause environmental cues to prompt the brain to fill in the "missing color." This process can be observed where colored lines and areas placed in a black-and-white field cause the eye and brain to fill in the missing colors.
These interventions create a complementary visual illusion, suggesting that colors that do not exist in the viewer's mind come to life.
Furthermore, some elements related to visual processing in the brain and the "color hallucination" can be listed. The visual cortex is known to process form and color contrast, particularly in areas V1, V2, and V4. In a black-and-white field, colored lines can stimulate these areas, causing the entire composition to be perceived as colored. This corresponds to a concept neuroscientifically known as "predictive coding." The brain fills in missing information based on past experiences and context.
Consequently, when the proposed work is evaluated from a Neuroaesthetic Perspective on art and perception, it not only engages the viewer visually but also conceptually. It raises awareness of the construction of visual reality. It encourages the viewer to consider the nature of perception, neuroscience, and aesthetic processes. Furthermore, the perception of the colorless as "colorful" results in the convergence of sensory illusion with aesthetics.
Plan of the work on the wall: This work consists of three canvas paintings.

Before the first note strikes, the stage is a living atlas of memory: twenty points etched in reflective tapes to form a luminous cartography of neuronal life. Inspired from Wayne McGregor’s Autobiography — DNA sequences incarnated as movement vocabulary—I merge the threshold of science and art, “dancing out” the hidden symphony of twenty Alzheimer’s brains.

Alzheimer’s, we know, marks in the withering of neurons and shrinkage of hippocampi. But in addition to that, recent studies have identified fractured neuronal synchronization and subsequent disconnected networks (Percio et al., 2023). Drawing upon open-source EEG data from OpenNeuro (Miltiadous et al., 2023), I calculated average phase synchronization indices (PSIs) for each EEG channel pair across the brain and average PSIs for each of the 20 patients, then wove those values into my choreography.

The average PSIs for each channel pair (put together to form a topographic map) becomes a guide of my trajectory, with me carrying light sticks to physically trace out the map. In regions of deep red — sites of high synchrony — my light-sticks glow and linger; in the cool blues of desynchronization, my form dissolves fleetingly into shadow.

Movement qualities unfold based on the average PSIs for each of the 20 patients. I plotted twenty points across the map. The first eight points, representing higher PSIs, are rendered in sharp, emotionless shapes. Then, as I pass the threshold into middle stages, I deform earlier phrases — the moves of the second point twisting into the eighth, the third into the ninth — signaling the insidious shift toward chaos. From point ten onward, structure gives way to improvisation: chaotic, jagged, disoriented sequences, guided only by the pulse of a soundtrack that also transitions from crisp, mechanistic beats to fractured noise.

Yet this is not a dirge, nor a mere illustration of loss. Like McGregor’s “body as living archive,” I reclaim autonomy from data through transforming it into body movements. These movements are not cold metrics but living memories — each gesture an inscription of individual neuronal firing. As mortality looms, I hope they leave not with despair but sense of agency. I also hope that, through choreography, the essence of Alzheimer’s can extend beyond a sterile data report—becoming humanized and immortalized in its most visceral form of expression.

This poem, titled "The Purkinje Listener", explores the structure and function of a Purkinje cell in the cerebellum. It describes how its flat, branch-like dendrites receive thousands of signals from granule cells through parallel fibers. The poem shows how the Purkinje cell carefully filters these signals to help the brain control movement and correct mistakes. In the final lines, it connects this process to the idea of flexibility: how the brain learns and adapts over time.