The Penguin Empire

Powered By Brains

The Penguin Empire laboratory has been busy over the last few months, working on a new project.

We’ve developed a helmet that turns brain waves into music.

Commissioned by the mad geniuses as Marketforce (in particular Guy Howlett & Neil Martin who cooked up the idea) we set out to bring this challenging proposition to life. We partnered with music-scientist Skot McDonald to develop a helmet-and-software system that reads the electrical activity of the brain and translates that into a unique music track for each wearer.

It’s all very technical, so perhaps it’s best explained by the man itself.

The project represented a new frontier for the Penguin Empire, getting involved in all aspects of the project’s execution. Moving beyond the typical role of a production company, we oversaw the entire project, encompassing not only the TVC, and web-video(s) you see above, but also producing the live event itself (in Rundle Mall and at the WOMAD festival) as well as developing the software and systems necessary to capture each performance live, upload them to youtube and automatically generate an EDM for each participant.

Fanciness. We’re good with stuff like that.