WIMN INTERVIEW: Beatie Wolfe's imPRINTING: The Artist’s Brain

Photo by Hideko San

With imPRINTING, “musical weirdo and visionary” Beatie Wolfe takes us inside our musical brains.

In this sonic self-portrait, “musical weirdo and visionary” Beatie Wolfe presents a new format for the digital age: a data-encoded “thinking cap” tailored by Mr Fish as a counterpart to their award-winning, wearable Album Jacket. Via retro listening stations, plugged into the hat, the audience will be able to listen to and explore the brain’s many channels which include music (limbic system), memory (temporal neocortex), collaborations (medial prefrontal cortex), conversations (Wernicke’s area) with the data related to each “brain channel” ecologically encoded in glass and woven into the cap to be preserved for up to 10,000 years.

Beatie ‘sat down’ with us from afar to share some thoughts about the project.

The WIMN: Diving right in– I’ve read that you were drawn to dementia and music research work after some family members were diagnosed with it, and were inspired by Oliver Sacks groundbreaking work and book Musicophilia. Music’s power to reach beyond diseases like dementia and Alzheimers is incredibly beautiful, heart-aching stuff; my grandma living with Alzheimers constantly sings the “who could ask for anything more?” line from “I Got Rhythm”. What’s one of your favorite concepts or ideas you learned through your research in this area that you love sharing?

Beatie: That music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience and that we think of ourselves as a language species but we are really a musical species. 

The WIMN: What’s one ‘core’ piece of music for you that you feel has become part of you in this way?

Beatie: “Tonight” by David Bowie and Tina Turner. I don’t know why. There’s no good story behind it or a specific moment that it takes me back to but whenever I listen to it (which is now thousands of times over many years) it always makes me feel exactly what it sings about… that everything will be alright. That’s also the magic about music, there is so much mystery in it, why it impacts us the way it does. There’s so much left to explore.