NIRS Project - a 30-participant orchestra as a sonic body-territory

A live orchestra offers one of the strongest images for thinking about the New World.

There is technique.
There is a score.
There is precision.
There is apparent hierarchy.
There is a conductor.
There are sections.
There are section leaders.
There is an audience.
There is silence.
There is breathing.
There is possible error.
There is emerging beauty.

And, above all, there is a collective body that is born in the between.

That collective body is the musical Jiwasa.

The orchestra shows that a group can produce order without becoming a machine. It can have leadership without becoming domination. It can have direction without erasing freedom. It can have technique without losing presence. It can have a score without killing creation.

The conductor, in this sense, appears as a living leadership. The conductor leads and listens. Guides and receives. Organizes entrances, pauses, intensities and passages of energy. At some moments, leadership is with the conductor. At others, it moves to the concertmaster. At others, to the strings. At others, to the winds. At others, to the brass. At others, to the percussion. At others, to the silence of the audience.

Leadership circulates.
Authority becomes movement.
The orchestra becomes a living complex system.

This is the primal seed of this experiment.

The orchestra as a wonder of complex systems

In a simple system, command descends from top to bottom.

In a living system, coordination emerges among parts that listen to one another.

The orchestra shows this clearly. The conductor does not play all the instruments. The conductor does not produce all the sounds. The conductor does not replace the bodies of the musicians. The conductor creates conditions so that many bodies can produce a single sonic presence.

The conductor's function is to modulate the field.

Accelerate.
Sustain.
Open space.
Call one section.
Hold back another.
Give protagonism.
Gather excess.
Protect the pause.
Expand the gesture.
Reduce the gesture.
Invite the collective to cross through a work.

This leadership approaches the idea of "a pretend chief and real freedom."

Leadership exists, but it operates as a relational function.

The conductor appears as a temporary center of coordination, not as the owner of the collective body.

This idea dialogues with "The Dawn of Everything", by David Graeber and David Wengrow, a work that questions linear narratives about human history and opens space to imagine more diverse, flexible and decentralized social forms.

The orchestra, then, becomes metaphor and laboratory.

Metaphor of a New World.
Laboratory of Jiwasa.

The question of the experiment

The NIRS Project asks:

can we measure when an orchestra stops being a sum of musicians and begins to form a sonic body-territory?

This question requires care.

NIRS does not prove Jiwasa by itself.
EEG does not capture the whole spirit of the collective.
Audio does not contain the whole presence.
Video does not see everything.

But together, these signs can open an experimental window.

The goal is to transform Capta into listening.

Capta is captured trace.
Jiwasa is emerging presence.

The experiment does not seek to reduce music to data. It seeks to create a science capable of perceiving when the group gains body, when leadership circulates, when the audience enters the field, and when sound stops being only execution and becomes event.

Methodological bridges between fNIRS, music, hyperscanning and Jiwasa

The proposal can be supported by an international field of research on fNIRS, music, hyperscanning, interpersonal synchronization, movement, social interaction and multimodal analysis.

fNIRS allows us to observe hemodynamic changes related to cortical activity, especially variations in oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin. Its value for this project lies in its non-invasive, portable nature, and in its compatibility with situations that are more natural than other neuroimaging modalities.

This matters because an orchestra is not a still subject inside a machine.

An orchestra breathes.
Moves.
Listens.
Adjusts.
Makes mistakes.
Reorganizes itself.
Produces presence.

For this reason, the experiment needs a technology capable of following living bodies in a performative context.

The literature gathered by Artinis includes a reference especially close to our proposal: a method for using fNIRS with orchestral musicians in concert, thinking about music-induced brain activation in a real performance situation. This reference opens a direct door to imagining a science of music that does not completely separate the laboratory from the event.

The hyperscanning literature is also essential. Hyperscanning means measuring the brain activity of more than one person at the same time in order to study how people interact. In an orchestra, this allows us to formulate a central question:

what happens among brains, bodies, gestures, breathing and sound when a collective begins to function as a shared presence?

Instead of observing only the isolated individual, hyperscanning allows us to study relationships.

The relationship between conductor and musicians.
The relationship between section leader and section.
The relationship between strings, winds, brass and percussion.
The relationship between musicians and audience.
The relationship between breathing, gesture, sound and attention.

Here, Capta approaches Jiwasa.

Not because data captures everything.
Not because a graph replaces experience.
Not because neuroimaging explains beauty.

But because data can become a form of listening.

The proposal is also strengthened by research on inter-brain synchronization, real-life cooperation, team creativity, synchronized movement and interpersonal coordination. These fields show that the bond among bodies is not only a metaphor. It can leave physiological, neural, temporal and behavioral traces.

In an orchestra, these traces appear as sound, gesture, breathing, gaze, micro-adjustment, entrance, pause, climax and silence.

The goal of the NIRS Project is not to reduce Jiwasa to a metric.

The goal is to create a science capable of recognizing signals of collective emergence.

Experimental design: 30 participants

The experiment proposes a reduced orchestra with 30 monitored participants.

Suggested composition:

1 conductor.
4 section leaders, including concertmaster, strings, winds, brass and percussion.
20 musicians distributed among the sections.
5 audience participants, chosen to represent the living listening of the room.

Total: 30 body-territories.

This formation allows us to observe three levels at the same time:

The individual.
The section.
The collective body of the orchestra with the audience.

The goal is to study musical Jiwasa as an emergent pattern among conductor, musicians, sections, audience, acoustic space and musical work.

What to measure

The experiment must integrate several layers of Capta.

Proposed measures:

fNIRS/NIRS in selected participants or in all participants, depending on technical feasibility.
EEG in a subgroup, especially conductor, section leaders and some musicians.
HRV/RMSSD to evaluate autonomic regulation.
Breathing through respiratory belts or equivalent sensors.
Multichannel audio of the room.
Synchronized video of the orchestra.
Body movement through IMU or visual tracking.
Score event registration.
Marking of entrances, pauses, leadership changes and critical passages.
Post-performance phenomenological reports.
Questionnaires on presence, belonging, risk, listening and the sensation of a collective body.

The combination of fNIRS and EEG can be especially valuable because the two techniques observe complementary dimensions of the brain process. EEG has high temporal resolution and captures fast electrical dynamics. fNIRS localizes hemodynamic changes related to cortical oxygenation. Together, they can offer a richer reading of the event.

But the design requires care.

NIRS measures one part.
EEG measures another.
Audio measures another.
Video measures another.
Breathing measures another.
Lived experience measures another.

Jiwasa appears when these layers begin to speak to one another.

Experimental conditions

The study can compare different forms of presentation.

Condition 1: recording

The audience listens to a high-quality recording.

Here we measure the stabilized sonic experience.

The recording creates permanence.

Condition 2: live performance without active audience

The orchestra plays in a controlled room, with minimal or absent audience.

Here we observe the internal coupling among conductor, leaders and musicians.

Performance creates coordination.

Condition 3: live performance with audience

The orchestra plays in front of the 5 monitored audience participants.

Here the field changes.

The room gains social breathing.

The audience enters the system.

Condition 4: centralized leadership

The conductor leads with high protagonism, more direct gestures and greater control.

Here we observe the collective body under vertical leadership.

Condition 5: distributed leadership

The conductor gives moments of protagonism to the section leaders.

The concertmaster takes over a passage.
The strings lead a transition.
The winds open a color.
The brass creates force.
The percussion reorganizes energy.

The conductor becomes less the owner of movement and more the modulator of the field.

Here we observe leadership circulating.

This condition is essential for our ideas of the New World.

Condition 6: microvariation and consented risk

The orchestra performs a passage with interpretive margin, a small consented rhythmic instability or controlled expressive freedom.

The goal is to observe how the group responds to living risk.

The question is:

when instability appears, does the collective break or reorganize itself?

Windows of the experiment

The experiment must be analyzed by windows.

Window 1: silence before the entrance

Before the first sound, the collective body has already begun.

The conductor breathes.
The musicians adjust posture.
The audience becomes quiet.
The room waits.

Question:

does the orchestra enter as 30 individuals or as a field in formation?

Window 2: the conductor's first gesture

The first gesture creates the pact.

The gesture calls time.
Calls body.
Calls listening.
Calls belonging.

Question:

who follows the conductor only as command, and who couples to the field?

Window 3: entrance of the first section

When a section enters, it can carry the collective.

The strings can open territory.
The winds can color emotion.
The brass can create force.
The percussion can reorganize the ground.

Question:

how does the body of the orchestra change when partial leadership assumes the field?

Window 4: passage of leadership

This is the heart of the study.

The conductor leads a passage and then gives protagonism to a section leader.

Leadership circulates.
The field reorganizes itself.

Question:

does synchrony increase when leadership is shared?
Does the breathing of the group become closer?
Does the audience perceive greater presence?
Does Jiwasa intensify?

Window 5: almost-error

A small instability appears.

The group adjusts.
The conductor feels.
The section leader responds.
The audience holds its breath.

Question:

does possible error create shared attention?
Does vulnerability increase coupling?
Does risk strengthen Jiwasa?

Window 6: climax

At the climax, the orchestra concentrates energy.

Sound, gesture, breathing and attention become denser.

Question:

is the climax only an increase in volume, or is it the formation of a sonic body-territory?

Window 7: silence after the ending

After the last note, the music continues in the body.

The final silence may be more revealing than the sound.

Question:

does the audience immediately return to the individual, or does it remain for a few seconds in a collective body?

Musical Jiwasa Index

The experiment can propose an exploratory index called the Musical Jiwasa Index.

This index would not be an absolute measure.

It would be a composition of signals.

Possible components:

inter-brain synchrony among conductor, leaders and musicians;
physiological synchrony through HRV and breathing;
acoustic coordination among sections;
temporal stability and flexibility;
gaze, gesture and movement dynamics;
audience reaction in HRV, breathing and reports;
subjective perception of presence, belonging and collective body;
moments in which leadership circulates without loss of cohesion.

Musical Jiwasa appears when many signals point in the same direction:

the group is creating a larger body.

The conductor as a model of leadership for the New World

The orchestra teaches a politics.

The conductor can be read as a transitional leadership.

Helps the group cross through a work.
Sustains the field.
Distributes attention.
Calls leaderships.
Recognizes the moment when another body needs to lead.

This image approaches the idea of a living State.

A State that recognizes the body-territory as the minimum unit.
A State that creates conditions for each territory to express its power.
A State that coordinates without capturing.
A State that distributes without erasing singularities.
A State that uses technology for belonging.

Here enters Citizen Drex as a technological seed.

In our reading, retail Citizen Drex can be thought of as a public technology of belonging.

Not only digital money.

But an infrastructure of connection among body-territory, rights, circulation, care, local production and common future.

The colonized world placed monetization at the center of life.

It transformed land into asset.
Attention into product.
Childhood into market.
Art into content.
Future into debt.

The New World needs to place the body-territory back at the center.

In this New World, financial technology needs to serve belonging.

A retail CBDC with Citizen Drex could function as a base for public policies closer to real life:

territorial income;
local financing;
cultural circuits;
community health;
situated education;
regenerative economy;
valuation of body-territories;
public traces of care;
belonging as infrastructure.

The orchestra helps us imagine this.

The conductor does not own the music.
The State should not own the territories.
The conductor creates conditions for sound to emerge.
The State should create conditions for the Weicho of each body-territory to flourish.

From the concert to the New World

This experiment begins with music.

But its question reaches politics.

The orchestra shows that coordination can be born with freedom.
It shows that leadership can circulate.
It shows that the collective can gain form without erasing singularities.
It shows that technique can serve presence.
It shows that a score can guide without imprisoning.
It shows that possible error can increase attention.
It shows that the audience participates in the sonic body.
It shows that the between is measurable, sensible and creative.

The science of NIRS can help reveal part of that between.

The philosophy of Body-Territory can provide language.
DNA Intelligence can provide vital foundation.
Citizen Drex can provide technological infrastructure of belonging.
And Jiwasa can give a name to what emerges when many bodies stop being mass and become a common body.

Closing

The NIRS Project with a 30-participant orchestra proposes more than a music study.

It proposes a rehearsal for the New World.

A world where leadership circulates.
Where the conductor calls powers.
Where the sections express differences.
Where the audience participates in the field.
Where technology measures without replacing life.
Where data listens to the body.
Where the State learns from the orchestra.
Where digital money can serve belonging.
Where the body-territory becomes the minimum unit of politics, economy and care.

The living orchestra teaches us that the most beautiful collective emerges when each body offers its singularity to the common field.

That common field is Jiwasa.

Perhaps the New World begins when we learn to conduct without dominating, measure without reducing, monetize without capturing and organize without killing the living freedom of body-territories.

Relevant publications and sources to connect to the project

Artinis Medical Systems - Publications
General base of publications using Artinis devices in fNIRS, hyperscanning, NIRS+EEG, clinical applications, movement, VR and other fields.

Artinis - Hyperscanning publications
Base for thinking about simultaneous measurements among multiple participants, inter-brain synchronization, cooperation, social interaction and collective coordination.

Artinis - Method for Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to Explore Music-Induced Brain Activation in Orchestral Musicians in Concert
A reference especially close to the project because it connects fNIRS, orchestral musicians and a concert context.

Artinis - Differential contribution of between and within-brain coupling to movement synchronization
A useful reference for thinking about the difference between synchronization within one brain and synchronization between brains during coordinated movement.

Artinis - fNIRS-based hyperscanning reveals increased inter-brain synchronization in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during interdisciplinary cooperation
A useful reference for thinking about cooperation, work among different areas and inter-brain synchronization.

Artinis - Brainstorming: Interbrain coupling in groups forms the basis of group creativity
A useful reference to connect collective creativity, group emergence and inter-brain coupling.

NIRx - Hyperscanning
Conceptual and technical base to define hyperscanning as the simultaneous neuroimaging of multiple people during social interaction.

Czeszumski et al. 2020 - Hyperscanning: A Valid Method to Study Neural Inter-brain Underpinnings of Social Interaction
General methodological reference to support the use of hyperscanning in real social interactions.

Li et al. 2021 - Dynamic Inter-Brain Synchrony in Real-life Inter-Personal Cooperation: A Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy Hyperscanning Study
Important reference for real-life cooperation, dynamic synchrony and interpersonal interaction.

Mayseless et al. 2019 - Real-life creative problem solving in teams: fNIRS based hyperscanning study
Important reference for team creativity, problem solving and collective dynamics.

NIRx - Concurrent fNIRS and EEG
Technical base to justify a multimodal reading, in which EEG and fNIRS appear as complementary technologies.

NIRx - fNIRS Analysis
Methodological base to reinforce that the experiment needs clear hypotheses, careful experimental design, event synchronization and rigorous statistical analysis.

The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber and David Wengrow
Philosophical base for thinking about flexible, decentralized and non-linear social forms.

Banco Central do Brasil - Drex
Institutional base to contextualize Drex as a central bank digital currency and to open the conceptual reading of Citizen Drex as infrastructure of belonging.