Netflix Transforms Viewer Brainwaves Into Music to Promote Telepathy Show

To promote its Sense8 series, created by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, Netflix and production company Tool crafted "Brainwave Symphony," an electronica recording made in part by attaching electroencephalograph—or EEG—sensors to the heads of eight people who binge-watched the first season and then sat through a common set of visual and aural stimuli.

In a complex multistep process, the Netflix team ran the different readouts—alpha, beta, delta, gamma and theta, each with its own frequency range—through various audio processing to render a short musical theme for each person, and applied those melodies to a predetermined rhythmic structure, ultimately weaving the parts together into a full piece.

For the geeks among you (squarely in Netflix's target here), the campaign website offers more details on the various technological aspects. A brief video summarizes the process, and Spotify is streaming the song itself.