JASON SNELL

Musician/Technologist (EEG)

Jason Snell is a multidisciplinary artist who performs electronic music with biosensors and builds generative art installations.

His performances use biofeedback loops to explore consciousness and blur the line between cause and effect. His installations explore the nature of authorship, requiring the presence of visitors to generate the art. These projects use live data from the body and mind to compose music and visual sequences in real-time. The resulting compositions are biomorphic - taking the shape of life patterns - and reveal a natural intelligence inherent in the world and our bodies.

For his main project, he uses an EEG headband to compose music directly with his thoughts; a type of “electro-psychedelic” that reveals the psyche through sound. He is also building a large-scale generative art installation in Iowa City that creates color sequences by synthesizing data from pedestrian movement, atmospheric light and temperature, and the moon’s

gravitational pull.

Jason’s projects have been featured at Sundance, SXSW, CPH:DOX, the Berlin Independent, SF Independent, Slamdance, and Eufonia festivals. They have been featured in TV and print news, and earned ADC, IAB, Webby, and Glaad Media awards. His brainwave sonification work has captured the attention of neuroscience and arts communities. He has presented and lectured throughout North America and Europe, including at New York University ITP, Ableton (Berlin, NYC, LA), Native Instruments, 343 Labs, St. Ambrose University, University of Iowa, and scores of music and technology shows, conferences, and festivals.

He founded the Newbo Synth Group, a monthly educational forum about synthesis.He studied at the University of Iowa, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, School of Visual Arts in New York, and attended technology-based art workshops at Spektrum in Berlin.

Jason grew up in Iowa and - when not in a pandemic - spends his time between New York, Iowa, and Berlin.