Let the music rewire your mind
Alpha waves, binaural beats, digital dopamine. We’re constantly searching Spotify for serotonin, scanning “happiness frequency” playlists. We turn to YouTube videos with relaxing melodies, meditate while anxious, and slow down our heartbeats. We are constantly plugged into sonorous forms of escape. Mindfulness apps, calming soundscapes, and ambient rhythms have made music listening increasingly addictive. What once was simply a form of artistic expression has now, through the development of technology, become part an algorithm.
In a world where everything has become mechanised, authentic artistic expression, along with the true sense of calm it can bring, is increasingly hard to find. Precisely because of this, when it does emerge, it holds even greater value. This is the case with contemporary Spanish artist Samyula. With a large and growing audience, she stands as a clear example of this rare, genuine approach. Despite an academic background in medicine and neuroscience, Samyula presents herself as a classical pianist. With more than six million streams across platforms, she has become an acclaimed musician thanks to the narratives and immersive emotional landscapes she creates through her compositions. Her mission is to challenge the boundary between neuroscience and music, bridging the two by empowering the human mind to explore, to experience, and to find peace. In this context, music becomes medicine. A solace for our mind, a moment of peace in the chaos of everyday life, and an active response against a reality that often feels constricting. Her work resists the domination of technology, while still embracing its tools, preserving the essence of music as art as it used to happen once.
The relationship between science and art has a long history. Take, for example, the use of the "aura" in visual art. Renaissance masters perfected it by applying proportion to the human figure, creating balance and visual satisfaction for the viewer. We also see this in literature, such as in the case of Lewis Carroll and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. For instance, subtly encodes complex mathematical theories within a story that, on the surface, reads like a simple children’s tale. In these examples, art and mathematics don’t oppose each other, they coexist, complementing and enhancing one another. Without manipulation or dependence, they cooperate to stretch the boundaries of human satisfaction and creative perfection. Artists like Samyula preserve this harmony. They offer a kind of artistic practice that remains authentic, an antidote to a contemporary reality poisoned by overstimulation.