Guerilla Frequencies
Annie Mitchell creates beautiful, site-specific land sculptures that combine light and sound with the natural environment. Using handcrafted fiber optics and rhythmic soundscapes, she employs a method called brainwave entrainment, which induces the brain’s frequency-following response. Her work is sometimes described as sound therapy, often resulting in meditative or even trance-like states. In this conversation, we discover how art and science can blend—tuning us to just the right frequency.
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Key Insights & Takeaways
Our brainwave state can have a profound effect on our perception and experience, and these states can be induced.
People spend much of their waking life in Beta, in constant stress and anxiety. Alpha is a desirable brainwave state associated with relaxation and creativity.
Brainwave entrainment induces the brain’s frequency following response so your brainwaves sync up to the rhythm of external stimuli (light and sound).
7.83 Hz is the Earth's resonant frequency, also known as the Heartbeat of the Earth, or Schuman’s Resonance.
There is a long tradition in many indigenous cultures of rhythm and movement used to induce entrainment, body synchronization, and altered states.
Studies show crowds at a live concert or theater can actually synchronize their heartbeats and breathing.
Aligning a group of people to the same frequency can enhance their communal experience.
Hiking to Annie’s remote Guerilla installations is an ideal palette cleanser, providing an important mental and physiological transition that prepares people to encounter the work.
Awe is an important emotion to consider while designing for change, associated with feelings of connectedness, self-transcendence, and altruistic behavior. Annie’s work aspires to induce awe, ala the Overview Effect at a macro level.
When designing for others to experience a specific emotion, it’s important to be in touch with your own personal experience of that emotion.
Our work designing for change shouldn’t burn us out. It should rejuvenate us as a sort of medicine or therapy. If you’re feeling drained by your work, maybe this is a signal that you’re doing it wrong. Perhaps there’s a better way that’s more about healing than it is about struggling and fighting.
Human development (our evolution) is highly influenced by our environment. So much effort is focused on getting people to change. What if more energy were spent on changing the environments people inhabit instead? Thereby creating the right conditions for change to emerge.
About our guest
Annie Mitchell is a Light and Sound Artist interested in what drives us as humans, the environments in which we thrive and the human connections we need to flourish.
Leveraging a career in design spanning 2 decades, Annie directed her training in technology and behavioral sciences to create immersive sound and light experiences that actively seek to change the collective tempo through a process that synchronizes human bio-functioning to external stimuli. By slowing the tempo of both the natural world and the audience, Annie hopes to create a meaningful connection between the two.
Driven by research in neuroscience and bioecology, the artist looks to science to help her create immersive experiences that provoke a visceral reaction in her audience. Light, sound and environment discreetly work together to slow the perception of time passing and visitors often report that they feel completely free of tension and anxiety during and following the experiences.
Connect with Annie Mitchell
Website | Instagram | Soundcloud | LinkedIn
Email: annie[at]anniem[dot]me
Links & resources from this episode:
Phillip Ross
Annie’s Guerilla Installations
Study: Awe and Self-Transcendent Experience in Space Flight
The Burnout Culture of Activism
Meditation and Brainwave States
Altered State of Consciousness
When Choirs Sing, Hearts Synchronize
Entrainment with Rhythm: Breathing and Heartbeat
Indigenous Practice: Rhythm and Ritual, Altered States of Consciousness
