Tune / Reward

Summer Krinsky, in collaboration with Dr. Sam Sober (US)

What if you could “see” and “hear” how your brain works? 

Tune / Reward examines the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine in vocal skill practice. Dopamine is a chemical that our brain cells (neurons) use to communicate with each other and which plays an essential role in our ability to learn from experience and is essential to reshaping behaviour. This applies during skill learning, when dopamine signals help us perfect our abilities, and also in states of addiction, when drugs hijack the dopamine system to produce addictive behaviours. Tune / Reward shares their research to offer us insights into how dopamine neurons detect errors in a bird’s singing performance, which leads the bird to improve its singing ability. It offers us a playful insight into how the dopamine pathway works.

Summer Krinsky is a Detroit-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, audio engineer, and creative coder. Her sound is stylized by the use of mixing and production as a compositional foundation. Krinsky plays drums, bass, piano, guitar, and sings, releasing music under the artist name Summer Like The Season. Exploring themes of this cyborg era, Krinsky makes music that traces the edge between live instrumentation and contemporary electronics, examining the intermediary role technology plays in modern identity. Additionally, she experiments with programming novel audio controllers and designing interactive installations. She is a 2022 Kresge Fellow and 2020 Science Gallery Detroit resident artist. Krinsky’s highly personal approach to creativity speaks with a unique and inventive voice.

Sam Sober is a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. His group investigates how the brain learns and performs complex skills. By examining how animals learn from experience, Dr. Sober’s has shown how the brain uses trial-and-error practice to rewire itself and modify behavior. This work also investigates how neurochemical systems including dopamine (a neurotransmitter strongly involved in addiction) reshape the structure and function of the brain.

Tune / Reward was commissioned by Science Gallery Atlanta