Music and Medicine with Beatie Wolfe
from WOLFE’S GROUNDBREAKING MUSIC & DEMENTIA RESEARCH WORK TO HER BRAIN INSTALLATION EXHIBITED IN THE WORLD’S LEADING SCIENCE MUSEUMS
The Power of Music to us on a core level, beyond that which even Science currently understands, runs through everything Wolfe does and has created. It is foundational. After witnessing the impact of music firsthand in ways that were previously thought impossible - e.g. watching individuals in the late stages of dementia wake up and transform from music that wasn’t triggering memory - Wolfe undertook groundbreaking research that went on to change policy and form a charity and started weaving in this understanding to all of her work. From being Calm’s first original content creator and making their first series of Sleep Stories to recently creating ‘imPRINTING’ - an award-winning brain installation that was exhibited at Somerset House and the Boston Museum of Science - Wolfe shares the power of music in everything she does.
“Music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience and I have witnessed firsthand too many examples of its medicinal powers (that often even transcend scientific understanding) to count. Music is not simply entertainment. It is core to our Wellbeing, our Humanity. ”
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Power of Music and Dementia
Beatie Wolfe began her pioneering Power of Music and Dementia work over a decade ago (in 2013) after reading Oliver Sacks ‘Musicophilia’ and then seeing the impact of music first-hand on her loved ones living with dementia. Following these early ad hoc live performances in care homes for loved ones, where profound reactions and breakthroughs were witnessed, Wolfe went onto undertake a study in 2014 that was the first piece of research to look at new music, unconnected to memory, for people living with dementia. The findings were published in: The Times, Independent, BBC Radio 4, WIRED, Stanford University, Forbes with numerous publications and scientific bodies declaring the work “groundbreaking” for looking at music outside of its link to memory.
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A Sonic Self-Portrait
Wanting to find a way to make our own brains more accessible and bring neurology and consciousness closer together, Wolfe created imPRINTING, an exhibit which transports visitors inside the artist’s brain via a retro-future “thinking cap” allowing them to tune into and discover its many channels and sonic imprints including conversations, collaborations, music, memory, hopes, fears and dreams. First exhibited at Somerset House and now installed in the Boston Museum of Science, visitors can pick up retro telephones to listen in to the brain channels all stored in Wolfe’s thinking cap. This “thinking cap” holds the data related to each area of the brain ecologically encoded in glass and woven into the cap to be preserved for up to 10,000 years.
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Calm's 1st Original Content
Beatie Wolfe - a pioneering musician who has beamed her music into space, held an acclaimed exhibition at the V&A Museum and been appointed a UN role model for innovation - was invited to join Stephen Fry as one of the first sleep story narrators on Calm. Not one to do covers, Beatie Wolfe wrote, produced and narrated her first original story “The Ocean’s Lullaby” which was the first original content on the app. This was followed by “The Mysterious Sound of the Sea” which she wrote and recorded on Jacques Cousteau’s Baja boat out in the San Diego Bay. These stories were so popular she then released each story’s soundtrack.
