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Wednesday, April 16, 2003 |
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Synesthesia - sensory cognition ? Interesting to come across this post at Metafilter. Smelling Colors, Hearing numbers. This article from Scientific American seems to be turning heads around the Psychology Department at U of M [Michigan]. It's got me going too. I've seen real connections between color and sound before, stone sober. Could there be something to all this? [MetaFilter] In the article above, the authors say : "In addition to clarifying why artists might be prone to experiencing synesthesia, our research suggests that we all have some capacity for it and that this trait may have set the stage for the evolution of abstraction--an ability at which humans excel. The TPO (and the angular gyrus within it), which plays a part in the condition, is normally involved in cross-modal synthesis. It is the brain region where information from touch, hearing and vision is thought to flow together to enable the construction of high-level perceptions. For example, a cat is fluffy (touch), it meows and purrs (hearing), it has a certain appearance (vision) and odor (smell), all of which are derived simultaneously by the memory of a cat or the sound of the word "cat." It was a Kandinsky painting that got me interested in this field. What impressed me was the tremendous sensory fusion .. one could almost hear music in the splash of colour. I'm no synesthete and nor am i involved in acid or mushrooms .... yet i felt the power of this piece. Richard E. Cytowic, author of 'The Man Who Tasted Shapes', in an article - Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology - A Review of Current Knowledge, talks of how this fusion is being used in art, music and theatre. "By mid-nineteenth century synesthesia had intrigued an art movement that sought sensory fusion, and a union of the senses appeared more and more frequently as an idea. Multimodal concerts of music and light (son et lumiere), sometimes including odor, were popular and often featured color organs, keyboards that controlled colored lights as well as musical notes. It is imperative to understand that such deliberate contrivances are qualitatively different from the involuntary experiences that I am calling synesthesia in this review. Rare condition or a state of sensory cognition to come?
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Link
Came across this neat link : Arts and Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - thanks K Masi ! 2:10:35 PM comment [] trackback []
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Research on Weblogs 2 interesting pieces of research on weblogs : 1. From Seb : Results of Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey 2. From Lilia - work in progress - current study on Blogging Adoption 1. Results of Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I have been conducting a survey of weblog use for knowledge sharing. 176 people have heeded my call and answered the survey that was graciously hosted by Blogstreet. As promised, here's the data and the first pie charts to come out of the oven: Seb's "weblogs and knowledge sharing" survey results. Unfortunately I don't have time to provide an analysis right now, but the result I personally find the most interesting is in the answers to question #16 and #17 - they suggest that weblogs provide a unique opportunity to create meaningful links between people in different fields. This correlates with my personal experience as well. I believe that deep insights often come out of such occasions for "creative friction". The wiki pies aren't ready yet, but it shouldn't take too long. Great stuff Seb ... i can't agree with you more about creative friction. Reminds me of a favourite : "You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star" Nietzche. I also find answers to questions 6 and 7 interesting ... the blog sphere can be a tremendous source of information exchange. 2. Blogging adoption questionnaires The goal of this study is to understand factors that support or inhibit adoption of blogging by comparing bloggers and "would be bloggers". I would appreciate if you can spend some of your time answering my questions. I estimate that it should take between 10 and 25 minutes (I took me 15 minutes). - if you have a weblog - http://blog.mathemagenic.com/blogtalk/blogger.htm - if you don't have a weblog - http://blog.mathemagenic.com/blogtalk/wouldbe.htm It took me all of 10 minutes to fill in the survey ... it made me really pause and reflect on my reasons for blogging. All of you bloggers and non-bloggers should see this. I look forward to seeing the results Lilia, and the very best for your paper.
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Blogs and Conversations
I've been wondering about the 'comments' link on blogs ... the youth and teeny blogs seem to encourage comments and conversation much more than any other segment of bloggers. (no hard data here .. just an observation). I sense a certain hesitancy or reticence to writing comments on blogs from other segments. Makes me wonder whether the old 'rules' of blogging in fact vitiate in some manner, the start of a two-way exchange. Many blogs seem intimidating, especially for those 'outside' the established circles, and somehow one is uncomfortable about starting a conversation, or adding a comment. I kind of like the Ryze guestbook ... its a really warm way of encouraging people to start a conversation. Obviously, once the dialogue has started it would then move into other structures like multimedia conversations and even face-to-face, if so desired. Or IM boards like zonkboard could be a great tool for encouraging dialogue .. yet it seems 'uncool' (unless you're a teeny networker) to have a guestbook type of board at your blog. My two-bits as a newbie blogger only just discovering this space !
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Blogs - One Stop Shop In my News Aggregator a few days ago .. noticed it today ! Welcome, Dina!.
"Conversations" with Dina is a nice new blog that has been focusing on social networks and metablogging in the recent weeks. I'm sure Marc will like this quote from a recent post titled Why do I blog?:
Through Dina - I've also just discovered Lilia Efimova. Everyone's got to have a Ryze account, be a member of Friendster and put their photos up at Fotolog. I'm also a member of ecademy - but I don't get much flow or interaction from there - yet. Each of these Identity systems serve a different purpose and consist of LOTS of communities within. Certainly equal to one's blogroll. So the question is: does your blog aggregate all your identity systems, or is there a new kind of "digital lifestyle aggregator" - which connects all these systems together? Or Both? No need to make choices when everything is meshed together. I've also been following Stuart's blog for a while, and he seems to have done loads of original thinking in this area. ... a recent post Smart Conversational Locator ties in with earlier posts on Identity Circles : "Marc Canter sums up Ross's post --- what if one tool could enable:
My "red" thinking Identity Circles. Could it be called my profile? Could I own it? Could it travels in circles approved by me? Would it is expand and grow cooperatively and collaboratively? Would it be a form of SMART CONVERSATIONAL LOCATOR? If so it needs better treatment than my e-mail phone number and home mailbox. I hope it manages my attention at my command rejecting unwarranted intrusions while constantly nurturing the types of exchanges my friends and I respond to where ever I may be. " Now these are terrific thoughts .... call them what you will .. Digital Lifestyle Aggregator or Smart Conversational Locator or simply Circles - while the benefits would be many, am not really sure how they would work (no tools guy here Marc !). I can only imagine how these sorts of social networking tools could work so well with youth, families, communities of all kinds, and even within business organizations. 12:10:03 PM comment [] trackback []
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Copyright 2009 Dina Mehta
