beeker ideas

can you tell?

So when I was looking stuff up for that last post, I came across this test of whether you can spot a fake smile.  I got 13 / 20.  Although number 18, in particular, can get outta here.  Kind of find myself wondering about the F(acial) A(ction) C(oding) S(ystem) they use to spot frauds though.  What if some people are just more joyful than others?  Their smiles will take less effort.  And what if people are just really good at acting?  Or know enough about the FACS tricks to FAC right back at them.

Anyway.  Fun test for anyone who likes to play amateur psychologist.   

genuine fake

I read about WebCameron and his Sion spoofer before seeing either's footage.  And I'd already made my mind up, that - laying aside for a moment my natural gag reflex at anything Tory - that David Cameron had won the day.  By being genuine.  Watching Sion first compounded this happy conclusion.  (Although I think the fact that it's not funny in any way had a lot to do with this.  Say if a comedian had spoofed Cameron I'd have said that was genuine - that's his job.  But another MP with political motives, that's cynical v Cameron's openness.)  I'm all for being generous to those who are being generous with disclosure, for want of a better word.  That's a big blogging tenet apart from anything. 

But then I watched David Cameron's films.  And here's a man who is so desperate for people to love him, he practically deficates with the struggle to appear likeable and convey the right image.  I've never seen such hand gestures.  It's about as genuine as a market handbag. 

Not that this teaches us anything new about David Cameron.  But it ruined my theory about ingenuousness.  In this instance.

purple numbers and sharp cheeses

I've finally got round to reading the fantastic Vilayanur S Ramachandran Reith lecture thanks to Camiel's comment on an earlier post about synesthesia.  I can't stop banging on about it.  It makes me want to go back to school.

This lecture is packed full of good stuff.  Including quotes like this:

But remember, if you're a clinician you know when somebody sounds crazy it usually means you're not smart enough to figure it out.

And:

We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it.

A man after my own heart.  Reminds me of Nicholas Humphrey and our Darwinian soul.

One of the most important things about his discussion, I think, is his exploration of metaphors: their formation; the people likely to find them in the everyday, and use them; the way they work.  The great thing is that although some people are better than others at employing them, we all respond to them.  That's one of the reasons according to Vilanayur, that Shakespeare is universal.  Richard's always praised analogies as a tool.  About which he makes beautiful sense.  There's plenty more support for it from this lecture.

I've been looking for some kind of moral to the story with synesthesia.  But I don't think there is one, other than that it supports the general belief that communication should be as rich, and complex and layered as possible, whatever your purpose.  Which isn't a bad one. 

music to your eyes

Our hearing of colours is so precise...Colour is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul. Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings. The artist is the hand that purposely sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key. Thus it is clear that the harmony of colours can only be based upon the principle of purposefully touching the human soul.  KANDINSKY

I've loved hearing about other people's experience of synesthesia.  And this quote, whilst showing the surely overly optimistic belief Kandinsky had in the aural power of art is beautiful for its depiction of colour as a keyboard and our eye as the hammer that strikes the note.  He's rejoicing in the power we all have to affect each other in a very fundamental sense, and importantly assigns a very active role to the person experiencing the effect.

It also occurred to me that we actively cultivate a mixing of the senses in some of our activities.  Like sightreading music - when you've learned to read music you experience the sound of the notes in your head as you follow them on the page.  A taught synesthesia.

make mine a noisy whiskey

I've been meaning to go to the Kandinsky thing at the Tate for ages so that I could write something proper about synesthesia. I'm a bit obsessd with it: the idea of one kind of sense stimulating another - someone smelling chips whenever a doorbell rings, or tasting bile in their mouth when a Coke Zero ad comes on. One of those strange convergences of information started a couple of months ago, when I read an article about synesthesia, then found another one about Kandinsky and his attempt at provoking a form of it purposefully in his work (using colour to create a kind of music)...and then I became a bit obsessed and kept seeing things everywhere to do with it. Plans to go keep being foiled, so I thought I'd get some drivel down in the meantime anyway.

The thing is I'm sure it has something pertinent to say to us in the business of understanding reactions. And the more I think of it, although I'm not properly synesthesiac (?) I do have milder strains of it. The days of the week were always like this for me, from very young (and I'd never realised it was at all out of the ordinary, or that for people who find it ordinary there is a proper name for it):

monday

tuesday

wednesday

thursday

friday

saturday

sunday

Not just as words, but as if every time I think of tuesday my brain's flooded with yellow. I know some proper synethesiacs experience this kind of effect for all kinds of words, and even letters, so that reading is like a cacophony of colour, and writing is something which must fit moral, aesthetic guidelines to avoid clashes. Does everyone have a bit of this in them?

our darwinian soul

I read about the eminent scientist Nicholas Humphrey and his controversial new Darwnian theory of the soul the other day. Or of how the soul fits into a Darwinian account of human evolution. It's fascinating. No one's yet given an accepted account which allows for our brains being more than just neuro transmitters and chemicals. Humphrey's theory says that our very reticence to believe we are mere no more than this is what comprises our distinguishing Darwinian attribute.  Our drive to be something more (to feel love for another human, to have a soul, to cultivate it, to be more than the sum of our parts) is our 'survival of the fittest', perpetuating our species as it is.

brave new world

Instead of art I have taught philosophy. Though technique for me is a big word, I never have taught how to paint. All my doing was to make people to see.JOSEF ALBERS

A funny thing's happened to my eyesight since going to the Tate's Bauhaus exhibtion a few weeks ago. Not knowing anything about Albers or Moholy-Nagy's philosophies it was a proper education. They (especially Albers) were evangelical about perception, and our attitude towards it, believing that we become progressively lazier in this sense the older we get. Objects, colours, shapes are taken forgranted, and assumed rather than really seen.

To encourage us to see things freshly again, and to question what we see, they played with colour and its juxtaposition, shape, form, material in different ways to shock us awake. It was like a proper social programme, which I know a lot of people are wary of when it comes to art, but it was fascinating in this context.

And I've honestly started to see things differently. More like when I was really little: when you see light switches as faces, and shapes in the dark look like antlers and all that weirdness. Love it.

Seems to me that most artists and designers, wordsmiths, and general creative people are people who never lost that gift of intrepid exploration of the new world. So often they are able to see things in a way that the rest of us can't. Clever visual twist and references, word plays and puns that other people are too lazy to look for any more.

Still can't pronounce Moholy-Nagy though.