Month: January 2011
The Experience and Perception of Time
We see colours, hear sounds and feel textures. Some aspects of the world, it seems, are perceived through a particular sense. Others, like shape, are perceived through more than one sense. But what sense or senses do we use when perceiving time? It is certainly not associated with one particular sense. In fact, it seems odd to say that we see, hear or touch time passing. And indeed, even if all our senses were prevented from functioning for a while, we could still notice the passing of time through the changing pattern of our thought. Perhaps, then, we have a special faculty, distinct from the five senses, for detecting time. Or perhaps, as seems more likely, we notice time through perception of other things. But how?
Time perception raises a number of intriguing puzzles, including what it means to say we perceive time. In this article, we shall explore the various processes through which we are made aware of time, and which influence the way we think time really is. Inevitably, we shall be concerned with the psychology of time perception, but the purpose of the article is to draw out the philosophical issues, and in particular whether and how aspects of our experience can be accommodated within certain metaphysical theories concerning the nature of time and causation.
via The Experience and Perception of Time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard (Broodthaers)
Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) is an artist’s book by Marcel Broodthaers published November 1969 in Antwerp. The work is a close copy of the first edition of the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name, published in 1914, but with all the words removed, replaced by black stripes that correspond directly to the typographic layout used by Mallarmé to articulate the text.
“Broodthaers reduces Un Coup de Dés to its structure – or to put it another way he elevates the structure of the work to a concept worthy of study in its own right, thus acknowledging Mallarmé’s own fetishistic attention to this aspect of his work. Rendering the structure concrete, visible, almost tactile, Broodthaers offers a conceptual analysis of Mallarmé’s poem across the distance of a nearly a century…It would be hard to imagine a more subtle treatment of Mallarmé’s work, or one more capable of demonstrating its essential properties, than this reworked book by Broodthaers.” Johanna Drucker
Often included in exhibitions tracing the history of the artist’s book, the work is seen as a seminal example of the European post-avant-garde. It is often referred to simply as Un Coup de Dés.
Square Depression by Bruce Nauman
Square depression is a project, which was originaly designed in 1977, when Burce Nauman was invited among nine other artists by Kaspar König to do a sculpture for an open space. It was built 30 years later in the campus of the university’s department of natural sciences Munster. Square depression is an inverted pyramid, ‘walk in’ sculpture made of white concrete. The aim was to create a space, where one could experience a feeling of being isolated, helpless and alone.
Panels by Paul Devens
From the press release:..At the invitation of NAiM/Bureau Europa, artist Paul Devens has realized an installation in the upper hall with a total floor area of 800 m2. ‘Panels’ attempts to provide the visitor with an intensified architectonic experience. The installation consists of acoustic panels that follow the contours of the roof vaulting, largely obstructing the view of the shell roof. The panels overlap and slide past one another, so that ever-changing patterns arise. With the assistance of loudspeakers, microphones and a computer, the so-called ‘Larson effect’ feedback is generated and the space is transformed into a instrument, so that the experience of the Arched Hall consistently alters both acoustically and visually…
via Panels on Vimeo.
Granular synthesis
Granular synthesis is a basic sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is often based on the same principles as sampling but often includes analog technology. The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed, phase, volume, and pitch.The result is no single tone, but a soundscape, often a cloud, that is subject to manipulation in a way unlike any natural sound and also unlike the sounds produced by most other synthesis techniques. By varying the waveform, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains many different sounds can be produced.
People you might know
John Frusciante – Control
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad5KRQz4dBE&fs=1&hl=nl_NL]
Aposiopesis
Aposiopesis (pronounced /ˌæpəsaɪ.əˈpiːsɪs/ from Classical Greek, ἀποσιώπησις, “becoming silent”) is a rhetorical device wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished, the ending to be supplied by the imagination, giving an impression of unwillingness or inability to continue. An example would be the threat “Get out, or else—!” This device often portrays its users as overcome with passion (fear, anger, excitement) or modesty. To mark the occurrence of aposiopesis with punctuation an em dash or an ellipsis may be used.
A classical example of aposiopesis in Virgil occurs in Aeneid 2.100. Sinon, the Greek who is posing as a traitor to deceive the Trojans into accepting the Trojan Horse within their city wall, tells about how Ulixes spread false rumors at Sinon’s expense. Indeed, Ulixes does not stop his malicious gossiping until he causes Sinon’s ruin with the help of the seer Calchas. The whole story is a lie that Sinon tells with consummate artistry in order to convince the Trojans that he deserted the Greeks to escape Ulixes’s enmity. To ensure the effect of his elaborate lie, Sinon at one point leaves a crucial statement unfinished (Aen. 2.97-100):
Film – Jim Jarmusch Wanders On in ‘The Limits of Control’ – NYTimes.com
… “What’s a story anyway?” its protagonist muses, “except one of those connect-the-dots drawings that in the end forms a picture of something?” …
via Film – Jim Jarmusch Wanders On in ‘The Limits of Control’ – NYTimes.com.