Whitefield-Madrano is regarding mirrors in the same role that I often give to social media. (Social-media sites seem to me to be self-consciousness machines, encouraging that one maintain a directorial distance from one’s own life experience in order to strategize how to present it in update broadcasts.) But the realities of patriarchy complicate matters considerably; as much as believe we are collectively compelling one another to route our social life through commercial social-media sites, that seems like nothing compared with the coercion involved with fulfilling gendered expectations of self-presentation.
Marginal Utility dissects Mirror Fasting. A goal that
blogger Whitefield-Madrano recently took up and called a
Month Without Mirrors. The initial reason behind her project:
"Sometimes I look in the mirror and see myself, or whatever I understand myself to be. Other times, I distinctly see an image of myself."
posted by P.o.B.
on Jun 20, 2011 -
25 comments
Swimming around in a mixture of language and matter, humans occupy a particular evolutionary niche mediated by something we call 'consciousness'. To Professor Nicholas Humphrey we're made up of "
soul dust": "a kind of theatre... an entertainment which we put on for ourselves inside our own heads." But just as that theatre is directed by the relationship between language and matter,
it is also undermined by it. It all depends how you think it.
posted by 0bvious
on Feb 4, 2011 -
17 comments
Few phenomena have the power to confound as many different types of people as
pareidolia. It doesn't discriminate by culture or religion. It causes Christians to see
Jesus and Mary, Muslims to see
the names of Allah and the Prophet, Jews to see
the Star of David, Hindus to see
the monkey-god Hanuman, and Buddhists to see — you guessed it —
the Buddha. Even atheists who haven't devoted themselves to skepticism have puzzled long and hard over the famous
face, and more recently,
Bigfoot, on Mars. Now video has surfaced on YouTube of pseudoscientist and perennial attention-seeker Richard Heene (yes,
Balloon Boy's dad)
seeing things on the red planet too. If you'd prefer the filler edited out, the
remix is highly entertaining.
[more inside]
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis
on Aug 11, 2010 -
20 comments
The average human eye has three types of cone cells, each of which is sensitive to a different wavelength range of visible light. The difference in the relative signal from the three cones allows us to distinguish colors. Unfortunately, since these sensitivity ranges overlap, there are some combinations of signals from the cones that can't be created by light emitted from a real object. These are the so-called "
imaginary colors". However, by
selectively overstimulating one or more types of cone, we can still perceive these colors; this is the principle behind the
Eclipse of Titan, an optical illusion which produces both a green and a cyan that don't otherwise appear in nature. (Similar effects can be seen in the Eclipses of
Mars,
Neptune, and
Triton.)
[more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good
on May 10, 2010 -
64 comments
Color Is Relative, pretty and interesting eye candy created by Gabriel Mott,
is a website dedicated to showing luminosity achieved through simple color combinations. On the site, the image is interactive. By moving the mouse over a single swatch the background color of the page will change to the same color. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Aug 29, 2008 -
13 comments
More good stuff for people who like visual ("optical") illusions (
previously): A nice Scientific American
article, a particularly
creepy illusion, and a
link to the "Best visual illusion of the year" contest. Given that the eye/mind/brain is so easy to trick, a person might wonder what's
really out there in the world.
posted by cogneuro
on Aug 28, 2008 -
26 comments
"People with
synaesthesia can’t help but get two sensory perceptions for the price of one. Some perceive colours when they hear words or musical notes, or read numbers; rarer individuals can even get tastes from shapes." (
previously) Neuroscientist Melissa Saenz of the California Institute of Technology has
discovered a
new form [pdf] of synaesthesia. Can you hear the
dots? (QT)
posted by Kronos_to_Earth
on Aug 5, 2008 -
75 comments
Are Zebras black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? Find the answer to this, plus many other fun zebra facts and many great zebra pictures and photos for your desktop at the appropriately titled
Fun Zebra Pictures & Facts website.
[more inside]
posted by Effigy2000
on Oct 5, 2007 -
40 comments
Your daily dose of perception-bending. Stare at the center of this video (wmv or flash) for a minute or two then look away from the screen at your surroundings. You'll experience an interesting and somewhat disconcerting effect. Not appropriate for anyone prone to headaches or seizures.
posted by brain_drain
on Aug 28, 2006 -
51 comments
We’ve detected background radiation from the Big Bang. We’ve sent explorers to the bottom of the ocean and the moon above us. We have images of the individual atoms of which our world is made. But we cannot have direct access to the sensory experiences of another human being. Language can help to bridge the gap but it is an imperfect tool. The closest we have come is
Brain Fingerprinting and even that only indicates recognition of a scene or object; it does not capture the actual visual memory of the scene or object. This may soon change. Several years ago, researchers at Berkeley wired a cat’s neurons to a computer and
were able to obtain videos of what the cat was seeing.
posted by jason's_planet
on Aug 14, 2006 -
50 comments
Masters of Deception "
There are a number of
incredible artistic works featured in Masters of Deception, which require movement to appreciate their full impact. Additionally, I had in my possession various interviews with some of the book's featured artists that I wanted to share with my readership. Unfortunately, the publisher was unwilling to produce a CD to accompany
the book. I have created this web site, therefore, to augment and enhance the reader's experience by presenting those works and interviews that I could not present in book form."
Al Seckel. enjoy.
posted by hortense
on Aug 19, 2005 -
3 comments
Greg's Digital Portfolio Here's the way to make everybody unhappy with their own life. With Photoshop and other imaging tools, the advertising industry has implanted images of such impossible perfection that the things we encounter in our lives seem somehow tawdry and inqdequate.
Greg is a "digital pre-press" artist that manipulates images to make them prettier, smoother, and more appealing--he makes the imperfect look perfect. On one hand, I am in awe of the command he has of his craft. But just as waxed apples make real apples seem uhealthy and crappy, what do such images of digitally mediated reality do for our relationship with the real world?
posted by curtm
on May 9, 2005 -
41 comments
How do we see? This site by Dr. Dale Purves makes it obvious we don't see things like a camera in any way. Check out the interactive demos, test your perceptual abilities, and read the research explaining why this happens. Number 12: Color Contrast Cube is particularly startling. Warning: Totally Flash interface, but appropriate for subject matter. More experiments at a less Flash-y
associate's site.
posted by JZig
on Feb 10, 2005 -
19 comments
