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Processing.org
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.Body Navigation « ole kristensen
As software artist i create computer programmed interactive art. My work combines installation art, audiovisual set design, modern dance, graphic design and performance art. Through developing digitally controlled setups – often with firsthand written open source software – one of my main interests lies in participating in new and challenging creative spaces for artistic practices and research, ranging from large-scale media-based installations to theatre and dance productions. In addition to my auto-didactic approach to knowledge and hands on experience, i hold a bachelor in Interactive Media. I thrive in experimental research environments where there is room for exchanging both crazy, grand or silly ideas. Whether it be with other artists, specialized geeks, academics, the local politician or a passersby.
Widely regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel in Economics for his pioneering work in behavioral economics -- exploring the irrational ways we make decisions about risk. Why you should listen to him: Daniel Kahneman is an eminence grise for the Freakonomics crowd.
Daniel Kahneman | Profile on TED.com
Emerald | Career Development International | Managing and improvising: lessons from jazz
Content: Latest Issue | Latest Issue RSS | Previous Issues Offers a model of leadership development based on the metaphor of jazz improvisation. Examines the meaning of improvisation as applied to jazz and shows how managers’ lives are similar to that faced by jazz improvisers in that they often face problems which are unstructured and ambiguous. Shows how the metaphor can be applied to other areas of organizational innovation.
How someone with synesthesia might perceive certain letters and numbers. Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia , plural synesthesiæ or synæsthesiæ ), from the ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), " sensation ," is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. Recently, difficulties have been recognized in finding an adequate definition of synesthesia [ 5 ] [ 6 ] , as many different phenomena have been covered by this term and in many cases the term synesthesia ("union of senses") seems to be a misnomer. A more accurate term for the phenomenon may be ideasthesia .
Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Sedaris
Browse for more commentaries by David Sedaris. Dressed in 'Corduroy and Denim' The self-deprecating humorist is back with a new collection of autobiographical essays.Douglas Adams Quotes - The Quotations Page
Showing quotations 1 to 24 of 24 total He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. Douglas Adams He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife.
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... "I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
An Essay by Einstein -- The World As I See It - StumbleUpon
ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students has created a system that pairs an EEG headset with a 3-D theatrical flying harness, allowing users to "fly" by controlling their thoughts. The "Infinity Simulator" will make its debut with an art installation in which participants rise into the air -- and trigger light, sound, and video effects -- by calming their thoughts. Creative director and Rensselaer MFA candidate Yehuda Duenyas describes the "Infinity Simulator" as a platform similar to a gaming console -- like the Wii or the Kinect -- writ large. "Instead of you sitting and controlling gaming content, it's a whole system that can control live elements -- so you can control 3-D rigging, sound, lights, and video," said Duenyas, who works under the moniker "xxxy." "It's a system for creating hybrids of theater, installation, game, and ride."
EEG headset with flying harness lets users 'fly' by controlling their thoughts
Single dose of 'magic mushrooms' hallucinogen may create lasting personality change, study suggests
ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2011) — A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it. Lasting change was found in the part of the personality known as openness, which includes traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness. Changes in these traits, measured on a widely used and scientifically validated personality inventory, were larger in magnitude than changes typically observed in healthy adults over decades of life experiences, the scientists say.
To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of over-learned musical sequences) was consistently characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex. Such a pattern may reflect a combination of psychological processes required for spontaneous improvisation, in which internally motivated, stimulus-independent behaviors unfold in the absence of central processes that typically mediate self-monitoring and conscious volitional control of ongoing performance.
PLoS ONE: Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation
Art and the Limits of Neuroscience - NYTimes.com
“Neuroaesthetics” is a term that has been coined to refer to the project of studying art using the methods of neuroscience. It would be fair to say that neuroaesthetics has become a hot field. It is not unusual for leading scientists and distinguished theorists of art to collaborate on papers that find their way into top scientific journals. Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist at University College London, likes to say that art is governed by the laws of the brain.At its core, improvisation demands an ongoing interaction with shifting tight places, whether created by power relations, social norms, aesthetic traditions, or physical technique. Improvised dance literally involves giving shape to oneself and deciding how to move in relation to an unsteady landscape. (Danielle Goldman, I Want to Be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom , 146) De fato, tanto no jazz quanto no samba , atua de modo especial a síncopa, incitando o ouvinte a preencher o tempo vazio com a marcação corporal – palmas, meneios, balanços, dança. É o corpo que [. . .] falta – no apelo da síncopa [. . .] aquele mesmo que a escravatura procurava violentar e reprimir [. . .] o corpo do negro.