Silent but deadly [or why I can't think clearly]

10 October 2010 • out of context
tags: brain, death, killers, murder, music, sound, television, tv series, waves

—So you think that music killed these people?
—Not music per se. Could you help me with this please, my dear?
—What about this? Would that work?
—Figaro? Perfect!
—We’ve known for some time that different sounds affect the brain in different ways.
—Look at my brain waves on the monitor.
—They’re smoothing out.
—Harmonic music reduces neural activity.
—Which is why we think more clearly when we listen to it, as opposed to this… Dissonance. Look… Look at my neurons.
—We get it, Walter. Can I turn this off now?
—Oh, sorry. You see, the point is this, that with this type of auditory phenomenon, taken to its ultrasonic extreme, can be fatal, and the way it affects the brain, it could well have induced some type of vegetative trance before death.
—Which would also explain the trauma to the inner ear.
—So we’re looking for some kind of deadly music box?
—No, it’s ultrasonic, so you wouldn’t be able to hear it, the frequency’s too high.
—Silent but deadly.

Fringe, episode 2 season 3.

Readings

8 August 2010 • readings
tags: aesthetics, analysis, books, death, history, humour, murder, perception, religion, senses, situationism, suicide, zen

• Panegírico
Guy Debord

• Del asesinato considerado como una de las Bellas Artes [read in English]
Thomas de Quincey

• Consciousness and Perception: The Point of Experience and the Meaning of the World We Inhabit [read]
Sérgio Roclaw Basbaum. Revista Eletrônica Informação e Cognição, v.5, n.1, p.181-203, 2006.

• Preguntes a un mestre Zen
Taisen Deshimaru

The four mists of chaos

8 August 2010 • out of context
tags: chaos, death, quotes

The     Four     Mists     of     Chaos,
                    the     North,     the     East,
                                the     West,
                       and     the     South,
                        went     to     visit     Chaos
    himself.
  He     treated     them     all     very     kindly
                and     when     they     were     
thinking     of     leaving,
         they     consulted     among     themselves
    how     they     might     repay     his     
hospitality.
   Since     they     had     noticed     that     he
     had                  no      holes      in      his
     body,                                    as      they
     each      had                  (eyes,      nose,
     mouth,      ears,      etc.),
               they      decided                  each
     day                  to      provide      him
             with      an      opening.
                                  At      the      end
    of      seven      days,
           Kwang-tse      tells      us,
                         Chaos                    died.

Indeterminancy by John Cage

Incivility and procrastination

8 August 2010 • out of context
tags: articles, books, death, murder, quotes, religion

“Si uno empieza por permitirse un asesinato, pronto no le da importancia a robar, del robo pasa a la bebida y a la inobservacia del día del Señor, y se acaba por faltar a la buena educación y por dejar las cosas para el día siguiente”.

Del asesinato considerado como una de las bellas artes, Thomas De Quincey. Alianza editorial

“For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.”

Second Paper on Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas de Quincey

Self Portrait as a Drowned Man

25 July 2010 • outer
tags: body, capitalism, criticism, death, fiction, humour, politics, ruin, statements, truth

“This photograph, shot in 1840 and titled Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, is not of a drowned man, and if it had been it would be far less interesting or important. This humble image, so far as anyone knows, can claim all of the following honorifics- First instance of intentional photographic fakery. First photographic practical joke. First use of a photograph as propaganda / protest. And, quite possibly, a result of the world’s first reliable photographic process, direct positive or otherwise.” [read complete text at the nonist]

Watchings

3 November 2009 • watchings
tags: cinema, death, flicker, music, noise, sound, video

• The Passing (1991)
Bill Viola

• Making of Scott Bartlett’s On/Off [watch]

• Sound of Noise: Synopsis par Jim Birmant [watch]

• Report (1967)
Bruce Conner

• N:O:T:H:I:N:G (1968)
Paul Sharits

• Adoration (2008)
Atom Egoyan