According to this short post, PET scans have shown that the auditory cortex of a deaf person activates when seeing sign language. The brain differentiates between nonsense handwaving (processing it in the visual cortex) and sign language (processing it in the auditory cortex).
The human body is flexible—even in the most intricate areas of the brain!
I might be a little bit biased, but I find this article in Seed Magazine to be exceedingly relevant to the practice of science as it is executed today.
Perhaps it is because I often experience eureka! moments that solve longstanding problems while playing through all the major scales on the piano (and of course, more stereotypically, while lathering in the shower). Or maybe it’s because I know a pre-med student who thought it would be a good idea to drop acid in order to truly understand the structure of enzymes (I never followed up to find out if it was a successful experiment, but it seems that this might be another story for another time).
In reference to the ironic dependence on language within a “hard” scientific discipline such as physics, Jonah Lehrer eloquently states: “Our mind evolved in a simplified world, where matter is certain, time flows forward and there are only three dimensions. When we venture beyond these innate intuitions, we are forced to resort to metaphor. This is the irony of modern physics: It seeks reality in its most fundamental form, and yet we are utterly incapable of comprehending these fundaments beyond the math we use to represent them. The only way to know the universe is through analogy.”
This is one of the most important points to take home from the 7 pages of the article, and it reminds me of John Bohannon’s Dance Instead of PowerPoint TED talk in which he viscerally performed an argument about expressing scientific ideas with the aid of professional dancers.
As a dancer myself, I speak with confidence when I state: the body knows things that the mind blocks out. This past summer while attending a week-long dance intensive, I participated in an exercise during which we were first asked to make a movement and perform it before the class. Secondly, we were asked to put words behind the movement, and to say these words out loud while performing the movement again. And last, we were asked to perform this movement again without the words—but this time, with the clear condition of knowing exactly what we wanted to say. The final performances were the most seamless, powerful, and convincing, though we ironically arrived at that place of unspoken and meaningful bodily movements by using the semantic languages stored in our minds to give voice to them.
The point? That sometimes scientists need subjective modes of knowing to fully grasp and explain their almighty objective theories, and sometimes artists need to buck up and put some good old-fashioned structure behind the experiential chaos happening in their brains (and bodies). The end results, it seems, are noticeably more beautiful.
This Huffington post video is truly precious, and arrived just in time for the holidays!
So according to this, a man named Yuri Zupancic makes small paintings on microchips with paintbrushes constructed out of his own eyelashes. If this isn’t some weird modern-day art and science fantasy—then I suppose it must be some weird modern-day art and science reality. Enjoy!
Over the past couple of days, I was pointed to two Huffington Post articles that present females in different ways. The first one was A Message to Women from a Man: You are Not “Crazy”, which details the ways in which women are often manipulated into thinking they are “crazy” or unjustified in expressing the feelings they have. Yashar Ali provides a thoughtful analysis how this process is often enacted unconsciously by men and even generationally between women.
Today, a friend of mine posted this article online: Men are Three Times More More Likely to Say ‘I Love You’ Before Women. As you can probably assume from the title, it explains that research has found men to be three times more likely than women to say “I love you” first. The writer concludes that, contrary to popular belief, men are actually more romantic than women. She also admits that this tendency can be related to a confounding of sexual desire with love, which men are said to experience sooner and with more intensity (which is a giant assumption, but a typical one).
However, I see a fundamental connection between these two articles that might provide an alternative interpretation of the research. As Yashar Ali points out, women are not often empowered to express their emotions in fear of being deemed overly emotional or “crazy.” I believe this stigma is also common in dating scenarios as interpreted by traditional models of gender role behavior.
As far as American society assumes it has advanced in this arena, men and women are continuously portrayed as holding different characteristics for exhibiting the exact same behavior. The “romance” attributed to the men in Kyrsty Hazell’s article by saying ‘I love you’ after dating for only a few weeks would very likely be viewed as “insanity” or “desperation” if it were enacted by women. Even in less extreme cases where the couple has been dating for a much longer period of time, it can easily be argued that women are simply afraid to say ‘I love you’ first—the reasons behind this which are likely related to the devaluing of the female emotional experience that Yashar Ali describes.
I’ve recently discovered Nucleus Medical Media after stumbling upon this video while exploring YouTube. They have other interesting videos up, such as a vaginal childbirth set to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude in G Major (Warning: Even though this is an animation, you may feel slight abdominal pain while watching it. And I am sure you will never feel the same about Bach again). The videos present an interesting way of bringing to life traditional biology textbook topics, and will only improve as more interactive digital features are explored.
Although my blog tends to center around theoretical intersections of art and science and oddly progressive technological projects, I felt I had to share this amazing link to photos of various objects as shown under a microscope. It is a testament to the beauty that both science and nature are capable of producing. My favorite is number 4—the surface of a strawberry. It’s actually a fun exercise to look at the photos without reading the descriptions on top, to see if you can guess what the image is representing. Enjoy!
I am sharing this video of “Dr. Mermaid” educating her audience at the Mermaid Lagoon about environmental issues in the Gulf as a follow-up to my original post which expanded upon her life as a bellydancing scientist. The video isn’t of the best quality, but it should be an interesting view for those who didn’t have the pleasure of making it to the actual event!
I fittingly stumbled upon Mark Vernon’s blog post tonight after returning from an electrifying day spent in DUMBO for the Creator’s Project event, where two of my favorite installations utilized art and technology to induce an almost surreal transcendence of space and time.
After waiting in line for about 20 minutes to view Jonathan Glazer and J. Spaceman’s A Physical Manifestation of Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, I laid on the ground directly adjacent to a floor speaker and allowed myself to be completely immersed in the experience of the blaring music, streaming ceiling lights, smokey clouds, and spiritual ambiance.
Some people spoke. Others took pictures. A few looked like they were napping. But for many, the experience was in fact spiritual. The mood of the installation was similar to that strange scene in a movie where things happen slowly and beautifully—perhaps the purest character walks towards a light, or a couple sees each other in perfect unity for a single moment in time. These actions are regular and mundane, but with the help of technological and artistic tweaking appear to the viewer as divine.
Minha Yang’s New York debut of Meditation also directly invoked the spiritual as in line with the technological by providing an interactive projection in which people can physically and emotionally meditate to the emanating visuals and sounds. The result was a beautiful mixture of spontaneity of movement and physical limitation, that is perhaps the greatest reflection on the state of both the human body and the technologies we create. When a movement would alter the course of the visuals, many participants would wait to see what the projection “did” before responding further. Others delved into the interaction with more flow, and I myself treated it almost as if it were a playful dance.
Regardless of one’s individual experience, the fact of the matter remains that this meditation was made possible by (among other things) C++ and is a testament to the exciting ways technology might enhance social and cognitive perception—or, as Mark Vernon mentions, transport us from Deficiency to Being in a way that feels unnervingly “natural.”
Yesterday, before the chaos of the Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Brooklyn Bridge arrests, a smaller (yet equally important) protest was happening in Union Square: SlutWalk NYC.
Protesters gathered in the square at 11 a.m. to prepare their signs and groups for the walk around a small section of the neighborhood to begin at noon. At around 1:30 pm, the marchers arrived back at Union Square in an exhilarating crowd as speakers, poets, and musicians performed their work and spoke their thoughts on the 14th Street stage.
The purpose of the SlutWalk was to bring attention to the disturbing tendency of society to blame victims of rape, suggesting that their provocative or “slutty” clothing and behaviors prompted the attack. This tendency was particularly salient in the minds of the New Yorkers in attendance, as there was significant media coverage about cops making similar suggestions to women in South Park Slope as a way to remedy the recent sprouting of sexual assaults in that neighborhood.
People carried and wore signs that stated things such as “I am a Survivor,” “End Rape Culture,” “No Saints, No Whores, Just Women,” and “Who do You Call When Your Rapist is a Cop?” or, one of the most heart-wrenching: “This is What I Was Wearing. Tell Me I Asked for It. I Dare You.”
(photo by Francesca June)
Others decided to use their bodies as signs, writing “Survivor” and “Slut” on their skin and electing to go topless to illustrate a point about the ultimate freedom inherent in the expression of one’s personal aesthetic (when it is permitted).
Because attending the SlutWalk inspired me to become more active in raising awareness of these issues, I began to research the various organizations that were handing out fliers at the event. Luckily, I stumbled upon one of the most brilliantly written treatises for women’s rights that I have ever read—the What we want, what we believe mission statement of National Women’s Liberation. Please do yourself a favor and read this statement from start to finish, and share it with people who you believe it will (or should) speak to on a personal level.
The “We are Pro-Woman feminists” section is especially sensible, and expands on Pro-Woman theory by stating:
“Women are screwed over, not screwed up. This simple idea is a key part of the Pro-Woman line, a cornerstone of what we consider the most useful women’s liberation theory. The Pro-Woman line explains so many of the contradictions among women, and also points toward the necessity of a collective solution.
We don’t believe that women are brainwashed or conditioned, or that we oppress ourselves. Rather, we do what we have to do to get by in a world that is still run by and dominated by men. Wearing make up, acting flirty, even getting plastic surgery or botox—all are the result of our oppression, and a way of coping with it, not the cause.”
The issue being explained in the second paragraph points to two classic conundrums that resurface in the creation and critique of most social scientific research: Nature vs. Nurture, and Correlation vs. Causation. If it can be agreed upon that women are in fact different from men in measurable ways, are these differences located internally and projected outward (nature) or are they constructs internalized by the pressures, demands, and beliefs of society (nurture)? And if in fact these differences are found in the first place, is being born biologically female correlated with particular traits or does it cause the traits to develop?
Causation, in fact, is virtually impossible to prove, and most psychological literature will use the term correlation when describing the relationship between variables under study. So let’s stick with NWL’s example of wearing make-up and say hypothetically that a study aims to research the relationship between gender and how much time is spent grooming or maintaining one’s physical appearance. If the researchers have a large enough sample size and is relatively unbiased in who they choose to participate, they might be able to definitively say that being female is significantly correlated with a higher amount of time spent on personal grooming. This finding, however, does not (and cannot) separate the female variable into social and biological components and so does not give insight into the cause of the behavior under study.
Remembering this fault is essential to critiquing both scientific and mainstream literature that claim to understand the underlying roots of supposedly inherent and immutable sex differences. It is also necessary to remember when contextualizing an act of rape, and deciding on who and where to place the blame. It is quite easy to say “Women who wear skirts and shorts will attract a male attacker, which will cause him to choose her as his victim” and feel as if you are stating a social fact that expresses genuine concern for the well-being of women. However, it can easily be argued that patriarchy and male-decided standards of beauty “caused” the particular woman to wear a skirt in the first place.
And so the dictation of female dress in the name of safety becomes yet another instance of the ways by which males covertly control the behaviors of females in public settings. This point of view is given from a position of power, freedom, and safety that most women will never truly know. It takes the shame thrust upon women who survive rape, and multiplies it exponentially within their internal perception of who they are. It is an alarming call for the demand of social reform that spans such diverse arenas as the workplace, health care, and hyper-sexualization of women and girls in the media. Ultimately, it creates an environment where sexuality is an act of violence rather than something to enjoy. And as one protester’s sign coyly pointed out on a bright red canvas yesterday in Union Square: “Mutual sex is BETTER.”
(photo by Art and Science Lab)
