Cretien van Campen: The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · art and science, brain, cognition, music, neuropsychology, perception, psychology, science, synaesthesia, visual music
What does it mean to hear music in colors, to taste voices, to see each letter of the alphabet as a different color? These uncommon sensory experiences are examples of synesthesia, when two or more senses cooperate in perception. Once dismissed as imagination or delusion, metaphor or drug-induced hallucination, the experience of synesthesia has now been documented by scans of synesthetes’ brains that show “crosstalk” between areas of the brain that do not normally communicate. In The Hidden Sense, Cretien van Campen explores synesthesia from both artistic and scientific perspectives, looking at accounts of individual experiences, examples of synesthesia in visual art, music, and literature, and recent neurological research.
Van Campen reports that some studies define synesthesia as a brain impairment, a short circuit between two different areas. But synesthetes cannot imagine perceiving in any other way; many claim that synesthesia helps them in daily life. Van Campen investigates just what the function of synesthesia might be and what it might tell us about our own sensory perceptions. He examines the experiences of individual synesthetes—from Patrick, who sees music as images and finds the most beautiful ones spring from the music of Prince, to the schoolgirl Sylvia, who is surprised to learn that not everyone sees the alphabet in colors as she does. And he finds suggestions of synesthesia in the work of Scriabin, Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Nabokov, Poe, and Baudelaire.
What is synesthesia? It is not, van Campen concludes, an audiovisual performance, a literary technique, an artistic trend, or a metaphor. It is, perhaps, our hidden sense—a way to think visually; a key to our own sensitivity.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
Leonardo Books series
ISBN 0262220814, 9780262220811
185 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-3-19)
Comment (0)Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975/1987)
Filed under book | Tags: · communism, marxism, ontology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, representation, socialism, society
This is one of the most original and important works of contemporary European thought. First published in France in 1975, it is the major theoretical work of one of the foremost thinkers in Europe.
Castoriadis offers a brilliant and far-reaching analysis of the unique character of the social-historical world and its relations to the individual, to language and to nature. He argues that the most traditional conceptions of society and history overlook the essential feature of the social-historical world, namely that this world is not articulated once and for all but is in each case the creation of the society concerned. In emphasizing the element of creativity, Castoriadis opens the way for rethinking political theory and practice in terms of the autonomous and explicit self-institution of society.
Castoriadis’ wide-ranging discussion deals with many issues which are currently topical in the English-speaking world: the critique of Marxism; the creative and imaginary character of language; the relations between action and social institutions; the nature of the unconscious and the reappraisal of psychoanalysis; and the role of symbolism on both the individual and the social levels. This book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with social and political theory and contemporary European thought.
First published as L’institution imaginaire de la société, by Les Editions du Seuil.
This English translation first published 1987 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Translated by Kathleen Blamey
Publisher Polity Press, May 1997
Reprinted 2005
ISBN: 9780745619507, 0745619509
448 pages
The Gift of Nam June Paik, 2 vols (2009) [English, Korean]
Filed under proceedings | Tags: · art, art history, technology
Papers from the seminars which took place at Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea on 4-5 February and 3-4 September 2009.
Contributors to Vol. 1: Hannah Higgins, Suki Kim, Seongho Haam, Midori Yamamura, Mary Bauermeister, Youngchul Lee, Jinsok Kim, Bazon Brock, Jinkyung Yi.
Contributors to Vol. 2: Jungjin Park, Hunyee Jung, Susanne Neuburger, David Zerbib, Chunsil Yoon, Jeonghwan Jo, Hank Bull, Kogawa Tetsuo, Chulki Hong, Joonggwon Jin.
Publisher: Nam June Paik Art Center, 2009
Publisher (Vol. 1)
Publisher (Vol. 2)
Vol. 1: Shifting Perspectives and The Notion of Time
ZIP’d PDFs (English, updated on 2014-2-11)
ZIP’d PDFs (Korean, updated on 2014-2-11)
Vol. 2: Retying Gordian Knots
ZIP’d PDFs (Korean, added on 2014-2-11)