Showing posts with label .Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label .Science. Show all posts

2011/12/13

Gevorderden improviseren het best zonder leider (Advanced people improvise best without leader)

12 dec 2011 -> nu.nl

Gevorderde acteurs improviseren het beste wanneer niemand daarbij de leiding heeft. Ze raken dan in een 'staat van gezamenlijke improvisatie', die ze mét leider niet bereiken.

Dat schrijven Amerikaanse en Israëlische biologen maandag in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift PNAS.

Improvisatie is het uitvoeren van een creatieve taak, waarbij vooraf zo min mogelijk aanwijzingen zijn gegeven.

Voorbeelden zijn freestyle rappen en improvisatietoneel, maar ook spontane gesprekken kun je improvisatie noemen.


Spiegelspel

Bij gezamenlijke improvisatie komt de actie van de een voort uit die van de ander. Hoe die improvisatie het beste resultaat oplevert, onderzochten de biologen aan de hand van 'het spiegelspel'.

In dit spel voor twee is het de bedoeling dat een van de tegenspelers spontane bewegingen begint te maken en de ander die zo snel en goed mogelijk imiteert. Daardoor lijkt het alsof de bewegingen ingestudeerd zijn.

De onderzoekers lieten ervaren en onervaren improvisatoren het spel spelen. Afwisselend wezen de onderzoekers daarbij wel en geen leider aan.


Secuur

In de sessies met leider imiteerden de ervaren acteurs minder secuur. Bovendien hadden de imitatoren moeite om dezelfde snelheid als het voorbeeld aan te houden. Hun bewegingen gingen steeds iets te langzaam of te snel.

Onervaren acteurs presteerden een stuk slechter dan ervaren acteurs, helemaal wanneer niemand werd aangewezen om de leiding te nemen.

Volgens de onderzoekers komen gelijkwaardige, ervaren improvisatoren wanneer geen van beide officieel de leiding heeft tot onbewust overeengekomen bewegingen. Ze hebben dan in feite steeds allebei de leiding. Is een van de twee aangewezen als leider, dan ontstaat die 'staat van gezamenlijke improvisatie' niet.


Onervaren

Onervaren acteurs bereikten met leider wel iets beter dan zonder, maar bereikten in geen van de gevallen de 'gezamenlijke improvisatiestaat'.

In feite zou je de bijeenkomsten van Occupy-demonstranten ook improvisatie kunnen noemen. Zij kiezen uit principe geen leiders. Dat blijkt dus niet alleen een effectief middel tegen machtsmisbruik, maar in het geval van ervaren demonstranten ook goed voor het improvisatievermogen.

2011/08/24

The Return-Trip Effect: Why the Return-trip Often Seems to Take Less Time

August? 2011 -> spitswww.uvt.nl
Three studies confirm the existence of the return-trip effect: the return-trip often seems shorter than the initial-trip, even though the distance travelled and the actual time travelled is identical. A pretest shows that people indeed experience a return-trip effect regularly and the effect was found on a bus trip (Study 1),
a bicycle trip (Study 2),
and when participants watched a video of someone else travelling (Study 3).

The return-trip effect also existed when another, equidistant route was taken on the return-trip, showing that it is not familiarity with the route that causes this effect. Rather, it seems that a violation of expectations appears to cause this effect.

2010/06/20

HARD SOUNDING MEN REALLY ARE HARD

Researchers have found that people can determine with uncanny accuracy the physical strength of a man by listening to a short clip of their voice

16 Jun 2010 Richard Alleyne
telegraph.co.uk/science/7830013/
Hard-sounding-men-really-are-hard.html

2010/06/01

MUSIC FOR DEAF PEOPLE HEADPHONES PRODUCE "SOUND" THROUGH SYNAESTHESIA

Neckphone instead of earphone?
A concept from designer Frederik Podzuweit could deliver music to the deaf using synaesthesia, aka perceiving one of the five senses, like hearing, via a different sense, like touch. Or, as the Beach Boys might call it, Good Vibrations.

2010/05/11

ADVICE TO GRADUATES: EMBRACE USELESSNESS

'Praise of uselessness & some aforisms from wikipedia'
QUOTE:

If we remember another of Santayana's pronouncements, we may not be condemned to getting the liberal arts wrong.
Music, he once observed, is essentially useless. (He added that this is also true for life, but let's not go down that path.)

To say music and its kindred arts are useless is not the same as saying they are worthless.
What is worthless, of course, is a world without J.S. Bach or the Beach Boys.
What Santayana meant is that music has no end or goal outside itself. It is absolute and absolutely pointless

May 8, 2010 ROBERT ZARETSKY
chron.com


+ More examples from wikipedia

Usually an aphorism is a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written. Aphorisms can be both prosaic or poetic, sometimes they have repeated words or phrases, and sometimes they have two parts that are of the same grammatical structure. Some examples include:

Good Art seems ancient to its contemporaries, and modern – to their descendants. — Plutarch

Lost time is never found again. — Benjamin Franklin

Mediocrity is forgiven more easily than talent. — Emil Krotky

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.— Benjamin Franklin

That which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly. — Theodor Adorno

If you see the teeth of the lion, do not think that the lion is smiling at you. — Al-Mutanabbi

The first ape who became a man thus committed treason against his own kind. — Mikhail Turovsky

Many of those who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lampposts. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

A mystic hangs a fig leaf on a eunuch. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere. — John Coltrane

When you are expected to exceed expectations, expect the unexpected. — Oleg Vishnepolsky

The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs. — Celia Green

It is not uncommon to commiserate with a stranger's misfortune, but it takes a really fine nature to appreciate a friend's success. — Oscar Wilde

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. — Unknown, possibly French proverb, or authored by François de La Rochefoucauld

Only that which always existed can be eternal. — G. Antuan Suárez

Empathy is lost whenever it is most needed. — Arturo Mendívil

Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see. — Mark Twain

It is better to be hated for what one is, than loved for what one is not. — André Gide

Truths are not relative. What are relative are opinions about truth. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana, "The Life of Reason," Volume 1: "Reason in Common Sense," 1905.

2010/04/09

WELL-READHEAD: I'VE GOT WORMS

There's nothing wrong with the Beach Boys per se.
The album Pet Sounds routinely shows up on best-of-all-time lists.
But I'm feeling a bit less fondly towards them after recently having the chorus of Help Me Rhonda stuck in my head on a loop.
It reappeared several days in a row.

Fri Apr 9, 2010 Leigh Sales
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/09/2868049.htm?site=thedrum

+ Why do songs get stuck in my head?
http://health.howstuffworks.com/songs-stuck-in-head.htm

2010/02/19

Piano Stairs - The Fun Theory

2009-09-22






youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&fmt=18

+ http://www.thefuntheory.com/
This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better.

2010/02/13

WHEN DAPPY GROWS A BEARD, IT'LL MEAN N-DUBZ ARE GETTING SERIOUS

design: Herb LubalinThe Killers got facial hair to connote lofty ambition, while Chris Martin grew something as amorphous on his chin as Coldplay's music. So who's next to ditch the razor?

Saturday 13 February 2010 Will Hodgkinson
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/13/bands-with-beards-guardian

2010/02/02

2009/06/29

MALCOLM GLADWELL: LESSONS FROM FLEETWOOD MAC

So what did Malcolm Gladwell talk about during his keynote speech at NECC? Fleetwood Mac. No, really. Looking closely at the evolution and success of the late 60s rock band can teach us three important points about creating meaningful learning environments, he said.

The first is that effort is more important than talent.

2009/06/27

FLUTES OFFER CLUES TO STONE-AGE MUSIC

At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world.

Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they began spreading through Europe or soon thereafter.

2009 june 25 JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/science/25flute.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

2009/06/07

CREATIVE MINDS: THE LINKS BETWEEN MENTAL ILLNESS AND CREATIVITY

All too often, creativity goes hand in hand with mental illness.
Now we're starting to understand why. Roger Dobson reports

At first glance, Einstein, Salvador Dali, Tony Hancock, and Beach Boy Brian Wilson would seem to have little in common.
Their areas of physics, modern art, comedy, and rock music, are light years apart.

2009 may TheIndependenthttp://mixmysalad.blogspot.com/2009/05/creative-minds-links-between-mental.html

+ http://beachboysnews.blogspot.com/2009/05/perfect-prescription.html

2009/06/05

2009/05/01

PARROTS JOIN HUMANS ON THE DANCE FLOOR

Two famous parrots and a bevy of YouTube videos have now convinced scientists that people aren't the only ones who can groove to a musical beat.

Dancing has long been thought to be uniquely human. Toddlers will spontaneously bob along with music, but you never see dogs or cats listen to a tune and tap their tails in time.
2009 may 1 Nell Greenfieldboycehttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103629651

+ http://inventorspot.com/articles/snowball_dancing_cockatoo_disproves_evolutionary_theory_21320

+ http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13570066

THE PERFECT PRESCRIPTION


A musician explores the role music has played in treating his mental illness


I was about 14 when I first went crazy. Sitting in the bedroom of my parents' G.I. Bill house, a bolt of noxious energy exploded around me and the air turned grainy, like reality was suddenly an ugly, 16-mm film.


2009 apr 29 Ian Grey
http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-perfect-prescription/Content?oid=1566498

2009/02/18

DIY IMPROVISED SOUND

Intro --- there's no such thing as a wrong note

Anyone can make music . Of course the music that's produced might not be to your taste , but let's not be critical . What discourages a lot of people is that the music they make isn't what they wanted to happen .This is a problem that affects even the best musicians - the music that comes out of your instrument isn't exactly as you may have wanted it to be .

(2002/2004 Dave Jackson)
http://www.freewebs.com/diyimprov/improvising.htm

2009/02/05

WHY THE FED CAN'T PREVENT A DEFLATIONARY DEPRESSION

In June of 1966 (similar to the warm sunny days of summer in 1929 and 2007), Brian Wilson produced the Beach Boys’ single “Good Vibrations.”
Capturing the positive feelings of the day, it quickly became a number one hit. But something had changed in 1967 when the Beach Boys moved on to their next album: Smile.

(2009 Feb 5 / Paul J. Lamont)

2009/01/14

SCHOOL OF ROCK: WHAT MAKES A GREAT ALBUM?

There is some careless talk about digital downloads signalling the death of the album. So before it becomes obsolete, we'd better figure out what makes the LP a thing of wonder

(2009 Jan 14 / Will Byers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/14/school-of-rock-great-albums