The mood of the observer

Although images of faces have long been employed in the scientific study of emotion, the objectives and assumptions motivating their use have shifted according to the various fields and research programs within which they have been put to use. This short film traces these shifts through three such fields – the social psychology of polka dot dresses, cross-cultural research of the 1950s, and the contemporary neurosciences of emotion – in order to assess the recent use of facial images as a means of correlating particular emotions with particular locations in the brain.

Another Renseiw ‘pata-investigation. Polka in here, click on the dots above, or enjoy a bout of The history of facial images in the science of emotions…

Change of garde (avant)

“…Films are even stranger [than theater], for what we are seeing are not disguised people but photographs of disguised people, and yet we believe them while the film is being shown…There are people who barely write poetry, and they are generally dedicated to filming it…Life itself is a quotation...”

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless, muses Sam R, thinking of Pierre Menard; View the timeless parade by clicking off-guard or enter here.

The New Age of Ballooning

Next week on 'The Golden Age of Ballooning', Patalab will examine the work of Girlsher and Coxwell, the English balloonists who ascended to a height of seven miles in 1862 without washing. There's also a record of someone reading the book of 'The Golden Age of Ballooning', a crochet-work bedspread with the words 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' on it, available from the BBC, price €18 and there are matching toilet-seat covers and courtesy mats with illustrations of many of the baboons mentioned. Also available is a life-size model frog which croaks the words 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' and an attractive bakelite case for storing motorway construction plans in, made in the shape of a balloon.

Renseiw and Co. giving it quietly the full monty, Flying Circus wise. Coming soon to your favorite opera house in Copenhagen. Vorspiel here, or click on the balloon image.  /link updated

Telemetry and trapping

Bicyclists, because of their size and life cycle, are among the most vulnerable species regarding the presence of obstacles on motorways. During a study of the efficiency of two types of bicycles passes, the behaviour of migrating Copenhagen bicycles was investigated using telemetry and trapping at a small electric power mast (north-east of the centre of Copenhagen). Radio tracking was conducted manually and by stationary receivers in a bicycle lane area and downstream and upstream from the city centre. Sixteen bicyclists were tagged by surgical implantation of transmitters and released up road of the bicycle lane. Results provide insight on bicyclist behaviour during the morning rush hour (rates and delayed migration) as well as behaviour in front of both exits to the examined lane.

A Renseiw pata-research, visualized in colour. Enter here or chase the cyclist on the road.

The cartographers

The philosopher Wilfred Sellars once characterized philosophy as aiming "to understand how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term" . Applied to the philosophy of cognitive science, this means that one role of philosophers is understanding and describing how all the various elements of cognitive science fit together (or conflict, as the case may be). In doing this they produce large-scale conceptual maps of the discipline; we can thus think of philosophers and/or acrobats as the cartographers of cognitive science.

A hung situation, fluctuating. A pataphilosophical visual by Sam R. Enter here, Or join the acrobats in the frame.

Ofelia's delicate line of balance

According to Ayurveda, being in balance means that we live in tune with our particular nature, which we are each born with. Being in balance means our body mobilizes its own perfectly attuned defense system to keep us well. It seems implicit in Ayurvedic tradition to treat not only physical inorganic level, but also non-physical biological, social and intellect levels as well. Mental stress, arising from our social interactions with others, become physical illnesses affecting biological level moral codes. Intellect level cannot treat biological level moral codes directly, but must first address social environment stress.

The delicate subject of everyday stress management. Enjoy a delicate moment of balance, caught by Renseiw in circus mood. Or enter by clicking on the red bat.

Subjectivity as focus

"...As to the interpretations of the quantum paradoxes, we emphatically endorse the discovery that consciousness creates reality, when it triggers the collapse of Schrödinger's function, turning actual (real) what was only a potential existence (imaginary). That process, countless repeated in all observational actions, turns actual worlds potentially hidden in quantum possibilities, as it builds his or her parallel universe around that observing subjectivity."

Thus, we link ourselves also to the interpretation of the multiple universes, of Hugh Everett III, as we acknowledge the universe as, actually, a multiverse: An inexhaustible unfolding of universes that can portray small - or much accentuated - differences among themselves. However, we distinguish our interpretation from Everett's. He admits that all countless versions of universes in some way would "exist", superposed in a hyper-space of endless simultaneous realities as we, collectively, would only have consciousness of one. In our view, conversely, each of these multiple versions can exist only when centralized around a subjectivity that functions as its existential nucleus: Each subjectivity is the center of his or her own parallel universe..."

A typical Renseiw pata-research. Enter on the trophy or click here to surf a parallel universe, as seen in Copenhagen.

Manolo B. hates traveling

The first exercise for the viewer, is to figure out what the meta-levels of the concept of Being are and to see if you can think each one in turn, and whether you can think the fifth and higher meta-levels of Being...It turns out that by applying the idea of higher logical type theory derived from the work of Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica which was pointed at disarming paradoxes of all types, and even absurdities, that it is possible to disengage the question of the kinds of Being from Continental Philosophy which is anathema to Analytical Philosophers from Britain and America. Once we have disengaged the problem from Continental Philosophy we can attempt to answer these questions ourselves and see… So that is a challenge left as an exercise to the viewer.

A pure Sam R. pataphysical. go and see the principle here or click the stiletto in the frame/ updated links

colorless green ideas sleep furiously

"Sensus communis is originally a Roman notion of the shared ‘communal sense’ that facilitates communicative understanding. The most important philosophers of the modern age who have discussed it at length are Giambattista Vico, Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (as the basis for wit and humor), Immanuel Kant and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Since there is much disagreement on the very notion of sensus communis, this video takes its cue from J.L. Godard by briefly examining the relation between understanding humour and agreeing on a particular cognitive interpretation of the Madison."

A typical Renseiw for you. Enjoy a bout of Madison ( just click à part) while reflecting on the colourless green. Or enter here : Anna K. Still enchants.

basic semiotics for beginners

…”Most contemporary semioticians regard rhetoric (or at least aspects of it) as falling within the domain of semiotics. The study of what Saussure called 'the role of signs as part of social life' could not exclude the ancient art of persuasion. Whilst a general overview of rhetoric is beyond the scope of this film, a concern with certain key tropes (or figures of movement) is so prominent in semiotic theory that one cannot embark on an exploration of semiotics without some understanding of this topic…”

A short research document of a Sasha P. performance excerpt. Captured by Sam R., pondering on the process of transferring data from a source to a receiver. Enter here or click the key trope on the image.

i began to hunger for wild sensations

” But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain in schools: they must be sought elsewhere.”

From a recent school opening: A genuine Sam R. glimpse, with a somewhat Howard Hawks’s shadowy focus. Enter here or glide in the crowd on the icon above.