“For all the fun we have with them, illusions do serious work in illuminating how our brains work, and in particular how perception works. They may also help us understand how consciousness developed, and tell us about our ‘neuro-archaeology’.”
Tag: 11.12.09
Who Are Nature’s Best Chameleons? (Hint: Not Chameleons)
“We might call a fickle, changeable acquaintance a chameleon, but the true champions of camouflage turn out to be cephalopods – octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. Unlike a chameleon, an octopus can duplicate the colour and texture of almost anything.”
Get Ready For Graphics Transmitted Right Onto Your Contact Lenses
“A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display” – graphics transmitted right onto the lens and into its wearer’s field of vision. Uses might “include subtitles when conversing with a foreign-language speaker, directions in unfamiliar territory and captioned photographs.”
Ballet BC Launches Its First Series Of New Work
Following its near-collapse last year, the Vancouver company is binding itself to its community with “its first choreographic series, Surfacing, which will feature commissioned work by four local choreographers performed by company members and 15 dancers from the Arts Umbrella Graduate Program.”
PHILADANCO At 40
“‘Forty years,’ reflects Joan Myers Brown on the dance company she founded and continues to run, ‘means really another year that we’ve got to struggle. But, the fact that we are still here is amazing’.”
Designer Withdraws Claims Against Riverdance
The withdrawal came on the third day of a hearing expected to last two weeks. Dublin-based designer Jen Kelly had claimed his original costumes for the show were used and altered without his consent, and that he had been “airbrushed out of the history of the show” and not given proper credit for his work.
Study: Musicians Can Pick Out Background Talk Better
“Researchers asked 16 lifelong musicians and 15 non-musicians to listen to speech in a quiet or noisy environment while they were wearing scalp electrodes to monitor their brain activity. Background noise delayed the brain’s response, but this delay was much shorter in the musicians. What’s more, in the noisy environment, the musicians’ brainwaves were more similar to the sound waves of the speech than in non-musicians.”
Slatkin Cancels Concerts After Heart Attack
“Detroit Symphony Orchestra music director Leonard Slatkin has canceled his appearances with the orchestra during the next two weeks on the advice of doctors following a heart attack he suffered on Nov. 1 in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.”
Forget The Internet – Many UK TV Watchers Stiil Use B&W Sets
Almost 30,000 people across the UK still tune into their favourite programmes on black and white TV sets.
Aspen Music Festival Chief Offered Job Back
Alan Fletcher, who had been recently fired by the Festival’s board, was offered reinstatement. Following a meeting of the festival’s board of trustees last Wednesday, Fletcher “was offered a contract to continue as president and CEO through September 2010, which includes provisions governing any extension for future seasons.”