{ Chris Cunningham’s original photo for Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker cover }

{ A spectrogram of “Windowlicker” reveals a spiral at the end of the song. This spiral is more impressive when viewed with an X-Y scatter graph, X and Y being the amplitudes of the L and R channels, which shows expanding and contracting concentric circles and spirals. The effect was achieved through use of the Mac-based program MetaSynth. This program allows the user to insert a digital image as the spectrogram. MetaSynth will then convert the spectrogram to digital sound and “play” the picture. | Wikipedia }

Guy Debord’s first book, Mémoires, was bound with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next to it.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Mémoires was written, or rather assembled, by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn in 1957. Debord himself often referred to Mémoires as an anti-book. […] The text is entirely composed of fragments taken from other texts: photographs, advertisements, comic strips, poetry, novels, philosophy, pornography, architectural diagrams, newspapers, military histories, wood block engravings, travel books, etc. Each page presents a collage of such materials connected or effaced by Jorn’s structures portantes, lines or amorphous painted shapes that mediate the relationships between the fragments.

{ via David Banash | Continue reading }

{ This is what would happen if we breach the debt ceiling }

images { 1. Fakir Musafar | 2 }

We tested whether eye color influences perception of trustworthiness. Facial photographs of 40 female and 40 male students were rated for perceived trustworthiness. Eye color had a significant effect, the brown-eyed faces being perceived as more trustworthy than the blue-eyed ones.

{ PLOS | Continue reading }

{ 1 | 2 }

{ 1 | 2. Richard Avedon }

{ John Kacere | Aaron McElroy }

{ 1 | 2 }

{ Daniel Shea }

{ 1 | 2 }

{ A new study suggests that if you’re looking for employment, wearing red is a bad decision }

photo { Nadav Kander }

Cerebral cortex has a very large number of testosterone receptors, which could be a basis for sex differences in sensory functions. For example, audition has clear sex differences, which are related to serum testosterone levels. Of all major sensory systems only vision has not been examined for sex differences, which is surprising because occipital lobe (primary visual projection area) may have the highest density of testosterone receptors in the cortex. We have examined a basic visual function: spatial and temporal pattern resolution and acuity. […]

Across the entire spatio-temporal domain, males were more sensitive, especially at higher spatial frequencies; similarly males had significantly better acuity at all temporal rates. […]

We suggest that testosterone plays a major role, leading to different connectivities in males and in females. But, for whatever reasons, we find that males have significantly greater sensitivity for fine detail and for rapidly moving stimuli. One interpretation is that this is consistent with sex roles in hunter-gatherer societies.

{ Biology of Sex Differences/NCBI | Continue reading }

We examined the possible sex differences in color appearance of monochromatic lights across the visible spectrum. There is a history of men and women perceiving color differently. However, all of these studies deal with higher cognitive functions which may be culture-biased. We study basic visual functions, such as color appearance, without reference to any objects. […]

There were relatively small but clear and significant, differences between males and females in the hue sensations elicited by almost the entire spectrum. Generally, males required a slightly longer wavelength to experience the same hue as did females.

{ Biology of Sex Differences | PDF }

image { Jaymes Sinclair }

{ Hanne Darboven, Quartett >88<, 1988 }

Bees at a cluster of apiaries in northeastern France have been producing honey in mysterious shades of blue and green, alarming their keepers who now believe residue from containers of M&M’s candy processed at a nearby biogas plant is the cause.

{ Reuters | Continue reading }

Devising marking systems (signs & etc.) which can be easily understood by anyone, anywhere, and in any language, is never going to be an easy task. Now imagine that on top of this, the systems have to remain intact and effective for the next 10,000 years. Specifically to discourage inadvertent intruders at a large-scale nuclear waste repository.

Just such a daunting task was evaluated by two teams co-ordinated by the US Sandia National Laboratories in 1992. They produced a 351-page report detailing their findings: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant [PDF | 20MB].

{ Improbable Research | Continue reading }

oil on canvas { Johannes Kahrs, Untitled (four men with table), 2008 }

{ ARTINFO }

{ Progress in Automatic Giraffe Recognition | Improbable Research | Detecting, Localizing and Recovering Kinematics of Textured Animals | PDF }

{ Julian Wolkenstein’s Symmetrical Portraits take individual faces, split them down the middle, then mirror each side, creating two “new” identities from the same person }

{ The artworks presented are typified by their transformation of a functioning musical composition or mapping document from a sound-based performance into a work of visual art. | Render Visible | 29 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 | Reception: Friday, October 5, until October 28 | Photo: Hannah Whitaker }