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kestrell« Optical illusions show how we see: Beau Lotto on TED.com |
from an interview back in 2009
http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/08/beau_q_and_a/
block quote start
How does Bing Bong fit in with your wider research?**
Bing Bong is part of a larger program of research, which is sensory
substitution or sensory augmentation.
When I say to people that the light that falls onto our eyes is
meaningless, people find that really hard to believe. You open your
eyes, you look around, you see nothing /but/ meaning; you ask yourself,
How could it be meaningless? But that's of course because you're not
seeing the light that falls onto your eye, but your brain's perception
of that light. You're seeing that light in the context of the millions
of years of evolution that our brains have gone through.
But if I translate that light into sound, and you instead /hear/ the
visual information, you directly experience the meaninglessness of it.
Then, through interacting with the world through sensory substitution,
you experience yourself literally making sense of it. You begin to hear
patterns. Those patterns start having a meaning for you. You're actually
an observer of yourself as you do this.
Through sensory substitution, we can create prosthetics for the visually
impaired --- to make the world navigable. But we can also do things like
make music from color, which is an element that I touched on during my
TEDTalk
<http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html>.
*The brain almost doesn't seem to care what type of information it
receives --- it just starts decoding any information it is given. Do I
have that right?*
The most fundamental thing the brain does is it evolves to evolve. It
adapts to adapt. The brain is wonderfully plastic. Now, it's a plastic
of different levels of flexibility --- the brain couldn't function
without some stability as well.
block quote end
Links
Bing Bong Iphone application
http://www.lottolab.org/products.asp
Tedtalks
http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html
Music from Color
http://www.lottolab.org/articles/musicfromcolour.asp
Lottolab
http://www.lottolab.org/index.asp
from an interview back in 2009
http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/08/beau_q_and_a/
block quote start
How does Bing Bong fit in with your wider research?**
Bing Bong is part of a larger program of research, which is sensory
substitution or sensory augmentation.
When I say to people that the light that falls onto our eyes is
meaningless, people find that really hard to believe. You open your
eyes, you look around, you see nothing /but/ meaning; you ask yourself,
How could it be meaningless? But that's of course because you're not
seeing the light that falls onto your eye, but your brain's perception
of that light. You're seeing that light in the context of the millions
of years of evolution that our brains have gone through.
But if I translate that light into sound, and you instead /hear/ the
visual information, you directly experience the meaninglessness of it.
Then, through interacting with the world through sensory substitution,
you experience yourself literally making sense of it. You begin to hear
patterns. Those patterns start having a meaning for you. You're actually
an observer of yourself as you do this.
Through sensory substitution, we can create prosthetics for the visually
impaired --- to make the world navigable. But we can also do things like
make music from color, which is an element that I touched on during my
TEDTalk
<http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html>.
*The brain almost doesn't seem to care what type of information it
receives --- it just starts decoding any information it is given. Do I
have that right?*
The most fundamental thing the brain does is it evolves to evolve. It
adapts to adapt. The brain is wonderfully plastic. Now, it's a plastic
of different levels of flexibility --- the brain couldn't function
without some stability as well.
block quote end
Links
Bing Bong Iphone application
http://www.lottolab.org/products.asp
Tedtalks
http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html
Music from Color
http://www.lottolab.org/articles/musicfromcolour.asp
Lottolab
http://www.lottolab.org/index.asp
no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 10:02 pm (UTC)(Sadly the Bing Bong app isn't for sale in the U.S. store.)