Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
Subliminal messaging
Posted on: May 5, 2010
I’ve learnt that information overload can contain subliminal messages, through adverts, design, and people as a form of influence (and whether we accept it or not, we are still manipulated to choose). The use of pattern recognition helps us to make sense of all the information that is overloading our minds. Its under these patterns that the subconscious is open to information that the conscious cannot accept or block out. If I were to overload my audience with too much information, I can also present to them information at a subconscious level, achieving the presentation of what, how and why we deal with information overload; in effect overloading the conscious and sub conscious mind.
Subliminal message are being bombarded at you continuously though out the day, though books, magazines, television and music. Their effect increases with increased exposure time, for example having seen a subliminally embedded poster will not likely produce
insanity, but a lifetimes worth may drastically alter conscious decision making.
- Sub-audible background sounds: Sub-audible background sounds: a monotonic, rhythmic voice will repeat the words “OBEY”, “BUY MORE”, “SPEND AND SAVE”, “SLEEP”, “WE ARE WATCHING YOU” or something similar over and over again at a very low sound level. The commands words “SLEEP” and “OBEY” are geared directly at the subconscious mind. The idea here is to “turn off” the subconscious mind’s reporting mechanisms. The subconscious mind is unable to do anything other than produce emotions: “SLEEP” and “OBEY” prohibit the subconscious from reporting (producing a feeling like – something’s wrong here) of any misdeed.The idea behind subliminal programming is not so much to manipulate the conscious perception, but rather stimulate feelings. Subliminal stimuli are not direct attacks upon conscious thought; they produce emotions – fear, hate, love, and so on.
- Embedding: signal or message “embedded” in another medium, designed to pass “below” the normal” limits of perception. In early forms of embedding (1950s to late 1970s), an artist would lightly print words in the background of pictures that were to be printed. These days, computers and high quality printers can (and do) produce a background mosaic of the commanding words. Ordinarily, the subconscious mind would produce a feeling (the subconscious mind is not capable of rational decision making) telling the viewer, “Something is awry here.” The command SLEEP and OBEY weakens the mind’s ability to alert the viewer to the embedded command:
- Subliminal Priming – when an image or message is flashed so quickly that it doesn’t register with humans on a conscious level. (ref to Sperling experiment-‘what is information overload‘ article); Balwin (1991) carried out studies on how iconic figures and their expressions had an effect on the observers answer.
I have found out that no adobe program offer 1000 fps rate, both premiere and after effects only go up to 60 fps, and flash reaches up to 120 fps. Taking into account that from my research in pattern recognition Averbach and Sperling (1961) experimented the relation between setting audio tones to a visual grid (low, medium, high). This caused the test subjects to retain the desired memory of an image but not the corresponding grid position to the level of tone.
- Backwards masking – is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. Under hypnosis, patients have exhibited the ability to read from mirror images, upside down, and a mix of right side up, upside down, and mirror images at a normal reading rate. From this, researchers have gathered that the subconscious mind works at nearly 100 times as fast as the conscious mind.
Just to back up that subliminal messaging has and still is under speculation, Dr. Joe Stuessy (1985) testified to the United States Senate at the Parents Music Resource Center hearings that:
‘The message of a piece of heavy metal music may also be covert or subliminal. Sometimes subaudible tracks are mixed in underneath other, louder tracks. These are heard by the subconscious but not the conscious mind. Sometimes the messages are audible but are backwards, called back masking. There is disagreement among experts regarding the effectiveness of subliminals. We need more research on that. Some messages are presented to the listener backwards. While listening to a normal forward message (usually nonsensical), one is simultaneously being treated to a back-wards message. Some experts believe that while the conscious mind is trying to absorb the forward lyric, the subconscious is working overtime to decipher the backwards message’
U.S. Senate (1985;118,125)
An ‘interesting’ evaluation of these techniques:
‘As I studied subliminal messages more, the reasoning became clear. With increasing exposure time, subliminal stimuli becomes ever more
effective. The goal of these mind manipulators became clear: by manipulating the subconscious mind of every person, the mind manipulators intends to lull us into an altered state of consciousness, have us equate material possessions to sexual gratification, greatly reduce birth rates, and promote homosexuality. Homosexuality is of couse the most effective means of birth control (population reduction). <I’ve always wondered why ‘The L word’ even existed on our screens bar the whole gay rights, they just wanted more homosexuals to curb birthrates! I jest>
For those of you with background in psychology, you will note that their exists no experiemental data for long term subliminal exposure.
Even if such data were available, the study would be entirely falsified by the power structure that exists in this country...
…KILL, PAIN, and FEAR are usually reserved for children and hostile political leaders. Most every child you see in print (Time Magazine,
Vogue, Your Daily Paper, etc) has the word KILL embedded across his or her forehead. The idea behind this is quite clear: associate death
with children. Now try to follow me on this one folks. Have you ever heard a young person saying something like, “Death before marrage?” or “A kid — never!”
To digress briefly, the birth rate in the US has gone from 3.9 children per female in 1950 to 1.2 children per female in 1990. Note
subliminal programming was not used largely until the mid-1950s. Do you people get it? We are breeding ourselves into extinction! In forty years, our birth rate has more than halved. By subliminally equating children with KILL, PAIN, and FEAR the mind manipulators have eradicated a large number of us — prenatally!’
Modemac (Accessed 4th April, 1995)
Subliminal messaging has been a topic in the past as a technique that advertisers and cults used to manipulate the masses over time through repetition and was easily blamed for odd occurrences in death especially in the young like in the case of the Judas Priest case where James Vance and Raymond Belknap, attempted suicide in 1985 (other cases). However in today’s popular culture subliminal messaging is not seen as a threatening tools used by the media, but more as an overstatement:
‘An episode of The Simpsons involved Bart and his friends joining a boy band, the Party Posse. While watching a video for the Party Posse, Lisa notices the phrase “Yvan Eht Nioj” being repeated continuously by belly-dancers. She plays the video in reverse and finds that it means “Join the Navy”. Also, an Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster can be seen in the video frame by frame. The joke was that the United States sends subliminal messages in order to recruit people. In addition, the art of “superliminal messages” was demonstrated to Lisa; a Navy representative leans out a window, sees Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson, and shouts “Hey you! Join the Navy!”‘
‘Subliminal messages in popular culture’ Wikipedia
I still remain skeptical with subliminal messaging especially embedding messages visually. There are too many external factors that change the way a generation behave, and move. I understand that the conscious mind is the gatekeeper to all the information and by overloading it, messages aimed at the sub conscious can be manipulated, but to a very or no effect unless the person drowns themselves in one particular message for a very long time. So where does this leave me with this project? I could use some techniques to enforce what I’ve learn about information overload but whether people pick up on it is another thing seeing as it’s NOT meant to be noticed.
Word cloud for embedded message:
Words that could be used in the film. I like the idea of seeing if I could audio track OBEY, LOVE, SLEEP using backwards masking, and having a simple command as embedded messaging. From the word cloud its clear that the popular words are: curious, disturbed, zeal, sensitive, fearful, shocked. Maybe its what I want the film to feel like, but it does not help with promoting the subject of what, how and why we deal with information overload.
A detailed essay on how slow or fast a recorded sound/voice can initiate emotion (not just the meaning of the word to the listener). This is a a whole new field that requires knowledge on mathematical equations that I cannot make sense of. I know now that I won’t be able to be selective with the low frequencies for subaudiable sounds, in other words the words OBEY, LOVE, SLEEP might not even work at a sub conscious level. A written blog states that:
‘Audio subliminal recordings are made in which in addition to using a primary carrier, such as music, two audio channels are used to deliver subliminal messages to the brain. On one channel, accessing the left brain hemisphere, the message delivered is meaningfully spoken, forward-masked, permissive affirmations delivered in a round-robin manner by a male voice, a female voice and a child’s voice. On the other channel, accessing the right brain, directive messages, in the same voices, are recorded in backward-masked (or meta-contrast). The three voices are recording in round-robin fashion with full echo reverberation. The audio tracks are mixed using a special processor which converts sound frequencies to electrical impulses and tracks the subliminal message to synchronize the subliminal message in stereo with the primary carrier. The processor maintains constant gain differential between the primary carrier and the subliminal verbiage and, with the subliminal verbiage being recorded with round-robin, full echo reverberation, ensures that none of a message is lost. The primary carrier should be continuous music without breaks or great differences in movements.’
Woodhams, James R. Taylor, Eldon(Accessed 22nd Nov, 1992)
It looks like options to input any subaudiable sounds is out of the question, seeing as there are a few ways to go about it, one requiring deeper knowledge in sound frequencies and the other in actually attaining the right equipment.
Here’s an attempt at what both writers explained how subaudiable messaging should be like:
With embedded imaging I thought about what kind of message I wanted to make out of the 4-5 iconic images, so that people can generally link them to make sense out of the chaos. They need to be universally recognised and known to stand for something for example, a gun is to kill or protect it is also a form of power. Referring back to Simon Everly’s discovery about popular searches on music, religion and relationships I thought about using relationships as the topic, music is too broad with different genres so it can’t be applied to the general public, and religion is a sensitive subject that people instantly become defensive about (in my opinion). Choosing relationships opens the door to emotions that everyone can relate to and is part of our deepest desires; Freud’s instinct drives: Eros working for creativity, harmony, sexual connection, reproduction, and self-preservation; Thanatos for destruction, repetition, aggression, compulsion, and self-destruction (‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ Sigmund.F 1922). To positively reinforce the eros or thanatos?
What to do:
Selective!
Recreate a film version of my flash website example, selective random iconic images as well as including 4-5 images based on relationships; leaving these relationship images to flash twice as long so that the viewer can recognise and imprint these into their short term memory, which would hopefully over a period of time piece together a meaning to them.
The videos compressed on youtube lost allot of the frames per second from the original footage and also altered the effect of each change in image repetition ; an unreliable example to show in the blog. Full quality videos found in CD: FMP/videos/flash_0# to see their full effect.
I tried a variety of try out to find the right speed of frames per second and the right timing for the repeated relationship image to appear. Here are the results:
Worked out according to Balwin (1991); 1/4 of a second is 250 m/sc The footage is being exported as 60fps, so a 1/4 of that is 15 fps, the time frame to input the embedded images and sound a tone after the image. I am fully aware that it’s not the 1000 fps test Balwin carried out so I already know that this may not work. But with the programs available 60fps is the maximum I can get.
Created embedded images on Flash, setting a different image to a frame and setting the output to 60fps. Did this for 960 frames and when it came to exporting it uncompressed the files came out as 875MB which is too big, and overclock my RAM and virtual memory.
So I tried exporting it in chunks; every 240 frames which was much better and this time I compressed the footage to 32 fps, so I’m further away from Balwin’s experiment. 32fps seemed to take allot of the frames out and for some reason extended certain frames when editing on premiere. Re-editing the frames on premiere seems to work better and I should have used that program then flash. This mean that I had to rely on the background music for the que to insert a beep tone AND place the embedded images in the right place.
Problems with the exporting of footage. 60 fps is eating away at my RAM and crashes my exporting program. Decrease fps to 32 fps and Quicktime H.264 compression, as I was setting the footage to uncompressed AVI
In 1985, Dr. Joe Stuessy testified to the United States Senate at the Parents Music Resource Center hearings that:
| “ | The message of a piece of heavy metal music may also be covert or subliminal. Sometimes subaudible tracks are mixed in underneath other, louder tracks. These are heard by the subconscious but not the conscious mind. Sometimes the messages are audible but are backwards, called backmasking. There is disagreement among experts regarding the effectiveness of subliminals. We need more research on that.[34] | ” |
Stuessy’s written testimony stated that:
| “ | Some messages are presented to the listener backwards. While listening to a normal forward message (usually nonsensical), one is simultaneously being treated to a back-wards message. Some experts believe that while the conscious mind is trying to absorb the forward lyric, the subconscious is working overtime to decipher the backwards message. |
What is pattern recognition?
Pattern recognition involves identification of faces, objects, words, melodies, etc. Pattern recognition refers to the process of recognizing a set of stimuli arranged in a certain pattern that is characteristic of that set of stimuli.
Gestalt (theory) effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is often used when explaining Gestalt theory.
Principle of Totality – The conscious experience must be considered globally (all physical and mental aspects of the individual simultaneously) because the nature of the mind demands that each component be considered as part of a system of dynamic relationships.
General solutions for information overload that becomes part of pattern recognition:
- Gain information on a ‘need to know now’ basis rather than ‘nice to know’.
- Focus on quality of information.
- Be direct with questioning/answering.
- Single-tasking keep mind focus on one issue at a time.
Pattern recognition is looking at the analysis of logic vs emotion, how you analyse information and make selective choices by seeing patterns. So even though people may generally pick out similar bits of information that’s relevant to them, there’s always minute variations in interpretation because of their individual feelings linked to their past experiences. An example to show personal interpretation can be found in various experimental films whereby the footage presented is designed to make you find a meaning within the images and sounds.
Naqoyqatsi is the third film made by Godfrey Reggio called Life as War, and was part of the Qatsi trilogy. The film focuses on society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based industrial environment. I like the calm and gradual approach to telling a story about the changes from analogue to the digital age. The slow motion film over lapping each other and orchestral score (composed by Phillip Glass) creates a tense and heavy tone with the dis-coloration, negative treated, distorted footage. I know that due to it being considered as an experimental film its open to interpretation, I find the symbolism of mass production (products we use, and our collective conscious mind on the internet) and how our lives is becoming more and more busy as individuals with the speed of information, is portrayed as; marching people, and a lone skater, is so simple and yet easy to relate to (iconic).
Pattern recognition in business:
The recent boom in social networking is a good example to show how someones looked at what people are looking at; information on the internet, personal websites about themselves or subject of interest and created servers that provide sevice’s for people. For instance social information like, msn worked by connecting people via text and one to one sharing, then LinkedIn; professional career networking and myspace; social networking which attracted a young audience with its changeable layouts and applications, uploaded images, text feeds, and other movements the user does on the server widening the one to one sharing to one to global sharing. Both networks came out in 2003 attracting different types of online socialites (age, lifestyle, goals) and gained popularity for their ability to connect people from around the world for professional or personal reasons. Then Facebook, which started out as a university social networking server(2004) and later developed for global use (2006) was introduced for the general need for a professional social network server, which could update its live feeds which myspace never offered (through uploaded images, text feeds, and other movements the user does on the server), and had set design layout (which encouraged more serious and professional people to use). Finally the latest social networking fad is Twitter where short text live feed messages is shared amongst friends, specifically for thoughts, and sharing links.
A gradual increase in sharing information on these servers means that a person needs to focus on whats the common interest or identify a pattern in information that can be used for the future; the developers of Facebook and Twitter had already seen how social networking was in demand early on since myspace and developed their own through seeing how many people signed up on previous networks and how they use these for themselves and what they wanted. Even stock brokers after being blasted with price data need to see a pattern in order to make the right decisions:
‘When you see a price pattern starting to form on a stock chart, you know the stock is starting to slow down, or consolidate, and that you need to slow down, take a step back and evaluate what may happen to it. What you don’t know, is whether the stock is going to breakout and continue moving in the same direction after it slows down, or if the stock is going to turn around and change direction.
Price patterns are an underutilized and extremely valuable tool in your stock-trading arsenal. It may take a little while to get comfortable with dealing with the subtle nuances and occasional ambiguity that are a part of price patterns, but once you do, you will feel like you are able to see into the future.
Price patterns are visual representations of market psychology. They tell you when traders in the market are excited and moving, when they need to take a moment and catch their breath and regroup and when they are ready to get moving again.’
S. Wade Hansen
This is all specific access to specific information, what about assembling multiple unrelated sources of information into one?
‘Information overload is an opportunity for pattern recognition and thus leads to better abilities to sense what is going on and how to respond to it. Therefore, information overload is actually a good thing. Obviously it brings anxiety at certain times, but if you position yourself with it in a different attitude based on the flow/perceiving metaphor rather than collection/consumption metaphor, you will have much easier time coping with it.
This is exactly why those people who use RSS readers to scan through thousands of feeds, read blog posts from various decentrally connected sources and who engage themselves into assembling multiple unrelated sources of information into one (probing connections between them) have much greater ability to sense and respond to changing conditions in increasingly complex environments than those who read only the major newspapers, watch only the major news networks and don’t put themselves into a difficult situation of being hammered with a lot of stuff at once.
Linear, intentional learning was how you learned in the past. Enter nonlinear, visually active way of learning of the future.
The blogosphere is like a digital photograph: one pixel is one blog post. The details don’t make any sense but once the pixels appear to be connected, it forms a pattern, a picture perhaps that you can recognize. This is exactly what happens if you swim in information overload and try to perceive how things fit together. As a result, you might think that you have almost psychic capabilities to know what is happening at the market right now and how to respond.
If you are an individual, start using RSS readers and expand your field of subliminal vision. Use sources that regularly provide insight into your life. If you are a corporation, create information overload inside your organization and give people tools to follow and perceive patterns. Otherwise your competitors will soon know better than you what to do next.’
Taking it to a more personal level, overloading yourself with information even if they have no real strong links can help generate patterns which you would never have seen or thought about and can use; creating personal links from information sources that have weak or no connection to the subject. Controlling when you let information overload you, and what types whether its personal or work related, helps with using such data for perceived developments and actions. It could even benefit you by thinking outside the box, or being ahead of the game, rather than following the crowd, self realisation; internal change in behavior or attitude, actions that produce positive outcomes (business, or personal).
‘The ART of Adaptive Pattern Recognition – By a self organising Neural Network’ by Gail. A. Carpenter, Stephen Grossberg (1987;1) looks into how intelligent systems can posses the ability to adapt to similar stimuli by making links to previous memories, which allows:
‘…learning to be automatically incorporated into the total knowledge base of the system in a globally self-consistant way.’
‘The ART of Adaptive Pattern Recognition – By a self organising Neural Network’
Gail. A. Carpenter, Stephen Grossberg (1987;1)
This is how and why people deal with information overload, by analysing a vast flow of information, that encourages the ability to recognise patterns and change one’s condition to understand and survive.
Simon Everly a web designer posted on his blog about his experience with word association generators: Web Seer, What do you suggest?. Both sites acts like a visual Google suggestion drop bar; they allow the user to input a word and in response the generator presents the user with suggestions for the next word just like Google but show the number of searches for each suggestion by the size of the arrows; so the thicker the arrow the more searches Google has had with the whole phrase and vice versa. He found out over a period of time that familiar patterns in peoples searches started to reveal themselves to him; music, religion and relationships.
What to do:
Repetition!
Create repeated audio source with tone breaks to help break up the sequence of iconic images. Music or voice or both?
Inbetween new and old
Posted on: April 26, 2010
Synthesized touchscreen on website using mouse. LINK
Interpretations of the internet
Posted on: April 25, 2010
Lawnmower man:
Geometric shapes.
The Matrix:
Interchangable numbers and asian text falling or forming letters.
Minority report:
Sounds.
Interface gestures.
Information service
Posted on: April 24, 2010
This reminded me of this:
There was also a slot on Capitol fm about a decade ago where they have someone read out bits of information that had loose links to the previous word they started with.
Videos all expressing information overload edited and collated into one video. Jumping from video to video, with sounds.
Audio points:
Stop animation works with presenting a large number and continuous amount of information.
Descriptive words and tone (type, movement of type and images) helps get the message of information overload in a literal form.
This is just sexeh.
Later friend pointed this out:
Only in Japan…
Online searches
Posted on: March 29, 2010
After the meeting on Monday I was suggested to look up Golan Kevin and Jenny Holtzer.
Golan’s, ‘Audiovisual Environmental Suite’:
Golan Kevin ‘Audiovisual Environmental Suite’ focuses on the movements of the participant to dictate the visual patterns produced through a projected interface. Obviously there’s some processing behind the visuals and participant movements, and previous research has led me to focus more on the visual meaning and how the viewer reacts to the information presented to them, rather then the coding needed to make these react as a live feed.
Looking at the visuals used in his works has helped me visualise a way of representing information in a graphic form here are some tests I’ve made using After Effects, eventhough it may not be a live feed its a illustrated method of showing how music and online communication over the internet may look like:
Single track.
Numerous tracks.
Added online chatter to interpret the amount of music information is on the internet that people play and download all the time.
After being asked about what this video was and what it had to do with the internet, I had my doubts about using this as a clear message about information overload on the internet.
History
Posted on: March 27, 2010
- Mastered and managed- each generation it gets bigger, overloads student.
What problem does it propose?
Posted on: March 27, 2010
e.g.:
- Wikipedia
- This site
‘Information is Beautiful’
Posted on: March 27, 2010
‘Information is Beautiful’ by David McCandless, collection of collaborations with designers. Specific information, filtered.
FMP 