3 posts tagged “love”

Two days before my actual birthday, a quite handsome UPS man delivered a package from SAN DIEGO to my door. Although I had to pay 55,94 pounds of bloody taxes to bail it out, I was simply in ecstasy when I opened it.
The sender, Mr.Jason Moore, was able to put together in only one present my love for maps, my addiction to electro/experimental/anticon music and my desire to own BOSE QC2.
My man is awesome and I am a lucky motherfucker I know...
UUUUUuuuhhhhh happy birthday to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       

Music Included:

Tape/Luminarium
Near The Parenthesis/L'Eixample
Eero Johannes/Eero Johnannes
Dosh/Wolves and Wishes

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About a month ago, my friend Edoardo Zamuner, a Reserch Fellow at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Professor Semir Zeki (UCL), invited me to participate to an experiment in Neuroaesthetics.  As described in Wikipedia: Neuroesthetics investigates the structure and activity of the brain in response to experiences of esthetic phenomena. This relatively young discipline take advantage of neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and in genetic analysis which makes everything more interesting from a visual and semiotic perspective.

The particular project that the lab of Prof. Zeki is working on at the moment is about romantic love and obviously has something to do with face recognition of the loved one. The group is interested in scanning the brain of eterosexual and homosexual subjects in a love relationship from 1 month to 5 years.
This is how the experiment was intorduced to me:

"Love is one of the most overwhelming sentiments in human experience. Understanding what happens in our brain when we see our lover is of great benefits to society. If you agree to take part in this study you will be invited to a laboratory visit. You will be asked to provide photographs of your lover and also other people of the same sex for whom you have natural feelings. We will scan these images and return the photographs to you directly. You will also fill out a questionnaire about your feelings toward your lover. 
The scanning of your brain will last about one hour. During the scan you will see the faces of your lover ad the neutral people repeatedly. You are asked to press a button when you see a particular visual prompt. We will monitor your heart rate, breathing and skin conductance by instruments attached to your body. Directly after the scan you will fill out the questionnaire about your feelings a second time."

Side

I did the lab visit last week and yesterday I did the brain scanning. It was a tremendously interesting experience. Not only because I think this project is amazing and because all the people involved are highly qualified and inspiring individuals but also because of my interest in data visualisation in the art-formerly-known-as-new-media-art.

At the end of the experiment John Romaya, the computer programmer who coordinated the scanning of my brain gave me a software application to explore the regions of my brain. The images I am posting here are from a structural scanning, from a side, back and zenithal point of view.

Zenith

Oh and the reason why they are not looking into individuals in a relationship longer then 5 years is because it seems that after only 1 year..the brain does not react to the sight of the loved one in the same way anymore..This is a sad and not very surprising fact.

I am looking forward to the paper that will examinate the results of the empirical data, which is supposed to come out sometime in 2009. If you live in London and you would like to volunteer for this amazing research project please contact Doctor Edoardo Zamuner at e.zamuner@ucl.ac.uk. At the particular stage of the project they are particularly interested in scanning the brains of homosexuals subjects and of people from ethnic minorities.

Back

I keep up with my daily routine constantly thinking of what time is in California while trying to be on time here. It is a dystopic feeling and it does not help your daily anxiety and stress. Here are some ideas to help other-side-of-the-globe-distance love talk:

the power of now option

-Set up an on line number in the Country where your partner is. Your partner can call the on line number for free if you set it in the same residential area where she/he lives. I got a three month account for 17 euros.
-Buying Voicemail on Skype helps if your partner is ten hours behind you.
-On Skype, sound quality is best with a USB head-set. About 30 euros.
-Skype Out is cheap, at some point you can't pretend your lover to stay in front of the computer the whole fucking time. In the US you do not pay, in Europe yes.
-If you have a web-cam,  plug it in. It is a little dirty, I know.
-On Skype you can send text messages to cellphones.This is convenient but automaticly sends the message with your user name which is not personal at all. I would like to see the name it displays when I chat.

hello

-Gmail chat is nice..sometime you are about to write an email at work and you see your partner's icon turning green..It makes you run into each other's life which is intimate.
-Have a pre-paid international card in your wallet just in case. International pre-paid phone cards are good,  but you need to call from and to a land line, or the 200 minutes they promise become 2.
-Cell phones are good for I-really-need-to talk-to-you calls, but ridiculously expensive internationally. Why?
-Fuck social networks. Why do other people need to know what we are talking about? Facebookers should be just friends.
-Remote control looking mobile phones (blackberries, palms, etc..) are expensive and look very ugly.

skype me when you can