rene' magritte

this painting by rene' magritte was used on my copy of 'the man who mistook his wife for a hat' it would be a good idea to referance him in my essay if i end up writing it on a subject aroud who we see and recognise objects.

BBC Documentry

BBC Documentry: "Do You See What I See?"

i thought this was interesting and it kind of relates the the older post on "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat'

book: the man who mistook his wife for a hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat

by Oliver Sacks

neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks wrote an anecdotal book on some of his strangest patient cases.

the peticular case i'm interested in for this project is the books name sake "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" the story of a man called Mr.P (for the sake of patient confidenciality) who developes later in life an  accute and odd form of the condition known as Agnosia:- 

Visual agnosia is the inability of the brain to recognize or understand visual stimulus. An individual with visual agnosia has otherwise normal visual functioning and can see, but is unable to interpret or recognize what they are seeing. There is also no deficit in general mental ability (Rothi, Mack, & Heilman 1986)

In Mr.P's case he had trouble destinguishing people from objects including himself, recognising objects and people and describing or recognising scenes from pictureshe could describe them elequently and in great detail but could not see or recognise the object as a whole for instance in the book he is shown a glove by Stacks and is asked what it is MrP Examins and describes it as "A continuous surface, infolded on itself. it apears to have five out pouchings..."

and continues when asked for its use, "A container of some sort? - There are many posibilitys. It could be a change purse, for coins of five diferent sizes"

 only afer he accidently put it on dose he exclaim "my god its a glove" 

I would like to continue to look at this story for inspiration on how we perceve and recognise objects and process them how they relate to us, how we relate to them and so on.

also on the same tangent colour blindness is a form of agnosia called Achromatopsia

Frigyes Karinthy's Six Degrees

Six Degrees of Separation

I have done a little research into the Six degrees of separation theory how i now no was conceved by a man named Frigyes Karinthy a hungarian writer in his short story 'chains'(1929).

this 'six degrees' theory is supposed to describe the five steps you need to link your self to anyone else in the world the sixth like being your self though a 'friend of a friend' method. The theory is more of an excersise or "game" that Karinthy and his friends would play to prove Karinthys idea that the worl has infact "shrunk" due to growing ease and quikness of comunication, this is certainly true in modern times with technonlogical revolutions such as the invention of the internet and the creation and eplossion in popularity of things like social networking. i would like  to explore these ideas later on in this project.

degrees of separaition

degrees of separation

the last post got me thinking about degrees of separation might be a good tangent for later on in the project

jeremy deller

Jeremy Deller

I think this is a fairly obvious sourse to look at, though the diagram depicts two wildy differing musics and not physical objects it shows simple (silly) ideas pushed  limited degrees of separation 

 Jeremy Deller, History of the World / Acid Brass, 1997 - 2004