Human Interface - Life Sciences and the Humanities interact
Linguists and anthropologists, neurologists and media scientists, experimental ophtalmologists and art historians, psychologists and geneticists, all came together for a full day of public conference interaction on the human interface, "Schnittstelle Mensch". It would be an understatement to say it was very interesting - indeed the interactions, the dialogues and the inspirations coming from that where simply brilliant. And my head did not explode, even though I was definitely more competent to relish and to comment in some areas than in others. I had seen Birbaumer's fMRT show before, so that was nothing new. And my s.o. (more significant maybe than in previous times) works at the intersection of mind and body, when trying to build up interdiscliplinary pain therapy at Tuebingen University, so I have an idea what they might do in an area where the subjective feeling, and instrospective reverberations of perceptions play an enormous role.
Language was a topic in my focus, so I decided to visit those presentations and skip the philosophiocal and historical background where I might know more already. But where did language begin? My earliest scientific endeavours in this field were proto-celtic remainders in early indo-european languages, so I was listening to geneticists, neurologists and palaeo-anthropologists telling about the beginnings of language, where Chomsky might be wrong in his earlier assumption that grammar is an inborn ability, and how grammatical thinking evolved with and after the FOXP2 gene in humanoids. And how media language, from movie cuts to photographs to virtual reality CAVEs can be used to lie.
Asked how all these diverse topics might fit together, I answered that every single lecture and discussion today might be used to enhance the experience in future Virtual Reality worlds, to make beings we encounter more real and give them the ability to influence our perception of reality in hearing and seeing, in intonation, mimics, gestures and in communicating to our instincts below our perception, because we start to understand the functionality of our ideas of reality much better today than we did just five years ago. Fascinating stuff - and I intend to see some of that in the future of myraworld - but I don't expect this idea to surprise many of my readers and friends here.
What surprised me was that after the final discussion I was invited to join a panel of Tuebingen area thinkers talking about matters as diverse as the reality of the theatre as a model of reality and the reality of visions for Europe, in a series of talks called "Tuebingen Thinking". We'll see what will become of that. Some public exposure on European ideas mightl certainly be helpful for my current plans and future ambitions.
Where I interact with you, I'll first say Happy Birthday - belatedly here to ellifaey (who failed to celebrate, but will enjoy the tickets to the new musical "Wicked" which started here just this week and which she will see - not with me, for once, but with lenew. Not because I would not like to see it, but because I've been to the movies with her much more frequently in the last year(s), and someone else also deserves a go.
I will also say "Happy Birthday" to paradisedreams2, who might not be reading this (or not behind the cut), who is not sharing the last name with me anymore, but still dear to me for the friendship we developped when I was still new to AIM.
Last not least I would like to ask those of you who read this far a question: Do you think what I write about is beyond the scope one blog/LJ should have? Should I separate personal and general entries, take my political or my German language posts elsewhere to target more specific audiences, the LJ/BC/HP friends vs. those possibly interested in my other observations? As of today, I'm still undecided on that matter. I suppose I would prefer to keep it together as both is part of who I am, if you, my readers, (or those of you who comment) agree.