The phrase "sense blending" popped into my head Sunday night, right after I had a mini state schema solely involving the Science of Sleep trailer. When I saw the movie, I was slightly disappointed and didn't think I liked it much, because it was different from how I thought it would be, based on this trailer. It violated my expectations, pretty much. As more time went by, however, I thought about it over and over again and grew to adore the movie for what it actually is. Anyway, I was in the mood to watch the trailer (the video store was closed, it was late at night). I had completely forgotten what happens at 1 min. 37 sec. of this thing. So, up to this point, there are all these visuals and sounds and narration and a bit of a story. It all mixes together perfectly, like the delicious red velvet cakes my roommate makes sometimes. At one minute and thirty seven seconds, a song called Your Heart Is An Empty Room comes on. It's one of those songs that makes you feel like you are completely immersed in a swimming pool, the song being the water. You are in the center of it. It is the absolute perfect song for that precise second in the trailer... in the universe. I am sure of it. So I had a state schema. I thought about why, and then realized that it was sense blending. A tiny bit synaesthetic, since the music sounded like the iridescent waves, the narration feels like the main chracter waking up with his feet in the icebox, etc.
This is not my point though, and I just wanted to share the state schema with everyone because I had been missing them (my last one was in March). Then I saw an interesting-looking link on the side frame of YouTube, and was brought to one of the coolest videos I have ever seen.
Do you guys remember Spin Art? It was a machine that you would put a piece of thick paper into, and it would spin really fast. Then you would squirt different colored paints on it and you would end up with something like this:
I played with this thing a lot as a kid. Anyway, Michel Gondry had the idea to use a turntable for this and attach a camera to the top that spun at the same rate, so you could see what the paint looked like AS it was squirted onto the paper (instead of just seeing a blur). That's not even the best part. The whole machine was powered by little electrodes that were connected to Björk's fingers as she played the piano.
Can you think of a better experiment between those two? Watch the video - maybe you'll have a sense-blended state schema.
