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This is your brain on architecture

Michael Cannell has a nicely illustrated post on Fast Company about recent discoveries on the neuroscience of architecture. Among other discoveries, it turns out that our brains are more receptive to rounded, cushy designs instead of hard edges:

A study by neuroscientists at Harvard Medical School found that faced with photographs of everyday objects—sofas, watches, etc.—subjects instinctively preferred items with rounded edges over those with sharp angles. Mose Bar, a neuroscientist, speculates that our brains are hard-wired to avoid sharp angles because we read them as dangerous. He used a brain scan for a similar study and found that the amygdala, a portion of the brain that registers fear, was more active when people looked at sharp-edged objects.

And as if in affirmation, Jonah Lehrer observes that the "padded leather womb" of his Eames Lounge Chair makes reading tedious articles a little more approachable; he calls the chair a rare intersection of comfort and modernist (read: characteristically geometric and angular) beauty. (By the way, Lehrer also recently wrote about neuroscience and a different form of art—jazz improv.)

Filed under  //   architecture   design   design trend   modernism   music   science  

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273 seconds of silence

What is it like to watch—or perform—John Cage's famously "silent" piece 4'33"? SFMOMA gallery attendant Michael Zelenko posted his experience on the museum's blog:

At some point during the third movement, as if orchestrated, all these previously unacknowledged sounds seemed to come together. It felt to me as if the museum itself was performing for us. When it was all over I turned to the audience and heard the pitter-patter of applause, not quite sure who it was for.


The (performance? installation? artwork? all of the above?) was part of SFMOMA's The Art of Participation exhibition, which closed Sunday.

Filed under  //   museum   music   performance   sfmoma  

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