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Mysteries explained...

"Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight."
-- Danny, from Withnail & I

RECEPTION Full Programme

CONTRIBUTOR: Nervous Radiation

Nervous Radiation: The first years of the Dutch Society for Psychical Research

“It is impossible to report on our activities, since no phenomena have occurred.”

In 1921 the Dutch Society for Psychical Research was founded by professor Gerardus Heymans. Its stated aim: "We don’t desire to arrange interesting shows a la Rubini, nor to collect sensational stories, nor to satisfy higher or lower emotional needs, or the need for comforting views or nervous shivers. We want to study the phenomena involved scientifically, and without prejudice…”

Nervous Radiation relates the story of the first, trying years of the S.P.R. as gathered from their minutes and proceedings from 1921 until 1925 (the year in which Heymans gave up his presidency). A talk about empty mailboxes, wild metaphysics, and waiting around for a proper ghost to materialize. Because after all, “Surely not only sentimental old spinsters choose to manifest themselves? ”

Jantine Wijnja (1980) works as an artist and is co-director of Artist-In-Residence Hotel MariaKapel. Experiencing a fierce lack of clarity in virtually all aspects of life led to a practice revolving around the notion of ‘articulated haziness’: carefully rendered crystallizations of, or tributes to obviously unclear events. Recent projects include Wild Metaphysics, a series of lectures concerning the current state of affairs in parapsychological research culminating in a group show, and The Darndest Miracle You’ve Ever Seen, a performance/lecture based on the story of self-proclaimed PK-man Ted Owens.

WRITING: Sense in the Citrus

On the morning of pancake day a sun had been crushed, following the rain of the night with a cool citrus flush. This citrus creased faces from the clouds and curdled the oil of a sick engine’s guts. The pips bent prisms of colour in the puddles from the rain, reflecting cacophonies of patterns in the dampness of haggard streets.

On this day I did wander the dampened down streets for the clouds were low and perfectly placed. Blowing towards the centre of this city passing birds who would twitter yet dampened down by a clutch on a Honda. It’s the drain and the strain of the rush hour through on the high street, and a perceptual awareness that I’ll try to explain, as the sun did try hard that day to hold back the rain. The frayed lemon is the clock; the backdrop is a gust and there was a 4 digit pull from of the hole in the wall.

So these clouds gathered low - merging mindsets in tow, of groups modern and past, of races and faith harboured idyllically safe. The laptops and mobiles and scumbags and youth – the hobos, the business, the cash point, the queues. Their faces, haircuts, clothing all trigger thoughts of where their head is and where heads their course.

Some, who followed the fashions of music and art, sparked the creative combustion of my turbulent heart. I know these disparate cultures so intimately that I’d quote them, but I saw other mindsets as surface colours on oil. In the puddles as they mingled, they curdled like the clouds; colours cascaded the weather system cycle and swarmed through the crowd.

With separate identities in a spectrum alight, each colour connects these mindsets burnt bright. The frail, the strong, the old and the young, the pantone patterns of upbringing, love vibes and angst, fractures and fragments the grey scaled streets. I separated apart states of mind like predicting the weather; it’s a process that’s seasonally safe but not perfect yet. And I colour coded this visually for the weather may change and I want to know where the tethered summer will reign. Storms always come when you can’t flush the drains.

We all move and we separate and float though this space like our own weather system under pressured gravitas. Rooting us down to these dirty haggard streets as the wind bellows free it diffuses faces in clouds, drips trickle back to the sea. We live and we breathe and we wander awake, we disperse out die and back to the lake – some will form puddles with oil stagnate, some will rain free and others shine citrus a spectrum cacophony.

Mathew Humphrey 3/3/09

CONTRIBUTOR: Incoming Audio Transmission

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-- Stuart McAdam

Born in Paisley, Scotland 1982. Lives and works in Glasgow. Graduated in 2008 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. Recent work investigates language, in particular the idea of signs; manifesting as Spoken Word/Performance, Written/Drawn works, Sound and Film.

Previous exhibitions include New Contemporaries 2009 at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh and When I Stand on an Open Cart, Wasps, Glasgow.

Future projects include a solo show in Bristol and a research residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow.

CONTRIBUTOR: The end of a zero

The end of a zero is a performance that will take the form of a jazz funeral as found in the traditions of New Orleans and parts of the American south. Based on both a found photograph of a downed WWII fighter plane and a randomly intercepted radio transmission from Quito, Ecuador, The end of a zero will meditate on cinema and silence, death and duration, photography and muteness as well as music and emotional state.

-- G. Leddington

(to be performed at RECEPTION with the Cube Orchestra)

CONTRIBUTOR: Magical Thinking and the Human Brain

Dr. Christine Mohr and Sara Simblett will present their research on "Magical Thinking and the Human Brain", exploring the links between creativity and supernatural belief in associative thinking.

Dr. Mohr obtained a PhD in 2001 for her work on the "neuropsychology of magical belief" at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and has continued working in this field ever since. After taking on post-doctoral positions in Geneva (Switzerland) and Edmonton (Canada), she joined the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol in 2004 where she teaches neuropsychiatry. Strongly guided by her neuropsychological background, she mainly investigates and publishes on the brain correlates of paranormal beliefs and experiences (including out-of-body experiences). Although not primarily concerned with the question of whether the paranormal exists or not (she is a skeptic), her research seeks to understand why paranormal belief is widely distributed in the general population in the face of scant supporting scientific evidence.

Sara Simblett obtained her Masters in Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol this year. She is interested in the neuropsychology of creativity, in particular whether individual differences in personality influence creative thought processes. Sara is currently working on a research project funded by the Nuffield Foundation with Dr. Christine Mohr in the Experimental Psychology department at the University of Bristol investigating if people belonging to different professions display differences in both paranormal belief and the ability to make creative word associations.

FFI: Scrying

Formerly the domain of crystal balls, artist and programmer Martin Howse's Scrying project surveys the electromagnetic landscape. More info, hardware and code plans here: http://1010.co.uk/org/scrying.html
and here: http://www.tunedcity.de/?page_id=171

FFI: I'm still here...

Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and instrumental transcommunication (ITC) utilise modern electronic media such as radio, television and computers to receive messages from the spirit world.

Popularised by Konsantine Raudive and utilised more recently by Mike Kelley and Scanner, among others:
http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/742
http://www.mikekelley.com/academicut.html

Video testemonial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSSqQ_gJlXU

Slideshow with audio clips: http://www.worlditc.org/t_01_introduction_01.htm

Try it yourself: http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostaudiovideo/a/aa072604.htm

FFI: The Seybert Commission

The Seybert Commission, a group of University of Pennsylvania academics, was charged with investigating 'modern' spiritualism, 1883 – 87. Read their fascinating report here.

CONTRIBUTOR: Beat Boy, Beat Girl

The Glamourous - Iain Morrison and Leiza McLeod - channel the spirits of the largely forgotten Beat Girls. Their haunting vocal renditions of these women poets' works bring these long-quiet voices, whose history was repressed by their male peers, back to life in a beautiful and uncanny form.

Let us rewind you through the last fifty years of gender discourse to a confused moment when the enforced divisions of the 2nd world war left everyone wondering what they wanted from their sex identities and how they were going to get it.

The Glamourous draw on their research into the elided women writers of the Beat Generation, tonight re-enacting some of the male v. female wars of words that show clearly what was being fought over in pre-feminist 50’s America. The poems draw elegantly on a long tradition of poetic statement and reply, engaging the males on their own territory and being as in-your-face as they were. Tonight Plan 9 is the ghostly battlefield. Join us, hipsters, as we are possessed by the spirits of the hepcats and cool chics on either side.

Read more on the female Beat writers here: http://www.womenwriters.net/may2001/nogirlsallowed.htm

FFI: Natural Radio

'Natural Radio' describes naturally-occurring electromagnetic (radio) signals emanating from lightning storms, aurora (The Northern and Southern Lights), and Earth's magnetic-field (the magnetosphere).

The majority of Earth's natural radio emissions occur in the extremely low frequency and very low frequency (ELF/VLF) radio spectrum, frequencies between approximately 100 to 10,000 cycles per second (0.1 - 10 kHz). Natural radio waves are vibrations of electric and magnetic energy (radio waves) which, though occurring at the same frequencies as sound, require a radio receiver to make them audible.

Global lightning strikes number around 100 times per second and are the source of most natural VLF emissions on Earth. Lightning strokes emit a broadband pulse of radio waves at all electromagnetic frequencies simultaneously, from DC to Light. This constant crackling (static) is known as 'sferics', an abbreviation of 'atmospherics'.

VLF crackles can be detected from storms thousands of kilometers away. Radio waves can propagate such distances by bouncing back and forth between our planet's surface and the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere ionized by solar ultraviolet radiation.

Sferics that travel far enough through this reflector become 'tweeks', a musical ricochet sound. This is due to delay dispersion within the atmosphere. The frequency where half a wavelength will fit between our planet's surface and the bottom of the ionosphere is around 3 kHz. The closer a wave is to this cutoff, the slower it travels. High frequency components reach the receiver before the low frequencies resulting in a tweek.

Some lightning pulses follow magnetic field lines to the magnetosphere, 10,000 km or more above Earth's surface, and return more greatly dispersed. 'Whistlers' are heard as descending tones. The dispersal of the signal is due to travelling great distances through magnetized plasmas (an ionized gas), which are strongly dispersive media for VLF signals.

'Chorus' defines several types of sounds when they occur in a rapid, intermixed form. It is a product of magnetic storms, when events on the Sun, such as a solar flare, or 'holes' on the Sun's outer atmosphere (the Corona) allow a barrage of high-speed charged particles to impact Earth's (magnetosphere), causing it to deform and pulsate.

Listen to live streams and find more information on VLF at
http://www.abelian.org

INFO: You are invited...

Click for venue information and directions.

CONTRIBUTOR: Fordvogeltechnik Presents: An Evening With Wernher (+ His Birds)

Wernher is dead
His bird is dead
The last sighting
Scuttling across the floor
Of Test Stand IV
The world is finished

Wernher is now a relay
Between
You
And the birds

Wernher awaits your questions
He is at your service
Blessed forever to be
The conduit
Between the birds
And you

Is there any bird out there?