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...

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