Negative feelings have been rising

2019 World Happiness Report
May 7th, 2019

Via Yes!: "According to the 2019 World Happiness Report, negative feelings are rising around the world—and the United States is particularly hard hit with an 'epidemic of addictions.' Tellingly, the report also shows a widening happiness gap, with some people reporting much more well-being and others showing much less within each country.
Released annually on the International Day of Happiness, the World Happiness Report ranks countries based on their life satisfaction in the Gallup World Poll. Residents rate how satisfied they are with their lives on a scale of zero to 10, from the worst possible life to the best possible life.
This year, the most satisfied country was Finland, followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and the Netherlands. [...]

One trend is very clear: Negative feelings—worry, sadness, and anger—have been rising around the world, up by 27 percent from 2010 to 2018. [...]

One thing is certain, says Sachs: 'The U.S. is suffering an epidemic of addictions.' This includes an addiction to technology, which researcher Jean Twenge largely blames for the worrying mental health trends among U.S. adolescents. In her chapter of the report, she argues that screen time is displacing activities that are key to our happiness, like in-person social contact. Forty-five percent of adolescents are online 'almost constantly,' and the average high school senior spends six hours a day texting, on social media or on the internet.
But we’re hooked on more than just technology. According to researcher Steve Sussman, around half of Americans suffer from at least one addiction. Some of the most prevalent are alcohol, food, and work—which each affect around 10 percent of adults—as well as drugs, gambling, exercise, shopping, and sex."

Emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics

Cultural evolution
April 25th, 2019

Via Center for Open Science: "The cultural dynamics of music has recently become a popular avenue of research in the field of cultural evolution, reflecting a growing interest in art and popular culture more generally. Just as biologists seek to explain population-level trends in genetic evolution in terms of micro-evolutionary processes such as selection, drift and migration, cultural evolutionists have sought to explain population-level cultural phenomena in terms of underlying social, psychological and demographic factors. Primary amongst these factors are learning biases, describing how cultural items are socially transmitted from person to person. As big datasets become more openly available and workable, and statistical modelling techniques become more powerful, efficient and user-friendly, describing population-level dynamics in terms of simple, individual-level learning biases is becoming more feasible. Here we test for the presence of learning biases in two large datasets of popular song lyrics dating from 1965-2015. We find some evidence of content bias, prestige bias and success bias in the proliferation of negative lyrics, and suggest that negative expression of emotions in music, and perhaps art generally, provides an avenue for people to not only process and express their own negative emotions, but also benefit from the knowledge that prestigious others experience similarly negative emotions as they do."

About Hilma af Klint

Planetary objects
April 22nd, 2019

Via Hilma af Klint Foundation: "The collection “Paintings for the Temple” encompasses 193 paintings, subdivided into several series and sub-groups. It is one of the very first pieces of abstract art in the Western world, as it predates with several years the first non-figurative compositions of her contemporaries in Europe. [...]

Hilma af Klint understood the uniqueness of her works. Working intensively with herself, and with her personal development, she wanted to understand the process in which she was taking part.

This aspect became the main quest all through her life: “What is the message that the paintings convey?”. She would actively seek the answer through philosophical studies, by taking part in various religious movements and by researching in their respective archives – all in vain. [...]

Hilma af Klint had a vision that her work would contribute to influence not only the consciousness of people in general, but in its extension also society itself. However, she was convinced that her contemporaries were not ready to perceive them. She had received strict orders from the “High Ones”, her spiritual leaders, not to show the paintings to anyone. Not even Rudolf Steiner could interpret Hilma af Klint’s paintings. At their first meeting in 1908, Rudolf Steiner consequently advised her to wait fifty years before exhibiting them. This is one of the reasons why Hilma af Klint never aimed at exhibiting her esoteric and abstract works during her lifetime. The works of art belonged to the future and would only then be understood by the public.

When Hilma af Klint passed away in the autumn of 1944, she left behind around 1300 non-figurative paintings that had never been shown to outsiders, and more than 125 notebooks and sketchbooks. In her will, Hilma af Klint specified that her life’s work should be kept secret for at least 20 years after her death. Her last wish was also that the collection should never be split up."

Paradoxical thinking

Inner Peace
April 14th, 2018

Via Quartz: "...a team of psychology researchers began to challenge his ideas using a technique called paradoxical thinking. The premise is simple: Instead of presenting evidence that contradicts someone’s deeply held views, a psychologist agrees with the participant, then takes their views further, stretching their arguments to absurdity. This causes the participant to pause, reconsider, and reframe their own beliefs."

Related: "Bazon Brock: Affirmation – Die stärkste Kraft des Widerstands ist das Ja-Sagen."

Lambert Windges

Ich war die Wellen, doch dann sah ich sie an.
April 1st, 2019

The sound and light installation Ich war die Wellen, doch dann sah ich sie an. [I was the waves, but then I looked at her.] by Lambert Windges takes the emergence, presence and disappearance of varying circumstances in a polyrhythmic structure as its theme.

Inspired by the dualistic interpretation of various phenomena in our lives, in his work Lambert Windges describes a perspective that seeks to observe these phenomena and at the same time to uncouple them from their dualism through the neutral standpoint of observation. The audience is invited to embark on a hypnotic journey, where the boundaries between opposites subtly blur.

Ich war die Wellen, doch dann sah ich sie an. [I was the waves, but then I looked at her.] by Lambert Windges is his final project as a Visual Music major at the Institute For Music And Media of the Robert Schumann conservatory. Marcus Schmickler and I supervised the project.

Values

My pyramid
March 30th, 2018

Presence [anwesend sein]
Honesty - Humor - Love
Humility - Openess - Intuition - Trust - Flexibility - Empathy.

Take another step toward what matters.

"When the Organ Played 'O Promise Me' " (1943)

Auroratone by British filmmaker Cecil Stokes
March 27th, 2019

Via YouTube: "This is an Auroratone produced and created by British filmmaker Cecil Stokes for use in the treatment of mental disorders - definitely a kinder, gentler alternative to the electric-shock treatments which were then in vogue! The soundtrack features Bing Crosby and organist Eddie Dunstedter. An online biography of Bing Crosby notes that he was a shareholder in Mr. Stokes' Auroratone Foundation. It also notes that Mr. Crosby made exclusive recordings of Ave Maria, Home on the Range, and When You Wish Upon a Star, for Auroratones, but there's no mention of this film's soundtrack When the Organ Played Oh Promise Me. It's possible that Mr. Stokes used a recording that Bing and Mr. Dunstedter had made several years earlier. [...]

Regarding the films themselves, I've found scant information other than a few mentions in psychiatric journals from the period. Several websites devoted to experimental film do mention Mr. Stokes and briefly describe his work and technique, but none of them offer any visual examples at all. One website promises to teach you how to create The Auroratone Effect for a fee - but its preview shows a modern re-creation only. It appears that my YouTube clip is currently the only example of an original Cecil Stokes Auroratone that exists on the internet anywhere."

Thanks to Jan Wagner !

All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks, PhD

Via Bell Hooks Books: "Author Bell Hooks gives us a non-academic, though personally profound look into this universal and ageless question in her book, ‘All About Love: New Visions.’ One can assimilate Hooks’ analysis to love to Scott M. Peck’s view of life from ‘A Road Less Traveled’: “Life is difficult” as Peck says… once one accepts that life is, in fact difficult, it’s easier to accept the natural course of life.

Venture with Hooks into her perspective on love in her value-filled chapters about what love is. This non-academic, though the intellectually written book, will allow you to consider your own thoughts and views on what love is while giving you cultural awareness on what society allows us to accept and what we are taught to believe love is."

Via Harper Collins Publishers: "As Bell Hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection and society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how profoundly she can."

Related: bell hooks: "This ain't no pussy shit" I The New School

Thanks to Prof. Dr. Swantje Lichtenstein!

Do you say “sorry” too much?

What to say instead
March 23, 2019

Via TED: "When we needlessly apologize, we end up making ourselves small and diminish what we’re trying to express, says sociologist Maja Jovanovic. [...]

Jovanovic, who teaches at McMaster University and Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, became interested in this topic when she attended a conference four years ago. The four women on a panel were, she says, 'experts in their chosen fields. Among them, they had published hundreds of academic articles, dozens of books. All they had to do was introduce themselves. The first woman takes a microphone and she goes, ‘I don’t know what I could possibly add to this discussion’ … The second woman takes the microphone and says, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought they sent the email to the wrong person. I’m just so humbled to be here.’' The third and fourth women did the same thing.

During the 25 panels at that week-long conference, recalls Jovanovic, 'not once did I hear a man take that microphone and discount his accomplishments or minimize his experience. Yet every single time a woman took a microphone, an apologetic tone was sure to follow.' She adds, 'I found it enraging; I also found it heartbreaking.' [...]

We can eliminate the sorrys from our sentences — and still be considerate. The next time you bump into someone, Jovanovic says, 'you could say, ‘Go ahead,’ ‘After you’ or ‘Pardon me.’ Similarly, during a meeting, Jovanovic says, 'instead of saying, ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ why not try ‘How about,’ ‘I have an idea,’ ‘I’d like to add’ or ‘Why don’t we try this?’ The idea is to be polite while not minimizing yourself.

The sorrys that fill our written interactions also need to be noticed — and banished. For emails, Jovanovic says, 'There’s a Google Chrome plug-in called just not sorry that will alert you to all the needless apologies.' With texts, she points out, 'Every single one of us has responded to a text you got when you weren’t able to respond right away. What did you say? ‘Sorry.’' She says, 'Don’t apologize — say, ‘I was working,’ ‘I was reading,’ ‘I was driving, ‘I was trying to put on Spanx.’ Whatever it is, it’s all good. You don’t have to apologize.'

And, in some of the instances when we’d typically throw in a sorry, we could just use the two magic words: thank you.

Laurenz Ulrich

hörst du mich?
March 6th, 2019

In the interactive installation hörst du mich? by Laurenz Ulrich either collages of video and sound recordings merge into opaque chaos or visitors are offered new perspectives by means of extending and slowing down.

Außen und Innen. [Outside and Inside.] To be bubbling over and have control of yourself. Beset by countless influences. The view of the individual. Stress and inner peace. The installation hörst du mich? offers an analogue telephone to make links between these states. Laurenz Ulrich's voice recordings serve as supporting elements. They are based on texts from various works by Walter Benjamin, Wolfgang Koeppen, Siegfried Kracauer, Christian Kracht, John Dos Passos and Rainer Maria Rilke. Visitors can listen to these texts on the telephone receiver.

hörst du mich? by Laurenz Ulrich is his final project as a Visual Music major at the Institute For Music And Media of the Robert Schumann conservatory. Marcus Schmickler and I supervised the project.

Laurenz Ulrich is particularly grateful to Yannick Benavides, Alexander Borowski, Jakob Ertl, Laura Greco and Philip Sudheimer for their support during the video documentation.