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Electricity, Volume 1
Artist's Statement -
"The series nanomovies exploring brain electricity, admittedly and undoubtedly will take poetic liberties with the science of the brain. However, having had an auditory hallucination named Susan as a lifetime companion, having grown up juggling mania and depression, I follow the rule for people who want to write the great American novel or Pulitzer prize-winning play: 'write what you know.' Who says a jpg of a star going nova can't be used as metaphor for rapid cycling? Who says a jpg of a circuit board doesn't look like a map of the pinging back and forth of a thought you can barely hold onto in the middle of the night when you're so manic it feels like high noon (or a star going nova) inside your head. Who says?"
IMAGE: closeup of brain tissue
[blackout. light on. self-portrait, blinking - whiteout.]
the path between between left and right brain is electricity.
IMAGE: view of right & left brains
resistance is undesirable. Resistance produces losses in the energy flowing
through the material. The brain [images]. The brain is like this [fists]: once set
in motion, electrical current will flow forever in a closed loop of superconducting
material. the brain. it's like this: the closest thing to perpetual motion in nature.
IMAGE: Orange-Blue-Lilac Fibers
Macroscopic quantum phenomenon. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.
Phenomenon. NNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.
IMAGE: Blue-Orange Waves
IMAGE: Blue Circuit Board
Functioning much like a uniquely designed electric conduit, the brain actually
encodes stimuli from the body as nerve impulses. When the electrical
impulses reach the brain, they trigger the release of messenger chemicals,
such as glutamate, which in turn induce electrical impulses as they travel
from one neuron to another.
[tangles of orange, yellow, red, purple and blue thread]
With 100 billion cells, each with 1,000 to 10,000 synapses, the neocortex
makes roughly 100 trillion connections and contains 300 million feet of wiring
packed with other tissue into a one-and-a-half-quart volume in the brain.
My brain is as big as the universe inside this - [show head] - more cells
than stars and planets and black holes and white dwarfs.
IMAGE: Stars-Galaxy-Clouds
Did you know: Stretched flat, the human neocortex -- the center of our
higher mental functions -- is about the size and thickness of a formal dinner
napkin. [cover skull with napkin and bleach to white]
With 100 billion cells, each with 1,000 to 10,000 synapses, the neocortex
makes roughly 100 trillion connections and contains 300 million feet of wiring
packed with other tissue into a one-and-a-half-quart volume in the brain.
[stuff the napkin into the skull]
These cells are arranged in six very similar layers, inviting confusion. Within
these layers, different regions carry out vision, hearing, touch, the sense of
balance, movement, emotional responses and every other feat of cognition.
More mysterious yet, there are 10 times as many feedback connections --
from the neocortex to lower levels of the brain -- as there are feed-forward
or bottom-up connections.
[now do you understand how hard it is to understand when
something goes wrong that you don't understand? {dump the napkin
and thread out of the skull}]
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