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Intuition, Subliminal Perception and the Subconscious

evsc — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:13:38 +0000

Barriers and Filters

There are several barriers between us – the conscious us – and the world. We are constantly bombarded with information from our environment and our physical bodies use senses to read that information. As a first barrier the limitations of our physical senses act as filter on the incoming information and only let certain content through. Now our subconscious is at play and processes the perceived input and acts as second barrier, as it decides which information will be handed up above the threshold of awareness to our conscious mind. Conscious perception of the physical world around is a filtered and mutated presentation of the real deal.

This is nothing new. We are already aware of the fact that there is so much more out there that is beyond our sensory range, and even beyond our technologically advanced sensory capabilities (see dark matter). What i find highly intriguing though, is the fact that our subconscious mind has access to a much faster and more detailed library of knowledge than our conscious mind does. Studies show that our subconscious senses at a higher resolution (Small Difference in Sensation, 1884) and at a higher sampling rate (Mere Exposure Effect, 1980) than we are aware of. But this high level of detail is not necessary for survival and would cause an information overload for that entity of our mind that we call consciousness.

Instead of relaying all possible input forward into awareness, our subconscious makes a selection. The really important stuff is passed on of course, but the majority of it is processed directly in the subconscious with quick rule-of-thumb methods. Only the final product of these processes enters our awareness in the form of hunches, instinct, gut feelings, snap judgments or – as we mostly called it – intuition.

Intuition and Rapid Cognition

Intuition is a fidgety topic. Discussing it with friends showed that everyone has his/her own interpretation of what it means, and especially in what situations one makes use of it.

I’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and understood it as a book on intuition. Yet he never uses the word intuition in the book and calls his subject rapid cognition instead. And rapid cognition is the perfect word for what my understanding of intuition is: Your unconscious makes decisions, reaches conclusions in a similar rational way as your conscious thought processes would do. Yet it does it a lot faster, and has access to more memory than your consciousness does. Within 1-2 seconds intuition can tell you if a person might be lying to you, if a chess game might be lost or if a situation might become dangerous. It tells you in the form of a gut-feeling, delivering the final conclusions of a long debate without revealing any of the rational behind it. It relies on your unconscious picking up on cues in the environment, on discovering micro-expressions on someone’s face, on comparing situations to hundreds and thousands similar ones housed in your memory and even digs into genetically and biologically hard-coded instincts.

Maybe Gladwell shies away from calling it intuition, because he feels that the term is too associated with emotional, irrational and mystical concepts. Probably letting go of the term and calling it by a new name is reasonable. Rapid Cognition.

“Apart from the fact that we may not be able to perceive the entirety of the external world due to information processing limitations inherent to our physical system, what seems more unsettling is that we may not even be able to experience all that we perceive! Is there some limitation of our own internal system that keeps not only the world, but the way this world is represented in us fundamentally unknowable to ourselves?”

– Overgaard M, & Timmermans B (2009). How unconscious is subliminal perception?

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

In his 2005 book Malcolm Gladwell presents a series of studies that demonstrate how our subconscious helps us make decisions, yet also leads us astray. It’s an easy read, probably too easy. I have heard Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide and Gerd Gigerenzer’s Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious might be a bit more thorough.

“Intuitive thinking is perception-like, rapid, effortless. … Deliberate thinking is reasoning-like, critical, and analytic; it is also slow, effortful, controlled, and rule-governed.”

- psychologist Daniel Kahneman

Lack of Intuition

Antonio Damasio’s study with card decks (Emotion, Decision Making and the Orbitofrontal Cortex, 2000) shows that the subconscious figures out game advantages and starts to influence behavior accordingly before that information reaches awareness in form of a hunch. Damasio also shows that test subjects with damages to a part of the brain responsible for planning and decision making (Ventromedial prefrontal cortex) are not able to produce hunches.

“Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious”
– Carl Gustav Jung

Experiments Below The Awareness Threshold

So, how do you measure if information is present in your subconscious, yet not in your conscious mind? In his paper Does “subliminal perception” (perception without awareness) occur, and how can it be measured? (2004) Berkes gives a good overview of the controversies existing in experiments trying to capture subliminal perception. Experiments testing the effect rely on null effect / null sensitivity data – which means subjects have no conscious awareness of a given stimulus. Detecting this condition is not easy. When detection relies on Self-Report of awareness (or non-awareness) by the subject, it is flawed as every person has different response bias that influence their statement. Early test, like the Peirce Jastrow Experiment have been criticized for this. The Dissociative Paradigm method asks test subjects to choose between fixed options, even if he/she finds them equivalent. The choice will unconsciously be influenced by the subliminal stimuli (see Mere Exposure Effect, 1980). The Exclusion Paradigm presents test subjects with a task and asks them not to use the supposedly subliminally presented stimuli (Jacoby exclusion task, 1994).

“Subliminal perception occurs whenever stimuli presented below the threshold or limen for awareness are found to influence thoughts, feelings, or actions.”

- Philip M. Merikle, Subliminal Perception (2000)

Self Report

Small Difference in Sensation, 1884

In 1884 Peirce and Jastrow published the paper On Small Differences in Sensation that documents their highly interesting experiment, showcasing that our subconscious even has a finer resolution in perception than our consciousness does. Subjects had to compare weights that were so similar that they seemed identical. People were asked to indicate the heavier object and also to specify their level of confidence in their choice. Subjects that indicated zero percentage of confidence – and seemingly only picked one over the other by chance – ended with a 62-70% success rate. Even though they were not aware of any difference between the two stimuli, their intuition let them to pick the right answer more often than not. The findings indicate that their intuition could give the answer based on reason, because their subconscious had a more accurate perception of the weight than their awareness.

Dissociative Paradigm

[Image Source: Nick Epley]

Mere Exposure Effect, 1980

In 1980 Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc showed that subliminal exposure to an object increased a persons affect for the object. This phenomenon is know as Mere-Exposure Effect – we tend to prefer what we are more familiar with. (Yet! The more invasive and repeated the exposure is, the more we’ll start to respond in a negative fashion.) In their experiment Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc showed test subjects 1 millisecond flashes of an image of a polygon. Afterwards the test subjects were presented with images of two different polygons, and were asked to pick the one they recognized and the one they liked better. As the flashes were too fast for conscious awareness and therefore at chance level, the recognition question correctly led to 50:50 answers. Yet the same test subjects indicated at 60:40 preference for the polygon they were subjected to.

Exclusion Paradigm

Jacoby exclusion task, 1994

In 1994 Debner and Jacoby executed a word completion experiment that sparred conscious processing against unconscious processing. Images of a priming word were flashed at test subjects at durations that ranged from subliminal to clearly visible. Afterwards the test subjects had to complete word-stems and were instructed not to use the priming word. Here the threshold of awareness was evident in the results. If test subjects were aware of the priming word, they avoided in the word completion task. If the priming was truly subliminal, they were much more likely to use the priming word in the task.

Original paper: Unconscious Perception: Attention, Awareness, and Control, James A. Debner and Larry L. Jacoby, 1994 (PDF)

Benjamin Libet – Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness

Always Half a Second Behind?

So, we know that the unconscious influences our conscious behavior. What if it does more than simply influence it? Benjamin Libet’s famous volatile-action experiment challenges the concept of free will as it demonstrates that neuronal spikes signal the onset of action before a conscious decision to take action has been made.

Maybe our subconscious is truly in control of us? Maybe our subconscious possesses free will and orchestrates our conscious experience like a puppet on a string. Your subconscious as the dark ego, living within us.

Or, our subconscious is not in control either, and free will is an illusion. Which option is better? Creepy vs. disillusioning.

Libet’s Bereitschaftspotential Experiment

In 1983 Benjamin Libet, following German neurologist Hans Kornhuber, asks volunteers to move a finger ‘whenever they feel the urge to do so’. Measuring their brain activity, he discovers that first brain activity controlling the movement happens roughly 500 milliseconds before conscious awareness of the subjects intention to move their finger, and another 150 milliseconds before the actual movement.

Open Questions

Now that we know that our subconscious knows more, sees more, hears more than we do, the questions arises – how can we access it? Through simple training? A more sensitive awareness to whatever your gut tells you?

Once a skill is routinized by extensive practice it is moved down into subconscious territory, to make space for new content. We walk, we breath, we swallow, and are mostly not aware of it. Can we master any skill and implement it in our subconscious?

Has our subconscious a more open mind for scientific ideas that are hard to grasp for our conscious mind? Is our subconscious able to understand multistability, and therefore allows the existence of separate realities in it’s neuronal circuitry (see An Oscillating Reality Battle)? Is our subconscious the maker of time and creates the illusion of time for our conscious mind?

Hidden Minds – A History of the Unconscious

In this book Frank Tallis leads us through the history of the unconscious touching upon hypnotism, lucid dreaming, subliminal stimuli, psychoanalysis and new research in neuroscience. Very recommended.

Podcast References

Brain Science Podcast – Episode 13 “Unconscious Decisions!”, where Dr. Ginger Campbell discusses unconscious rapid decision-making, Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and other writings on the subject.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast – Episode “Is Your Gut A Genius?”, where Robert and Julie talk about butterflies and lots of neural wiring in your stomach.

Brain Science Podcast – Episode 19 “Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer”, where Dr. Ginger Campbell discusses said book.

Project M

evsc — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:07:36 +0000

Together with video artist Mia Makela i developed a software piece that generates a live visuals set for Austrian violin artist Mia Zabelka‘s new record M.

info : Generative Visuals
date : 2011
ware : Max/MSP Jitter
show : Phonofemme, 30.10.2011 in Vienna
with : Mia Makela, Mia Zabelka, Pierce Warnecke

A Generative Visuals Set

The software produces beautiful and hypnotic black and white visuals (with the occasional color input), that correspond to Mia Makela’s poetic live-cinema projects. Simply geometries, grainy noise fields, moving branches and textures of ice photography build the core of the visual language. The software that was created with Max/MSP Jitter reacts to audio and data inputs from Zabelka’s MIDI violin (Zeta Jazz) and the only interaction required is the navigation between the sets for the individual songs.

The collaboration sprang from meeting Makela at the Banff Centre in 2010, and the recognition that software developers (even in the rather welcoming field of Max/MSP) are rarely female. Late in 2010 we all met for the first time during the Pixxelpoint festival in Slovenia. I recorded a first set of test MIDI and audio data that we subsequently used for developing the generative strategy of the visuals. The next half year was a challenging yet successful experiment of remote collaboration between Makela and me via email, skype and dropbox.

Specially developed Max/MSP Jitter GUI externals, that can be patched together for customized visual sets.

The Software

I prototyped a set of different video-generating and video-filtering Jitter externals that enabled us to easily patch together a customized visuals GUI for each of the 8 songs of the album. Makela developed the visual elements and narrative and in back-in-forth communication we fine-tuned the function and parameters of the generative outcome.

Narrative changes in the visuals are partially triggered by special MIDI note combinations, and partially timed. Some of the songs use additional images or videos as textures, yet mostly all visual elements are generated with code.

A big master program is in control of audio and MIDI data input, video output and the navigation between songs via a MIDI foot pedal. It allows Zabelka to have the visuals generated on her laptop during concerts without the need for an additional person controlling the software.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Showing

Premiere at
Phonofemme – International Klangkunstfestival
30.Oktober 2011, 19:30 – 21:00
Brunnenpassage, Vienna, Austria

Trojan Horse 2011

evsc — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 21:51:11 +0000

We did this!
[photo credit: extramatic]

info : Burning Man art project
date : 2011
show : Black Rock City 2011
ware : wood, steel, LED strips, ropes, …
with : Douglas Bevans, Alaya Boisvert, Jay Mosher, Eric Swenson, Ariel Sutro, Dan Fox, Chris Webb, Bill Tubman, Alma Banuelos and many many more
web : trojanhorse2011.com, Flickr pool

A large wooden Trojan Horse with hidden rooms inside stands ready to be towed across the desert as part of Burning Man’s 2011 theme “Rites of Passage.”

The LED lights gave the whole surroundings of the horse an intense red glow at night.
[photo credit: jojomelons]

I’ve been on a journey for over a year – a journey that started with a vision and was constantly confronted with doubts from the outside. A journey that challenged me into unknown territories and taught me that everything is doable with an enormous amount of dedication, willpower and organization. A journey that brought me close to many wonderful, committed, energetic and inspiring people. A journey that finally culminated in the construction, celebration, towing and burning of a 50-foot-tall, 25-tons heavy wooden Trojan Horse in the desert of Nevada at the Burning Man festival 2011.

Together with a core-team of 8, and a construction crew of about 20 and an additional large pool of volunteers and helpers, we created a multidisciplinary spectacle combining sculpture, light installation, music, performance, and dramatic arts into what was a major highlight at 2011′s Burning Man festival.

Our Journey

It all started out over a year ago at the Banff Centre, where composer Douglas Bevans developed the vision for the project, and soon found willing followers in myself and visual artist Jay Mosher. Together we developed the horse’s cubistic identity, that amplifies the project’s incentive of creating an abstract modern interpretation of an ancient myth.

Between the fall of 2010 and the summer of 2011 our team communicated in weekly skype conferences and almost daily emails conversations, learning on the go how to organize finances for such a massive and expensive project, how to make the project community-owned through fundraising, how to communicate the idea and invite volunteers to join, how to organize the sheer amount of volunteers that responded with enthusiasm, how to find the most dedicated construction crew, how to pick environmental friendly materials for the burn, how to set up an art support camp, how to orchestrate a thousands-of-people event, etc. No one of us had done anything close to a project of this scale before!

The horse between the obelisks.
[photo credit: V at 4sightfoto.com]

San Francisco / Oakland

Finally in August 2010 i went to San Francisco to join the construction crew for the last 3 weeks of pre-fabrication at Nimby, Oakland. The most rewarding days were the once spent measuring, cutting, angling, and assembling triangle pieces – getting covered in saw dust and your hands dirty while seeing the physical manifestation of a sculpture – you’ve edited in 3D programs on your screen for months and months – grow in front of your eyes high into the sky! The rest of the time was spent sourcing materials for the interior and exterior decoration of the horse, planing the power setup for the lighting of the horse, and handling online communication and website updates. And then,on Aug. 21th I started my desert adventure out on the nearly-empty, beautiful playa.

On Friday night, Sept. 2nd, the horse burnt after an spectacular fireworks show by Black Rock FX.
[photo credit: hep]

Taping and stapling LED strips to the surface of the horse.
[photo credit: Abraxas3d]

The Lighting

The skin of the horse and the matching obelisk sculptures were lit up with red LED strips that ran along the edges of the triangle panels. The total length of LED strips amounted to 840 meter! After doing the calculations it showed that the strips contained a total amount of 50.400 LEDs and would require a current of 336 Amp at 12 Volt power. This amount of electricity, needed to be converted from AC (generator) to DC, plus everyone’s cautionary tales about electronics in the Black Rock Desert (see here) were quite scary. After hauling in advance from many parties, and considering several options, I settled down on 8 Power Switching Units, that would power the LEDs on the surface of the horse, segmented into 70 channels of maximum 10-meter strips. This required about 2500ft. of 16-gauge speaker-wire to lay out the connection between the triangles-skin and the electronics-brain setup in a small room within the horse. I gave up any plans to control/dim the lights and simply focused on getting the lights working.

Mounting LED strips

Another tricky problem was how we would attach the LED strips to the wooden surface. We couldn’t just staple them, as the LED strips were bare without any protective surface. The solution involved 46 spools of clear duct tape, and stapling of the duct tape within a distance from the strips. The last 2-3 days before the opening of Burning Man, several of us spent many hours on a boom-lift at 30-40-50 feet heights, taping and stapling LED strips to the outside of the horse. (Thank you Alma, David, Eric, Pikey, Jay, Ariel and Matt for all your help soldering, wiring, stapling!)

The Inside

The inside of the horse was dimly lit with EL-wire and some LED bulbs. The back legs were equipped with staircases that functioned as entry and exit gates into the belly of the beast. The main platform housed a triangle-shaped bar serving absinthe – if the visitor revealed his own most significant rite of passage to the barkeeper. Going higher up into the head of the horse, you could look out a narrow window facing towards the Man (the center of Black Rock City’s horse shoe) showing the obelisks serving as the Gates of Troy.

The Red Glow

And, on Monday night, shortly before it’s official opening, the Trojan Horse turned into a beacon of red light! The outlined edges had a Tron-like quality, that gave the horse a different unique presence at night. I loved how the glow seemed to hum at its own frequency and very much transformed the steps, cart and close proximity of the horse into this otherworldly magical place. The glow of the LEDs was so intense that it not only colored it’s whole surroundings into a red cloud, but also was visible from pretty much anywhere on the playa. It became a beacon for many who wanted to find their way home at night.

More red glow!
[photo credit: jlaux42]

First Rendering vs. Reality
[photo credit: extramatic]

Youtube Playlist with Procession and Burn Videos

Procession and Burn

On Friday, Sept. 2nd we orchestrated the procession and pull of the Trojan Horse. Over 550 slaves lined up along six 300ft. long ropes and pulled the 25-ton horse with too-much-ease along the perfectly solid playa surface. Behind the horse a marching band played Douglas’ composition march, that similar to the horse’s design, represented the use of ancient Greek music traditions in a modern abstract interpretation. At sundown we reached the burn circle behind the Gates of Troy.

Before and after the procession we stripped and loaded the horse in preparation for the fireworks show and it’s ultimate death by fire. Shortly after midnight, archers shot flaming arrows and triggered the spectacular fireworks show by pyro crew Black Rock FX. The fireworks show morphed into the burning of the horse, which lasted a long long time. Layer after layer, the horse lost it’s skin panels, showed us its familiar structural skeleton, until it extremely slowly and extremely beautifully and touching collapsed forward onto its chest.

That’s me, looking at our 50 foot Trojan Horse.
[photo credit: yabbasha]

In retrospect

I had some of the best and some of the worst experiences out there. I feel an enormous bond to all the team members that helped create this adventure. Building this horse and figuratively walking through fire with everyone left such strong impressions, that even my first Burning Man experience couldn’t trump.

Maybe i’ll return, maybe not. But i’ll definitely never feel as proud out there again as this year – walking around Black Rock City and never letting go of this giant majestic horse in the distance, that seemed to have this magnetic pull on me.