Sunday, April 9, 2017
Juuso Hämäläinen’s Fine PhotographyJuuso is a 22-year old...
Juuso Hämäläinen’s Fine Photography
Juuso is a 22-year old Finland-based self-taught photographer and a visual artist. He finds nature a relaxing, magical and healing place and loves spending time there. Through his photos he shares the feelings he experiences in the nature and thus wants to inspire peopMore unique art on
Even though he’s always wandering around in the woods and photographing the nature, he loves to challenge himself to try new things and wants to master a wide range of different styles in photography f.ex. people, events, animals, street photography etc. He’s very open-minded and tries to see the beauty even in the very mundane things.
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Posted by Andrew
Juuso Hämäläinen’s Fine PhotographyJuuso is a 22-year old... crss
Juuso Hämäläinen’s Fine Photography
Juuso is a 22-year old Finland-based self-taught photographer and a visual artist. He finds nature a relaxing, magical and healing place and loves spending time there. Through his photos he shares the feelings he experiences in the nature and thus wants to inspire peopMore unique art on
Even though he’s always wandering around in the woods and photographing the nature, he loves to challenge himself to try new things and wants to master a wide range of different styles in photography f.ex. people, events, animals, street photography etc. He’s very open-minded and tries to see the beauty even in the very mundane things.
More unique art on Cross Connect Magazine:
Twitter || Facebook|| Instagram
Posted by Andrew
crssIf You Think Music Is Just an Entertainment, You're Living in a Nutshell
We have all been in this situation. You’re in some bar or club, the music is loud, you’re not in the mood to dance. But while the track plays, you notice your fingers tapping, or your head nodding, or your knees bending to the music. To wallflower guy like me, it can cause all kinds of awkwardness.
But why is this? Why can something inherently artificial like music, especially electronic music, cause an almost unconscious physical reaction in people? And also why dance? What benefits does it have? These are questions that have been in my mind a lot lately, so, I began to explore.
When we’re tapping our fingers, something’s happening in our brains.
What is interesting, is that dancing seems to appear in many cultures, without influence from each other. Culture X may have a totally different musical style from culture Y, yet they may at times find themselves moving to the rhythm of their music.
Consider the different kinds of First Nation tribal dances, and European forms, though different in style and motive, they generally form the same function and basically boil down to rhythmic moving to music. Going back thousands of years, there was even a dance culture in ancient Egypt.[1] Dancing then is totally human.
You don’t need to look far to see more evidence of this, babies, with no real cultural expectation or conditioning dance to music (though…not very well).
On a deeper level, scientists have found that music stimulates certain regions of the brain, particularly the Ventral Striatum, and the Orbitofrontal Cortex.[2] These parts of the brain are key regions generating pleasure, emotional responses and rewarding them. Interestingly these parts of the brain are more stimulated if you like certain songs.
There are some suggestions that motor regions of our brain are also attuned to this, and also that motor regions of the brain are somewhat triggered when we see others moving. So you may be more likely to dance when others are around you dancing. It is understood that the body derives pleasure from movement. So when this is combined with the subconscious pleasure also got from music, you essentially get double the pleasure response.
Music is a combination of rhythm and melody. (But we know it’s more than that.)
Deep down all music is creatively arranged vibrations.[3] These vibrations arranged in pitch, tempo, rhythm, harmony, and melody.[4] Different instruments and the human voice form these vibrations differently, but fundamentally, music is sound, and sound is vibration.
But this kind of explanation takes all the fun out of it.
Pointing out that the Mona Lisa is just bits of color on a canvas, or that John Coltrane was just really good at manipulating vibrations, doesn’t explain why millions of people go to the Louve gallery specifically to see the Mona Lisa or why Coltrane was one of the best Jazz (Jazz of course originating as a fusion of multiple international musical styles) performers of all time.[5]
There is something else.
Music is more than just a form of entertainment.
Generally we consider music either a mere form of entertainment, something brought and used like a good film or video game. At best we see music as just an art form, perhaps the cooler, more popular cousin (who gets invited to all the good parties) of literature.
However I would go so far to say that music is closer to a form of communication, one that exceeds all cultural boundaries.
For example, I admit it, I am a really into folk and roots music. Lately I’ve been listening to the Norwegian folksinger Siri Nielsen, her voice is angelic….and I have no idea what she is singing about. If I pick up a book published in a language I can’t read (which is pretty much all languages) then it is inaccessible. But this is not the case with music.
All cultures throughout history have had some form of musical culture. This is a nice idea, the next time you listen to your favorite band, or a good piece of music, you’re involved in an activity that humans have done throughout all history.
And maybe the creation of music is to change people’s mood and mind.
People have been trying to answer that answer for centuries. Charles Darwin for example proposed that music was invented as a kind of sophisticated come on, like some animal mating ritual. This makes sense as the majority of popular music are love songs, or straight up unambiguously about sex.[6]
Another popular theory, the theory I personally agree with, was that music was created as a way to form social groups.[7] We often see music now as an individual experience.
We’re used to being by ourselves, blasting out our favorite song. Thanks to headphones, we can be surrounded by people, but be the only one to hear music. Because of this, it is easy to forget, that prior to the invention and popularity of recorded sound, the only way to listen to music was to hear it live.
We still love the social aspect of music, we can hear our favorite band in perfect sound quality for a fraction of the price, but few would ever say that listening to an MP3 is a better experience than seeing the band live.
This is why we love music and dancing, it is the total humanity of it. Our core biology reacts and gives us pleasure from the music we love, and the music we love brings us together. This is something music has always done, and always will do, and why music matters.
Infographic credit: FineMinds
Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io
Reference
| [1] | ^ | University of Birmingham: Communication Through Music in Ancient Egyptian Religion |
| [2] | ^ | Scientific American: Why do we like to dance–And move to the beat? |
| [3] | ^ | Psychology Today: What is Music Exactly? |
| [4] | ^ | mfiles: What is music? |
| [5] | ^ | The New York Times: The Prehistory of Jazz The Africanization of American Music |
| [6] | ^ | BBC: Is Music Really All About Sex? |
| [7] | ^ | National Geographic: Why Did Humans Invent Music? |
The post If You Think Music Is Just an Entertainment, You’re Living in a Nutshell appeared first on Lifehack.
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Love, Like, or Lust: What It's Like to Be Falling in Love
If you ask ten different people to compare love, like, and lust, more than likely you will get ten different answers. Why is that? There’s no doubt that love and its similar counterparts are complicated emotions, in part because there could be as many definitions for love as there are people.
Love isn’t something you can see with your eyes; rather, it’s more of a feeling that occurs deep within a person that sets off a domino effect of subsequent thoughts and external actions. We use those thoughts and actions to cultivate our own perception of what love is.
Regardless of how you perceive love, like, and lust, there exists a simpler, science-based explanation that goes beyond your personal sentiments and experiences to reveal what it’s like to fall in love.
But why do we love the person we love?
People often wonder why they fell in love with the person they love. But this time, psychology takes the answer wheel.
Since infancy, we develop an understanding of what acceptable behavior looks like. Typically, the things we experience as young children ingrain its impact on how we perceive other things in our lives, including love.[1]
We typically fall in love with people who are like ourselves, who share the same interests, values, and desires because those are the things that give us a sense of identity. The person we choose to love is usually a reflection of ourselves.
There’s something about love that science knows but you didn’t realize.
Emotions and their triggers represent some of life’s greatest mysteries, but science may have cracked the case when it comes to distinguishing the true discrepancies between like, love, and lust. A study published in Psychological Science revealed that it all depends on how you look at another person.[2]
In the study participants were shown pictures of the opposite gender, and were asked to imagine if they could feel lust or love for each person. Scientists tracked their eye movements and discovered that people who felt love lingered on the person’s face, while those who felt lust lingered on the body. The same study also showed photographs of couples, and respondents had to answer if the images conjured feelings of love or lust.
Once again, more focus was on the couple’s faces if the respondent answered “love” and on the couple’s bodies if the respondent answered “lust”.
Then, there are the noticeable changes in body function, such as an increased heart rate, palms, and a fluttering feeling in your stomach. But science takes body changes a step deeper by examining the amount of “happy” chemicals in the brain. In instances of love, seratonin and dopamine levels tend to rise.
But since you can’t see inside your own brain, there are a few more obvious signs that could indicate you’ve found true love and not a short-lived infatuation:
- Do you look at the person constantly? This goes back to the photograph study where people who felt love would linger on a person face rather than their body.
- Does the person invade your every thought. The person you love is more important than anything else your brain can think of.
- Does anyone else matter? You find it impossible to have similar feelings for anyone else.
- Would you be deeply affected if something bad were to happen to this person? True love means you can’t imagine going back to the life you lived before you knew this person.
If you answered yes to these four questions, this person might just be “the one.”
Like, love, and lust are different, because they’re actually on a emotional spectrum.
You should know that love, like, and lust are not interchangeable, though people will often substitute one for the other in conversation. Let’s look at the differences.
Like
On the mild end of the spectrum, “liking” something or someone gives you a feeling of contentment. However, you could be just as satisfied if that person or thing in your life were absent.
For instance, you might like your neighbor because they have good taste in music. But if your neighbor decides to move away, their departure wouldn’t leave a gaping hole in your life.
Love
On the more intense side of the emotional spectrum, love is the unceasing yearning that impacts the physical functions of your mind and body (according to science). In other words, think of love as a point of no return: once you fall in love with someone, life as you know it will never be the same.
When you find someone who sweeps you off your feet, that person is all you can think about, talk about, and look at. Of course, these feelings can happen even when it’s not true love. The key difference is if these feelings last longer than a few months.
Lust
Then there’s lust, a (sometimes dangerous) emotion that disguises itself as love, but with completely different intentions. There are three distinct attributes that separate the two:
- Lust is temporary.
- Lust is a superficial emotion driven by physical characteristics such as a person’s appearance.
- Lust is easily forgotten, whereas love leaves a lasting impact.
Lust tends to be more sex-focused, with more emphasis on physical pleasure than deeper connections. For instance, a person who may have had a few alcoholic drinks might find a person more interesting than if they were sober. Once the alcohol effects wear off, life can resume as normal without a second thought.
In some ways, you might consider lust and like as precursors to love; that is, lust and like will eventually wear off. If you’re still interested in a person when that happens, you may have found your true love!
Love could be about the balance of love, lust and like.
They each start with “L”, but they are far from synonymous.
Scientific discoveries on how the mind and body react to each “L” proves it. If you want to know if it’s real, think about how you look at a person, and how a person looks at you. If you each spend more time studying the face, you might have found a winning combination.
Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io
Reference
| [1] | ^ | Business Insider: 9 weird psychological reasons someone might fall in love with you |
| [2] | ^ | Psychological Science: Love Is in the Gaze: An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Sexual Desire |
The post Love, Like, or Lust: What It’s Like to Be Falling in Love appeared first on Lifehack.
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Saturday, April 8, 2017
rexisky:Artwork: Distance by Marco Nabi | Motion Effect by... crss
crssArtwork: Distance by Marco Nabi | Motion Effect by rexisky
I remastered this piece because I now have access to the full-sized source image. A huge thank you goes to my friend Marco Nabi It’s always awesome to collaborate with him
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