My research takes two forms: I can read the available material others have written relating to my topic and I can learn from experiments I do myself.
The topics that will be most directly helpful to my research include electroencephalography, scientific studies on entrainment, and technical knowledge of the hardware used for image capture and playback.
As for experiments I can do on my own, I want to begin my building a strobe light device that can receive flash-rate information from a computer (probably implemented via Arduino). Running a binaural-beat program in synch with the light rate is also an option.
The second step to doing some primary research on my own would be to head into DIY neurofeedback (http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/, http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/~peortega/ae/). This would not be a light undertaking, and would start in July at the very earliest. With such a complete setup, I could monitor and quantify my own response to a flashing light with some amount of scientific rigor.
While the artistic exploration of frame rate is my chosen primary independent research area, I will continue the simultaneous pursuit of knowledge in other fields. Alternative pixel grids for image sampling is one of my most recent interests (hexagonal and triangular tessellations of the field). The human voice is another interest (particularly with regard to the concepts of fundamental frequency and register). I mention these to reinforce that my experiments with cinema framerate will be a long-term (and not all-consuming) project.
At this point, I believe that the conscious mind may perceive a range of frame rates in correspondence with a range of semantic association. As I’ve mentioned before, I imagine the range as: slower=passive/dreamy, faster=active/fearful/epiphany. Actual entrainment is unnecessary for frame variability to color the viewing experience.
The several areas I am interested in exploring with frame rate are distinct enough that it is productive for me to define them as separate here:
1)Entrainment-based cinema.
2)Frame rate matching to a semantic range.
3) Subjective interaction (interference patterns) between capture device rate and rate of filmed subject (e.g. wagon-wheel effect).
Discussing these as separate categories is helpful to my project advancement, as it offers a better clarity of purpose.
The ends of my interest in entrainment is not mass mind-control, it is transcendental self-awareness and communal experience. Trance has a very bad connotation and I doubt that I could erase suspicion of it with several pages of writing. For the most part this suspicion is a healthy impulse anyway, so trying to persuade those concerned otherwise wouldn’t be the best use of my time.
If anyone has been keeping up with the entries of this blog, please let me know. It’s admittedly quite dense, but I hope that its density has been informative for any reader intrepid enough to slog through it. Moreover, if you’re that interested in my project enough that you’ve read through this whole sketchspace, maybe I’ll have somebody to collaborate with next quarter.
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