The science of now ...
The New Scientist has an article about how long we perceive the present to be, called The time illusion: how your brain creates now. You can read the first two paragraphs here (or all of it if you subscribe.).
The scientists whose research the article describes believe that the brain constructs what we perceive as the present from the stimuli that reach it over the previous three seconds.
It's interesting putting this together with how youtube mashups such as the ones I reposted over Christmas work. Many of the mini-clips which were mashed together to make those Christmas songs represented one or two words, occasionally even breaking in the middle of the word (as when "The missile" and "Toe" became "The mistletoe") and there were often as many as three clips covering the space of a single second. In such cases it is relatively easy for the brain to run them together.
Where they don't want things to merge together or "create a sense of chaotic or confusing movement, Hollywood film directors rarely use shots lasting less than three seconds."
It is interesting to turn a focus on how long we perceive a moment of the present to be.
The scientists whose research the article describes believe that the brain constructs what we perceive as the present from the stimuli that reach it over the previous three seconds.
It's interesting putting this together with how youtube mashups such as the ones I reposted over Christmas work. Many of the mini-clips which were mashed together to make those Christmas songs represented one or two words, occasionally even breaking in the middle of the word (as when "The missile" and "Toe" became "The mistletoe") and there were often as many as three clips covering the space of a single second. In such cases it is relatively easy for the brain to run them together.
Where they don't want things to merge together or "create a sense of chaotic or confusing movement, Hollywood film directors rarely use shots lasting less than three seconds."
It is interesting to turn a focus on how long we perceive a moment of the present to be.
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