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Robert Austin

  1. The Tone Generation

    Back in the 1950s, electronic music was just emerging from the musique concrete movement, with their massively spliced magnetic tape assemblies and shellac records. In those days, lone composers might assemble a few military-surplus audio oscillators and filters with a tape recorder, and cobble together odd sounds by hand; the modular synthesizers made famous by Robert Moog in the late 1960's had not yet been conceived of. Some amazing works were created during this period, despite the technical ...
  2. Battle of the Colors

    Some of us remember the light shows pioneered back in the late 50s, that were especially popular additions to rock shows in the latter 60s. Though a number of techniques were used, from film strips to strobes, the most popular was perhaps the 'wet show', in which drops of colored water were added to dishes of oil (or vice-versa), and manipulated in various ways. The results were projected onto a screen, and no doubt contributed to the altered states of consciousness experienced by many concert-goers ...

    Updated 08-08-2011 at 11:51 AM by Robert Austin

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    Altered States , AVS , Light and Sound , The Brain
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  3. Creating interesting visuals, tip #1

    One of the most compelling aspects of a light and sound session is the point at which new visual patterns seem to leap into existence, then dance through a set of transformations which never seem quite the same each time you experience that session. Rather fractal-like. I've been working on some sessions recently which employ "visual beats", which means that the frequency of one color channel moves through a range slightly offset the other (fixed frequency) channel. Here's a simple ...
    Tags: art, visuals
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  4. Science and Invention

    Hugo Gernsback is probably best known for launching the world's first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories back in 1926. He started out in the publishing business in 1908 with Modern Electrics, catering to hobbyists early in the development of 'wireless'. In 1913 he launched The Electrical Experimenter, which became Science and Invention in 1920, covering a broad range of amateur science topics, now often speculative. The oversized (9x12 inch) covers were colorful paintings, and the paper ...

    Updated 06-05-2011 at 06:47 PM by Robert Austin

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  5. Podcast: All In the Mind

    I confess to feeling a bit partial to BBC podcasts, but my favorite source of wide-ranging psychological discussion comes from down under... Australia, to be precise. Actually I would do this series a disservice by limiting its range to psychology, as it really does treat just about everything which has to do with how and what we think.

    Natasha Mitchell's ?All In the Mind? has been running since 2002 on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National, and has covered a remarkable ...
    Tags: mind, psychology
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  6. Podcast: Brain Science

    I like listening to podcasts during my occasional long drives, fitting a bit of learning into an otherwise fairly boring experience. And one of my favorites is the Brain Science Podcast, hosted by Ginger Campbell, M.D. She's covered a wide gamut of topics related to neurophysiology over the 73 episodes released so far. Most of these are in the form of extended interviews with researcher and academic scientists, some of whom discuss recent books they've authored.

    Just a few examples ...
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  7. Remembering Tom Budzynski

    When Tom passed away recently, I lost an old friend and mentor.

    Tom was a true pioneer in the fields of biofeedback and light and sound, as well as an inventor. Trained originally as an electrical engineer, he worked on such projects as the SR-71 spy plane, before returning to college for his PhD in psychology. His dissertation was about the use of electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback to control frontalis (forehead) muscles?useful for reducing tension and headaches. He opened ...

    Updated 05-04-2011 at 01:51 PM by Andy

    Categories
    Human Interest
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