Are there bears in these woods?

You are standing outside a football stadium while a match is being played. Inside, 90,000 people are involved, to varying degrees, in the match. Some are paying close attention to the movement of the ball, others watch the match officials, some see the shifting patterns made by the positions of the players and are quick to spot an offside infringement. Some of the match-goers are not directly observing the game at all at this moment; maybe they are talking to the person standing next to them, or standing in line at the snack bar, or queuing for the toilet. Each of these people, lets say, is making a small noise, a hunger-fuelled rumble of the stomach from the man at the snack bar, a sigh of relief when another reaches the front of the toilet queue, the low murmur of conversation as one fan talks to another about the game. Perhaps the most common sound though is that which accompanies the ebb and flow of the game itself. As the fortunes of one side or another rise and fall, so the gasp, cries, and whoops of the individual spectators also rise and fall, shifting in lockstep with the perceptions of the game. From you position outside of the ground, you do not have access to these individual responses; what you experience is a low background roar which for most of the time stays at a fairly low level, definitely audible when you pay attention to it, but easily forgotten just like any other monotone. Punctuating this background sound however, is an occasional wave of increased intense expression. Sometimes this upwelling of sound is joyous, washing over you like a warm current of bliss and elevating you, buoying you up. At other times the sound drops away for a moment in agonising anticipation, then returns in an outpouring of ooooooooooooooooooh of grief and disappointment.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• consciousness
• emotion
• Antonio
• Damisio
• Joseph
• Ledoux
• Dartington
• Blackburn
• Rovers
• football
• cognition
• somatic
• marker

[rayek4eq]

May I use the audio from this as a sort of voice over for a song I'm making?

[conferencereport]

@rayek4eq Sure, go for it.

Fred

[rayek4eq]

@conferencereport final product: search J.J. See on Soundcloud, I'd post a link, but Youtube doesn't like them. Synth-poppy, lo-fi, etc. Cheers!

[conferencereport]

@rayek4eq Listening to it now.

:)

[rayek4eq]

@conferencereport Thank you so much! it sounds great!