Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Wholphin + brain scans

Wholphin is a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney's. McSweeney's is a publishing house founded by Dave Eggers. You might recognize Eggers as the author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and as the screenplay writer for "Where the Wild Things Are" by Spike Jonze.

Anywho, the idea of a DVD magazine is pretty unique to me! For example, the current issue runs 2 hours, 40 minutes, has 11 films and features:

"The Duplass Brothers celebrating friendship, Selma Blair and Jeremy Davies celebrating an awkward romance, the haunting prequel to the indie-hit Martha Marcy May Marlene, Antonio Campos' Cannes-winning Buy It Now, a couple who eat each other's pain, Jonathan Lisecki'sGayby, and seven contestants going neuron-to-neuron in a love competition!"

To pique your interest, here's one of the included films by Brent Hoff, editor of Wholphin. The video documents a love competition. The contestants are strapped into an MRI machine and asked to think about love. Scans of the contestants’s brains track activity in the brain, with special interest in a specific region called the nucleus accumbens, where three neurological pathways associated with love converge. The video briefly introduces the contestants, who explain their strategies for winning while Dr. Melina Uncapher prepares each for their scans.


The Love Competition from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.

Caroline

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