brain responses to cultural emissions (was Re: [-empyre-] syntax of wetness)

["wendy joy" <w-joy@zip.com.au>]

I wonder what is going on structurally in the brain in these immersive
states that have been discussed here - I guess it's the surge of
beta-endorphins and enkephalins and the low alpha waves.  I guess there have
been studies of brain activity and responses to 3d art - can someone
enlighten me?

I smiled when i read john's paragraph

>  in Ultima i felt intense anxiety when
>my character was in tough situations, incredible adrenaline rushes in
>combat, and great depression when my character died. i mean, i *really"
>felt it. this is immersion to me, regardless what is presented to my
>eyes.

I used to feel this with pinball machine - actually any kind of game.  Is
play a mimetic rehearsal for real time situations?  Is play pleasure for
it's own sake?  Do salmon love swimming upstream?  Does a bear shit in the
woods!  :)

Just yesterday i was leafing through a magazine and saw a picture of a
theatrette full of immaculately equipped GIs cheering at the screen as they
watched afgani targets being destroyed.  The Great Game John!  Too right!

it's interesting how these responses are harnessed for both leisure and
lethal destruction.

don't get me wrong - i'm not promoting a causal link between killing sims &
real time violence.

It's interesting how there is a knee jerk reaction demonising the perceived
"misuse" of these responses as "addictive" or socially destructive when they
are merely "adaptive".

Garden Grove CA has a moritorium on internet cafes - cos the kiddies were
killing each other.   talk about shooting the medium/messenger :)

hmm banning public internet spaces - now that's a good strategy to
put an x box in every home. hehe :)

Now that Bush the second has made his 'little list' of nuclear objectives
and
america is the Sparta of the modern age - it's an interesting time to be
harnessing the convincing brain
states produced by 3d simulations and feeling the "real' effects of war -
the sorrow,
the mass deaths and the displacement (so eloquently portrayed in Beyond
Manzanar - good on you Tamiko!).

or like John's work - the cold blooded ambivalence of the chunky graphics -
what horror WHAT HORROR I feel over *that* cold blooded ambivalence and
indifference and depersonalisation of human suffering that it implies.

that's the immersion I feel - horror and tears!  Tears over the japanese
internees and their modern day afghan counterparts stateless in the
Australian desert - and there arises the anxiety -  and under those bombs
and behind that barbed wire there but for the grace of god go we.

cheers wendy