As the year continues, many of these posts will be philosophical in nature. Some will be in contradiction to previous postings. These are not intended as truths or assertions, they’re merely thoughts…ideas. Think of this as stream of consciousness over a wide span…
One of the podcasts I listen to is The Naked Scientists, and they recently had an entire episode dedicated to the theme of horror. One segment in the show particularly caught my attention. Dan Blumstein is a scientist who studies Marmots, and he started investigating animal screams when one of his subjects began screaming upon handling. He wondered why an animal’s screams could have such an effect on him, though he isn’t the same species (or even genus) of animal. In the course of his study, he discovered that there is a commonality to all screams across the animal kingdom. He states (and I’m chopping a little here to paraphrase):
“Screams are produced when animals overblow their vocal production systems…that system is no longer acting in a linear way. And there’s a series of these acoustic attributes that are associated with overblowing a system…
He’s talking about distortion. He goes on to explore the idea of distortion and noise and the effects it has on a spectator/viewer/listener, and also the idea that we’re predisposed to react to it. I encourage you to go check out the full story.
It’s fascinating to know that we’re hard-wired to be affected by distortion and non-linear acoustic phenomenon.