November CommQuote

What's the polar opposite of a heavy meal drowned in rich turkey gravy?  How about something from Bjork, just for balance. ( It's not an either-or, mind you, you don't have to choose.)  The Atlantic.com website recently posted a video of Bjork "explaining television."  Highlights include her taking off the back of a TV set and likening the little world in there to a city.

"Look at this. This looks like a city. Like a little model of a city. The houses, which are here, and streets. This is maybe an elevator to go up there. And here are all the wires. These wires, they really take care of all the electrons when they come through there. They take care that they are powerful enough to get all the way through to here."

She goes on to explain the narcotizing effects of television from a much needed hard science perspective.

"This beautiful television has put me, like I said before, in all sorts of situations. I remember being very scared because an Icelandic poet told me that not like in cinemas, where the thing that throws the picture from it just sends light on the screen, but this is different. This is millions and millions of little screens that send light, some sort of electric light, I'm not really sure. But because there are so many of them, and in fact you are watching very many things when you are watching TV. Your head is very busy all the time to calculate and put it all together into one picture. And then because you're so busy doing that, you don't watch very carefully what the program you are watching is really about. So you become hypnotized. So all that's on TV, it just goes directly into your brain and you stop judging it's right or not"

But I've spoiled the audiovisual Icelandic pixie aspect which you can take in here. Enjoy!