Breaching

stud

ent ma

gazin

e >>

unive

rsity

of so

uthern

>> # 3

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Wint

er 2014

/15

Denm

ark,

Kolding

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im·mer·sion noun \i-ˈmər-zhən, -shən\

: the act of putting someone or something completely in a liquid or the state of being completely in a liquid

: complete involvement in some activity or interest

: a method of learning a foreign language by being taught entirely in that language

: state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption

word of the issue

3focus

editor’s corner Flow - Nudging - Fakebook - Mr and Mrs A-hole - Brainy wawes - Nebendinge!

Aren’t these just beautiful words? I find myself almost in love with those

words. Maybe it is because of the holiday season… ! No, I am more inclined to

attribute it to the open-minded and creative people, who have contributed to

bring to life yet another Breaching magazine.

Again this marvelous blend of students and researchers, contributing with their wise and beautifully woven words. No authors willing to write, no magazine! And what glues the above words together into a neatly wrapped Christmas present for you - dear readers – is that they are all key words stemming from the different articles you can immerse yourselves in in this third edition of Breaching.

And if you have not guessed it on your own yet, I am willing to unwrap the curling ribbon of this Christmas present for you and reveal that our theme this time is Immersion. Should you ponder a bit about what the exact meaning of Immersion is, you can find the answer on page 2, or read the wonderful articles, each with their individual and unique perspective on

the notion of immersion☺ If you are impatient (just

like children tiptoeing to unwrap their Christmas presents), I can give you my own preferred definition of the word Immersion right here and now:

“Complete involvement in some activity or interest”

Reading through the magazine (a prerequisite to write ‘an editor’s corner’, which makes just a little bit sense), I personally lost track of time and (almost!) forgot about the most wonderful time of the year – Christmas! And that is quite an accomplishment, as I am probably one of the most christmassy- crazy people in the world, I simply love this time of the year! In other words, I involve myself completely in this season.

4

Artist: Agnese Caglio | Title ‘Imm

ersed’

! will refrain from dwelling too much (= immerse myself too much

☺) on the holiday season, and instead tell you a bit about the

actual content of the Breaching magazine. So dear reader, I invite you to go with the flow; learn how to avoid the wrong

type of nudging; or decide if you want to be a horse whisperer because nobody wants to refer to him or herself as Mr. or Mrs. A-hole! And maybe you could consider if beta or gamma-waves are your preferred types of energy flow or whether you want to spam Fakebook with your new favorite word of the month: Nebendinge! If your Christmas spirit (or absence of it) could benefit from more stimulation after this, I seriously advice you to consult the hilarious horrorscope on page 20. And if you are too immersed in fear and stress of facing the dreadful coming exam period, please re-read the horrorscope

page once more! Either it will help you get rid of exam stress for good, or it will cause you to take the

Breaching team to court for trying to “nudge” you into a certain emotional state of mind for all the wrong

reasons.

I wish you all a wonderful December, plenty of room for immersion, best wishes for the coming exams, and not least a

very happy read indeed☺

Merry Christmas

Jeanette Landgrebe

5

World War II. In an Italian prison camp a Hungarian teenager is bored shitless.

Partially in order to escape from the daily hardship and partially to get away from everyday life’s trivialities, he takes up playing chess. In chess he finds

himself “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The

ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought

follows inevitably from the previous one. Your whole being

is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost”.

(Csikszentmihalyi: 1996)

Rainar Rye Larsen 5th semester

Information and Communication Studies

His name is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the state of being he discovered

while playing chess is called flow. The concept of flow was further developed

through many years of subsequent studies and psychological experiments.

Flow is now an important part of theories of learning, in game design, in

spatial design und so weiter! Oh by the way: Pronouncing his last

name might not evoke an immediate state of flow but rather

cause damage to your tongue so here’s a hint to aid you:

Chick-sent-me-high-ee.

If you find this article too abstract you might find

assistance in referring its abstractions to the already

mentioned chess game. Well, there’s actually no need

to go all abstract, as the concept of flow is something

you already know - though you might have forgotten

the sensation of being in flow. Kids’ play is the most

commonly used example of being in flow: For a

second (after reading this of course) close your eyes

and try to remember how playing in the sandbox;

with your lego; playing cowboys and indians;

pretending to be a princess or even playing your

favorite computer game, dissolved time and

the very game at hand; playing in itself

became all that existed.

Flow is thus a mental state, where you’re

fully immersed. Where your attention is

focused. Where time and space imposes no

significance. Where the ‘here and now’ of it is all

that exists. This complete immersion makes you

aroused, and in fact this very arousal seems to

constitute maximal learning. (If being aroused turns

you on - you should definitely give the old Dane

Christen Kold and his ‘Først-oplive-så-oplyse-

pædagogik’ (gloss: first-enliven-then-inform-

pedagogy) a look! Although Hans Henrik Knoop (a not

so old Dane) would be a more updated and accessible

approach

The estimated maximum span of attention (= psychic energy) is 114 bits pr.

second, adding up to 500.000 bits a day and approx. 168 billion bits in a

lifetime. Focusing fully on one specific element X equals 60 bits of psychic

energy/sec. Now focusing on more than one element e.g. persons or artifacts

such as a tablet, computer, a tv turned on in the background etc. reduces the

amount of available energy per task:

X1 = 114bit/sec per X

X1 & X2 = 57bit/sec per X

X1 & X2 & X3 = 38 bit/sec per X

X1 & X2 & X3 & X4 = 28,5 bit/sec per X

flow

6

even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding“

Csikszentmihalyi

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996).Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and InventionHarperCollinsPublishers.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow. The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=da

Knoop, H. H. (2002). Leg, læring og kreativitet – hvorfor glade børn lærer mere. København: Aschehoug.

Knoop, H.H. (2005). Om kunsten at finde flow i en verden, der ofte forhindrer det. In: Knoop, H.H. & Lyhne, J. (red.). Et nyt læringslandskab – Flow, Intelligens og det gode læringsmiljø. København: Dansk psykologisk Forlag.

Kold, C. (1877). Om Børneskolen.

Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press (Danish translation 2005)

Instead of allowing simple math or people like the psychologist G.H. Mead to

corrupt this article with the concepts of ‘play’ and ‘game’ and, very rightly,

associating it with the development of the self (learning rules by roles) and

socialization (assuming the generalized other through roles), let us for now,

in the very context of this article, direct all our 114 bits of psychic

energy per second and concentrate on the practical aspects of

getting into flow. Or even better as grown ups, who seem to

have forgotten all about flow: let us work at getting back

into flow.

Being in a state of flow equals a state of fully

focused motivation, and Csikszentmihalyi lists a

number of internal (it’s all in your head) and

external (stuff that’s outside your body) conditions

that assist in creating the optimal setting for

getting in flow:

1.Well defined goals 2. Immediate feedback

3. No interruptions 4. Balance between challenge and current skill

5. Action and conscience are merged 6. Self-awareness disappears

7. The concept of time is distorted 8. The activity at hand becomes a goal in itself

Flow is thus not a mental state reserved

exclusively for children in game and play.

Children might have easier or more intuitive

access to flow through play, but including, and

planning for the first 4 conditions when studying

or working should increase your chance of getting

in flow. However, as other articles in this issue

points out, the force of distraction is a force to be

reckoned with. Perhaps adaptabi l ity is a

characteristic trait of post- traditionel human

beings - perhaps the accompanying negative effect

is a pervading lack of concentration? Whatever the

case might be, multitasking, distraction and lack of concentration

will never bring you into flow!

Let’s get all archeological in the end: Archeologists don’t discover artefacts

or traces - they re-discover. Maybe concentration and flow are there to be re-

discovered?

7

suggested reading and

vieewing

maybe concentration and flow are there to be re-discovered“

You see them everywhere. They look perfect, they are

always smiling and act like they have all the energy in

the world. But deep down they are frustrated, stressed

out and on the edge of a deep depression. This is a (maybe

exaggerated) description of the "A+ students" who only accept

A+ grades in every course they attend. They fight with every

cell in their body to achieve this and if they fail by getting only

an A, or worse an A-, they feel as the greatest failure in history!

They pace themselves into a marathon of performance, where

nothing is ever good enough. This sad trend is spreading its

dark wings over 21 century students, and is turning them

into little grey mice (male and female) running faster

and faster in the running wheel.

They run faster to achieve unrealistic goals and

some day they trip and hurt themselves so

bad that they need help from experts to get

back up on their feet. Do not get me wrong

on this point. Ambitions and goals in life

are very important and it is good to strive

to do your best. But when you end up

defining yourself completely through your

grades and perfect performances, it can

turn into a very unhealthy stressed

lifestyle, which may burn you out.

Thomas Pape, a professional stress adviser,

psychosomatic physiotherapist and owner of the

one and only "student" stress clinic in Denmark, has

an explanation to why students often end up being

stressed out.

Pape explains that stress is not only caused by one factor but

the sum of many factors. The pressure on students has grown

and the demands to personal branding has increased. Good

grades alone are not enough because students should also

travel the world, blog, find the right student job, spend time

with friends and post the right things on Facebook in order to

give an absolutely perfect image of themselves as individuals.

8

demands and expectationsA+Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. A+

aka Mr. and Mrs. A-hole

christina priisholm Freelance

beware! the running wheel will catch you

read more at: http://spine.dk/

A quick calculation on this will easily show that all these demands

actually do not give the student much time to focus on their studies,

and this can be quite problematic. In addition to this you can add many

other demands and expectations from our modern day competitive society.

The competitive demand carries great weight on the shoulders of the

students from the very first day in primary school and onwards. Competing

with others - and ourselves - is part of our daily schedule. "Be the best in your

class and receive a golden star". Not only are we taught from day one that it

is all about achieving golden stars and good grades for our performances, we

are also taught to be "on-line" all the time. The mobile phone is always

switched on and we strive to be visible on as many social media platforms as

possible. There is no backstage where we can pull the plug and just "be"

instead of "do". Everything in our society is based on performances and how

we act instead of who we are as individuals. This trend is creating "A+

students" who are stuck in the aforementioned famous running

wheel trying to be accepted and awarded in the society of

competition.

The fitness guru and motivation coach Chris

MacDonald also gives a good angle to why students,

and people in general, tend to be stressed out and

lacking motivation. It is actually quite simple - it is

all in your head! To be more accurate it is in your

Frontal Lobe everything is being messed up.

According to Chris MacDonald we have these 3

different voices in our head (creepy right? ):

1. Mr. A-hole

2. Mr "Worry"

3. The horse whisperer

The first one is quite an A-hole and always tells you how awful

you are, and that you cannot do anything right and that you never

ever will be good enough at anything. Sadly this is the strongest of them

all and the one that controls the minds of the "A+ students". Mr. "Worry" will

stress you all the time saying things like "you have to read your syllabus at

least twice ( and backwards too) or else you will experience the 7 plagues and

not even get close to passing your exams" or " if you do not run this

afternoon you will probably die of a heart attack before you turn 30" . Mr.

"Worry" is always there to keep you alert and he can also stress you so much

that you will have a hard time finding motivation. This function and voice in

the brain was the main function to keep us alive in earlier times, where

people lived in the woods and were devoured by bears if they did not listen

to this voice. This voice is the second strongest, and that leaves us with the

horse whisperer as the weakest of them all.

The horse whisperer tells you how well you perform and

motivates you to keep up the good things in your life.

You will therefore benefit a lot by listening more to

the horse whisperer than Mr. A-hole and

Mr. "Worry". In other words it is all about

turning the automatic negative thoughts

into more positive thoughts on how

well you are doing.

That is why you must choose your relations wisely and

spend time with people who motivate and encourage you.

According to Chris MacDonald, good relations are very important

to feel motivated and to avoid stress. If you spend time with negative

people who spread negative vibrations, you will most likely be dragged down

to the same level of negativity. But if you spend time with positive and

encouraging people, they will help you to stay motivated and focused. You

therefore have to think about your relations and who you need the most in

times of exam pressure and tough study periods. It is also important that you

focus your energy on what is important to you. It is a question of priorities if

you want to succeed with your studies and exams. Maybe you have to focus

less on your student job and activities with your friends and focus more

on your studies in order to avoid being stressed out. To stay focused

on one thing at the time will create an in-depth concentration,

which will motivate you and keep you in balance. And

please do me a BIG favour and IGNORE Mr. A-hole

in whatever context he will show you his ugly

face; - that stubborn negative ass is not worth

listening to!

9

in your frontal lobe everything is being messed up

choose your relations wisly

To set this into perspective, let's look at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam,

Holland. The airport had a big problem with men’s peeing behavior, because

men often peed wide off the mark, which caused a lot of cleaning expenses.

To take care of this problem, they called in a Dutch architect, who simply

placed a drawing of a little fly in the urinals. The effect of the fly was that the

fly created unconscious attention, which caused men to aim. This little fly

reduced the amount of cleaning expenses with 80%.

Nudging, however, is not only used to change your behavior, but also to

change your decisions when buying a product. For instance, the company

Williams-Sonoma, which sells kitchenware, launched a new, bigger but

poorer breadmaker, than the one they already had on the

market. Why? The price of their most popular breadmaker

was 275 USD (1,643.3 DKK), and the new was almost

identical to the other, except that it was bigger, and the

price was 429 USD (2,563.6 DKK). The new model was

doomed from the beginning (and they knew that),

but what happened was that the sale of the most

popular one increased by 80 %, after the new one

came on the market. This shows very well why the

context is so important, when we need to make a

decision.

An ethical concern

There is a big ethical question with nudging,

because even though it is intended for changing

people’s behavior for the better, it could - in

theory- be used the opposite way. For EVIL!

Muahhahaha. No really, it could be used to change

people’s behavior for the worse. That is why you must

be really careful that the world of nudging doesn’t land in

the arms of the wrong people. What if the fly in the toilet

was placed near the edge of the urinals, and not in the center?

Then men would most likely pee much more on the floor, compared

to the times without the fly, and therefore cost Schiphol Airport even

more cleaning expenses.

And now to an example of evil nudging from the University of Southern

Denmark in Kolding. Have you ever wondered why there are no doors to the

classrooms (sorry….lecture rooms)?

What is nudging?

‘To nudge’ is a way to influence people's behavior in a wanted direction. This

is done by designing an environment, where you can control the context for a

decision. Because, if you can control the context for the decision, you can

control the decision. Nudging is not intended for being noticed, which is why

it works so well, because it doesn’t take away your options, but it encourages

you to take another (and better) choice.

10

men need to aim

Sanne P. Rasmussen 1th semester Design Culture and Economics

evil nudging on campus

nudge, nudge,

wink, wink,

The word ‘nudge’ originate from the book ‘Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness’

from 2008 by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein.“

You can use it to get phone numbers. You read right. Interested? I thought so.

Earlier I wrote that if you can control the context for the decision, you can

control the decision. And this is exactly what you are going to do. There are

endless examples of this, so I’m just going to give you one of them. Lets say

you are a boy (no...of course...a young man), who would like to get a special

girl’s phone number. First you’ll gather a couple of friends, who are good

at behaving badly, then you get your friends to make a pass at the

girl, which they do really badly. When your girl turns down all

of your friends, you make a pass at her, the best you can.

What happens in this situation is that the girl sees a

context of 4 boys, where 3 were behaving badly and

1 nicely. So who do you think she will choose?

When controlling the situation for a

decision, you control the decision,

my dear:-0

11

wipe-your-ass-nudging

nudging with benefits

Well there are, but they are made of glass. This makes them invisible, because

it’s glass, and that’s exactly the problem. Glass doors distract the students in

the classroom, and makes professors walk into the (invisible) doors. Nudging

is intended for making it easier for you to take the right decisions, and I think

we can all agree that walking into a door after which you have to go to the

hospital to get stitched up, is a very very very bad decision. And even though

the glass doors weren’t intended for nudging, all design effect our everyday

life in a positive or negative sense, and therefore all design has a bit of

inherent nudging. The conclusion is that glass doors to classroom (oh...sorry

again...lecture rooms) is an example of very bad and evil nudging.

Not all design on Campus Kolding is evil nudging, quite the

reverse actually. The elevators on Campus Kolding are slower

and smaller than most elevators, which makes it quicker to

take the stairs, and you are therefore nudged to take the

healthier choice. It’s the same healthier choice you’re

nudged to take, when you see the “big” staircase

from the ground floor to the third floor.

The staircase seems smaller because it doesn’t stop at the first

floor, and that makes it manageable to take the staircase instead of

the slow elevators. If you walk up the staircase, but you really want to

get to the next floor, you can either choose to take the elevator or another

smaller staircase. But the smaller staircase is closer to the big staircase than

the elevator, so I wonder which choice you’re going to take? Nudged again,

my friend!

Another neat example of nudging from our very own university is the toilet

paper. The toilet paper on campus is not like normal rolls, instead you get

small and thin pieces of toilet paper. When normally using rolls you justkeep rolling off the toilet paper, and often end up using way too

much compared to how much you actually need. But with the small pieces, you only take 3-4 pieces of toilet paper each time, because it seems profuse to use 6 pieces of toilet paper to wipe your ass.

12

Fakebook

or How I Learned to Stop Posting and Love the Talk

Let's guess. On a given day, how many times does an average user check her

mobile phone? Sadly, I can't hear your thoughts, so I will do some freestyle

statistics and then compare my numbers with those published by

researchers. Let's see. An average user sleeps 8 hours a day, and we take the

freedom of choosing someone that never sleep-checks her device. Let's call

her Macarena. Macarena is awake for 16 hours and for your sake, the reader,

she is a student. And a committed one. Her phone goes off when she joyfully

steps in class every morning, from nine to twelve. And she is polite too, so

when she lunches with her friends or studies in the library there is neither

vibration nor tone or dial. After uni there is handball, because she lives

in Kolding. Another phone-less hour or two. That leaves our

committed, polite, sporty Macarena with six hours of mobile

interconnectedness. I don't want to be surprised by

scientists so I will aim high and guess that she checks her

smartphone ten times every hour and I will add ten

more checks to account for loving messages from her

boyfriend and a call or two from her mum. Surely,

Macarena checks her phone around 80 times a day.

Or just keep on reading. According to a recent

study by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers,

Macarena reaches out for her phone 150 times a

day. How naive my evaluation of the interactive

powers of this device! Definitely, Macarena views the

time on her phone. And her messages, her calls, her

emails, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Facebook

and an almost endless etc.

Having accepted my failure as a freestyle statistician I will turn to

11-year-old math. 150 times checks a day is almost a check every 4

minutes. Macarena, if you were alive, I would grab my phone and ask you, can

you concentrate and immerse yourself in any demanding task? Of course, I

would try to be considerate and indicate beforehand that by "demanding" I

just mean "anything that takes more than 15 minutes to complete.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Fortunately, Macarena is just an imaginary representation and hence, there is no need to interrupt this immersive act of writing with a phone call. I can just refer to her as the subject of other studies or even speculate with a certain degree of accuracy with respect to her abilities to immerse in an activity. Macarena is a university student. She

has succeeded previously when exams where the norm so there is no doubt

she can concentrate to, for example, read and write properly. Her focused

attention, that which requires effort in order to perform a task successfully,

works. However, Macarena is human, and as such, exercises a second type of

attention: transient attention. This is an automatic response triggered by

sudden changes in a persons immediate environment (such a phone alert)

which draws away attention from whatever activity is being performed onto the source of the change, for this to be evaluated and acted upon (if it is a threat) or safely ignored. Macarena may not be aware, but her phone is, aside from a very efficient communication device, a weapon of mass distraction targeting the core of her sensory system.

13Enrique Encinas

3rd semester it product design

educating

Marcarena

guess

Paolo Parigi, a scientist from Standford University, decided to investigate this

issue in depth to, among many other things, provide an knowledgeable

alternative for freestyle anthropologists. Lucky me! In his paper "Social

Isolation in America" he exhaustively describes how and why "greater

Internet use was associated with decreased communication among family

members in the household, declines in the size of the respondent's social

circle, and increased feelings of loneliness and depression." which basically

turn all my common-sensical assumptions into nonsense. Among the lines of

this paper we find Sherry Turkle, who coined the term "alone together" to

argue how depth is traded with connectivity. In her own words: “Online, we

easily find company but are exhausted by the pressures of

performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have

each other’s full attention. We can have instant audiences

but flatten out what we say to each other...The ties we

form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties

that bind”

Macarena is a digital native. She belongs to a generation where digital

technologies permeate every aspect of life so turning her back on them

seems, at least, inappropriate. Especially when a number of those

technologies allow her to fulfill yet another human need: to gossip. Gossip is

in her genes, because it is the human equivalent to grooming. When primates

are engaged in grooming, a strong social bond arises. The same goes for

humans when confidential information about others is shared. But is this the

case when gossip occurs online? Danah Boyd would join me in asserting that

this is not the case she plainly explains: "You don't even know that I’m

watching your life. Are you really going to be there when i need you?"

Macarena, do something!

14

Common Sense fails

Communication versus distraction. Interconnectedness versus immersion.

This conundrum encourages me to deepen into Macarena's life and know

more about the reasons behind her use of technology. Again ethnography is

not a possibility (I will leave virtual ethnographic studies for adventurous

sociologists) so why not employ some freestyle anthropology by means of

common sense? After all, there surely are studies that confirm (or rebuke) my

conclusions.

Social Immersion

search

for

reality

15The list of authors criticizing the prevalent attitude towards virtual social

interactions could fill many magazines. Nevertheless, if she was interested, I

am sure Macarena would enjoy watching Catfish or InRealLife or reading "On

Internet" from the phenomenologist Hubert L. Dreyfus. I bet she would rather

hit play than hold a book, but I won't go into freestyle guessing. Freestyling is

risky, and Macarena is just a quirk.

And then there is Cory Doctorow, the famous blogger. He criticizes Facebook (and online social bonding platforms

in general) on psychological grounds: "Facebook is a huge behaviorist casino

designed to teach you to undervalue your privacy. They can control how far

your disclosure spreads and they can predict it's responsive outcome.

Facebook gets you a lukewarm response to most of your disclosures and then

randomly hands you a jackpot of a massive response to some of your

disclosures. And that intermediate reward is the most powerful conditioning

force in the world." Aside from occasionally granting the candy of social

affection to his inhabitants, Facebook forces them to adhere to what Cory

calls the "Zuckerberg doctrine”: "every person should have exactly

one name and that name should be identical in every context". I

doubt Macarena chooses the same words to answer the

simple question "how are you?" when inquired by her

doctor, her mother or her lover, yet in Facebook, she

must do so.

To be honest, I am concerned about Macarena. If she had

an ear I could speak to, I would invite her to try a little

experiment: delete your Facebook profile. Calling is talking,

texting and emailing is reading. Yes, I know, some of your friends

are far away and that's why in this experiment, Skype is there for you

to help. Why not grooming your friends for real, interacting with your whole

body, Macarena? After all, isn't that what your song is all about?

Note - The ultra-famous 1996 song "Macarena" sings "Dale alegría a tu cuerpo

Macarena" which translated into English would be "Give happiness to your

body Macarena".

zuckerberg

doctrine

Have you ever wished to have super powers? Like to be able to

move things with your brain power? Or do you think this can only happen

in science fiction? Think twice as it is actually possible, you might even have

seen it happening, just at our very own SDU campus Kolding. No? Well, just by

the Library’s entrance you might have noticed a big white box with a

transparent tube on top that holds an earth globe? If you have seen that

earth globe floating up the tube and some people standing around, then what

you have witnessed is someone using his or her brain waves to activate the

fan sitting at the base of the box that in turn will lift the earth globe.

Magic? What are these brain waves? No one was visibly

connected to the tower, there were no buttons pressed,

were these then super powers? One could say that

in a way they could be considered so… I can

almost imagine your eye brows lifting by

skepticism now… but if you think about

it, many of the heroes’ super powers

described in science fiction books

a n d m o v i e s a r e e n h a n c e d

existing senses or physical

abilities, super vision, x-ray

vision, super hearing, super

strength, etc., One can also say

that part of human history can

be told by the creation and

advances of technology that

enhance our senses and

abilities.

Brain waves were first recorded

almost a century ago, when Hans

Berger, in 1929, discovered that brain

activity is characterized by electrical impulses

at different frequencies and those can be

recorded with the use of a conductor or electrode.

These recordings were named electro-encephalographs

(EEG) and are measured in hertz (Hz). The different ranges

of electrical frequencies have been named after Greek letters

and have been linked to actions and different stages of consciousness

(Curran, 2003), see table below:

16

moving the world with your brain power

Associate Prof. Rocio Chongtay

tune in on a frequency which fits the purpose

You might be wondering by now “what all this has to do with

super powers, or at least with brain power? ” Well, if you think

about it, depending of our state of consciousness we produce

electrical impulses at different frequencies that, as any

electrical impulses, combined with some technology can be

converted into physical action, like activating a fan at different

speeds, as the fan at the base of the tower with the earth

globe.

The particular brain power that lifts

the earth globe at SDU works as

follows: a person wearing a Brain

Computer Interface (BCI),

which is simply a headset

that has a dry forehead

sensor that can register

s o m e b r a i n w a v e s ,

i n c l u d i n g B e t a a n d

Gamma waves that give

an indication of your level

of focused concentration

a n d a t t e n t i o n . T h e

headset sends the brain

waves data wirelessly (via

B l u e t o o t h ) t o a s m a l l

computer at the base of the

tower that in turn is connected to the

fan. The software that reads the data is

configured in such a way that the more the

person concentrates (higher frequency brain

waves), the faster the fan rotates and the

higher the earth globe is lifted, see figure to the right:

17

Our very own BRAIN POWER machine at SDU, Kolding

As this issue of the Breaching magazine is about immersion,

let’s put this into this context the Brain Controlled Tower. The

people that tried the headset to lift the earth globe can tell you that

to reach a state of concentration that activated the fan was not as straight

forward as it seemed; many people tried both during the official opening of

the new SDU campus Kolding and on the Open House day. For some people it

was easier than for others, and there were also some instances where the

necessary level of concentration was simply not achievable. In the current

world of information overflow, reaching a state of focused concentration is

becoming more of a challenge! Just think about it, when was the last time you

remember feeling mentally involved in something so deeply that you

lost track of time? A time where you didn’t think of checking your

email, or text messages or fiddle with any of the many apps

on your phone?

Can you concentrate on demand? I believe that most people think they can, if

they want to, but that they choose not to, like in the classrooms at the

university, you can see many of your classmates (or yourself) attending a

lecture, the teacher is talking, showing some power point presentation, so it

feels easy and “natural” to be checking Facebook, watching the latest funny

video on Youtube or browsing for new shoes at the same time. I wonder if we

are witnessing a self-produced attention deficit disorder generation.

You might want to ask yourself is it really by choice? Can I

really concentrate on command at any time I want?

As I have mentioned before, from the people

that tried the brain computer interface

(BCI) to lift the earth globe, some could

reach a focused concentration faster

than other, but in most cases it

took more than instant command.

The good news is that it is

possible to train your brain to

reach a state of focused

concentration, for some people

p r a c t i c i n g s p e c i fi c t a s k s

facilitate this state, for example

while doing sports, or reading

something of high interest to the

person. BCI’s have also been used

as an aid to ease the reach of

focused concentration, for example

the American Olympic Team for Archery

uses BCI as part of their training. BCI’s have also

been used to help people with Attention Deficit

Hyperactivity Disorder, normally using BCI controlled

games where the success in the game depends on the

level of concentration, this technique is known as

neurofeedback which is a computer-aided training method in which

selected parameters of the person´s own brain activity, which can normally

not be perceived, are made visible. (see Duric et al 2012).

I hope by now that you find Brain Computer Interfaces interesting, imagine all

the possible applications where of transforming brain waves can be

transformed into actions., - there already exist many applications from

health care, enabling disabled people to become mobile, to recreational like

art installations or brain controlled games, (which as mentioned it can also be

useful for health applications).

18

do students suffer from a self-produced attention deficit disorder? [SPADD]“

The brain controlled tower with the earth globe at SDU

campus Kolding is part of a project called Agora

Labs [Learning Open Spaces], funded by the

SDU programme Students in Focus, these labs

are open spaces at different places in our

new building, you can recognize them by

the big Flat screens, these spaces are

meant for students to unleash their

creativity and work on projects by

using the latest technology in

what is known as multimodal

interfaces (more than one mode

to interact with systems), such

as the brain computer

interface , hand gesture

devices, full body tracking

( K i n e c t ) , e y e t r a c k i n g ,

immersive virtual reality

headset, etc.. If you are

interested in trying these

technologies send your project

d e s c r i p t i o n b y e m a i l t o

rocio@sdu.dk. Maybe you create a

project that will look so good on your CV

that will help you to get a job once you get your

degree, or a project that can be the next crowd

funded success on the news.

19

References Curran, E. (2003, April). Learning to control brain activity: A review of

the production and control of EEG components for driving brain–

computer interface (BCI) systems. Brain and Cognition, 51(3), 326–336.

Duric NS, Assmus J., Gundersen D., Elgen I. Neurofeedback for the

treatment of children andadolescents with ADHD: a randomized and

controlled clinical trial using parental reports BioMed Central

Psychiatry 2012, 12:107

20 ♓

♑♐

♏♈

21F.ortune T.eller

Professor in absentia

SDU Kolding

22

from the depths, I have cried to you

Asides on and Height When as a schoolboy at the gymnasium I had to learn Latin, one of the

things which appeared most peculiar to me was that this language only had

one single word altus where my mother tongue German had two:

“hoch“ (‘high’) and “tief“ (‘deep’). Didn‘t the Romans distinguish between

depth and height? Studying linguistics, I later learned that altus just refers

to the “vertical dimension“ without distinguishing the two directions

(polarities) in it. Besides thus being occupied with the “vertical dimension”, I,

as a student, have also been concerned with Nebendinge” (i.e., ‘things beside’), i.e., with things lying on the “horizontal dimension”.

Nebendinge” is the term used by the protagonist Professor Raat

(nicknamed “Unrat”, thus ‘garbage’, by his pupils) in Heinrich Mann‘s novel

Professor Unrat for dubious activities of his pupils keeping them away from

learning. One of my „Nebendinge“ was reading Freud’s The Interpretation of

Dreams and related material such as his little note The Antithetical Meaning

of Primal Words (Vom Gegensinn der Urworte) published in 1910, ten years

after his book on dreams. In this note, Freud deals with further

examples of the same kind as the Latin altus and puts forward the

hypothesis that languages in the very early stages of their

development tend to pack contradictory meanings into the

same word. Furthermore, he relates this to his theory

about the Traumarbeit (the labor of the dream). We may

leave it undecided here whether this really is a

“deeper” explanation of the semantics of the Latin

altus than that given by modern linguistics, which

then would remain “at the surface” of the

phenomenon.

Linguistic descriptions of intellectual endeavors

abound with spatial metaphors. References to

“depth” seem to point toward the positive part of

the underlying scale of values. A good explanation,

e.g., goes “in depth”; insufficient ones, however, are

“superficial”. “Deep thoughts” are “thoroughgoing”

and are thus distinguished from “shallow” ones.

Serious students and researchers “go in depth” with

their topic. For their endeavors Danish and German even

have single verbs (at fordybe sig, sich vertiefen). But things

are not so clear as they appear to be at a first glance. As is

testified by the famous first verse of Psalm 130, depth is not always

desirable: “From the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord”. The two

first words of the Latin version of the verse has become its standard name:

De profundis; and the psalm itself is used in the Catholic Church as the

traditional prayer for the dead. It may strike one as a shock that a profound

(< Latin profundus, both ‘deep’ and ‘high’, once again) thought may be as

deep as a tomb. It seems that there often are ambiguities - instances of a

Freudian “Gegensinn” (‘antithetical meaning’) - not only in the factual

meaning of words but also in their evaluative meaning components.

Klaus Robering Professor SDU Kolding

depth

In Danish and German, one says of a person thinking “deeply” about some

topic that s/he grubler (Danish) or grübelt (German), both verbs deriving

from the German word Grube (meaning ‘hole’). - As a “Nebending” let me

note here that, in his famous study on Leonardo da Vinci, Freud analyzes the

researcher’s “Grübelzwang” (obsession for ruminations) as something

derived from the young child’s “research interest” in sexual matters. -

Returning now to holes, remember that a hole may very well be a pitfall.

This is nicely illustrated by the famous story about the Greek

philosopher and astronomer Thales of Miletus reported by Plato.

Once Thales, deeply involved in astronomic observations and

looking up to the stars, stumbled and made a deep fall

into a water well. Observing this, a Thracian maid, both

pretty and witty, made fun of him: He is striving for

recognizing the things high up in the sky but has no

idea of the things close to his eyes and

immediately before his feet. - Height, on the other

hand, is not without problems either. As well as

ending at the bottom of a hole, the keen flight of

thoughts may very well stop on the top of the

ivory tower.

Let me finish by a more positive story about Thales - this

one reported by Aristotle. Provoked by the reproach that

philosophy is of no real use, Thales once used his knowledge of

astronomy to find out that the harvest of olives would be very rich in

the next year. Therefore he invested his small savings for renting already

the winter before all oil presses available. During the harvest then, he lend

out the presses to a high price thus demonstrating how easy it would be for

a philosopher to become rich if he only wanted, but that this in fact isn’t

something philosophers strive for.

philosophy and olives

Is there any “moral” to be drawn for students from all this? Perhaps: Go in

depth with all the issues you are concerned with and let your thoughts fly

up into the sky. But don’t forget about pitfalls and ivory towers - and go on

with your “Nebendinge”.23

editorial staff

Rainar Rye Larsen5th semester

Information and

Communication Studies

Christina Lysen Priisholm Freelance

Klaus RoberingProfessor

SDU

Sanne P. Rasmussen1th semester

Design Culture and

Economics

Jeanette LandgrebeEditor

SDU

Questions? Want to be a part of us: facebook.com/Breaching.SDU.Kolding

24Enrique Encinas

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