BBC WORLD SERVICE PROGRAM . "CROWD SCIENCE"
ibiza·@romanie·
0.000 HBDBBC WORLD SERVICE PROGRAM . "CROWD SCIENCE"
When I paint in the studio I spend many hours alone.
Most of the time I listen to music that helps me explore moods and spaces within.
Some days, when I´m doing some more repetitive shapes, I love listening to podcasts and talks. This is a way of engaging in interesting topics and thoughts drill my mind. I can be far away in other peoples reality while my paintbrush moves by itself and I have almost no notion of what went on there.
Anyway, last year in February 2017 I was painting quite intensely in my studio. At home, (just across the street from my studio) we had a Colombian friend staying for a few weeks. He is wonderful Iyengar yoga teacher. Carlos. At lunch times or at breakfast we would gather at home and share the food.
One lunch time my mother was over eating with us. We have the custom to talk in English ever since ever, and that habit is difficult to break. So during this one lunchtime, my partner Jason, my mother Jenny, Carlos and I eat together. My partner and I talk mainly in Spanish to each other but we can easily switch to English or Catalan.
As Carlos heard me talking in English to my mother quite naturally after speaking very naturally in Spanish, he then asked me "So what language do you think in? "
This question is one I remember being asked many times as a child. I always wondered why people should ask such a question. It was obvious to me that i didn´t think in a language, it´s more like a concept or an image, but definitely not a language.
So, I sighed to this comment and answered as I had done in the past telling Carlos that I didn´t think in a language. He was so sure that I should think back and for SURE there was a language in my thoughts.
I argued back, so sure there was NO language in deep thought. I did come to realise that more superficial thoughts, like when you are about to talk to someone in a language, one obviously is thinking the language one is about to express ones self in but when one is thinking about profound thoughts there is no language, for me it hops from images to concepts in images... anyway... to cut a looong conversation short, there was no way my Colombian friend who only spoke Spanish could understand what I was trying to say to him and no way I could understand what he was saying to me.
After lunch, no hard feelings, the conversation had left me thinking, may be I was wrong. May be I had a different cognitive capacity to others.
As I had been listening to BBC podcasts in the studio recently on science, I remembered there was one that asked for peoples questions to be sent in.
So, I got on my computer, typed the email in to this program called Crowd Science and sent them my very recent thoughts on this topic. My question being: Do we really think in words or images and concepts? I couldn´t understand why it would be an other way than the way I thought. The discussion with Carlos made me think may be there is something I don´t get or I´m not understanding.
I got an instant reply from the program thanking me fro the email and that if they never replied not to worry because they got many emails a day and thank you anyway. I didn´t think anything more of it.
Next week I got an email from the program saying they were very interested in making a program about it and could they cal me and know more. So they did.
After that first call with the producers who asked me this and that and why did I think of this question bla bla... I then returned to my painting in the studio. As I was doing this I suddenly remembered I hadn´t mentioned I was a painter and this might be of interest for them when they ask the experts. So I just made a small email and let them know.
During the following months we were in contact from time to time and as I came across information that might be relevant to their investigation, I sent it to them. They also wrote to me a few times.
They then told me they decided they wanted to come to Ibiza to do an experiment on me right there live so we were planing on what days worked for us all.
This then extended to experimenting on other kinds of brains like my partner who is chess player or Pere a musician. All bilingual from birth.
It happened to be that the day the producers were in Ibiza to do this experiment on me I had to give an art class in the morning to a lovely school. They asked me if there were bilingual children there. OF COURSE! This school is a babel mixture of children from all over the globe, literally, so, we asked permission to the school and they were also included in the program.
Anyway, this program went out on air on the 30th of June 2017 on BBC World service. Here is the podcast if you care to listen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056p7wf
I have just been told by Cathy Edwards the producer of this program that this program has been shortlisted for an award of ABSW Science Writers’ Awards for Britain and Ireland 2018
and we will know how it did in two weeks time!!! I´m thrilled to hear it has been nominated and hope they get the prize!
this is the link:
https://www.absw.org.uk/news-and-events/news/shortlists-announced-for-the-2018-absw-awards
Here are some images of the recording when they were in Ibiza last May:
Producers Cathy Edwads and Nastaran Tavakoli-Far.
experimenting on Jason.
recording Pere Verges.
Interviewing Pere Verges
Interview in the Studio.
Ther rest are images of the interviews at the School of Sant Llorenç, Ibiza.
I hope you have enjoyed this post.
If you have any thoughts on this topic please comment below, it is always interesting to know other people´s perspectives.
Best Wishes!
Romanie
www.romanie.net
this is when it was in the local news paper... (in Spanish!)
AND... please note.. the experiment was one thought out by one of my favourite people of all time, Richard Feynman...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y👍 romanie, patschwork, anibas, sbi3, fanservice, gric, astronomyizfun, cub2, remlaps2, remlaps, twirble, mira13, eronimo, opheliapoe, moserich, bubke, ftk, krasnec, sukhasanasister, riverblue, berien, momoriso, jameshsmitharts, erh.germany, opheliafu, jupiterhead,