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During a presentation by Michael Lightborne I tonight I was struck by a couple of things he mentioned to illustrate a broader point he was making about his work, but which made me think of something else. He was talking about The Projection Project, run by Warwick University to capture the last days of the commercial 35mm film cinema projector. Michael mentioned two things.
The first, during an off-hand digression, was that the projectionists often had calloused fingers and thumbs from handling rough celluloid during the splicing process. He also alluded to sound editors whose fingers would be locked in a hook shape after decades of operating mixing desk sliders. This notion of human bodies being physically changed by industry is nothing new - it arguably started with the invention of farming circa 6,000 BCE and continues today with my neck ache after too much typing. But these physical changes are often seen as a negative thing, a bending of the natural form by unnatural activity.
The second thing was that professional projectionists could diagnose a technical fault with their equipment by the sounds it made which would be imperceptible to anyone else. Again, this is nothing new. Car mechanics often listen to an engine before looking in it, and so on.
But I wonder why this bending of the brain to work more efficiently is always seen as a good thing, while the physical stuff isn’t. Or maybe it’s that the physical stuff is demonstrably limiting - once your fingers are locked into that position you might be an awesome sound mixer but you’re never going to play the piano. A mental optimisation to hear one thing really well, meanwhile, doesn’t mean you can’t use that resource for other things. Or does it?
Does repeated mental activity cause us to think in specific ways? Can you mentally programme a population through the work you give them to do? Or am I mixing apples and oranges.
Still, I like think a shift towards thinking of the mind and body as equally malleable by outside forces is necessary as we move from the notion of free-will to something more programmable.
Pic from Richard Nicholson’s related photographic project, The Projectionists.