#researchpost

One of the most amazing art spaces I’ve seen is located in a former prison in the Tres Cruces neighbourhood of Montevideo. When I was visiting the city in the end of November, I was lucky enough to arrive just in time for the opening of the new season at Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo. Which means I got to enjoy not only the art itself, but also a cool sound performance and a few glasses of free craft beer. I love this city!

The building looks exactly how you would expect a former prison to look - they even kept a row of cells untouched in order to preserve the authentic feel of the place.

At the local museum.

Soviet Space Dogs © FUEL Design and Publishing, 2014, London

Text Olesha Turkina

Translated by Inna Cannon, Lisa Wasserman

Images compiled by FUEL, Marianne Van der Lemmer

Edit and Design Murray & Sorrell FUEL

I love books. Beyond their primary function of holding information, I find them fascinating as physical objects in their own right. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing, I enjoy more than creative book design and high quality printing.

To me, music is the most beautiful form of art. The fact that anyone can strum their fingers on the guitar, or go hard on instruments like the violin or piano, or even making/producing beats on programs such as Fruity Loops or Audacity is impressive and captivating. Even Acapela is badass! I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember; my mother even played it for me whilst in the womb. For my research topic to discuss on this blog, I want to research music and it’s effects on humans and society. It’s so fascinating to me how music is it’s own language, and allows for people to communicate and feel through sounds. 

For starters, I found this wonderful article titled, “Music & How It Impacts Your Brain, Emotions”. The author, Malini Mohana states “Music, though it appears to be similar to features of language, is more rooted in the primitive brain structures that are involved in motivation, reward and emotion.” This means that as you are listening to music, it is first processed and interpreted in the cerebellum and amygdala, two very important structures related to our emotions. I personally find myself more motivated to finish tasks while jamming out to my favorite tunes. I mean, right now I’m listening to music, writing about music and researching about music and I’m having a blast while doing it. The article also talked about how music effects our frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain responsible for pleasure. When we are happy with the way a song sounds and are anticipating the best part, our frontal lobe is the source of pleasure we feel from hearing and being pleased with hearing a song we like.