Year of the Rat Music Project

Did you know that when you go to the theater to watch a movie, half of the time is spent staring at a black screen? For each frame of the film the shutter closes twice, meaning no light is being projected towards the screen. Fortunately our brains have a nifty mechanism we refer to as closure that allows us to watch a movie as if it were a steady stream of images. Here’s another nifty example of closure-

Do you see the big “A”? That’s closure. A computer wouldn’t be able to recognize anything except a group of individual “A”’s. This is why you have to punch in random letters and numbers to prove you’re human when setting up a new account online.

Similarly, sound works with moving images to create closure. The sounds you hear when watching a video often have no connection with what you are seeing, but your brain syncs them up. Most of the time it works, sometimes not so much, like when you notice someone lip syncing. This is part of the reason air guitaring is so funny.

Read more of Music and the Moving Image Part 1