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BALDNESS FORUM
Now don't laugh. Baldness affects 80% of men and is a cause of great distress, even depression. This site has been set up to provide information and advice as well as product information and a directory of clinics that provide hair restoring operations. www.5tophairlossnow.co.uk
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STYLISH SHOPPING
If only all websites were as easy on the eye and moved so stylishly. This looks gorgeous and you can actually buy stuff easily from it. Essentially. this is just the shop online but is filled with gentle quirks and touches: look out for the little animated shadow people coming in and sitting on the sofas and the colour co-ordinated displays. www.habitat.co.uk
EAVESDROPPING
Yes. we admit this is pretty pointless. but trying to ponder the conversations that bookend these little nuggets overheard on the London Underground has the potential to while away many an hour. www.themanwhofellasleep.com/ gossip.html
i n From Here to Eternity Ingleby Gallery. Edinburgh. Fri 18 Jun
Jonathan Designer
A touching collection of beautiful. buyalflt) work.
8 THE LIST 24 Jun-~8 Jul 200A
theEditorial
Now, tell me Alex, The Whole Ten Yards: even better than The Whole Nine Yards?
Who's making the movie?
Hollywood is introducing science fiction hardware into its film marketing research. Could this be the beginning of the end of cinema as we know it?
ollywood is introducing hi—tech brain scanning into its battery of movie marketing research
techniques. according to an article entitled ‘If
you liked the film. you'll love the scan‘. recently published in The (ham/ran.
A number of undisclosed American film studios have hired California Institute of Technology boffin and ‘neuromarketing' pioneer Steven Quartz (superb name. but does he really exist?) to undertake market research. So far. this has involved wiring tip 40 volunteers to a piece of science fiction hardware called a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Tube Scanner. The guinea pigs watch a movie. in a comfy cell akin to the Big Brother confessional. and the FMRITS monitors blood fiow changes in various parts of the brain. measuring emotional reactions. anticipation. apprehension. appreciation. etc. Brains. Quartz argues. can‘t lie. He says: ‘They [the focus groups] maybe don‘t want to admit they find an action hero attractive. but you can see it directly in their brain.‘ It’s all a bit (’lnekir'nrk ()range. isn't it?
This really is quite creepy. having someone look inside your head. That‘s mind reading. and that's got to be some kind of human rights violation. hasn’t it? Maybe. but who in Hollywood cares? If Quartz‘s FMRlTS gizmo can assist the studios” enormous financial garnbles on a film in paying off. then privacy of the mind be damned.
Hannah
History student Really impressive pieces. (tulle (itrnosplrorrc; it would have boon great to have of Susan Derqos' Still series.
Anyway. it‘s not as if the studios haven't been conducting pre-final cut test screenings of films for years. Studio films are frequently subjected to test screenings. If the audience gives the film a thumbs down. the reels go back to the editing suite for hacking and chopping. and the filmmaker. or their replacement. is required to shoot new scenes.
Quartz’s argument — and here he's starting to sound not a lot unlike Robert Oppenheimer — is that neurornarketing is a much more reliable and informative method than the old test screenings (with their ballot box multiple choice cards to be filled in after the show). That's all very well. Steve. but what do you suppose Hollywtmd is going to do with the new. more reliable marketing research? Produce finer works of cinema?
Not at all. Hollywood is going to let the public make the movies. How those orbitofrontal cortexes react will determine the final cut of the film and it will determine what the next slate of Hollywood films will be like too.
What that means is. instead of a Hollywood talent like. say. Steven Soderbergh making something quite brilliant such as Out afSig/rt. or even a reliable director for hire such as Gore Verbinski making something as mainstream quirky as The Pirates of the Caribbean. we will see aesthetically barren. untrained in filmmaking Joe Srnoes calling ‘action’ and ‘cut‘.
Neil Carol Artist Architect Fantastic Art to lose evocation of yourself in. light, spirit and Turrell's
installation is the red equivalent of Yves Klein's
‘blue': you can't focus your eyes.
the human experience.