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KRAFTTREMOR: Paralysis Agitans Project

Keywords: rhythm, pathological bodily metronome, being controlled,

technological cure, technological control, loss of bodily control

 This project is a continuation of and is related to past projects in my

work, including “Project of Seeking Cooperation with Scientific Teams”

and “Project of Beats from Living Things.” From the former this new

project draws its methods of display in the form of precise scientific

evidence and diagrams, while from the latter it borrows the visual style

of the music video in order to present the bodily rhythms of a living

thing that has lost self-control. In the “KRAFTTREMOR Project,” all of 

the works are based on a human illness: Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system;

its primary symptoms include muscular rigidity, tremors, bradykinesia,

and even loss of motor ability. The greatest difficult sufferers face is

hindered movement, no longer able to control movements with

thought at will. What calls for investigation here is the contradiction

between the power of the human spirit and the restrictions of the

body, a loss of control produced by the special conditions of bodily

movement that follow pathological changes. In terms of the degree to

which the spiritual will is able to control the body, is the strength of the

spirit more powerful than or subservient to the strength of the natural

body? Do the obstacles to bodily mobility produced by pathological

transformations in the brain indicate, even obliquely, that human

thinking is merely a collection of neurons and nervous equations--and

that damage or destruction to these elements causes a loss of control?

One of the visual manifestations of obstructed motor ability appears in

the form of tremors: the visual effects of the disease appear as

precisely calculated symbolic beats, the sufferer functioning as a

metronome. Rhythms of the pathological body precisely calculated

with technological measures appear in largely the same way.

Computing the automatic rhythm of the human body? The music video

“KRAFTTREMOR” is produced with regard to the condition described

here. I have produced both the music and visual tracks myself in order

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to allow the rhythm calculated by the computer and that of the body to

correspond more closely. Musically, it employs a contrasting synthesis

of high and low frequencies to allow the audience on-site to perceive

the resonance of acoustic frequency and internal organs.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is also a key element of this work, an

existing and mature surgical treatment for the loss of self-control and

bodily tremors that accompany Parkinson’s disease. The surgery is

able to help the sufferer get rid of the difficulties of tremors, but, on

the other hand, it is also able to control the behavior of the patient:

bodily control owing to the control of the living brain. With this method

one might control the behavior of multiple sufferers, exhibiting a

frightful and uncanny visual effect.

As our contemplation of the control of the human apparatus via

mechanical means become more involved (for further work like this

see the “Project of Seeking Cooperation with Scientific Teams”), we

may be led to doubt the essential existence of the spirit--just as the

writer of this statement doubts the processes and calculations of her

own mind.