1. seed
  2. Assessing Avatar

Assessing Avatar

By milhayser on January 7, 2010.
i-61f411434dffb8a58312bc9b17b2b544-avabuzz.jpg

ScienceBloggers liked Avatar, but that hasn't stopped them from picking the science apart from the science fiction. On The Scientific Indian, Selva wonders how communication between the humans and their avatars could take place inside the "vortex," when all other kinds of transmission are disrupted. PZ Myers on Pharyngula lauds the detailed flora and fauna imagined for Pandora, but laments that the natives ended up looking so safely human in an otherwise alien world. On Greg Laden's Blog, Greg turns a critical eye to the film's anthropological undercurrents, comparing the representation of the Native American-like Na'vi to the Westernized military-industrial villains. And on The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer discusses the real-life brain activity of film viewers, explaining that auditory and visual immersion inhibits the logical faculties of the prefrontal cortex in favor of pure sensorimotor processing. For this reason, Lehrer holds Avatar to be a paragon of the cinematic medium.

Links below the fold.

Tags
neuroscience
Science Fiction

More like this

Avatar movie review
First the name. Avatar--if you play computer games, you may know this very well--is a character you use inside an unreal world. The word Avatar has its origins in Indian mythology. An Avatar (ava-tara in Sanskrit) is god's visit to earth to fix something that is broken. Vishnu, one of the three…
Avatar
I loved Avatar. Sure, I chuckled at the schmaltzy dialogue and found the neon color scheme a little garish and could have done without all the pantheistic moralism...But the movie was still mesmerizing. For 150 minutes, I vanished into the screen, utterly absorbed in the stereoscopic world…
How Do You Review Avatar?
Maybe you tell us why they're blue. First the name. Avatar--if you play computer games, you may know this very well--is a character you use inside an unreal world. The word Avatar has its origins in Indian mythology. An Avatar (ava-tara in Sanskrit) is god's visit to earth to fix something that…
The Tet Zoo guide to the creatures of Avatar
Tone and I recently went to see Avatar. I've been reading up on the movie for months and was really looking forward to seeing it. I mostly liked it, though did think it was a bit clichéd and predictable. But I'm not here to talk about storylines and plot devices... you want to know about the…