More on Radiohead and Science (You do it to yourself, you do...)

Last week, I proposed the writing of a piece that aimed to look at the music video for Radiohead's "Just" in a scientific way. Here, I just wanted to note that Bill Benzon over at The Valve picked up on it and generated some interesting reader feedback - feedback that was distinctly different from the sort generated here at Scienceblogs. Is this another good illustration of the "two cultures" phenomenon?

Anyhow, you can go here to check out that dialogue, but here also is the commentary I provided when weighing in myself:

In some respects, the basic idea behind the query is to look at what sort of intersections can exist between different perspectives. As a scientist and my role as a science communicator (that is, the perspective I'm most familiar with), I am curious at delineating a potential truth based on observation and empirical things, a truth which is fronted by previous observations of near or similar truths. Then I like to talk, sometimes write about it - preferably for other people.

And I happen to think that doing this for something as esoteric as a Radiohead video has merit (maybe not in a grant writing context, or a save the world context, but intellectually for sure) - even if only as a starting point for discussion. This discussion, in turn, could lead to some gain of literacy in the sciences, which is something that is (and this is a generalization) sorely lacking in the public these days.

So talking Radiohead is just a vector for doing this. The video is a creative piece that is wonderful in its own right, but why not look at it in this unlikely perspective? It's an intersection that could lead to some interesting things, and more importantly engage someone who might not necessarily care about Radiohead or care about such and such a scientific discipline.

Fittingly, I find the commentary here in this post only adds fuel to my intentions. The arguments, debates, and discussion presented here are great. Some are critical, some are simply questioning, but whatever the intent, there is a variety of ideas afoot. And this, I think, is great - they are perspectives that I might not be familiar with, and so, having the opportunity to hear them out, in my view, can't be a bad thing. ~Dave

Of course, Bill wrote back with some very insightful thoughts:

I hesitated to make this post because it wasn't clear to me whether you were mostly interested in using the video as a vehicle for a little science education--in the manner of those books that talk about the physics of Star Trek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer--or whether you were also trying to show us poor benighted humanities types how to improve our game by becoming more scientific. I've got nothing against science and certainly think our game needs some improvement, but I also think one needs to have been in the game for awhile to see how that might be done.

As for the video itself, when the man first lies down, the vocalist is singing "you do it to yourself"--as your Rolling Stone reviewer notes. It's not clear to that there's much more to it than that. And when the crowd hears whatever he's done to himself, they, in turn, do it to themselves. To get a little perspective I might look at Kafka, not only the novels, but his enigmatic parables. And Pynchon with his paranoid secrets. And so forth.

But then there's the music itself. What particularly interests me, for example, is that just before the man finally utters the words, we hear a long sustained high note on the guitar, up near the pain threshold. What's up with that? Reminded me of the long trill near the end of Beethoven's piano sonata opus 111, which also has long astonishing stretches of boogie-woogie rhythms. Now, I'm not suggesting that Radiohead was alluding to Beethoven at that point, nothing like it. Long high notes near the end of things are a dime a dozen. Why? I don't know, but were I to start looking for an answer I'd look at the ethology of mammalian signaling (perhaps leafing through the relevant sections of Nils Wallin's brilliant hodge-podge, Biomusicology), a consideration of the significance of various types of sounds in the human environment of evolutionary adaptedness, and the biophysics of human hearing.

There's lots of ways to skin the scientific cat. ~Bill

You know, this just kind of makes me want to write the piece even more...