Archive for April, 2009

Scent is relatively neglected in terms of how much research and attention the other senses receive. More recently, research has been showing up all sorts of interesting things about smell, such as how our noses adapt to chemicals in the air within twenty minutes (i.e., we can’t smell them anymore).

You have likely experienced the strange phenomenon of having a whole era of your life come flooding into memory when you pass someone with a particular perfume or whiff of hair shampoo. Scent is more entwined with our emotions and memories than we give it credit for, and it operates largely on a purely subconscious level. This is why scent is now becoming a hot area in marketing research.

The picture is for Tom Tykwers movie adaption of Patrick Suskind’s novel, Perfume: Story of a Murderer. More information about the research of scent can be found here.

IF YOU’VE SEEN THE SHOW then please leave your analysis, ideas, observations, reviews etc in the forum / blog bit below, ESPECIALLY if you were chosen for anything!!

THE BELOW COMMENTS CONTAIN SPOILERS so please don’t read them unless you enjoy indulging in the fun of trying to analyse/figure out the tricks.

My Review of the show:
Personally, Derren’s recent work has been a bit too tricksy for my liking – the frenetic running about with clipboards, envelopes, pens etc just screams ‘mentalism’ and doesn’t capture the psychological intrigue of his earlier work. In fact, I would go as far to say that Derren has broken the rule he spelled out in Pure Effect, the need to convince the audience of the ‘process’ you are pretending to use for that sense of wonder. E.g. the first stage show I saw felt full of wonder, as if the whole audience was together with it. Ever since Something Wicked This Way Comes, I don’t think “wow – he’s reading their body language!” I just think “oh – its a trick”.

The first half of Enigma was tricksy, the usual running around reminding the audience of whats happening, frisbees, marker pens, and then gasps of delight as various things are turned around to reveal something. As well as the virtuoso showmanship (not just the usual charismatic presentation but the acting, deception etc) I love the humour of these shows, in fact they could be classed more accurately as comedy magic than psychological magic. Many moments had me laughing out loud. The tricksy-tricksy was redeemed in the second half, where Derren surprised the hell out of me by using genuine hypnosis (as opposed to the pseudo ‘bow your head, look hypnotised and write something on this clipboard that I can use as a trick’ hypnosis that hes used in stageshows before.) Surprising because he hasn’t done it on stage before (at least to this extent) and also because there are laws in Britain about public hypnosis acts that he somehow sidestepped. A spirit cabinet routine similar to seance was excellent as live entertainment, very visual and interesting, I still have no idea how it works. The problem here is that Derren’s rushing about strips it of the potential wonder and intrigue it could have had – had he framed it more patiently, it would have been a lot more eerie. On the whole though, although slightly flawed and annoyingly tricksy in places, its very funny and interesting enough to make it worthwhile.

Blessed are Fox Broadcasting for knocking out another belter of a show. Lie to Me stars Tim Roth (Mr Orange in Reservoir Dogs, an excellent British actor) and follows the endlessly interesting day job of an expert in body language and lie detection. Puzzles are solved in a format similar to CSI, your first impressions of a situation gradually evolve during an episode to reveal an unpredictable twist of events. Its based on the work of Paul Ekman, whose books Telling Lies and Emotions Revealed are recommended for anyone interested in observational psychology. I love this show – not quite as much as Dexter but its getting there.

In my Exeter Hypnotherapy practice I met a lot of clients with problems of anxiety, life confusion, panic attacks etc. Underneath the surface of confidence, contentment etc, most lives are anything but. I found this article quite interesting.