Phantom Limbs (Body Image) - Rationalé
Phantom Limbs (Body Image) was inspired by research conducted into phantom limb phenomenon. A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body. Phantom limbs can generally be moved at will, and they also move in coordination with the rest of the body. When people lose a flesh-and-blood limb, they do not usually lose the sense of its presence. It feels as if it is really there, even though it is no longer materially real. In addition to a sense of its shape, position, and movement, amputees generally experience various feelings within the missing limb, such as itching, warmth, and twisting.
Recent work has led researchers to look into the thalamus and the somatosensory cortex within the brain itself, as the root cause of phantom sensations. It has been suggested that phantom pain could be explained through genetics and the neuromatrix, the neuromatrix being a network of many interconnected neurons that exists within the brain. In addition to responding to sensory stimulation, this neuromatrix continuously generates a characteristic pattern of impulses indicating that the body is intact, and identifies the body as its own. This pattern of self-identification or neuro-signature body image is imprinted on the output signal carrying information about the body’s sensory input.
This theory is based on the supposition that the neuromatrix and its image of the human body is pre-wired by genetics. The homunculus, located in the sensory cortex of the brain, is what contains the actual "blueprint" representation of the entire body surface, and identifies the locations of sensations felt on the skin. This blueprint assumes that the human body is complete with all limbs intact, whether or not in actuality the person does possess all the limbs to constitute a complete body. Therefore, if the brain expects a limb is there, it might send an output signal to the limb through certain neural pathways in the neuromatrix.
Phantom Limbs (Body Image) - Production Methods
To interpret these ideas about phantom limbs within a creative experimental music context, an acoustic body ‘map’ was made by carefully moving a sensitive microphone over the surface of the skin. Many different body-surface sounds were noted and captured, the skin of the thigh being different for that of a more rougher knee cap or soles of the feet, more percussive sounds from finger- and toe-nails, as well as sounds of the many different hair textures. The sounds were then fed into a granular sampler. The various click and glitch sounds represent the sounds of the electro-chemical firings of neurons within the brain’s neuromatrix. The phantom ‘ghost’ sounds of the body image feeding back into itself.
