The Voices in Our Heads
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Many people think their recorded voices sound strange - even those who have to listen to them for a living. Ben Adair and Ayala Ben-Yehuda use a little audio technology to bring you their voices as they hear them in their own heads - and Columbia University audiologist Dan Ellis explains why they're different from what everyone else hears.
Driver's License Photos
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Like it or not, you're pretty much stuck with your driver's license photo. Ayala Ben-Yehuda visits the Department of Motor Vehicles offices in Hollywood and Van Nuys to find out the lengths people will go to try to get a good shot - and gets a little advice from the DMV on how to do it.
Felis Stella
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Artist Felis Stella is documenting her aging process by taking digitally-manipulated photos of herself kissing herself every ten years until she turns 81. She tells Ayala Ben-Yehuda that it's about accepting yourself no matter what you look like - though even she admits it's not that easy.
Nikki Davis
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Nikki Davis was a model and artist living in Paris. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager. But one day in 1984, she had her first psychotic episode, and she became a different person - even to herself. Ayala Ben-Yehuda met Nikki Davis at her home in Echo Park.
The Los Angeles chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness offers information and support programs for people with mental illness and their families.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
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There is a diagnostic tool that psychologists use called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, which consists of over 500 true/false questions. You take it and your answers are compared to the answers of other people who have taken the test - normal people as well as those with known mental disorders. You are then given a score: a series of numbers and a chart detailing your current mental state.
Dr. Alex Caldwell studied with the two men who created the MMPI. Queena Kim drove out to his home in Venice to ask him: can a standardized test really define who each of us are?
Taking the Test
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Scott Hadley attended a Rent-a-Center management meeting and was surprised to find out he had to take the MMPI. He joined a class-action lawsuit against the company over its use of the test. He tells Queena Kim about what it was like to take the MMPI and how the company used the results.
The Ab Ovo Project: Ben Ehrenreich
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A Bay Area curator recently gave the MMPI to a group of prominent artists, collected their psychological profiles, then gave them to writers as the basis for children's story characters. The end result? The Ab Ovo Project and some pretty fascinating reads. The writer Ben Ehrenreich came up with "The Sad Story of Rhonda the Rhinoceros."
Ehrenreich's book The Suitors is due out from Counterpoint Press this April.
Eloy Torrez
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At Barnsdall Art Park, the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery recently showed a huge retrospective called Otis: Nine Decades of Los Angeles Art. It featured the work of alumni from the first 88 years of the Otis College of Art and Design. One painting in the show was called "Bridge" and it was painted by Otis class of '77 alum Eloy Torrez.
"Bridge" shows a large concrete bridge and an angel with fallen wings front and center. The sky is filled with dark, foreboding clouds in a tragic, if somewhat familiar, atmosphere. Torrez and Ben Adair went searching for that bridge he painted ten years ago just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Joe Schwartz
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Joe Schwartz calls himself a "folk photographer" and began shooting all over Southern California after World War II. But the photos on display at the Skirball Cultural Center aren't your typical images of 1950s America. Schwartz is 92 and lives in Atascadero, California, so Ayala Ben-Yehuda checked out the exhibit with photographer and writer Mark Edward Harris at the Skirball.
Sonic Scenery
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The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum in Exposition Park has opened an exhibit called Sonic Scenery. The curators there got musicians and bands to compose themes for the different main exhibition halls. The artists roamed the rooms, found inspiration and wrote a song for you to listen to while you explore. You can download the songs from the iTunes Music Store or rent a headset at the museum. Here's a sampling of musical contributions by Ozomatli, David J, Jon Hassell and Nobody.
