Sunday, February 17, 2008

Anima Obscura


The name of my band is Anima Obscura. Here's the meaning. It's Latin. Anima means "spirit". Obscura means "shadow". Anima Obscura means "dark spirit". But there's more. Anima Obscura is a play on the term Camera Obscura. These words are Latin as well. Camera means "room" and obscura means "shadow" i.e. dark room. It comes from a phenomenon in physics. If you have a dark room and you put a tiny hole in the wall, the bright outside world will be projected on the oposite wall of your dark room. This occurs because everything we see is a reflection. Light bounces off of stuff and goes into our eyes. If what we're looking at absorbs all light waveleanths but green, then green bounces off the objects and shines into our eyes and we see green. The same thing happens when you have a dark room with a tiny hole in the wall. light, reflected off the objects outside, streams through the tiny hole in the wall and shines onto the opposite wall. Now, here's the weird part. The image shining on the opposite wall will appear upside down and backward. The same thing happens in your eye. Sometimes I think I see everything upside down and backward in a dark room.

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