http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
This is an article about Joshua Bell, one of the world's greatest violinists, and his social experiment regarding classical music.
" It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant."
I had a variety of quick reactions after reading this article. 1: Inspired by a bold experiment to see how the general public would react 2: Sadness for the ignorance by the passerbys as Bell plays some of the great violin pieces.
We all recognize names. Sports figures, movie stars, as well as composers. Too often we hear these names without really knowing their faces. An example: Last year I was fortunate to have a picture taken with the great film composer John Williams. If you ask anyone in the Film Scoring they will automatically know the name. However, as I showed the picture around I recieced the too often "Who is that?" response. Is this ignorance on part of the student? It seems essential to know these composers by their name as well as their face. This will prevent you from looking inexperienced in social gatherings. This article made me think of the evolution of ads, like we had discussed in class. Text based to picture based to logo based. The Nike symbol can immediately be recognized without saying "Nike". Is it our job to know what Nike is? No, thats why they have marketing departments to make sure that we do. Is this departure of facial recognition due to the increase of global communications? As the world becomes smaller, is personal technologies, such as the ipod, preventing us from social interaction? Relationsihps are essential for anyone's success. I think that in general, society needs to "lighten up and look up". Pay attention to those around you, interact socially with them, and stop looking at the ground. In essence we are all humans. Why should we shut out those around us?
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I had read this article a week or so ago and had similar reactions. I think that people especially with music, tend to believe that all good music will be performed in a concert hall or on a stage, and thus, rubish is what is performed on the subway, so automatically making ones desicion before one even has the chance to listen. It is very interesting i think that in many cases this can effect how we react or intake things, For example food and drink are often effected by the collective atmosphere of both location and the interior of the resturant.
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