Do we only enjoy art because context allows it?

An article from 2007 about an interesting social experiment where a famous classical violinist took his art to the busy subway to see if the passing hordes in the mundane setting would stop and appreciate the 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.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Do we only enjoy art because a convenient and conducive context ‘allows’ us to?

What is the real value of art then? 

Is Nuclear Paranoia Justified?

Nuclear Energy Debate

The recent earthquake-tsunami disaster in Japan renewed worldwide concern over the use of nuclear energy as several reactors at the ageing Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been besieged by fires and explosions, causing alarm from surrounding populace over radiation leaks.

Image of smoking Fukushima Nuclear Facility from Channel NewsAsia

The debate over nuclear energy has been an ongoing one as our modern world grapples with the need to weigh the high risks of such energy use against depleting fossil fuels and increasing energy demands. A nice background of the debate is available on BBC while a more in-depth view of the opposing views from various quarters is also accessible on Debatepedia.

Is nuclear energy justified and should it be expanded?

Should Singapore adopt nuclear energy in the future?

#downwithmubarak?

As the protests in Cairo continue to rage on (you can catch live updates here), what’s of noteworthy attention is how the government has clamped down on social media in its desperate bid to quell the unrest. This was an unsurprising move as the genesis of the uprisings was arguably virtual in origin, inspired by the revolution at Tunisia and probably Iran as well (and of course, there’s always an element of US involvement). Again we see how the role of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have helped trigger and fuel “people power” protests over unpopular regimes–a trend that is sparking concern from world leaders about the consequences such events have over regional economic and political stability (especially with regards to oil and gold prices ).

Why are protesters increasingly turning to social networking sites?

Is the internet a friend or foe of democracy?

Age of Connectivity & Empowerment

Hi everyone,

You may find the lecture slides here. It’s a link to Prezi. Just choose ‘Download’ on the right hand side, or playback on the site itself. Enjoy!

Does Social Networking Make People Abusive?

Lai Han-Wei explores whether the power of anonymity on social networks is turning people abusive.

I’m really trying not to make it seem like I have a vendetta against Facebook. I love using it. I use it every day. And I think it’s brilliant for social networking. 

However, beyond the shiny veneer of yet another layout change and fancy features, it’s hard not to find cracks – privacy issues, malicious Facebook apps, rumours that founder Mark Zuckerberg is kind of a jerk – there are tonnes of options for anyone who wanted to hate Facebook to choose. Yet, despite all the griping, Mark Zuckerberg must be doing something right – being chosen as Time’s Person of the Year is as big an affirmation as anyone could get. His idea (or the idea of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, if you trust ‘The Social Network’) revolutionised how people interact with each other.

Even if that interaction seems to be taking a turn for the worse. Recently, Alviss Kong, a 22-year-old man in Malaysia, jumped to his death after he broke up with his girlfriend of four months. Before he did, though, he posted a Facebook status update at 11.15pm wondering what to do in for the next 45 minutes. A cry for help? Or a plea for attention, or someone to talk to? According to Malaysia’s The Star newspaper, what he got instead was 204 ‘likes’ and a series of messages – some concerned, some nonchalant. Seemingly none of them alerted his family or authorities to help. A few hours later, Kong’s body was found sprawled dead on a car 14 storeys below.

In the group, fans of the page posted about how they pitied the owner of the car Kong landed on, and planned to raise money for repairs by selling t-shirts. Many of them cursed Kong and showed no sympathy.

 

Could Kong’s suicide have been prevented had someone taken his message seriously? Or have we become so desensitised online that we treat everything as a joke or prank first? Are we jaded to the point that we lash out at people we’ve never met?

Common sense and human nature would say so. Too often we’re tempted to snap at someone we know, but bite our tongue to be ‘diplomatic’. Being online, comfortably behind a pseudonym affords people an illusion of ‘protection’.

In fact, science agrees – studies have shown it’s the lack of face-to-face interaction that leads to people online misreading others, misinterpreting comments, and yes, even being mean. People are more inclined to behave differently and say things they’d never say in person if there’s no fear of recrimination.

However, it would be short-sighted to blame it on just Facebook – there’s something about the anonymity and ‘protection’ online that encourages some to treat others as less than human.

In 2006, Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl in the US, killed herself after the ‘boy’ she liked on Myspace sent her abusive messages, telling her that ‘everyone’ hated her and that ‘t he world would be better off’ without her. Six weeks after she hung herself, it was revealed that a former friend and her mother were behind the hoax account. However, at the time, they maintained that it was just a ‘joke’.

However, that wasn’t the end of it. Soon after Kong’s death, a crop of Facebook fan pages in remembrance of him emerged – yet even then, a fan page called “We pity the car owner more than Alviss Kong” popped up. At the time of writing, it has more than 3,600 fans.

Have we always been like this? Have we just been waiting for an excuse to cut loose and not face the repercussions? I hope not. Call me naive, but I believe that innately, people are still decent to each other, and that the bravado online users display is just that – bravado.

The Straits Times

Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming!

THE earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

New York Times