Perception
 

I found this article. It has some questions at the end worth thinking about but then the more I thought about it the more I thought something wasn't quite right. Maybe it isn't so much about perception as it is about being who you are at your core and finding peace with it.

http://bitsofwisdom.org/2009/10/21/i...ng/perception/



Something to think about….
Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.
The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
*Do we stop to appreciate it?
*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.
How many other things are we missing?
Thanks Gene

October 21st, 2009

The question I asked myself," What if people had noticed who the player was? What then? What was his (J.B.'S) motivation? I am not so sure it was to test people and I am not so sure what the angle of the author was except to publish an article. really

See the original article in the Washington Post. There is also some discussion about this in Dan Ariely's book "Predictably Irrational."

Context and expectation are key.

One problem I had with this experiment back when the article first ran was that the musical piece he played was chosen for its complexity and difficulty, not necessarily its melodic appeal. It's actually kind of a jarring piece unless you're familiar enough with classical music to recognize the nuance.

What if he chose a different setting? Hanging out isn't what subway stations are designed for. They are built to keep people moving and discourage repose. I don't think a piece that requires serious listening gets a fair shot in such a place.

It is interesting about expectations though. If you go to see a AAA baseball game you see players who are in the top x% in the world. If you go to a MLB game you watch the top 1/4x% in the world. You can see the difference but is it worth the difference in admission? Part of the excitement of baseball is when someone makes a mental error causing something unusual to occur.

Maybe a less professional musician is free to interpret something in a radically different way... [big shrug]

Hey, late post here. I was just saying the same thing griff.

Thank you for that article Perry. I was really curious about the staging of it and how it all came about.

The fact that few people even rose their heads to look is more telling than the fact it was rush hour and people had places to go.

I think if he had done this in a public park there would have been a better response or even outside a coffee shop or a department store people would have given it more thought.

Even if someone found a diamond they wouldn't stop to shout about it. They would just pick it up and keep on moving.

Getting home or getting to work is kind of like a house fire. Nothing would stop anyone from getting to it. I don't think it is a good test of peoples ability to appreciate beauty.

I have to agree with skysidhe - people using the Metro are in a hurry. I love classical music, and would probably have paused a few minutes to listen, but I'd be worried about being late to work or where ever I was going.

I think, too, people have just become jaded. They can hear great music all the time on their ipods or stereos , etc.

Finally, people just don't want to get involved. They probably thought the violinist was homeless, and they just threw him some change and kept moving.

One simply doesn't expect to hear or see beauty on the Metro, so people were victims of their own expectations.

People strongly distrust others on the Metro -- muggers, crazy people, pickpockets, the homeless... The built-in suspicion is probably what kept a lot of the parents moving their kids on in such a hurry.

On the metro, one's frame of mind is set to 'endure', not 'enjoy' or 'learn'. Teachers, artists & entertainers know that a receptive frame of mind is very important to 'reaching' someone.

It's an interesting bit. I have a little trouble with the idea that the amount he collected was a signal to how poorly the people appreciated the work.

exactly

I agree with you all.

It wasn't a good test for all of those reasons.

The money's definitely not a sign of appreciation, but I admit I was a little surprised at how few people even turned and looked. I thought busking wasn't actually allowed on the Metro, so I would think at the very least it would be something strange to notice, but maybe they do usually have musicians down there.

We've discussed this before.

There's been talk of allowing busking in the stations, but I've never seen it. It doesn't exists on the trains. There are plenty of buskers at the entrances to the Metro though. And those are extremely busy places. If you stop, you will be in the way. There's one electric guitar guy that I've heard over the years and really enjoyed. Mostly you just listen for the 30 seconds or so it takes to get up the escalator, and then the ten more seconds as you are walking away down the sidewalk. After digging this guy for several years, I got a $20 out of my wallet one time as I was riding up the escalator, folded it up, and put it in his guitar case.

I've heard good classical music too, and enjoyed it, but never stopped to listen.

How many of those 2000 people paid $100 to hear the Boston concert? The concert tickets are sought out by those who enjoy that sort of thing. Those people form a very small percent of the population. What are the chances that any of them passed by in that 45 minutes? Just because some people value that stuff very higly doesn't mean it's worth that to everyone.

Maybe the conclusion about perception is the wrong way around.

Maybe the music is in fact not terribly pleasant; the violinist not noticably better than an regular professional musician; the violin is merely priced at $3.5 million, but isn't noticably better than $1,000 jobs ... but when people are charged $100 admission and led to expect something amazing, they "perceive" it to be so regardless of its actual quality.

Maybe subway crowds are more discerning judges of music than the placebofied sheep herded into overpriced concert halls.

Well I certainly feel that way about Picasso. Don't get it, never have.

hear, hear (or should that be ear here?) :D

Even Guernica?
"This bull is a bull, and this horse is a horse." - Picasso

We all know that perspectives are skewed when things are out of place contextually. What was the test again?

I consider myself reasonably erudite.
I would not pay to see a single man play a violin. It's not my bag.
If he was playing in a Tube station (there are places set aside for buskers - they have to audition. Seriously) I'd probably chuck him some money. We've been through this before - I'm short on funds but it's how I was brought up.

Would I enjoy it? Highly unlikely. If it's a complicated, jarring piece, it will not be at its best in the echoing tunnels. I will not really be listening but will assume this is an aspiring musician down on his luck/ wanting public performance experience/ trying to break through. As other people have said, my mind would be on me, myself, my journey, whether I can overtake that woman in front of me, what time I'll get there and WHY IS HE WALKING SO SLOWLY?!

And I don't even wear headphones - whereas many many people do on public transport.

Interesting article Sky. Rubbish experiment.

That was Van Gogh.

Lack of time and lack of a place to sit. He's just not going to draw a crowd no matter how good he is.

They should try the experiment in front of the lincoln memorial in nice weather. I bet the results would be different.

You forgot playing shit most people don't want to listen to.

Forgot obligatory quote:

Perception is reality.

If he played "the devil went down to Georgia" or sumptin.

Well he did make $32 in 45 minutes, which is equivlant to $42.67 an hour. Assuming the income rate remains constant, a 40 hour work week, and working 50 weeks a year, he just made over $85,000 in one year! That's more then I will make for a long time, if ever, in one year.

I would say that is pretty damn successful for someone playing music on a New York subway.

But it's gonna take awhile to pay for that $3.5 million gitfiddle. :haha:

Well, not really. First, $20 of that was from one woman who recognized him from his fancy concert the night before. Second, rush hour at the metro doesn't last all day, he'd only get maybe a maximum of 3 hours a day at that high attendance rate. Third, folks aren't going to pay the same guy every day, his income would go down unless he was constantly moving between stations.

Oh, and thanks to inflation, $85,000 a year will be right around today's poverty level in just 50 years. So you'd better hope you make that much at some point in your lifetime. :)

Don't go shooting down my assumptions you jerk....they are all I have.

Then again, between rush hours people may not be in as much of a hurry and take time to listen, therefore generating huge sums of tax free cash.;)

Yeah $35 dollars is a huge offset.

Had they posted "Joshua Bell Playing" label near his head (and probably little description about how much his work is worth), the reaction would have been completely different in same metro station by the same people. It seems like a human mind tends to forget the perception of beauty in regular rush of the life. It needs to be slapped awake sometimes to show about the things.
And then there is a view that if some object of beauty is beautiful enough to appeal you, it will definitely stick to you even in amid of whole chaos.

If it's visual, we can process it immediately, and make a decision to explore it further or not. But aural takes time. Time to take a sufficiently long sample for us to evaluate, unless it's immediately familiar. For example, 10 seconds of Layla, Baba O'Riley, or Jumpin' Jack Flash, would hook me, but with Joshua Bell, it might take several minutes for me to accept or reject. On the way to work, several minutes is unacceptable delay.

very astute