Re: Do We Perceive Beauty in an Unexpected Context

[David Coffin <dpcoffin@earthlink.net>]

Make that: EVERYTHING's less important than the "task at hand".

On Feb 20, 2012, at 10:29 AM, David Coffin wrote:

> Ditto Paul and Pawel; this "experiment", which I recall reading  
> about shortly after it happened, always seemed to me to have been  
> set up to guarantee the results obtained and wanted, and pretty  
> obviously so.
>
> What's so surprising about a bunch of commuters in a metro station  
> on the way to work being too busy, too preoccupied and too  
> habituated to jump the rails for some serious, long-form music, no  
> matter how high-quality? Any marketing person could have predicted  
> exactly what happened, let alone any busker…
>
> Similarly, I don't see any evidence that an average crowd or the  
> average person values random beauty much at all. How often have you  
> ever seen a freeway traffic jam, or even a single pulled-over  
> vehicle, during a spectacular sunset, or any other jaw-dropping  
> display of light on landscape as seen from the road? Nothing's less  
> important than the "task at hand".
>
> What's more of a cliche than "Stop and smell the roses!" or that the  
> Artistic Life (which is not renowned for being an enviable one) is  
> about noticing the beauty that everyone else misses?
>
> dpc