Panel Discussion: Examining the Aesthetic Choices of our Urban Environment

Galeri Petronas,
Suria KLCC.

09 May 2009 - SAT,
4:00pm

Bringing a range of perspectives from architecture to design, the session will explore a range of issues concerning the development of our urban environment, from the selection of public sculptures to urban planning and architecture as well as the relationship between urban communities and the space that they inhabit.

Panelists: William Harald-Wong, Kevin Mark Low and Azhar Ahmad
Moderator: Sharaad Kuttan

FREE. Open to all. Find out more here.
Interests: architecture, art/sculpture, design, local/urban culture

This forum is held in-conjunction with the art exhibition "Cadangan-cadangan untuk Negara Ku" (Suggestions for my Nation) by Liew Kung Yu.
Inspired by the monuments and public sculptures found in Malaysia, artist Liew Kung Yu has created eight new works that offers the viewers of what Malaysia could look like in the future. The sculptural works comprise a Photoshop montage of various public sculptures found in the country such as the giant Pitcher Plant at Dataran Merdeka and the concrete tigers at Zoo Negara. Kung Yu's works are playful, theatrical, extremely kitsch and strangely beautiful.

Living abroad? Study shows you’re likely to be creative

SINGAPORE, April 24 — Living abroad helps people expand their experiences and also their minds, according to an international study into the link between moving to another country and creativity.

The research, published by the American Psychological Association, consisted of five studies involving students at Paris’ Sorbonne University, at INSEAD, a business school with campuses in France and Singapore and at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in the United States.

Researchers said that although the studies show a strong relationship between living abroad and creativity, they do not prove that living abroad and adapting to a new culture actually cause people to be more creative. “This research may have something to say about the increasing impact of globalisation on the world, a fact that has been hammered home by the recent financial crisis,” said the study’s lead author, William Maddux, assistant professor of organisational behaviour at INSEAD.

“Knowing that experiences abroad are critical for creative output makes study abroad programmes and job assignments in other countries that much more important, especially for people and companies that put a premium on creativity and innovation.”

In one study, MBA students at the Kellogg School were asked to solve the Duncker candle problem, a classic test of creative insight in which individuals are presented with three objects on a table placed next to a cardboard wall: a candle, a pack of matches and a box of tacks. The task is to attach the candle to the wall so that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax on the table or the floor and the correct solution involves using the empty box of tacks as a candleholder, and then tack it to the wall.

The solution is considered a measure of creative insight because it involves the ability to see objects as performing different functions from what is typical and the results showed that the longer students had spent living abroad, the more likely they were to come up with the solution.

The findings appear in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

— Reuters