Eight pianos, nine musicians, four cameras and one dog. For two weeks, the 'Play Me, I'm Yours' event inspired choirs, ballerinas, pianists and poets to tickle the ivories at fifteen piano hotspots in parks and streets across the city of Cambridge. Nine students from the University's Faculty of Music volunteered, each lending their own particular playing style, which is reflected in the video. In order to maintain a level of artistic control, the volunteers were asked to memorise the same chord progression and play along to a beat played off an MP3 player. Playing in whatever style they felt most comfortable, the pianists followed the same tempo allowing for more than one recording to be played simultaneously, creating the illusion of a musical collaboration.
A talk by Professor Steven Connor, literary critic, cultural commentator and the author of Paraphernalia: The Curious Lives of Magical Things which investigates our strange relationships with mundane objects.
Have you ever wondered how and why one language differs from another? Find out in this interactive lecture, where Professor Ian Roberts, a world-renowned expert on the syntax of Celtic, Romance and Germanic languages, describes some of the building blocks of language. Audience members were encouraged to ask questions and to contribute information about languages which they speak/have familiarity with. After the lecture, participants were encouraged to come to the sister event 'Lingquiztics' to see how much they have learnt!
Michal Kosinski, Operations Director of the Psychometrics Centre, will show how online behaviour reveals our most intimate traits, such as sexual orientation, ethnic origin, religion, political preferences, intelligence, satisfaction with life, and personality. The results are based on a large (7 million individuals) sample of Facebook users. Michal will explain how intimate details can be predicted from widely available records of online behaviour. What does that mean for our privacy online? Will you change your behaviour? We’ll also show a variety of psychological tests for you to try.
How much does nature influence gender and is neuroscience being used to bolster and emphasise traditional views about gender differences? Has the debate between scientists and social scientists become too polarised? Panel discussion with Simon Baron Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology; Jo-Anne Dillabough; Jo-Anne Dillabough, Faculty of Education; Dr Laura Nelson, writer and entrepreneur and and Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford.
Experts on East Asia and the US discuss the impact of the upcoming US election in a debate.
Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, discusses China's increasing economic power and how, as it becomes a major player, it won't necessarily become more Western; we will become more Chinese.
One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook and the average Briton devotes an entire day to the site each month. This event examine whether the social media giants are profiting from our willingness to share the most intimate details of our lives online and whether we should be worried by this compromise to our privacy? With Michal Konsinski, Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre; Professor William Dutton, Oxford Internet Institute; Nick Pickles, Big Brother Watch; Mariam Cook, Porter Novelli and the Chair, Spencer Kelly, Click presenter.