East of Old Street

Lovely lunch yesterday with Jess (old St Luke’s chum whose been planning at Mother for quite a while).

As I walked back along Great Eastern I saw this little installation: 3 stories up above the road.

You groovy folks probably spotted it months ago but made my little afternoon.

And as I stood and snapped it, so a couple of other folk did, too but mostly passersby just,…er…passed by, heads down and no eye contact.

Which reminded me of an old Stanley Milgram experiment (the American Social Psychologist who effectively killed off the experimental side of Social Psychology with his obedience experiment design). Skypointing…he sent a bunch of student experimenters out on the streets of NY (I think) to point at the sky, first on their own, then in pairs, in threes and so on…

And he discovered that after a certain size, passersby start to believe the pointers are seeing something. A kind of small-group ‘conformity’ effect.

Used to have a reference to the experiment but can’t find it today. Does anyone have it?

Trains in the sky? Spitalfields, just like I pictured it…