Grand Central SEMINAR

As a person growing up so close to New York and as a college student living in New York, I never really took the time out of my busy days to go to Grand Central and pay attention to all the little details that the place offered. For me, Grand Central was just like Times Square, another place to avoid the chaotic environment. Grand Central was a major tourist sight as well as a major way of transportation as it holds responsibility of getting people from place to place such as Boston or even farther. When given the assignment to do a scavenger hunt during studio class at Grand Central, I never really believed that I would get anything out of this assignment, but after reading Tony Hiss’s Simultaneous Perception, I was taught the importance and significance of Simultaneous Perception. He explains how “Simultaneous perception helps us experience our surroundings and our reactions to them, and not just our own thoughts and desires” (4)[1]. This related to my experience doing the scavenger hunt around Grand Central. I never noticed the different places and significant parts of the station such as the bi-plane on the ceilings, the different clocks that scattered throughout, the cracks and wears giving history to the station, as well as the different artworks that were scattered throughout the building and architecture of the building. I really got to experience and paid more attention to the little details while doing this assignment, paid more attention to the people, the police, the protests, the voices, the smell, the vibe, etc. It’s important to understand simultaneous perception because every single one of your environments hides details that you don’t notice. It’s important to understand simultaneous perception because every single one of your environments hides details that you don’t notice. Hiss explains how when going to Grand Central, “I came out of the East Side IRT subway into the more southerly of the two straightaways and immediately found myself part of a stream of people, four or five abreast, all of them looking straight ahead and moving at a fast New York clip toward the concourse along the right-hand side of a tunnel only twice the width of the stream itself” (5).[2] One of the first aspects of Grand Central I noticed was also the people and the stream of people that went into one direction as well as the stream of people that went into the other direction. Personally, that is one of the most important aspects of Grand Central. There are always people coming in and out of subways and trains from different ways, yet all end up in the same place. The main concourse of the station. While walking through Grand Central, one can experience things maybe people wouldn’t be able to, yet after reading Tony Hiss’s reading about simultaneous perception, it gave an idea of engaging with the environment and little details around someone, not just the general main point of a specific place.

 

 

[1] Hiss, Tony. “Simultaneous Perception.” In The Experience of Place, 3-26. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990.

[2] Hiss, Tony. “Simultaneous Perception.” In The Experience of Place, 3-26. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990.

 

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