From the end of August 20 12, a lecture will be held once a month, and 7-9 guests with stories and knowledge of humanities and science will be invited to each lecture. In the case of low-key to almost no publicity, the number of applicants for each venue in Beijing was above 500, while in Shanghai, when the guest list was not announced, the blind newspapers were almost full, and finally reached twice the capacity of the venue.
Free is certainly not the reason why a seat is so popular. As a newly established and unprofitable entrepreneurial team, the idea of holding lectures is to "encourage sharing of views, experiences and imagination of the future" and "conduct valuable exchanges". But in the long queue outside the center of contemporary art, young people in their twenties and thirties account for the majority, either geeks, young artists or people in a broader sense. They pursue "it is better to study for ten years than to listen to you" and are keen on "humanities, technology and daydreaming".
Listen and observe in the dark
It is a little mysterious for a seat to participate in a seat activity in such a low-key way in the underground street. Wait for the announcement first, and wait for the registration channel to open. After completing the registration form, wait patiently for the registration confirmation SMS. Only the specific address can be found in the SMS, and the on-site tickets can be collected by SMS. Tickets are postcard cards related to the current lecture content, and the reverse side is the guest list and time. Although low-key, Weibo, WeChat, Douban Station and Youku Space have been opened, and apps and podcasts are also being opened. Gentlemen always reply to messages as soon as possible. One has accumulated an audience by the most primitive word of mouth.
Among the lecture videos uploaded to the Internet, the one with the highest number of hits has reached 370,000 times, and the guest and folk singer Da Bing at that scene has now joined a seat and become the host of the Shanghai venue.
As soon as the seats were opened, the audience was in complete darkness. There is no podium on the stage, which is more like a stage. The guests stood on the round red carpet and gave speeches. The red letters stand in the corner of the black stage in the background, under the warm light, such as sitting in a theater. Behind the speaker is a curtain showing the lecture notes. He turned the page by the remote control in his hand, and a prompt board was in front of the audience to ensure the fluency of the speech. Before the lecture begins, the screen reminds the audience to keep quiet. There are several cameras recording in different positions under the stage, and there is even a slide rail on the side of the stage. There are no subtitles and clips in the uploaded video, which is convenient for the audience who didn't go to the scene to learn and share.
A speech is divided into two halves, each of which is 20 minutes or more, and the whole course is about 4 hours. This is not only a physical performance, but also a game to kill brain cells. Each brain has to change at least 8 channels to keep up with the rhythm. However, in a short afternoon, sometimes a lecture ends, but it may change a person's life. Many people quit after listening to a seat, which was an extra shock to us.
The speaker opened a window.
Kong Xiangdong played first yesterday. At that time, the "piano prince" has now become a "piano boy", and his musical instrument has also changed from piano to iPad, playing electronic violin for the audience. Kong Xiangdong said: "Music is the church, the universe and all emotions." He doesn't want to be a pianist, he wants to be a disseminator of the beauty of music. "Learning music is not learning the piano; Practicing vocal music is not an etude. " He reminded us: "Music is us, and we are also music. Don't forget that we have musical instruments-vocal cords. Our joys and sorrows are the pitch, notes and inspiration of music. " He strongly recommends music software. In his view, it is a weapon that can "command the happiness of knowledge", and you can enjoy the beauty of composing music without boring practice.
Su is an urban planning expert of Tongji University, a core member of the master planner team of the World Expo, and the founder of the city China, but more importantly, he is the promoter of "Etobang". Since the Sichuan earthquake, Su has put the research on sustainable development and architectural integration into practice, aiming at changing the situation that there is a lack of communication between designers and residents, and both sides have no autonomy in housing. He proposed a system of "bones, muscles, skin and gallbladder", which divided the house into frames, liners, water heating systems and other parts, allowing users to participate in customization and self-selection in the digital warehouse, and then packaged and assembled at home, just like building a Lego toy. "IKEA puts the furniture in the trunk and we put the house in the container." Su's concept of integrated architecture focuses on the low-end market, especially in rural areas and areas that need reconstruction after the disaster, which can save time and manpower, reduce costs, and most importantly, the environmental protection characteristics of building materials. "Making architecture flexible may be what architects can do for this society in the case of resource shortage."
Chen Nengchang, an expert on soil pollution control, gave a speech entitled "The land is sick". Due to the pollution caused by wastewater discharged by industrial and mining enterprises, the contents of cadmium, lead, arsenic, copper and zinc in the soil of many rural areas in Guangdong Province exceeded the standard. Known as "cancer villages", Shangba Village, Xinjiang Town, wengyuan county, Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, is located near Dabaoshan Mine. Cadmium is the most important heavy metal affecting the health of local residents. The photos of patients with kidney disease and pain caused by cadmium (also known as pain and bone pain, the earliest cadmium poisoning incident in the world occurred in Toyama Prefecture, Japan in 1950) are shocking. What Chen Nengchang is doing is to use secondary control technologies such as water control and pesticide spraying to adjust the properties of the land with rare earth series and silicon series, and also to absorb cadmium in the soil by planting long fragrant valleys. These land restoration technologies may bring hope to the morbid land that has almost lost its ability of self-repair and perfection.
Xinjiang people took Chyi Chin to meet the King of Western Songs and devoted their lives to music. As a native of Hotan, he was taken away when he was three months old. His adoptive parents are from Chun 'an, Zhejiang. His ideal is to spread the positive energy of Xinjiang through notes and bridge the rift between Xinjiang and other parts of China. Perhaps the most successful case he has done is the song "Alimujiang, where are you", calling on every Xinjiang child who is wandering outside to return to Xinjiang. "I am paying attention to things like cutting cakes, and there are deep roots behind them." Maybe listening to beautiful Xinjiang folk songs will make you know more about Xinjiang.
Popularize domestic voice system
And speech environment.
The single-seat team currently has only seven people. Yan Dong, who graduated from Tsinghua University, is the planner of this project. As a traditional publisher in his early years, he noticed the potential of new media, so he hoped to spread it more with the help of a mature Internet platform. "We spread it through live speeches and post-videos. Nowadays, people spend more and more time on mobile devices, and the time spent watching videos gradually exceeds that of words, so we try to do it. "
One seat will give a lecture for 20 minutes at a time, but there is no limit to the duration. Da Bing's most popular speech lasted for 45 minutes. "But for the mobile Internet, 20 minutes is still too long, and five or six minutes may be the most appropriate. Judging from the video click, most people still watch it on the computer. We are still exploring this, maybe there will be 8 minutes in the future, or there will be an abridged version. " In addition to the regular comprehensive venue once a month, there are also individual guest specials and cross-border year-end venues.
Anyway, a seat is easy to remind people of Ted. Yan Dong began to pay attention to Ted around 2009, which is very enlightening to create a seat. However, he believes that Ted faces the defects of uneven speaker level and poor communication. Most importantly, if we copy the Ted model, it will definitely fail in China. "Ted is more about innovation and technology. Europe and the United States have always had this atmosphere, while China is relatively weak in this respect, and topics with stronger sociality and humanity are more suitable for China's speech environment. "
A person can find a suitable speaker through two channels, one is to find a topic through people, and the other is to find someone through topic selection. "For example, topics such as science and technology and grassland desertification are all our concerns, so let's go to Greenpeace researchers and tell us." Before each speech, a teacher should spend a lot of time communicating with the speaker, as real as possible, what everyone cares about, and what the speaker and others have not said.
This is also a test for the speaker. "On the one hand, China people are relatively low-key and introverted, and there is no such expression atmosphere in China; On the other hand, in the theater, the light is very strong and there are many people sitting below, which in itself brings a sense of tension. But this tension can inspire the speaker, and the speaker will naturally throw away the high-sounding cliches, but tell the most authentic part, which is more touching from the perspective of later video communication. "
The original intention of a building is to promote the domestic phonetic system and phonetic environment. "There is a lack of video communication in domestic lectures, and even if it is recorded, it is not perfect. The most important thing is that there is no platform for communication. We hope to gradually build a loyal audience and form this platform. " One is expanding its scene to Hong Kong as a pilot in Chinese-speaking areas, and will soon promote good Chinese abroad.
Preview; trailer
March 30th Beijing Oriental Media Center
April 28th Hong Kong Polytechnic University