P010 → Lucky Statue Research (News & Essay & people’s opinions)
Introduction: When I first arrived in Edinburgh, I followed the crowd and rubbed the toes of the David Hume statue, having heard that it would make me wiser. Later, I learned that David Hume was a philosopher who opposed superstition. I wonder what he would think about us touching his toes for luck. This made me think of how, in China, people touch a general's statue for health because his name sounds like 'without illness,' but this general actually died of illness at the age of twenty-three.
I later realized that this tradition of rubbing statues is widespread around the world. Often, people don’t fully understand the stories behind the statues or the damage their actions cause; they just do it for fun. This tradition is so ingrained that many attempts to control it are ineffective.
So, I want to approach this project in an engaging way: imagining what the statues would say to stop people from touching them. I hope this will serve an educational purpose.
Some countermeasures: 1. Barriers; 2. Replacing with replicas; 3. Raising the position; 4. Placing signs; 5. Repairing (but despite these measures, they are sometimes still ineffective).
A team once conducted bacteria tests on popular sculptures in European tourist attractions, as reported in 'The Bacteria On Europe’s Monuments: The Results Are In'.