Taking inspiration from the ill-fated Fyre Festival, the NYU Psych Lab is now hosting a music festival of their own, FoxFest, that is the first of its kind. It will feature a slew of local talent in order to fund research.
Fyre Festival, the brainchild of millenial manipulator Billy McFarland, was a 2017 music festival that was sold as the ideal opportunity for youth’s spring break and instead got notoriety for being a horrifying scam.
“Billy McFarland is a psychopath; I stand by it,” NYU Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology Pascal Wallisch said. “It’s not slander — he’s a psychopath. It’s on everyone’s mind right now. Because it is what we study, it felt right. No one has done this before. To our knowledge, this is the first lab that has put on a music festival for a fundraiser. The stars aligned perfectly.”
When Wallisch described the process of his newest endeavor — a part-lecture series, part-fundraiser and part-music festival — he could not help but reference Kairos. The word is Greek for impeccable timing, something that undoubtedly helped his lab’s music festival sell out more than half of available tickets in a matter of days.
Members of the research lab will be giving small discussions with the audience about how psychopaths interact with music: including the very psychopath that caused the Fyre Festival to burst into flames.
FoxFest was conceived only about a month ago, during the first week of classes, when CAS senior and undergraduate researcher Mir Hwang approached Wallisch about launching an NYU community-based event at the intersection of psychology and music. A musician himself, and co-developer of GigFinesse, an app that connects independent artists with venues, Hwang’s experience in booking over 300 individual acts proved key in providing music as a cornerstone for the event.
“How often do you combine art and science?” Wallisch said. “To my knowledge, there aren’t a lot of opportunities where you can support local artists while at the same time supporting local science, while having a good time and connecting with your local community.”
Wallisch and Hwang also expressed the evident lack of student community at NYU, stating that FoxFest can be an experience to form a bond not only with students, but with professors as well.
“Even in my stats class, for students in a group of 180 people, I feel like there is not a lot of community,” said Wallisch.
Undergraduates who are interested in research but aren’t sure where to start can take the opportunity to mingle in a laid-back setting with peer researchers and professors.
“It’s like the same thing with artists — there may be artists out there that are really talented but don’t know how to sell themselves,” Hwang said. “There may be hidden gems of undergrad students that might make killer researchers, but [they] just don’t know how to go about doing that.”
For Hwang, this endeavour in the music industry won’t be his last — the Psychology major on the pre-med track is putting his plans of medical school on hold, fully inspired to continue his dream in the realm of music. For Hwang, FoxFest satiated his interests in both academia and in the arts — and he wants to keep going.
“Med school can always wait, it will always be there for me,” Hwang said. “I can take risks because I’m young. This is something I’m really passionate about, and luckily I’ve been getting a lot of support.”
Wallisch, perhaps, said it best: “It’s going to be lit.”
FoxFest will be held at the Bushwick Public House, 1288 Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn on Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m. The event is 21+.
Email Nicole Rosenthal at [email protected].