Is Miley more or less happy than June Cleaver? Given very fragmentary information about the lives of two stereotypical figures with identical emotional states, people tend to give strangely asymmetrical evaluations of the two characters' propensity for happiness and unhappiness. An illustration of a controversial study called "The Ordinary Concept of Happiness (and Others Like It)".
This work is also available on the Experimental Philosophy Trilogy.
Ben Coonley is a video and performance artist who uses comic pedagogical styles and direct audience address to explore aspects of media culture and film history. Drawing from the avant garde canon and amateur/public access video conventions, his videos are sardonic no-brow subversions of cinematic form and genre.
Coonley studied Art Semiotics at Brown University, and received his MFA from Bard College. His works have been screened at venues and film festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Underground Film Festival, Cinematexas and the Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco. He is a regular contributor to Movies with Live Soundtracks, a quarterly DIY film/performance series based in Providence, RI. He lives in Brooklyn.
He was recipient of the 2003 Barbara Aronofsky Latham Memorial Award, given to an Exceptional Emerging Video Artist.