Attention Please! (An experiment and an Attention seeking video installation).
Posted by Katie Lips on April 19, 2006 6:18 am
Artist Sara Smith and technology partner Kisky Netmedia are creating Attention Please! An Experiment - attention seeking video designed to measure attention.
Is it possible to measure our impact on space and on art? The attention Please! experiment attempts to answer this question using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. Audience members, visitors, participants, and collaborators pay attention with their an Attention Card to a piece of video. If you pay more attention, does it work harder to keep it? Other videos may feel neglected and try to attract your attention away; your attention is valuable after all.
Its focus is on manipulating the relationships between art, technology and audience, within and outside of a gallery environment. The concept centres on Saras aim to explore the notion of presence, aura, and attention and uses emerging and everyday technologies to reveal some of these subliminal and emotional notions.
We live in a world where many services, products and people are continually competing for our attention. Each day our attention is attracted and divided; what to wear, where to eat lunch, where and how to party the night away. We are faced with images, stories, emotions all around us, on billboards, radios, and TV screens. Can our attention be turned within a gallery? What happens if we pay attention to some art more than other art? Will it know? Does it matter? It does now!
The experiment asks nothing more than for you, the audience to give your attention. Pay attention at The Box, FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ, UK. 03 & 04 May 2pm - 6pm Just turn up or pay attention online at http://www.attentionplease.co.uk
Is it possible to measure our impact on space and on art? The attention Please! experiment attempts to answer this question using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. Audience members, visitors, participants, and collaborators pay attention with their an Attention Card to a piece of video. If you pay more attention, does it work harder to keep it? Other videos may feel neglected and try to attract your attention away; your attention is valuable after all.
Its focus is on manipulating the relationships between art, technology and audience, within and outside of a gallery environment. The concept centres on Saras aim to explore the notion of presence, aura, and attention and uses emerging and everyday technologies to reveal some of these subliminal and emotional notions.
We live in a world where many services, products and people are continually competing for our attention. Each day our attention is attracted and divided; what to wear, where to eat lunch, where and how to party the night away. We are faced with images, stories, emotions all around us, on billboards, radios, and TV screens. Can our attention be turned within a gallery? What happens if we pay attention to some art more than other art? Will it know? Does it matter? It does now!
The experiment asks nothing more than for you, the audience to give your attention. Pay attention at The Box, FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ, UK. 03 & 04 May 2pm - 6pm Just turn up or pay attention online at http://www.attentionplease.co.uk
> Is it possible to measure our impact on space and on art? The
> attention Please! experiment attempts to answer this question using
> RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology.
RFID: The neutral tool that art makes cool.
- Rob.
RFID: The technology that, if we talk about hating it enough, amongst ourselves,
without actually doing anything, will just disappear all by its lonesome, its
evil little feelings in shambles.
-Alexis
> ::RFID: The neutral tool that art makes cool.
>
> RFID: The technology that, if we talk about hating it enough,
> amongst ourselves,
> without actually doing anything, will just disappear all by its
> lonesome, its
> evil little feelings in shambles.
And the art?
- Rob.
I hadn't realized that all artists had to have the same intentions and beliefs
for their work to receive a stamp of artistic merit. Many atrocities and wrongs
have been committed throughout history with the aid of artists, but that doesn't make
their work any less art. It makes a call for those who disagree to respond with
their own work rebuking the first. But that requires action, balls, and
creativity, each of which this project has in spades. Enough, at any rate, to
get a write up in Wired, ensuring a lot more people than those on this list
will hear (about) it.
So. Do you want to make a whimper, or a bang?
-Alexis
On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Rob Myers wrote:
::And the art?
::
::- Rob.
::On 19 Apr 2006, at 20:24, Alexis Turner wrote:
::
::> ::RFID: The neutral tool that art makes cool.
::>
::> RFID: The technology that, if we talk about hating it enough, amongst
::> ourselves,
::> without actually doing anything, will just disappear all by its lonesome,
::> its
::> evil little feelings in shambles.
::
> We make money, not art.
So how much do I have to pay you to agree with me?
> I hadn't realized that all artists had to have the same intentions
> and beliefs for their work to receive a stamp of artistic merit.
I'm not quite sure how we got here, but I do not particularly care what
artists
think. Unless they think "I'm going to kill Rob in three, two...", in which
case the fact that they are an artist is a secondary consideration.
What interests me are artists' actions and the effects of those actions,
particularly the unexamined, glossed-over, or dissonant effects of those
actions.
This is a separate issue from the work's merit as art, unless that merit rests
in part on such issues.
> Many atrocities and wrongs
> have been committed throughout history with the aid of artists, but
> that doesn't make
> their work any less art.
I'm not sure about that. Thomas Kinkade's shops would be a good
counter-example.
> It makes a call for those who disagree to respond with
> their own work rebuking the first.
If you see a mugging in progress, mugging someone else is not always the best
way of reporting the incident.
> But that requires action, balls, and
> creativity, each of which this project has in spades.
So, given this, its promotion of RFID is unproblematic? Or is it the
presence of
RFID that gives the work its "balls" and creativity?
> Enough, at any rate, to
> get a write up in Wired, ensuring a lot more people than those on this list
> will hear (about) it.
I'll take the audience of Rhizome over the audience of Wired any day.
Unless I'm
trying to sell an SUV, in which case obviously I'll take the conde nast
option.
> So. Do you want to make a whimper, or a bang?
I want to ask why the rash of RFID cheerleading in contemporary art.
- Rob.