Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Attention and Distraction

For this assignment I read Anne Petersen's article "Attention and Distraction: On the Aesthetic Experience of Video Installation Art". I read the section entitled "Experiencing Video Installation Art". I found this article interesting because it discussed an aspect of video installations that isn't much investigated regardless of its commonality: the fact that people are easily bored by it. If a video is more than a few minutes people tend to wander on rather than wait around to understand the meaning of the piece. We are used to things with simple meanings and that work actively to hold our attention (i.e television); it is hard for us to have to stand by long enough to find the meaning for ourselves. The attention span of the audience will be a good thing to keep in mind when we are starting our video projects.

4 comments:

  1. I can definitely relate to the content of this article. When viewing art, I find it difficult to constrain interest if an idea is not portrayed easily. When the idea is not noticeable or present to me in a decent amount of time I tend to loose engagement in the work. Though I appreciate the artists approaching video art in different ways I think you are right in keeping the attention span of our viewers in mind.

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  2. I think it's interesting that some video artists (I believe it was Warhol) intentionally make videos extremely and boring so viewers can leave, go get something to eat, and come back without missing a beat. I personally don't understand it as I like to be engaged throughout a film in its entirety. But who's to say that this isn't a genre of video art? I think art lends itself to so many styles that this type of video might actually have a legitimate place in video art.

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  3. This article definitely makes some interesting points! Video artists do have that extra challenge of trying to hold their viewers attention for the duration of the video. The article also reminded me of a video at the Harn, where at first it just looks like a video of a building , but as you sit and watch and watch, it explodes. I'm sure many people have missed that because they immediately write it off as 'boring'and as a result miss the best part and the whole point of the piece

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  4. I definitely agree that its hard for many people to hold their attention in an art gallery and really focus on the work itself. When something doesn't stand out right away the audience finds it hard to find interest and figure out the meaning behind the work and the intention of the artist. It is very easy for us to become distracted and loose interest very quickly.

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