My Attention Is Not For Free
Our Attention Quantified – Our Attention Commodified – Our Attention Targeted – Our Attention Disrupted.
Attention is currency, cognitive control, and identity. One’s focus is a decision and a habit. It is the process of adopting concepts and courses of action, an interface of sorts that shapes our perception.
Attention is, in a sense, morality, a personal guidance system with hierarchies and priorities. Memory and familiarity often direct our attention to a narrow, oriented, and curated observation of the elements around us in a manner in which our environment resonates with our sense of self in every fight, flight, or connecting situation.
But what is this sense of attention? How does it “feel” when we select, focus, observe, and connect with our object of interest?
I found my answer in the words of the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis: “Doubtless for each one of us there is a separate, irreplaceable sense which if one does not find it and isolate it on time and cohabit with it later, to fill it with visible acts, one is lost.” – The Little Seafarer.
It is this separate, irreplaceable sense of embodied intention which characterizes the way you or I are in the process of cognition, creation, and evolution. In other words, the act itself feels like me — It reinforces my sense of identity when I select, isolate and connect with the object of interest, leaving the rest of the world to fade into the background.
The images in this series essentially represent spontaneous embraces of an intention with the reality of places I consider home. Athens, Lemnos, and New York sparked and shaped my attention, each in their way. Overlapping, at times, in my consciousness, fusing a sense of timelessness and non-locality into a kaleidoscope of curiosities.
Our Attention Quantified – Our Attention Commodified – Our Attention Targeted – Our Attention Disrupted.
Attention is currency, cognitive control, and identity. One’s focus is a decision and a habit. It is the process of adopting concepts and courses of action, an interface of sorts that shapes our perception.
Attention is, in a sense, morality, a personal guidance system with hierarchies and priorities. Memory and familiarity often direct our attention to a narrow, oriented, and curated observation of the elements around us in a manner in which our environment resonates with our sense of self in every fight, flight, or connecting situation.
But what is this sense of attention? How does it “feel” when we select, focus, observe, and connect with our object of interest?
I found my answer in the words of the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis: “Doubtless for each one of us there is a separate, irreplaceable sense which if one does not find it and isolate it on time and cohabit with it later, to fill it with visible acts, one is lost.” – The Little Seafarer.
It is this separate, irreplaceable sense of embodied intention which characterizes the way you or I are in the process of cognition, creation, and evolution. In other words, the act itself feels like me — It reinforces my sense of identity when I select, isolate and connect with the object of interest, leaving the rest of the world to fade into the background.
The images in this series essentially represent spontaneous embraces of an intention with the reality of places I consider home. Athens, Lemnos, and New York sparked and shaped my attention, each in their way. Overlapping, at times, in my consciousness, fusing a sense of timelessness and non-locality into a kaleidoscope of curiosities.