Reading Response: Distracted Reception

The Article, Distracted Reception: Time, Art, and Technology, consisted of a theoretical approach to understanding the reception of art in modern society. Its foundation lies in Walter Benjamin's theories regarding art in the age of mechanical production. However, the article takes Benjamin's discussion, based on the emergence of cinema and its effects, and carries it forward through the innovations of both television and computer and internet. In doing so, he suggests a possible "de-linear-ization" of logic and attention with the emergence of these new technologies, as they plunged us into a seemingly unnavigable sea of ideas, agendas, and information saturated content/media.

To illustrate his point, the author presents some flaws of the attention vs. distraction paradigm, especially within the realm of how we define modern art. He explains how art is inherently a process that we engage in for the purposes of diverting our attention from what is in front of us. He states that we go to galleries to intentionally distract ourselves from reality, and in order to accomplish said goal, we must focus on the art that exists in the gallery. This is described as diverted attention. However it becomes more complicated as we take in whole gallery experience: the other viewers, the employees, the cars out the window. At this point we have become distracted from our original focus; from the distraction that we used to divert our attention in the first place. In his words, "art distracts and art is received in distraction... ...Art is received with attention invested with an anxiety about distraction; both distraction from the work and the "distraction from the distraction," that is attention to the work. Here, attention is distraction (from distraction); and distraction is attention (to other objects)"

I believe that the author is suggesting we imagine our process of logic in a way that is less antiquated, allowing for exploration, or what antiquated terms have always defined as distraction. In essence, we are in constant flux between attention and distraction, both variously occurring in the realm of what has happened and what is yet to happen. Thinking that we can ride a solid line, or divert from that line and return to it, can be thought of, in a sense, as irrational with regards to the emergence of computer and internet technology. Rather than considering our unique, unpredictable, speculative, and investigations of the unmapped virtual space (the internet) as a distraction from what we should be doing, we should understand that distraction and attention as we have defined them, are no longer under our control. We should embrace our new tools and understandings to their fullest potential.

Here are some visual schemas that illustrate my speculations about distraction/ perception, and human thought/ analysis.