“Prompt”

Respond to a moment of discovery/learning/epiphany about noticing which emerges for you either from a reading or discussion in class. This post should demonstrate that you’ve engaged with the course material in a way which moves beyond describing what the author or someone else said. This post should lead you to a question or query which you will explore through making.

Seeing the Unseen is my current media studio, regarding the topic of noticing and the mundane everyday tasks that don’t particularly capture our attention unless we truly focus. This shift of attention is something that captured me regarding the course itself and through our discussions and analysis of the readings in the first two weeks of class. The reading that resonated with my point of view was John Mason’s “Forms of Noticing”. Here, Mason describes the act of noticing as “evaluation, judgment, and validation” – something that I had not previously thought of at all. There are so many mundane moments (for example, waiting for the tram or walking down the street) – actions that are ingrained in everyday life, that they become a natural part of an individuals routine. Attentive Noticing, also described in the reading, draws this focus into the everyday tasks – allowing people to expand and think in a worldly view and paying close attention to their surroundings. Often, our brain becomes attuned to the environment that we are in – for example, sitting in my room, writing this – if I ‘force’ myself to attentively notice my surroundings I can hear birds outside, the pipes pushing water from the laundry, construction (unfortunately), the buzz of a fan – all things I did not regularly notice before. In the reading “Ontonography”, the quote “(Ontonography) catalogs….exemplifying the ways human interventions can never contain the mysterious alien worlds of objects” – this quote identifies to my ways of developing this media task as the chaos and interconnecting of my media is in the smaller details, rather than the larger picture – often something unnoticed in the everyday life.

Although Attentive Noticing can be done, it often requires a high level of patience and skill to be able to recognize it and develop it all the time. To notice, it to not only recognize the foreground of an event or situation, it is also the skill to recognize the background too – the whole surroundings are important to the art of noticing.

Thus, not only gathering my own ideas about noticing and paying close attention to detail – I have also started to develop the skills for noticing mundane and everyday activities that I participate in and how the shape and impact my state of living. Thus, through Seeing the Unseen, I would like to develop and hone in on these skills through the art of videography and photography – bringing these new and fresh ideas to life.