ATTENTION REDIRECTION

Social Practice - Minor project - Powerplay

How can we reimagine the model that the Attention Economy is built on, in order to implement it into the physical sphere, so that we have the opportunity to engage with our spaces and connect within our shared reality rather than individualistic realities we live in online?

This project explores the Attention Economy, and how it is affecting our ability to give attention to our environment in the physical world. Our attention in the online sphere is the prime source of capital for large social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram due to the way their advertising models are built. Through participant observation I discovered Tristan Harris (2014) who discusses that these companies use a variety of aggressive tools of persuasion to ensure we stay engaged in our online worlds, which draws away from the physical realm. One key tool of persuasion that is used is showing a user only posts that the user would like, placing users into what Eli Pariser (2011) coined as a filter bubble. These filter bubbles construct individual realities for people due to the hyper personalisation of the online sphere.

This research asks, How can we reimagine the model that the Attention Economy is built off, in order to implement it into the physical sphere, so that we have the opportunity to engage with our spaces and connect within our shared reality rather than individualistic realities we live in online?

This research thus explores what the foundation and effects of this economy are and from that how we can rehumanize it.

To understand the concept of the Attention Economy better I departed from the literature of Jenny Odell (2019) and analysed it. Odell argues that the physical world is our last common reference point, and that there is an utmost need to deepen our attention rather than simply resisting the attention economy. Her idea of redirecting our attention to our natural surroundings provoked me to examine my own attention habits. I began by mapping out locations in public space where I am most vulnerable to falling for the Attention Economy, as well as using non-participant observation to analyse others in these points of vulnerability.

Through a variety of design experiments, I have created a public installation to entice people to rediscover their surroundings, by highlighting elements, engaging the senses and contrasting the shared reality experience to the individual online reality experience in these points of vulnerability.

You can follow my research + design process at :

https://powerplayalicia.hotglue.me/ 




This project was part of the Powerplay Minor at WDKA.
Together we curated an auditory exhibition at :

https://www.poweroflistening.nl/

Full research document : 

https://issuu.com/aliciarottkefitzpatrick/docs/alicia_rottke_fitzpatrick_0947153_attention_re_di