Artworks can function as prostheses that train attention on the familiar environment

Evidence

In this sense, what Hockney and countless other artists offer is a kind of attentional prosthesis. Such an offering assumes that the familiar and proximate environment is as deserving of this attention, if not more, than those hallowed objects we view in a museum. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 365

Hockney, who defines looking as a “positive act,” would have been pleased. For him, actual looking was a skill and a conscious decision that people rarely practiced; there was “a lot to see” only if you were willing and able to see it. In this sense, what Hockney and countless other artists offer is a kind of attentional prosthesis. Such an offering assumes that the familiar and proximate environment is as deserving of this attention, if not more, than those hallowed objects we view in a museum. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 365

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Attentional prosthesis’ is a key Odell term — art as a tool that extends the viewer’s capacity to look, aimed at the proximate rather than the museum.
• XREF: This directly counters the withdrawal misreading the reader is defending against: attention-prostheses push us into the everyday world, not away from it. — connects to: Attending to a work can itself constitute an artistic act — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 437; Both creating and receiving art demand skilled labor on attention — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 435; Attention in aesthetic experience historically derives from prayer — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 436
• SEED: Essays about ‘attentional prostheses’ in everyday life — what everyday objects or routines could serve this retraining function without requiring museum visits, feeding the privilege critique.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 365