Attention’s deepest ground is the material medium of perception itself

Evidence

The true challenge of an attention ecology is, however, to be found elsewhere, in a second displacement that gives us access to the most important stratum of this double ground. The ‘abstract’ painting of the twentieth century taught us to pay attention to the concrete materiality of the canvas itself: in addition to the human figures sheltering under umbrellas, in addition to the background setting representing buildings and a tree, I may also focus my attention on the diagonal scratches that scuff the surface of the painting. It is a second material ground that appears here: not located in a Calcutta street on a rainy day through a representation phenomenon, but situated here and now in front of me, in the concrete material presence of the painting. When I look at the original, this second ground is comprised of a watercolour on a thick weave coated in coloured pigments. If I look at this same image on a screen, like at the moment as I write this conclusion, it is pixels activated by an electric circuit. For you who are holding this book in your hands, it is black ink printed on a white page. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 556

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The two displacements — from figure to represented background, then to the canvas/pixels/paper materiality — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reframing of what attention ecology attends to. It resists one-sentence summary.
• XREF: The shift from represented content to material medium echoes McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ and the Frankfurt School’s focus on technical reproduction (Benjamin’s aura in the age of mechanical reproduction). — connects to: Attention’s task is learning to perceive its own background — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 547; Attention acts as a gate that admits pre-existing sensory information into consciousness — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 393; Directed attention does not weaken world-consciousness but relegates the world to ground — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 881 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Attention acts as a gate that admits pre-existing sensory information into consciousness #contradicts (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 393
• Attention itself can be the creative medium, not just the output #expands (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 52
• Directed attention does not weaken world-consciousness but relegates the world to ground #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 881