Attention’s task is learning to perceive its own background

Evidence

This may be the greatest challenge for our attention echology: how can we adapt our way of looking at backgrounds so as to see new aspects in them that had not yet been perceived as aspects. The whole of the work that is concluding here has been directed towards this end: how can we hear the echo chamber that nurtures the voice of the soloist? How can we perceive the resonating vault behind the media buzz? How can I do justice to the joint attention that gives me the confidence I need to speak? In other words, when all of our sensory and academic education has taught us to notice prominent figures, how can we see and hear the – inextricably communal and environmental – ground that supports our existence? How can we communicate with the commons? — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 547

Categorization

• XREF: The figure/ground reorientation echoes the figure-ground-field mapping from Schafer’s soundscape work and the commons concept. — connects to: Automatic attention is sedimented past attention and belongs in any attention ecology — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 373; Focused attention necessarily amputates awareness of other stimuli; Attention’s deepest ground is the material medium of perception itself — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 556 (+2 more)
• SEED: Closing essay angle: attention as the faculty that must turn on itself to perceive the ground/commons that supports it.

Broader Connections

• Attention’s deepest ground is the material medium of perception itself #expands (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 556
• Grounding perception in figure-on-ground configuration requires original nihilation by attention #qualifies (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 192