Attention can make the act of perceiving itself palpable to the perceiver

Evidence

A picture represented something other than itself; a painting represents itself. A picture mediates between a viewer and an object in pictorial space; a painting is an object to which the viewer relates without mediation…It is on the surface and in the same space as we are. Painting and viewer coexist in the same reality. … Incidentally, this points to another way in which attention brings us outside the self: it’s not just the other that becomes real to us, but our attention itself that becomes palpable. Thrown back on ourselves by a “wall” and not a window, we can also begin to see ourselves seeing. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 383

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the picture/painting distinction and the turn-by which attention becomes reflexive — core to Odell’s account of attention as world-constitution.
• SEED: The ‘wall not window’ idea is an essay angle on how experiences that throw attention back on itself build reflective selfhood, applicable to architecture and interface design alike.
• XREF: connects to: Recognition of one’s own sensory ignorance is a condition of learning to observe — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 229