Manual-blindfold walks can restore attention to place through deliberately paced reveals

Evidence

Take the French choreographer Myriam Lefkowitz, who has for more than a decade created intimate “pieces” that involve taking a person, whose eyes are closed, on a handheld walk—through a new place, or a familiar one. Along the way, now and again, Lefkowitz stops, and may gently direct her companion’s head this way or that, covering the closed eyes with her hands. When she opens this temporary (manual) blindfold, her companion’s eyes open, too, onto a view that Lefkowitz has selected. For the subject of these walks, the itinerary becomes a series of “snapshots,” linked by stretches of blind movement, in which a heightened awareness of sound and smell and touch awakens an unseen world. One can scroll very quickly through ten images on Instagram, but it is nothing like strolling through ten views on one’s own block, with Lefkowitz as your guide, walking close and in step. This is Attention Activism that feels sweet and near. It is, to be sure, a kind of “doing nothing”—on a higher level. And a powerful way to connect to the actual magic of our senses, and the minds they inform. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 380

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: Strong scene-spark: a character whose sighted life has been flattened by feeds takes a blindfolded walk and learns that attention is a curated, paced, physical practice.
• QUESTION: The claim that ten slow guided views outrank ten Instagram images is asserted, not shown—what would a rigorous test of the pacing-versus-plenitude hypothesis look like?
• XREF: connects to: Attention training reveals the many distinct ways one can fail to notice something; Attending closely to movement reveals a whole vivid soundscape within walking — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 431; Attentional scaffolds controllable by individuals constitute techniques of attention. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 45 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Attention training reveals the many distinct ways one can fail to notice something; Attending closely to movement reveals a whole vivid soundscape within walking — Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening, 431; Attentional scaffolds controllable by individuals constitute techniques of attention. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 45 (+3 more)