6 minute read
What We Notice
What We Notice
By Vanessa Chan
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If you walked out of the room that you’re in right now, pen and paper, would you be able to draw it from memory? Make a list of the things inside? Describe it in 10 nonmetaphorical statements?
These questions are some of the 131 prompts suggested by Rob Walker in his book The Art of Noticing. The book was inspired by the open-ended assignment he leaves for his NYC School of Visual Arts graduate students: practise paying attention. It’s what transforms looking into seeing. To budding designers, and anyone who’s looking for a creative vitamin boost, he advises that “making a habit of noticing helps cultivate an original perspective, a distinct point of view.”
These prompts draw inspiration from artists, writers, students, a n d v a r i o u s o t h e r s w h o contributed their approaches to noticing, organised into five chapters (Looking, Sensing, Going Places, Connecting with Others, Being Alone). His editor sums it up: “First you look around, then you end up looking inside.” Structural direction aside, the statement reflects the truthfulness of the book’s subtitle, “rediscover what really matters to you”. What you pay attention to reveals a state of mind, a set of c o n c e r n s , s u g g e s t s t h e conditions under which these observations are made.
I first skimmed through this book mid-2019, prejudiced against the yuppie self-help coffee-table kind of book I’d thought it’d be. The kind that seemed to speak to a middlec l a s s w h i t e p ro f e s s i o n a l audience residing in cities I’d never been to. I mean, the suggestion to “Donate Time” as a response to ‘time famine’, s o a s t o c h a n g e o n e ’s perspective of time spent, wouldn’t resonate with anyone who works two jobs, or for whom the principles of mutual aid is a material condition. That being said, the slightly offset eyes on its cover seemed to look back at me from the world outside.
When the small gallery I’d been sitting in emptied out at lunch, I started paying attention to the lighting. For a particular i n s t a l l a t i o n o f e m p t y hourglasses, brown coffee filters were fitted around the lights, softening the edges of the spotlight and casting fascinating patterns onto the ceiling. I sat on the floor, changing my position every now and then, considering the relationship of works in the room as their arrangement shifted in my view. Did I mine some previously unassessed profundity, or was I simply playing both the caged animal and its enrichment team for the afternoon?
Both options are equally satisfying, in Walker’s view. The book can be discussed in the context of art, design, business, but also leisure, and the personal. Sarah Todd makes note of the intersection b e t w e e n f o c u s i n g o n e ’s attention and mindfulness, an obsession that only grows in proportion to the ‘attention panic’ of an increasingly noisy, uncertain world. Carl Honore’s In Praise of Slow hasn’t gotten any less relevant or popular since its 2004 release. The desire to live with intention and regain control amidst the sweeping currents of urban life has been expressed and explored in every wellness column and social media detox wrap-up post you’ve ever read, so I won’t press the point.
A y e a r o n , C O V I D h a s deepened the complexity of this particular flavour of modern discontent. We have been experiencing both an a w a r e n e s s o f o u r interdependent fates and the isolation of physical separation, a simultaneous disconnection from the external world and hyper-connection due to accelerated digitisation. This reality colours everything.
The prompt “Make a Weekly List” is inspired by American a c t i v i s t A m y S i s k i n d documenting the gradual transformation of democratic norms. Whether your list zooms i n o n e n c r o a c h i n g authoritarianism, like the original, or something more mundane, the point is that ‘normal’ is whatever we stop noticing. When every second headline is proclaiming the unprecedented and the ‘new normal’, while the world is literally on fire, this exercise b e c o m e s p a r t i c u l a r l y destabilising. The instruction to “Look Out A Window” we usually take for granted and contemplate what we can’t control is a lot more depressing than inspiring at the moment.
The book is its own salve, though. “Exhaust A Place”, calls attention to the ‘infrao r d i n a r y ’ , F r e n c h w r i t e r Georges Perec’s critique of media sensationalism. In his book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, he made a list of everything he saw, save for the monumental architecture a ro u n d h i m , a s t u b b o r n commitment to the ‘poetry of the everyday’ in opposition to the big things that govern our lives. In fact, this is what archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger argues we should record, “things that over time will change and are very much tied to our historical era”. “ Tr e a s u r e t h e D r e g s ” , appropriate from preexisting material, “Search for the Big in the Small”. The conceptual distinction between prompts is often weak, but that itself opens up possibilities. What details capture this period of your life?
I thought of this list that I’d k e p t d u r i n g S i n g a p o re ’s lockdown:
- Burning sugar- Frying aromatics- Fumigation- Cigarette smoke- Japanese curry- Teriyaki sauce- Browning butter- Fried eggs- Burning toast- Jasmine oil- Fried chicken
I collected these scents from my tenth floor living room. The o l f a c t o r y e x p e r i e n c e s suggested the people and actions that had created them, a perception no less substantial than the visual. They slipped imperceptibly between the p u b l i c a n d p r i v a t e , communicating an alienated i n t i m a c y m a d e u n i q u e l y possible by the familiar theatre within which I received them. In extraordinary times, there’s pleasure taken from knowing t h a t a l l a ro u n d y o u t h e everyday was happening, that the city would offer you c o m f o r t i n a n o n y m o u s connection.
Saint Lucy by Agnieszka Szuber @koolazowa
