For ATT/ention we invited artists to dissect notions of distraction through digital art. We encouraged them to explore the theme in terms of content and/or form. Without prompting, the artists each created interactive works – the viewer can elect to become engaged with the various conceptions of distraction or be pulled elsewhere.
DARCY MAE
FAHAMU PECOU
COURTNEY
MCCLELLAN
DAVE GREBER
TAK MASUDA
ALL DAT GLITTERS AINT GOALS, EP
By Fahamu Pecou
Using satire, through both language and image, Pecou offers the viewer a critical glimpse into the insecurities being played out in hip-hop music, visual culture and American popular culture at large and illustrates our ongoing quest in the "pursuit of happiness."
*Note the glitter speaker was a curatorial choice. The artist's work is an EP. Listen to it here. C'mon. Listen.
HAPPINESS SPECTRUM
By Tak Masuda
Understanding the distraction of the journey to attain happiness is the purpose of Happiness Spectrum. Each lightbulb represented an experience in life wherein the aggregate effect cannot be measured, nor understood, until the End. A retrospective view unfolded a lucid picture of the journey to achieve Happiness and revealed a richness and beauty that colors each of our lives. Olivier Messiaen's "Visions de l'amen" inspired the pulses of light on the lightboard. For Messiaen, who experienced a type of synesthesia, a particular color could evoke harmonies or sounds. He composed “Visions” mostly in the key of A, which he associated with blue, the color of the sky and eternity.
*Viewers were encouraged to manipulate the bulbs into a pattern or placement that rings harmonious to them.
608.518.8566
By Darcy Mae
After initial attraction, another element must hold the viewer's attention. People maintain interest when they are included in exclusive conversations.
RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE
By Dave Greber
“I often explore distraction in my work in terms of both content and form. The concept of this piece was about the instant a distraction pops into your mind, glorified and exploded. The character is sitting in an (electric) chair sending his consciousness into a created world where he and his vice (beer) are joined.” -D.G.
*Viewers were invited to grab a beer off the bar and drink with Dave.
NOVEL
By Courtney McClellan
Novel is living fiction. Based on a 2013 study that claims reading fiction improves empathy, McClellan re-performed these finds by immersing herself in imagined worlds from books and television. To breach the thin digital barrier between fantasy and reality, she reached out to the characters she observed in a familiar way: she emailed them. Crossing reading with binge-watching, literary fiction with fan fiction, and correspondence with the fake emails on the laptops at the Apple Store, Novel explores what comes from an over abundance of the fictional.
*Viewers were encouraged to sit down and sift through Courtney’s emails.
