Social encounters in the open and the importance of attention
One of the positive side effects of the lockdown that people have been talking about is how we have reclaimed our streets from vehicular traffic and even met our neighbours. As one of mine said when I met her (for the first time) on the street, “so people actually live in all these houses, who knew?!” Being kept in our houses has reminded many of us how valuable public open space is, and this article in The Guardian relates how pandemics have influenced urban design in the past and how this one is making us rethink open space.
Being in lockdown has got me downloading e-books and one that seemed like it might be helpful was “How to do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. I thought it might be followed up with “How Not to Go Anywhere” and “How Not to Meet Anyone” but it turned out not to be anything like that at all, but rather how “the politics of technology are stubbornly entangled with the politics of public space and the environment.” The author’s discussion of attention itself, leaving aside its financial exploitation, is fascinating. She cites experiments that show that where we place our attention determines what enters our consciousness, even if we’re subconsciously perceiving more. What we pay attention to entirely determines our reality. That’s quite important because it implies that it should be quite easy to change your reality, something many people are keen to do but believe it would require a radical change in their circumstances (or illegal substances with nasty side effects). It does also suggest that maybe we shouldn’t let an algorithm decide for us what we pay attention to, something I have to admit to doing more than usual in the last month or so…
The rendering here was for a project at the foot of the Songshan mountain in China, revered as the birthplace of Kung Fu. They show a riverfront landscape conceived as part of the commercial district of a larger, mainly residential development with SAOTA.
‘til next time.
Stuart
PS I hope you enjoy having links in the newsletter again. Here is some interesting eye candy for you from the Issues In Science and Technology Gallery section, the Corona Project from before it was a virus, and some beautiful glass viruses.
Songshan Riverfront - winter.