note
The Economics of Attention Style and Substance in the Age of Information
Richard A. Lanham
Inquiry of all sorts has to be serious. That is its organizing premise. But if you subtract the object of that seriousness by putting a urinal in its place, that seriousness is turned into a game. To understand it, you must then write a serious treatise on games and play, wondering all the while what you are about. The critic, like a bull bemused by the toreador’s flashing cape, starts pawing the ground, angry and confused. Such confusion has made Duchamp famous. The urinal proved to be an extraordinarily efficient generator of fame because other people—the critics and historians—did all of Duchamps work for him.
“That oscillation constitutes a serious lesson about seriousness. But it does not constitute great art, if we think of art as composed of stuff shaped into beauty, as forming part of a goods economy. In this industrial framework, Duchamp is the charlatan some have taken him for. But if you are willing to put him into an attention economy rather than a goods economy, let him work in attention, not in stuff, then things look different. Duchamp, as few before him, knew how to catalyze human attention in the most economical way possible. The disproportion between his oeuvre, the physical stuff he left behind, and his reputation can be explained in no other way. If we are looking for economists of attention, he provides a good place to start, an excellent lesson in efficiency.”
a) Put Armitage shanks logo onto an IKEA mug
b) Give away as a gift (Put on display in exhibition)
c) Get tech drawings made on C.A.D of mug (Production drawings)
d) Make mock up of Evening Post article for wall at college (For Photo only)
e) Make meeting with Armitage and IKEA as performance....
The object is turned into an idea, an idea that catches peoples attention. When people worship the idea over the object the idea switches back into the object again.
Lets take “the” fountain. We can't, because it is not “the” Fountain but “a” fountain. The fountain has a great story.
Richard A. Lanham
Inquiry of all sorts has to be serious. That is its organizing premise. But if you subtract the object of that seriousness by putting a urinal in its place, that seriousness is turned into a game. To understand it, you must then write a serious treatise on games and play, wondering all the while what you are about. The critic, like a bull bemused by the toreador’s flashing cape, starts pawing the ground, angry and confused. Such confusion has made Duchamp famous. The urinal proved to be an extraordinarily efficient generator of fame because other people—the critics and historians—did all of Duchamps work for him.
“That oscillation constitutes a serious lesson about seriousness. But it does not constitute great art, if we think of art as composed of stuff shaped into beauty, as forming part of a goods economy. In this industrial framework, Duchamp is the charlatan some have taken him for. But if you are willing to put him into an attention economy rather than a goods economy, let him work in attention, not in stuff, then things look different. Duchamp, as few before him, knew how to catalyze human attention in the most economical way possible. The disproportion between his oeuvre, the physical stuff he left behind, and his reputation can be explained in no other way. If we are looking for economists of attention, he provides a good place to start, an excellent lesson in efficiency.”
a) Put Armitage shanks logo onto an IKEA mug
b) Give away as a gift (Put on display in exhibition)
c) Get tech drawings made on C.A.D of mug (Production drawings)
d) Make mock up of Evening Post article for wall at college (For Photo only)
e) Make meeting with Armitage and IKEA as performance....
The object is turned into an idea, an idea that catches peoples attention. When people worship the idea over the object the idea switches back into the object again.
Lets take “the” fountain. We can't, because it is not “the” Fountain but “a” fountain. The fountain has a great story.
posted by olliebetts at 4:53 AM
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