{"title":"Stay with Me: Uncertain Indices and Attentional Presence in Chat Interfaces","authors":"Maja Bak Herrie, Mette-Marie Zacher Søresen","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65.140199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65.140199","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, Herrie and Sørensen examine the mediation of typing indicators (“…”) in online messaging. Their point of departure is a scene from the contemporary novel Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan (2020), in which the ‘dots’ play a prominent role. Their analysis shows how typing indicators, as interface design, mediate the complex communication situation in which they take part: from being mere signals, they have slipped into our emotional lives. From a semiotic perspective (Charles S. Peirce), the authors define typing indicators as uncertain indices which through unknowability and suspense establish an attentional presence. In continuation hereof, the authors argue that the acts of writing and waiting in contemporary attentional ecologies (Yves Citton) through the mediation of typing indicators as indicators of attentional presence, could be considered a mode of caring (Bernard Stiegler).","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49510542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Your Tongue Here (Or Not): On Imagining Whether To Take a Bite (Or Not)","authors":"Sue Spaid","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65.140201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65.140201","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by recent visits to the Disgusting Food Museum (DFM) in Mälmo, SE and “FOOD: Bigger than Your Plate” (2019) at the Victoria & Albert in London, UK, this article explores the saliency of “disgust” given its role in the “attention economy,” hipster allure and emotional encoding. Initially appalled by the DFM’s demonizing national delicacies as disgusting, the author soon realised that doing so has a “silver lining” in terms of attention. One aspect that remains under-explored is the connection between imagination and attention. The relationship between taste and disgust grants us a vehicle for working this out, since human beings are wired for disgust, yet what disgusts is learnt. Unlike basic emotions for which we have salience and/or memories, we deploy our imagination to anticipate disgust. To defeat disgust’s alarmist ploys, “food adventurers” must block their imagination. “Disgusting food” not only grabs people’s attention, but it tends to deceive.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46447068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attention Disorders Between Impairment and Ferality: Towards a Political Aesth-Ethics of Dismantlement","authors":"Yves Citton","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140093","url":null,"abstract":"Attention in the 21st century is commonly perceived as being in insufficient supply. Increasing numbers of children and adults arediagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) worldwide. This article suggests that our understanding of attentional deficits could gain from a double reframing. First, the notion of “impairment” (as recently discussed by Jonathan Sterne) seems more appropriate than the category of “disorder” to unfold the stakes of attentional problems. Second, approaching attentional issues as collective and organizational questions seems more empowering than as individual shortcomings—and the notion of “ferality” (as developed by Anna Tsing and the contributors to the Feral Atlas) provides an enlightening tool to account for the role played byinfrastructures in the production of attentional deficits. As a result, the article sketches two compasses designed to help us develop a “collapsonaut attention” more in tune with the challenges of the Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48527452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Keeping the War Outside the Frame: Ellipsis as a Means of Redirection Toward Women's Perspectives in Two War Narratives","authors":"Bernardita M. Cubillos","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140105","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how cinema’s material discontinuity can stimulate the attention of a distracted audience and prompt reflectionon historical violence. By examining Yasujiro Ozu’s Sanma no aji (1962) and Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), it argues that ellipsis is a powerful technique used to construct an argument about the relationship between war and women’s social roles. Specifically, the article analyses how these films use the ellipsis to enhance the resistance of women who act against the official thread of History. Finally, the findings highlight the potential of cinema to challenge dominant narratives and encourage alternative approaches to representing violence and social roles.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48436588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Performativity of Disinterested Attention for the Experience of Contemporary Art","authors":"Francesca Natale","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140114","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to point out that attentional practices don’t simply overlap with control and action/reaction dynamics; they are also strictly connected to non-productivity, non-instrumentality, disinterestedness, contemplation as performative inactivity. Disinterested attention (a definition formulated by Bence Nanay) and free-floating attention help to better understand the apparently seamless and unproblematic transition from passive spectator to active participant/agent of contemporary art. If considering attention in relation to executive functions (planning and organizing our experience in the world we live in) could be persuasive, a self-evident definition of attention strictly considered as “selection for action” is less convincing, and the weakness of this connection becomes clear when goal-oriented attitude is pushed into the background. Attention is often researched into to improve our performances and to overcome the inevitable “blind spots”: experiencing art is about a different way of paying attention, that is fluctuating, “suspended,” fragmented.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46236901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Silence! The Background of Attention as a Battleground","authors":"A. Vandsø","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140098","url":null,"abstract":"The commodification of silence responding to a disturbing environment is integrated in the growing attention economy. This paper suggests that the idea of silence embedded in these products preclude fruitful understandings of—and interventions in—theproblematics they address, and it proposes Cage’s silence as a more efficacious model for understanding our problems with a disturbing environment, and a better practice for intervening in it. Informed by Yves Citton’s ecology of attention the paper argues that Cage’s silence centers the interplay of attention, subjectivity and intentionality, as it takes play between us and the background, which to some extent produces us. And finally, it suggests that the Cagean practice of paying attention to this background is what Citton calls a “micropolitics of attention”, because it reveals the background as a battleground.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45953121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Free Art Calls for a Free Society: On the Freedom of Art and Autonomy as Project","authors":"Kim West","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140118","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, the far right “culture war” has to an increasing extent been allowed to set the terms for cultural policy debates, in Sweden and internationally. In the Swedish context, empty accusations against public cultural institutions of “wokeist” bias and “cancel culture” have found support in a public report from the governmental Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis, which claims that national public funding bodies are imposing politically correct demands on their applicants, with a “detrimental influence” on the freedom of art. This article shows that the ACPA lacks grounds for these claims. Taking its cue from the ACPA’s report, it instead focuses on the fundamental and contested concept of the freedom or the autonomy of art. It seeks to outline what would need to characterise a critical concept of the autonomy of art today, and asks what the political implications would be of a rigorous understanding of such a concept. It argues that cultural policy should be understood as a project of cultural democratization, which should in turn be understood as a project of autonomy.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45371107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Artists and the Public's Attention Since the 1960s: An Exploration of How Artists Seek to Capture the Audience's Attention","authors":"Patrick van Rossem","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140107","url":null,"abstract":"Art historical research shows that artists, especially since the 1960s rise in museum and art gallery attendance do not always trust the audience’s ability to deal with their art. The choice for a performative aesthetic, for example, has also been a method for reasserting rather than—as is often thought—relinquishing artistic control. The article looks at aesthetic strategies developed by artists who desire(d) a more attentive look from their audiences. It considers works made by artists in the sixties and seventies. It is a fact that the appearance of mass audiences goes hand in hand with the creation of artworks that have “attention” as their subject. Secondly, the article takes a look at more contemporary work. Faced with spectators that spend about 28 seconds looking at artworks and reading the accompanying labels, artists are developing strategies that slow spectators down, thus hoping to channel and hold their attention.","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48018659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Lund, Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen, Mette-Marie Zacher Søresen, Maja Bak Herrie
{"title":"Introduction: The Aesthetics of Attention","authors":"J. Lund, Birgitte Stougaard Pedersen, Mette-Marie Zacher Søresen, Maja Bak Herrie","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140090","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43865340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Critique of the Power of Prophecy","authors":"A. Enström","doi":"10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v32i65-66.140116","url":null,"abstract":"During the winter of 2022/23 the wave of protests in the public and private sectors in Britain intensified: Workers across the NHS, Royal Mail, civil service, and the transport network were already on strike in the ongoing row over conditions and pay, the London Underground had ratified a directive for an additional half a year of industrial action, whereas teachers, firefighters, and junior doctors were scheduled to vote on taking action. Regardless of how the conflict’s impact on the rights and welfare of the British workers will play out, the labor strike is a salient example of the (im)possibility of society’s alteration. On the one hand, it represents the legitimization of the wage-labor system; by aiming for improved conditions within the governing economic order, it also works as its reinforcement. From this perspective, industrial action on the labor market simply displays our lost capacity to imagine radically other futures. On the other hand, a critical understanding of this loss can itself have a powerful effect on our capacity to imagine another future. It is also from such a standpoint that the wide-ranging acts of solidarity we saw on the streets of London and in other cities come to symbolize precisely that collective action to—on the level of experience—pursue an alternative to what late philosopher Mark Fisher termed “capitalist realism”. A strategy that instead of seeking to overcome capital, focuses “on what capital must always obstruct: the collective capacity to produce, care and enjoy.”1 For Fisher, the practice of collective imagination can incite thoughts of a different world and strike action, among other forms, can be understood as the materialization of such practice. Prophetic Culture, by London based Italian philosopher and former anarchist gone theologian Federico Campagna (1984), performatively places itself at this very hinge moment of pressure and confusion where the demanding ecological, political, spiritual and psychic conditions calls for new narratives of worlding. At a","PeriodicalId":38858,"journal":{"name":"Nordic Journal of Aesthetics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42645537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}