Attention Shoppers: Everybody Please Rise

April 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

A spectator has the unique power to wield attention. The ability to capture and hold the attention of spectators is a desirable skill for any performer to have, and is part of a raft of skills and tools utilised by performers which collectively result in ’stage presence’.

From the point of view of cognitive linguistics, when we use these metaphors we are not simply making poetic allusions in place of more symbolically structured knowledge or transcendent reason. Rather in using these and related metaphors to describe the performance event we are relating the formal structure of thinking itself. From this perspective, almost all thinking is metaphorical and these metaphors (which ultimately are sourced from bodily experience) overlap and inter-relate to form what we think of as bodies of knowledge. This paper will use the cognitive linguistic approach developed by Lakoff and Johnson and others to excavate the metaphors and image schemas associated with attention in relation to performance. Particular attention (sic) will be given to the use of metaphors used in performer training as a possible means of empowering the performer and developing stage presence.

Posted in Attention, Cognitive Linguistics, Conference Abstract, Johnson, Mark, Lakoff, George, Performance, Presence, Schema | No Comments »

Attention Grabbing States of Mind

April 18th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The central question asked by this presentation is; does the state of a person’s mind affect their ability to attract attention. Secondarily to this, is such a correlation exists, what mechanism might be posited to explain this effect.

Brennan, T. (2004). The transmission of affect. Ithaca; London, Cornell University Press.

Sheldrake, R. (2003). The sense of being stared at: and other aspects of the extended mind. New York, Crown Publishers.

Posted in Attention, Brennan, Teresa, Conference Abstract, Consciousness, Sense, Sheldrake, Rupert | No Comments »

Clover 3

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

And this morning I found these

Posted in Attention, Clover, Story | No Comments »

Clover 4

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

And this 5-leafed specimin.

I’m not intentionally looking for them, they just seem to be ‘jumping out’ at me. Very strange.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Intentionality, Story | No Comments »

Clover 5

May 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Just one today.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Story | No Comments »

Counting Clover

May 18th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I’ve been thinking about that Clover.

Maybe the reasons why the four-leafed clover is jumping out at me is that I am somehow non-consciously primed to look down at the clover and give it minimal attention, (even though I have no conscious awareness that I am doing this). This primed looking must somehow involve subitizing the number of leaves because if I was counting or estimating the number I would have to be conscious of the act. As far as I know the evidence is pretty conclusive that there are (at least) two ways of perceiving numbers (Kaufman, Pylyshyn, Trick, Dehaene, etc.) and subitizing, which is innate and immediate, is the only one that seems to be able to operate non-consciously.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Consciousness, Mathematics, Story | No Comments »

Presence, Being, and Charisma

June 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It will be claimed that the concept of charisma is identified in one or more of four processes;

• Celebrity recognisability - in which charisma is a function of the degree to which the possessor has gained public and/or media attention.
• Supernatural power - in which the possessor is assumed to have some gift, energy, or magic that confers charisma upon them.
• Actual authority - where the possessor of charisma also has access to material resources, knowledge, force, etc that is desirable.
• Beauty/attractiveness - in which the possessor of charisma also possesses other, less mysterious, attractions.

The notion of presence within performance (and in non-theatrical contexts) will be related to these various processes of charisma production. It will be proposed that there are techniques to produce presence/charisma in performance in which the embodied signs of these processes are manifested.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Energy, Performance, Presence | No Comments »

Attention Physics

June 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Attracting attention is a physical response to an environmental or social situation. In certain situations it is necessary, if not evolutionarily adaptive, to be able to call attention to oneself; when drowning for example, or in an attempt to attract a sexual partner or advertise one’s prowess in a particular field. Whilst this might obviously entail gross motor actions in a deliberate attempt to attract attention (shouting, broad movements etc), it is inevitable that other, more subtle, behaviours also exist for the management of attention. These behaviours include such minimal and largely unconscious proprioceptive actions as eye gaze direction, length of pauses in speech, syncopation of physical and vocal patterns, etc. Given that such fine-grained behaviour is usually beyond the reach of conscious control, it is likely that these are better controlled through the adopting of an overall mental ‘attitude’, and using this attitude or mindset to organise proprioception. The succesful organisation of proprioception around an attitude of attractiveness results in the physical manifestation of ‘presence’.

In order to develop the ability to attract attention in this way, and to develop presence, it may be necessary to learn techniques for the subtle orientation of the physical body such that the necessary attitude is produced. It is likely that such techniques would take the form of holistic exercises intended to allow the embodiment of such an attitude and its realization through the control mechanisms of the proprioceptive senses.

Posted in Attention, Embodiment, Exercises, Presence, Proprioception, Training | No Comments »

The Belief Economy

July 21st, 2006 Fred McVittie

All psychogenic, psychosomatic, and meaning-response based processes work better in the presence of belief. For example, the so-called ‘placebo’ effect in which therapeutic affects are attributed to non-active substances, only functions when the patient believes that the placebo is actually active. A placebo administered without the patient’s knowledge has no effect at all. In double blind trials, in which some patients are given active substances and some the placebo, the placebo effect still operates, but at a reduced level. This is because the patient is aware that they may have been given an inactive placebo and therefore do not invest the treatment with the same level of belief than if there was no such possibility. Belief, in double blind trials, is therefore a kind of ‘attentional resource’ which is in limited supply and must be distributed carefully for maximum effect. Presumably the same is true for other activities which require the careful management of limited belief resources, including performance.

Posted in Attention, Belief, Performance, Placebo | No Comments »

The Performance of Everyday Life

August 1st, 2006 Fred McVittie

Performance is understood as the inter-relational aspect of an event or entity, existing in and defined by the moment at which an entity becomes available for experience and evaluation. This definition covers all aspects of performance, from theatrical and art performance events, to the performance of a business model, an engine, or an athlete. (See Mackenzie 2001). The conventions of theatre and art, and the domains of practice these conventions prototypically exemplify, frame this moment of experience and evaluation, and separate it from ‘normal life’, (even though normal life contains an endless stream of performance instances).

One implication is that performance (and performance studies) does not take its cue from theatricality (as Schechner and others have claimed). It is rather the case that theatricality and art is the performativity of everyday life enhanced, isolated, restaged, reframed, and by brought to the centre of attention, rendered inconsequentially conscious.

Posted in Art, Attention, Mackenzie, John, Performance, Schechner, Richard, Theatre | No Comments »

Full Attention (workshop)

August 23rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

Workshop Exercise:

One person was selected/volunteered to be the centre of attention and the rest were designated as ‘audience’ or ‘viewers’. The volunteer took up a position centre stage and the following instruction was given.
To the volunteer - your job is to look at each person in the audience. Make eye contact with everyone.
To the audience - keep looking at the ‘performer’. If you feel you have not been looked at for around 5 seconds put your hand in the air.
This went on for a little while with hands going up and the performer getting slightly better at looking around. Then part 2:
To the volunteer - look at each person in the audience, but this time really look. No mechanical methods of pointing your eyes in the general direction of people. You have to really look and really see.
To the audience - keep looking at the ‘performer’. If you feel you have been looked at but have not been ’seen’ put your hand in the air.
This produced a significantly different result, but pretty stressful. Exercise 3 involved the recuiting of another volunteer who stayed in the audience but who everyone, including the ‘performer’ were asked to look at. Volunteer number 2 looked at the ground. Continues:
“To the audience and volunteer 1 (the ‘performer’) - look at this person. Make sure they are exactly in the centre of your field of vision, right in the middle of what you can see. Relax. Just look. I want you to notice several things about this person. Firstly I want you to see where they are. They are right in the centre of their world and everthing in the whole world is around them. Above, below, to the left, to the right, they are central. See how clear they are, and how well they occupy that position. Look at them and keep looking at them, and notice how, a little way away from them, the world starts to blur and become indistinct, the colours fade and then there is nothing. They are the most important thing and they hold it all together. Secondly, I want you to notice how alone they look. They are at the centre of all experience, and there is nothing and no-one with them. They are doing it all on their own. See how alone they look. They are in the centre and they are alone. Lastly, keep looking at them and keep seeing how central they are, and keep seeing how alone they are, and also look, see how beautiful they are. Every line and mark and colour and small movement is exactly as it should be. There is nothing out of place and is perfect in every way. See how they are, at the absolute centre, totally alone, perfectly beautiful.”
To volunteer number 2 - look up and see volunteer number 1.
To volunteer number 1 - see this person, really see this person.

Repeat first exercise.

Posted in Attention, Centre, Exercises, Seeing | No Comments »

Felt Knowledge (Exercise)

October 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

1. Shift the location of sensory awareness to different points in the body; feel oneself inside the foot, the chest, the arm, the head.
2. Distribute sensory awarness across two or more locations in the body and try to feel oneself balanced between those areas.
3. Feel sensory awareness moving through the space of the body.
4. Vary the scale of sensory awareness in the body, from a point to the entirety of the space occupied by the body.
5. Feel sensory awareness extending beyond the space of the body, into the space surrounding the body.
6. Vary the scale of sensory awareness of space outside of the body, from a point to the entirety of space outside of the body.
7. Feel sensory awareness of the space both inside and outside the body, the space permeates the inside and the outside of the body. Feel the entirety of space.

Posted in Attention, Exercises, Proprioception, Sense, Space | No Comments »

What is ‘Presence’?

November 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

‘Presence’ is an observable condition in which the person displaying this quality is distinguished from others who do not by their ability to attract attention (without apparently doing anything unusual). This quality is often characterised as a ‘power’ (charisma) which is ineffable and makes a direct appeal to intuition rather than to rational analysis.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Intuition, Presence | No Comments »

Attending to Attention

November 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Although attention can be visualise/conceived as an energy, for this exercise we are going to imagine it as corresponding with a spatial location, specifically the centre.

Select an object or person in the room.
Move your head and eyes such that that object is exactly in the centre of your field of vision.
Imagine that the object is at the centre of the world it occupies, just as it occupies the centre of your visual field.

The type of looking appropriate to this exercise is one of ‘attending’ or active waiting. Allow the object of your attention, the object occupying the centre of attention, to be pregnant with your waiting. Give attention to the object like a cat giving attention to a mousehole. Let nothing happen but the waiting.

Posted in Attention, Centre, Exercises, Seeing, Space | No Comments »

Presence, Performance, and the Management of Nuance

November 14th, 2006 Fred McVittie

One understanding of the term ‘Performance’ is as a moment within all creative processes corresponding to that of ‘illumination’ in Wallas’ model. This understanding has been applied to the process of scientific enquiry (Crease) in which the actual carrying out of an experiment is the ‘performance’. (It is revealing to note that Crease further describes a highly effective scientific experiment as ‘artistic’). If we can allow the term ‘performance’ to adopt this meaning, then it might be useful to consider what another terms/concepts used within the context of theatrical performance might come to mean when given this wider application. One term which lends itself to this consideration might be presence; the theatrical quality of being able to attract attention, also referred to as charisma.

It has been hypothesised elsewhere that presence is a function of a set of behavioural nuances which, taken together, convey a certain impression, even if the exact method of this conveyance is not recognised. We do not routinely note why a certain person possesses charisma, we recognise it non-consciously and feel ourselves affected by it. If we are to take this concept of the mechanisms of presence and apply it more broadly we would be led to conclude that the correlate of presence in non-theatrical creative processes would involve a similar management of subtle nuances. In a scientific process for example, particularly in the ‘performance’ moment of the scientific experiment, presence would consist of an attention to detail that might be thought of as requiring an artistic sensibility.

Posted in Attention, Charisma, Crease, Robert, Performance, Presence, Wallas, Graham | No Comments »

Make Room (Exercise)

November 25th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Stand or sit in a place where you can watch something approach; a person, a vehicle, on object. See this thing in the distance and be conscious of the space it is taking up in your visual field. As it approaches observe the changes that you are making and that you are experiencing. As it grows larger feel yourself making room for it in your awareness. Feel yourself giving the object space, almost as if you are moving part of yourself aside to allow the object to exist more fully. Feel the space of your mind open to accommodate the object as it approaches. Let the object fill the open space of your mind.

Alternatively, instead of having the object approach your self, try the same cognitive process as you yourself approach an object. As you move toward the object of your attention feel your mind making more and more room for that object. Feel the contents of your mind moving aside; feel yourself moving aside, to open up a greater and greater space for the object. As you get close to the object let it fill the open space of your mind. Try it with a person. Try it with someone you love. Try it with someone you don’t love.

Posted in Attention, Exercises, Love, Space | No Comments »

Return of the Midgard Serpent

May 28th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Looking into the distance we focus on a single infinitesimal point. We give this distant point all of our attention and become immersed in that point. There is no here here, and we are the distant point. We allow the point to diminish and diminish until we are looking at nothing, and that nothing is ourselves, devoid of place and content. We empty ourselves and become like a mirror, reflecting the world perfectly and with no sense of a separate self beyond that reflection. Then something catches our eye, at the corner of our eye, at the periphery of our vision. A shadow, a blur. We turn and the shadow turns with us, it is always there. Turning our attention to the the other extreme, left to right, right to left, we see the shadow is also there, always at the periphery of our vision. It is above us and below us, all around us and maybe even behind us. The shadow is our own body, and we are looking at our eye-sockets, the blur of a nose, an eyebrow. Looking forward we witnessed ourself retreating into the distance and in losing sight of ourselves were lost beyond the horizon of our identification, but now we have caught ourselves returning from that journey. We went all the way around the world and approached ourselves from behind, like a friend or an enemy lurking back there with hands outstretched toward us ready to clap them over our eyes and say ‘guess who?’

Posted in Attention, Ouroborus, Seeing | No Comments »

Jungian Acting

May 29th, 2007 Fred McVittie

“An actor is most likely to excel at their craft if they are ’self-centred’. For many this is synoymous with ‘ego-centric’, a term and an attitude which is associated with largely negative behaviour and modes of being. However, their are many formulations of the self, from a range of psychological, philosophical and spiritual traditions which do not associate the ’self’ with the (usually Freudian) Ego, and which therefore do not place this Ego at the centre of attention and action. Such alternative models of self may allow for useful but more palatable versions of ’self-centredness’ to be constructed, which may also be more conducive to the physical and emotional health of the actor. This paper will consider a particular application of this idea, in which the Jungian concept of ’self’ is embedded with a program of actor training.”

Posted in Acting, Attention, Centre, Jung, Carl G., Training | No Comments »

Dark Light

June 3rd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘projective’ model of vision in which the act of seeing involves the radiation of a beam from the eyes, was common to the Greeks and featured in Medieval texts on optics. This understanding of vision has largely been replaced with a more passive or relational account, in which the light reflected of the objects of the world enters our eye and contributes to sight rather than any light emerging from the eye. However, the idea of there being some kind of ray or light beam emitted by the organs of sight still has a place in the popular and scientific imagination.

A common metaphor for attention is that of the spotlight, in which it is conceptualised that when we look around at the world the light of our conscious awareness seems to fall on the objects of the world, calling them to attention. (See Fernandez-Duque, D. and M. L. Johnson: 1999). Evidently, regardless of its status outside of physical science, the ’spotlight’ of attention still has currency and meaningful value in the phenomenology of consciousness. An additional possible use of the spotlight metaphor, or rather an entailment of the metaphor which has not yet been exploited, is the application of the spotlight metaphor to an understanding of time. When we cast the light of our attention around the room we are illuminating space with that light, but we might also consider that, in some respects, we are also illuminating time.

When we walk in the dark carrying a torch to help us find our way, the light of the torch illuminates the path directly ahead; we can see the path, and the lower branches of the trees that overshadow it. We can see the bend in the path coming up. But the light of our torch is limited and can only penetrate the darkness a few yards ahead of our feet. We can see the way the path will support our next few steps, but beyond that it grows indistinct. We assume the path continues in a reasonably straight line beyond the haze limits of our illuminated sight, but we cannot be sure. There may be a fork in the road ahead, or the path may end suddenly, or the darkness may conceal an infinity of emptiness and potentiality. Maybe we are not moving forward at all. Maybe the darkness up ahead is actually moving towards us. Maybe our torch is not picking out selective details from the background of the night, but what we are witnessing is the constant congealing of the darkness into the solidity of the path and the lower branches of the trees. Maybe the bright light of our torch is not illuminating the world before us but in actuality we are witnessing the dark light of the past fuse into the singularity of the present.

Posted in Attention, Light, Metaphor, Seeing | No Comments »

Adaptive Attention

December 4th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Studies by Spelke and Baillargeon have established that babies and very young children look longer at events and objects which are unusual than at those which are behaving ‘normally’. This finding is used extensively to investigate what expectations about the world are hard-wired into the human brain and which are the results of acculturation. It has been found, for example, that babies look longer at events which seem to contradict the permanence of material object (in contrast to earlier experiments by Piaget), implying that the basic heuristic ‘objects persist’ is present at birth. Other findings suggest that such elements of knowledge as (Newtonian) gravity, inertia, momentum, agency, and energy conservation also appear to be built into the repertoire of innate human understanding. (This particular cluster of ‘facts’ seems further to underpin the Innate, Naive, or Folk Physics described by Smith, Hayes, etc).

The success of this experimental method depends upon the fact that babies pay greater attention to events that seem to contradict such ‘facts’. This behaviour, in which the unusual and the unexpected is awarded greater attentional resources that the usual and the expected itself requires some explanation. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology it is perhaps inevitable that, given the existence of any kind of innate or default model of the world, then an animal which was able to quickly detect variations from this model would have greater survival potential. After all, it tends to be the unusual events of the world that kill you, or conversely, provide rare opportunities for enhanced survival possibilities.

This tendency to be attracted toward and to pay preferential attention to unusual stimuli not only plays out within the field of visual attention (although given the massive processing power awarded by the brain to the visual system it is undoubtedly dominant). Unusual sounds, or combinations of sounds, attract the attention of babies also, as do irregular and unpredictable patterns of touch, e.g. tickling. It may be that the ‘invisible’ or ‘default’ actions, sights and sounds, those rhythms and patterns which do not demand attention reflect some aspects of the natural environment which our ancestors recognised non-consciously as unthreatening; the low murmur of a calm sea, the regular creak of breeze-blown trees, the predictable movement of clouds across the sky. Events which varied from these patterns would indicate the presence of unpredictability and possible threat; the faster rhythms and discontinuities of storm-blown trees, the crashing of a high sea, the dysrhythmia that signals agency and human or animal intentionality.

It would seem logical that, in addition to attracting and holding the attention of the senses literally, through the extended capture of eye-gaze direction for example, unusual stimuli would attract and hold the attention of mind; a kind of metaphorical gaze in which cognition is ‘focussed’ or ‘concentrated’ upon some non-standard aspect of the environment. Difference, and what Bateson (1979) refers to as ‘news of difference’, should be one of the most long-standing occupants of mind and consciousness.

Posted in Attention, Baillergeon, Bateson, Gregory, Consciousness, Evolution, Naive Physics, Physics, Spelke, Elizabeth | No Comments »

How Philosophy Captures the Mind

December 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It is said that a good question in science is one that is posed in such a way that the answer is easily found, whereas a good question in philosophy is one for which the answer is never found. Scientific questions, formalised in the conventions of the hypothesis, ideally constrain the field of inquiry to within clearly determined limits well-defined terms. The location of the answer to such a question, even if such answer be unexpected or disappointing, is tightly identified and focused upon. Philosophical questions on the other hand tend to focus less on the location or even the identification of possible answers than on the conceptual space opened up by the question. Good philosophical questions are ones which do not point to a specific answer/location but that extend the field of possible questions. This ability of questions in philosophy to capture the imagination and hold it in contemplation of the (possibly) unanswerable is one of the pleasures, if not consolations, of philosophy.

It seems likely that this feature of the ‘big questions’ to provoke extended contemplation, often by hundred of scholars over many centuries, is related to the ‘cognitive imperative’ identified by Newberg and D’Aquili and others, in which the human mind/brain irresistibly seeks out problems and ambiguous stimuli. Further, there may be a relationship with the tendency in babies and small children to give preferential attention to events which are unusual or which contravene their innate understandings of how the world works.

Posted in Attention, Cognition, Knowledge, Philosophy, Problem | No Comments »

Gendlin’s Vast Space

April 30th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The technique of ‘focusing’ developed by Eugene Gendlin aims to optimise performance and psychic health through the use of mental and physical imagery and schema. Emerging out of phenomenology and Rogerian counselling, focusing invokes an awareness of the body and its responses and maps these onto cognitive states. One interesting feature of this technique is its use of the metaphor of ’space’ in organising the understanding of certain states, and the relation of these to the person.

The first stage in the process, what Gendlin refers to as the first ‘movement’, involves the clearing of a ’space’ in one’s mentation by proposing the question, to the body, that ‘everything is fine’. This is immediately followed by a kind of active listening; the utilisation of the ‘felt sense’, to detect what responses the body makes to this proposal. Typically, to the experienced focusser, the body then presents a set of sensations and feelings, usually vague and unformed, which represent in corporeal form those aspects of being which are ‘not fine’. It is almost as if the body is replying to the original proposal made by the mind and saying “you think everything is fine? What about this?”

This prompting of a bodily response in which issues or problems normally considered to be entirely cognitive events are identified within the space of the body allows these events to be considered separately from the mental space of their arising. The technique subsequently involves the detailed identification of these issues out of the rather ill-formed initial felt response such that these issues begin to take on the ontology of objects external to the site from which they are viewed, almost as if they are outside of oneself. They can then be ‘put down’ or ‘put aside’ or ‘held up for view’, moves which only make sense as part of the overall schema in which entities which began as (possibly painful) phenomena lodged within the core of the self are redefined as objects outside of that (version of the) self and which one can take a more ‘objective’ viewpoint of. Simultaneous with this objectification of problematic concepts is the identification of self with the space in which such objects appear. There is a feeling that one is not coterminous with the thoughts and feelings one might normally be ’subject to’, that is, those located within what are normally thought of as the bounds of the subject. Instead the sense is of oneself as an emptiness, a calm immensity, or a kind of illuminated void.

Gendlin, E. T. Focusing. Second edition, Bantam Books, 1982.

Posted in Attention, Boundary, Dualism, Gendlin, Eugene, Non-duality, Psychology, Sense, Space, Void | No Comments »