[ Attention challenge ]

For my blog presentation I made myself a challenge. Because my blog is all about attention in your daily view I thought it was a good idea to find my inspiration and create something immediately in the classroom.

A wall-plug took my attention, several people plugged their stopper in and out.

That gave me the feeling of connecting with each other, the connection between people and I wanted to show that connection in wall-plugs.

Lifestyle & Design > Attention!

Lifestyle & Design can be everything that's wye you need to hold your eyes wide open and get your inspiration from almost everything that surrounds you. You have to pay attention to daily things and don't be afraid to lose a lot of time.

My research is divided in three subjects witch are daily inspiration, organize and old habits.

Old habits meets daily life

In other blogpost I showed you Artists inspired by old habits and Daily things. This artist placed old habits in our daily street view. Nowadays you see a lot of knitting street art witch I really like because you bring intimacy into the streets.

This street art is from Crystal Gregory

Material switch

Everyday we throw a lot of garbage away. Mostly plastic packaging like bottles and bags but also a lot of paper and pasteboard. Paper and pasteboard looks sustainable but it also needs to be recycled. If we switch these materials in some materials that life a lot longer and are sustainable, we would have less garbage.

Two designers came up with that kind of idea, an idea inspired by an common product.

Bags made from leather, you can't throw these away!

Ramon Middelkoop [ My Paper bag ]

Marie Turnor [ PicNic Clutch ]

Organize!

A new trend in arts seems to be arranging and ordering, a lot of artist are doing it.

In an earleyer blogpost I showed you some artists witch are ordering their shopping.

An other example is Steve McPherson who makes beautiful collections of plastic things arranges by color.

Today I was going to clean my closet and decided to organize that too, usually me and my closet are not that organized so it was going to be a big change.

I discovered that my color palette isn't that versatile their is only black,white,blue and pink in it.

Steve McPherson ;

Graphical food

We all eat at least three times a day, some of us eat all day long.

We eat for pleasure with out friends.

We eat because we are feeling sad.

We eat because where bored.

It seems like food is an perfect inspiration that everybody appeals.

Carl Kleiner photographed food in a graphical way

Embroidery old-fashioned?

Embroidery is an old avocation, something your grandmother does.

Nowadays we make almost everything on our computer it's fast and easy. But old habits always come back.

A lot of artists are knitting and stitching, Inge Jacobsen is one of them.

The work she is currently making is an intervention into found images through embroidery, cutting and collaging. The images she uses are from high fashion magazines.

Children's attention?

A subject I’m not familiar with. But I can imagine how much patience you must have. You have to do a lot of crazy things to get their attention. Or you just give them sweeets.

Jill Greenberg used the opposite to make these beautiful pictures. Her method for getting the children to cry is to offering the children candy and then taking it away.

organize your daily shopping

Everyday you go to the supermarket to do your daily shopping, but nowadays it has to go as quickly as possible. You don’t have to go to the baker’s, butcher’s and the chemist’s anymore, you’ve got it all in one.

If you want to spend more time on your daily shopping and make it a whole new experience you can do it just like the Artists Marco Ugolini & Pedro Motta.

Their reason to do this is because they see the supermarket as a space of manipulation. None of the products have been bought after the shooting.

Attention in everyday life

Almost every day you have to spend a few seconds of your precious time to wait for a traffic light to change green. But how many people nowadays have that patience? I have, but I think I'm a special case.

When you live in a big city you see more traffic lights than trees. In 1999, Pierre Viviant created a traffic light tree which is located in east Londen.

Patience in the past

Even in the past artists were interested in patience. The famous duo Ulay & Marina Abramovic started their cooperation in 1976. Every year on the 23rd of April, the birthday of both of them, they did a performance. In 1977 they did the performance “relation in time”. Sitting on the floor with their backs against each other and their hair knotted together.

Waiting…

Till they were too tired and exacted to sit straight. It took 16 hours before they collapsed.

Ulay & Marina Abromovic are still an inspiration. Here are examples of fashion editorials from Fashion Copius & Bettina Komenda

attention on the highway

Probable everybody knows the annoying situation on the road, when a truck is going to pass. You need to slow down, change gear and have a lot of patience.

The French photographer Eric Tabuchi has that patience and attention. He created an alphabet by observing the rear of trucks. For his book ‘Alphabet truck’ he spend a lot time on the highway. It took him four years and thousands of kilometres of driving to create this book.

The pictures of the trucks are all shot within a 250-km radius from Paris. I have a lot of admiration for the Tabuchi’s patience.

Real Time by Maarten Baas

Time is created by people, and almost all people fit their life into time. Nowadays we don't have and make a lot of time to do our daily things. You have to pay a lot of attention to update the time.

Maarten Baas, a Dutch designer makes that very clear.

Literally people creating time. His serie is called “Real time.”

“Grandfather clock”
Inside the grandfather clock a man is drawing the hands off a clock. Of course it is not a real man, but a movie of a man drawing his hands off.

“Sweepers clock”
Two people are making the hands of a clock by collecting garbage on the beach all day.

“Counting hours”
A man in a tiny office, watched by a security camera, is making time with his stationery

“Analog Digital Clock“

Behind the figures is a man who makes the lit lines black or removes them. Each time a new figure arises.

The exposition of real time produces an extra highlight.
An actor shifts the clock hands in real life, this performance is filmed and sold on a hard disk.

Attention!

Does this blog get your attention? Or are you already distracted by another website or blog? I am interested in what kind of things get the attention of which kind of people. Also I want to get your attention for daily things that look so normal nowadays and make a connection with an artist who is also inspired by this subject.

I think that the last few years people spend less and less attention on daily things. Everything has to go as quick as possible, we don't have a lot of patience anymore. Old habits are disappeared but I know for sure that in de following years they are making a come back. As I know, It's already happening.

Attention!