ATTENTION! ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

This article is fascinating! If you consider yourself to be one who finishes a task and then moves along to another, please read the article at the link above. If you're a multitasker, read, make notes, move around, check your Facebook, your SMS and then let's talk.

Why, you wonder, do I care about this neuroscience stuff anyway? The answer, friends, is that an artist communicates, eh? And, if an artist is a communicator, then it behooves the artist to know how the brain works, whether digital learning and stimuli changes brain functions, whether we are retaining the information that bombards us, etc ... You see. Not boring at all. In fact, it's fascinating and by paying attention to this information, we may become better communicators.

The added bonus for me is that I really appreciate the work of N. Katherine Hayles, a scholar and practitioner whose work I studied and cited in my MFA portfolio, the e-version of which is here. I  agree with her observation, "One of the basic tenets of good teaching is that you have to start where the students are. And once you find out where they are, a good teacher can lead them almost anywhere. Students today don't start in deep attention. They start in hyper attention. And our pedagogical challenge will be to combine hyper attention with deep attention and to cultivate both. And we can't do that if we start by stigmatizing hyper attention as inferior thinking."


I agree with Hayles because, as a teacher, I've abandoned syllabi to "start where the students are." It's been a great experience for me, and, I think, judging by student feedback, for them as well. 

Open Thoughts about Books

I have had a Kindle in my Amazon shopping cart at least a half a dozen times. As a matter of fact, I think it is on my wishlist and in the "save for later" collection I have stored online. So, why, tech geek that I am, have I not made the purchase?

First, the Kindle and similar e-reading machines -- or as the industry calls them "wireless reading devices" -- are EXPENSIVE. What is more, I am outright telling lies to myself when I argue that I can justify the expense by the amount of money I will save buying books. The truth is that it is likely the nation will be out of debt before I stop buying books. I know my bibliophilic habit is one that will not be kicked. Not all the intervention in the world will fixthis addiction I suffer.

So, if the Kindle or the Sony Reader were within reasonable price, I would likely buy one or the other and give electronic reading machines a try. Right now, I just cannot bring myself to do it.

Secondly, I love the tactile materiality of the book. I love the smell of books. I love the art on the covers of paperbacks. I love to make marginalia and to dogear pages. I interact with the physical object. I love to re-open books - some times years later - and see my response to an author's words, sentences, paragraphs, stories. So, in addition to the unaffordability of Kindle and Sony Reader, I guess I am a neo-Luddite when it comes to e-reading machines.

Still though, the fact that one year ago there were 38 million e-book titles and today there are 70 million is cause for pause. What does the gravitation toward electronic reading mean for the print book as an industry? What does it mean for libraries? For readers who cannot afford to buy books- print or electronic? For the artists who design books and book covers?

Remediation is a phenomenon I like and I dislike. Why not keep the old and adopt the new? Reading as we know it and as it is becoming can co-exist.

For now, perhaps, it is a good thing that e-reading machines are pricey?

Stories and Art

Whether you tell visual or verbal stories, I want to take a minute to recommend the work of someone who I have never met in person but whose teaching is important to what I do.
I've been following Katherine Phelps since I was a grad student. I like the way she thinks, presents and writes.

If you tell stories in through paintings, photographs, words or all of the above, I think you will find Katherine's work interesting. Be sure to check out Storytronics at her site Glass Wings. My own hyperfiction "Covalent Bonds" is modeled on her braiding, multipathing story structure.

And, if you like to blend the visual and verbal, come on over to my Ning and play ...