hHow often do you look up at the sky instead of at the black mirror in which you might be reading this column? Will you read to the end of this page? How many tabs have you opened today? If you’re on a train, how many people interact with other human beings instead of looking at their phones? I’m no one to judge. I’m as addicted to a dopamine fix as anyone. But lately, with the world increasingly disillusioned and divided, it seems more urgent than ever to look outward rather than inward, and pay attention in the most valuable way.
I was reminded of this when I saw bed rota tapestry by the American artist Qualeasha Wood, in Room 94 in New York. It shows a woman slumped over, exhausted or “rotting in bed,” with glowing white eyes seemingly illuminated by her screen. Framing it are numerous tabs with slogans that are emblematic of the culture of 2024 (“snotty summer,” for example), but that somehow already seem outdated, lost in the speed of our Internet-driven world. She looks exhausted. I feel exhausted looking at her. And their discomfort is common.
In a new radio series, Appetite for distractionMatthew Syed explores the state of our attention span. While debates about this topic have existed for millennia (medieval monks were outraged by “book” technology), it seems especially applicable to our digital age. Studies have found that, on average, people spend just 40 seconds or less on something they see on a screen, an 80% reduction since 2004.
While distraction can come in many forms, the current problem, Syed informs us, is the unregulated exploitation of us by giant tech companies. With their sophisticated algorithms, they are using more of our data than ever, turning our increasingly longer commutes into cash. This encourages addiction and impedes brain growth, especially in children. It seems we are slowly becoming less engaged, less creative, less connected and less human.
This does not mean that we should do away with modern digital technologies. Great things come from them: global connectivity; community building, especially for subcultures; movement creation; a platform to give people a voice, to spread joy, beauty and knowledge. But we must be aware of the more nefarious aspects that are encoded in its design, created to keep us captivated. Wood’s tapestry is a haunting vision of what this world could become, or has already become.
It’s worth acknowledging that Bed Rot held my attention longer than my screen normally would, affirming the power of art to make the viewer stop, look and think. It’s much harder to turn your back when there’s a material object in front of you, just as a conversation is more meaningful in person than on a screen.
I believe art can help counteract the harmful effects of scrolling on our smartphones. More than ever, we long for art that can offer world-changing perspectives that make us believe in our humanity again. For example, the work of Earth artist Nancy Holt reacquaints us with the natural world and the mysteries of the atmosphere above us.
In Utah’s Great Basin Desert are the Holt Sun Tunnels: four giant concrete tubes, tall enough to walk through, facing each other in an Barren landscape and sky through the tunnels. If it is sunny, the light filters through the holes in the tubes arranged in the constellations of Capricorn, Columba, Draco and Perseus, as if walking on the stars. Twice a year, on the summer and winter solstices, the sun will align exactly with the tunnels and light will pass through them.
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Using the Earth and the cosmos as tools, Holt, who died in 2014, accentuates the vast beauty of the natural world by providing a vessel from which to view it. His work reaffirms the fact that land, sea, sky, and human connection are out there, competing for our attention, but without any capitalist profit motive.
As the writer Iris Murdoch said in an interview: “Most of the time we fail to see the big real world because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment and fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it allows us to see and enjoy what is not ourselves.”
Art reminds us to look up from the small world we have created in the black mirror that lives in our pocket. It helps us understand our place in the universe and look toward the expansion, rather than toward our selves filtered through technology. It’s time to regain our attention; and to give it to the things we deserve and that matter.