What is the relationship between attention and the camera in filmmaking? Could the camera be said to be imitating the movement of human attention? What are film’s tools for choreographing the viewer’s attention — and to what end?

Taught by filmmaker, writer and Sundance Fellow Alyssa Loh.

The Attention Labs are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the joint exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.

Look, Here, Now is a three-week seminar course that introduces students to a variety of attentional modalities as experienced through contemporary artworks. Focusing on durational and performative pieces, each class explores artwork through a distinct sense receptor: vision, hearing and movement. We will examine works by William Forsyth, Pauline Oliveros, Janet Cardiff, and Irwin Wurm, among others, and activate a number of attentional exercises including deep listening and slow looking.

Taught by visual artist Will Lamson.

Look, Here, Now is a three-week seminar course that introduces students to a variety of attentional modalities as experienced through contemporary artworks. Focusing on durational and performative pieces, each class explores artwork through a distinct sense receptor: vision, hearing and movement. We will examine works by William Forsyth, Pauline Oliveros, Janet Cardiff, and Irwin Wurm, among others, and activate a number of attentional exercises including deep listening and slow looking.

Taught by visual artist Will Lamson.

Look, Here, Now is a three-week seminar course that introduces students to a variety of attentional modalities as experienced through contemporary artworks. Focusing on durational and performative pieces, each class explores artwork through a distinct sense receptor: vision, hearing and movement. We will examine works by William Forsyth, Pauline Oliveros, Janet Cardiff, and Irwin Wurm, among others, and activate a number of attentional exercises including deep listening and slow looking.

Taught by visual artist Will Lamson.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

The Attention Labs are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the joint exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.

Register for our LES Lab HERE.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

Attention and distraction can seem like new problems—part of our distinctively contemporary life—yet there is a rich history of contemplative practice stretching back thousands of years and across continents. Almost all spiritual traditions include some form of quiet sitting and contemplation; these practices could be considered technologies of attention, part of our collective cultural heritage. Can they offer new ways of relating to the commercialized attention economy we live in today?

Taught by visual artist, writer and Zen practitioner Sal Randolph.

Attention and distraction can seem like new problems—part of our distinctively contemporary life—yet there is a rich history of contemplative practice stretching back thousands of years and across continents. Almost all spiritual traditions include some form of quiet sitting and contemplation; these practices could be considered technologies of attention, part of our collective cultural heritage. Can they offer new ways of relating to the commercialized attention economy we live in today?

Taught by visual artist, writer and Zen practitioner Sal Randolph.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

The history of lyric poetry is a long-running experiment in human attention. Lyric becomes itself when it succeeds in making us attend differently to language: more closely, more slowly; with our ears open, even in silence; over and over again. It makes us attend to the world differently, too, as translated by metaphor, and broken open by lines. Lyric calls attention to attention as no other kind of language does…

Taught by Jeff Dolven, poet and Professor of English at Princeton University.

Attention and distraction can seem like new problems—part of our distinctively contemporary life—yet there is a rich history of contemplative practice stretching back thousands of years and across continents. Almost all spiritual traditions include some form of quiet sitting and contemplation; these practices could be considered technologies of attention, part of our collective cultural heritage. Can they offer new ways of relating to the commercialized attention economy we live in today?

Taught by visual artist, writer and Zen practitioner Sal Randolph.

The history of lyric poetry is a long-running experiment in human attention. Lyric becomes itself when it succeeds in making us attend differently to language: more closely, more slowly; with our ears open, even in silence; over and over again. It makes us attend to the world differently, too, as translated by metaphor, and broken open by lines. Lyric calls attention to attention as no other kind of language does…

Taught by Jeff Dolven, poet and Professor of English at Princeton University.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

The history of lyric poetry is a long-running experiment in human attention. Lyric becomes itself when it succeeds in making us attend differently to language: more closely, more slowly; with our ears open, even in silence; over and over again. It makes us attend to the world differently, too, as translated by metaphor, and broken open by lines. Lyric calls attention to attention as no other kind of language does…

Taught by Jeff Dolven, poet and Professor of English at Princeton University.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

SIDEWALK STUDY is a form of group inquiry combining theory, practice, and public space.

For decades, the concept of attention occupied a prominent if ill-defined role within the American classroom. Above all, ‘attention’ was seen through the lens of student discipline: students who ‘had’ attention could ‘pay’ it, and thereby follow the teacher’s instructions, while students who struggled with behavior were said to have a ‘deficit‘ of attention….

Taught by Jac Mullen, writer, teacher and former Executive Editor of The American Reader.

For decades, the concept of attention occupied a prominent if ill-defined role within the American classroom. Above all, ‘attention’ was seen through the lens of student discipline: students who ‘had’ attention could ‘pay’ it, and thereby follow the teacher’s instructions, while students who struggled with behavior were said to have a ‘deficit‘ of attention….

Taught by Jac Mullen, writer, teacher and former Executive Editor of The American Reader.

For decades, the concept of attention occupied a prominent if ill-defined role within the American classroom. Above all, ‘attention’ was seen through the lens of student discipline: students who ‘had’ attention could ‘pay’ it, and thereby follow the teacher’s instructions, while students who struggled with behavior were said to have a ‘deficit‘ of attention.

This situation has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. The proliferation of technologies for capturing, measuring, and monetizing attention has led to the creation of a new education technology (‘EdTech’) industry which is fundamentally transforming the ways in which student attention is managed and engaged in the classroom.

The Learning Industry will explore the various ways in which educators, scientists and technologists have sought to act upon student attention within classrooms— to cultivate, focus, capture, redirect, routinize, automate, gamify, condition, immerse, and supplement attention for educational ends. We will touch on key moments in the history of attention within pedagogical theory and practice; explore different conceptions of the role of attention within education; and imagine EdTech’s classroom of the future—a classroom characterized by gamification, XR, and artificial intelligence.

Finally—and most importantly— we will consider a range of alternative pedagogies which do not seek to capture or instrumentalize student attention, but which rather pursue, as their ultimate aim, the formation or emancipation of student attention as such.

Taught by Jac Mullen, writer, teacher and former Executive Editor of The American Reader.

The Attention Labs are an experiential, participatory workshop curriculum dedicated to the joint exploration of radical human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to build sanctuaries of attention — as well as networks of solidarity to sustain them.

Register for our Midtown Lab HERE.

Attention is the stuff of care. It is also, as Mary Oliver famously wrote, "the beginning of devotion." Writers and thinkers throughout the long twentieth century have explored attention's relationship to ethical questions of goodness, love and justice. The intensification of attention capture technologies add new urgency to these ageless inquiries. What role does attention play in our understanding of an ethical world? What is a "sanctuary" of attention? Where do these spaces already exist? How might we create them ourselves?

Enroll for the three-week course HERE.

This course will review attention's role in efforts to create a more just and compassionate world. By examining activist movements through the lens of attentional practice, we will consider how attention can reconfigure our understanding of "activism." We will read texts by Simone Weil, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Wynter, and Jenny Odell, among others.These inquiries will be activated in our culminating Attention Lab on November 18th, at which we will seek to create a "sanctuary" space for ourselves and our community.

Co-taught by Kristin Lawler, Jeff Dolven, and Len Nalencz

Attention is the stuff of care. It is also, as Mary Oliver famously wrote, "the beginning of devotion." Writers and thinkers throughout the long twentieth century have explored attention's relationship to ethical questions of goodness, love and justice. The intensification of attention capture technologies add new urgency to these ageless inquiries. What role does attention play in our understanding of an ethical world? What is a "sanctuary" of attention? Where do these spaces already exist? How might we create them ourselves?

Enroll for the three-week course HERE.

This course will review attention's role in efforts to create a more just and compassionate world. By examining activist movements through the lens of attentional practice, we will consider how attention can reconfigure our understanding of "activism." We will read texts by Simone Weil, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Wynter, and Jenny Odell, among others.These inquiries will be activated in our culminating Attention Lab on November 18th, at which we will seek to create a "sanctuary" space for ourselves and our community.

Co-taught by Kristin Lawler, Jeff Dolven, and Len Nalencz

Attention is the stuff of care. It is also, as Mary Oliver famously wrote, "the beginning of devotion." Writers and thinkers throughout the long twentieth century have explored attention's relationship to ethical questions of goodness, love and justice. The intensification of attention capture technologies add new urgency to these ageless inquiries. What role does attention play in our understanding of an ethical world? What is a "sanctuary" of attention? Where do these spaces already exist? How might we create them ourselves?

Enroll for the three-week course HERE.

This course will review attention's role in efforts to create a more just and compassionate world. By examining activist movements through the lens of attentional practice, we will consider how attention can reconfigure our understanding of "activism." We will read texts by Simone Weil, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Wynter, and Jenny Odell, among others.These inquiries will be activated in our culminating Attention Lab on November 18th, at which we will seek to create a "sanctuary" space for ourselves and our community.

Co-taught by Kristin Lawler, Jeff Dolven, and Len Nalencz