Attention Please! An Experiment

Artist Sara Smith and technology partner Kisky Netmedia have been working on Attention Please!, a project at Liverpool's Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), which concludes today. From an email sent out by Kisky:

Attention Please! is an experiment into measuring audience attention in a gallery space. "How can audience attention can affect the work itself and how can it be rewarded?"

The project...uses RFID readers and tags with video installations to play with ideas of identity, attention, and affect.

...The project uses WebObjects and a Cocoa application that captures RFID tag data and feeds in to and affects a video installation which is manipulated using Isadora software.

The project asks gallery goers to pay attention to the video works, and as they do, the presence of the audience affects what can be seen. The experiment is live at FACT, Liverpool, 3rd and 4th May, 2 - 6pm. It also has a development blog which documents all stages of the process from arts, technology, and attention viewpoints.

The blog is at: http://attentionplease.wordpress.com/ and contains a growing number of audience feedback comments: how do they feel about their attention being measured?

It's exciting to see the study of attention extending beyond the web and online activities into real-world events like this. And we'll surely see more projects along these lines with the proliferation of RFID and GPS technology. But an important question that's not yet being addressed here is, "How will these systems allow users to control and manage their offline attention data?" The ability to determine what data we share with whom, and what we receive in exchange, is just as important in the real world as it is online--perhaps even more so.

tags: attention attentiontrust attention+please rfid