”Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”

William James

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Andrew Freiband is a filmmaker, producer, researcher, writer, educator, and multimedia artist who founded ALI based on several years of original research and development into the unique capacities – and imposed restrictions – of artists in contemporary society.

He has 20 years of professional experience in the film, television, museum, and fine arts fields, having worked in productions everywhere from the top of the unfinished skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan to post-earthquake Haiti to the slums of Nairobi and beyond.

Freiband is an advocate of art as research. In his Substack, he recently wrote a great article called ‘A Note About Attention’, about art as attention. In this article, he says..

“Paying attention is how artists channel experience into knowledge.”

Freiband has some interesting things to say about how attention has become a commodity. In broad terms, this may be referred to as the attention economy.

Approaching art making as intentional attention is an antidote to the attention economy.

Click the link below to visit his Substack.

ANDREW FREIBAND

To read the full article on a separate page, click page 2 below.