Art / Environment / Attention

Catalog description

How do our acts of attention illuminate the world around us? Why do some works of art appear to "call out" to us, and others leave us unmoved? Is our accelerating world of new technologies altering our attention spans? What cultural resources do you bring to the acts of listening, looking, and reading? How can you deepen your creative and critical engagement with the world of which you are a part? This course will help you reflect upon and expand your powers of attention. We will give primary focus to (a) works of music and visual art and (b) your lived environment, experimenting with different styles of bodily engagement with them, and asking what modes of attention and attunement they enable and require of us. We will listen deeply and repeatedly to a single piece of music, until it becomes as familiar as our own inner voices. We will visit the Louvre and look at a single painting for a prolonged stretch of time. We will spend an afternoon at the water's edge and a day on a sand dune, practicing radical modes of attention to our surroundings. If you take this course seriously, you will emerge with a powerful set of conceptual tools; a new appreciation for the profound depth, complexity, and expressive richness of artworks and environments; and a refreshed and revitalized attention span that will enrich your scholarly life and the broader world you create, inhabit, and share. This course will be offered in January-Term 2026 in Abu Dhabi.