The Art of Noticing - Book Notes

 There's a book that I read recently that had some intriguing ideas about creativity. The Art of Noticing - 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday by Rob Walker had many ideas that I would like to try doing. 

Since the pandemic began back in March with a lockdown, I've struggled to get in a regular pattern of creative exploration and doing things that I enjoy - like pottery, sewing, writing, and quilting. 

Iris folding.

I'm hoping that by doing some of the activities in this book, that I will start doing these things again. (However, pottery will need to wait until the art center opens again.)

- My ambition is to provoke them [students] into thinking about what they notice, what they miss, why it matters, and how to become better, deeper, and more original observers of the world and of themselves. 
- A broad range of professions and pursuits relies on the creative process. The scientist, the entrepreneur, the photographer, the coach: Each relies on the ability to notice that which previously seemed invisible to everybody else. 

- The stimulation of modern life, philosopher Georg Simmel complained in 1903, wears down the senses, leaving us dull, indifferent and unable to focus on what really matters.

- In the early 1950s, writer William Whyte lamented in Life magazine that "billboards and neon signs," and obnoxious advertising were converting the American landscape into one long roadside distraction. 

- "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention," economist Herb Simon warned in 1971. 

- Polyconsciousness is what one researcher termed the resulting state of mind that divides attention between the physical world and the one our devices connect us to, undermining here-and-now interactions with actual people and things around us.

The girls next to one another...but, unfortunately, in their own worlds.

- When you actively notice new things, that puts you in the present...As you're noticing new things, it's engaging, and it turns out...it's literally, not just figuratively, enlivening. (Ellen J. Langer)

- Windows are a powerful existential tool....The only thing you can do is look. You have no influence over what you will see. Your brain is forced to make drama out of whatever happens to appear. Boring things become strange. (Sam Anderson)

Thanksgiving window stars.

- The quieter you become, the more you can hear. (Ram Dass)

- Appreciate the random participation of others in our lives. (Speed Levitch)

- Our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. (William James)

Ideas for noticing:

 - Conduct a scavenger hunt.

- Spot something new every day.

Lake Waconia - someplace new I visited in October.

- Take a color walk

- What are the colors that you become aware of first?

- What are the colors that reveal themselves more slowly?

- What colors do you observe that you did not expect?

- What color relationships do you notice?

- Do colors appear to change over time?

 - Start a collection (e.g., search images to hunt and document: arrows, public clocks, manhole covers, geometric shapes, specific architectural details, footprints, signs and objects prohibiting specific behaviors)

- Count with the numbers you find. The game is to find unexpected shapes, sizes, and contexts. Start at 1 and work your way up or start with 100 count down. 

- Document the (seemingly) identical - a developed named Jacob Harris regularly takes pictures of blue cloudless sky - near-identical squares of blue. He calls the series "Sky Gradients." Other ideas - sidewalks, parking lots, grass, tree trunks - both human-made features and natural ones offer endless possibilities.

Seed pods on a tree in the backyard.

- Look slowly. An example is Slow Art Day. Look at five works of art for ten minutes each, and then meet together with someone over lunch to talk about the experience. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York concluded that its patrons spend a median 17 seconds in front of any given painting. 

- Look up and then look farther up - this means slowing way down or stopping moving altogether.

- Repeat your point of view - occupy the same spot for 15 minutes every day and study passersby. 

- Look out a window - spend 10 minutes looking out the window you most persistently ignore. 

Two deer who frequently have visited our yard this Summer and Fall.

- Reframe the familiar - make a Polaroid-size frame, acrylic with a dry-erase surface - like portable windows. Hold the frame up to an object or scene and write a one- to two-word description on it (e.g., beautiful, vacant, cloudy). Then shift the frame to focus on a different subject, leaving the original description. How does the earlier description influence what you're looking at? 

- Cover 4'33" - John Cage composition in 1952 involved a 4'33" "song" of no music. Set the timer on your phone for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Set it to vibrate or chime, place it somewhere screen-down, and don't watch the clock tick. Close your eyes and just listen. 

- Make an auditory inventory - collect sounds and write down what they are. 

- Digital silence - observe a week of digital silence. 

- Stand - "Standing with Saguaros" project - stand for an hour in the proximity of one of the cacti there. You can also sit. Adapt to your area. Pick one thing and really attend to it for an hour. 

- Spend a day of traveling your hometown without spending a dime. See what happens when you take money out of the equation. How does it change where you move, what you look for, how you orient yourself. 

Staying by the hummingbird feeder for a long time yielded some photos 

I enjoy looking back upon now that the hummingbirds have migrated south.

- Play Big-Box Archaeologist - look for and document products you couldn't dream up if you tried as you go through a big-box store. What is the most absurb product you will see? The most poetic? The saddest? The one most revealing of 21st century America? The funniest?

- Read the plaque - read public plaques. They often tell fascinating stories hidden in plain sight. See readtheplaque.com for examples. 

- Apply the SLANT method: Sit up, Lean forward, Ask and answer questions, Nod your head, and Track the speaker.

- Ask five questions, give five compliments - this requires an alert attentiveness toward other people and what they're saying.

- Find something to complain about - without complaining, there can be no progress. The trick is to treat negativity as a means, not an end. 

- Meet a friend halfway - pick a friend and calculate the exact geographic midpoint between where the two of you live. See geomidpoint.com. 

- Be alone in public - it's not a penalty to spend time alone. It's an opportunity - to exist totally free of anyone else's expectations or your smartphone. 

A stand of pine trees on a trail that I 

explored by myself one morning.

- Care for something. Caring is at the very heart of it all. These exercises help you decide what you want to care about - and thus what and whom you want to care for and attend to.

A river in Wisconsin that I have enjoyed visiting several times.