Feb 1 - Display Research - 2hrs
I read through the The Six Laws of Attention. Summarized them the best I could below.
-1.) Attention is a Limited Resource. Humans are not capable of paying attention or being aware of everything. What I found most interesting about this law was that we are not even aware of our own biology, until something is pointed out. For example we don't notice our pumping/ throbbing hearts, unless if we are under some sort of stress, or until this last sentence was read.
-2.) Attention is Selective. In order to pay attention to something you must exclude something else. This essentially supports the limited resource law, but rather than not being able to recognize everything because of limitations, one selects what they pay attention to. The "Cocktail Party Phenomenon" illustrates this, basically when one person is having a conversation with somebody they become oblivious to other conversations around them.
-3.) Consciousness Requires Attention. This is a bit trickier to understand, but returning to the cocktail party, a person will still be dimly aware of things around them. So the more engaging something is, the more attention one pays to it.
-4.) Attention does not Require Consciousness. When a person becomes has over-learned something, like driving a car, they are not fully conscious of all the motions that are required to drive a vehicle. The only way this could be applied to display cases is that people may have such a over-learned, automatic behavior like a set routine to class which may result in students not being fully aware of the display case, unless if you draw their attention to it.
-5.) All Tasks Require Some Degree of Attention (although that amount may be small). In a nutshell, everything we do requires attention, even it is a small amount. The little amount of attention is used to monitor automatic behavior; for example we use some attention to notice where we step as we descend stairs, but an even smaller amount when walking on level surface.
-6.) All Tasks Have an Optimal Level of Attention. Complex task suffer from lack of enough attention, while automatic task suffer from too much behavior. Interestingly how drawing attention to automatic behavior, minor behavior could be very disruptive. Pointing out somebodies gait will result in them walking differently. So how can I apply this to the display case, well I don't know.... yet.
- Meeting with Grace - 1hrs
I met with Grace to look through the hard drive in order to see what files she wanted to use for her presentation. This also allowed me the opportunity to look at the material on the hard drive after reformatting it. One thing that became obvious to both Grace and I was that the files are not similarly organized. One folder titles DOCS had videos for a certain Visions, while another contained a VIDEOS folder with every video for that year, things like Panels, advertisement and Submissions all lumped together. It became obvious that there needed to be a universal way of organizing all files. So Grace and I got as much as we could and I left the hard drive sorting for another day. One good thing that came from this was that I was able to see the footage of past conferences and I did not really like the camera placements for much of the panels, they did edit it pretty well, had they had one camera that framed the speakers frontally it could have cut better, so I mentioned that to Sydney.
Feb 3 - Meeting with Brandon Guthrie- 1hr
Zoe and I met with my former professor, now the current Department Chair for Humanities and Fine Arts at CFCC. He gave us a tour of the new Cape Fear Humanities and Fine Arts center, and showed us locations we could advertise. We found out that there is a front side and a backside to the building. The backside is were students have access to, while the front side side used for bigger events and runs like a business by different people not connected to the Humanities and Fine Arts department. So it may be more difficult to advertise in the front part of the building, but we may be able to put, four-ups in the front area. This would be good because this is a high traffic area during plays and concerts. The process of getting posters approved was pretty simple as well, all you have to do is go to the kiosk in Union Station and ask for the posters to be stamped for approval, and you don't even have to be a student.
- Organizing Hard Drive - 1hr
After getting back on campus I began organizing the Buffalo Hard Drive. The first thing I did was make a 6 Visions folder and inside of all of them I put 7 folders to help organize material. This way one can go from one Visions folder to another and they will all be organized the same. It really is simple but about an hour in, I ran into a wall, I found some documents that I have no idea where they belong, I need to get my hands on all the programs in order to see what material is missing and begin hunting files down that way.
Feb 4 - Lumina Scout- .5hr
Rebecca Firth gave me access to Lumina Theater and I was able to take some pictures of possible camera placements for Sydney Burton. I think with 3 cameras we would be able to get sufficient coverage of the panels, keynote speakers, host and crowd. The camera operators will have to coordinate by restricted to certain zones.
Feb 5 - Display Case Research - 1hrs
Today I met with Brandon Guthrie again, we discussed various things on displays. It took a while to explain exactly what I was displaying, initially he thought it was just documents so he showed me how to best display that, but then gave me advice on how to best display material and how it should be closer to the glass so people can see it. People don't like to peer into things, they would rather be able to see something closer, so bringing material forward. Guthrie also told me to angle the documents slightly, this way if there is light on top it could illuminate downward on it and make it easier to read. I also found out that a darker background would more foreground objects pop out if they are lighter. Essentially you have to make the material easy to access visually and that will help draw the attention of onlookers.
Feb 6 - Meeting with Art Department - 2hrs
Grace informed me that many Dirty Dozen's needs to be adjusted, so I made some changes. I mainly changed the task completion dates. Grace and I later went to the edit lab and looked through the hard drives again to see what else she may need for her presentation. Found out that things on Vimeo have more information. Another option may be to search through the second drive and see what files are in that drive, hopefully together they can combine to create a complete festival record.
- Organizing Visions 2011 Files - 2hrs
I went through the 2011 files and organized them into several folders in order to make it more organized. I got through one complete drive and was exhausted by the end. There is a lot of files that are randomly thrown in there. I also did not see any video files files, so I will have to track those somehow.
Reflections
This past week I continued my trend of researching "how things work." I can't wait until I can actually apply all of these theories. Perhaps they wont work, so far the organization of the hard drive in the same structure as the online archive has been useful. If it makes it easier to access stuff on the hard drive it should be easy to access once its online. I look forward to the day Carson and I begin filling up the archives online.
The other day somebody called me Indiana Jones, this was partly because I have to track down all the missing pieces. I really like this idea of being an Anthropologist; after that it is my other major, and this is like the initial research phase that is done before requesting a grant to apply the theory. Last week I compared my research to Going Deep with David Rees, but thinking about it anthropologically is way is a lot more exciting.
Source:
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/lawsofattention.html
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