Partly inspired by Bruce Nauman’s “Please Pay Attention Please,” and reimagining it for the Internet age, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION explores the tension between our newest commodity, attention, and the “context collapse” in meaning that occurs on digital screens, small and large.
A principle of modern economics is that human attention is itself a fungible commodity, as valuable as oil or electricity. Thus, people try to garner the attention of strangers as a means of earning income and status. Like all commodities, attention becomes more valuable as it grows scarce. Attention deficit disorders continue to rise.
In 2008, Cultural Anthropologist Michael Wesch use the term “context collapse,” referring to YouTube vloggers, describing it as “…an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording. The images, actions, and words captured by the lens at any moment can be transported to anywhere on the planet and preserved … for all time. The little glass lens becomes the gateway to a black hole, sucking all of time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in upon itself.”
These images and sounds continually collide and overlap in unanticipated ways, and presents a total chaos of the formerly well-ordered self. By alternating attention-robbing, common Internet visual memes with diverse performers repeating variations of three common words, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION attempts to make sense of that chaos.