Pay Attention
Like Google’s “Adsense,” which auctions searchable terms to the highest advertising bids, Root Markets’ business plan to securitize attention is among the emerging strategies for the computerized parsing, bundling, and re-marketing of attention—taken together, these various strategies for the capture of attention mark a significant mutation in the conceptualization, character, and monetization of what Marx called “productive” labor (labor that produces capital for its capitalist). The rise of the internet along with the market valuation of internet companies allows us to grasp this simple fact: as with previous if still extant labor markets, the commodity being sold in capitalist media is productive power itself. (Beller)
As a mobile application developer, getting the audience’s attention is an essential formula for an application to survive and grow. Without this attention then it will be difficult for me to monetize this product. In one of the free courses I take online, they teach you about product design and a section of it tells you to transform from your product from a “vitamin” to a “painkiller”. A vitamin pill is something that we do not necessarily need but we might still take it. On the other hand, a painkiller is something that we need if we are in a huge amount of pain. In short, make a product that people need. If a product is already a painkiller, then it is easy to implement it but if the product starts as a vitamin then it is a different story. (Think Facebook, 10 years ago nobody thought that they need to open FB first thing in the morning, but now they do) First, you can get your user hooked by giving them rewards similar to B.F. Skinner’s Reinforcement theory(i.e. random likes and emails) and other psychological methods.
With that being said, I wonder if capitalizing on people’s attention is the right thing to do if I am basically taking advantage of our weaknesses as human beings to gain this attention. This attention that I just stole and sold to corporations, these users could have used it to do something valuable. As a business student, I do want to earn money but I also want to be socially responsible. Maybe, once I gain the audience’s attention, then I could divert it into something meaningful? For example, like making people aware that “there are more than 2 billion people who live on less than two dollars a day.” ?(Beller) I could give them something valuable, and in return, I would get their valuable attention.
The problem now, however, is that people do not value their attention. We would just gladly give it away by scrolling through Facebook mindlessly or reading some garbage articles because they seemed interesting. We are already experiencing information overload, yet, we want receive more information because we configured our brains to feed on information when we are bored or we have nothing to do. This pile-up of information decreases our cognitive ability, resulting in bad decision making.
Unravel
I was impressed by the synchronization of the disc jockey and the background orchestra. Every time the disc jockey touches or plays around with the disc, the orchestra acts as if the action affected their piece. As I am watching it, I keep asking myself, “Which one did he record first, the music or the video? Or both?.” If he recorded the orchestra first, then I’m impressed by the actor’s synchronicity with the music. If the actor was recorded first, then that is some great improvisation by the orchestra. Either way, this video art succeed in connecting a classical instrument (piano) with a modern instrument (the turn table). Both instruments are performed live, and combining them into one performance creates this mixture of beauty from both worlds.
Answer Me
Mr. Ansala’s choice of camera shot for the drummer and the girl saying “Answer Me” is quite interesting. The camera is closed up on the drummer’s face but we could get the idea that he is playing the drums. His eyes seemed to be fixated on whatever he’s doing. (I later found out that he’s staring at a wall). On the other hand, we get a long shot for the girl who keeps saying “answer me”. It creates some sort of distance between the audience and the character.
I felt pity for the girl because no matter how many times she say “answer me”, nobody actually responds to her (at first, I thought the voices from the kids were a response to her). When she actually starts saying an actual sentence, the audience could not hear a word she says. In a way, I see it as “How can I answer you if I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Intervista
I ended up watching Mr. Ansala’s earlier works, a documentary called Intervista. The documentary also deals with sound, or lack thereof. In this documentary, Ansali found his mother’s old film as a leader of the Communist Youth Alliance. The film did not have any sound so he asked for the help of deaf-mute lip readers to uncover her mother’s words. The way her mother reacted to the words that she said a long time ago is very compelling. She could not believe that she said those kind of things. This resonates to me because I believe people have the capabilities to change and people are also prone to extreme pressure. His mother lived in a time where a sign of opposition to the current government is an immediate imprisonment or death. In her mind, she was also protecting her children by protecting the government. As she said at the end, “if there is no Albania, then there is no future for us”. (heavily reworded).
This documentary played well with the concept of time and our memory. Nobody in the documentary could remember what happened or what was said but the only thing that was able to preserve this moment in time was the film.