Salvador Dali, The Lacemaker (after Vermeer) (1954-55)
Concentrating is an aspect of order in domain of thinking.
Real
True Narratives
- Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – And How to Think Deeply Again (Crown, 2022): “Hari breaks down the many causes of our lack of attention into two categories: too much and too little. Too much information, stress, surveillance and manipulation, and ADHD diagnoses. Not enough sleep, novel reading, navel gazing and nutritious food.”
- Jamie Kreiner, The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction (Liveright, 2023), “shows that the struggle to focus is not just a digital-age blight but afflicted even those who spent their lives in seclusion and prayer.”
Imaginary
Visual Arts
Jean-Paul Laurens, The Old Scientist, or The Alchemist
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Alvin Lucier has experimented with sound, emphasizing snails-pace changes in oscillations and other musical components. To derive the most from his music, listen with concentrated attention.
- “Music for Piano with Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators XL”
- “Music on a Long Thin Wire” (1980)
- “Navigations” album
Albums:
- Third Coast Percission, “Quartered”: “Quartered is a percussion quartet for live ensemble or for playback as a four-way sound installation. The instrumentation includes glass bottles, wood planks, ceramic tiles, metal pipes, electric toothbrushes, and resonant metallic instruments called sixxen. When performed live, each performer receives a headphone feed of one of four distinct metronomes. The independent clocks relate to one another differently throughout the piece, sometimes maintaining a proportionate relationship, and at other times flexing and contracting to dictate phasing events. Sustained, "irrational" composite rhythms sometimes result, as the metronomes/performers play all together in the same tempo but out of synch with one another.”