“The Decisive Moment, Instant or Attenuated?”
a research presentation by Jacqui Knight
in the CogNovo seminar room, Link Building (3rd floor) at Plymouth University
15 June 2016, from 13:00-15:00
Preceded by coffee and tea from 12:30.
The representation of the ‘distilled moment’ or ‘decisive moment’, clarifies some things whilst it obscures others; what it obscures is the distinction between attention and consciousness (awareness). The close relationship between attention and consciousness has led many scholars to conflate these processes whilst everyday speech and literature often resists a clear definition.
This seminar will provide examples that show consciousness and attention as two discrete components that need not occur together. This, in turn, has implications for the way we think about photographic practices and the weight of the collaboration between the photographer, the camera and the world revealed in certain incidental outputs.
This presentation will set up a problematic that aims to untangle the tight relationship between attention and consciousness through a range of photographic examples where there is a dominance of one or the other in the representation of a seemingly fleeting moment.
This seminar is hosted by Transtechnology Research, a transdisciplinary research group situated in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Plymouth University. Its constituency is drawn from historians, philosophers, anthropologists, artists and designers and is led from a historical and theoretical perspective with the objective of understanding science and technology as a manifestation of a range of human desires and cultural imperatives. Its overarching research project concerns the historical and philosophical aspects of science and technology and the popular arts.