When Irve expressed shock and dismay that people looked right past our funeral as they went about their day, I assumed that those people were belligerent: purposefully unwilling to be distracted by our very beautifully haphazard distraction. As I said at the time, many people do not see art, some because they actively seem to avoid it. But what about the others?
Lo and behold: another theory comes to my attention. Actually, a theory of attention. The theory of "The Invisible Gorilla," which it turns out is the result of a very important and reputable Harvard psychology study. It showed that many people, if preoccupied by a simple task, will be unable to notice salient factors within their environment.
Maybe, just maybe, we did encounter people whose heads were too full of numbers or algorithms or meeting schedules to even see a funeral procession going by. And what does that mean for the future of interdisciplinary art-in-the-world?
Check out the cool website for the set of Harvard experiments on attention:
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