Unthought. Attention Capitalism. Boredom. Ecologies of imagination.
Never before have our minds been more connected, devouring digital feeds but never fed, or getting lost in delicious beauty. Because it is beautiful. Internet connected devices are designed to capture our attention and hold it. How often do we find ourselves falling through the rabbit hole of webs only to forget what we originally went looking for, and for a quick moment to become forty, sixty and counting?
The universality of internet-connection and social media has created an excessively animated and over-exploited collective imagination (Crary 2008). The smooth Instagram aesthetic of homogenous images feeds empty time (Benjamin 1974) and a machinic-imaginary (Manovich 2011): we are hyper-active individuals within cognitive capitalism’s constraints. Ironically, this hypertrophy of collective imagination stops us from re-imagining the conditions under which our hyperactivity is being fed. With our attention constantly stimulated and opportunity for the mind to wander lacking, what thoughts are never formed by the process of thinking, not imagined, not dreamed? What if instead of bathing in the syrupy glow, we listened?
Moth Soup explores this lure through an imaginative installation of hand cranked boxes, silver plated spoons, film and animated moths.
This project is an ongoing investigation and intervention of contemporary imagination’s hyperactivity. Today, digital devices have resulted in dramatic shifts in practices of imagining. The ‘Moth Soup Series’ considers Gregory Bateson’s ecologies of mind, Jane Bennett’s material agency and Johnathon Crary’s attention as commodity to investigate temporality, metamorphosis of matter and relations to perception and imagination.
When asked what the response to her work had been, Kate shared, “it’s been really moving to hear the connections and emotions the work stirs in people.” She shared further, “it seems initially that people are drawn in by the gentle, familiar, feminine aesthetic and nostalgic sounds but quickly realise the colours and music are a veil over something more uncomfortable and uncanny at play… something worth exploring a little deeper.”
The exhibition can be experienced at WASPS Creative Exchange, Stormont Street, Perth PH1 5NW until 30 October 2021. Entry is free. Opening times Wednesday to Friday 10am-1pm and 2-4pm. Saturday and Sunday 1-5pm.
The film and Malaise installation was installed at SSA Annual 2022, RSA on the Mound, Princes St, Edinburgh.