AmbientAttentionYogaProposition
From UoWiki
It's not unusual [among the 0.1% of the planet's population daft enough to live in London... ;) - Provincial Ed.]~ to spend a good 90 minutes each day blankly staring at Tube-verts, because they're (apparently) the only or at least the densest blobs of meaning available in an otherwise seemingly dead or at least aesthetically uninspiring space.
So the experiment is very simple. Avoid at all costs looking at tube adverts, or at least avoid reconstituting them into units of signification. Do this for at least a week. At the end of the week report any conclusions/discoveries.
If it works, the experimenter should have begun a consciousness-shift from having to make a deliberate effort not to notice adverts, to simply erasing them from his or her awareness.
Working hypotheses:
- Noticing/interpreting Tube adverts is a waste of psychic energy;
- tube-verts actually drain energy (hence in part the exhaustingness of commuting);
- this occurs by a sort of vampirism. Tube-verts are dead space, even deader than their unattractive surroundings. The images masquerade as a promise of blessing but deliver only the desire for blessing, never the blessing itself. hence they draw forth desire so as to feed on (make money from) it.
- Ignoring them is best achieved through practising the ZenOfWon't
- The 'unseen' is central to GOOM tactics and applications, (see TheObeliskOfGoom). Hence whatever is deliberately designed to catch the attention deserves investigation if not outright suspicion.
The experiment also aims to discover whether it's possible to train the mind out of passive receptiveness not just the content of adverts but their very presence, and - by omitting these intrusive and exhausting irrelevancies - increase the yogi's capacity for attention to urban surroundings. that is, it's a feasibility test for possible methods of psychogeographical fitness training
NB: Ambient attention yoga needn't necessarily take place in London, but can be practised anywhere that has billboard adverts.
