Parade

 

Questions about technology and orientation of minds and bodies become pressing given the sheer number of technologically driven spectacles that demand our attention. And such spectacles need not even be spectacular. We think of the music-immersed environment outside the Starbucks, the creation of a particular micro-world that orients our thinking selves out of it, or, should we choose to stay and chat with passing students or colleagues, a leaning in of the body and raising of the voice to be heard while we also can’t help but wonder when was the last time we actually heard the Yaz and do either of us have this album. Indeed, as Richard Lanham famously pointed out, in an “attention economy” keeping eyes and ears and hands and bodies engaged, on task, and oriented may be one of the most difficult things to do for any “content creator.” And this difficulty isn’t just the preoccupation of a digitally driven age. The nearly 100-year-old ballet Parade from 1917 spoke powerfully, if briefly, at the dawning of the age of multimediated spectacle demanding attention, facilitating orientation.