After articulating my ideas to a friend for the upcoming assignment, I’ve finally decided to narrow down to the four following prompts:

ROUTINE, TRANSCENDENCE, ATTENTION, PERFORMANCE

These have been inspired by / extracted from past observations and boiled down into prompts that I find interesting and relevant to my situation. From here I shall break down what I find interesting about each of these prompts, how they apply to me and what specifically about them I’m planning to investigate.

ROUTINE
This is a loaded word that I find can be both enticing and repulsive. I feel that I operate at a more productive level when I have a routine in place as it provides me with the means to re-access certain streams of consciousness. At the same time, when I am pinned down by certain routines and structures I feel a bit claustrophobic and creatively strained. I think what separates these notions of routine is whether or not I feel like I’m making progress towards goals. If a routine can stimulate me to be forward-thinking, momentous and spontaneous then I am determined to maintain it, otherwise it is something I try to avoid. This dichotomy of routine is something I will attempt to represent in the assignment.

TRANSCENDENCE
After thinking more about the notion of heaven/hell that I extracted from my last major observation session, I felt that this could be refined into an exploration of transcendence. I am particularly interested in the ways that space can be organised in pursuit of transcendence. Home is often a sanctuary that people become familiar with to such a degree that simply stepping into it can relieve tensions formed through being in the outside world. In this way, it is separate from the world and exists as a multimedia reminder of our personality, memories, and values. What have I/has been organised in my home environment that offers the possibility of transcendence? Is transcendence always a positive thing? Am I attempting to transcend to distract myself? These are all questions that connect to following prompts.

ATTENTION
If there’s one ability that we have that I feel can influence our experience of the passage of time, it’s the ability to harness and focus attention. I see some of the observational practises of this class to be mindful activities, where opening an awareness of the present moment helps to find pure spontaneity within it. This gives a certain significance to each moment, enabling us to avoid the tendency to group experiences together into compartments that gradually grow larger and more vague. I am particularly interested in the ways different mediums demand different degrees of attention and begin to influence our broad capacity to concentrate. What you do and don’t pay attention to influences who you can be. How an idea, or a distraction, can have so much gravity. Attention-grabbing. Attention-seeking.

PERFORMANCE
In every social situation we become performative based on the circumstances. Here I think of Sartre and his notion of bad faith, that over-commitment to a character or role within society, the sacrifice of humanity. For the purpose of this assignment, I am considering how I perform in my own home. I feel that this could be directly connected to routine, as I am performing in a certain way to establish and carry out any routine. How do I perform within my own space? How do I perform in the spaces I share with others in my home? What is happening in the moments where I feel as though I’m not performing? Is this even possible?