Noticing ii - Jenny Odell, artist

I am reading a book by artist Jenny Odell on the importance of "doing nothing"—which of course doesn't mean wasting time or simple leisure, but rather is a means of repair in this age of excess consumption, noise, and entities clamoring constantly for our attention. Hers is an anticapitalist view, in the sense that relentless productivity and "progress" are not the be-all and end-all (by a long shot) of why we're on the planet. Rather, we should be paying attention, listening more deeply and forging connections with the life (including people) around us. 

But I'm not here to write about the book: I'm only in chapter two and will write a book report when I'm done. What I am interested in is Odell's role as an artist. As her bio on the flyleaf tells us, she teaches art at Stanford and has been an artist-in-residence at such places as Recology SF (i.e., the San Francisco dump), the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department. As she puts it, she makes "digital art of the physical world."

Here's a statement from her book, and then some images to illustrate.

As a visual artist, I've long had an appreciation of doing nothing—or, more properly, making nothing. I had been known to do things like collect hundreds of screenshots of farms or chemical-waste ponds from Google Earth, cutting them out and arranging them in mandala-like compositions. In The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a project I did while in residence at Recology SF, I spent three months photographing, cataloging, and researching the origins of two hundred discarded objects. I presented them as a browsable archive in which people could scan a handmade tag next to each object and learn about its manufacturing, material, and corporate history. At the opening, a confused and somewhat indignant woman turned to me and said, "Wait . . . so did you actually make anything? Or did you just put things on shelves?" I often say that my medium is context, so the answer was yes to both.
 Part of the reason I work this way is because I find existing things infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make. The Bureau of Suspended Objects was really an excuse for me to stare at the amazing things in the dump—a Nintendo Power Glove, a jumble of bicentennial-edition 7UP cans, a bank ledger from 1906—and to give each object the attention it was due. This near-paralyzing fascination with one's subject is something I've termed the "observational eros." 

The following images are from her project Satellite Collections (2009–11). In her artist statement she says, "The view from a satellite is not a human one, nor is it one we were ever really meant to see. But it is precisely from this inhuman point of view that we are able to read our own humanity, in all of its tiny, repetitive marks upon the face of the earth. From this view, the lines that make up basketball courts and the scattered blue rectangles of swimming pools become like hieroglyphs that say: people were here." (As always, click on the images to view large and on black.)

206 Circular Farms

100 Shipping Containers

681 Observatory Domes, Telescopes, and Other Structures
for Long Range Observation

137 Landmarks

10 Waterslide Configurations

And here are some photos from her installation The Bureau of Suspended Objects (2015–). These have no title, but the website has a good explanation of what Odell was aiming to accomplish. 

And here, finally, is Garbage Selfie, "a self portrait composed of everything I threw away, recycled or composted between February 10 and March 1, 2014."

How does this inform this possible new daily blog project of mine? What am I trying to accomplish? As I said yesterday, one of my goals is to remain open and curious. (Did I say that? If not, I meant to.) I want to learn about what's out in the world, and so does Jenny Odell, clearly. I am very interested in context—where things belong, where things end up. I am viewing her work with great sympathy. I like knowing that she's doing these projects, that her creative energy is in the world. Her work, in a very real way, is instructive on how to pay better attention.