This piece is a roundtable discussion on the Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility” examining its relevance today in our ongoing condition of media change in which attention and distraction are at the forefront of current concerns. The discussion was between Mike Jennings, Professor in the German Department at Princeton University and author of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life; Michael Wood, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University and author of Habits of Distraction; and Thomas Levin, Professor in the German Department at Princeton University and curator and co-author of CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother. The discussion was moderated by Daniela Fabricius, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute.

This piece is an interview with Harry Francis Mallgrave, author of The Architect’s Brain : Neuroscience, Creativity, and Architecture (Wiley, 2009). It addresses the past and present of the relationship between architecture and ideas about perception.

This piece is an interview with Mark Johnson, author of Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic Books, 1999). It addresses the implications for new findings in neuroscience for our ideas about embodiment.

This piece is an interview with Sylvia Lavin, author of Form Follows Libido Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture (MIT, 2004). It addresses Lavin’s observations and criticisms surrounding the issue of architectural attention today.

This piece is an interview with Tim Holmes, Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. It addresses Holmes research on new developments in attention-tracking technology.