"Blink: The power of thinking without thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell
If you read this book too slowly, it defies the message. The first few seconds of exposure are decision-makers - this is the premise of the book. Blink focuses on snap decisions.
My interest lies in the connection to dance and dance audiences (but is relevent to other live performing arts also). In a period of time compression [for more information, check out David Harvey's thoughts on time-space compression and conditions of modernity], if our attention span has decreased to the point of blinking, what value do we derive from sitting silently in a dark auditorium attending to a performance lasting an hour or more? Is this a renewal of 'slow'?
In developing our audiences, we can promote the virtue of having time, feeling present, being 'forced' by chosen circumstance to reflect and reevaluate. Live performance offers us the rare occasion to give our snap decisions second (third, fourth...) chances. Dance is both about blink, and about anti-blink.
-R
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