“Again: Serial Practices in Contemporary Art” is currently on display at The Wadworth Antheneum Museum and was reviewed in the Regional NY Times yesterday. But more importantly, the exhibit is curated by my good friend from Cal undergrad days, Ash Anderson. The showcase is comprised of 113 photos by 15 artists, all tied together by the theme of repetition (however it may be interpreted).
The theme of the exhibit got me thinking about the psychology of repetition–why the mind reacts to repetitive sequences and how it incorporates these sequences into daily life in the form of habits. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, repetition leads to a behavior/response that becomes more automatic with each repeat. So in essence, repetition leads to the formation of habits, which could be any part of an activity, ranging from eating and sleeping to thinking and reacting.
Then there’s the concept of spaced repetition, which is a learning technique in which increasing intervals of time are used between subsequent reviews. It’s more than just simple, rote repetition but instead focuses on active recall and using methods such as questioning, free association, intellective reflection, or prompting using other mnemonic triggers/cues. And did you know that people differ little in the way their memory works? Studies have found that people with large differences in IQ will often exhibit similar spaced repetition patterns. For example, when we learn something new, most people require a repetition within 1-10 days to ensure 95% retention. Interesting, right?
I guess advertising works because it capitalizes on the effectiveness of repetition on memory and habit-formation. But now that consumers are so savvy about advertising in general, they have built up antibodies that resist traditional marketing methods (such as repeated messaging). Repeated messaging usually gets tuned out or simply ignored these days. There’s definitely much to be said about current trends in consumer communication and new ways to connect with an audience, but that’s another story for another day ;) In the meantime, check out a short article I wrote on communications and context on House of Naked.
Filed under: Shrinkwrapped | Tagged: advertising, art, photography, psychology
[...] Shrink the Media. wrote an interesting post today on Discovering the Insight in RepetitionHere’s a quick excerptDiscovering the Insight in Repetition Posted on October 22, 2007 by vee … ). car-in-lake.jpg The theme of the exhibit got me thinking about the psychology of repetition– … increasing intervals of time are used between subsequent reviews. It’s more than just simple, rote [...]
It’s so interesting to read a psychological perspective on repetition. Some of the work in the show was made over a lifetime- prolonged fascination or obsession with a single theme- while other series document less than an hour beginning to end, before the artist moves on to something completely different. I’ve been wondering how people view the show- whether they can really see 23 very similar portraits framed identically and hung in a row as individual pictures, or whether after viewing a few they lack the concentration to keep at it, and summarize the piece mentally.
Perhaps we tune out those advertisements because it’s not longer repeition due to the frequency of the ads; it becomes something closer to saturation, so naturally we have to cut it off before we drown in the madness of “too much”. :-)