‘Your Attention Please’: Media, spectacle and The Complex

This article explores the problematic concept of attention in a mediatized culture. Using Blue Man Group (BMG)’s The Complex concert as a case study, I historicize and analyse discourse on attention and perception through phenomenological and deconstructive frames. I conclude with Michel Foucault’s conception of the heterotopia as the site for a productive analysis of The Complex show, a mediatized manifestation of other spaces, ones that defy focused attention and reveal encounters with and misfires from contemporary media consumption. The heterotopic multimedia concert calls the possibility of attention into question, and with this challenge the Blue Man provides a constructive re-evaluation of consumption and media culture.