Two more "art of noticing" exercises

I've been making notes on The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker.  I just recalled that I've been doing these kinds of noticing exercises for a long time!  

In 2012 the family took a camping trip to Maine.  On one of the hikes, I set up a game: set my phone timer for 5 minutes.  When the 5 minutes are done, stop.  Look around.  There is something extraordinary there.  Take a picture.  Repeat.  I just looked at my photos from that time and saw that no photos from that experiment remain... just family snapshots.

When I was in Vermont a couple summers ago, I did something similar with writing.  Set the timer for 15 minutes.  Stop and write about where I am NOW.  

Both of these techniques interrupt the "flow" of time and indicate: "something is happening important right now.  Get out of your head and notice it."

Also, it makes me think of a road trip I took with a girlfriend once.  We were hiking near the Columbia River.  I had the idea of "digital" versus "analog."  Digital represented walking along the path, along with dozens/hundreds of other folks.  "Analog" represented the idea that we could step off the trail at any point, and walk perpendicular to the trail and find endless wonders.  

I don't think the metaphor is apt so much anymore.  I think it referred to the idea that each "moment" of a digital recording is a single "digit" of music...a pointilist moment that, added together, represents the song.  (I'm not sure why I think that the analog "song" was richer/deeper than that... maybe because it's "closer" to the actual room where the musican's played? maybe because you could hear the coffee maker in the background in the studio in an analog recording (could you? and if so, wouldn't that be in the digital recording, too?)