Across these experiments, the meaning of relationship gradually became more specific. I do not use the term primarily to describe an interpersonal or emotional connection. Rather, a relationship exists when the action or condition of one element changes the possibilities available to another. The lettering guide constrains and enables the movement of the hand. In the visit-card maker, the actions of two participants continually affect one another through a shared mechanism. In An Instrument of Attention, qualities produced through an encounter become conditions for the movement of another system.

If a tool could organise an encounter between people, I began wondering what a technological system might be capable of noticing within an encounter.

Polygraph: a machine historically associated with surveillance and truth extraction. It listens to bodily signals while someone speaks and turns those signals into lines that can then be interpreted as evidence. If that logic were turned around, what would it mean for an instrument to pay attention without trying to extract the truth?

An Instrument of Attention listens to a conversation, but it does not record what is being said. Instead, it responds to selected qualities around speech: rhythms, fluctuations, changes in vocal intensity and frequency, pauses and hesitations. These changes are translated into the movement of a drawing instrument. As the conversation unfolds, lines accumulate on paper. The drawing cannot tell us what happened in the conversation. A pause might mean discomfort. It might mean someone is thinking. It might be hesitation, distraction, exhaustion, or nothing particularly meaningful at all. A change in intensity could be anger or excitement. The instrument cannot know the difference.

It only knows what it has been given the ability to notice.