Our growing fascination with boredom

University Affairs:

A funny thing happened to Julian Haladyn while researching boredom and art. He got excited.

The dull subject was conceptual artist On Kawara’s Today paintings, a series of hundreds of rectangular, solid-coloured canvases – he aimed to make one daily – featuring the day’s date in white. “It was a very boring experience. Your eyes start to glaze over,” says Dr. Haladyn, an OCAD University lecturer, of attending a Kawara exhibition in person.

Dr. Haladyn was doing research for his 2012 PhD thesis, and it was during that work that he came across the image of a Kawara painting featuring his birthday – different year, but the right day. He was so thrilled he called his partner over.

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Psychology professor Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida began conducting studies on boredom in the early 1990s, including one that showed how participants’ results on boredom tests related to their self-actualization. Canada’s leading boredom-focused psychologists, York’s Dr. Eastwood and James Danckert, a University of Waterloo psychology professor, built on Dr. Vodanovich’s work and that of others starting in the early 2000s. Their research has inspired colleagues, and both run labs that support grad students delving into new facets of boredom.

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