19Returning the Gaze
‘Returning the Gaze’ is an cyber-physical robotic installation by Behnaz Farahi supported by Universal Robots for ANNAKIKI’s Milan Fashion Week. ‘Returning the Gaze’ is an exploration of this scenario. In the center, a female model wears a spacesuit-like outfit and a headpiece fitted with two tiny cameras. The cameras track and capture the movements of the model’s eyes, and enlarging and displaying them on four monitors mounted moving around on robotic arms glaring back at the observers. The gaze of the model is thereby directed back at the viewer, extended and enhanced through cyborgian technologies.

Reverse Blinking
Imagine that your head is captured inside a photo camera. It is completely dark. Only when the shutter opens en closes, you see the world in a flash. The shutter moves so fast that nothing has time to move. Everything where you point your gaze at, becomes like a photograph. A memory. Something that has been, but isn’t anymore. You see people as frozen figures, whole streets as untouched moments. Life as a sort of dia show. “Reverse Blinking” creates this experience. It is a completely closed helmet with two shutters in front of the eyes. They are controllable by the user. Reverse Blinking works on batteries and can be freely used in or outside the museum. It is best used where there is a lot of movement and people. “Reverse Blinking” is part of a series of art works, through which the artist tries to add video and photographical effects to our natural way of seeing.

Eyeris
Eyeris is a cultural prosthetic that renders the user dependent on human touch for sight. While many of today’s digital devices extend our abilities to connect with each other, disability of our current digital devices can been seen through our loss of tangible human interaction. I made this piece in trying to explore the importance of human interdependency in a society living under the myth of autonomy driven by technological symbiosis between man and computer. Eyeris is a mechanically operated electronic device powered by digital input that is deliberately over-engineered to call attention to the social behavioral conditioning imposed on us through less discreet technological devices that we assimilate on a daily basis.

no(where) now(here)
Fashion designer Ying Gao has fabricated a pair of dresses that writhe around and light up when someone stares at them.”We use an eye-tracking system so the dresses move when a spectator is staring,” Ying Gao told Dezeen. “[The system] can also turn off the lights, then the dresses illuminate.” The gaze-activated dresses are embedded with eye-tracking technology that responds to an observer’s gaze by activating tiny motors to move parts of the dresses in mesmerising patterns.

Infinite Cityscapes
Sack’s work explores architecture as a flexible medium capable of expressing the unique space between realism and abstraction; where interpretation and our ability to create meaning is in flux. Within this space, Sack, furnished with pen and ink, encapsulates both the infinite and infinitesimal. His work invites the eye to explore drawings of the “big picture,” to gaze into a kaleidoscope of histories and to look further into the elemental world of lines and dots.

Caress of the Gaze
For Caress of the Gaze, Farahi worked with AutoDesk, PIER9 (where she is currently an Artist in Residence) and MADWORKSHOP to create a kind chest-covering cape covered with a beautiful layer of feather-like quills. While they appear soft to the touch, the quills can actually detect the gaze of another (a man, as shown in the video below) and expand and contract as his eyes move around the body. A microcontroller connected to the cape’s camera can also detect the age and gender of the onlooker, perhaps helping the wearer to discern their motives.

Automultiscopic 3D displays
Automultiscopic 3D displays allow a large number of viewers to experience 3D content simultaneously without the hassle of special glasses or head gear. This display uses a dense array of 216 video projectors to generate images with high angular density over a wide field of view. As users move around the display, their eyes smoothly transition from one view to the next. The display is ideal for displaying life-size human subjects, as it allows for natural personal interactions with 3D cues such as eye-gaze and spatial hand gestures.

Multiple Identities, Sustainable Development
The focus is on multiple identities. There are pale, milky plastic pipes attached to the ceiling of the concrete interior, inside which, moved by fans, roll white balls. One after the other. If the one arrives, a new one is sent to another tube.Such works breathe inner unity. This closeness is sometimes a closeness, if not encryption. Because the language of contemporary installation art is foreign and difficult to read. The viewer’s gaze likes to evaluate subjectively and is always shaped by environmental influences such as culture, trends, styles, beliefs, experiences and politics. This makes the interpretation uncertain, it becomes subjective, often tempting to misconduct. Because anyone who claims that the work of art is created in the eye of the beholder and means that everyone, regardless of where they come from and how educated, can make a valid statement about a work of art is wrong. What Marcel DuChamp meant is that it unfolds in the eye of the beholder. But this development should not mean that simply opening the eyes also brings with it knowledge and insight. These qualities are developed through active participation, through perception. This, in turn, is not only feasible through the visual stimulus in the eye. It is possible, however, if you know who the artist is, what he is doing, what he wishes to express and with which underlying design principles the view is guided in what way to what. Only then does the processing take place, a connection of the causal relationships, which ultimately leads to art in the eye of the beholder. To an inner feeling outside of the spontaneous feelings.