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.

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.

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.