Saccadic Sightings - in progress
Saccadic Sightings - Project homepage
Problem statement - original project description
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still from MobileEye recording
21-05-08
Since mid April I have had a MobileEye at my disposal. This has kindly been lent to me by Stephen Oliver of S Oliver Associates. I have been able to shoot a lot of interesting footage and also get a clearer idea of where I want this project to go. It's one thing to think it up, but once you get the actual medium in your hands, the real work/fun starts.
The MobileEye is a very easy-to-use and versatile system. It captures the movements of the eye as well as the scenery, that the person wearing it, is looking at. Using Eye Vision software the movements can then be transposed onto the scene footage to determine the point of gaze. This gives you avi movies in which the point of gaze is represented by a small crosshair.
One of the things I want to do with that footage is to 'reverse' the movements of the point of gaze; i.e. to make the footage move around the center rather than the eye move around the footage (of the scene). That way you create an illusion of what it would be like to sit behind someone's eyes, receiving only information from his outer eye. The footage from the MobileEye is very well suited for this purpose. The small lense of the scene cam creates very poetic, blurry (no auto focus) images with faded colours and a wide angle distortion.
Brief introduction to the project
Like the picture of the old woman who turns into a young lady depending on your focus, my works play with the expectations and preconceptions of the viewer by mixing genres, points of reference and conceptual models. Technically, this often entails capturing an everyday situation on video and transforming it to the point of being barely recognizable. The transformation itself and how this is achieved plays an important part in my work process. E.g. it can be done through a process of physical or digital distortion or omission, or by cut ‘n pasting the imagery onto itself until it gains a new meaning. The important thing is that the viewer is constantly forced to switch between thinking he knows what he sees and being confused and unable to comprehend the imagery.
In recent works I have started looking into the way our vision works, and used this as a starting point for transforming imagery. For instance, in the video installation Peripheral Panorama, I walked through The Hague with two cameras filming not straight forward, but to the sides at an angle corresponding with my peripheral vision. This footage was filtered to eliminate detail and enhance contrast and movement. It was synchronized and projected onto two screens at the same angle as it was recorded, in effect giving a walk-through of The Hague as my peripheral vision would have ‘seen’ it.
Saccadic Sightings deals, in a somewhat similar way, with the saccadic movements of the eyes. I want to incorporate these movements into video footage to try to create a representation of the input the eye receives from its surroundings – capture the ‘raw’ footage as it were, before the input is processed.
In relation to my previous works, the movements will act as the transformation. By their very nature the movements should seem recognizable to the viewer, but the fragmented imagery of the ‘unprocessed’ footage will be confusing and very difficult to fully comprehend - strange, yet familiar. I plan to construct a similarly fragmented narrative around the footage, creating a dream-like, association-driven video(-installation).
How much information do we receive through the eyes, how detailed is it, how long is it retained and how big a part does the brain play in putting it all together?
Why do we experience the visual world as a coherent and seamless whole, when the information gathered about it through our eyes is apparently completely fragmented?
Is the 'outside' world located in- or outside the visual apparatus?
