APD Week 1 - Observation: Seeing

Theme:

Observation

Context:

As a filmmaker I am interested in narrative / plot, as well as in the emotional ride you can take an audience on.

To convey emotion we often make use of conventions such as montage theory and other techniques that have a strong basis in psychology.

Thinking this way, I approached the APD exercise of ‘observation’

A psychologist friend of mine was recently telling me about an exercise they do in training where they themselves need to face another psychologist-in-training and then stare into one another’s eyes for a prolonged period. One of the things they explore afterward is how much each felt they were ‘being seen’ and how much they felt they were ‘seeing’ the other person. This idea makes us examine our sense of self, our relationship with the ‘human gaze’ and for me it also raises questions about the psychological function as well as the neuroscience of ‘seeing’ itself.

I decided to infuse the APD ‘observation’ exercise with the idea of ‘seeing’.

I looked at the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic and her work ‘The Artist is Present’. I thought of doing something similar as a starting point and seeing where that led.

Scientific studies and/or ideas I looked to included:

Giovanni B Caputo Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion

Equilibrium Theory Revisited: Mutual Gaze and Personal Space in Virtual Environments

http://vhil.stanford.edu/mm/2001/bailenson-equilibrium.pdf

The Self-Experiment

https://positivepsychology.com/international-eye-contact-experiment/

Method:

I wasn’t sure where this exercise would lead me but I hoped curiosity and experimentation would take me to somewhere new in my thinking – that I would land on a new idea or concept which might inform a future work, or at least stretch my thinking.

As above in 'Context', I used the idea of Marina Abramovic and her work ‘The Artist is Present’ as well as the eye gaze training exercise as a springboard into my work.

I started out filming students doing the eye gaze in dyad exercise for one-minute. I wanted to try this for longer, so used myself as a guinea pig and stared into my own eyes (via video recording) for three-minutes.

Finally I played with the idea of the distortion and disassociation that can happen over time if you stare at yourself in the mirror for 10 minutes.

Response/Reflection:

After just jumping in and making, as well as a little research, I eventually landed on the seed of an idea:

Seeing + time = distortion

This concept might also be applied to thoughts ie. if you think about the same thought for long enough, does it start to deteriorate and dissociate from its original meaning?

I like the idea that this concept could drive an interactive experience (yet to be determined) called ‘human gaze time maze’, in which, over time, the human gaze is somehow key in both overcomplicating a maze and simplifying it depending on the duration of your seeing things, or perhaps your ability to hold your gaze.

This exercise was good inspiration for work we did in the Oscar Raby/ VRTOV workshop on 26th/27th July.

In a small group at the workshop, we started to prototype a VR experience in which you can never escape ‘being seen’. The experience is contemplative and explores the concept of ‘self’ through reflection.