Yasushi Noguchi, Hideyuki Ando - Watch Me!, Eye-responsive Installation 2009

Watch Me! is an experimental project dedicated to documenting social bind (defined below) by intervening in a public space. It watches the different behavior of peoples eyes using a robot bear as an unusual event. The project was finally presented as an installation.
If it is the first time for you to stay in some country, you may be puzzled by peoples behavior as they respond to incidents or encounters.
Then you might realize that they seem to behave spontaneously but are predisposed to exhibit certain behavioral traits by society and culture. We call this social bind.
You maybe feel that, people at a train station in Tokyo for instance, look very cool and calm.
People in a jam-packed train car during rush hourtend to be quiet. Nobody ever complains even if someones music from an iPod is too loud. You might wonder whether people just do not mind or whether they are afraid of complaining. Probably, the latter would be true. In addition, conversation between people who do not known each other is rare.
However, it is not true that people are unaware of others, but instead try to ignore them.
Probably, in Tokyo, social bind is quite strong.
If you live in a city in a different country, you will find that social bind exists as a quite different thing from that in Tokyo. This is because the cultural and social rules differ from country to country.
So, how do people react when an unusual event happens in a public space.
For this project, we assumed that the behavior of peoples eyes is the most excellent index of their reactions.
Do they experience the event and try to be nonchalant about it? Do they stare with great interest? Do they nervously look around?
Watching the behavior of their eyes lets us observe the social bind of a local area.
More info: http://r-dimension.xsrv.jp/projects_e/watch_me/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• art
• responsive
• eye
• tracking
• gaze
• collective
• behavior