Eye Robot (Opto-Isolator)

Opto-isolator (2007: Golan Levin with Greg Baltus) inverts the condition of spectatorship by exploring the questions: "What if artworks could know how we were looking at them? And, given this knowledge, how might they respond to us?" The sculpture presents a solitary mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and unnerving. Among other forms of feedback, Opto-isolator looks its viewer directly in the eye; intently studies its viewer's face; looks away coyly if it is stared at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its viewer blinks. Available through bitforms gallery, NYC.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• golan_levin
• interactive_art
• eye_tracker
• robot
• face_tracking
• sculpture
• eyeball
• eye

[rapazn]

put this on ur front door and kids will never messing with your house again.

[SuperSZ]

Na'vi: I see you

[andrespereyda]

it doesn't need to blink

[kalcaron]

It's cute.

[moffe247]

That would have been SO AWSOME!

[jazzisievers]

..now thats just scary

[Zerosmelt]

or even better install it right above the toilet, lol

[bricology]

"It reminds me : Bill Spinhoven : 'I/Eye',1993."

That's exactly what I was thinking. It's also derivative of Ed Ihnatowicz' "Senster" (1970).

Hasn't this whole "inversion of the viewer/viewed" thing been pretty thoroughly explored already over the past 40 years? This particular incarnation seems gracelessly heavy-handed and literal to me.

As Santayana might've said: "Those who cannot learn from art history are doomed to repeat it".

[tilai11]

It reminds me :

Bill Spinhoven : "I/Eye",1993.

but 2007 version

Well done

[indemnis4]

brilliant!