The Eye Resonator Makes Rich Visualizations Based Off Your Eye Movements

Part interactive installation and part psychological experiment, Brigitta Zics and John Shearer's Eye Resonator seems like it’d be used by optometrists in some ultra-surveilled, dystopian future—not unlike the eyeball-grabbing machines of A Clockwork Orange and Brazil. It’s pretty creepy-looking.

But as the video trailer and photo stills reveal, that creepiness is offset by its custom technology. Developed by Zics and Shearers after years of fine-tuning, its focus on creating contemplative environments in which our eye movements get rendered into a real-time graphic performance is both innovative and hypnotic.

Maybe, then, it’s not creepiness that we’re feeling towards the concept, but uncomfort towards a forced self-awareness. Afterall, Zics and Shearers whole goal is to inspire a feeling of suspension, or “nakedness,” in which the user’s experience is dictated solely by their own physical reactions to The Eye Resonator’s solitary environment.

“The Eye Resonator […] is an interactive aesthetic ecosystem that applies generative visualisation technology [that’s] responsive to affective states of the participants through reading their eye gaze,” says the project's press release. “By detecting behavioural changes, it stimulates a process of self-observation and guides them through a sequence of experiences and feedback loops.”

Its centerpiece is the dome, or “cupola,” which was developed in Zics’ homeland of Hungary, and holds the bulk of the duo’s custom technology. In addition to reading a participant’s eye movements, the dome cycles pulses of heat, cold, sound, and light towards the user, in order to place her in a “journey of self-reflection,” according to the project’s website.

It debuted earlier this month at Newcastle University’s Culture Lab, but it’s slated to make appearances in Liverpool, Budapest, and London in 2015. Just where in those cities hasn’t been disclosed yet, but we’re hoping they’re not corporate vision centers.

All images, stills, and video provided by Newcastle University’s Culture Lab.

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