A Glance A Gaze A Glare

Patterns of Egocentric Motion in Cities

Radhakrishnan T R
MAUD 2023
Joseph Kennedy
DDes 2025
Image
1 A sculpture of egocentric vision in Times Square

Urban spaces are experienced by people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. We engage with cities and the environment around us through our bodily motions in both conscious and unconscious ways. This project explores the rather subliminal motion of our eye - representing attention - magnified by the motion of ourselves as a real-time sculpture visualisation in the medium of Augmented Reality (AR).

Our cognition and human sight are constantly communicating. Despite our greatest efforts to control them, our eyes frequently become distracted by events outside of our influence. We stare, we gaze, we glare and never stop. This is an egocentric vision, a pattern of human bias that carries artistic representations of physical space. We can draw conclusions from it even though we cannot control it. Set in the context of Time Square, NYC - an urban space where eyes usually get lost, this project "a glance, a gaze, a glare" creates patterns of eye movement; pondering the issues of what people see in urban spaces and how places are shaped in our minds. This pattern is represented as a sculpture where colours are used to represent visual attention.

Project video
Image
2 Motion tracking and eye tracking recorded using augmented reality
Image
3 The framework
Image
4 The algorithm
Image
5 Realtime sculpture