The Needle in a Haystack: Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

Exhibition at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, accompanied by catalogue (containing essay by Tchalenko) and 15 minute DVD film “The Needle in a Haystack: Strategies of Visual Search in Art, Medicine and Daily Life. The Eye Control project (2001-2004) from which this research originated, was a Wellcome Trust funded project comparing visual search strategies in art (e.g. in observational drawing) and in medicine (e.g. in X-ray diagnosis). It was undertaken jointly with Imperial College Computing Department whose role was confined to providing eye track equipment and processing the medical part of the data. In parallel to addressing the specialist, our main emphasis was to generate enthusiasm amongst a younger generation of potential scientists and artists. This was achieved on the science side with the Royal Society exhibition display (see 1.1) which was voted as the 2nd most popular display of the show. On the art side, we were invited by David Hockney and Alan Jones to exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show 2004 examples of free-eye drawing (drawn with the eyes alone) by four international artists