Eye and I

This project is experimental for science, because it stretches the limits of scientific thinking beyond where science and scientists are comfortable operating; and it is experimental for art, because it eschews the transformation of human experience into objects (such as paintings, songs or sculptures) in exchange for an experience that mirrors real life - -for what happens in brains and minds when human eyes make contact. In an otherwise ordinary room, the ceiling is filled with randomly placed slots, rather like those in a peep show. Staring down through these slots into the space below are fifty pairs of human eyes. Each day "The Eyes" have a different emotional task to perform (they are the eyes of actors, stand up comics, poets - those that live by the edge of their emotional lives). "The Eyes" never speak and are always in place before visitors arrive. Sessions on the key human emotions are performed through their eyes only. A session on grief may procure tears dropping from the ceiling above, a session on joy or humour may provoke laughter in those who look up. The public may come to see and spend time with "The Eyes" for all sorts of reasons, some private, some curious, some up for a different and unique experience. Sessions have been created and planned with teachers, educators and mental health workers to provide new opportunities for emotional learning and exploration. This installation/experience will also provide a unique "scientific laboratory without walls" to run experiments exploring interpersonal relationships and the relationship between individuals and their minds. (Most research on human emotion uses standardized images, sounds or videos to evoke emotion. These stimuli are useful for controlled experiments, but also result in unnatural emotional responses that may not generalise beyond the boundaries of the laboratory itself. Furthermore, these stimuli tend only to elicit a small range of emotional response. With this installation/exhibit, we will experiment with new methods of evoking emotion, and move toward the study of emotional experiences not traditionally explored in highly controlled scientific studies.)" This installation/exhibit is unique for art, in that it is the visitors who are themselves the exhibit. Their feelings and responses are the work. The art and the artist step back and allow the activity of human-to-human relating to take their places. The art is Emotional Life itself