Doodling with the eye-tracker (stairs), 2021
The selected drawings below are the outcome of an exploration that transforms the gaze into a method of doodling with eye-tracking technology. For this specific project, I would wear the Pupil Core monocular eye-tracking headset during the mundane moment of going up and down the stairs.
Some eye-tracking drawings were eventually overlaid on top of a rough 3D scan of the bedroom space.
An illustration of the practice of drawing-with the eye-tracker while going up or down a staircase
Illustration is my own
Anecdote:
I was returning home from the grocery store, when while climbing up the stairs I was thinking about the practice research. The previous day I had tried to draw-with the eye-tracker while walking across the apartment’s corridor: a short-lived exercise as something had gone wrong in the data-capturing process. The blank results were on my mind, as I still did not know what had led to the technological error. I thought that it would be best to reattempt the drawing exercise, and while I was still going up the staircase, I muttered: “This can actually be something interesting to try”. I therefore left my groceries in the kitchen and powered-on my laptop. I made sure the laptop’s configuration of going into sleep-mode when closing the lid was turned off and plugged-in the Pupil Capture monocular eye-tracker. I defaulted most of the eye-tracker’s settings to auto – “It will figure it out”, I thought – and wore the eye-tracker for calibration. I closed the laptop lid, held it beneath my left arm, and headed for the doorway.
I started going up and down the stairs as I attempted to draw the activity with my eyes with the technology. This resulted in an obscuring of natural and unnatural processes – for example my natural way of gazing while climbing the stairs blurred into moments where I subverted my natural gaze trajectory with the intent of drawing with my eye movements. The technology was also out of its optimal environment for a best performance. For example, as it was not being used in its ideal stationary scenario, the light changed drastically and continuously along the staircase. I was also holding my laptop vertically with its lid closed, hoping that the technology was still communicating and processing. Once back in the apartment, I checked that Pupil Capture did in fact hold some data and I was glad to save it on my laptop as folder ‘drawing_staircase_1’.
A few days later, I exported the eye-tracking data as a .csv format, which was imported as a point-cloud within Rhino 3D using Grasshopper. Through the latter I processed the computation to generate a polyline across the data-points, a process that transformed the data-points into a three-dimensional digital drawing. As I interacted with the drawings in the bare digital space of Rhino 3D’s viewport, it occurred to me that I should try situating them within a more representative aesthetic context.
Navigating the 3D space with my mouse reminded me of a website that I had recently come across during one of the frequent moments of wandering while surfing the internet, that specifically consisted in an interactive ‘virtual museum’ of 3D-scanned underwater heritage sites surrounding the Maltese islands (VM 2020). I did not have a 3D scanner, but I did have the technology to improvise one. I googled for apps that turned one’s mobile phone camera into a 3D scanner, and downloaded the app ‘3Dim Capture’ (3Dim 2020). I rushed to the staircase and performed multiple rough scans of the interior space with my mobile phone using the app. These were exported as a point-cloud and eventually added as a digital layer representative of context to the digital eye-tracking drawings.
Eye-tracking doodling while going up and down the stairs, January 2021
Two digital video loops with eye-tracking
Pupil Core monocular eye-tracker, Pupil Player, Rhino 3D, 3D scan with 3Dim
Eye-tracking doodling while going up and down the stairs, February 2021
Digital drawing with eye-tracking
Pupil Core monocular eye-tracker, Pupil Player, Rhino 3D, 3D scan with 3Dim
Eye-tracking doodling while going up and down the stairs, March 2021
Digital video loop with eye-tracking
Pupil Core monocular eye-tracker, Pupil Player, Rhino 3D, 3D scan with 3Dim