First Impressions is a social tagging experiment that allows us to see what you see, or rather, where you see. Individuals were able to go through a selection of artwork and click on where their eye was drawn first. By doing this, we were able to document exactly what people looked at first.
Kyle Jaebker is the applications developer behind First Impressions. “Coming from a non-art background, it’s interesting to see if I’m looking at what everyone else is . . . and any art interaction is valuable.”
So what do people see? Well here is one of the presented images -
Lozowick, Louis (American, 1892-1973), "Winter Fun."
and here is where everyone clicked (the warmer the color, the more clicks received).
The viewer did bounce around a little but mostly kept to the figures in the foreground and the center of the painting. But are these people looking at the right things? Or are there even right things to look at?
Marty Krause, Curator of Print, Drawings and Photographs, weighs in on this idea, “There aren’t wrong answers. People’s eyes tend to go to the middle—that’s how eyes work.” The artist knows this and builds their composition around it. You’ll look at what the artist intended you to look at first; it’s part of their job as a visual expresser.”
Filed under: Around the Web, Art, Musings
Below are your clues for the last film. I think you all know the drill by now but the first person to correctly guess will win two tickets to any Summer Nights film. Leave a comment below and the answer will be given tomorrow morning.
