Abstraction, Bare Life, and Counternarratives of Mobility in the Refugee Films of Richard Mosse and Ai Weiwei, Incoming and Human Flow

This chapter explores the unprecedented formal experiments of Richard Mosse and Ai Weiwei in their attempts to capture the signature global event of our time, the mass movements of refugees and immigrants across geopolitical boundaries. In Mosse’s Incoming, a thermal camera registers the heat emanating from human bodies from some 30 miles away, providing images of refugees in lifeboats, transport trucks, and refugee camps that are both other-worldly, almost mutant in their strangeness, and deeply moving—images that rivet the gaze. In Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow, drone cameras render the vast scale of human displacement around the world—a view from above is interspersed with the close witnessing of cell phone video, using the visual language of spontaneous documentation in counterpoint with a technology associated with military surveillance. In both films, Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “bare life” is articulated within an advanced optical and technological framework that brings new critical questions into view.

Multipurpose Bio-Monitored Integrated Circuit in a Contact Lens Eye-Tracker

We present the design, fabrication, and test of a multipurpose integrated circuit (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) in AMS 0.35 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology. This circuit is embedded in a scleral contact lens, combined with photodiodes enabling the gaze direction detection when illuminated and wirelessly powered by an eyewear. The gaze direction is determined by means of a centroid computation from the measured photocurrents. The ASIC is used simultaneously to detect specific eye blinking sequences to validate target designations, for instance. Experimental measurements and validation are performed on a scleral contact lens prototype integrating four infrared photodiodes, mounted on a mock-up eyeball, and combined with an artificial eyelid. The eye-tracker has an accuracy of 0.2°, i.e., 2.5 times better than current mobile video-based eye-trackers, and is robust with respect to process variations, operating time, and supply voltage. Variations of the computed gaze direction transmitted to the eyewear, when the eyelid moves, are detected and can be interpreted as commands based on blink duration or using blinks alternation on both eyes.

Fixation classification: how to merge and select fixation candidates

Eye trackers are applied in many research fields (e.g., cognitive science, medicine, marketing research). To give meaning to the eye-tracking data, researchers have a broad choice of classification methods to extract various behaviors (e.g., saccade, blink, fixation) from the gaze signal. There is extensive literature about the different classification algorithms. Surprisingly, not much is known about the effect of fixation and saccade selection rules that are usually (implicitly) applied. We want to answer the following question: What is the impact of the selection-rule parameters (minimal saccade amplitude and minimal fixation duration) on the distribution of fixation durations? To answer this question, we used eye-tracking data with high and low quality and seven different classification algorithms. We conclude that selection rules play an important role in merging and selecting fixation candidates. For eye-tracking data with good-to-moderate precision (RMSD < 0.5∘), the classification algorithm of choice does not matter too much as long as it is sensitive enough and is followed by a rule that selects saccades with amplitudes larger than 1.0∘ and a rule that selects fixations with duration longer than 60 ms. Because of the importance of selection, researchers should always report whether they performed selection and the values of their parameters.

Dinamiche della bellezza: sguardo e narrazione nel ritratto

Through the commentary on portraits (Lotto, Giorgione, Vermeer, L. Freud, Rembrandt, Tiziano, Bacon…), my contribution will develop two topics. In fact, the portrait calls to reflect both on the reversible dynamics of the gaze (between painter, subject and spectator, between presence and absence) and on the time of the individual as an experience and as a transformative process that tells a story.

How to Recover Reality. Neo-Romantic Irony in Post-Postmodern American Fiction

Even though transcendentalism never ceased to be present in American culture, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the gaze of artists and theorists turned to the ideas of the American Renaissance with a hope that had no place during the reign of postmodern irony. With this in mind, the purpose of this article is to discern the adequacy of Emerson’s philosophy for the recovery of realism through the transcendence of language and a new use of Romantic irony. The previous analysis will take us to the New Sincerity movement. The writers of the generation that followed in the wake of David Foster Wallace’s acted as a bridge between the postmodern and the post-postmodern narrative of the beginning of the new millennium. These young writers based their fiction on a critique of institutionalized irony in order to pave the way for the new post 9/11 novel.

Study on Driver Gaze Characteristics in Sight Distance Limited Section of Mountain Highway Based on Visual Information

In order to study the gaze behavior characteristics of drivers in mountainous road sections with limited sight distance, the real vehicle test is carried out by using Smart Eye Pro 5.7 noninvasive eye tracker. Combined with the sight distance change rate theory, 6 typical test representative mountainous sections are selected to study the gaze distribution law and gaze duration of drivers in different mountainous sections. The research shows that when the driver drives on the test section with the most unfavorable sight distance of 44 m, 50 m, and 56 m, the fixation characteristics of “from far to near” are significant, and the long fixation duration accounts for a large proportion of the driver. When the driver drives on the section with the most unfavorable sight distance of more than 70 m, i.e., the sight distance change rate of less than 1.33, the fixation characteristics of “from far to near” disappear. The driver’s fixation stability increases, the fixation freedom increases, and the proportion of medium and long fixation duration decreases. The data analysis provides a theoretical basis for drivers to pass safely in mountainous sections.

A Study on the Mechanism of Social Robot Attitude Formation through Consumer Gaze Analysis: Focusing on the Robot Face

This study intends to utilize eye tracking for the appearance of a robot, which is one of the trends in social robot design research. We suggest a research model with the entire stage from the consumer gaze response to the perceived consumer beliefs and further their attitudes toward social robots. Specifically, the eye tracking indicators used in this study are Fixation, First Visit, Total Viewed Stay Time, and Number of Revisits. Also, Areas of Interest are selected to the face, eyes, lips, and full-body of a social robot. In the first relationship, we check which element of the social robot design the consumer’s gaze stays on, and how the gaze on each element affects consumer beliefs. The consumer beliefs are considered as the social robot’s emotional expression, humanness, and facial prominence. Second, we explore whether the formation of consumer attitudes is possible through two major channels. One is the path that the consumer beliefs formed through the gaze influence their attitude, and the other is the path that the consumer gaze response directly influences the attitude. This study made a theoretical contribution in that it finally analysed the path of consumer attitude formation from various angles by linking the gaze tracking reaction and consumer perception. In addition, it is expected to make practical contributions in the suggestion of specific design insights that can be used as a reference for designing social robots.

Princesses in the Suburbs: Reading The Virgin Suicides as a Fairytale

<p>The concept of male gaze has been present for a very long time. It is present in literature, albeit literature being an entirely different media. In <em>The Virgin Suicides </em>by Jeffrey Eugenides, this theme seems to be very apparent along with themes such as voyeurism and objectifications. Drawing on the structuralist and gender studies, this article emphasizes about the effect of the male gaze and how this specific way of viewing affects the girls in a way that it shifts their function as a character, by reading the novel as a fairytale—a form of literary work of which the elements are easy to understand—helped by Vladimir Propp’s theory of <em>dramatis personae</em>. The findings attained from literature reading and library research concludes that the way the neighborhood boys' view of the Lisbon girls does affect their roles in the story. I argue that the Lisbon girls were put on a very high pedestal since the very beginning; therefore positions them as the fairytale princess. However, due to the nature of the gaze applied in the work, there are possibilities that it may shift to other characters.</p><p> </p>