The fine people at TED just posted a talk by Carnegie Mellon-based artist and educator, Golan Levin. One of its more, ahem, eye-catching moments involves Levin’s demonstration of the Opto-Isolator. As Levin’s website, Flong., explains it:
The sculpture presents a solitary mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and unnerving. Among other forms of feedback, Opto-Isolator looks its viewer directly in the eye; appears to intently study its viewer’s face; looks away coyly if it is stared at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its visitor blinks.
Levin’s entire talk is a fascinating one, and Flong. itself describes a number of his projects, each one exploring “the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity.”