How We Gaze by Omar Nema

In an art gallery or museum, a viewer is typically engaged in a one-way reading process: they study a piece on their own. The gallery is not built as a participatory environment, but as a space for silent, solo viewing. Beyond the physical design of the gallery, each individual is limited to language as the primary means to communicate their thoughts on a piece of artwork. We cannot see how others see. And as a result, we may not understand how others connect to (or do not connect to) a given piece of artwork. Could showing how someone gazes at art connect us closer to that piece? Could doing so bring us closer to that person, and their perspective in that moment? How We Gaze is a project that visualizes how individuals study art through the use of eye-tracking and web-based data visualization. Within its interface, individuals are invited to view pieces of artwork, and see their gaze visualized alongside others’ in real-time. In visualizing how we look at art, How We Gaze attempts to connect viewers both to a curated set artwork and to the individuals who gazed at it.