Virtual Eyes
A project supported by the IOU Creation Centre and a DYCP grant from Arts Council England.
Artist Showcase 2024, IOU Creation Centre, 1 July - 9 August 2024
Slade Research Forum, Slade School of Fine Art, 14 November 2024
Image © 2024 Armelle Skatulski, Untitled, still from Virtual Eyes, a three channel long form video made using VR technology.
Artist Statement
Virtual Eyes is a meditation on the links between virtual cinematics, attention computing, digital information and natural resources extraction.
The project stems from an interest in how ‘player eye data’ like eye movements or fixations can be collected and mined during VR interactions in so-called attention computing studies to produce behavioural statistics or data visualisation products such as heat maps used in marketing or worker monitoring.
Virtual Eyes uses various interactive heat maps designed for VR and consists of a series of video recordings made using a Virtual Reality engine to explore the virtual gaze and the virtual camera for the (anti)cinematic possibilities that they offer in order to probe a tension between attention and inattention, valuable and valueless ‘data.’
Through three-dimensional collage and cinematic after-images, the project develops Virtual Reality scenes which explore a type of three-dimensional virtual object that is fleeting and that can only be recorded by the virtual camera as an after-image.
Virtual Eyes is a project supported by the IOU Creation Centre and a Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant from Arts Council England.
Image © 2024 Armelle Skatulski, Untitled (heat map iris), still from Virtual Eyes, a three channel long form video made using a VR engine.
Armelle Skatulski, Virtual Eyes, three channel video display at the CultureDale Artist Showcase 2024, IOU Creation Centre. Photo courtesy of Alexander Dobrev/IOU.
Image © 2024 Armelle Skatulski, Untitled (heat map iris), still from Virtual Eyes, a three channel long form video made using a VR engine.
CultureDale Artist Showcase 2024 launch, 27 June 2024, IOU Creation Centre. Photo courtesy of Alexander Dobrev/IOU.
Virtual Eyes is a project supported by the IOU Creation Centre and a Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant from Arts Council England.