Introduction

This installation investigates how eye-tracking can be represented in the form of an interactive film editor to create a new output film. The eye data recorded from a first person perspective film¹ directs the video and audio in an immersive space while the audience is overwhelmed by the suprising nature of the output film². Multiple angles of a scene are recorded to provide wide-angle (WS), mid-to-wide angle (MS), and close-up (CU) shots. The fourth angle is taken as the first-person (FP) perspective. A composite video of 4 narratives in FP are stitched in a 2x2 array to create the eye-tracked film. This video was shown to 20 people while they were being eye-tracked for screen position, pupil dilation, and blink data. The additional angles of the scene are not shown to the eye-tracked users as these are used to ``reward'' the eye-tracked user with a deeper revelation of the narrative that pulls their attention.

The display of the original eye-tracked film as a composite of 4 narratives is inspired by Michael Figgis' ``Timecode'' which has 4 concurrent narratives in a loosely scripted plot centered around an earthquake and dramatic love story. The nature of our film is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges who often used the idea of circularity in time. The idea that a circular ``labyrinth'' of film edits that correspond to a narrative which is inherently circular in nature would lead to some interesting developments. The narratives themselves are separated into two corresponding lovers, Man and Woman, and Sara and Josh. These two lovers share much in common and find themselves struggling through desire. They eventually meet in person, in another metaphysical world, or as themselves, depending on how one interprets the story. The idea of desire, anticipation, and the marriage of the two narratives are inspired by William Blake's, ``The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'':

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; ... And being restrain'd, it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.