haelo design manifests the look of love with eye tracking technology at istanbul design biennial

haelo design manifests the look of love with eye tracking technology at istanbul design biennial
silver object — 25th anniversary — craig + patrice
the silver object highlights the focus of each lover
all images courtesy of haelo design

 
helen maria nugent and ron kirkpatrick of haelo design have manifested ‘the look of love’ in a project which brings tangibility to a lover’s glance — one of the most personal, palpable, and sought after human sensations. presented for the 2nd istanbul design biennial, titled ‘the future is not what it used to be’, the work acts as a proposed design service, which creates highly personalized objects designed by the intimate form of communication between a couple. a completely unique artifact — directly formed by how they see one another — is generated by the gaze of each pair, mapped using custom eye-tracking technology. the resulting data is transformed into a physical object through parametric modeling tools and digital fabrication processes. these objects are realized in the material most closely associated with the duration of the couple’s relationship at their anniversary, allowing them to mark significant intervals in their time spent together.

bridgette and steve (3 years in love) use the eye tracking technology to generate data from their glances

anders and mardell (47 years in love) gaze through the glass eye tracker to determine the movement of their stare

tom and heather (10 years together) stare at each other through glass, capturing the movement of their eyes

a proposed lifetime subscription provides couples with an annual appointment to collect new gaze data and evolve their collection of designed objects. the first of five prototypes are included in the exhibition on view at the 2nd istanbul design biennial, developed from data collected from the initial subjects: the first object is created in paper to mark the couple’s one year anniversary; the second is woven willow to commemorate a nine year anniversary; the third in patinated silver to celebrate a couple’s twenty-five years together; an aluminum series measures 9 years in love; a porcelain object marks 20 years together.

depth was generated from how often eyes repeatedly looked at the same place on their lover’s face

paper object — 1st anniversary — lisa + bruce
the paper object highlights the path that the lovers’ eyes walk

the creased edges, viewed from above, show the course of how the lovers’ eyes deflected from consistent eye contact

aluminum object — 10th anniversary — heather + tom

the aluminum object highlights the path that the lover’s eyes followed

willow object — 9th anniversary — david + vanessa

these irregular baskets can be thought of as the ‘face that the lovers see when they looked at one another.’

porcelain object — 20th anniversary — helen maria + ron (haelo design)
the porcelain object highlights the contact that the lovers’ eyes make

the voids in the porcelain object are created through a collision detection algorithm

additional project credits:

digital design, form development, animation: zach pino
eyetracking hardware/software development: miguel perez
videography: sanaz sohrabi

about the 2nd istanbul design biennial:

the 2nd istanbul design biennial ‘the future is not what it used to be’ organized by the istanbul foundation for culture and arts (IKSV) and curated by zoë ryan opens to the public on november 1st, 2014. throughout the city and in the biennial hub, galata greek primary school, the biennial features 53 projects from designers all over the world that ask: ‘what is the future now?’ as well as panels, conversations, workshops, film screenings and many other events until 
14 december 2014. by rethinking the manifesto as a platform to frame pertinent questions, the projects question the role of design, its relationship to society, and its ability to be an active agent for change.

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