, Dan Hill examines how we look at artwork, using an experimental approach that combines eye tracking with facial coding. |
| Image Courtesy Dan Hill, Sensory Logic |
Facial coding involves the careful tracking of minute facial expressions that animate the face of a viewer while reacting to a stimulus. As we process images through our brains, the information passes through an emotional filter before we can rationalize what we're seeing.
Hill uses a market-research approach to analyzing our response to art. In a controlled experimental setting, he invites viewers to respond to a variety of famous paintings and photographs. The book is an informally written summary of his experimental results.
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| Image Courtesy Dan Hill, Sensory Logic |
Hill says: "an art work's window of opportunity for creating an emotional connection is typically super brief." After spending many hours in many different museums carefully watching how people interact with the art on the walls, he concludes that the average viewing time per painting in an art museum is about 10 seconds: "Most often, you're likely to look at an artwork for four seconds before taking five seconds to read the plaque (i.e., "tombstone") describing the work's title, the artist's name, and so forth. Then if still interested, you'll glance back at the artwork for another second, before moving on. The vast majority of museum viewers, he observes, read at most twenty words of the museum caption before their attention falters.---
On Amazon: First Blush: People's Intuitive Reactions to Famous Art
," Montagu Pollock describes reflections that create "a chain of loops or a series of disconnected rings. Such rings are amongst the commonest features of gently moving water in the foreground of a picture. The reflexions of a boom or bowsprit, or of any conspicuous horizontal line, often assume this form."
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